"I asked you if you had a pocket-flash about you!" answered Bailey indignantly. "If you call a question like that violence--" He seemed about to restrain the Doctor by physical force.
Miss Cornelia quelled the teapot-tempest.
"It's all right, Brooks," she said, taking the front door key from his hand and putting it back on the table. She turned to Doctor Wells.
"You see, Doctor Wells," she explained, "just a moment before you rang the doorbell a circle of white light was thrown on those window shades."
The Doctor laughed with a certain relief.
"Why, that was probably the searchlight from my car!" he said. "I noticed as I drove up that it fell directly on that window."
His explanation seemed to satisfy all present but Lizzie. She regarded him with a deep suspicion. "'He may be a lawyer, a merchant, a Doctor...'" she chanted ominously to herself.
Miss Cornelia, too, was not entirely at ease.
"In the center of this ring of light," she proceeded, her eyes on the Doctor's calm countenance, "was an almost perfect silhouette of a bat."
"A bat!" The Doctor seemed at sea. "Ah, I see--the symbol of the criminal of that name." He laughed again.
"I think I can explain what you saw. Quite often my headlights collect insects at night and a large moth, spread on the glass, would give precisely the effect you speak of. Just to satisfy you, I'll go out and take a look."
He turned to do so. Then he caught sight of the raincoat-covered huddle on the floor.
"Why--" he said in a voice that mingled astonishment with horror. He paused. His glance slowly traversed the circle of silent faces.