“I shan’t.  I only wish there were something I could do for you, my dear.”

Dale stopped in the alcove doorway.  “There’s nothing anybody can do for me, really,” she said soberly.  “At least—­oh, I don’t know what I’m saying!  But don’t worry.  I’m quite all right.  I may go over to the country club after dinner—­and dance.  Won’t you come with me, Aunt Cornelia?”

“Depends on your escort,” said Miss Cornelia tartly.  “If our landlord, Mr. Richard Fleming, is taking you I certainly shall—­I don’t like his looks and never did!”

Dale laughed.  “Oh, he’s all right,” she said.  “Drinks a good deal and wastes a lot of money, but harmless enough.  No, this is a very sedate party; I’ll be home early.”

“Well, in that case,” said her aunt, “I shall stay here with my Lizzie and my ouija-board.  Lizzie deserves some punishment for the very cowardly way she behaved this afternoon—­and the ouija-board will furnish it.  She’s scared to death to touch the thing.  I think she believes it’s alive.”

“Well, maybe I’ll send you a message on it from the country club,” said Dale lightly.  She had paused, half-way up the flight of side stairs in the alcove, and her aunt noticed how her shoulders drooped, belying the lightness of her voice.  “Oh,” she went on, “by the way —­have the afternoon papers come yet?  I didn’t have time to get one when I was rushing for the train.”

“I don’t think so, dear, but I’ll ask Lizzie.”  Miss Cornelia moved toward a bell push.

“Oh, don’t bother; it doesn’t matter.  Only if they have, would you ask Lizzie to bring me one when she brings up the lemonade?  I want to read about—­about the Bat—­he fascinates me.”

“There was something else in the paper this morning,” said Miss Cornelia idly.  “Oh, yes—­the Union Bank—­the bank Mr. Fleming, Senior, was president of has failed.  They seem to think the cashier robbed it.  Did you see that, Dale?”

The shoulders of the girl on the staircase straightened suddenly.  Then they drooped again.  “Yes—­I saw it,” she said in a queerly colorless voice.  “Too bad.  It must be terrible to—­to have everyone suspect you—­and hunt you—­as I suppose they’re hunting that poor cashier.”

“Well,” said Miss Cornelia, “a man who wrecks a bank deserves very little sympathy to my way of thinking.  But then I’m old-fashioned.  Well, dear, I won’t keep you.  Run along—­and if you want an aspirin, there’s a box in my top bureau-drawer.”

“Thanks, darling.  Maybe I’ll take one and maybe I won’t—­all I really need is to lie down for a while.”

She moved on up the staircase and disappeared from the range of Miss Cornelia’s vision, leaving Miss Cornelia to ponder many things.  Her trip to the city had done Dale no good, of a certainty.  If not actually ill, she was obviously under some considerable mental strain.  And why this sudden interest, first in the Bat, then in the failure of the Union Bank?  Was it possible that Dale, too, had been receiving threatening letters?