The Bat Part 6

"Now, Lizzie Allen!" she said sharply, "you forget all that superst.i.tious nonsense and stop looking for ghosts! There's nothing in that sort of thing." She smiled--she would punish Lizzie for her obdurate timorousness. "Where's that ouija-board?" she questioned, rising, with determination in her eye.

Lizzie shuddered violently. "It's up there--with a prayer book on it to keep it quiet!" she groaned, jerking her thumb in the direction of the farther bookcase.

"Bring it here!" said Miss Cornelia implacably; then as Lizzie still hesitated, "Lizzie!"

s.h.i.+vering, every movement of her body a conscious protest, Lizzie slowly went over to the bookcase, lifted off the prayer book, and took down the ouija-board. Even then she would not carry it normally but bore it over to Miss Cornelia at arms'-length, as if any closer contact would blast her with lightning, her face a comic mask of loathing and repulsion.

She placed the lettered board in Miss Cornelia's lap with a sigh of relief. "You can do it yourself! I'll have none of it!" she said firmly.

"It takes two people and you know it, Lizzie Allen!" Miss Cornelia's voice was stern but--it was also amused.

Lizzie groaned, but she knew her mistress. She obeyed. She carefully chose the farthest chair in the room and took a long time bringing it over to where her mistress sat waiting.

"I've been working for you for twenty years," she muttered. "I've been your goat for twenty years and I've got a right to speak my mind--"

Miss Cornelia cut her off. "You haven't got a mind. Sit down," she commanded.

Lizzie sat--her hands at her sides. With a sigh of tried patience, Miss Cornelia put her unwilling fingers on the little moving table that is used to point to the letters on the board itself. Then she placed her own hands on it, too, the tips of the fingers just touching Lizzie's.

"Now make your mind a blank!" she commanded her factotum.

"You just said I haven't got any mind," complained the latter.

"Well;" said Miss Cornelia magnificently, "make what you haven't got a blank."

The repartee silenced Lizzie for the moment, but only for the moment.

As soon as Miss Cornelia had settled herself comfortably and tried to make her mind a suitable receiving station for ouija messages, Lizzie began to mumble the sorrows of her heart.

"I've stood by you through thick and thin," she mourned in a low voice.

"I stood by you when you were a vegetarian--I stood by you when you were a theosophist--and I seen you through socialism, Fletcherism and rheumatism--but when it comes to carrying on with ghosts--"

"Be still!" ordered Miss Cornelia. "Nothing will come if you keep chattering!"

"That's why I'm chattering!" said Lizzie, driven to the wall. "My teeth are, too," she added. "I can hardly keep my upper set in," and a desolate clicking of artificial molars attested the truth of the remark. Then, to Miss Cornelia's relief, she was silent for nearly two minutes, only to start so violently at the end of the time that she nearly upset the ouija-board on her mistress's toes.

"I've got a queer feeling in my fingers--all the way up my arms," she whispered in awed accents, wriggling the arms she spoke of violently.

"Hus.h.!.+" said Miss Cornelia indignantly. Lizzie always exaggerated, of course--yet now her own fingers felt p.r.i.c.kly, uncanny. There was a little pause while both sat tense, staring at the board.

"Now, Ouija," said Miss Cornelia defiantly, "is Lizzie Allen right about this house or is it all stuff and nonsense?"

For one second--two--the ouija remained anch.o.r.ed to its resting place in the center of the board. Then--

"My Gawd! It's moving!" said Lizzie in tones of pure horror as the little pointer began to wander among the letters.

"You shoved it!"

"I did not--cross my heart, Miss Neily--I--" Lizzie's eyes were round, her fingers glued rigidly and awkwardly to the ouija. As the movements of the pointer grew more rapid her mouth dropped open--wider and wider--prepared for an ear-piercing scream.

"Keep quiet!" said Miss Cornelia tensely. There was a pause of a few seconds while the pointer darted from one letter to another wildly.

"B--M--C--X--P--R--S--K--Z--" murmured Miss Cornelia trying to follow the spelled letters.

"It's Russian!" gasped Lizzie breathlessly and Miss Cornelia nearly disgraced herself in the eyes of any spirits that might be present by inappropriate laughter. The ouija continued to move--more letters--what was it spelling?--it couldn't be--good heavens--"B--A--T--Bat!" said Miss Cornelia with a tiny catch in her voice.

The pointer stopped moving: She took her hands from the board.

"That's queer," she said with a forced laugh. She glanced at Lizzie to see how Lizzie was taking it. But the latter seemed too relieved to have her hands off the ouija-board to make the mental connection that her mistress had feared.

All she said was, "Bats indeed! That shows it's spirits. There's been a bat flying around this house all evening."

She got up from her chair tentatively, obviously hoping that the seance was over.

"Oh, Miss Neily," she burst out. "Please let me sleep in your room tonight! It's only when my jaw drops that I snore--I can tie it up with a handkerchief!"

"I wish you'd tie it up with a handkerchief now," said her mistress absent-mindedly, still pondering the message that the pointer had spelled. "B--A--T--Bat!" she murmured.

Thought-transference--warning--accident? Whatever it was, it was--nerve-shaking. She put the ouija-board aside. Accident or not, she was done with it for the evening. But she could not so easily dispose of the Bat. Sending a protesting Lizzie off for her reading gla.s.ses, Miss Cornelia got the evening paper and settled down to what by now had become her obsession. She had not far to search for a long black streamer ran across the front page--"Bat Baffles Police Again."

She skimmed through the article with eerie fascination, reading bits of it aloud for Lizzie's benefit.

"'Unique criminal--long baffled the police--record of his crimes shows him to be endowed with an almost diabolical ingenuity--so far there is no clue to his ident.i.ty--'" Pleasant reading for an old woman who's just received a threatening letter, she thought ironically--ah, here was something new in a black-bordered box on the front page--a statement by the paper.

She read it aloud. "'We must cease combing the criminal world for the Bat and look higher. He may be a merchant--a lawyer--a Doctor--honored in his community by day and at night a bloodthirsty a.s.sa.s.sin--'" The print blurred before her eyes, she could read no more for the moment.

She thought of the revolver in the drawer of the table close at hand and felt glad that it was there, loaded.

"I'm going to take the butcher knife to bed with me!" Lizzie was saying.

Miss Cornelia touched the ouija-board. "That thing certainly spelled Bat," she remarked. "I wish I were a man. I'd like to see any lawyer, Doctor, or merchant of my acquaintance leading a double life without my suspecting it."

"Every man leads a double life and some more than that," Lizzie observed. "I guess it rests them, like it does me to take off my corset."

Miss Cornelia opened her mouth to rebuke her but just at that moment there, was a clink of ice from the hall, and Billy, the j.a.panese, entered carrying a tray with a pitcher of water and some gla.s.ses on it.

Miss Cornelia watched his impa.s.sive progress, wondering if the Oriental races ever felt terror--she could not imagine all Lizzie's banshees and kelpies producing a single s.h.i.+ver from Billy. He set down the tray and was about to go as silently as he had come when Miss Cornelia spoke to him on impulse.

"Billy, what's all this about the cook's sister not having twins?" she said in an offhand voice. She had not really discussed the departure of the other servants with Billy before. "Did you happen to know that this interesting event was antic.i.p.ated?"

Billy drew in his breath with a polite hiss. "Maybe she have twins,"

he admitted. "It happen sometime. Mostly not expected."

"Do you think there was any other reason for her leaving?"

"Maybe," said Billy blandly.

"Well, what was the reason?"

"All say the same thing--house haunted." Billy's reply was prompt as it was calm.

Miss Cornelia gave a slight laugh. "You know better than that, though, don't you?"