It somehow weakened her terrified admiration for him, but she had nothing but acclaim for the escape he had made from the Hidden Room itself.

“That took brains,” she said.  “Cold, hard brains.  To dash out of that room and down the stairs, pull off his mask and pick up a candle, and then to come calmly back to the trunk room again and accuse the Doctor—­that took real ability.  But I dread to think what would have happened when he asked us all to go out and leave him alone with the real Anderson!”

It was after two o’clock when she finally sent the young people off to get some needed sleep but she herself was still bright-eyed and wide-awake.

When Lizzie came at last to coax and scold her into bed, she was sitting happily at the table surrounded by divers small articles which she was handling with an almost childlike zest.  A clipping about the Bat from the evening newspaper; a piece of paper on which was a well-defined fingerprint; a revolver and a heap of five shells; a small very dead bat; the anonymous warnings, including the stone in which the last one had been wrapped; a battered and broken watch, somehow left behind; a dried and broken dinner roll; and the box of sedative powders brought by Doctor Wells.

Lizzie came over to the table and surveyed her grimly.

“You see, Lizzie, it’s quite a collection.  I’m going to take them and—­”

But Lizzie bent over the table and picked up the box of powders.

“No, ma’am,” she said with extreme finality.  “You are not.  You are going to take these and go to bed.”

And Miss Cornelia did.