Page:Weird Tales Volume 29 Number 1 (1937-01).djvu/18

able to locate this strange woman whose advent heralded these murders?"

"No, sor, we haven't," answered the detective. "We spread th' dragnet for 'er, like I told ye at th' joint last night, but we can’t find hide nor hair o' her. P'raps she's stayin' in New York—there's lots o' furriners—axin' yer pardon, sor—always hangin' out there, an' we've asked th' police to be on th' lookout fer her, but you know how it is. Pretty much like lookin' fer a needle in a haystack, as th' felly says. So when Nancy—beg pardon, I mane Miss Meigs—come an' told me she might be able for to shed some light on all this monkey-business, I thought I'd better bring her over."

"Precisely," nodded Jules de Grandin. "And in the meantime, while we seek the so elusive Lady of the Bat, how shall we make things safe for Mademoiselle Nancy?"

"H'm, I might lock ’er up as a material witness,” Costello offered with a grin, "but——"

"Oh, would you—please?" broke in the girl. "I never wanted to be anywhere in all my life as much as I want to be behind jail bars right now!"

"Sold," Costello agreed. "We'll go over to your place an' get your clothes; then you can trot along to jail wid me."

"One moment, Mademoiselle, before you go to the bastille," de Grandin interrupted. "It is entirely unlikely that the search for this Bat Woman will produce results. They are clever, these ones. I do not doubt that they have covered up their trail so well that long before the gendarmes realize the search is useless she will have fled the country. Tell me, would you know your way—could you retrace your steps to that so odious temple where the Children of the Bat have made their lair?"

A little frown of concentration wrinkled her smooth forehead. "I think I could," she answered finally.

"And will you lead us there? Remember, it is in the cause of justice, to avenge the ruthless murder of your friend and to save le bon Dieu knows how many others from a similar fate."

She looked at him with widened eyes, eyes in which the pupils seemed to swell and spread till they almost hid the irides. Her eyes were blank, but not expressionless. Rather, they seemed to me like openings to hell, as though they mirrored all the nightmares she had seen within their depths.

"I suppose I might as well," she answered with a little shudder. "If I go there they will nail me to a cross. If I stay here they'll do it sooner or later, anyway."

She was like a lovely, lifeless robot as she rose to go with Costello. The certain knowledge of foreshadowed death, cold and ominous as some great snake, had seized her in its paralyzing grip.

Captain Hilario César Ramirez de Quesada y Revilla, Commandant of Tupulo, courteously replenished our glasses from the straw-sheathed flask of habanero, then poured himself a drink out of all proportion to his own diminutive stature. "Señores, Señorita," he bowed to us and Nancy Meigs in turn, "your visit is more welcome than I can express. Valgame Dios! For a year I have stormed and sweated here in impotence; now you come with explanations and an offer of assistance. Crime is rampant in this neighborhood, and the police are powerless. A man is murdered, a business house is robbed at night, no one knows who did it; there are no clues, there are no complainants. The very persons who are injured place their fingers on their lips and shrug their shoulders. 'La Murciélaga,' they say, as