The Bat
I
THE SHADOW OF THE BAT
"You've got to get him, boysâget him or bust!" said a tired police chief, pounding a heavy fist on a table. The detectives he bellowed the words at looked at the floor. They had done their best and failed. Failure meant "resignation" for the police chief, return to the hated work of pounding the pavements for themâthey knew it, and, knowing it, could summon no gesture of bravado to answer their chief's. Gunmen, thugs, hi-jackers, loft-robbers, murderers, they could get them all in timeâbut they could not get the man he wanted.
"Get himâto hell with expenseâI'll give you carte blancheâbut get him!" said a haggard millionaire in the sedate inner offices of the best private detective firm in the country. The man on the other side of the desk, man hunter extraordinary, old servant of Government and State, sleuthhound without a peer, threw up his hands in a gesture of odd hopelessness. "It isn't the money, Mr. De CourcyâI'd give every cent I've made to get the man you wantâbut I can't promise you resultsâfor the first time in my life." The conversation was ended.
"Get him? Huh! I'll get him, watch my smoke!" It was young ambition speaking in a certain set of rooms in Washington. Three days later young ambition lay in a New York gutter with a bullet in his heart and a look of such horror and surprise on his dead face that even the ambulance-Doctor who found him felt shaken. "We've lost the most promising man I've had in ten years," said his chief when the news came in. He swore helplessly, "Damn the luck!"
"Get himâget himâget himâget him!" From a thousand sources now the clamor aroseâpress, police, and public alike crying out for the capture of the master criminal of a centuryâlost voices hounding a specter down the alleyways of the wind. And still the meshes broke and the quarry slipped away before the hounds were well on the scentâleaving behind a trail of shattered safes and rifled jewel casesâwhile ever the clamor rose higher to "Get himâget himâgetâ"
Get whom, in God's nameâget what? Beast, man, or devil? A specterâa flying shadowâthe shadow of a Bat.
From thieves' hangout to thieves' hangout the word passed along stirring the underworld like the passage of an electric spark. "There's a bigger guy than Pete Flynn shooting the works, a guy that could have Jim Gunderson for breakfast and not notice he'd et." The underworld heard and waited to be shown; after a little while the underworld began to whisper to itself in tones of awed respect. There were bright stars and flashing comets in the sky of the world of crimeâbut this new planet rose with the portent of an evil moon.
The Batâthey called him the Bat. Like a bat he chose the night hours for his work of rapine; like a bat he struck and vanished, pouncingly, noiselessly; like a bat he never showed himself to the face of the day. He'd never been in stir, the bulls had never mugged him, he didn't run with a mob, he played a lone hand, and fenced his stuff so that even the fence couldn't swear he knew his face. Most lone wolves had a moll at any rateâwomen were their ruinâbut if the Bat had a moll, not even the grapevine telegraph could locate her.
Rat-faced gunmen in the dingy back rooms of saloons muttered over his exploits with bated breath. In tawdrily gorgeous apartments, where gathered the larger figures, the proconsuls of the world of crime, cold, conscienceless brains dissected the work of a colder and swifter brain than theirs, with suave and bitter envy. Evil's Four Hundred chattered, discussed, debatedâsent out a thousand invisible tentacles to clutch at a shadowâto turn this shadow and its distorted genius to their own ends. The tentacles recoiled, baffledâthe Bat worked aloneânot even Evil's Four Hundred could bend him into a willing instrument to execute another's plan.
The men higher up waited. They had dealt with lone wolves before and broken them. Some day the Bat would slip and falter; then they would have him. But the weeks passed into months and still the Bat flew free, solitary, untamed, and deadly. At last even his own kind turned upon him; the underworld is like the upper in its fear and distrust of genius that flies alone. But when they turned against him, they turned against a spookâa shadow. A cold and bodiless laughter from a pit of darkness answered and mocked at their bungling gestures of hateâand went on, flouting Law and Lawless alike.
Where official trailer and private sleuth had failed, the newspapers might succeedâor so thought the disillusioned young men of the Fourth Estateâthe tireless foxes, nose-down on the trail of newsâthe trackers, who never gave up until that news was run to earth. Star reporter, leg-man, cub, veteran gray in the tradeâone and all they tried to pin the Bat like a caught butterfly to the front page of their respective journalsâsoon or late each gave up, beaten. He was newsâbigger news each weekâa thousand ticking typewriters clicked his adventuresâthe brief, staccato recital of his career in the morgues of the great dailies grew longer and more incredible each day. But the big newsâthe scoop of the centuryâthe yearned-for headline, "Bat Nabbed Red-Handed", "Bat Slain in Gun Duel with Police"âstill eluded the ravenous maw of the Linotypes. And meanwhile, the red-scored list of his felonies lengthened and the rewards offered from various sources for any clue which might lead to his apprehension mounted and mounted till they totaled a small fortune.
Columnists took him up, played with the name and the terror, used the name and the terror as a starting point from which to exhibit their own particular opinions on everything and anything. Ministers mentioned him in sermons; cranks wrote fanatic letters denouncing him as one of the even-headed beasts of the Apocalypse and a forerunner of the end of the world; a popular revue put on a special Bat number wherein eighteen beautiful chorus girls appeared masked and black-winged in costumes of Brazilian bat fur; there were Bat club sandwiches, Bat cigarettes, and a new shade of hosiery called simply and succinctly Bat. He became a fadâa catchwordâa national figure. And yetâhe was walking Deathâcoldâremorseless. But Death itself had become a toy of publicity in these days of limelight and jazz.
A city editor, at lunch with a colleague, pulled at his cigarette and talked. "See that Sunday story we had on the Bat?" he asked. "Pretty tidyâhuhâand yet we didn't have to play it up. It's an amazing listâthe Marshall jewelsâthe Allison murderâthe mail truck thingâtwo hundred thousand he got out of that, all negotiable, and two men dead. I wonder how many people he's really killed. We made it six murders and nearly a million in lootâdidn't even have room for the small stuffâbut there must be moreâ"
His companion whistled.
"And when is the Universe's Finest Newspaper going to burst forth with 'Bat Captured by BLADE Reporter?'" he queried sardonically.
"Oh, forâlay off it, will you?" said the city editor peevishly. "The Old Man's been hopping around about it for two months till everybody's plumb cuckoo. Even offered a bonusâa big oneâand that shows how crazy he isâhe doesn't love a nickel any better than his right eyeâfor any sort of exclusive story. Bonusâhuh!" and he crushed out his cigarette. "It won't be a Blade reporter that gets that bonusâor any reporter. It'll be Sherlock Holmes from the spirit world!"
"Wellâcan't you dig up a Sherlock?"
The editor spread out his hands. "Now, look here," he said. "We've got the best staff of any paper in the country, if I do say it. We've got boys that could get a personal signed story from Delilah on how she barbered Samsonâand find out who struck Billy Patterson and who was the Man in the Iron Mask. But the Bat's something else again. Oh, of course, we've panned the police for not getting him; that's always the game. But, personally, I won't pan them; they've done their damnedest. They're up against something new. Scotland Yard wouldn't do any betterâor any other bunch of cops that I know about."
"But look here, Bill, you don't mean to tell me he'll keep on getting away with it indefinitely?"
The editor frowned. "ConfidentiallyâI don't know," he said with a chuckle: "The situation's this: for the first time the super-crookâthe super-crook of fictionâthe kind that never makes a mistakeâhas come to lifeâreal life. And it'll take a cleverer man than any Central Office dick I've ever met to catch him!"
"Then you don't think he's just an ordinary crook with a lot of luck?"
"I do not." The editor was emphatic. "He's much brainier. Got a ghastly sense of humor, too. Look at the way he leaves his calling card after every jobâa black paper bat inside the Marshall safeâa bat drawn on the wall with a burnt match where he'd jimmied the Cedarburg Bankâa real bat, dead, tacked to the mantelpiece over poor old Allison's body. Oh, he's in a class by himselfâand I very much doubt if he was a crook at all for most of his life."
"You mean?"
"I mean this. The police have been combing the underworld for him; I don't think he comes from there. I think they've got to look higher, up in our world, for a brilliant man with a kink in the brain. He may be a Doctor, a lawyer, a merchant, honored in his community by dayâgood line that, I'll use it some timeâand at night, a bloodthirsty assassin. Deacon Brodieâever hear of himâthe Scotch deacon that burgled his parishioners' houses on the quiet? Wellâthat's our man."
"But my Lord, Billâ"
"I know. I've been going around the last month, looking at everybody I knew and thinkingâare you the Bat? Try it for a while. You'll want to sleep with a light in your room after a few days of it. Look around the University Clubâthat white-haired man over thereâdignifiedârespectableâis he the Bat? Your own lawyerâyour own Doctorâyour own best friend. Can happen you knowâlook at those Chicago boysâthe thrill-killers. Just brilliant studentsâlikeable boysâto the people that taught themâand cold-blooded murderers all the same."
"Bill! You're giving me the shivers!"
"Am I?" The editor laughed grimly. "Think it over. No, it isn't so pleasant.âBut that's my theoryâand I swear I think I'm right." He rose.
His companion laughed uncertainly.
"How about you, Billâare you the Bat?"
The editor smiled. "See," he said, "it's got you already. No, I can prove an alibi. The Bat's been laying off the city recentlyâtaking a fling at some of the swell suburbs. Besides I haven't the brainsâI'm free to admit it." He struggled into his coat. "Well, let's talk about something else. I'm sick of the Bat and his murders."
His companion rose as well, but it was evident that the editor's theory had taken firm hold on his mind. As they went out the door together he recurred to the subject.
"Honestly, though, Billâwere you serious, really seriousâwhen you said you didn't know of a single detective with brains enough to trap this devil?"
The editor paused in the doorway. "Serious enough," he said. "And yet there's one manâI don't know him myself but from what I've heard of him, he might be ableâbut what's the use of speculating?"
"I'd like to know all the same," insisted the other, and laughed nervously. "We're moving out to the country next week ourselvesâright in the Bat's new territory."
"We-el," said the editor, "you won't let it go any further? Of course it's just an idea of mine, but if the Bat ever came prowling around our place, the detective I'd try to get in touch with would beâ" He put his lips close to his companion's ear and whispered a name.
The man whose name he whispered, oddly enough, was at that moment standing before his official superior in a quiet room not very far away. Tall, reticently good-looking and well, if inconspicuously, clothed and groomed, he by no means seemed the typical detective that the editor had spoken of so scornfully. He looked something like a college athlete who had kept up his training, something like a pillar of one of the more sedate financial houses. He could assume and discard a dozen manners in as many minutes, but, to the casual observer, the one thing certain about him would probably seem his utter lack of connection with the seamier side of existence. The key to his real secret of life, however, lay in his eyes. When in repose, as now, they were veiled and without unusual qualityâbut they were the eyes of a man who can wait and a man who can strike.
He stood perfectly easy before his chief for several moments before the latter looked up from his papers.
"Well, Anderson," he said at last, looking up, "I got your report on the Wilhenry burglary this morning. I'll tell you this about itâif you do a neater and quicker job in the next ten years, you can take this desk away from me. I'll give it to you. As it is, your name's gone up for promotion today; you deserved it long ago."
"Thank you, sir," replied the tall man quietly, "but I had luck with that case."
"Of course you had luck," said the chief. "Sit down, won't you, and have a cigarâif you can stand my brand. Of course you had luck, Anderson, but that isn't the point. It takes a man with brains to use a piece of luck as you used it. I've waited a long ti...