A. Fair - Bats Fly at Dusk

“Wasn’t there something in what I just said, something that made you excited?”

“Oh, I thought there was for a while,” Bertha said, yawning again, “but I guess it’s all a false alarm. Don’t know what she paid for the music box, do you?”

“No, I don’t, but I think it was rather a large sum. It’s a very beautiful piece, and there’s painting on it. Some kind of landscape painting done in oils.”

“Ever had that painting described to you?”

“No, I’ve just felt it with my fingers.”

Bertha sucked in another prodigious yawn.

“Well, I’m going to sleep. Do you like to sleep late in the morning?”

“Well, yes.”

“I don’t usually get up before nine or nine-thirty,” Bertha said. “That isn’t too late for you, is it?”

“The way I feel now, I could sleep the clock around.”

“Well, go ahead and get a good might’s sleep,” Bertha told him. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

Bertha guided him through the door of the connecting bath, helped him off with the woman’s clothes, piloted him around the room until he had the general lay of things, left his cane by his bed where he could reach it, and then said, “Well, sleep tight. I’ll go grab some shut-eye.”

She walked through the connecting bathroom, closed the door, listened for a moment, then grabbed her hat and coat, moved cautiously across the room, tiptoed down the corridor to the elevator, and ten minutes later was tearing madly along the road to Los Angeles.

It wasn’t until she had passed Pomona that she suddenly realized she was doing exactly what Jerry Bollman had been doing some twenty-four hours previously — and probably for the same purpose. And now Jerry Bollman was stretched out on a slab.

Dim-out regulations were in effect. At the crest of the hill Bertha snapped her lights over to dim parking and crawled along at a conservative fifteen miles an hour. She swung her car in close to the curb, shut off the motor, and listened. She could hear nothing save the little night noises which had not as yet been frightened into silence: the chirping of crickets; the shrill chorus of frogs; and several other mysterious, unidentified noises of the night which are never heard near the more populous centers.

Bertha produced her pocket flashlight. By the aid of the weird, indistinct illumination, as intangible as pale moonlight, she found her way up the walk to the house.

The bungalow loomed suddenly before her, a dark silhouette. She followed the walk with the guide rail running along it, came to the porch, climbed the steps, and paused. The door was tightly closed. This would be the work of the officers. Bertha wondered whether it had been locked.

She tried the knob. The door was locked.

Bertha’s flashlight showed her, after some difficulty in getting it properly centered, that there was no key on the inside of the door. The police then must have put on a night latch or have closed and locked the door.

Bertha had a bunch of skeleton keys in her purse. She knew they constituted a dangerous possession, but they frequently came in very handy, and Bertha was not one to hesitate over something she wanted badly enough.

A skeleton key clicked in the lock. She tried three in succession. It was the fourth that unlatched the door.

Bertha Cool pushed the door open, then stood perfectly still, waiting to see if the dark interior of the house offered anything of menace.

She heard no sound. Her flashlight showed her nothing, although she mechanically depressed the beam over towards the left-hand corner in order to see if the sinister red stains were still on the carpet. They were.

Bertha switched out the flashlight.

Abruptly she heard motion in the room. Her ice-cold thumb fumbled with the switch of the flashlight. She was conscious of something coming toward her; then bony fingers seemed to clutch her throat.

Bertha lashed out in front of her with a frenzied kick. She swung her left fist and groped with her right, trying to find the wrists of her assailant.

Her hands encountered nothing. Her kick merely threw her off balance. She knew she had given a half-scream.

It wasn’t until Bertha Cool had screamed that reason reinstated itself. The object at her throat abruptly left. She heard a fluttering sound, and caught the dim glimpse of a sinister shape flitting past her into the darkness.

“Freddie!” she muttered under her breath. “It’s that damn bat.”

She turned, the beam of her flashlight exploring the room while Bertha tried to, convince herself there were no more death traps planted in the house against the return of the blind man.

Bertha’s search of the place was necessarily impeded because of her desire to feel her way cautiously, to avoid running into some thread which, all but invisible in the dim light, would release a deadly bullet.

It was easy now to visualize what had happened the night before; Bollman, hurrying into the house, trying to get that music box and get out before anyone caught him — the lunge against the string that led to the trap gun. Bertha, too, felt impelled by that same haste, that fear of discovery, yet she dared not surrender to it.

The house was plainly but comfortably furnished. Evidently Kosling tried to keep five or six comfortable chairs for his cronies when they came to visit. These chairs, all cushioned and comfortable, were arranged in a half-circle around the living room. Against the wall under a window was a book-case whose glass-enclosed shelves held no books, a table which was absolutely devoid of a magazine. On a stand over near the window — Bertha’s eyes fixed on that stand. She advanced toward it. Her eager hands pounced upon the music box. When she had first seen it, when the blind man had exhibited it to her on the street, her inspection had been only casual. Now she studied it with a concentration that was all but microscopic.

The light of her flash showed Bertha that it was made of smoothly polished hardwood. On the outside was an oil painting of a pastoral scene. On the opposite side was a pox-trait of a beautiful young woman, somewhat ample as far as curves were judged by present-day standards, but quite definitely the belle of a bygone era.

At one time the paint had been varnished over, but now there were places where paint and varnish had worn thin. However, the grain of the wood showed through a beautiful satin-like finish, and the excellent preservation of the box indicated that here was something that had been long treasured as a family heirloom, something which had had the best of care. Little wonder that it had become one of the prized possessions of the affluent blind beggar.

Bertha explored the outside of it carefully, holding her spotlight within a couple of inches of the surface. There was not so much as a mark or a label on it. Disappointed, Bertha raised the cover. Almost instantly the music box picked up the strains of Bluebells of Scotland and filled the room with its tinkling sweetness.

Just inside the cover Bertha found what she wanted. A small oval label had been pasted on the top. It said, “Britten G. Stellman, Rare Antiques.”

Bertha replaced the music box. The closing cover shut oil the strains of music. She turned, started for the door, then came back to wipe her fingerprints from the music box.

Her spotlight turned toward the door. Vague, dancing blotches of darkness drifted along the wall, looking as though dark figures were bunched there waiting to pounce on her. Bertha realized that it was the bat flying in frenzied circles around the room, casting shadows when it crossed the beam of her spotlight. Evidently the bat was hungry for human companionship, but sensed that Bertha was not the blind man.