For a moment she felt very helpless, very much alone.  Then her courage returned.

“Pshaw, Cornelia, if you have got to get help—­get the help you want and hang the consequences!” she adjured herself.  “You’ve always hankered to see a first-class detective do his detecting—­ well, get one—­or decide to do the job yourself.  I’ll bet you could at that.”

She tiptoed to the main door of the living-room and closed it cautiously, smiling as she did so.  Lizzie might be about and Lizzie would promptly go into hysterics if she got an inkling of her mistress’s present intentions.  Then she went to the city telephone and asked for long distance.

When she had finished her telephoning, she looked at once relieved and a little naughty—­like a demure child who has carried out some piece of innocent mischief unobserved.  “My stars!” she muttered to herself.  “You never can tell what you can do till you try.”  Then she sat down again and tried to think of other measures of defense.

Now if I were the Bat, or any criminal, she mused, how would I get into this house?  Well, that’s it—­I might get in ’most any way—­ it’s so big and rambling.  All the grounds you want to lurk in, too; it’d take a company of police to shut them off.  Then there’s the house itself.  Let’s see—­third floor—­trunk room, servants’ rooms—­couldn’t get in there very well except with a pretty long ladder—­that’s all right.  Second floor—­well, I suppose a man could get into my bedroom from the porch if he were an acrobat, but he’d need to be a very good acrobat and there’s no use borrowing trouble.  Downstairs is the problem, Cornelia, downstairs is the problem.

“Take this room now.”  She rose and examined it carefully.  “There’s the door over there on the right that leads into the billiard room.  There’s this door over here that leads into the hall.  Then there’s that other door by the alcove, and all those French windows—­whew!” She shook her head.

It was true.  The room in which she stood, while comfortable and charming, seemed unusually accessible to the night prowler.  A row of French windows at the rear gave upon a little terrace; below the terrace, the drive curved about and beneath the billiard-room windows in a hairpin loop, drawing up again at the main entrance on the other side of the house.  At the left of the French windows (if one faced the terrace as Miss Cornelia was doing) was the alcove door of which she spoke.  When open, it disclosed a little alcove, almost entirely devoted to the foot of a flight of stairs that gave direct access to the upper regions of the house.  The alcove itself opened on one side upon the terrace and upon the other into a large butler’s pantry.  The arrangement was obviously designed so that, if necessary, one could pass directly from the terrace to the downstairs service quarters or the second floor of the house without going through the living-room, and so that trays could be carried up from the pantry by the side stairs without using the main staircase.