A. Fair - Bats Fly at Dusk

Bertha tried to entice the bat outside so that she could close the door, but the bat apparently preferred to stay inside.

Bertha made little “cheeping” noises, finally said in exasperation, “Come on, Freddie, you old fool. Get out of here. I’m going to close and lock that door. You’ll die if I leave you inside.”

It might have been that the bat understood her, or perhaps the sound of the human voice sent him once more fluttering around her head.

“Get away,” Bertha said, brushing at him with her hand. “You make me nervous, and if you get on my neck again, I’ll—”

“Exactly what will you do, Mrs. Cool?” the voice of Sergeant Sellers asked. “You have me definitely interested now.”

Bertha jumped as though she had been jabbed with a pin, turned around, and at first failed to locate the sergeant’s hiding place. Then she saw him standing by a vine-covered corner of the porch, his hands resting on the rail, his chin on the backs of his hands. Standing on the ground, he was some two feet lower than Bertha Cool, and Bertha, looking down at him, could sense the triumph on the man’s smiling countenance.

“All right,” Bertha snapped. “Go ahead and say it.”

“Burglary,” Sergeant Sellers observed, “is a very serious crime.”

“This isn’t burglary,” Bertha snapped.

“Indeed? Perhaps you’ve had a special Act passed by the Legislature, or the Supreme Court may have changed the law, but a breaking and entering such as you have just done—”

“It’s just a little trick of the law that you don’t happen to know,” Bertha said. “To make it burglary, you must break and enter for the purpose of committing grand or petit larceny or some felony.”

Sellers thought that over for a minute, then laughed and said, “By George, I believe you are right.”

“I know I’m right,” Bertha snapped. “I wasn’t associated with the best legal brain in the country for several years for nothing.”

“That brings up a very interesting question. Exactly what was your purpose in entering the house?”

Bertha, doing some fast thinking, said triumphantly, “I had to let the bat out.”

“Ah, yes, the bat,” Sergeant Sellers said. “I’ll admit eluded you. You gave it a name, I believe. Freddie, wasp it?”

“That’s right.”

“Most interesting. That’s the tame bat?”

“Yes.”

“More and more interesting. And you came here to let out?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“I knew that it would die for lack of food and water someone didn’t let it out.”

Sergeant Sellers came walking around the corner of the porch to climb up the stairs and stand on a level with Bertha Cool. “I’m not trying to be funny. I’m trying to be polite. You might also remember that I’m asking these question not as a mere matter of idle curiosity, but in my official capacity.”

“I know,” Bertha said. “You’re putting on a lot of dog, but you’re boring in just the same. I always did distrust a polysyllabic cop.”

Sellers laughed.

Bertha said, “When they started putting college men on the force, they damn near ruined it.”

“Oh, come, Mrs. Cool. It isn’t as bad as that.”

“It’s worse.”

“Well, let’s not discuss the police force in the abstract the moment. I’m interested in bats — and one in particular Freddie.”

“All right, what about Freddie? I’ve told you why I can out here.”

“You wanted to release Freddie. You knew he was in the building then?”

“I thought he might be.”

“What gave you that idea?”

“Kosling had it so the bat could get in and out. He always left the door open a few inches and blocked it with a rubber wedge so it wouldn’t blow either open or shut. I kept thinking that perhaps you men had been dumb enough to shut the door and leave the bat inside.”

“I’m quite certain we didn’t, Mrs. Cool. I think the bat came in from the outside.”

“Yes, I suppose so.”

“And gave you quite a start. You screamed and—”

“Well, it would give you a start, too, if something came out of the night and perched on your chest.”

“The bat did that?”

“Yes.”

“Very interesting. Do you know, Mrs. Cool, I think this is the first time I’ve ever had a case which involved a pet bat? I think it’s the first time I’ve ever heard of a person making a pet out of a bat.”

“You’re young yet.”

“Thank you.”

“And how did you happen to be sitting out there waiting for me to come and let the bat loose?” Bertha asked.

He said, “That is indeed a coincidence. More and more I’ve been wondering whether we had the correct theory of what happened last night. I thought that it might — just barely might be possible that your friend, Jerry Bollman, pumped your blind client, received some very interesting information which made him feel there was something the blind man had that he wanted. In place of coming out here with Kosling, he left Kosling somewhere and came out here alone to get the thing he wanted. Obviously, he didn’t get it. If he did get it, he certainly didn’t carry it away with him; but the indications are he walked into that deadly trap gun and was killed as soon as he entered the place. A snare gun that was rigged up by a blind man for a blind victim. Most interesting. We’ve heard of the blind leading the blind, but this is a case where the blind kill the blind.”

“Go right ahead,” Bertha said. “Don’t mind me. I’ve got lots of time.”

“Then,” Sergeant Sellers went on, “it began to dawn on me that perhaps I had been just a bit credulous. When I was in your office this afternoon a collect telephone call came through.”

“Was there anything remarkable about that?” Bertha Cool snapped. “Didn’t you ever have anyone call you collect or long distance?”

Sellers’s triumphant grin showed that she had led with her chin. “The remarkable thing, Mrs. Cool, was that you accepted the call after you found out who was calling — and then a very peculiar circumstance popped into my mind. After you hung up the telephone there was some more talk about Rodney Kosling. You didn’t say that you didn’t know where he was after you had hung up the telephone, but you did use a rather peculiar sentence construction. You said that you had answered all of my questions truthfully, according to the best information you had at the time.”

“I’ll admit, Mrs. Cool, I didn’t think of it until after dinner; then it dawned on me as an interesting possibility. I didn’t want to lose face among my subordinates by staking any of them out here, in case it proved to be a poor hunch, and I didn’t want to trust the examination to anyone else, in case it proved to be a good one. But it was an interesting possibility. Suppose Bollman came out here for something. Suppose you went to meet Rodney Kosling. Suppose you found out what it was Bollman had come out here to get, and suppose you came out and picked up that particular article. That would be very, very interesting.”

Bertha said, “I didn’t take a thing from that house.”

“That, of course, is an assertion which will have to be checked,” Sellers said. “Much as I dislike to do so, Mrs. Cool, I’m going to have to ask you to get in my automobile and go to headquarters where a matron will search you. If it turns out you haven’t taken anything, then — well, then, of course, the situation will be radically different. If it should appear that you have taken something, then, of course, you’d be guilty of a crime, the crime of burglary. And, as a person apprehended in the act of committing a burglary, we’d have to hold you, Mrs. Cool. We’d have to hold you at least until we had a very fair, full, and frank statement of just what you’re trying to do.”