The Bat

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. "There's a bigger guy than Pete Flynn shooting the works, a guy that could have Jim Gunderson for breakfast and not notice he'd et." The underworld heard and waited to be shown; after a little while the underworld began to whisper to itself in tones of awed respect. There were bright stars and flashing comets in the sky of the world of crime-but this new planet rose with the portent of an evil moon. The Bat-they called him the Bat. Like a bat he chose the night hours for his work of rapine; like a bat he struck and vanished, pouncingly, noiselessly; like a bat he never showed himself to the face of the day. He'd never been in stir, the bulls had never mugged him, he didn't run with a mob, he played a lone hand, and fenced his stuff so that even the fence couldn't swear he knew his face. Most lone wolves had a moll at any rate-women were their ruin-but if the Bat had a moll, not even the grapevine telegraph could locate her. Rat-faced gunmen in the dingy back rooms of saloons muttered over his exploits with bated breath. In tawdrily gorgeous apart-ments, where gathered the larger figures, the proconsuls of the world of crime, cold, conscienceless brains dissected the work of a colder and swifter brain than theirs, with suave and bitter envy. Evil's Four Hundred chattered, discussed, debated-sent out a thousand invisible tentacles to clutch at a shadow-to turn this shadow and its distorted genius to their own ends. The tentacles recoiled, baffled-the Bat worked alone-not even Evil's Four Hundred could bend him into a willing instrument to execute another's plan. The men higher up waited. They had dealt with lone wolves be-fore and broken them. Some day the Bat would slip and falter; then they would have him. But the weeks passed into months and still the Bat flew free, solitary, untamed, and deadly. At last even his own kind turned upon him; the underworld is like the upper in its fear and distrust of genius that flies alone. But when they turned against him, they turned against a spook-a shadow. A cold and bodiless laughter from a pit of darkness answered and mocked at their bungling gestures of hate-and went on, flouting Law and Lawless alike.