"Our on the roof!"
"Come on, Beresford!"
"Hustle - you men! He may be armed!"
"Righto - coming!"
And following Miss Cornelia's lead, Jack Bailey, Anderson, Beresford, and Billy dashed out into the corridor, leaving Dale and the frightened Lizzie alone with the Unknown.
"And I'd run if my legs would!" Lizzie despaired.
"Hush!" said Dale, her ears strained for sounds of conflict. Lizzie, creeping closer to her for comfort, stumbled over one of the Unknown's feet and promptly set up a new wail.
"How do we know this fellow right here isn't the Bat?" she asked in a blood-chilling whisper, nearly stabbing the unfortunate Unknown in the eye with her thumb as she pointed at him. The Unknown was either too dazed or too crafty to make any answer. His silence confirmed Lizzie's worst suspicions. She fairly hugged the floor and began to pray in a whisper.
Miss Cornelia re-entered cautiously with her candle, closing the door gently behind her as she came.
"What did you see?" gasped Dale. Miss Cornelia smiled broadly.
"I didn't see anything," she admitted with the greatest calm. "I had to get that dratted detective out of the room before I assassinated him."
"Nobody went through the skylight?" said Dale incredulously.
"They have now," answered Miss Cornelia with obvious satisfaction. "The whole outfit of them."
She stole a glance at the veiled eyes of the Unknown. He was lying limply back in his chair, as if the excitement had been too much for him - and yet she could have sworn she had seen him leap to his feet, like a man in full possession of his faculties, when she had given her-false cry of alarm.
"Then why did you - " began Dale dazedly, unable to fathom her aunt's reasons for her trick."Because," interrupted Miss Cornelia decidedly, "that money's in this room. If the man who took it out of the safe got away with it, why did he come back and hide there?"
Her forefinger jabbed at the hidden chamber wherein the masked intruder had terrified Dale with threats of instant death.
"He got it out of the safe - and that's as far as he did get with it," she persisted inexorably. "There's a HAT behind that safe, a man's felt hat!"
So this was the discovery she had hinted of to Anderson before he rebuffed her proffer of assistance!
"Oh, I wish he'd take his hat and-go home!" groaned Lizzie inattentive to all but her own fears.
Miss Cornelia did not even bother to rebuke her. She crossed behind the wicker clothes hamper and picked up something from the floor.
"A half-burned candle," she mused. "Another thing the detective overlooked."
She stepped back to the center of the room, looking knowingly from the candle to the Hidden Room and back again.
"Oh, my God - another one!" shrieked Lizzie as the dark shape of a man appeared suddenly outside the window, as if materialized from the air.
Miss Cornelia snatched up her revolver from the top of the hamper.
"Don't shoot - it's Jack!" came a warning cry from Dale as she recognized the figure of her lover.
Miss Cornelia laid her revolver down on the hamper again. The vacant eyes of the Unknown caught the movement.
Bailey swung in through the window, panting a little from his exertions.
"The man Lizzie saw drop from the skylight undoubtedly got to the roof from this window," he said. "It's quite easy."
"But not with one hand," said Miss Cornelia, with her gaze now directed at the row of tall closets around the walls of the room. When that detective comes back I may have a surprise party for him," she muttered, with a gleam of hope in her eye.
Dale explained the situation to Jack.
"Aunt Cornelia thinks the money's still here."Miss Cornelia snorted.
"I know it's here." She started to open the closets, one after the other, beginning at the left. Bailey saw what she was doing and began to help her.
Not so Lizzie. She sat on the floor in a heap, her eyes riveted on the Unknown, who in his turn was gazing at Miss Cornelia's revolver on the hamper with the intent stare of a baby or an idiot fascinated by a glittering piece of glass.
Dale noticed the curious tableau.
"Lizzie - what are you looking at?" she said with a nervous shake in her voice.
"What's he looking at?" asked Lizzie sepulchrally, pointing at the Unknown. Her pointed forefinger drew his eyes away from the revolver; he sank back into his former apathy, listless, drooping.
Miss Cornelia rattled the knob of a high closet by the other wall.
"This one is locked - and the key's gone," she announced. A new flicker of interest grew in the eyes of the Unknown. Lizzie glanced away from him, terrified.
"If there's anything locked up in that closet," she whimpered, "you'd better let it stay! There's enough running loose in this house as it is!"
Unfortunately for her, her whimper drew Miss Cornelia's attention upon her. "Lizzie, did you ever take that key?" the latter queried sternly.
"No'm," said Lizzie, too scared to dissimulate if she had wished. She wagged her head violently a dozen times, like a china figure on a mantelpiece.
Miss Cornelia pondered.
"It may be locked from the inside; I'll soon find out." She took a wire hairpin from her hair and pushed it through the keyhole. But there was no key on the other side; the hairpin went through without obstruction. Repeated efforts to jerk the door open failed. And finally Miss Cornelia bethought herself of a key from the other closet doors.
Dale and Lizzie on one side - Bailey on the other - collected the keys of the other closets from their locks while Miss Cornelia stared at the one whose doors were closed as if she would force its secret from it with her eyes. The Unknown had been so quiet during the last few minutes, that, unconsciously, the others had ceased to pay much attention to him, except the casual attention one devotes to a piece of furniture. Even Lizzie's eyes were now fixed on the locked closet. And the Unknown himself was the first to notice this.At once his expression altered to one of cunning