"It isn't the money, Mr.De Courcy--I'd give every cent I've made to get the man you want--but I can't promise you results--for the first time in my life." The conversation was ended.
"Get him?
Huh! I'll get him, watch my smoke!" It was young ambition speaking in a certain set of rooms in Washington.

Three days later young ambition lay in a New York gutter with a bullet in his heart and a look of such horror and surprise on his dead face that even the ambulance-Doctor who found him felt shaken.

"We've lost the most promising man I've had in ten years," said his chief when the news came in.

He swore helplessly, "Damn the luck!" "Get him--get him--get him--get him!" From a thousand sources now the clamor arose--press, police, and public alike crying out for the capture of the master criminal of a century--lost voices hounding a specter down the alleyways of the wind.

And still the meshes broke and the quarry slipped away before the hounds were well on the scent--leaving behind a trail of shattered safes and rifled jewel cases--while ever the clamor rose higher to "Get him--get him--get--" Get whom, in God's name--get what?
Beast, man, or devil?
A specter--a flying shadow--the shadow of a Bat.
From thieves' hangout to thieves' hangout the word passed along stirring the underworld like the passage of an electric spark.