A city editor, at lunch with a colleague, pulled at his cigarette and talked.  “See that Sunday story we had on the Bat?” he asked.  “Pretty tidy—­huh—­and yet we didn’t have to play it up.  It’s an amazing list—­the Marshall jewels—­the Allison murder—­the mail truck thing—­two hundred thousand he got out of that, all negotiable, and two men dead.  I wonder how many people he’s really killed.  We made it six murders and nearly a million in loot—­didn’t even have room for the small stuff—­but there must be more—­”

His companion whistled.

“And when is the Universe’s Finest Newspaper going to burst forth with ‘Bat Captured by blade Reporter?’” he queried sardonically.

“Oh, for—­lay off it, will you?” said the city editor peevishly.  “The Old Man’s been hopping around about it for two months till everybody’s plumb cuckoo.  Even offered a bonus—­a big one—­and that shows how crazy he is—­he doesn’t love a nickel any better than his right eye—­for any sort of exclusive story.  Bonus—­huh!” and he crushed out his cigarette.  “It won’t be a Blade reporter that gets that bonus—­or any reporter.  It’ll be Sherlock Holmes from the spirit world!”

“Well—­can’t you dig up a Sherlock?”

The editor spread out his hands.  “Now, look here,” he said.  “We’ve got the best staff of any paper in the country, if I do say it.  We’ve got boys that could get a personal signed story from Delilah on how she barbered Samson—­and find out who struck Billy Patterson and who was the Man in the Iron Mask.  But the Bat’s something else again.  Oh, of course, we’ve panned the police for not getting him; that’s always the game.  But, personally, I won’t pan them; they’ve done their damnedest.  They’re up against something new.  Scotland Yard wouldn’t do any better—­or any other bunch of cops that I know about.”

“But look here, Bill, you don’t mean to tell me he’ll keep on getting away with it indefinitely?”

The editor frowned.  “Confidentially—­I don’t know,” he said with a chuckle:  “The situation’s this:  for the first time the super-crook —­the super-crook of fiction—­the kind that never makes a mistake —­has come to life—­real life.  And it’ll take a cleverer man than any Central Office dick I’ve ever met to catch him!”

“Then you don’t think he’s just an ordinary crook with a lot of luck?”

“I do not.”  The editor was emphatic.  “He’s much brainier.  Got a ghastly sense of humor, too.  Look at the way he leaves his calling card after every job—­a black paper bat inside the Marshall safe —­a bat drawn on the wall with a burnt match where he’d jimmied the Cedarburg Bank—­a real bat, dead, tacked to the mantelpiece over poor old Allison’s body.  Oh, he’s in a class by himself—­and I very much doubt if he was a crook at all for most of his life.”

“You mean?”