“Fortunately, however, the bat had been in my room long enough before I entered it to shake all the deadly powder from its wings. The powder had settled and the air was pure before I crossed the threshold of that room, else I would have died a quick and horrible death.
“The same thing is true of the bat that sprinkled death in the face of Berjet. When you and I, in company with the police, entered the scientist’s house, the bat had been gone for several minutes, and the stray particles of pulverized death had settled. You realized this, of course, or you would not have entered the room. If Strange and I had entered the house five minutes earlier, you would have let us enter it alone.”
Peret took a lavender handkerchief from the breast pocket of his coat and wiped from his brow some beads of perspiration. A slight moisture was also noticeable on the forehead of the artist, but it was due to another cause. Although he must have known that each word of the detective’s was a strand in the rope that was being woven around his neck, he gave no signs of emotion. Inwardly, the strain had begun to tell on him, but outwardly he was calm, confident, almost indifferent.
Restoring the handkerchief to his pocket, Peret resumed: “I confess that at first the case baffled me. Through a mistake of my own, soon to be explained, I got started on the wrong track. Your story of the Whispering Thing did not impress me, although I did not at first suspect you of deliberately trying to deceive me. I laid the Thing to your imagination and wrought-up condition. My skepticism vanished, however, when I reached my rooms, as I have explained.
“At first I scarcely knew what to believe. The asphyxiation theory of Sprague and, later on, of Coroner Rane set my mind in motion, but led me nowhere, because it did not fit in with my interpretation of Berjet’s last words. As a matter of fact, nothing else seemed to fit in with anything. Clues ran counter to each other and the facts themselves clashed.
“I got my first inspiration when you declared that the breathing of the Thing was cold and clammy, for this made it seem likely that poison fumes had been fanned in your face by some mechanical device. Had it not been for the horrible experience in my room, this is the theory upon which I should have based my investigation.”
“Then you captured the bat?” said Deweese, in a tense voice.
“Oui, Monsieur,” nodded Peret. “I tried to shoot the tiny thing, without even knowing what it was; but I ask you in all seriousness, my friend, could one hope to hit with a thirty-two bullet a chauve-souris that one could not see? Not I! So I telephoned for the police and they came and conquered it with a tear bomb!
“The bat, Monsieur, was then turned over to the city chemists, and they analyzed the traces of powder found adhering to the little pads on its wings. Their report gave me the name of the poison that opened the gates of eternity for Berjet and Sprague.”
Peret twisted the needle-points of his slender black mustache and beamed upon his host.