The Bat Part 28

CHAPTER TWELVE

"I DIDN'T KILL HIM."

"The rest of it?" queried Dale with a show of bewilderment, silently thanking her stars that, for the moment at least, the incriminating fragment had pa.s.sed out of her possession.

Her reply seemed only to infuriate the detective.

"Don't tell me Fleming started to go out of this house with a blank sc.r.a.p of paper in his hand," he threatened. "He didn't start to go out at all!"

Dale rose. Was Anderson trying a chance shot in the dark--or had he stumbled upon some fresh evidence against her? She could not tell from his manner.

"Why do you say that?" she feinted.

"His cap's there on that table," said the detective with crus.h.i.+ng terseness. Dale started. She had not remembered the cap--why hadn't she burned it, concealed it--as she had concealed the blue-print? She pa.s.sed a hand over her forehead wearily.

Miss Cornelia watched her niece.

"It you're keeping anything back, Dale--tell him," she said.

"She's keeping something back all right," he said. "She's told part of the truth, but not all." He hammered at Dale again. "You and Fleming located that room by means of a blue-print of the house. He started--not to go out--but, probably, to go up that staircase. And he had in his hand the rest of this!" Again he displayed the blank corner of blue paper.

Dale knew herself cornered at last. The detective's deductions were too shrewd; do what she would, she could keep him away from the truth no longer.

"He was going to take the money and go away with it!" she said rather pitifully, feeling a certain relief of despair steal over her, now that she no longer needed to go on lying--lying--involving herself in an inextricable web of falsehood.

"Dale!" gasped Miss Cornelia, alarmed. But Dale went on, reckless of consequences to herself, though still warily s.h.i.+elding Jack.

"He changed the minute he heard about it. He was all kindness before that--but afterward--" She shuddered, closing her eyes. Fleming's face rose before her again, furious, distorted with pa.s.sion and greed--then, suddenly, quenched of life.

Anderson turned to Miss Cornelia triumphantly.

"She started to find the money--and save Bailey," he explained, building up his theory of the crime. "But to do it she had to take Fleming into her confidence--and he turned yellow. Rather than let him get away with it, she--" He made an expressive gesture toward his hip pocket.

Dale trembled, feeling herself already in the toils. She had not quite realized, until now, how d.a.m.ningly plausible such an explanation of Fleming's death could sound. It fitted the evidence perfectly--it took account of every factor but one--the factor left unaccounted for was one which even she herself could not explain.

"Isn't that true?" demanded Anderson. Dale already felt the cold clasp of handcuffs on her slim wrists. What use of denial when every tiny circ.u.mstance was so leagued against her? And yet she must deny.

"I didn't kill him," she repeated perplexedly, weakly.

"Why didn't you call for help? You--you knew I was here."

Dale hesitated. "I--I couldn't." The moment the words were out of her mouth she knew from his expression that they had only cemented his growing certainty of her guilt.

"Dale! Be careful what you say!" warned Miss Cornelia agitatedly. Dale looked dumbly at her aunt. Her answers must seem the height of reckless folly to Miss Cornelia--oh, if there were only someone who understood!

Anderson resumed his grilling.

"Now I mean to find out two things," he said, advancing upon Dale. "Why you did not call for help--and what you have done with that blue-print."

"Suppose I could find that piece of blue-print for you?" said Dale desperately. "Would that establish Jack Bailey's innocence?"

The detective stared at her keenly for a moment.

"If the money's there--yes."

Dale opened her lips to reveal the secret, reckless of what might follow. As long as Jack was cleared--what matter what happened to herself? But Miss Cornelia nipped the heroic attempt at self-sacrifice in the bud.

She put herself between her niece and the detective, s.h.i.+elding Dale from his eager gaze.

"But her own guilt!" she said in tones of great dignity. "No, Mr.

Anderson, granting that she knows where that paper is--and she has not said that she does--I shall want more time and much legal advice before I allow her to turn it over to you."

All the unconscious note of command that long-inherited wealth and the pride of a great name can give was in her voice, and the detective, for the moment, bowed before it, defeated. Perhaps he thought of men who had been broken from the Force for injudicious arrests, perhaps he merely bided his time. At any rate, he gave up his grilling of Dale for the present and turned to question the Doctor and Beresford who had just returned, with Jack Bailey, from their grim task of placing Fleming's body in a temporary resting place in the library.

"Well, Doctor?" he grunted.

The Doctor shook his head

"Poor fellow--straight through the heart."

"Were there any powder marks?" queried Miss Cornelia.

"No--and the clothing was not burned. He was apparently shot from some little distance--and I should say from above."

The detective received this information without the change of a muscle in his face. He turned to Beresford--resuming his attack on Dale from another angle.

"Beresford, did Fleming tell you why he came here tonight?"

Beresford considered the question.

"No. He seemed in a great hurry, said Miss Ogden had telephoned him, and asked me to drive him over."

"Why did you come up to the house?"

"We-el," said Beresford with seeming candor, "I thought it was putting rather a premium on friends.h.i.+p to keep me sitting out in the rain all night, so I came up the drive--and, by the way!" He snapped his fingers irritatedly, as if recalling some significant incident that had slipped his memory, and drew a battered object from his pocket. "I picked this up, about a hundred feet from the house," he explained. "A man's watch. It was partly crushed into the ground, and, as you see, it's stopped running."

The detective took the object and examined it carefully. A man's open-face gold watch, crushed and battered in as if it had been trampled upon by a heavy heel.

"Yes," he said thoughtfully. "Stopped running at ten-thirty."

Beresford went on, with mounting excitement.

"I was using my pocket-flash to find my way and what first attracted my attention was the ground--torn up, you know, all around it. Then I saw the watch itself. Anybody here recognize it?"

The detective silently held up the watch so that all present could examine it. He waited. But if anyone in the party recognized the watch--no one moved forward to claim it.

"You didn't hear any evidence of a struggle, did you?" went on Beresford. "The ground looked as if a fight had taken place. Of course it might have been a dozen other things."

Miss Cornelia started.