“Keep quiet!” said Miss Cornelia tensely.  There was a pause of a few seconds while the pointer darted from one letter to another wildly.

“B—­M—­C—­X—­P—­R—­S—­K—­Z—­” murmured Miss Cornelia trying to follow the spelled letters.

“It’s Russian!” gasped Lizzie breathlessly and Miss Cornelia nearly disgraced herself in the eyes of any spirits that might be present by inappropriate laughter.  The ouija continued to move—­more letters—­what was it spelling?—­it couldn’t be—­good heavens—­ “B—­A—­T—­Bat!” said Miss Cornelia with a tiny catch in her voice.

The pointer stopped moving:  She took her hands from the board.

“That’s queer,” she said with a forced laugh.  She glanced at Lizzie to see how Lizzie was taking it.  But the latter seemed too relieved to have her hands off the ouija-board to make the mental connection that her mistress had feared.

All she said was, “Bats indeed!  That shows it’s spirits.  There’s been a bat flying around this house all evening.”

She got up from her chair tentatively, obviously hoping that the seance was over.

“Oh, Miss Neily,” she burst out.  “Please let me sleep in your room tonight!  It’s only when my jaw drops that I snore—­I can tie it up with a handkerchief!”

“I wish you’d tie it up with a handkerchief now,” said her mistress absent-mindedly, still pondering the message that the pointer had spelled.  “B—­A—­T—­Bat!” she murmured.  Thought-transference—­ warning—­accident?  Whatever it was, it was—­nerve-shaking.  She put the ouija-board aside.  Accident or not, she was done with it for the evening.  But she could not so easily dispose of the Bat.  Sending a protesting Lizzie off for her reading glasses, Miss Cornelia got the evening paper and settled down to what by now had become her obsession.  She had not far to search for a long black streamer ran across the front page—­“Bat Baffles Police Again.”

She skimmed through the article with eerie fascination, reading bits of it aloud for Lizzie’s benefit.

“’Unique criminal—­long baffled the police—­record of his crimes shows him to be endowed with an almost diabolical ingenuity—­so far there is no clue to his identity—­’” Pleasant reading for an old woman who’s just received a threatening letter, she thought ironically—­ah, here was something new in a black-bordered box on the front page—­a statement by the paper.

She read it aloud. “’We must cease combing the criminal world for the Bat and look higher.  He may be a merchant—­a lawyer—­a Doctor —­honored in his community by day and at night a bloodthirsty assassin—­’” The print blurred before her eyes, she could read no more for the moment.  She thought of the revolver in the drawer of the table close at hand and felt glad that it was there, loaded.

“I’m going to take the butcher knife to bed with me!” Lizzie was saying.

Miss Cornelia touched the ouija-board.  “That thing certainly spelled Bat,” she remarked.  “I wish I were a man.  I’d like to see any lawyer, Doctor, or merchant of my acquaintance leading a double life without my suspecting it.”