In a wealthy American suburb, where the women wear pearls on a quiet evening and the men smoke pipes while pondering things, and the houses look like miniatures both rustic and opulent, a killer skulks.
He (if it is a ‘he’) wears a grotesque mask over his face, complete with snout, teeth and wide ears. His coat is long and black, concealing pistols and rope and hooks for climbing walls and jimmying windows. He may be able to fly, and if he can’t, there’s some very large bats bobbing in the night sky above the homes and businesses he robs. We see these little details from the beginning of The Bat, but the police do not—they arrive on the scene just as The Bat’s gloved hand recedes from view, leaving a socialite bent over the windowpane with a broken neck. The police chief, pinching a bat-shaped paper calling-card between his fingers, can do nothing but vow:
“I’ll send ‘The Bat’ to the chair, if it’s the last thing I do!”
