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.