The porcelain mask : A detective story

By John Jay Chichester

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Title: The porcelain mask
A detective story

Author: John Jay Chichester

Release date: October 10, 2025 [eBook #77022]

Language: English

Original publication: New York City: Chelsea House, 1924

Credits: Tim Miller, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PORCELAIN MASK ***

The Porcelain Mask

_A Detective Story_

BY JOHN JAY CHICHESTER

CHELSEA HOUSE
79 Seventh Avenue
New York City

The Porcelain Mask

(Printed in the United States of America)

To my Aunts,

ELLA and ANNA

who once told a very small boy that
he would some day grow up and write
a book.

CONTENTS

I. JOAN SHERIDAN RETURNS

II. THE SQUALID HOUSE

III. HELEN ANSWERS HER LETTER

IV. "WHAT DOES IT MEAN?"

V. VICTOR SARBELLA

VI. IN THE STUDIO

VII. THE GET-AWAY

VIII. CAUGHT IN THE WEB

IX. THE OPEN DOOR

X. COMMON SENSE

XI. BUSHNELL CALLS THE POLICE

XII. "WIGGLY" PRICE

XIII. WHAT DID JOAN KNOW?

XIV. THE GIRL IN THE SARBELLA CASE

XV. SARBELLA SPEAKS

XVI. THE FOUR CLEWS

XVII. KIRKLAN PROTESTS

XVIII. TWO BRANDS OF CIGARETTES

XIX. ENTER SERGEANT TISH

XX. A QUEER JUMBLE

XXI. A CRY OF TERROR

XXII. WHAT THE COOK SAW

XXIII. THE TRAPPED RAT

XXIV. HASKINS KEEPS HIS SECRET

XXV. THE SKEPTICISM OF SERGEANT TISH

XXVI. BITS OF TALLOW

XXVII. WIGGLY REMAINS UNCONVINCED

XXVIII. THE BLACK SMUDGE

XXIX. "LET THE GUILTY MAN SPEAK!"

XXX. WIGGLY MAKES A WAGER

THE PORCELAIN MASK

CHAPTER I

JOAN SHERIDAN RETURNS

One of the village taxis, a sorry, disreputable affair, with noisily
clattering fenders, dashed bumpily along the rural highway and turned
with precarious suddenness into the driveway, lined on either side by
great walnut trees that formed a leafy tunnel to the big house at the
far end. It was, despite considerable age, a magnificent house, and it
had been modernized with green-striped awnings and sun rooms. The taxi
was heavily loaded with luggage. There was one passenger, a girl of
twenty-one or two, with an attractive face and expressive dark eyes,
now shining with a light of eagerness, as she leaned toward the door of
the jouncing vehicle. One slim, gloved hand rested upon the catch.

The little car came to a skidding halt beneath the old-fashioned
portico, as the driver jammed the brakes with a suddenness that pitched
his fare violently forward, knocking her hat awry. But even this failed
to dim her happy, expectant smile; she did not so much as bother to
straighten the hat. She had the door open and was out before the driver
could double as footman.

"Hope I didn't jar you up, lady, but y' said hurry, an' I fed 'er the
gas," he said with a wide grin that revealed two prominently missing
teeth. "She's a great li'le car, ain't she, fer goin' on the fifth
season?"

The girl nodded and gave him a dollar bill.

"Don't bother about the bags," she told him. "Just leave them anywhere,
and I'll have Bates carry them in."

She ran briskly up the brief rise of steps from the driveway to the
wide porch that semicircled the house on two sides. The entrance was
around the turn; she paused suddenly at sight of the strange young
woman who reclined in the couch hammock, asleep. For a moment she
stared in surprise, wondering who she was. Women visitors were unusual
at Greenacres.

"How beautiful she is!" murmured the girl, letting her eyes linger on
the soft, oval face of the sleeper, crowned with bronze hair. "I wonder
who she can be?" She softened her step and continued across the porch
to the entrance.

Hardly had she entered the reception hall when Bates spied her and came
rushing toward her, with that peculiar, shambling gait of his, a broad
smile crinkling his thin, leathery face.

"Heaven bless us, it's Miss Joan!" he exclaimed.

"Oh, 'Daddy' Bates!" she cried. "It's so wonderful to get home again!
The finest thing about going away is coming back. Only bit over a
month, and it's seemed a year!"

Bates was the Gilmore butler, but he had been in the family since the
time Joan was a child, and, in this moment of home-coming exuberance,
it was only natural that she should use the old affectionate address.
Bates, his hands clasped in front of his chest, continued to smile
fondly and proudly.

"Well! Well!" he chuckled. "Won't Mrs. Gilmore be happy to see you
again, Miss Joan! Surprised, too; she wasn't expecting you until
to-morrow."

"The boat docked a day ahead of time," she explained, "and I didn't
telegraph. Where is mother?"

"She went upstairs less than half an hour since. Your bags, Miss Joan?"

"Outside, Bates; I told the taxi man to dump them out any old place.
Take them right up, if you please, Bates; there are some little things
I bought on the other side, and I didn't forget you, either."

Bates sobered.

"Your room----" he began, but broke off suddenly, looking decidedly
uncomfortable.

Joan, in her excitement, did not notice. "Why, of course, my room!" she
cried gayly, making for the stairs and taking the steps, two at a time.
Bates stared after her, wagging his head sadly, and his thin shoulders
moved with a lugubrious sigh.

"Poor Miss Joan!" he murmured. "It's going to be an awful shock to her;
I didn't have the heart to tell her. And her room, too!" He shambled
out to the porch for the luggage.

Reaching the upper hall, Joan went swiftly to the left wing of the
house, where her mother had her private sitting room, bedroom, and
bath. With a quick gesture she flung open the door and, arms reaching
out eagerly, fairly leaped at the little gray-haired woman who sat by
the window, reading.

"Mumsey!"

Before Mrs. Gilmore could get to her feet, the girl had swooped down
on her in a cyclone of joy, smothering her with kisses and leaving her
almost breathless with hugs.

"I--I didn't expect you until to-morrow, dear," gasped Mrs. Gilmore.
"Why didn't you wire and let us meet you at the station? Goodness,
child, give me air!"

"Oh, it's so much nicer to surprise people," laughed Joan. "How are
you?"

"We've all been well."

Joan sat on the arm of the chair and cuddled her mother close.

"It's so wonderful to be home again," she murmured happily. "It was
a wonderful trip, my first sea voyage, and the Sharps were perfectly
wonderful to me--all through southern France by motor--but there's no
place in all the world like Greenacres. How is Kirk getting along with
the new novel? Has he missed his severest critic?"

An anxious, half-frightened look came into Mrs. Gilmore's face.
"Kirklan," she answered slowly, an ominous note creeping into her
voice, "hasn't been writing much during--during the past three weeks.
He couldn't really be expected to, since----"

Joan's fingers tightened about her mother's hand.

"Mother! Something--something has happened to Kirk! Is he ill?"

"No, dear, Kirklan is perfectly well, but he----" Again Mrs. Gilmore's
voice came to a halting stop.

"Why don't you tell me? The tone of your voice frightens me. What has
happened to Kirk?"

"An author can't be expected to do much writing, Joan, when--when he is
on his honeymoon," Mrs. Gilmore finished faintly. She felt the girl's
fingers, still resting across her own, tremble and become cold.

Joan's face had turned ghastly pale and there was a stunned dullness in
her dark eyes. "His--his honeymoon?" she whispered. "You mean----Oh,
you can't mean that Kirk has married?"

Mrs. Gilmore nodded.

"Yes, he married--about ten days after you sailed. It was a surprise--a
shock--to all of us. The first we knew of it was when he brought her
home with him."

Joan was making an ineffectual attempt to keep her emotions in check,
to conceal the evidence that the news had been a terrible blow to her.

"Why--why, I had no idea that Kirk was even interested in any one."

"Neither did any of us. It seems that he fell madly in love with her
almost at first sight; they were married, I believe, a week after their
first meeting. I can't understand how a man would rush headlong into
marriage like that, although she is pretty."

Joan's mind reverted to the beautiful woman she had seen asleep in the
porch hammock.

"She--she is here now? Then that--that woman I saw downstairs is Kirk's
wife? Kirk's wife?" She laughed unsteadily. "It's so hard for me to
believe--coming so suddenly like this. Yes, she is pretty; not only
pretty--beautiful."

She walked slowly to the window and stood there, her back to the room,
trying to keep her face from her mother's eyes. But Mrs. Gilmore was
not deceived; she had known for a long time and had feared that the
situation would bring only unhappiness.

Although Joan was Mrs. Gilmore's daughter, she still bore her father's
name of Sheridan. Her mother, left a widow, had married Peyton Gilmore,
a childhood sweetheart, who had himself been previously married. Peyton
Gilmore had been a well-known New York lawyer. Those with long memories
may remember that he had dropped dead in a crowded courtroom, during a
famous murder trial, while pleading for the life of his client. There
was a son, Kirklan Gilmore, only twelve years old at the time of his
father's death, and Kirklan's rearing had fallen to his stepmother. The
two families, merged into one, had long occupied the picturesque, rural
New York estate of Greenacres, without friction or discord.

Joan and Kirklan had always hit it off well together, and when, after a
try at law, Kirklan had turned to writing, it was Joan who sympathized
the most over his failures and rejoiced the most over his successes.
Realizing that Joan's deft touches had helped the tremendous success of
his novel, "Rogue's Paradise," Kirklan had given his stepsister a trip
abroad.

The silence became so long, so painful that Mrs. Gilmore felt that
something had to be said.

"Her name," she murmured, "is Helen--Helen Banton before she married
Kirklan."

"Does--does he seem to be--very much in love with her, mother?"

"Very much in love with her," Mrs. Gilmore answered, and Joan winced.

"I--I hope he will be very happy," the latter said with a muffled voice.

Mrs. Gilmore shook her head slowly. "I'm afraid that he won't be, my
dear. A pretty face is not sufficient to make a man happy. 'Marry in
haste, repent at leisure.' It's an old saying, but it's true--as most
of the old sayings are. Kirklan has made a mistake, a terrible mistake."

"I don't believe you like her, mother."

"My likes or dislikes have nothing to do with it. They have few tastes
in common; already she is sick and tired of Greenacres, and you know
how Kirklan loves it out here. She has no interest in his work, and you
know how much he needs sympathy, encouragement. He's not the kind that
can forge on alone; the kind of wife he should have----"

"Mother, don't! Who was she--how did he happen to meet her?"

"She was employed in some minor capacity by Kirklan's publishers," Mrs.
Gilmore replied. "As to who she is--I wonder. Yes, I wonder. I don't
think even Kirklan knows anything about her. I don't consider it a good
sign when a girl is reticent about her family. Kirklan says, 'I've
married a girl I love, not a family tree.'"

Joan winced again, for that was a line she had written into Kirklan's
successful novel.

"If--if they're in love with each other, mother, I suppose that's all
that matters."

"He's in love with her, but they're not in love with each other, and
those one-sided romances always end in disaster. I can't help but feel
that she is going to smash his life."

"She--she'd better not!" whispered Joan, her hands clenched. "We won't
talk about it any more--please. I'm going to my room and unpack.
I'll--I'll come back in a little while, mother." Her tone was weary,
lifeless.

Mrs Gilmore gave her daughter another quick glance, as she prepared to
deliver the second blow.

"I--I guess you'll miss your old room, Joan; you've always loved it so,
with its view of the river."

Startled, bewildered, the girl turned away from the window. "Miss my
old room? Why, mother, what--what do you mean?"

"Kirklan had your things moved to the east wing, dear. He tried to make
her understand, but----"

"The things moved--from my room!" cried Joan. "Kirklan did that? He--he
tried to make her understand? You mean that woman----"

"It wasn't Kirklan's fault, Joan; he tried hard enough to reason with
her, but his wife is so headstrong. It is the best room in the house,
of course, and I suppose she felt that she had a right, as the new
mistress of Greenacres, to it. The place is Kirklan's property."

"That--that woman--in my room!" There was a catching sob in Joan's
voice. "Oh, how dare she? And Kirk let her do it."

"You don't understand how headstrong she is," Mrs. Gilmore explained
hastily. "She's the sort who demands, who takes what she wants. Kirklan
tried to avert it, but I suppose it's hard for a man to deny his bride
anything. Kirklan has the adjoining room, a separate sleeping chamber.
It's the modern thing, I believe, these days. She's had a doorway cut
through; the carpenters finished their work yesterday. I knew you would
resent giving up your room."

"Of course I resent it!" flared Joan. "She has no right----" She paused
and then added bitterly, "No, I suppose I'm wrong; the house is Kirk's,
and she did have a right--to everything. I'm going to unpack now, there
are some little souvenirs I brought back with me----"

This was but an excuse to get away, to be alone. Leaving the sentence
unfinished, she fled. A moment later she was in the east wing, where
her personal belongings had been banished by the usurper. Some
one--Kirk, no doubt--had tried to hang her pictures in the same
position they had occupied in the beloved room that had been hers for
so long. An effort had been made to make things appear the same, but
they were not the same; they would never be the same. Here she felt a
stranger, almost like a guest in a transient hotel. Nothing would ever
be the same--now.

Bates had already brought up her bags, and they were stacked in an
orderly pile on the floor, but Joan made no move to unpack. That had
been but an excuse. She stumbled toward her bed and flung herself
across it, giving way to a torrent of tears.

"I love him so!" she sobbed. "It never would have happened--if I hadn't
gone away. I know it wouldn't have happened. No other woman has a right
to him when I love him so much."

Presently she got herself in check and went listlessly to the window
and, lifting back the curtains, looked out. From here she had not so
much as a glimpse of the Tappan Zee, where the Hudson broadens a good
three miles wide. In her old room, curled up in the window seat, with
soft pillows at her back, she had been able to look out across the
water to the rugged rise of the Palisades looming up picturesquely from
the New Jersey shore--and dream.

And now in that other room--her room--would be Kirklan's wife! Perhaps
the other woman and Kirklan would sit in her beloved window seat, his
arm about her; the thought of it made the blood pound in Joan's brain,
made a red mist swim before her eyes.

Below her a figure moved across the lawn, a graceful figure in a white
sport skirt. Even from that distance the woman's bronze hair glinted in
the strong sunlight. Joan stared down, her hands clenching until the
nails bit deep into her palms.

"She has taken two of the things I have loved best!" she whispered
fiercely. "I hate her! I can't help it, I hate her!"

CHAPTER II

THE SQUALID HOUSE

Relic of the horse-and-carriage days was the Gilmore stable, with
living quarters for the now obsolete coachman and footman. Kirklan
Gilmore, that he might have more detachment and quiet than the house
afforded, had remodeled the stable into a studio, and here it was
that he did his writing. Success in anything means hard work, and
authorship is no exception. Being a successful novelist, he was a hard
worker, but for weeks now, except for a mildly curious visit by Helen,
who had been frankly disappointed in the unpretentiousness of her
husband's workshop, the place had been locked. The manuscript of the
new novel, for which his publishers waited fretfully, lay untouched and
uncompleted.

It was two days after Joan's home-coming. As had been customary since
her arrival at Greenacres as a bride, the new Mrs. Gilmore was having a
breakfast tray in her room, and she sat at a small table by the window
which commanded Joan Sheridan's beloved view of the Tappan Zee.

Frilly, lacy things were becoming to the new mistress of Greenacres,
and she was an alluring picture, with the loose, flowing sleeves of
her morning gown falling back from shapely arms, as she lifted her
coffee cup. Morning is the severest test of a woman's beauty, and, only
twenty minutes out of bed, although it was half an hour past nine,
Helen Gilmore was undeniably a beautiful woman. Her age might have been
twenty-three; it may have been even twenty-seven, for she was of the
type that clings long to youth. Just now, however, there was in her
blue eyes a look of brooding discontent that does not become a bride of
three brief, honeymooning weeks.

At the hallway door there sounded the rap of knuckles against wood, and
in answer to the petulant, "Yes, come," Bates, the butler, crossed the
threshold with his shambling gait.

"Mail for you, madam," said Bates, holding a silver tray toward her.
The topmost envelope was patently an advertising circular, which
completely concealed the one beneath, and Helen with a contemptuous
glance waved the tray aside.

"You should know better than bothering me with things like that," she
said shortly; "take it away."

"There is also a letter--a personal letter," Bates answered stiffly, as
he moved aside the offending advertisement, and revealed a small, cheap
envelope, rather smudgy and addressed with a lead pencil in a ragged,
scrawling script, as if the hand that wrote it was not far advanced
beyond illiteracy. The postmark was New York City.

Rather a strange, disreputable-looking missive, one might have thought,
to be received by the mistress of Greenacres. Bates stared sharply, as
he saw the startling effect that the sight of the letter had on Mrs.
Gilmore. Her coffee cup, poised for a moment in mid-air, clattered down
to the saucer, and her fingers, reaching swiftly for the envelope,
trembled noticeably. Her face had gone white, and into her eyes there
came a look that was unquestionably apprehension, perhaps fear. With
an effort she controlled herself.

"Probably from my little nephew," she said, evidently thinking to
explain the smudgy appearance, the crudity of the handwriting. But
Bates, moving toward the door with the perfunctory murmur, was not
misled.

"Huh, little nephew!" he grunted, as he went down the hall. "That
was a man's handwritin'. Poor Mr. Kirklan! I'm afraid he's been
fooled--fooled bad."

When the butler had gone, Helen Gilmore relaxed self-restraint, and
there returned to her face that haunted look of fear. Several times she
turned the envelope over in her unsteady hands, delaying the opening of
it.

"He's traced me here!" she whispered. "He knows."

After another moment of hesitation she opened the envelope and drew
forth a sheet of paper. Quickly her eyes went over the scrawl. It
began with the address, "Dear Mrs. Gilmore," and the last two words of
that were underscored, as if there was a concealed gibe in the "Mrs.
Gilmore."

I want to talk with you on some business. If you don't want me to
come there, you better come to see me. Phone Joe's place & he'll
tell you where I am.

It was unsigned, but no signature was needed for her to know the
identity of the sender; she knew that all too well. Her hands clenched,
crushing the paper between her fingers.

"Oh, what a fool I've been to take this chance!" she exclaimed
bitterly. "He'll hound me, as he hounded me before. I--I thought I'd
got away from him for good. I thought he was----"

A step sounded down the hall, a quick step that she had learned to know
during the past three weeks. Hastily she thrust the crumpled letter
and its envelope into the bodice of her morning gown and, as the door
opened, forced a smile to her lips.

"Good morning, my dear," she greeted her husband. "Your indolent wife
is just finishing her breakfast. You look as if you had been up for
hours, and you must be going somewhere!"

Kirklan Gilmore, clad in a gray business suit, instead of white
flannels, blazer coat, and canvas Oxfords that he wore for his mornings
at home, crossed the room eagerly and bent to kiss the lips raised
dutifully to him.

Gilmore was dark, while his wife was fair. He was slender, and his
eyes had something of a poet's dreaminess in them--black eyes, with
an intense light when he felt any strong emotion, either personally
or through the characters that he put down on paper and breathed the
breath of life into. He sat down beside the narrow table and touched
his fingers in a gentle caress to the back of his wife's hand, as his
eyes devoured her fondly.

"You don't know how wonderful you are, Helen! If I could only put you
into a book--as you are. But I'm afraid it would turn out to be a
volume of poetry, and poetry doesn't make a best seller. You--you are
the most beautiful thing that ever lived!"

Despite an agitation that she could hardly keep from being observed,
Helen flushed, and her eyes lighted with pleasure. She liked being
told she was beautiful. It was the one story that never grew old to her.

"Thanks, Kirklan; it's nice of you to say that--especially in the
morning. Why the street clothes? Are you going somewhere?"

"Yes, I am, worse luck. That slave-driving publisher of mine has called
a halt to our honeymoon. A wire came from him this morning, commanding
me to come in town and see him. I know what that means; he's going to
pep me and send me back to my knitting. Well, we can't blame Atchinson
for that; I've promised him the new book for winter publication. Thank
Heaven, it's two thirds finished. I thought we might run into New York
together; make the trip in the car, you know. There'll be lunch with
Atchinson."

Helen managed to look languid and bored. "Lunch with that old pill,
Atchinson? It doesn't appeal to me; but don't you think we might go
away while you are finishing the book? It will take you weeks upon
weeks, and that means I've got to stick around this poky hole, mooning
around by myself, while you're locked in that old stable for endless
hours. I'd like to go away, Kirklan."

Kirklan patted his wife's hand.

"I'd like to, Helen, but I'm used to things out here, and a change
usually upsets my work very badly. I've got to dig in now for all I'm
worth. Poky old hole? I thought you liked Greenacres."

"I don't; I hate it. Oh, don't start harping about 'the scenery;' the
scenery's all right for a change, but I'm fed up on it. Outside of
gawking around the country, there's nothing to do but get up, eat, and
then go to bed again. I don't know why we couldn't go down to--well,
Atlantic City, while you're finishing the book."

"Oh, tut!" Gilmore reproved mildly. "You've just got out on the wrong
side of the bed this morning. It's quite impossible for us to go away.
It won't be lonesome for you now that Joan is back. She's no end of
good fun, Joan. Greatest little pal in the world. And that reminds me
that I must ask her to help me straighten out the sixteenth chapter.
There's a little something it lacks, and I can always depend on Joan to
supply just the right touch."

Helen laughed, but not pleasantly. "Yes," she said with an edge of
sarcasm, "that stepsister of yours and I would make great pals--not!
It's all that she can do to be civil. Sometimes I feel that she
actually hates me!"

"That's nonsense, Helen. Joan hate you? How ridiculous! Joan never
hated any one in her life."

"It's not ridiculous!" flared Helen; she was one of those persons who
always flared when contradicted. She could not brook opposition, even
verbal opposition. "I tell you, Miss Sheridan dislikes me intensely."

"She might be a little hurt--temporarily," admitted Gilmore. "I'm sorry
we didn't leave the room alone until she got back. Perhaps it doesn't
seem quite right, moving her out while she was away."

"Every one in the house looks upon me as--as an interloper," Helen
rushed on. "Even the servants--I can feel their antagonism toward me. I
don't know why I should be asked to--to tolerate such treatment."

"Try and look at things more calmly," soothed Gilmore. "Naturally,
everything seems strange to you at first. Both my stepmother and Joan
are wonderful, Helen--real mother and sister to me. You'll learn to
love them very much; please, Helen, for my sake, you'll try."

"And you expect to let them make their home with us permanently?" she
demanded bitterly.

Kirklan Gilmore looked uncomfortable, unhappy; this was the first rift
in the lute. He was discovering that his wife, after all, was not quite
the perfect woman. It is a painful realization for a new husband.

"W-well," he said slowly, "I hadn't thought of that. This has been my
stepmother's home for almost twenty years, and, while it belongs to me
legally, I wouldn't think for a moment of pitching her out." He paused
for a moment, and his tone had a touch of wistfulness in it. "It's
always been my home, too, Helen. To me there is no place quite like
Greenacres; I--I wish you'd really try to be happy here."

Helen did not respond with that sympathetic understanding he had
hoped for, and Kirklan, of course, could not know that the receipt of
the letter only a few minutes before had filled her with a desperate
anxiety to flee from the thing that threatened her.

"You--you won't--take me away?" she persisted.

"Helen, you don't know how hard it is for me to deny you any wish.
Heaven knows I want to make you happy, but can't you understand that
we've got to be practical? My studio is here; my library is here; and
it's here that I've always done my best work. At least wait until the
book is finished, and then, if you still do not like Greenacres, we--we
will see what we can do." There was, despite his conciliatory tone,
a note of firmness, and Helen, with a shrug of her pretty shoulders,
dismissed the subject temporarily.

"You won't go into town with me?" asked Gilmore. "It will be a change,
and I think you'll find it a pleasant trip in the car."

Helen thought swiftly and came to a decision. She did want to go to New
York, but certainly not with her husband; she must forestall any effort
of the unsigned sender of that letter to see her at Greenacres. The
sooner the better.

"Why don't you use the train, Kirklan, and let me have the car?" she
suggested. "I'd like to take the ferry across the river to Nyack and
drive out toward Tuxedo."

Gilmore agreed promptly. "Suppose you take Joan along," he suggested.
"You can't help liking her after the first strangeness wears off;
really you've no idea what a perfect little brick she is."

Helen shook her head. "No," she refused, "I'd rather be alone to-day."
And that much was true.

Gilmore looked at his watch and moved toward his wife for a parting
embrace; it was the first time he had left her, even for a trip to
New York, and, madly in love with Helen as he was, the prospect was
depressing.

"You'll be careful about driving," he warned. "Stay on the country
roads and out of the traffic; you're still a bit new at it, you know.
I've just time to get the ten-thirty train."

There was no thought in Helen's mind, despite her decision to make a
secret trip into the city, of risking the heavy and perilous traffic of
New York. Her plan was to run the car across country to White Plains,
and there board the Boston & Westchester interurban electric. In this
way, she reasoned, she would avoid the Grand Central Station and the
possibility of getting back on the same train with her husband.

How the most cunning of plans go astray!

After a reluctant leave-taking--reluctant on Kirklan's part--he went
downstairs with the idea of getting Joan to drive him down to the
station and bring the car home, but Joan was nowhere in evidence, so
he had to call on Billings, who looked after the grounds and who could
drive in an emergency. Billings was a silent, taciturn sort of fellow,
and this silence suited Gilmore's mood exactly.

Helen's attitude worried him; her discontent alarmed him. Suddenly it
occurred to him that in the two days since Joan's return he had seen
his stepsister only at dinner and a few minutes afterward. Thinking it
over, he wondered if Joan had been quite her usual, jolly self; if she
had purposely avoided him.

Gilmore felt guilty about taking Joan's room, but it is hard to deny
a wife of a few days, and Helen had actually demanded it. It never
entered his mind that there might be some other reason, a deeper, more
vital reason for Joan's attitude--that she feared, until the first
shock of it had passed, she might unwittingly let him see into her
heart. He made up his mind that on his return he would have a talk
with Joan and let her know how sorry he was about the room.

A few minutes after Billings let him off at the station, the train
rushed in from the north, and Gilmore got aboard. During the
forty-five-minute run to New York he remained depressingly thoughtful.

"I guess, at that, it's a bit dull for Helen at Greenacres--and will be
even more dull when I've got to lock myself in with my work. I ought to
have some company down, I suppose, to liven things up for her a bit.
I'll see who I can drum up for the next week-end."

This decision gave him a feeling of relief, as it automatically solved
the problem of his wife's discontent with rural life.

Arriving at Grand Central Station, Gilmore took a taxi to the office
of his publishers and, less than half an hour later, was in conference
with Atchinson regarding the unfinished novel. The latter was a dynamic
sort of fellow, a voluble enthusiast, and their talk lengthened until
it was past one o'clock. He had read the carbon copy of what had been
written and felt that it promised to have a greater success than
"Rogue's Paradise."

"We've decided to try illustrations with this book of yours," Atchinson
was explaining. "I've selected Victor Sarbella to do the job. Sarbella
draws splendid pictures--faces with life and character in them. He's
one of those intense fellows. Half Italian, you know, although his
mother was an American. You've met him, of course?"

Gilmore nodded. "Yes, I know Sarbella; interesting chap; and, say, that
gives me an idea. I had been thinking of having some people down to
Greenacres. Helen is finding it a bit lonesome. Wouldn't it be a good
idea to have Sarbella come out?"

Atchinson beamed. "That's fine! He can pick out some of the dramatic
situations with you and get the spirit of your characters. He's
devilish slow in turning out work, and I don't want to run any chances
of spoiling the drawings by rushing him. Suppose we call him up right
now and get that part of it settled."

Word became action, as the publisher reached for the telephone and
asked the firm's private switchboard operator in the outer office to
get Victor Sarbella's apartment for him. A few minutes later the matter
was arranged, and Atchinson glanced at his watch.

"Phew!" he whistled. "Half past one, old man; we'd better hurry out and
have a bite of lunch. Speaking of Italians, what do you say to one of
those Italian feeds? I'm always digging up new places to eat and I've
run across a splendid little restaurant, where the food's uncommonly
good even if the location is poor--in the upper Forties."

Kirklan Gilmore agreed indifferently. "Most anything will suit me," he
said.

The two left the publishing-house building, and, Atchinson talking
almost incessantly and not always to the point, they started out.

"Suppose we leg it," suggested Gilmore; "it may give me a little zest
for lunch."

"I'm for that," Atchinson said heartily; "it's only a dozen blocks."
How many things hinge on trifles! As they neared Eighth Avenue, passing
along this cheap and squalid street, which one found it hard to
believe was so near to pretentious Broadway. Atchinson's emphatic voice
jarred to an abrupt stop, his hand caught at the novelist's arm.

"Hello!" he exclaimed. "Isn't that Mrs. Gilmore yonder?"

"You mean my wife? Oh, that's impossible. Where?"

But his eyes had looked too late. The woman Atchinson had seen was
gone, disappeared swiftly into one of those grimy, ugly entrances
before he could so much as glimpse her.

"I'd take my oath that was Mrs. Gilmore," muttered the publisher,
giving a puzzled stare at the sign across the way which announced,
"Furnished Rooms. Rates $3 Weekly and Up." Since Helen had worked in
the publishing office for two months, he felt certain he had not been
mistaken.

"That's ridiculous!" snorted the author. "She took the car and motored
out to Tuxedo. Besides, what would Helen be doing in a neighborhood
like this?"

Atchinson, feeling very uncomfortable, was wondering precisely the same
thing. "Humph!" he grunted. "I must have been mistaken; yes, no doubt I
was. Some one who looked like her."

But this was friendly diplomacy; he had got a square look, and he knew
quite positively that he had not been mistaken. The woman who had
hurried, almost furtively, into the cheap, unclean lodging house was
Kirklan Gilmore's wife!

CHAPTER III

HELEN ANSWERS HER LETTER

Entirely unaware that she had been observed, Helen Gilmore slipped
furtively into the dark, musty vestibule of the ugly house. There were
those unpleasant odors which accumulate in a decaying house, the smell
that suggests neglect.

The opening of the second door automatically set a bell ringing, an
unpleasant jangling that caused the woman to start and compress her
lips, shutting back the nervous gasp which rose in her throat. When she
closed the door the ringing stopped.

After a wait of a moment there came down the raggedly carpeted stairs a
slovenly and haglike female, with straggling hair of dirty gray and the
shoulders of a professional wrestler in their muscular broadness. The
face of the slattern was, until she reached the bottom of the stairs,
in the shadows. At the sight of it Helen instinctively retreated a
step; she had never seen such a terrible face, she thought. A pair
of narrow red eyes looked her up and down with appraising, impudent
curiosity.

"Perhaps--perhaps I've made a mistake," Helen stammered. "I thought
this was the right number; I--I wanted to see Don Haskins."

"You ain't made no mistake," came the response in a hoarse guttural.
"He's upstairs. He told me he was lookin' fer comp'ny. Guess you're the
swell sister he was tellin' me about."

"Y-yes," Helen answered faintly.

"Go right on up, deary; it's the thoid floor--the door at the end of
the hall, the door with a busted panel, where the cops broke in. They
thought, it bein' locked, Terry Mooney was there, but he wasn't." Her
voice broke into a peal of cackling mirth. "No, he wasn't there; he
was--somewheres else."

Starting toward the stairs, Helen turned, one hand resting upon the
ancient rail.

"Then Don is wanted by--by the cops?"

"Ask him," grunted the woman with the gargoyle face; "ask him. I'll say
he is, deary."

Helen went tremulously up the stairs, stumbled about the dark hallway
until she found the second flight, which was narrow and, if possible,
dirtier than the first. Here the boards were loose and clattered
noisily beneath her step. Reaching the third floor, a bit of sun
struggled feebly through the dust-filmed skylight and fell slantwise
across the door with the broken panel, now patched with some unpainted
strips torn from a chance packing box.

The occupant of the room had heard her approach--only a deaf man
could have failed to be notified by the clatter of the loose stairway
boards--for the door opened cautiously, and a haggard unshaven face
looked out through a widening crack. A pair of thin lips twisted back
into an unpleasant and gloating triumphant grin.

"So--so you've come, have you?" the man rasped and laughed harshly. "I
thought you would. I give you credit for havin' that much sense. Real
prompt, ain't you? Only mailed the letter yesterday." He moved back,
making room for her to enter. His eyes, hard and glittering, followed
her with a look of venomous hate that was at the same time one of
admiration, as if her beauty stirred him.

The room was small, dark, and unventilated, and there was the vile odor
of soured liquor that mingled nauseatingly with the stench of stale
tobacco smoke. There was a narrow, tousled bed, with the white paint
long since peeled from the metal framework, a broken-backed chair upon
which rested a bottle of homemade whisky, that the old hag downstairs
sold for ten dollars the quart.

"Why did you send for me, Don?" demanded Helen. She was plainly
frightened. Looking at him she found it hard to believe that this
haggard man was the same person she had first known as "Nifty Don." Don
had been handsome--once.

Don Haskins placed the bottle on the floor and with a sarcastic
courtesy waved her to the chair.

"Be seated, Mrs. Haskins," he sneered, and himself occupied the edge of
the bed. Helen shivered, her fingers working nervously. For a moment he
sat there staring.

"You still got the looks," he muttered thickly. "I--I guess I ain't
ever goin' to get over bein' crazy about you, Helen--even--even when
I'm hatin' you. His grimy hand reached out to her; his touch might have
been tender, but at her shuddering recoil his eyes blazed again, and
his fingers crushed about her white wrist until she gave a cry of pain.

"You always did think you was too good for your own kind," he snarled.
"Now that I've got you where I can put on the screws, I ought to get
you sent up; that's what I ought to do with you. After what you done to
me----"

"I've done nothing to you, Don. Why did you send for me? You told that
woman downstairs that I am----"

"Yeah, it was a good stall, tellin' 'Eighth Avenue Annie' that I gotta
rich sister that would put up for me. See? Thirty bucks a week I gotta
give the grafter for hidin' me away in this room, and ten dollars
a bottle for this rat poison she calls whisky. I owe her a hundred
now, and she won't let me skip until I pay up. If I don't pay--well,
Annie fixes that by givin' the bulls a tip where I can be located.
See? That's why I sent for you--to take me outta hock." He grinned
sardonically. "When a guy's in trouble, ain't it the most natural thing
in the world that he turns to--to his wife."

Helen shivered. "I'm not your wife!" she cried. "You know I'm not. I've
never been your wife!"

"The law says different," retorted Don Haskins. "You married me, didn't
you?"

"Yes," Helen admitted bitterly, "I married you. I liked you, and when
you got into that trouble I--I thought I loved you. It was only pity.
You rushed me into it so that I wouldn't have to testify against you--a
wife can't be made to testify against her husband. I knew, before you
got out of the Tombs, that I'd made a mistake."

This revival of old and bitter memories convulsed Don Haskins' face
with anger.

"You lie!" he gritted. "When y' say I married you just to keep outta
stir, you lie. I married you because I was crazy about you. You liked
me, too, until--until you run into that other bird and fell for him.
But when I got outta the Tombs I stopped that, all right."

"Yes, you stopped it," choked Helen. "I loved him--with every beat of
my heart. You--you robbed me of my one chance to be happy. You--oh, why
do you drag all these ghosts before me? Those are things I'm always
trying to forget. I saved you from doing a twenty-year stretch, and
you've been hounding me--hounding me ever since. That--that's your idea
of gratitude!"

"Aw, cut out that stuff. I'm desperate. The cops is lookin' for me; I
gotta make a get-away and I gotta have money."

"Oh, I see, you want money," nodded Helen, fumbling at her purse. "You
said a hundred dollars----"

Don Haskins gave a contemptuous sneer.

"I said that's what I owe Annie, but I want more'n that--a lot more.
Aw, I know you're well fixed. I know you married a guy that's got it. I
got all the dope on you, see."

"How----"

"You thought you were pretty foxy, didn'tcha? It wasn't much trouble
gettin' a line on you. When I went out West with Keegan and got nabbed
pullin' the job we went out there to do in Chi, you thought I was in
for a long stretch, and that you'd lose me. You changed your name, did
the workin'-girl stunt, and hooked a live one--married a fellow that
writes, Kirklan Gilmore.

"But the State's attorney out there made a little deal with me; I
handed him some information he wanted, and he got me paroled. See? I
come back, lookin' for you. Madge knew all about it, and I made her
tell. Never trust a friend, girlie; that's my motto."

"So Madge told you?"

"She hadda tell; I'd have choked the life outta her if she hadn't."

"I--I suppose the past is one thing that never dies," Helen whispered.
"I was a fool to think I could get away with it. I--I was a fool to
take the chance."

"I ain't gonna stop you from gettin' away with it," grunted Don; "at
least I ain't--providin'----"

"Don't beat around the bush, Don; get to the point. Providing--what?"

"I'll get to the point fast enough. I gotta be practical, I oughtta
make you squirm, but I'm in a bad fix. What I need is a thousand bucks,
and I need it quick."

Helen stared at him fixedly.

"I haven't got a thousand dollars, Don, but if two hundred will help
any----" Her fingers were at the clasp of her hand bag.

"If you ain't got a thousand, then get it--from that rich husband
you've swung onto."

"But he's not rich. You don't understand. He owns a house, an
automobile, and lives well, but he's not rich. I doubt if he's got much
money outside the royalties from his book. I--I don't see how I could
ask him for a thousand dollars, without giving him some sort of an
explanation, and I don't know what I could tell him."

"He ain't rich?" Don broke in skeptically. "Say, whatcha tryin' to hand
me? If he ain't rich, whatcha marry him for--and risk doin' a trip for
bigamy? Stuck on the guy, huh?"

Helen shook her head.

"N-no," she faltered. "I'm not 'stuck' on him. I wish to Heaven that I
hadn't married him--now." Her lips twitched. "I--I suppose it looked
like a chance to be respectable. I heard that you were in trouble
out in Chicago, that you'd been put away for a long time. I took up
typewriting after Tilliston's cabaret closed; I changed my name and got
a job with a publishing house."

"Yeah, I got all that from Madge."

"Oh, what's the use going into the rest of it? I don't like to work;
I never did. I met Gilmore. He was wild about me--still is. It seemed
like such a wonderful chance, the wife of a famous novelist. I wonder
what he'll do if he ever learns the truth? Perhaps--perhaps--he'll kill
me!"

"Aw, can that stuff," growled Don Haskins. "Conversation don't help me
any; what I want is that thousand bucks--quick. I'm due for a long trip
up the river--or worse--if I don't jump town before the bulls nail me.

"I was in on a loft job. It was a water haul--not a ten-dollar bit
between the three of us that was in on it. One of the birds got nabbed,
and I know he's got a yellow streak in 'im as wide as Fifth Avenue.
The cops won't have to more'n bounce a nightstick over his head when
he'll come through with a squeal. I gotta get outta town, put distance
behind me, because"--his voice sank to a low, hoarse whisper--"because
the watchman got croaked, see! It--it's a chance of the chair, if 'Dago
Mike' squeals on the other two of us.

"A guy ain't got no chance doin' a slide outta town these days unless
he's well heeled. I'm flat broke. Do I get that thousand from you,
or----"

"Say it, Don."

The man's eyes were narrowed.

"Or do I drop a note to Gilmore, tellin' him that his wife's got two
husbands, that if he'll taxi over to Borough Hall in Brooklyn and
look over the marriage-license records for October tenth, nineteen
sixteen----"

"You--you wouldn't do that to me, Don?" Helen's face was deathly white.
"You ungrateful rat----"

"If I'm a rat, then it was you made me a rat!" gritted the man. "When I
got outta the Tombs that time and found you'd throwed me over, and was
trailin' around with that swell with the Eyetalian name, it made a bum
outta me. If I could have got my hands on you that first night----" His
hands darted toward her, extended fingers twitching convulsively, as
they neared her throat. With a stifled scream Helen protected herself
with her arms.

"Don't! Don't! Don't look at me like that. I'll try to get the thousand
dollars, but I don't know what--what I will tell him."

"It's up to you what kind of a song and dance you give 'im," he
growled. "The big thing is--get it. It's that, or else----Now pass over
that two hundred you was talkin' about; that'll help a little."

Helen's fingers trembled as she reached into her hand bag for the roll
of bills. "Even if I give you the thousand dollars, I suppose I'll
always be at your mercy--that you'll always be coming back for more,
that you'll hound me, blackmail me----"

Haskins made no promises as to that; he grabbed the money avidly from
her hand and counted it eagerly. Ten dollars lacking two hundred.

"When do I get the rest of it?" he demanded. "I can't wait long; it
won't be safe--stayin' here with Eighth Avenue Annie."

Helen considered swiftly. "This--this is Monday," she said. "I may be
able to get it by Wednesday. If I can get it at all I suppose I can get
it by then. You--you'll give me until Wednesday?"

"Ain't got no jewelry that you can put in soak to raise the jack?" Don
wanted to know.

"He--he would miss that, what little there is. I'd better try to get
the money from him--if I can."

Haskins' lips twisted unpleasantly. "You better," he grunted
threateningly. "Aw right, I'm givin' you until Wednesday, but if you
ain't come across with it by then, I'll saunter out to that swell place
I hear you're livin' in--and collect."

CHAPTER IV

"WHAT DOES IT MEAN?"

Returning from New York on the five o'clock train, Kirklan Gilmore
stood for a minute or so on the station platform, looking along the
assembled line of cars in which thoughtful wives were meeting their
city-working husbands. He felt disappointed and hurt that Helen had not
come for him, especially as this was his first absence.

Then it occurred to him that she might not have returned from her drive
across the river; the country roads might have lured her farther than
her announced destination of Tuxedo. A worried frown appeared over his
eyes, as his imagination led him to take the unpleasant possibility
that, since Helen was new at the steering wheel, there might have been
an accident. A horrifying picture of a collision, his beautiful wife
maimed, cut, bleeding, arose before him, but he brushed it aside with a
shudder.

"I suppose all doting husbands do a lot of unnecessary worrying," he
told himself. "I couldn't stand losing her."

Gilmore did not for a moment believe that it had been Helen whom
Atchinson had seen on the street in New York; he considered it a bit of
a joke on the publisher and intended having a good laugh by teasing his
wife about her "double."

The village of Ardleigh is small, and, since it is surrounded with
people owning their country homes and their own cars, there is small
demand for taxicab service. There were just three of the ramshackle
vehicles, but Gilmore delayed so long that the last one was occupied
and started in motion, as he crossed the platform toward it.

Except that it might delay him getting to Helen, he felt no annoyance
over this incident; it was only two miles from the village to
Greenacres, and he often made the trip on foot by choice. It was a
splendid, picturesque walk, which to him had never lost its charm.

Carrying his manuscript case of black leather, he swung off briskly,
choosing the dirt road rather than the paved highway; this not only
afforded the more scenic view, but also saved him nearly a quarter of a
mile. He was in a hurry for, try as he would, he could not help being
rather anxious about Helen and her safe return.

The road ran along the backbone of a ridge, so that, while still some
distance from the house, he was able to get a glimpse of the driveway
through an opening in the trees, and he gave a breath of relief as he
saw the car. His anxiety had been quite unfounded; his wife was home.

Approaching the house itself, he saw Joan on the lawn teaching tricks
to the new collie pup, and she was so engrossed with the task that she
failed to hear the crunch of his shoes on the gravel.

"Hello, Joan!" he called cheerily.

The girl, on her knees in the grass, dropped the puppy's paws and
turned half toward him, the drooping brim of her hat shielding
whatever expression may have been in her dark eyes.

"Hello, Kirk," she answered, getting to her feet.

"I see Helen's got home. I was just a little worried about her--she
being new about driving the car."

"Yes, she's home," nodded Joan. "She drove in about five minutes ago;
I think you'll find her dressing for dinner." She essayed a brief and
fairly successful laugh. "I won't keep you, Kirk; I know you'll be
anxious to see her after being away from her all these hours."

Gilmore hesitated for a moment. "See here, Joan," he protested, "I
believe you're trying to get away from me. Somehow I've got the feeling
that you've been trying to avoid me ever since you got back from your
trip. You haven't told me a thing about it."

"I--I didn't think you'd want to be bothered; all your time belongs to
Helen. I've thanked you for the glorious treat, haven't I? I know I
intended to."

"There are no thanks due, Joan; you earned it--and more. Atchinson was
speaking of some passages in 'Rogue's Paradise' only to-day, and, bless
your life, most of them were yours!"

"It's nice of you to say that, Kirk," she murmured lifelessly; he would
never know--must never know--what a labor of love it had been. There
was an uncomfortable pause, during which Gilmore fumbled at his watch
chain, and Joan bent over to pull gently at the puppy's ears.

"I guess there's something else I ought to say," he floundered. "I feel
mighty guilty about Helen taking your room. I don't blame you for
being hurt about it. I did my best to make her understand, but----"

"We'll not talk about that, Kirk. The house belongs to you; it was
quite within your right. I'll get accustomed to my new quarters, and it
will be all right, Kirk--quite all right."

It was strange that Gilmore, whose books were considered to contain
keen analysis of the human emotions, should have missed the catch in
her voice, the touch of pathos, as she tried to mask her true feelings
with a careless, matter-of-fact tone. But miss them he did, and he felt
relieved that she was being such a good sport about it.

"It's like you, Joan," he said warmly, "to take it like that, and I
wish you'd try and make things as pleasant as you can for Helen. She
still feels strange, and, I suppose, is overly sensitive. This is just
between you and me, understand, but she has a notion that there is a
feeling of antagonism, even among the servants, toward her. Of course
that's ridiculous; no one could help loving Helen. She is wonderful,
isn't she?"

Joan could not force the polite falsehood to her lips, but Gilmore
rushed on, taking no cognizance of her silence.

"I've been honeymooning for the past three weeks, Joan, but I've got
to get back into harness again--a very good simile, since my studio is
a renovated stable--and rush the book to a finish. I've got to lock
myself in and work.

"Well, I'm afraid Helen is going to get pretty lonesome unless some one
looks after entertaining her a bit. Atchinson has arranged with Victor
Sarbella--you remember meeting Sarbella in town, of course--to draw the
illustrations for my coming book, and he'll be out to-morrow for a stay
of several days. He'll have time for loafing, while I'm working, and
I wish you'd see to it that things are made as jolly as possible for
Helen.

"It's partly selfishness that I don't want country life to pall on
Helen; I've got to make her contented with Greenacres, or she'll be
pulling me away from the old place and into town."

Joan's lips tightened. Kirk did not know, of course, how much he was
asking of her. "You'd better be getting in to Helen," she said.

And when Gilmore had gone, striding swiftly to the house, Joan Sheridan
dropped to her knees in the grass, hugging the collie pup close, the
one living thing she would have permitted to see the tears now flooding
her dark eyes.

"Oh, Laddie, boy," she whispered into one of the inquiringly cocked
ears, "it's so hard to pretend--so hard! Oh, how I hate that woman--how
I hate her! I didn't know there was so much hate in me."

Kirklan Gilmore entered the house and went directly upstairs. A moment
later he was rapping at the door of his wife's room and, after her
muffled response from the other side of the panel, he went in.

Helen was not, as he expected, dressing for dinner. She sat by the
window in a listless, preoccupied attitude, and she had not so much as
removed her hat. Her greeting was not that spontaneous explosion of
welcoming joy that he would have liked after their first parting, even
of the brief hours.

"Hello, Kirklan," she said listlessly. "How's everything in New York?
Hot, wasn't it?"

Gilmore kissed her eagerly, but found her even more than usually
unresponsive.

"Not so hot," he answered, "but the humidity was stifling. What's
wrong, Helen? You look all out of sorts."

"Just tired, I suppose," she said. "Driving a car is a strain on the
nerves."

"Yes, it is for a beginner; you shouldn't attempt such long trips until
you're more accustomed to the wheel. Have any trouble?"

"I stalled the motor on a hill, but I just put on the emergency brake
and worked the starter. That's what you told me to do in a case like
that."

"Good headwork, Helen. The truth is, I'd worried about you a good deal.
If anything had happened to you, my darling----" His voice choked,
husky with emotion, and he put his fingers softly to a strand of bronze
hair that had broken prison from under the edge of her hat.

When a man is in a soft mood, that is the best time for a wife to ask
what she wants. Helen realized this and decided not to delay the matter
of the needed thousand dollars. So she reached up and let her hand
close about his.

"Kirklan," she said, "I--I am worried about something. I am ashamed to
come to you with it, but----"

A look of alarm came into Gilmore's face, as he waited for her to
continue.

"Oh, Kirklan, I--I am so--so ashamed. It's money."

He gave a quick, relieved laugh. "And it hurts your pride to ask your
husband for a little shopping money. Since you feel that way about it,
I suppose we'd better decide on a regular allowance. No doubt you'd
like to have your own little bank account. I'll be as generous with
you as I can, dear, but, as I told you before we were married, I'm no
bloated capitalist. The royalties from the last book are coming in
pretty regularly now, although we hope they'll be even larger. The
sales seem to be growing. Did you have your mind set on any particular
amount? Don't be timid about it, honey; if it's more than I can stand
I'll have to tell you so."

"There--there are so many things I need, Kirklan; sometimes a man
doesn't understand about a woman's wardrobe. I've been afraid you would
think I am extravagant, and I don't want to be a burden on you." It had
been in her mind to manufacture some past debt, but his suggestion of
an allowance seemed to make it easier.

"How much do you want, Helen? You fix the amount, and, if I've got it,
it's yours." Then, as she still seemed to hesitate, he suggested a
figure that to his mind was generous. "Suppose I deposit five hundred
in the village bank to start with? By the time you've checked against
that, I'll have some more money coming in."

"I--I'd like to have a thousand dollars, Kirklan. Does that seem a
great deal? Of course I won't have to ask you for any more for--oh, for
quite a long time."

Gilmore was not displeased with her, but he was chagrined, for the
reason that his own bank balance was three hundred dollars less than
the thousand.

"Store accounts, of course!" he said. "I've charge accounts at several
of the stores in New York, and you can buy what you want and charge it
to me. The truth is, dear, that I haven't got a thousand in cash. We
writer fellows aren't very good financiers and I've been living pretty
close to the last dollar. But my credit is good."

Helen bit her lip. "I'd rather not charge things, Kirklan. If it would
be just as convenient to let me have the cash----"

"I'll let you have it Friday," he agreed; "I'll drop a note to
Atchinson and ask him to make me an advance. The publishing house makes
out its checks on Thursday."

"Kirklan," she murmured, forced to try a new line, "I'll have to tell
you the truth. I'll have to have some money by Wednesday. Oh, I know
it's terrible, asking you to pay my old debts, but I'm so afraid of--of
being sued that I----"

Gilmore patted her shoulder reassuringly. Had he stopped to think about
it, he might have considered it strange that a girl in the humble
position in which he had found her should have got into debt to the
extent of a thousand dollars, but it was Helen, not he, who recognized
this possible inconsistency, and she hastened to add with that glibness
which even a poor liar may achieve in a moment of desperation: "It--it
was money that I borrowed for my sister's illness. I had to sign some
notes, and----"

"You shall have the money, Helen, but the truth is always the best in
the first place, dear. I want us always to be frank with each other. I
want you to feel that you can come to me with everything. After all,
a falsehood is the most futile thing in the world. You should have
told me the exact truth about the matter from the beginning. I'll get
in touch with Atchinson on the phone to-morrow and arrange it. You
shall have the money to-morrow night, but you must never lie to me,
dear--under any conditions. A lie is one of the things I find it hard
to forgive."

His tone was so gentle, his agreement to the request so prompt, and his
faith in her so unquestioning that Helen was touched. It made her think
that she might almost learn to love him; impulsively she brushed her
lips to the back of his hand.

"That's good of you, Kirklan; you--you'll never know what a weight
you've taken from my mind. You--you do love me a very great deal."

"Better than all else in the world, Helen!" he answered huskily.

There was a silence, to Gilmore an enraptured silence in which he felt
closer to his wife than ever before. It seemed that suddenly there was
a new bond between them.

"What does Atchinson think of the new book?" she asked him presently.
"Does he think it will have the success of the last one?"

"Yes, even more. He's enthusiastic--even for Atchinson." His lips
parted into a smile. "Speaking of Atchinson, that reminds me.
He was trying to convince me that he saw you in New York this
afternoon--going into some cheap dump just around the corner from
Eighth Avenue."

With a startled gasp, Helen's hand jerked away from the fondling caress
of his fingers and, clenched, went to her mouth. Her eyes became wide
with something that was more than either surprise or bewilderment. Her
gaze was fixed upon his face with a fascinated stare, and the smile
that she attempted was only a sickly grimace.

"Why, Kirklan! In--in New York? How silly! You know very well that I
drove the car to Tuxedo."

Kirklan Gilmore's blood was suddenly ice; his eyes were no longer
smiling.

"Great Lord!" he whispered. "It's true. Atchinson was right. Helen,
you've lied to me; you----"

"No!" she cried in a desperate frenzy of denial. "I swear to you----"

"I see guilt in your face. I know now; I know that you were the woman
Atchinson saw in New York this afternoon. What does it mean, Helen?
These lies, this deceit--what does it mean?"

Helen laughed hysterically.

"Don't--don't be so tragic--over nothing. I wasn't in New York; you
just startled me, that's all. Please don't be so silly. Atchinson was
mistaken; some one who looked like me, perhaps."

But, as much as he wanted to believe her, Kirklan Gilmore could not
convince himself; her face had betrayed her. The blood was pounding
in his brain, and he felt that the mystery of it, the doubts, the
suspicions would certainly drive him mad.

CHAPTER V

VICTOR SARBELLA

The next morning, after a sleepless night, found Gilmore haggard and
hollow-eyed. There were moments when his wife's persistent denials
almost convinced him that it was all a horrible mistake; for a
beautiful woman in tears can be most plausible at dissimulation; and
then, when trying hardest to believe her, there would come before him,
with photographic clearness, the memory of her startled face, the
sudden guilty terror in her eyes, and credulity would crumble.

He was up hours before the rest of the household, although the cook was
stirring and brewed him a cup of coffee, which he gulped mechanically
and then fled to the solitude of his studio, thinking that he might
relieve the tension by forgetting himself in his work.

That, of course was ridiculous; there was no possibility of mental
detachment with his brain in such a riotous tumult. Sheet after sheet
of paper he drew before him to receive his thoughts, but, instead
of smooth sentences flowing from his pen, he found himself tracing
meaningless lines. He gave up any attempt at creation and tried
correcting, ironing out rough spots in the manuscript, where he had
left off three weeks previous, but in his present frame of mind all
spots were rough, just jumbled words. He tossed down his pen with a
violent force that crumpled the gold point and sent a spray of ink
spattering across the desk top. Then he leaped to his feet and began to
pace the floor like a caged beast.

"I've got to know the truth!" he groaned. "I think I could make myself
forgive her anything, but the deceit of it is driving me mad! What
could have taken her to that place--what is she hiding from me? Her
reason for wanting the thousand dollars--perhaps, that too, was a lie."

It suddenly dawned upon him how little he knew of Helen's life; nothing
more than she had been pleased to tell him, and that had not been
much. She had seldom spoken of her family, and then only in a hazy,
unenlightening sort of way. He had rather got the impression that her
parents had died when she was a child, and that a shadowy, indefinite
aunt had reared her.

Gilmore's love for his wife had been so blindly intense, so headlong
that it had never occurred to him to weigh these things. He had loved
her for herself, and that had been sufficient.

Until long past noon he remained locked within the studio, and no one
came to disturb him. At last he could no longer endure the oppression
of four walls; the day was hot, and he had neglected to open the
windows; the air was stifling. So he flung himself out of the renovated
stable and plunged, with hardly any sense of direction, across the open
country--trying to think, trying to think!

Thus he missed the arrival of Victor Sarbella, his artist guest; in
fact he had forgotten that Sarbella was coming. It was a quarter past
four when one of the village taxis turned in at Greenacres, nosed
along the driveway and, coming to a stop beneath the portico, deposited
Victor Sarbella and his bags beside the long, cool porch.

One did not need to hear the name to be certain of Sarbella's Italian
blood, for from his Florentine father he had got the intense black eyes
and the tinting of skin which belong to that warm-blooded race. He was
a handsome, powerfully built man, nearing forty. His hands, as he paid
the driver, were revealed as long-fingered, tapering, such hands as
properly belong to the artist.

With a honk of the horn the taxi moved off, and Victor Sarbella looked
about him, his black eyes snapping with an appreciative light. The
artist in him was delighted with the charm of Greenacres.

"My friend," he mused, "has a most beautiful home; a beautiful wife,
too, I am told."

Attracted by the taxi's arrival, Bates, the butler, shambled out across
the porch, followed by Joan Sheridan. Joan had met him at a literary
affair in New York the previous winter, and of course she remembered
him; Victor Sarbella was not the kind of man that one found it possible
to forget. She met him with an outstretched hand.

"Welcome to Greenacres, Mr. Sarbella. Kirk told me last night that you
were coming. I haven't seen Kirk all morning, but I suppose he's at the
studio. Have you seen him, Bates?"

"Not all day, Miss Joan; as you say, perhaps the studio."

Joan nodded. "I'll find him, Bates, while you take in Mr. Sarbella's
bags. He loses all track of time when he really gets to work, and he's
got to make up for three lost weeks."

"Naturally my poor friend takes up hees pen like, as they say, a slave
scourged to hees dungeon," he laughed. While he had spent a good many
years in America with his mother who, following the death of his
Italian father, had taken up residence in New York, there was a touch
of foreign accent in the pronunciation of certain words. His education
had been in Florence, and each winter he returned there for two or
three months. "Tell me, Mees Sheridan, is hees new wife so beautiful as
I have been told?"

Joan nodded. "Yes, she is beautiful, a very beautiful woman. Now I'll
run and find Kirk. He'll feel much humiliated that he wasn't here to
greet you. You're to make the illustrations for the new book. That's
wonderful. I've always admired your drawings; there's such intensity in
your pictures."

Sarbella, bowing, murmured an acknowledgment of the compliment and
turned to follow the butler into the house and up the stairs to the
second floor. A few minutes later he was unpacking his bags, as Bates
drew a tub of water for him.

"What time is dinner, Bates?"

"A quarter past six, Mr. Sarbella."

"It is now nearly half past four," said the artist, glancing at his
watch. "Every one dresses for dinner, I suppose."

"Oh, certainly, sir."

"Then I wish you would press my dinner coat, Bates; it's badly
wrinkled. I was never good at packing. You may tell Meester Gilmore
that I will not come down until six. There's no sense in dressing
twice."

"Quite so," nodded Bates and, accepting the dinner coat, shuffled out
of the room.

Sarbella took a brief plunge in the tub of tepid water, finished it off
with an invigorating cold shower, and, slipping into a light bath robe,
pulled a chair to the window and began to smoke. His thoughts evidently
took an unpleasant turn, for his eyes glowed hotly, and his muscles
tensed until his fingers crushed the burning cigarette, and the fiery
end of it smoldered odorously in the nap of the rug at his feet.

"To-day is the ninth," he smiled, half aloud; "day after to-morrow
would have been hees twenty-third birthday--Andrea's twenty-third
birthday! If I could but find her, that woman, I would kill her with my
own hands! Heaven curse her! She----"

The tense soliloquy of hate was interrupted by a rap at the door;
Sarbella turned with a start and called, "Yes, come."

Kirklan Gilmore, face still haggard, his eyes bloodshot, entered the
room with tumbling words of apology.

"Can you forgive my discourtesy, Victor?" he exclaimed. "I should have
been here to receive you. A fine host you must think me when----"

"Poof! That for your discourtesy, my good friend!" broke in Sarbella
with a laugh and a snap of the fingers. "We are artists, you and I;
you are an artist of the pen, and I an artist of the brush. So we
understand each other. I think nothing of it. But, my friend, what has
happened to you? Your face is that of a man who is ill."

Gilmore gave a jerky laugh. "It's nothing, Victor--nothing. Poor
night's sleep, that's all." While their friendship was a warm one, it
had never reached the point of intimacy; and to no friend on earth
would Kirklan Gilmore have confided the truth. "We'll have a cocktail
or so before dinner, and that will put new life back into me again."

Sarbella felt certain that this was an evasion and a very thin one;
through Gilmore's eyes he saw a soul in torment. But he pretended to
accept the explanation.

"The beautiful new wife, she must not see you so. It will make her
unhappy."

Gilmore's lips tightened, and he hastily changed the subject.
"To-morrow, Victor, we'll dig in and talk over the illustrations you
are to make. I have an idea or so, but I'll have to chase along now and
dress for dinner. Did Bates tell you? A quarter past six? When you've
dressed go on downstairs; we'll have the cocktails on the veranda. I'll
be down ahead of you, perhaps; I'm a regular fireman for throwing on my
clothes."

And he bolted abruptly from the room. Victor Sarbella stared after the
closed door and shook his head slowly.

"Ah!" he murmured. "A poor night's sleep, he says. I fear it is nothing
so simply remedied as that. It was tragedy I saw in his face--tragedy.
We all have our tragedies; I, too, have had mine. Poor Andrea; he was
so young to die. And our mother----" He blinked back the moisture
which flooded his eyes and tossed off the bath robe of silk crape,
starting to get into his clothes. Before he had finished, the butler
returned with the freshly pressed dinner coat, uttered a few polite
banalities, and departed.

Sarbella smoked another cigarette and then went downstairs to the
veranda, where he found that Gilmore had preceded him, looking a little
less pale than some minutes before. But the color in the author's
cheeks was plainly artificial, induced no doubt by a nip or so from the
bottle of liquor with which he was engaged in mixing the cocktails.
The man was making a supreme effort to conceal the true state of his
feelings, and being only moderately successful at it.

"The ladies will be down in a moment," said Gilmore, moving the
cocktail shaker back and forth. "Joan tells me that she saw you when
you arrived. Great admirer of your work, Joan; she's tickled to death
that you're going to do the drawings for the book. She'll probably help
you pick out some of the dramatic high spots; she knows the manuscript
forward and backward. Here's my mother now; I hear her coming through
the hall."

Victor Sarbella turned to greet Mrs. Gilmore, Kirklan's stepmother,
whom he had not met before.

"Mother, this is Mr. Sarbella. Further introductions are unnecessary,
Victor, because she's heard all about you."

As Sarbella bowed over her hand, Joan joined them.

"I think you can fill the glasses, Kirk," she said with a glance at the
tray. "Helen was directly behind me, as I came down the stairs. You
know, Mr. Sarbella, we're terribly punctual about dinner. The way the
servants do discipline us these days!"

The screen door onto the porch opened again, and Helen Gilmore came out
quietly, almost listlessly.

Kirklan was filling the last glass. "Victor, I want you to meet my
wife; Helen, this is Mr. Sarbella--the artist, you know," he said.
"Perhaps I neglected to tell you that he was expected."

There was a pause.

The polite, formal smile on the artist's lips was washed away by a
tidal wave of emotion--surprise, incredulity, horror--which left his
face white and rigid; into his eyes there blazed a scorching fire of
hatred that, since his back was toward the others, was seen only by
Helen.

At mention of his name Helen had stopped, her own features ghastly;
but she quickly checked the startled gasp which rose in her white
throat and, by the most tremendous effort, managed to control herself.
However, her agitation escaped neither her husband nor Joan; both of
them sensed what a dramatic shock the meeting had been to her.

Sarbella mastered his emotions wonderfully, and he came of a race that
is essentially emotional. And while he could not hide the pallor of his
face, he did mask that first flash of hatred which had blazed in his
eyes. Yet he dared not trust his tongue. Silently he bowed.

Kirklan Gilmore's unsteady hand splashed the last cocktail all over the
tray.

"Perhaps--perhaps you've--met before?" he suggested, alarmed by what
was obviously an attempt to conceal a mutual recognition.

"No," answered Victor Sarbella, his voice husky despite himself, "Mrs.
Gilmore and I have never met until this moment. It is a circumstance
that I very much regret."

"Mr. Sarbella," said Helen, an almost hysterical catch in her voice,
"is a total stranger. The name startled me. It is such an unusual name,
and I once had a--a friend who----"

"Dinner is served!" announced Bates. He said it quietly enough, but it
was like a thunderclap, this interruption.

"Here's how!" cried Joan, picking up her cocktail glass. "You'll go a
long way before you find anything like this, Mr. Sarbella; it's some of
the old stock that Kirk's father had in the cellar--oh, years and years
ago." It served to break the tension. "Here's to the new book--may it
be a tremendous success!"

"Great gods!" Sarbella said under his breath, as he mechanically lifted
his glass. "It is she--the woman! I find her here, the wife of--of my
friend. Merciful Heaven, his wife!"

CHAPTER VI

IN THE STUDIO

There can be nothing so dismal as pretended gayety, nothing so
mirthless as hollow, empty laughter. After that startling encounter
between Victor Sarbella and Helen Gilmore, both of them fighting for
self-control, all five on the porch drank the toast that Joan had
offered in an attempt to save the situation. Joan, of course, could not
know what it was all about, but she sensed the ominous trend of things.
She had seen the look of frozen terror in Helen's face, had seen the
muscles bulge and rise beneath the shoulders of Sarbella's perfectly
fitting dinner coat, and, while she had not glimpsed his face, it was
easy to know that he, too, had experienced a distinct shock.

"I have not tasted a better cocktail since my last trip abroad,"
exclaimed the artist, forcing a smile to his face. As a matter of fact,
he had swallowed the drink mechanically, hardly tasting it.

"Now for dinner!" cried Joan, taking full command of things. Putting
her fingers on Sarbella's arm, she led the way into the house and
toward the big, old-fashioned dining room.

Kirklan Gilmore jerked himself together with visible effort; his
impulse was to dash forward, face his wife and his friend squarely,
demanding sternly, "What does this mean? Answer me! What does this
mean?" But good breeding demanded restraint; his obligations as a host
required a simulated appearance of naturalness. With a queer mental
offshoot he wondered how he would have made one of the characters in
his books behave under a similar circumstance.

A moment or so later the five were at the dinner table. Even Mrs.
Gilmore, whom nature had endowed with no large store of astuteness,
realized the strain, realized that something was tremendously amiss,
and she, poor and well-meaning soul, made matters all the worse by the
uneasy, inquiring glances that she cast about the table in nervous
bewilderment.

Victor Sarbella managed to carry things off with fairly commendable
grace, but not so with Helen Gilmore, who made clumsy mistakes with
the table silver and not once lifted her eyes either to her husband or
the others. The rouge on her cheeks made the paleness nothing short of
ghastly.

Kirklan Gilmore's eyes, slightly narrowed and brighter than they should
have been, shot quick, queer glances from his wife to his guest.
Perhaps it was but natural that his mind swept to one conclusion--a
previous affair between these two. His friend and his wife! The salad
fork trembled in his hand. Time after time he suppressed the impulse to
leap to his feet, voicing the demand that kept shrieking through his
mind: "What is there between you two?"

Only Joan's persevering diplomacy kept them at fairly even keel; she
rattled on with scarcely a halt. But the dinner was a thoroughly
miserable affair, and by the time it came to an end the nerves of the
five were raw.

Joan's heart ached for the suffering she saw in Kirklan's face, and
there swept through her an intensified hate for the woman who had won
the man she loved.

"She's going to wreck his life!" she said under her breath. "I know
it--I know it! She's killing him--killing his soul! If she does that,
I'll----" The thought that came into her mind frightened her, for she
had not known that there was so much of primitive passion in herself.

The moment the unhappy dinner came to an end, Helen Gilmore murmured an
almost incoherent something about a headache and fled upstairs to her
room. The other Mrs. Gilmore, too, faded out of sight, still wondering
what it might be all about. Joan was inclined to remain, but Kirklan
showed very plainly that she wasn't wanted.

"Run along, Joan, if you don't mind," he said in a jerky, strained
voice. "Sarbella and I"--it was to be noted that he had dropped the
more cordial and customary name of Victor--"are going to--to talk
things over. Come out to the studio with me, Sarbella; the manuscript
of the book is out there."

Victor Sarbella was not deceived into any notion that Gilmore had in
mind a discussion of the new novel, and, while he shrank from what he
felt sure was going to be a cross-examination, he did not see how he
could very well refuse.

"All right," he agreed with a nod, reaching for his cigarette case.
Silently the two men left the house and cut across the lawn through the
gathering dusk toward the studio. No word was spoken as they entered
the building and mounted the stairs to the writer's workroom above.
Kirklan Gilmore switched on the lights, and the two faced each other at
the desk strewn with pages of the manuscript. Sarbella remained calm,
but the other let himself go, and his whole body shook like a man in
the grip of a chill.

"Well, let's have it--the truth!" he rasped, almost a sobbing catch in
his voice.

Victor Sarbella finished off his cigarette with a long puff that slid
the burning edge of the tobacco tube close to his lips; at the same
time he reached for a fresh smoke, tapped it on the back of his hand,
and then lighted it with the stub of the old. A thin trickle of smoke
swam slowly through his parted lips.

"Just what do you mean?" he parried.

"Don't you fence with me, Sarbella!" Gilmore shouted hoarsely. "I've
got to the breaking point. My nerves are stretched tight as piano
wires; if something snaps----"

"That's the trouble, Kirklan," Sarbella broke in soothingly. "You're
nervous and upset over something; that's the size of it. You were upset
when I first saw you, and I----"

"That's got nothing to do with it, Sarbella. You know very well what I
mean. I saw Helen--my wife--saw her face when I introduced you two on
the porch. Introduced you!" His voice rose shrilly. "I guess you know
her better than I do; I saw----"

"Kirklan," again interrupted Sarbella, "that is where you are
absolutely wrong. I give you my solemn word of honor, my oath as a
gentleman, that until this evening I never saw Mees Gilmore."

"Oath of a gentleman!" derided Gilmore. "You're the sort who would lie
like a gentleman. Man, I tell you that I saw--her face! Helen, my wife,
was afraid of you. Why was she afraid of you? Why did her face turn so
pale? Why did she look as if she were fainting?"

"She said," Sarbella replied smoothly, "that it was the name--that she
had once known some one named Sarbella. Why couldn't that be true!"

"It could be, but it isn't. Sarbella, you're hiding something from me,
and I've got to have the truth." His hands were clenched, and his eyes
blazed with jealousy. "Isn't it a fact that you were once in love with
her?"

A harsh, humorless laugh, the sort of a laugh that it is not pleasant
to hear, burst through Sarbella's lips.

"In love with her? Great Lord, no--a thousand times no! I----" He
broke off, on the verge of saying too much, of betraying the truth in
one exclamation of passionate, hot-blooded hatred. "I tell you again,
Kirklan, that your wife and I never met until this very evening. That
is quite all I have to say; you must take that or leave it."

Sarbella paused as if he would choke on one more word.

Chest heaving, lips twitching, Kirklan Gilmore leaned heavily across
the table, staring into the eyes of this other man whom he had
considered his friend. Suddenly he straightened and leaped toward the
door, turning the key in the lock; swiftly he turned and faced Victor
Sarbella.

"Take it or leave it, eh?" he panted. "Suppose I won't leave it;
suppose I tell you that you're not to leave this room until you tell
me what I want to know? What you are hiding from me?" His voice broke.
"I--I can't stand these lies, these evasions, this deceit any longer.
You have given me your word that you have told the truth, that you
never saw Helen before to-day. I don't know whether to believe that or
not. But, if it is the truth, you know something--something about her.
In Heaven's name, man, tell me! Who is she? I ask you--what is she?"

Victor Sarbella shook his head slowly. "She is your wife," he answered,
as if that might explain why he must keep sealed lips, but Gilmore
would not have it rest that way.

"Yes," he groaned, "she is my wife, but who was she, what was she
before--before she became my wife? I think you know." His shoulders
shook with a dry sob. "Sarbella, can't you see what this is doing to
me--that it is driving me mad?"

Again Sarbella's head described a sadly negative gesture. "I am sorry,
Kirklan," he said; "believe me, Kirklan, I am your friend, and I am
sorry, but there is nothing I can tell you. Set at rest any fears you
may have had about"--his lips twitched into a bitter smile--"about any
romantic attachment between us. Anything but that!"

Kirklan Gilmore took a step forward; the next instant he had flung
himself on Sarbella, and, although he was the less powerful man, the
latter was taken off his guard and staggered back into a chair.

"You tell me what you know, and tell me now, or I'm going to kill
you!" he gritted. "Tell me before I have to choke the life out of you."
His fingers squeezed about the artist's throat, and Sarbella had to
fight him off to break the grip. With a tremendous heave of the muscles
he flung Gilmore back, and the novelist, reeling, lost his balance and
plunged heavily to the floor.

He lay absolutely still.

Victor Sarbella stood over him, staring down at him pityingly. "I
am sorry for you, Kirklan," he said huskily: "yes, I am sorry--very
sorry." He went to the door, unlocked it with the key, and turned,
just as Gilmore was struggling up. "I cannot very well remain your
guest now, Kirklan. Oh, I don't mean just this." His fingers touched
his torn collar, the rumpled bosom of his dress shirt. "But I'll stay
until to-morrow. We can't forget that we are under obligations to the
publishers. Yes, I will wait until to-morrow; see if you can't pull
yourself together long enough to talk things over."

Gilmore gave no sign that he had heard, and Victor Sarbella passed on
out of the studio and down the old wooden steps of the stable. When
the door closed, Kirklan Gilmore slowly dragged himself to his feet
and moved toward the chair by the desk. Like a rheumatic old man with
protesting bone joints, he lowered himself into the chair, his body
sagging limply forward until he lay across the desk, his face pillowed
in his arms. He lay like that, his senses numbed, almost as if he were
dead, for a long time.

CHAPTER VII

THE GET-AWAY

Not for a moment did Don Haskins doubt that Helen Gilmore--legally
Helen Haskins, by grace of an unsundered legal tie previously
knotted--would "come through" with the thousand dollars that he had
demanded as the price of his silence. She wouldn't dare refuse; bigamy
is a sternly met crime in New York State.

With a thousand dollars to the good he felt that his get-away was
safely assured, for a thousand dollars would enable him to put a long
distance behind him. And so, sitting in the squalid, shabby little
third-floor room in Eighth Avenue Annie's disreputable haven for those
hunted men who can raise the price of her protection, he was laying
his plans. Several points of the compass beckoned to him; California
intrigued him, but he was also inclined toward Cuba, and, even at a
lesser distance, Florida waved its picturesque palms beckoningly before
his mental vision. He had thought, too, of South America, but was wise
enough to know that this trip would have to contemplate the dangers of
getting a passport. A passport is not readily secured by a man of Don
Haskins' unsavory standing as a citizen; so he scratched South America
off his list.

It had been Monday afternoon when Helen had called at Eighth Avenue
Annie's, leaving a payment of one hundred and ninety dollars on
account; it was now just gathering dark of Tuesday, and so certain was
Don that the dawning of the following day would bring the remainder of
the thousand that he was making his very definite plans for sliding out
of town--quickly.

He had allowed his beard to grow; that would help some. Perhaps it
wouldn't fool the eyes of a dick who knew him well--and many of them
did--but it added materially to his chances. The cops, since he had
no successful job to his credit, wouldn't expect him to be in funds.
The thing to do, he reasoned, was the thing he wouldn't be expected
to do; therefore with fifty of the one hundred and ninety dollars he
had got from Helen--previously diminished by an even hundred that he
owed his old hag protector--he had sent Annie out among the secondhand
shops of Eighth Avenue to gather a wardrobe, a gentleman's wardrobe, at
reasonable prices.

"Nuttin' flashy," he had warned; "respectable-lookin', but none of the
race-track stuff, see."

And so Eighth Avenue Annie went forth among the clothing shops where
stained, ancient garments are sponged, pressed, and advertised "Just
Like New." True enough, Annie took her own reward for this service;
to the suit of blue serge for which she paid twelve dollars and
ninety-five cents, she affixed a price tag which read twenty-four
dollars and ninety-five cents, and, as you might expect, put the
difference into her own capacious and ever-hungry pocket.

There seems to be some persistent destiny that has the habit of
sending policemen past a certain spot at a certain moment. It is
always happening, as an almost daily glance at your morning newspaper
will bear affirmative witness. As Eighth Avenue Annie was engaged in
purchasing Don Haskins' get-away outfit, Detective Sergeant John Henry
Tish passed the door of Abramson's dark, gloomy and somewhat odorous
"Clothes Bought and Sold" establishment and chanced to glance within.

Detective Sergeant Tish was not perhaps nearly so good a detective as
he thought himself to be, but he had a good record for arrests and
convictions; when he made a "pinch" something usually came of it. He
had been recently assigned to this district, on the fringe of the old
Tenderloin, and he wasn't so well acquainted as he might have been.
But he knew Eighth Avenue Annie; he had seen her in Jefferson Market
Court not a great many months before, and Annie's gargoyle face, with
the narrow, red eyes, her bulging, muscular shoulders, were not easily
forgotten.

"Humph!" grunted Sergeant Tish. "The old hag is buyin' somebody some
new rags--that is some rags that was new--one time. Looks as if there
might be something in it."

So, instead of pursuing his way down Eighth Avenue, he loitered outside
Mr. Abramson's cluttered establishment, to all intents and purposes
interested in a suit of plaid which occupied the central space in the
window. "Can't Tell it from New," read a card. "A Bargain at $22.69."
Mr. Abramson, you see, was a great believer in the psychology of the
odd cent.

Eighth Avenue Annie striding forth with that swaggering, Bowery walk of
hers, a bundle under her arm, did not glance behind her. Had she done
so, she would have seen Sergeant Tish, a short, well-fed-looking man,
who didn't look much like the usual run of fly cops, lose interest in
the plaid and follow her at a discreet and disarming distance.

However, when Annie turned in at her place of abode and harbored
evil-doers just around the corner of the second block, Sergeant Tish
quickened his pace and was directly behind her, as she stepped into
the vestibule. It might have been the ringing of the automatic bell
that dimmed her ears to the pad of the detective's shoes, for, as she
turned, there was Tish, grinning at her wisely, his foot thrust forward
to prevent the door being suddenly slammed in his face. He had no
intention of finding himself on the outside looking in.

"Say!" growled Annie. "What's the game?" Sharp as were her red,
narrow eyes, she failed to see the brand of headquarters in the
plain-clothes man's round, fat face.

Sergeant Tish continued grinning, but it wasn't a grin to arouse any
contagious mirth or even good humor.

"Who'd you buy the new rags for?" he demanded. "I wanna know a thing or
two about that. Get me?"

Eighth Avenue Annie got him; there was the tone of authority in the
man's voice.

"What's it to you?" she demanded with pretended indignation. "Ain't a
lady gotta right----"

"Cheese it!" broke in Detective Tish. "I know you, an' I gotcher
number. When a bird sends you out to buy 'im clothes, he's either
a cripple or a crook--an' if he was that bad a cripple I guess he
wouldn't need any clothes." He chuckled in appreciation of his own wit.
"So don't try no bluff with me. Take your hand off that door."

Annie had often defied the law, but her defiance was never flaunted
openly. When a cop said open the door, she opened it quickly.

"I ain't done nothin' wrong," she protested with a ludicrous pretense
at innocence. "There ain't nothin' wrong, is there, in doin' a favor
fer a gent roomer. Is there, now? He said fer me to go out an' buy
'em----"

"Where is this guy?" broke in Sergeant Tish. "I guess I'll give him the
once-over. Chances are he's some bird that's wanted, tryin' to do a
swift one outta town. Yeah?"

"I dunno," muttered Annie; "I dunno nothin' about 'im. I rents 'im
a room; he pays his rent. I'm a poor lady tryin' to make an honest
livin', I am."

"That's a double lie," snorted Sergeant Tish. "You ain't no lady, an'
you never glommed an honest jitney in your life. Lead on, you; I'm
gonna give this guy the once-over an' a free ride most likely."

The woman hesitated, for she was at a ticklish disadvantage. The
surprise of the detective's visit was too complete to give her any
opportunity to warn Don Haskins who waited in the vile little room on
the third floor for his new wardrobe.

On the stairs leading to the top story there was concealed a very
cunning little device that in six years of hiding hunted men for pay
had not once been detected by the police. Two of the steps, by a simple
mechanical operation, could be jerked upward into an opening large
enough to admit a man's body. Below this was space large enough to
accommodate several persons, the steps then dropped back into place,
looking thoroughly innocent. But Haskins had not been given the secret
of the third-floor stairs, and now there would be no opportunity to
favor him with this belated knowledge.

"I'll run right up an' tell Mr. Smith to come down," said the old hag.

"Say," sneered Sergeant Tish, "do I look that easy? On the level, do
you think I'd fall for that stuff?" It angered him that she should
have so little regard for his intelligence. "What floor did you say?"
He unbuttoned his coat which fitted somewhat tightly across his ample
stomach, giving him freer access to his police automatic strapped
beneath his arm.

Eighth Avenue Annie had not lived in the underworld for nothing; she
knew the ways of the cops. She knew, for example, that the first overt
move she made to protect her well-paying lodger would land her in jail
on a charge of aiding and abetting a criminal. She wanted to help
Haskins, not from any motive of sentiment, but because she expected to
garner further money from Don's "swell sister," as she supposed Helen
Gilmore to be.

"I didn't say what floor, off'cer," she muttered, "but I'm sayin' now.
He's on the thoid. I ain't protectin' nobody that ain't right." She
tried to affect a virtuous attitude. "I dunno nothin' except he spiels
it to me his moniker is--um--Smith."

"Lead the way," ordered Sergeant Tish. "Not a word outta you either.
Get me? No tip-off goes with me; try that, and it's the station for
yours. If you think I won't, try it." Evidently Tish had not been
deceived in the slightest by her attitude of innocence. "You go on up
them stairs just like you was bringin' back his new duds. You say,
'Here's your clothes, mister.' I guess we won't use the Smith racket,
either. His name ain't Smith, and you know it ain't."

"Yes, off'cer," agreed Eighth Avenue Annie.

"Not so loud with that officer talk," warned Tish. "Ease down on the
lung power, you. Now, let's go."

He motioned to the bundle she had just brought in from Abramson's,
and she obediently picked it up, starting up the dank, musty stairs.
The detective followed, walking with surprising lightness of step for
so corpulent a man. They reached the second-floor landing and passed
around a bend in the hall to the next flight. There was no hope for Don
Haskins now.

As they reached the top, lighted murkily by the dirty skylight,
Sergeant Tish crouched low so that his head and shoulders would be
shielded by the bulking form of Eighth Avenue Annie and her packages.
The woman's shoes clattered noisily, and Haskins came to the door with
the broken, patched panel, his unshaven face peering out.

"You got the stuff, huh?" he grunted. "I'll bet it's a tin suit."

Eighth Avenue Annie made no effort to warn him; that might mean
shooting, and she wanted no shooting in her house.

"It's a good suit," she muttered in a hoarse guttural. "It cost----"

"Stick 'em up," roared Sergeant Tish, flipping out his gun, and rising
to his full height, leveling the weapon at the now wide-open door. "Get
'em up, or I'll drill you."

Don Haskins' hands went up; he would have been a fool otherwise. His
lips twisted, as they emitted a vicious snarl.

"Double crossed me," he said. "Took my good jack an' called in the
cops. Curse you, I'll----"

"Shut your mouth!" Annie whispered hoarsely, her own face livid.

Sergeant Tish grinned delightedly; he was beginning to realize that it
had been a fortunate circumstance looking so casually into the doorway
of Abramson's secondhand clothing store. He had felt all along, of
course, that the woman was lying, that she was keeping a man in hiding.
And men do not hide unless they are wanted. It might be a big haul.
He took another step forward and peered closely into the face of his
quarry.

"I can't name him offhand, but I guess the Bertillon boys'll rap to
'im fast enough." He backed Haskins into the stuffy, dirty little room
at the point of the gun and reached into the pocket of his coat for an
ever-ready pair of nippers.

"Stick out them fins," he ordered. "I'll get these darbies on you, an'
then we'll talk things over."

Knowing that the gun was beaded for his vitals, and that any fool can
shoot straight with an automatic, Don Haskins stuck out his hands; the
handcuffs snapped about his wrists.

"What's the pinch for?" he demanded with an effort at bluster. "You
ain't got nothin' on me; I ain't done nothin'."

"Well, anyhow, I guess you've done time," Sergeant Tish said shrewdly.
"What's your name down at central office?"

Don Haskins remained sullenly silent, his eyes glowing hotly, as
they stared at Eighth Avenue Annie. The hag had let the bundle from
Abramson's slide to the floor, and with both hands she pushed back the
dirty gray hair that straggled down across her soiled face.

"Want to hold out on me, eh?" grunted Sergeant Tish, with a shrug of
his flesh-padded shoulders, as he thrust the gun back into its holster.
His chubby face wore a smile, for he was well pleased with himself; a
single-handed capture is a thing that a cop delights in. And, if it
turned out to be an important arrest--well, Tish had a hunch that it
was just that, an important arrest. "Suit yourself, John Doe; you'll
get the rap fast enough when I get you downtown."

Don Haskins knew how hopeless it was now. Ten minutes ago he had been
daydreaming pleasantly of Florida, perhaps Cuba, and now--Sing Sing
via the Tombs. It all depended on whether or not "Dago Mike," his
confederate in the loft job, net profit ten dollars split three ways,
had squealed. And he was sure Dago Mike had squealed. The warehouse
watchman had been croaked, and that meant that not only the actual
slayer, but Don Haskins, as a participant in the crime, was liable to
the death sentence.

Haskins thought swiftly, desperately. The chair! The sickening vision
of it swam before his eyes and drove his brain to cunning that was
somewhat beyond his normal mental processes. He staggered back to the
unkempt cot.

"Gimme a cigarette," he muttered thickly, his nerve apparently
deserting him. "I'll talk--tell you who I am. I--I gotta have a fag
first."

Sergeant Tish had seen that kind before. "Sure," he agreed readily
enough and produced a package of his own. Don lifted his manacled arms
and took a cigarette. It trembled between his fingers, wabbled between
his twitching lips. The detective lighted a match and held the flaming
stick toward him.

Haskins inhaled deeply and seemed to grow calmer; his eyes raised,
taking his captor's measure. He noted with satisfaction that he was
almost a head taller than Tish. Even then he found the time to wonder
how he had managed to get on the force.

Tish did not rush his man. "Take your time," he encouraged. "No hurry;
spill it when you're ready."

Eighth Avenue Annie edged to the door from the hall, peering inside
with a horrible leer, as she considered that this man whom she had
befriended--for pay, of course--was going to be a yellow skunk and
"cough up." He would probably squeal on her, too; tangle her up in
his own net of trouble. That was the way with some of these rats;
they couldn't stand the gaff and wouldn't protect their friends. She
muttered something that sounded like "scum."

Little did Annie know what was going on in Don Haskins' mind. Don had
never been a swift thinker, and hard drinking of bootleg whisky hadn't
added to his nimbleness of wit, but his brain was traveling in high
now. He knew that it wouldn't do him any good to conceal his identity;
lie as he would, there would be plenty of cops down at headquarters to
remember him. More than that, his picture was in the rogues' gallery,
his finger prints on file. But he didn't propose to make that trip down
to headquarters. Desperation made him resourceful.

"My name is Haskins," he muttered. "They used to call me Nifty Don in
the old days, but you ain't got nothin' on me. On the level, you ain't
got nothin' on me."

Sergeant Tish frowned for a moment and then a look of delight spread
over his round, fat face. "Guess again, Haskins. There's a general
order out for you. You're wanted for a croak out in the Bronx; I forget
the details, but you're wanted all right. Yeah, I'll say you are."

Don groaned. He had been right in his fears; Dago Mike had squealed.
The handcuffed man got to his feet; his shoulders heaved, as he inhaled
deeply on the now half-consumed cigarette. He filled his lungs to every
cubic inch of their capacity. He took a step toward the detective and,
opening his mouth, expelled a cloud of smoke directly into Tish's face.

Sergeant Tish, half blinded, was taken totally by surprise; he
staggered back and made a motion toward his gun, but he was not quick
enough. The prisoner's manacled arms flashed upward and downward, the
metal wristlets catching the detective a stunning blow on the side of
the head. The latter's knees sagged, but he continued to fumble for his
gun, when Haskins struck again, and this time the plain-clothes man
crumpled up on the floor, blood gushing from the edge of his scalp.

"My Gawd!" whispered Eighth Avenue Annie.

For the moment Haskins ignored her, as he knelt beside the form of his
captor and took the police regulation automatic; then he began frisking
the man for the handcuff keys.

"Here," he said harshly to the old hag, "get these cursed things off of
me. Hurry!"

"You'se ain't croaked 'im?" gulped Annie, her eyes bulging.

"Naw," grunted Don. "Use that key, or I'll give you a dose of the same.
I ought to, anyhow, you dirty double crosser. Tipped the cops off,
didn'tcha?"

"He seen me buyin' the clothes; he follered me. See? I didn't have no
chance to give you warnin'. Nice fix you got me into, brainin' a dick
in my place. They'll send me away for this." She worked the key in the
lock, and the handcuffs came free.

"I hope you get ten years," Haskins said viciously. "Gimme them
clothes." A moment later he was changing in trembling haste, shedding
the disreputable suit for the more respectable garments that Annie had
purchased at Abramson's. His fingers were shaking, and he steadied his
nerves with a drink from the bottle which rested beside the bed.

Eighth Avenue Annie was twisting her grimy old hands in an anguish
of terror. She knew the aftermath of this, and the revenge of the
outwitted detective was not a pleasant thing to consider. Had she
dared she would have tried to square herself by preventing Haskins'
escape, by sending out an alarm, but Haskins was armed and at her first
move would perhaps kill her. She flattened against the wall, sobbing
hoarsely in self-pity, cursing the man who had sent Haskins to her for
protection.

In his haste Haskins forgot something very important; he forgot that
beneath the dirty mattress was the forty dollars that remained of
the one hundred and ninety dollars Helen Gilmore had given him the
previous afternoon. He didn't think of it until he had dashed down
the two flights of stairs and had reached the street. As he realized
this amazing oversight and turned back, he saw Annie sneaking out of
the vestibule, running. He knew. She was calling the cops, trying to
square herself. He didn't dare go back for the money. He wheeled in the
opposite direction, walking swiftly.

Flight without a dollar in pocket is a problem, but desperation has
cut many a Gordian knot. Eighth Avenue is not a well-lighted street,
and darkness had settled down over the city. A taxi nosed through the
gloom, and after but a moment of hesitation Haskins hailed it; the
question of fare did not bother him--not with that automatic in his
pocket. The taxi drew up alongside the curb; it was a nice new taxi,
with a shining, spotless coat of blue paint.

"I wanna get to Yonkers in a hurry," said Don briskly. "Gotta
important date out there. How quick can y'make it?" Yonkers was the
river-bordered town which joined the New York city limits on the north.

"Hour and a quarter," answered the driver, giving Haskins a sizing-up
look.

"O. K.," grunted Haskins. "Let's travel; go down Riverside Drive all
the way." He climbed inside, and they were off.

Don had a particular reason for choosing the Riverside Drive route.
Past One Hundred and Eightieth Street the Drive winds between the river
and high-towering bluffs, with no houses on either side. He desired a
quiet place for settling the matter of the fare. They had reached the
spot which is called Inspiration Point, when the fleeing passenger
rapped on the glass which separated him from the chauffeur's seat.

"Stop 'er!" he shouted.

The car ground to a halt, and Haskins leaped out, cursing volubly.

"Lost ring--diamond ring--slipped right off my finger. That rock cost
me eight hundred bucks," was the excuse he gave.

The driver stared suspiciously, for his fare did not look like a man
who would own an eight-hundred-dollar diamond ring.

"Aw, watcha handin' me?" he growled skeptically.

Haskins looked up and down the Drive. The nearest car was some distance
away. His hand slipped to his pocket for the automatic he had taken
from Sergeant Tish. At the same instant he sprang forward. He did not
shoot, but brought the butt of the weapon down in a vicious swing on
the fellow's head. With a grunting, choking groan the latter collapsed
into black unconsciousness, still sitting at the wheel.

The approaching car swept past; another followed; and neither paused
their swift progress. There was no reason why they should have noticed
anything. Don Haskins lifted out the limp form and carried it well
back to the side of the road, where he quickly rifled the senseless
man's pockets, taking nineteen dollars and thirty-five cents in cash,
a good watch, and the driving license. Then he donned the chauffeur's
cap and climbed into the taxi; an instant later he was speeding on
northward--alone. He was headed for the one place where he was sure
that he would find money and protection--Greenacres.

CHAPTER VIII

CAUGHT IN THE WEB

The wife of Kirklan Gilmore was not literary, had not even any
tendencies in that direction; no literary qualifications had been
required for her employment as a typist in Atchinson's publishing
house. Her reading had been superficial, shallow, but she had an
adaptable mind and was constantly picking up surface things, chance
clever little quips and quotations, which, if she were not put to a
severe test, might pass for an acquaintance with the classics.

When, overwhelmed by the appearance of Victor Sarbella as her husband's
guest, she had fled to her room, it was with the realization that still
another specter of the past had appeared to haunt and undo her. And
there flashed through her mind a fragment of an old quotation:

Oh, what a tangled web we weave,
When first we practice to deceive.

Yes, what a tangled web she had woven--inextricably enmeshed in the
snarled skeins of her ambitious folly. How circumstances had conspired
against her.

"What a fool I was to think I could get by with it!" she whispered
bitterly. "How will it end? It was bad enough without Sarbella.
Him--him! It was like a ghost from the grave. He will tell my husband;
of course he will tell him--he could want no better revenge than that.
That look in his eyes--how he hates me!"

She began to think of flight, even made a half-hearted, indecisive
move to gather up some of her things, but there was no train now until
morning, and the thought of driving the car, novice at the wheel that
she was, through the dark night terrified her. Besides which the car
was probably in the garage, locked; and she did not have the key. There
seemed nothing to do but wait.

Helen would have been a very blind person indeed had she not realized
that Kirklan had sensed something amiss in the amazing meeting between
her and Sarbella; and, as time dragged on--eight o'clock, nine, and
then ten--she wondered why her husband had not come raging upstairs to
fling the past accusingly into her face, to order her out of the house,
perhaps to kill her!

"Surely he would come if he knew," she told herself. "Hasn't
Sarbella told him? Why, he--he must have told him!" It was past her
understanding.

Wearily she went to her dressing table, removed the dress she had
worn at dinner, slipped into a flowing-sleeved dressing gown that was
charmingly open at the throat, and began to let down her glorious
bronze hair which cascaded over her shoulders.

Detached as Greenacres was, the house was very still, so still that
the many sounds which always fill a country night, floated through the
window, magnified by her taut, tortured nerves to crescendo volume.

"Something has got to happen. Why can't it happen now and be over
with!" she moaned. "The suspense, this awful suspense! I can't stand
it--I can't!"

Nervously she went to the window, and, pushing aside the curtains,
leaned out, staring into the night. The future, her future, was like
that--black, impenetrable, void, and she felt that there could never be
any dawn--not for her.

"My life's been nothing but tragedy," she told herself bitterly. "I
thought I might be happy and respectable. There's a curse on me; that's
what it is, a curse. I'd be better off dead, but--I don't want to die."

Helen, staring off into black space, did not see the skulking form that
moved stealthily through the shrubbery, circling uneasily, furtively
about the house. The slinking man stared upward at the lighted window,
stopped, as she leaned out across the sill, framed in the open space by
the light which burned within the room behind her.

"It's her!" he grunted, but, as he crept forward, intending to call
softly, she disappeared.

Don Haskins had deserted the stolen taxicab two miles down the road; by
cautious questioning he had learned the location of Greenacres and had
walked the rest of the way, and here he was. It had been a troubling
problem as to how he would get in touch with Helen. He had thought of
going into the village and calling her on the telephone, but there were
objections to this plan. In the first place he did not want to risk
an appearance in the village; added to that, it might be bad business
calling her to the phone so late at night. It had been his tentative
idea to find a hiding place on the spacious estate until he could get
in touch with her. Already he had considered the stable as a likely
place for his purpose.

"That's her room," he told himself, still looking up at the lighted
window. "Now, if she was alone----" He crept closer to the house the
better to study the situation, and he found it very much to his liking.
The window of Helen's room opened out on the roof of the veranda which
semicircled the house on two sides.

It might be risky business, but a desperate man, the prospect of the
death chair looking him in the face, does not stop to weigh such minor
risks as this. He reached an almost instant decision. He sat down in
the grass and removed his shoes; tying the laces together, he swung
them about his neck.

"I never done no porch climbin'," he muttered, "but it don't look so
hard."

But it was hard, much harder than he had anticipated; the porch post
was large of circumference, making it difficult to hug his arms about
it with a freezing grip. Several times he slid pantingly down just as
his straining fingers were within a few inches of the raised awning.
The perspiration poured from his body and moistened the palms of his
hands, so that he had to keep wiping them dry.

In one last desperate effort he got hold of the awning's edge and
began to pull himself upward to the cornice. The triumph, however, was
far from noiseless; awning hooks snapped loose from the wood, and the
awning itself tore with a ripping sound under the strain.

Panting, breathless, exhausted, Haskins lay flat on the roof, waiting
to see if the sounds would arouse the house. He marked the time by
counting, one to sixty, one to sixty, until four minutes had dragged
past. Not even Helen, within the room of the open window directly
above, seemed to have heard.

Haskins began edging himself, a few inches at a time, across the
shingles toward the patch of light that streamed out across the roof.
Presently he had reached the sill and, drawing himself up, peered
within.

Helen was again at the dressing table, mechanically applying bedtime
cosmetics. Otherwise the room was empty; Don made sure of that before
he pulled himself still further forward.

"Sh!" he hissed. "It's me--Don. Douse the glim!"

Helen Gilmore did not turn; there was no need. Through the
dressing-table mirror she could see his unshaven face at the corner of
the window sill. Her hand clapped to her mouth to stem the scream which
rose in her throat. Her body rocked in the low-backed chair, but she
did not faint.

"Douse the light!" Haskins commanded again in a piercing whisper.
"Somebody might see me sneakin' in."

Helen stumbled unsteadily to her feet and snapped out the lights. In
the darkness she heard him floundering through the window and into the
room, heard the curtains rip, when he caught at them, evidently to keep
his balance, as he lunged forward. She even heard his panting breath,
as it wheezed through his mouth.

Don turned, lowered the sash, and drew down the blind. "Lock the door
an' then flash on the lights again," he ordered tensely.

"The door is already locked," answered Helen, as she fumbled for the
light switch. The next instant they were blinking at each other; she
leaning limply against the wall, he standing in the center of the
floor. "My God, Don, what made you come here--to-night of all nights? I
can't stand any more; I can't. You gave me until to-morrow----"

"Blame the damn cops," he grunted. "It was them did it--them an' Eighth
Avenue Annie. She sicked 'em onto me." He still believed that the old
hag had double crossed him.

"You mean----"

"Yeah, they're after me. I'm in for it right. They had the darbies on
me, but I beaned the dick that nabbed me, got 'em off, took his gat,
swiped a taxi, an' here I am. My hunch was right. Dago Mike squealed on
the loft-job croak."

"How did you--find me--this room?" gasped Helen.

Despite the desperation of the situation, Don Haskins grinned a little.

"Seen you when you poked your head outta the window; shinned up the
porch, an' here I am."

"I--I haven't got the money, Don; I haven't got it--yet."

"But you're gonna get it to-morrow? I betcha y'are." His tone was
menacing. "You gotta hide me somewheres until----Mebbe you can drive me
somewheres in a car. Boston, huh?"

Helen lifted her hands in a weary gesture. "Everything seems to be
happening at once," she whispered. "I--I don't know if I am going to
be able to get the money or not--now."

The man glowered menacingly. "Don'tcha try to pull no stall on me; that
stuff don't go. Understand?"

"Don, listen. My husband was on the same street yesterday when--when I
went to that place to see you. His publisher saw me--the man I used to
work for."

"Aw, say; you don't expect me to swallow no guff like that?"

"Sh! Not so loud, Don. It's true. Atchinson saw me. Kirklan didn't
believe it at first, but now he feels sure it's true. At first he'd
promised me the money. I told him that I wanted to pay an old bill, but
I don't know what he is going to do now. Then"--a shudder went through
her--"to make it all worse, a man came to the house to-night, a Mr.
Sarbella. He----"

Haskins lifted his hand to his unshaven chin and stared at her
dubiously. "Sarbella? I guess you're bats, ain'tcha? Why, that guy's
dead!"

"Not--not Andrea," choked Helen. "Victor Sarbella. At first I
thought--they look so much alike. He recognized me. Oh, the awful look
of hatred that he gave me!"

"You mean that Sarbella spilled to Gilmore?"

"I--I don't know. I haven't seen any one since dinner. I--I suppose he
did. He hates me, and he wants revenge. The newspapers said----"

"That he was gonna get you," finished Don. "Yeah, I remember readin'
that. The papers made quite a piece about it--Eyetalian revenge an'
that sort of spiel. I guess you're some scared that the Sarbella guy's
gonna croak you, huh? Right here in the house, is he?"

Helen nodded. "Yes, right here in the house," she answered.

Don whistled softly. "Well, if that ain't the cat's eyebrows!" he
murmured, as he stared at her suspiciously. If what she told him was
true, he probably had lost the club he had been holding over her head
to extort money from her. But he doubted if it were true; Helen, he
told himself, was clever. Perhaps she hadn't found it easy to get the
thousand dollars blackmail money from her husband, and she had made up
this story as a pure bluff.

"Where's the Gilmore guy?" he demanded.

"I don't know. I told you that I hadn't seen any one since dinner. I
can't understand why Kirklan hasn't come to me, if Sarbella has told
him."

Haskins pursed his lips thoughtfully and wrinkled his shallow forehead;
after a moment he nodded. "I gotcha; if Gilmore had the low-down on you
he'd have come stormin' in here to have it out with you. Sure he would.
No, I guess Sarbella ain't spilled to him. I guess that ain't his way
of gettin' even with you. Stiletto! That's the way them Eyetalians do
it."

Helen gasped; she hadn't thought of that possibility. She was inclined
to treat the suggestion lightly, but there came back to her the memory
of Victor Sarbella's black eyes flaming into her face, hot with a
stored-up hatred, and she shivered.

"Oh, I--I don't think he would kill me!" she gasped.

"Then you don't know them Eyetalians," Don grunted sagely. "They sure
is strong on the revenge stuff. If I was you I'd keep right here in
this room, while he was on the premises. But that's your trouble, and I
got troubles of my own. When do I get that thousand bucks you was gonna
hand over?"

"But if Sarbella has told Kirklan who I am, what I was before----"

"Then you figger to pass me up, huh? Guess again. Even if Sarbella
does, Gilmore won't squeal to the cops; a guy like him don't want
no family scandal, see! Mebbe he'll show you the gate, but he ain't
gonna send you up the river--not if he's crazy about you like you said
yesterday. But me, that's different. You done me dirty; you throwed me
over, made a bum outta me." His face contorted unpleasantly. "I owe you
one, I do, an' I'm handin' you this on the level; if I get nabbed this
trip I'm goin' to spill. I'm gonna send for the district attorney an'
tell him----"

"I'll try to get the money for you, Don; I'll try my best," broke in
Helen with a quick promise.

Don glared at her triumphantly, as he reached into his pocket for one
of the cigarettes that he had taken from the unconscious taxi driver,
lighted it, and, puffing slowly, began rocking to and fro on his
feet. A silly smile spread over his face, as glancing down, he saw a
bare toe protruding from one sock, where a hole had been rubbed by
friction against the porch post in his climb of a few minutes before.
He remembered that his shoes still swung from around his neck. With a
chagrined exclamation he untied the laces and put the shoes on. Helen
did not smile.

"Yes," she said again, "I'll try to get the money for you to-morrow."
Her hands went out in a nervous gesture, and Don caught the sparkle of
a diamond on her finger. She had not worn it on her visit to Eighth
Avenue Annie's--for good reasons. Haskins stared at the ring and put a
hasty appraisal of four or five hundred dollars on it.

"I'll take that for security," he said, pointing. She drew back against
the wall in a move of refusal, and Don, eyes narrowed, darted toward
her.

"Aw, I guess you will," he growled.

But, when his fingers touched the smooth, white skin of her arm and
seized her in an effort to force the diamond from her, a change came
over him. A fierce return of his old love for her swept through him.
All his hate melted, like ice returned to its first form of water. His
arm tightened about her, drawing closer; his unshaven, stubbly chin
buried against her throat.

"The law says you're mine!" he panted. "You're my wife. I--I guess I
ain't stopped bein' crazy about you even--even when I was wantin' to
kill you--wantin' to choke the life outta you like--like this."

The fingers of one hand raised before her face, writhing, twisting,
like tentacles; they neared her soft throat, toyed against the skin.
Helen dared not scream, but she struggled in silent terror. Her arms
flailed against his sides, and her hand struck against the bulky
automatic in his coat. Her fingers slipped swiftly into his pocket and
seized the butt of the gun.

"You ain't this guy's wife," he went on hoarsely. "You're my wife;
the law says so, and you're goin' with me." He was so beside himself
that he did not feel the tug of the pistol, as it came free from his
pocket. And then there crashed through the stillness of the house the
slam of a closing door. Don's arms dropped limp.

"What was that?" he whispered, returning to the realization that he was
a hunted man, fleeing for his life.

"I think it's Kirklan," she whispered. "His room adjoins this one. Sh!
He'll hear you."

Haskins took a flying leap across the room and switched off the lights;
his hand went to his pocket.

"The gat--it's gone!" he muttered under his breath. "It musta dropped
outta my pocket when I was climbin' up the porch." He groped through
the darkness. "Helen!"

"Sh!"

"You gotta stash me away somewheres. If I get nabbed, what I said
goes--I spill what I know."

Helen in the darkness concealed the automatic beneath the flowing
sleeve of her robe. With the gun she was no longer afraid of Don, but
she still did fear his threats, his power to send her to Auburn prison
on a charge of bigamy. A moment before he had loved her madly; the next
he might hate her again with just as much intensity. She had to aid
him--protect him.

"I'll hide you," she told him, "on the third floor--an old storeroom.
No one ever goes there. I'll bring you food. I'll try to get you the
money; I'll get you money--somehow. I'll see that you get away. Follow
me."

Cautiously she opened the door. The hallway was in friendly darkness.
She groped along the wall, fearful that Don would betray their
presence, but he followed her in stealthy silence.

The third-floor stairway was inclosed, and it was reached through a
door which, since the third floor was seldom used, creaked dismally, as
she swung it open.

"Up there!" she whispered. "The last door at the left; you'll know it.
It's a storeroom. I'll see you--some time to-morrow."

The door closed again whiningly, inclosing Don Haskins within the
stairway. He considered it safe to light a match and did so to
illuminate the upward climb. He saw accumulated dust, evidence of
disuse; Greenacres servants were not good housekeepers above the second
floor, it seemed. Without any difficulty he found the storeroom and,
striking another match, discovered that a kindly circumstance had
left a discarded couch for him to rest upon. He sat down on the edge
of it and felt in his pocket for his package of cigarettes, and then
something dawned upon him. The gun had been in his pocket after he had
got inside the house; he remembered the touch of it, as he had sought
out a cigarette.

"Curse her!" he gritted. "She took that gat outta my pocket. What did
she want with it, anyhow? I got a good notion to go back down there
an'----" He lighted a fag and smoked nervously, indecisively. He wanted
his gun. A desperate man feels safer with something to shoot with, but
he could not quite make up his mind to risk a return to the second
floor.

Helen had returned to her room without detection. She switched on the
lights again, but in her agitation forgot to lock the door behind her.
Stunned, nervously exhausted by this new-conspiring circumstance, the
appearance of Don, she sank down into a chair, and, as her arms dropped
listlessly down, the gun which a few brief hours before had been the
property of Detective Sergeant John Henry Tish of the New York police
department slid down to the rug with a faint thud and lay at her feet.
She made no move to pick it up.

She faced the door, her eyes fixed vacantly upon nothing; hopelessness
engulfed her. Don--her legal husband--here. Sarbella here, too. Both of
them here with her under the same roof. No wonder that she was stunned,
dazed; at times she felt that she must be in the midst of a terrible
nightmare, that she would wake up with the grateful realization that it
wasn't true.

For perhaps ten minutes she sat motionless, surrendering any attempt to
think coherently. Suddenly her lax nerves snapped taut, a gasp escaped
her lips, her eyes widened. There had been no sound of a footstep in
the hall, there had been no rap at the door, but the knob was turning
slowly, silently, and the door began to move.

CHAPTER IX

THE OPEN DOOR

The butler at Greenacres occupied a small room on the ground floor near
the kitchen. He had been asleep for some time when the ringing of the
doorbell sounded, a loud jangling in the night's stillness; he stirred,
muttered grumblingly, and was about to tell himself that it must be a
mistake, when the ring was insistently repeated.

"There ought to be a law against it," he declared, as he slid his thin
old legs out from beneath the sheets, and, not more than partly awake,
fumbled groggily for the light. The clock on the bureau told him that
it was half an hour past midnight. "Fine time of night for people to
go around ringing bells at respectable houses!" Again the bell started
its clatter. "Maybe it's an automobile accident out on the road," he
said, but he did not hurry. Bates was not the hurrying kind. He reached
under the pillow for his false teeth, clicked them into his toothless
gums, and then began to pull his trousers on over the old-fashioned
nightshirt that flapped about his skinny legs.

Still grumbling under his breath, he shambled down the hall, switched
on another light, and went to the front door, making sure that the
safety chain was in place before he opened it. Bates did not have good
eyesight even in the daytime, and at night he was little better than
blind; squintingly he stared through the narrow crack at the form of
the man out on the porch.

"What's wanted?" he snapped complainingly.

"It's me, Bates," came the answer.

"Heaven bless us, it's Mr. Kirklan!" gasped the butler, making haste
to unfasten the chain and admit the master of Greenacres. "Was it you,
sir, doing all that ringing?"

Kirklan Gilmore, still wearing his disheveled dinner coat, entered the
house with a slow, dragging step. His face, as it had been all day, was
haggard and drawn.

"Yes, I rang," he answered; "sorry to rout you out of bed, but I must
have forgotten my keys when I dressed for dinner. It was the only way I
could get in, and I didn't want to spend the night in the studio."

"Oh, certainly not, sir," Bates agreed hastily. "You mustn't think I am
objecting to getting up to let you in. It's quite all right, sir--quite
all right. But you gave me a surprise; I thought you were in bed hours
ago. Have you been at your writing so late?" As an author, Kirklan
Gilmore was one of those methodical fellows who worked just so many
hours a day, usually eight, and at the most ten.

He laughed mirthlessly. "Writing? Man, I can't think, much less write."

"You are ill, sir," Bates murmured solicitously. "I noticed at dinner
that you did not look well. I thought----" He broke off abruptly,
realizing that thinking, especially as regards family affairs, was not
one of his offices as butler.

"You thought--what?"

"Er--nothing, sir; I beg your pardon very humbly. Is there anything I
can do for you before you turn in?"

Kirklan Gilmore's lips twitched.

"Thanks for offering, Bates; as a matter of fact, I was thinking of
asking you to make me one of those old-fashioned toddies that you once
were so good at in my father's day. With a dash of stomach bitters in
it, you know. My nerves are all shot to pieces, Bates. You can see
that; probably liquor won't do any good, but perhaps a good, long drink
will help me get to sleep."

Bates' head wagged approvingly on its slender neck.

"Your father, Mr. Kirklan, always found them beneficial after a hard
day at court. I remember one time when----But I mustn't be gabbing,
when your nerves are jumping like that. I'll mix the toddy for you
right off, sir."

"And I'll go with you," said Gilmore. "You know, as many of 'em as I've
had, I don't think I ever saw you make one."

"There's a bit of a trick to it," Bates admitted modestly and shuffled
toward the rear of the house, Gilmore at his slippered heels. A moment
later the butler was performing a service for the author that, in the
old days, he had performed many times for Kirklan's father. Kirklan
wasn't so fond of liquor as his father had been.

"A full measure of orange juice--like this," Bates was saying. "Two
squares of sugar and----" He droned on, illustrating his formula, as
Gilmore watched him dully.

"Take one for yourself, Bates," he invited; but the butler shook his
head.

"They say it's a poor doctor that won't take his own prescription, sir;
but it would upset me at this time of night. Thank you just the same,
sir. Ah, there you are." He handed Gilmore the glass, the square of ice
clinking, and the latter accepted it, sipping slowly. He did not gulp
it down hastily, as Bates had expected.

"Is Sarbella still here?"

The butler looked bewildered.

"Is he still here, sir? Why--why certainly, Mr. Kirklan. I took it for
granted that he was down for a considerable stay. He retired to his
room a little more than an hour after dinner."

Gilmore nodded.

"Oh, yes, of course," he murmured and took another sip of the
toddy. "But I thought he might have gone. A little something
happened--something that----My God, man, what's that?"

His body had tensed, and the glass slipped from his fingers, as a look
of horror spread over his face. Loud, shrill, blood-chilling, there
rang through the house a terrified scream--a woman's scream.

Bang! A sharp, staccato explosion reverberated through the night's
stillness. Bates' thin legs were trembling beneath him, his mouth
sagged open, and his eyes rolled wildly toward the ceiling as,
struggling for utterance, he pointed a shaking hand upward.

"That was upstairs!" he cried hoarsely. "Something--something terrible
has happened upstairs. It was a shot. And that scream--I swear that it
was Miss Joan's."

Kirklan Gilmore stood, his muscles rigid, hands clenched at his sides,
gulping hard.

"Joan's scream?" he muttered. "No, Bates, no! Something tells me, man,
that it was my wife. I tell you it was my wife. Quick, the stairs! I've
got to know what happened; I've got to know. Come!"

And, although it was Gilmore who urged haste, it was the butler who
took the lead, heading for the stairs with a lame lope.

"I--I can't understand it, sir," the servant chattered as he went
along. "There's no weapon in the house except your shotgun; and that
report--it wasn't loud enough for a shotgun. It must have been a
pistol; I am sure that it must have been a pistol."

When they were perhaps halfway up the staircase there came to their
ears, unmistakably clear and permitting no possibility of a mistake,
even in the tenseness of the moment, the sound of a hastily slammed
door. Gilmore stopped dead in his tracks. An opening door, some member
of the household aroused by the scream and the explosion, would have
been perfectly understandable. But a closing door! There was the
suggestion of hasty, headlong flight. Under the circumstances it was a
sinister sound.

Nearing the top of the stairs, the two men, master and servant, saw a
patch of light rays which came from an open doorway down the hall.

"That light!" panted Gilmore. "It comes from my wife's room. The door
of her room is open--her light is burning!"

They had now reached that ominously opened door; it stood ajar for
perhaps ten inches. Gilmore stopped again, the breath wheezing through
his teeth, as if he might have had a presentiment of what he might find
on the other side of that panel. The old butler went on forward, laid
his withered hand upon the knob; but he was unprepared for the sight
which met his eyes. With a gasp of horror he reeled back.

"You--you were right, sir," he whispered hoarsely. "It is your wife,
and she----Be brave, sir--be brave!"

Helen Gilmore lay in a half-reclining posture on a wicker couch.
Looking only at her face, one might have thought her sleeping, such was
the repose of her features. But the bosom of her silk robe was stained
crimson. On the floor, beneath the outflung fingers of one hand, there
was an automatic pistol.

Gilmore took another brief step forward and over the butler's shoulder
saw his wife, the light from one of the wall brackets flooding across
her beautiful face--still beautiful even now. A shudder shook his
shoulders, as if the hand of some invisible giant had seized him in a
vicious grip.

"Your wife has killed herself!" cried Bates. "The poor woman has shot
herself!"

"Is she dead?" Gilmore cried hoarsely. "I can't--I haven't the
strength--the courage to go near her, Bates. Can you tell me if--if my
wife is dead?"

The butler was trembling in his agitation, but he steeled himself to
the ordeal and forced his unwilling feet forward. Even as he neared
the couch, he thought one last, weak breath escaped the lips of his
master's wife. But he might have been mistaken. His fingers reached
out and touched her cheek.

"She is still warm," he gulped; "of course she would be--so soon after.
But I think she must be dead. You see, sir, the bleeding has stopped.
I understand that is a sign of death." He shook his head slowly. "Yes,
Mr. Kirklan, I am sure that she is dead."

Gilmore collapsed into a chair; head lowered, his eyes closed, as if to
blot out the terrible sight in front of him, he began to sob, brokenly,
but without tears. A moment later he checked his grief.

"You'd better call Doctor Bushnell, Bates," he choked. "There--there
might still be a chance of saving her."

The butler shook his head sadly. "I'm afraid not, but there is a way
that I've heard the doctors use----" He shambled to Helen's dressing
table where he picked up a silver-backed hand-mirror; then he returned
to the limp form on the couch and held the glass close to her lips.

"Yes, I know," Gilmore muttered thickly, watching him with a fascinated
stare. "If any breath of life remains, there will be moisture on the
mirror." He leaned forward tensely. "What--what does it show, Bates?"

The butler inspected it briefly.

"There is no breathing," he answered; "I was right, sir; your wife is
quite dead. But I will phone for the doctor; that is, I believe, the
customary thing in cases like this."

As the servant moved toward the door, he paused suddenly, a startled
look coming into his eyes.

"It is very strange," he muttered; "yes, very strange."

Gilmore looked at him dully. "What is strange?" he demanded heavily.

"That--that she should have shot herself with the door standing open,
sir. If you will pardon me, I know that I wouldn't kill myself--with
a door open. I would lock myself in. And"--his voice sank to a tense,
vibrating whisper--"Mr. Kirklan, did you hear a door slamming shut, as
we were coming up the stairs just a moment ago?"

"I heard a noise, Bates, yes. You are sure, Bates, that it was a
closing door?"

"Quite sure of it!" cried Bates. "There is something else, too. If she
shot herself, why did she scream? My word, sir, don't you understand?
Your wife has been murdered!"

CHAPTER X

COMMON SENSE

"Your wife has been murdered sir," repeated the butler, with growing
conviction of his sudden theory. "I am not a detective, but I am sure,
were it suicide, the door here would have been closed--locked. That is
only common sense, Mr. Kirklan."

Kirklan Gilmore forced his eyes to that lifeless, crimson-stained form
which so recently had been alive, that lovely creature whom he had
married only three weeks before. His face was set in a rigid paralysis
of horror, which did not change even when he turned his head away and
closed his eyes.

"No, Bates, no!" he cried thickly. "It--it couldn't be. Look! There
is the gun beside her, where it must have dropped from her fingers
after--after she pressed the trigger. Your first impression was the
right one; Helen has killed herself."

But the butler was not to be shaken.

"You heard the scream, sir," he argued; "the scream that sounded before
we heard the shot--the scream that I thought was Miss Joan's."

"What nonsense!" muttered Gilmore, pressing his hands to his temple. "A
scream is a scream, Bates; they all sound alike."

"Of course I was mistaken," the butler broke in hastily. "I had heard
Miss Joan scream once, the time you were thrown by the horse, and we
all thought you had been killed. It sounded so much like that, sir, I
thought for a moment----But naturally it could not have been Miss Joan."

"Certainly not," said Gilmore. "Why do you stand there arguing about
it? Go call the doctor, can't you? Tell Doctor Bushnell to come
quickly."

Yet Bates delayed another moment to press his theory.

"Do you remember the scream, sir?" he whispered. "There was terror in
it. Not at all the kind of a scream, Mr. Kirklan, that one would give
unless faced with a terrible danger. And people do not scream when they
are about to shoot themselves."

Gilmore groaned and tossed his hands wildly.

"Stop it!" he cried hoarsely. "Get out! Do what I tell you--call the
doctor. You're a butler, not a policeman. In Heaven's name, Bates, get
a move on you."

As the butler shambled into the hall, almost ludicrous in his haste, he
narrowly escaped a collision with Victor Sarbella, who appeared from
out of the darkness, a dressing gown thrown over his pajamas.

"What's happened?" demanded the guest of Greenacres. "I thought
I heard a shot." His voice was strained, excited; there could be
considered nothing strange in that, for there was certainly the
promise of sinister, tragic things when the after-midnight stillness
of a peaceable country house is shattered by the startling voice of
exploding gunpowder.

"The younger Mrs. Gilmore is dead, shot--murdered!" panted Bates, and
dashed on past so headlong that it seemed he would surely tumble down
the steps.

A smothered exclamation broke through Sarbella's lips, and for a brief
moment he did not move, as he stared toward the half-open door in front
of him. His face was set into tense lines. From within he heard the
sound of a groan, and, stepping forward, he saw Kirklan Gilmore, as his
body sagged in a chair, twisting his hands with such intensity that it
seemed he must snap the finger joints. And then the artist saw the dead
woman on the chaise longue.

"Great Lord, Kirklan----"

The novelist turned, flinging out an accusing finger in a wild gesture.
"You did this!" he screamed. "You----"

Sarbella's eyes narrowed, his face hardened. "Be careful what you say,
Gilmore," he broke in. "It is no light thing to accuse a man of murder."

"I say you did it! Helen has killed herself, and you--you drove her to
it--you drove her to her death."

Sarbella was naturally bewildered.

"Your butler says your wife has been murdered; then you accuse me of
it, and now you switch everything around by telling me that she has
killed herself. I don't know what it all means. What _has_ happened?"

"Bates is an old fool," muttered Gilmore. "Of course she has killed
herself. You see--there is the gun on the floor, where it dropped from
her fingers. Any one can see that it was suicide."

One might have thought that a look of relief came into the face of the
artist; he nodded his head slowly in agreement.

"Yes, that's the way it appears; but if that is the case, why is it
that your butler says----"

"Oh, what's the use of discussing my butler's notions. He seems to
think that he ought to be a detective, that's all. She killed herself,
and"--his voice became edged with bitterness--"it was you who drove her
to do it."

The artist tossed out his hands in an imploring gesture. "That is
unfair," he protested. "Perhaps her conscience, but am I responsible
for her conscience? Am I responsible for--for her sins?"

Kirklan Gilmore staggered to his feet. "What do you mean--her sins?" he
cried hoarsely. "Am I never to know the truth about her?"

Sarbella shook his head. "Not from my lips," he answered; "she is dead.
Let what past there be buried with her. It will be better that way,
Kirklan--better for every one."

"Who is dead?" came a tremulous question from the hall. The novelist
recognized the voice of Mrs. Gilmore, his stepmother, and leaped
forward to prevent her entrance. He knew, high-strung, nervous woman
that she was, the gruesome sight would be a tremendous, perhaps even
dangerous, shock to her.

"You--you mustn't come in here, mother. Something--something has
happened to Helen."

"You mean," gasped Mrs. Gilmore, clutching at the casing of the door
for support, "that she is dead?"

"Yes, Helen is dead," finished Kirklan. "Go back to your room, please."

"I was awakened by something. I am not certain just what it was,"
whispered the little, gray-haired woman. "And then there was a shot.
You mean, Kirklan, that your wife----"

The novelist inclined his head. "Helen has--has killed herself. Bates
has gone to telephone Doctor Bushnell; there is nothing you can
do--nothing. Now please return to your room."

Mrs. Gilmore began to sob wildly, perhaps not so much from grief as
from the hysteria of horror.

"She has killed herself--suicide! Oh, the disgrace, the scandal of it;
three weeks married and--a suicide. I--I knew that something awful
would happen. It was in the air. I had a presentiment of it at dinner.
All of you acted so strangely, so tragic. Kirklan, what made her do it?"

"I don't know," he answered thickly. "Perhaps the reason for it died
with her. I--I don't want to talk any more about it, mother; it's all I
can do to hold myself together. Won't you please go back to your room?"

Mrs. Gilmore, making a move to obey him, released her fingers from the
support of the door casing and staggered; thus, unintentionally, she
reeled just within the door. As she saw the crimson-stained form on the
lounge, a scream tore up through her throat. She swayed dizzily, her
knees crumpled beneath her, and she would have fallen to the floor in a
limp heap, had not Kirklan reached out and caught her in his arms.

"Sarbella!" he called. "She--has fainted. I knew that would happen
if--if she saw it. Won't you help me with her? I--I suppose we'd better
take her to Joan's room; she can't be left alone in this condition."

Victor Sarbella rushed forward to lend his assistance, and between
them they supported the limp, gray-haired figure down the hall to the
wing of the house where Joan Sheridan's belongings had been banished by
the coming of Kirklan's bride to Greenacres. This, the room of tragedy,
had been Joan's until the coming of the house's new mistress.

"You'll find a light button there, near the corner of the turn,"
directed Gilmore, and Sarbella fumbled for the switch. "It's the last
door to the right. She--she's heavier than I thought."

As the two men came to the door that Kirklan had indicated, there
reached both of their ears the muffled sound of sobbing--convulsive,
hysterical sobs. A tremor went through Gilmore.

Joan's room being somewhat removed from the other part of the house, it
was reasonable that the sound of the shot might not have awakened her,
but, being awake, how could she have failed to hear it? And she was not
asleep! She was awake--weeping!

Apprehensive terror clutched at Gilmore's heart--the terror of a
sinister something that he could not explain. Was it possible that,
after all, it had been Joan who had screamed? Sarbella, too, looked
startled and darted his host a quick, uneasy, questioning glance. His
arms being occupied, Gilmore kicked his shoe against the foot of the
door, as a substitute for rapping. On the other side of the panel the
choking sobs suddenly ceased.

"Yes?"

"It's Kirklan, Joan. Something has happened, and your mother has
fainted. We thought we ought to bring her here to you."

"Just--just a moment, Kirk," came the tremulous answer, "and I will let
you in."

There was a brief wait and the sound of running water, as the girl
within the room turned on a faucet. Then the door opened, and Joan
stood before them. Although it was now almost one o'clock in the
morning, she had not taken down her hair for the night; she had, late
as it was, not yet retired. Evidently the sound of running water had
marked her effort to undo the evidence of tears, but her eyes were red
and her face was ghastly! After a first furtive glance her gaze avoided
Gilmore's eyes.

"You can put her on my bed," she said in a shaking voice, but she did
not ask why her mother had fainted.

"Something very terrible has happened, Joan," the novelist said
hoarsely. "Didn't you hear it?" He had placed his stepmother on the bed
and mechanically began to rub her wrists.

"Didn't I hear--what?" Joan asked so faintly that her voice was hardly
audible.

"The pistol shot--just--just a few minutes ago," answered Gilmore.

The girl shuddered, her head averted. Her hands were clenched at her
sides, and her lower lip was imprisoned between her teeth, obviously in
an effort to keep it from trembling. She was making a tremendous effort
to keep her self-control.

"I did not hear a pistol shot," she said, her voice still very low. "I
did not hear any shot. Why do you ask?"

"Helen has killed herself, Joan; she shot herself with a pistol."

There was no startled cry of horror from Joan's lips, as she heard what
might have been supposed to be her first news of tragedy. But was it
news to her? There was not so much as an exclamation of surprise, not
so much as a murmured word of sorrow or sympathy.

Standing a little to one side, Victor Sarbella stared at the girl in
narrow-eyed, intent interest, evidently greatly puzzled by her peculiar
attitude. Joan still said nothing; almost absently she began massaging
her mother's ice-cold fingers.

"She faints very easily," she murmured. "It is never serious. She will
be all right presently. Mr. Sarbella, will you please dampen a towel
under the cold-water tap?"

"I had been out at the studio," Gilmore went on, the words tumbling
out jerkily. "I think I must have fallen asleep out there. When I came
to the house I found that I didn't have my keys, and had to ring for
Bates to let me in. My nerves were in a bad way, so I asked Bates to
mix me a toddy, a nightcap. I was drinking it, when both of us--Bates
and I--heard a scream. Right after that there was a shot. Bates and I
rushed upstairs to find Helen dead; that's all I know."

As his voice trailed off to a dull, lifeless stop, Joan gave a start
and looked up to take the damp towel that Sarbella offered her. She
placed it across her mother's forehead; Mrs. Gilmore stirred under this
application and moaned faintly.

"I think mother will be all right now," said Joan. "I don't think it
will be necessary for either of you to stay. If I need you I will
call."

"Bates has telephoned to Doctor Bushnell. I will have him see mother
when he comes, Joan."

Joan nodded.

"Perhaps it would be best," she agreed. "She is very high-strung, and
may need an opiate. It was a tremendous shock to her--of course."

Kirklan began a retreat from the room, and Sarbella, after another
queer glance at Joan, followed. No word was spoken until they had come
to the room of the tragedy.

"I can't stand to go back in there!" Gilmore cried hoarsely. "It--it's
all that I can do to hold myself together as it is. I think I'll go
downstairs and have another drink."

Victor Sarbella, frowning so deeply that his eyes seemed to be closed,
put out his hand impulsively.

"Don't do that, my friend," he murmured; "for your own sake--don't.
Liquor will not help any at a time like this, and it will look bad,
very bad, for you to be under the weather at a time like this."

The butler came hurrying up the stairs.

"I have had Doctor Bushnell on the wire, sir," he reported. "He had
just got home from a call, and he says that he will be here as quickly
as the car can bring him--a matter of minutes. It is only two miles
from the village."

Kirklan Gilmore glanced shudderingly toward the door of his wife's
room. "It doesn't seem right," he muttered, "leaving her in there
alone, but I can't stand to look at her again. I----"

"There no use torturing yourself," advised Sarbella. "It is quite
certain that she is beyond all human help. There is nothing that can
be done until the doctor comes. Here, man, you're wabbly--all in; sit
down here on the top step. Hold yourself together the best you can, my
friend."

Kirklan laughed harshly, mirthlessly. "Stop calling me 'my friend,'
Sarbella," he said unsteadily. "I won't have any more of that from you.
If it hadn't been for your coming down here, Helen would----" He broke
off abruptly, as he realized that Bates was within earshot, and that
very little missed the butler.

Sarbella shrugged his shoulders, but made no verbal response. The house
had become intensely still again. From the foot of the stairs there
was the steady, measured ticking of the tall clock on the first floor,
as the long pendulum moved to and fro. Gilmore sat down on the steps,
shoulders slumping forward, as he laced and unlaced his fingers.

Why had Joan been sobbing in her room? What was the reason for her
strange behavior? Why had her face been so ghastly pale, even before he
had informed her of Helen's death?

He pondered this.

"Listen!" said Bates, breaking the uneasy silence. The other two men
jerked into an attentive attitude. There came to their ears the hum
of a powerful motor. An instant later an automobile horn blasted the
stillness in brief announcement. Doctor Bushnell had arrived.

CHAPTER XI

BUSHNELL CALLS THE POLICE

The butler hurried stumblingly down the steps to admit Doctor Bushnell,
who had been the Gilmore family physician for almost a dozen years;
he swung open the door, as the doctor was stepping briskly across the
porch.

"You got here in a hurry, doctor," said Bates. "It happened upstairs.
Mr. Kirklan is up there now--at the top of the steps. She's dead; I
held a mirror to her face and----"

"Yes, so you told me over the telephone," broke in Doctor Bushnell; he
was a tall, crisp man, with a pair of gray eyes looking out from behind
a pair of rimless spectacles.

"She----" began Bates again.

"This is no time for conversation, my good man," the doctor again
interrupted firmly, but not impatiently. "You can talk later." He
started swiftly for the stairs.

But Bates was not to be shaken off so easily.

"You didn't give me a chance to finish telling you over the phone," he
said, blocking the way. "Mr. Kirklan says she killed herself, but I
know better. She was murdered."

Doctor Bushnell abruptly halted. "Murdered?" he repeated.

"See if you don't bear me out, sir," whispered the butler. "I'm not a
detective, but I've got common sense enough to know----"

The physician shook loose Bates' fingers. "There'll be time enough for
that, Bates. Just now there's a chance--a bare chance--that you are
mistaken, and that she is still alive. If there is any chance of saving
her, there must be no wasted time."

Surgical kit swinging at his side, the doctor bounded up the stairs,
two steps at a time. Kirklan Gilmore was waiting just outside the
door of Helen's room. The doctor offered his hand, and they clasped
silently for a brief moment, the grasp of the physician warm-hearted,
sympathetic.

"Am I too late, Kirklan?"

The novelist bowed his head. "Yes, Doctor Bushnell, you are too late.
She is dead--I am sure she is dead. She shot herself with a pistol.
She is--there." He pointed to the partly open door. "It--it won't be
necessary for me to--to come in there with you?"

The doctor gave a pitying glance at the young husband, whose wife had
been taken from him after three weeks of marriage; he saw the haggard,
drawn face, the horror-filled eyes, the twitching lips.

"It will not be necessary," he answered quietly. "Perhaps you had
better wait downstairs. If I need you I will call."

"Th-thanks," gulped Gilmore.

Doctor Bushnell, after a glance at Victor Sarbella, who, of course, was
a stranger, passed on into the room and closed the door behind him.
Being a doctor, he was steeled to death, but he was hardly prepared for
the sight that shocked his eyes. Despite himself, his nerves reacted
with a tingle of horror, and a gasp slipped through his lips.

Quickly he bent over the still form of the beautiful woman; it was
the first time that he had seen Kirklan's wife, although gossip of
the surprisingly sudden unannounced marriage had reached the near-by
village. Little more than a cursory examination was necessary to
verify the butler's earlier findings. Helen Gilmore was dead; she had
succumbed to that bullet wound which the doctor found in the chest,
just a little below the left armpit.

"She was murdered!" The butler's statement came back to Doctor Bushnell
with a rush of conviction now. It would have been almost impossible
for such a wound to have been self-inflicted. For the woman to have
shot herself would have meant the holding of the weapon at a decidedly
awkward and unnatural angle. Possible, perhaps, but highly improbable
from a medical viewpoint.

Doctor Bushnell's face had become grim. Swiftly he unfastened the
surgical kit and found a long, slender probe, with which he might
approximate the direction that the bullet had taken. Ranging downward!
Still further argument against the wound having been self-inflicted.

"Bates was right!" muttered the physician. "I wonder how he knew." He
stepped back and glanced at the gun on the floor. He had, of course,
noted that the moment he had entered the room, and he took it at the
moment as proof of suicide. The pistol had every appearance of falling
from the hand flung out over the edge of the lounge.

"Who could have killed her--this beautiful bride of three weeks?" he
said under his breath. As a physician, as a surgeon, he knew the right
thing to do at the right time, but now a feeling of helplessness came
over him. Obviously something had to be done. What?

As he stood there in the center of the floor, staring down at the dead
woman, debating, there came to his ears the sound of a muffled cough in
the hall. He took a quick step toward the closed door, more than half
suspecting that some one was eavesdropping.

"Oh, it's you, Bates," he grunted, as he saw the butler. "You might as
well come in; there are some questions I wanted to ask you, anyhow."

"Yes, sir," murmured Bates, entering the tragedy chamber willingly
enough. "Have you discovered anything, doctor?"

"Did you examine the body, Bates?"

The butler shivered.

"Examine it?" he whispered. "Heaven, no! I held a mirror close to her
face; I touched her with my hand; that is all. Why did you ask me that,
sir?"

"I wondered what made you so certain that it was murder, Bates, and
whether you had observed the nature of the wound which caused her
death."

"It wasn't that made me know it was murder; it wasn't anything more
than just common sense. The door into the hall was open when we found
her."

"The door was open? What significance was there in that?"

"Would you shoot yourself, sir, with a door standing half open?"

Doctor Bushnell stared and, after considering this question for a
moment, shook his head. "No," he answered slowly; "since you mention
it, I don't suppose I would."

"And you wouldn't scream, doctor, while you were getting ready to pull
the trigger," added the deductively inclined butler.

"You mean----"

"I mean, sir, that she screamed horribly. Oh, it was a terrible scream,
the kind of a scream that makes a man's blood turn to ice." Bates made
no mention of his first impression that the scream might have been
that of Miss Joan; he had, in his own mind, entirely rejected that
possibility as too absurd for any consideration whatever. "As I take
it, sir, she screamed when she knew that she was about to be murdered."

"Humph!" murmured Doctor Bushnell. "You've got quicker wits than I'd
given you credit for. You figured that out like--well, like, I imagine,
a trained detective might do it."

Despite the situation, Bates gave a faint smile of pleasure at this
compliment.

"I have always read a great many detective stories, sir," he said.
"I've not only read them, I've studied them. I might say that I am
quite a student in a way. Had I not waited so late in life to develop
my mental faculties, I hardly think that I should have remained a
butler. In fact, I am quite sure that I would not."

"You're a queer fellow," mused the doctor. "What else have you
deducted, Bates? Can you manage your tongue?"

"Why do you ask that, doctor? If you mean, can I keep from talking too
much, I can be very discreet."

"All right, Bates; then I'll tell you that you were right. This woman
has been murdered. The nature of the wound verifies your guess."

Bates looked grieved. "You don't call it guessing?" His tone was
protesting.

"Well, no, not guessing," Doctor Bushnell answered slowly. "It had
more foundation than a guess. Very logical, Bates, reasoning out that
business about the door. What else can you tell about this business?"

"Very little, sir, very little, indeed. Mr. Kirklan and I rushed
directly upstairs when the shot was fired and then----"

"Wait a minute. You rushed upstairs? What time was this?"

"A few minutes after half past twelve, very shortly before I had you on
the telephone."

Doctor Bushnell gave the man a quick glance. "You had been in bed,
hadn't you? I judge from your state of dress----"

"Quite so, doctor; I had retired early. I was sound asleep when I was
awakened by the ringing of the doorbell. It was Mr. Gilmore; he had
locked himself out and was trying to get in. He had been out at the
studio--the old stable, you know, where he does his writing. The poor
man was quite badly upset; he was in a terrible way, and asked me to
make him a toddy."

The physician looked uneasy. "Good Lord, Bates," he muttered, "you
don't think it possible that Kirklan----"

"Oh, certainly not, sir," the butler broke in quickly. "It was quite
impossible. I was standing within four feet of him when we both heard
the scream and the shot. The glass dropped out of his hand, and he
stood there like a man of stone, his hands shaking, his face white as
a sheet of paper. He said: 'My God, Bates, what's that?' And while we
were both still listening, there came the shot; it must have followed
the scream by half a minute, perhaps not so long as that. We both
dashed up the stairs, I in front. While we were mounting the steps,
sir, we both heard a sound that seemed to be the slamming of a door."

"Ah!" exclaimed the doctor. "The slamming of a door? Then you think
that some one in the house----"

"That would be but guessing, doctor. The door of this room was open,
the light was burning, and I was the first to see her. It seemed
to me--I cannot be sure--that she took her last breath while I was
watching her. The bleeding had stopped. Am I right, doctor, in
supposing that the flow of blood stops when death takes place?"

Doctor Bushnell nodded. "Yes, when the heart action ceases," he
answered. "What else, Bates?"

"The gun was just as you see it now, sir. It was only natural that Mr.
Gilmore should be so firm in his belief that she had taken her own
life. He was not even convinced when I mentioned the matter of the door
and the scream. Poor man, he couldn't be expected to do any thinking at
a time like that. He was very much in love with her; he seemed fairly
to worship her. It was too bad that she wasn't the right wife for him.
Miss Joan is the one he should have married; she's only his stepsister,
you know, no blood kin. I guess it nearly broke her heart, poor girl,
when----"

"What do you mean by saying she wasn't the right wife for him, Bates?"
broke in the doctor, moving toward the bed, where he began removing
a sheet with which to cover the body until an undertaker could be
summoned.

"She had good looks, but she wasn't his kind," Bates replied. "She'd
managed to climb up in the world--most likely from pretty near the
bottom. A servant can usually tell, sir, from watching them at table,
and a letter came--day before yesterday, I believe it was--a most
disreputable-looking letter it was, sir, to be received at Greenacres,
all smudgy and dirty. It gave her a shock, too, although she tried to
pass it off casual."

"What the servants don't know!" murmured the doctor under his breath,
and then added, aloud: "You think there may have been some connection
between the letter and the murder?"

"As to that, I couldn't say, Doctor Bushnell, but she was much
agitated, it seemed to me. I would say that it must have been written
by some very low person, a most peculiar sort of a missive for Mr.
Kirklan's wife to be getting."

"All these little scraps of information may prove valuable, Bates," the
doctor said meditatively. "You were pretty sharp on naming it murder.
Perhaps you have some theory as to who killed her."

Bates looked crestfallen; his slender stock of theory was completely
exhausted, and then he brightened.

"Finger prints!" he exclaimed. "Perhaps the murderer's finger prints
are on the gun." He made a move to pick up the weapon, but the doctor
stopped him with a gesture.

"Better not," he warned. "I understand it's such a simple matter to
destroy a delicate thing like a finger print. We'd better leave that
for more practiced talents than ours; I'm afraid that all finger prints
look alike to both of us."

"It wasn't robbery, sir," offered the butler. "She is still wearing
some jewelry."

"Yes, I'd noticed that. There are no back stairs, Bates?"

"There are none."

"In that case, Bates, it hardly seems likely that the slayer could have
fled from the second floor without you or Kirklan seeing him. That
probably means that the murderer is still in the house. That would not
give us a very large list, eh?"

The butler's eyes widened.

"You mean, sir," he whispered tensely, "that you think Mr. Sarbella
could----"

"I mentioned no names, Bates. Sarbella--is that the man I saw in the
hall when I arrived?"

"Yes, sir, that's him; he's a friend of Mr. Kirklan's, a guest who
came out only this afternoon--yesterday afternoon it is now, speaking
precise. He's some kind of an artist, I believe. I guess he's an
Italian, sir. I don't want to go around accusing any one, Doctor
Bushnell, but----"

"But what, Bates? This talk is strictly between ourselves."

"There was a most peculiar attitude at dinner, sir; Mr. Sarbella and
her"--pointing toward the sheet-covered lounge--"did not so much as
speak once, while I was serving. They were all on edge--even Mr.
Kirklan. I didn't understand it; I don't understand it now. After
dinner the younger Mrs. Gilmore went very quickly to her room; she was
pale and nervous. I don't think I know anything more, doctor."

"Just one more question, Bates. You and Mr. Kirklan were downstairs.
Sarbella was upstairs. Who else?"

"The elder Mrs. Gilmore, Miss Joan, and her." Again he pointed to the
dead woman.

"What about the other servants?"

"Elizabeth, the maid, went to Yonkers yesterday, sir. She pleaded that
her mother was ill, but I doubt it. She don't know what the truth
is, that girl; she's always making excuses, and Mrs. Gilmore is that
soft-hearted she never refuses her."

"Or doubts her stories," added Doctor Bushnell with a faint smile. "A
most credulous woman, Mrs. Gilmore."

"Exactly, sir," agreed the butler. "Mrs. Bogart, the cook, does not
sleep at Greenacres; she comes every morning from the village and goes
home again at night. And the gardener isn't employed full time--only
three days a week."

"To me it looks very much like Mr. Sarbella," murmured the doctor and
glanced around the room. For all that the physician knew there might be
clews within touching distance, but which he, untrained as he was in
such business, would never be able to recognize as clews.

"I am going to lock this door, Bates," he said. "No one must enter it
without my express permission. I am going downstairs now. I suppose you
might as well go to bed."

"What's the use?" muttered Bates. "Not a wink of sleep would I get
after this."

The key was in the lock; Doctor Bushnell removed it and put it in the
outside of the door. Then he turned off the lights, stepped into the
hall, shot the bolt, put the key in his pocket, and went down the
stairs. He found Kirklan Gilmore and Victor Sarbella in the library,
the latter sitting in a chair, puffing nervously at a cigarette, while
the novelist paced back and forth like a caged beast. At the doctor's
step, Gilmore swung around.

"You found her dead, of course?" he muttered thickly.

"Yes, Kirklan, I found her beyond all help." Doctor Bushnell gave a
quick glance at Sarbella, who returned it steadily for a moment with
his intense black eyes. "I would like to talk with you, Kirklan,
privately if I may. Suppose we go across the hall into the den."

Sarbella inhaled deeply at his cigarette and got to his feet.

"I am going to my room," he announced; "if you need me for anything,
I shall be at your service." He moved perhaps three paces toward the
stairs and then turned; his face was in the shadows, so that it was
impossible to see any expression that may have been on his features, as
he asked: "You discovered that it was self-destruction?"

"So it would appear," answered the doctor, deliberately indulging in
a deceiving play on words. With suspicion pointing toward Sarbella,
it was perhaps best that the man not know too much--just yet. If the
artist were guilty, there might be something gained by keeping him in
ignorance that the suicide sham had fooled no one. Sarbella moved on up
the stairs; Doctor Bushnell would have given a pretty penny to have
had a good look at his face, wondering if he might not see there a look
of relieved suspense.

Kirklan Gilmore's hands fidgeted restlessly in his pockets. "You say
that you want to talk with me privately?"

"Yes, suppose we go into the den."

"That isn't necessary now, is it? Sarbella has accommodatingly gone
upstairs to his room."

"The den, if you don't mind," insisted Doctor Bushnell. "I'd prefer
taking no chances of being overheard."

Gilmore's head jerked up. "I can't understand the reason for all this
secrecy," he muttered; nevertheless he led the way across the hall to
the room known as the den. It had in former days been his father's
favorite room. The physician followed and gently closed the door.

"Sit down, Kirklan," he murmured. "I dislike to add to your strain,
but there is something that I must tell you. Your wife did not kill
herself."

The novelist winced.

"You mean----"

"Kirklan, it's murder."

Gilmore staggered and dropped limply into one of the big leather
chairs, face buried in his hands. "But, Doctor Bushnell, it--it can't
be that. There--there was the gun beside her. That is proof----"

"Only proof of an effort to make murder appear suicide," broke in
the physician. "The nature of the wound is such as to preclude any
reasonable thought of self-infliction."

"Murder?" Gilmore whispered dully. "Bates was right, after all, then?
I can't understand it. Who would have killed her?"

"Ah, that is what remains in front of us. I am in a very peculiar
position, Kirklan. I am your family physician, but at the same time I
am a deputy coroner; I accepted the appointment only last month. It is
my official duty to do everything in my power that the law may take its
proper course. I don't suppose you know whom the gun belongs to?"

"I do not know."

"It is a heavy gun, Kirklan; not at all the sort of weapon that would
belong to a woman, or that a woman would use if it were left to her own
choice. I have not examined it; I have not so much as touched it. I was
afraid that I might destroy possible finger prints; I thought it best
to wait."

"Wound or no wound," muttered Gilmore, "I can't believe that it was
murder. Why would any one have killed her?"

"Kirklan, I am going to put a frank question. How well do you know this
guest of yours, the man Sarbella?"

"Great Lord, doctor, you don't think that he----"

"I'm afraid I don't think anything yet. I'm just stabbing around in the
dark. Was Sarbella previously acquainted with your wife?"

"See here, I don't want any insinuations of that sort."

"I am not insinuating, only asking a question. Bates thought he noticed
a peculiar, strained situation at the dinner table. Since you and Bates
rushed directly upstairs, and since that is the only means of reaching
the second floor, it seems quite certain that she was killed by some
one who is still in the house. There is no evidence of robbery. There
were but five persons in the house--Sarbella, your stepmother, Joan
Sheridan, Bates, and yourself. Unless we want to suspect Mrs. Gilmore
or Joan----"

"Oh, that's too absurd for words," broke in Gilmore, making no mention
of having heard Joan's sobbing.

"And that leaves Sarbella."

The novelist beat his clenched hands against his knees. "Doctor, I tell
you that you're wrong--wrong!" he cried. "Helen killed herself; there
is no other explanation--none! I must tell you something; my wife asked
me for a thousand dollars. She must have needed it desperately. Because
I did not give it to her----What are you doing with that telephone?"

Doctor Bushnell had picked up the instrument from the desk and lifted
the receiver from the hook.

"I am doing what I must do, Kirklan," he answered with quiet firmness.
"I am calling the village police."

CHAPTER XII

"WIGGLY" PRICE

The local police authority in the village of Ardmore was vested in the
person of Mr. Hamilton Griggs, who held the office of constable, and
whose most important duty was the enforcement of the municipality's
automobile laws. Since the roads were exceptionally good, and since
Constable Griggs received a fee of two dollars and fifty cents for
each arrest resulting in a collected fine, he found the office fairly
lucrative during the touring months.

Constable Griggs--generally called "Ham" by way of brevity--was a
widower and occupied with his daughter a neat, green-shuttered cottage
on Hudson Street. His police equipment was a high-powered motor cycle,
and his most profitable hours of patrol duty were between nightfall
and a little past twelve, when automobilists were hurrying over the
highways, probably feeling more secure in their breach of law under
cover of darkness.

It had been a good night for speeders, and "Ham" Griggs was mightily
pleased with himself; an even ten arrests he had made, the fines had
all been paid, and the neat sum of twenty-five dollars in fees reposed
in a trousers pocket of his khaki uniform. At a quarter of one his
motor cycle putt-putted stormily into the yard beside the cottage. He
shut off the engine, locked the ignition, and, going to the rear of the
house, let himself in through the unlocked kitchen door.

Etta, his daughter, had set out a cold lunch for him, as was her
custom, and the constable lost no time in "falling to." With a chuckle
of satisfaction he took the little wad of crumpled bills from his
pocket and tossed them to the top of the kitchen table, where he might
enjoy the sight of them.

"Pretty good," he told himself with a grin. "Let 'em speed!"

There was even further reason for jubilation. During his patrol of the
roads within the village's corporate limits, he had found the deserted
blue taxi, where Don Haskins, fleeing the New York police, had left it
to continue his journey to Greenacres on foot.

Taking the number, he had reported his find to the New York company
which controlled an entire fleet of like cabs. There ought to be a
ten-spot from the taxi company, the constable told himself. All in all,
it had been a most satisfactory night.

Ham Griggs was a heavy-set, dull-faced man of forty-odd; he had,
prior to his elevation into public office, been a caretaker for one
of the summer homes which border the Hudson River. Having an appetite
in proportion to his stalwart build, he ate with a gusty heartiness.
When the last chicken bone had been picked clean, he leaned back in
the chair, which creaked protestingly on its two rear, straining legs,
loosened his belt, and took from inside his uniform cap, always the
policeman's cigar cache, a rich-looking Havana which had been the
ineffectual peace offering of a gentleman who had been doing forty
miles per, when Mr. Griggs halted him.

"Ah!" murmured the constable, puffing deeply. "Betcha this is a
twenty-center--mebbe twenty-five." He removed it from his mouth and
examined the embossed band with utmost respect. "A smoke like this sure
tops off a good feed."

His coat unbuttoned, his thumbs hooked beneath the straps of his
wide-webbed suspenders, he continued smoking until the electric light
seemed to be swimming in a sea of smoke. And then the telephone rang,
a loud, insistent jangling from the front of the cottage. Ham Griggs'
chair thudded down on all fours with such force that there was the
sound of cracking wood.

"Now I wonder what that is?" he grunted. Ardmore being a quiet,
law-abiding community, a night call for the constable was highly
unusual. He lumbered hastily to his feet and plunged toward the sitting
room, where the telephone was located. The bell was still ringing when
he took down the receiver.

"Hello!" he shouted into the transmitter. "Hello there! Dang it,
central, quit ringin' in my ear; you'll bust an eardrum!" Possibly in
retaliation of this impolite tone, the switchboard operator buzzed
again.

"Constable?"

"Yeah, this is Ham Griggs."

"Doctor Bushnell speaking, constable. There's been a tragedy at
Greenacres--the Gilmore place, you know. Can you come at once?"

"Whatcha mean--tragedy, doc?"

"There'll be time enough for that when you get here," came the voice of
the village physician.

"I gotta right to know," grunted Ham Griggs. "Let's have it." His
voice was officially important now. "Y'mean robbery?"

"Worse than that, constable. Oh, I might as well tell you--Kirklan
Gilmore's wife has been killed. It is--murder."

"Good Lord, murder!" cried Griggs, his voice rising thunderously loud.
"Who killed her, doc? Who done it?"

"That's our job, constable, to find out. You'll come right away?"

"Sure I will. Whatcha think I'm constable for? How--how was she killed?"

"Shot, Griggs; let's not waste any more time talking now." And at the
other end of the line the receiver clicked, breaking the connection.

It was not surprising that the persistent ringing of the phone and
Ham Griggs' loud-pitched voice should have aroused the constable's
daughter, Etta. She appeared in the sitting-room doorway, her hair done
up in curlers, her rather plain face a glistening smudge of cold cream.

"What's happened, fawther?" she demanded, her none-too-plump arms
hugged tight across her flat chest.

"Ain't I told you to cut out that 'fawther' stuff?" growled Ham Griggs.

"Yes, fawther, but did you say somebody had been murdered?"

"That's the size of it," nodded the constable, beginning to button his
coat. "Out to Greenacres--Gilmore's new wife, so Doc Bushnell says."

"My Gawd!" gasped Etta Griggs, momentarily forgetting her little book,
"Social English." Etta was ambitious for herself; she was engaged in
writing a play, and wished to equip herself to move as one of the
elect in literary circles, when the moment of her great success should
arrive. "The--the author's wife? Why, they ain't--they haven't been
married a month yet! Did he kill her, fawther?"

Ham Griggs was impatient of questions, eager to be off, but his
daughter barred the sitting room's one door, and he knew that the only
way to pass without absolute violence was to answer her.

"I don't know nothin' 'bout it," he grunted, "except what the doc told
me, which was precious little. Seems like she's been shot. I dunno who
done it. Now get outta the way, Etta, an' let me get goin'."

"Chances are he did," mused Etta; "we literati are so temperamental, so
given to quick, strong passions."

"You just natcherally make me sick!" snorted her father, as he plunged
past her. A moment later she heard his motor cycle bark into life and,
with staccato explosions from the exhaust, race out of the yard and
down the quiet village street.

Etta's rôle in the Greenacres tragedy was more important than one might
imagine it could be, and for no greater reason than that she aspired to
be a playwright. Her play had reached its fourth and final act; with a
few minor corrections here and there, it was ready for its journey to
New York. She had not the slightest doubt of its immediate acceptance
and production.

She realized in a vague sort of way the power of the newspapers;
and, little knowing into how many independent departments a great
daily is divided, she was suddenly seized with an idea--a great idea.
The murder of Mrs. Gilmore, she reasoned, was news, stupendous news;
Kirklan Gilmore was a famous novelist. The newspaper which she read
regularly would, as she saw it, naturally feel grateful to her for
giving them firsthand information regarding the tragedy. It would serve
as a pleasant introduction to the editor of that great metropolitan
publication, would tincture the review of her "play" with a personal
kindliness.

What queer notions people do get into their heads! But the merit of her
idea is neither here nor there; the important thing is that Etta Griggs
did call the office of _The Morning Star_, and she was thus responsible
for the appearance on the scene of a certain news hound named Jimmy
Price, sometimes more intimately known as "Wiggly."

The news-gathering staff of _The Star_ is a high-pressure, hectic
organization; one would wonder how they could get out an intelligent
paper in the midst of such a mad scramble. It was nearing press time
for the final edition; Scoggins, the city editor, was bellowing at
the top of his nasal voice; the copy desk was railroading a last
batch of late news matter; the assistant make-up man, who is one of
the important gentlemen who keep the type in the right columns, was
screaming frantically about something of which no one except himself
seemed to know anything, and, from the way the office boys were
sliding back and forth across the floor, one might have thought the
city room was the skating rink of an insane asylum.

And then, with a breathless suddenness--silence! In newspaper parlance,
"the paper had been put to bed." From the street below there sounded
the blump-blump of a flat-wheeled surface car journeying along Park
Row. Scoggins, the city editor, gave a look at his news schedule,
sighed, and jerked off the shade which protected his eyes.

"There's not a live piece of local news in the whole darn paper!" he
muttered. "Here, Milne, take the desk; I'm going home, and----" He took
a last survey around the long, paper-cluttered city room, and saw Jimmy
Price, who was cognizant that he had incurred the displeasure of the
gods, trying to do a quick sneak out.

"Hey, you, Price!" he bawled.

Jimmy Price turned, and it became apparent why he had been saddled with
the nickname of Wiggly. In moments of inner excitement or of strong
emotion, Jimmy's protuberant ears became animate objects. They were
unruly ears, always wiggling when he least wanted them to; it seemed
that Jimmy had absolutely no control over his ears. They were wiggling
now, for their owner sensed what was coming. He turned slowly and
retraced his steps toward the city editor's desk, which was set up on
a platform. The boys called it "the throne," and certainly no monarch
ever held more despotic sway than Caleb Scoggins, the city editor of
_The Star_.

Scoggins was a good city editor, but he was a man of strong
prejudices, and he was prejudiced against Wiggly's animated ears.
It annoyed him to look down the room and have a perfectly good idea
take sudden flight, as he was forced to stare in fascinated, almost
hypnotized, interest at a pair of ears doing a sort of uncanny dance
on the side of a man's head, while the owner of those remarkable
appendages bent industriously over his typewriter entirely unaware of
his innocent havoc. Bob Roddy, the star rewrite man, that high-salaried
word slinger, whose supple brain and nimble fingers could paint a
column word picture with no more material than a five-line news
bulletin, was, likely as not, to be discovered staring, vacant-eyed, at
"Wiggly" Price, while the desk was waiting for the rest of his story.

And Jimmy Price was a good reporter, a rattling good one, so good, in
fact, that Scoggins had been at a loss for an excuse to fire him. But
now he had the excuse.

"Price," he rasped, "you fell down on the Hammerslaw kidnaping case."
His voice had the tone of doom, but Wiggly, except for the renewed
twitching of his ears, moved neither of body nor tongue. He was too
wise to point out that he had registered this one failure to fifty
successes, or to remind Scoggins that no reporter can bat a thousand in
the news-gathering league.

"Where you belong," went on the city editor with withering sarcasm,
"is in a side-show tent, along with the rest of the freaks, not in a
newspaper office. As a reporter----" He broke off, as the telephone
rang; mechanically he spun half around in his chair and pulled the
instrument toward him.

"Yeah?" he grunted.

Etta Griggs had chosen this opportune moment to call.

"Is this the editor of _The Star_?" came her sweetest, most cultured
tones over the wire. Scoggins admitted it with a grunt.

"This is Miss Griggs, the playwright, and I am calling to give you a--a
scoop, I believe you call it."

Had it been a busy hour, Scoggins would have switched the call over to
his assistant; experience had hardened him to persons calling him up to
give him a scoop. Usually they didn't pan out, these scoops.

"What is it, Miss Griggs?" he inquired with a deference that he never
used toward his staff.

"It--it's very important news," went on Etta Griggs tremulously, almost
overwhelmed by the realization that she was in conversation with the
great editor of her morning paper. "There has been a murder--a very
prominent family, and I thought you might be interested----"

"I should say I am!" exclaimed Scoggins, picking up a pencil and
poising it over a sheet of paper. "What did you say the name was?"

"Miss Griggs. I am----"

"Not your name--the murdered person's name."

"Oh, of course! Why, Mrs. Gilmore--the wife of Kirklan Gilmore, the
famous novelist, you know."

Now, as a matter of fact, Scoggins didn't know; he didn't read the book
reviews, and Gilmore, while he had written a selling book, wasn't
quite so famous as Etta imagined.

"You say she has been murdered, Miss Griggs?" he purred. "Where did
this happen?" And, waiting for the reply, he put his hand over the
transmitter as he said out of the corner of his mouth to Milne, his
assistant: "Who the devil is Kirklan Gilmore, the novelist? Get the
clippings on him outta the reference room. Picture of his wife, if
there are any. Hurry! We gotta stop the presses and make a lift, if
this pans out."

"Ardmore--Ardmore-on-the-Hudson," went on Etta. "The Gilmore estate is
Greenacres. She was shot--killed. Poor thing, they'd only been married
three weeks, too." Scoggins' eyebrows went up. In a flash he visualized
the headline, "Bride of Three Weeks Slain."

There followed a few rapid-fire questions in which the city editor
had all available information. The constable had been summoned--Etta
neglected to state that this constable person was her father--and the
village physician, a Doctor Bushnell, was at the house.

"Fine!" exclaimed Scoggins with that inhuman delight with which some
city editors receive the news of a crime. "If you will give your name,
I will have the business office send you a check, and then----"

"Oh, no!" cried Etta. "But I expect that my play will be coming out
soon, and----"

"Certainly--certainly," Scoggins murmured mechanically and snapped the
receiver to its hook. "She's a nut," he grunted. "Gotta verify this
story before we can use it, but I guess it's safe enough at that.
You, Kinsella, call up the Gilmore place, Ardmore, and ask for Doctor
Bushnell. You, Roddy, bat out a coupla sticks for a lift on page one,
and----" His eyes roved over the now empty city and then back to Wiggly
Price, who had withdrawn a few feet from the desk. In the pressure of
the moment he forgot that he had been about to fire the reporter with
the animated ears; he only remembered that he needed a good reporter
for a good story, and that Jimmy Price was a good reporter. He slid
open a drawer of the desk and tossed over a roll of bills.

"Here's a hundred dollars for expense money, Price," he snapped
crisply. "Gilmore place, Ardmore. Author's wife--bride three
weeks--murdered. May have to take taxi. Get pictures--lots of pictures.
Gotta hunch this is a good yarn." Wiggly's ears wiggled violently,
probably registering his delight that the catastrophe of being fired
had been so narrowly and unexpectedly averted, but Caleb Scoggins had
turned his vigorous attention to other details of the new story--the
only real piece of local news during the night--and he did not notice.

Price grabbed up the expense money and left the city room with discreet
swiftness. Less than five minutes later he was in a taxicab, speeding
out Broadway toward Greenacres.

CHAPTER XIII

WHAT DID JOAN KNOW?

Awaiting the arrival of the constable, Doctor Bushnell was still in the
den of the Greenacres house, while across from him Kirklan Gilmore sat,
like a man dazed, in one of the great leather chairs, staring vacantly
into space. He had not spoken for almost five minutes.

"So you had to call in the police," he muttered bitterly, breaking the
silence. "They've got to come, snooping through the house, prying into
things, asking questions, badgering, bullying----"

"You're taking the wrong attitude, Kirklan," the doctor broke in
gently. "I know how you feel, of course; you abhor the legal procedure,
but a crime has been committed, and the law must function. You would
not want your wife's murderer to escape, would you, no matter what the
price?"

"I can't believe yet, doctor, that it was what you claim--murder,"
protested the novelist with a shudder. "Your opinion is based on--just
exactly what?"

"The nature of the wound, Kirklan. Look, here is my pipe." He produced
from his pocket a straight-stemmed brier, holding it by the bowl. "Let
us suppose that this is the pistol. Your wife is right-handed? Yes, I
supposed as much; imagine any person holding a gun in the right hand
and reaching halfway around their body and shooting themselves under
the left armpit. You can see how absurd that is; even supposing she
might have been left-handed, it is almost as ridiculous."

Gilmore debated this a moment.

"I suppose you consider that incontrovertible--medically," he argued,
"but I've got a theory to suggest. I've had to study things a bit along
such lines--the material for my books, you know. My last was a mystery
story."

"Helen was lying on the lounge. The gun was heavy, hard for a woman to
handle, as you have said. Suppose she used _both_ hands in firing the
pistol; one to support it in range, and the other to press the trigger?"

Doctor Bushnell toyed with his pipe for a moment; absently he filled it
from a chamois pouch and struck a match.

"It's possible," he admitted, and then he shook his head, adding, "but
improbable. I did work at Bellevue in New York, while I was at medical
school. Naturally we had some suicide cases. It's a queer thing, but
most of the men shot themselves through the head, while the women aimed
for their heart--perhaps a natural horror of disfiguring their faces.
But, looking back, none of them tried to reach the heart from so far
around at the side. Always in front. Adding weight to the medical
aspect of it, there are those very significant points that Bates
raised. Quite an intelligent fellow, that butler of yours. He's been in
the family a long time, hasn't he?"

"More than twenty years, I think; he was much attached to my father."

"It is significant, Kirklan, that you and Bates found the door standing
open. And the scream--ah, there's the big point! Why did she scream?
Not because she had reached a decision to end her life. As I consider
the matter, this man Sarbella----"

"No!"

"Is your friendship for him so blind as that, Kirklan? Stop and think
things over, man; on the second floor, when the shot was fired, were
only your stepmother, your stepsister, and Sarbella. It must have been
one of the three; there is no other explanation!"

As his voice came to a dramatic pause, there was a rap at the door.

"Doctor Bushnell," came the voice of the butler from the other side of
the panel, "will you answer the telephone? There is a call for you."

The doctor looked puzzled. "There was no ring," he said.

"That is an extension," explained Gilmore. "There is no bell in this
room."

"Oh, I see," murmured the physician, and, leaning across the table, he
pulled the telephone toward him.

"Yes, Doctor Bushnell speaking," he said. "Who--what? Where did you get
that information?" A pause. "Yes, that is true, but there will be no
further information--positively none. You are quite wasting your time
in pressing these questions." He cut the conversation short by clicking
down the receiver.

Gilmore lifted his haggard face in a glance of curiosity. "Who was it?"
he wanted to know.

"_The Star._ It is really quite amazing how quickly the newspapers get
hold of a thing like this. Probably the telephone girl at the village
gave them the tip."

"The newspapers!" groaned Gilmore. "The scandal they will make of it.
Did--did you tell them that it was murder?"

The doctor nodded.

"They were already in possession of that report, and I verified it.
There's no use kicking against the pricks, Kirklan; the best that could
have been done was to keep it out of the papers for a few brief hours.
There will have to be an inquest, you know; that is a public hearing.
It's an ugly situation, but there's no escaping it."

"Yes, I suppose you're right," muttered the novelist, "but I want it
expressly understood that no reporters are to be admitted to my house."

"They won't bother you until daylight, I suppose," said Doctor
Bushnell, little thinking that already a madly speeding taxi was
bearing Wiggly Price toward Greenacres. "They'll descend upon you in
droves with morning, and they're a persistent lot, those chaps."

The two men in the den again lapsed into silence; Gilmore's muscles
twitched spasmodically. It looked as if he were about to crack under
the strain.

"I think I will give you an opiate of some sort and then get you in
bed," the physician said gently. "You've about gone your limit, I'm
afraid."

"That reminds me of something," Gilmore told him. "My stepmother
fainted; I promised to send you to her when you came. And as for
my going to bed--my room is next to Helen's. You couldn't expect
me to spend the rest of the night there. But I will let you give me
something, doctor; I feel as if my body were about to separate into
atoms. Yes, give me something that will let me forget--for just a few
hours."

Doctor Bushnell reached for a compact pocket medicine case and selected
a vial containing some small white pellets.

"The constable ought to be here any moment now," he said. "Not that
I expect Ham Griggs is going to be of very much help to us; catching
speeders is about the limit of his abilities. But he had to be
notified, and in the morning we'll notify the district attorney's
office. We may get an intelligent investigation from that source. Ah,
that must be Griggs now."

There had reached his ears the sound of the constable's approaching
motor cycle.

"I'll have Bates let him in and keep him waiting downstairs until I
have a look at Mrs. Gilmore. One of these pellets, Kirklan, and you'll
be falling asleep in no time."

The doctor left the den and went upstairs, after pausing in the hall
to instruct Bates that Ham Griggs should wait; passing the tragedy
chamber, he tested the door and found it, as he had left it, locked.
Then he made his way around the hall toward the room which, from
previous professional calls, he knew to be the elder Mrs. Gilmore's.
Kirklan had neglected to tell him that she had been taken to Joan's
part of the house.

Ahead a gleam of light sliced out into the hall from a half-open door,
the room occupied by Sarbella. The doctor's footsteps were audible,
and the guest of Greenacres appeared at the opening.

"You were looking for me?" he inquired.

Doctor Bushnell paused, wondering if Sarbella had left the door open in
an effort to keep in touch with what was going on; a guilty man, it was
reasonable to presume, would be nervously anxious to know the progress
of the investigation, to be forewarned of any suspicion turning in his
direction.

"No, Mr. Sarbella, I am on my way to Mrs. Gilmore's room. Kirklan has
just told me that she fainted some time since."

"Oh, but you're in the wrong part of the house, doctor; Gilmore and I
took his stepmother to Miss Sheridan's room." He paused for a moment,
and then added: "It has been a terrible night for all of us."

"It is a very puzzling business," murmured Doctor Bushnell.

"Very," nodded Sarbella.

"How long have you known the--ah--the dead woman?"

The artist hesitated briefly, and when he did reply gave the shrewd
doctor the impression of carefully chosen words.

"I met her last evening for the first time," he said. "I had never met
her before."

"During the dinner," pursued the physician, watching the man's face
closely, "did you notice anything strange?"

Sarbella shot him a quick glance. "She may have been depressed,"
he answered evasively. "Other than that I can tell you
nothing--absolutely nothing. Please do not let me keep you from
attending Mrs. Gilmore."

The doctor had the baffled feeling that something was being hidden,
that Sarbella knew a great deal more than he was willing to tell.
Yet he felt that this was the wrong time to ply questions, that
he would only muddle things until he was better fortified for a
cross-examination. So he turned and retraced his steps around the hall
to Joan's room.

Even before he rapped, he heard the sound of moans, punctuated by a
hysterical rambling of speech. His knuckles descended upon the panel,
and Joan promptly admitted him. Mrs. Gilmore tossed upon the bed like a
woman in physical pain.

"I am glad you have come, Doctor Bushnell," murmured Joan. "Mother is
almost beside herself with the horror of it."

"Kirklan was so upset that he didn't tell me until just a moment ago.
Your mother fainted, I believe."

"Yes, she was awakened by the shot and went to investigate. She
saw--her."

"I knew something was going to happen!" moaned Mrs. Gilmore. "It was in
the air. I felt it--impending disaster. Every one acted so strange."
There she broke off into wild weeping. The doctor reached for Mrs.
Gilmore's wrist and took her pulse. He decided that it was safe enough
to administer a soothing hypodermic. When this had been done, and the
morphia had taken effect, Bushnell turned to Joan.

"What does she mean by saying that she felt something was going to
happen?" he asked. "Did you notice anything peculiar in the behavior of
Kirklan's wife last night?"

Joan hesitated, twisting her fingers and biting her lip. "I--I don't
think she was quite herself," she answered, her voice very low. "She
seemed greatly worried."

"And the guest, Mr. Sarbella?"

A gasp escaped the girl's lips, as she gave the physician a startled,
wide-eyed stare. "Why--why do you ask about him?" she whispered.

"Joan, you are holding back something, and you have no right to do
that. This atmosphere of secrecy, concealment--what does it mean?
You are a sensible girl, and I feel that I can tell you something
confidentially. Kirklan's wife did not end her own life."

Standing near the foot of the bed, one of the girl's hands clutched at
the rail.

"Kirklan said that--that she had--killed herself. So you think that she
was shot by some one else? What makes you think that?"

"Without going into the unpleasant details, it would have been
practically impossible for her to have shot herself in such a manner.
And there was her scream. You didn't hear it?"

Joan's face was white.

"N-no," she stammered. "I--I did not hear Helen scream."

"Scream she did--a terrible scream of terror, according to Bates.
Added to that, the door of her room was found open, and--it was Bates
who suggested it--people do not scream when they are about to kill
themselves."

The girl's lips moved soundlessly as if she were trying to speak but
could not find the words.

Her eyes refused to meet his, and the physician had a baffled,
apprehensive feeling that she knew something she was very unwilling to
tell. Her attitude was one of terrified concealment. Was she trying to
protect some one? Or was she trying to protect herself? What did Joan
know?

"But," she said, after this tense pause, "you--you don't think that Mr.
Sarbella----"

Doctor Bushnell lifted his hands in a helpless gesture. "I don't
know what to think," he replied. "From what I have gathered there is
something under the surface and----"

Before he could complete the sentence Ham Griggs' voice bawled from
down the hall:

"Hey, doc! Where are you?"

The constable was not disposed to bide his time downstairs; officially
important, he had brushed the butler aside and mounted the stairs
in search of the physician. Joan drew a breath of relief and Doctor
Bushnell frowned.

"That's Constable Griggs," he said; "he's looking for me. Isn't there
something you can tell me, Joan, that will throw some light on the
tragedy?"

"Nothing," she answered faintly, "absolutely nothing. Only--I feel very
positive that Mr. Sarbella did not do it."

"Doc! Where the thunder are you, anyhow?" Again Ham Griggs' raucous
bellow, edged with impatience, boomed through the upper hall. The
physician turned toward the door, having no choice but to respond.
Joan's attitude troubled him. Why did she express such a positive
conviction of Sarbella's innocence, the most obvious suspect?

He found Griggs around the turn in the hall, stern and grim.

"This is a fine howdy-do," Griggs rumbled, "keepin' an officer of the
law coolin' his heels, when there's murder been done, an' there's
a murderer to be put under arrest." His hand moved in his pocket,
jingling a pair of handcuffs. "Who done it, doc?"

Doctor Bushnell sighed wearily, realizing that the constable was going
to be a difficult person to deal with. There is nothing more trying
than official bigotry.

"That's the job in front of us--to ferret that out," he answered.

"Reckon Gilmore----"

"No, Gilmore was downstairs talking to the butler when the shot was
fired," broke in the doctor. Briefly he related the facts, as he had
found them, but he confined himself strictly to facts, and indulged
in no theories or suspicions; he was afraid to trust Ham Griggs with
theories.

The constable listened, rocking his heavy body on his heels and
frowning sternly.

"Hum!" he grunted when the other paused. "Where's the body?"

"I'll take you there," the latter answered. "I locked the room--didn't
want anything disturbed, of course." He took the key from his pocket
and led the way to the tragedy chamber.

For all of his outward bluster, Ham Griggs was inwardly nervous and
uncertain, for this was his first murder case.

CHAPTER XIV

THE GIRL IN THE SARBELLA CASE

As Doctor Bushnell unlocked the door and snapped on the lights,
the constable was close upon his heels, staring at the lounge with
its sheet-shrouded burden. From beneath the edge of the white linen
covering, where it almost touched the floor, was the automatic pistol.

"Do you know anything about finger prints?" asked the physician. "I
thought there might be finger prints on the grip of the gun; but I
doubt it. The weapon was left behind to give the appearance of suicide;
the murderer, being deliberate as that, would hardly have been fool
enough to leave his signature behind him."

Ham Griggs neither admitted nor denied knowledge of the finger-print
science; as a matter of fact, he knew precious little about it, but
that did not deter him from stepping promptly forward, with great show
of confidence, and picking the pistol up by the barrel. He did have
gumption enough for that.

Stepping close to the electric light burning from one of the wall
brackets, he turned the gun slowly, examining the butt plates at
various angles.

"Gotta have a smooth surface, doc, to get finger prints," he grunted,
tapping the corrugated rubber with his finger. "There ain't any--no,
sir, there just natcherally ain't any."

Doctor Bushnell nodded. "You're right about that," he agreed.

"Guess I better keep this for evidence," said Griggs, handling it
gingerly; ignorant of an automatic's mechanism, he did not know just
how easily it might be discharged.

"Careful there!" warned the doctor. "It's ready for firing; the
explosion, you know, ejects the shell and throws back the plunger for
another shot. There's a safety catch on the side; I'll attend to it for
you."

Griggs willingly surrendered the gun and glanced around the room.

"Don't look like there'd been no scuffle," he muttered. "None of the
chairs is turned over, or nothin' like that. Don't seem like there is
any clews."

Doctor Bushnell handed back the gun. "I understand that there are
always clews, Griggs. No doubt there are plenty of them right here, but
our eyes aren't trained for seeing them. We're just overlooking them,
that's all, and I am afraid that we shall continue to overlook them.
This is a job for a detective--a real detective."

Ham Griggs looked resentful.

"Just you hold your horses a little while, doc," he growled. "Gimme a
chance, can't you? You don't expect me to clear this thing up in the
battin' of an eye, do you? Mebbe if I'd been on the ground long as you
have, an' talked to all the folks in the house, like you've done, I'd
have got somewheres by this time."

"Yes--maybe," murmured Doctor Bushnell.

"Well, anyhow," retorted the constable, "I allow to ask a heap of
questions. I ain't gonna stand here suckin' my thumb. Where's Gilmore?"

"I gave him an opiate, Griggs; the poor chap's a nervous
wreck--naturally. Give him a chance to pull himself together. It would
be rank cruelty to subject him to an inquisition until he's had an
opportunity to come out from under the first shock. Remember, he had
been married but a few weeks; a terrible blow, Griggs."

"Who else did you say was in the house?"

"Bates, the butler, the elder Mrs. Gilmore, Miss Joan Sheridan, Mrs.
Gilmore's daughter by her first marriage, and a Mr. Sarbella, a
guest from New York. Mrs. Gilmore is in a state bordering on nervous
prostration, and, as her physician, I should certainly refuse to admit
her to be questioned just now."

"Seems like to me," grunted the constable, suspicion in his voice,
"they don't mebbe want to be questioned. The other three--they got
prostrations, too?"

"No; there is nothing to prevent your cross-examining the others."

"The butler feller, you said he was downstairs with Gilmore when the
gun was shot off?"

"Yes, that's right."

"An' that the two womenfolks an' this--whatcha say his name is?"

"Sarbella, Victor Sarbella."

"Sounds dago. So you say that Sarbella an' the two women was upstairs?"
In his slow-witted, blundering way, Ham Griggs was arriving at the
obvious. "That bein' the case, doc, I guess--hum--I reckon we better
have a look at this Sarbella. I hope you ain't give him no chance to
escape?"

"I'll call him," responded Doctor Bushnell, "but do you want to
question him here?"

"Best place I can think of, doc; if he done it he'll kinda give himself
away by bein' in the presence of the victim."

"Up to date," imparted the physician, "Sarbella thinks we believe she
took her own life."

"That's good; we'll spring a surprise on 'im. Go get 'im, doc."

When Bushnell had responded to this command, Ham Griggs stepped to the
lounge and drew back the edge of the sheet, staring at the beautiful
face below him. He was surprised at the woman's beauty.

"Sure was a swell looker," he said to himself and drew the sheet back
in place. With his stubby, thick fingers clasped behind his back, he
took a turn across the room, so intent with his sluggish thoughts
that he did not notice the trodding of his heavy shoes upon a bit of
dark porcelain that lay upon the rug near the table which stood by
the north wall--a bit of porcelain no larger than a silver dollar. It
splintered beneath his weight, with a faintly crunching sound. In his
preoccupation he did not hear it.

A moment later Doctor Bushnell had returned with Victor Sarbella. Ham
Griggs turned and stared intently at the guest of Greenacres, who had
himself well under control.

"The doctor tells me that you wish to see me," murmured Sarbella. "I am
at your service."

"You betcha I want to see you," grunted the constable, motioning to a
chair that faced the sheet-covered lounge. "What do you know about this
case?"

Sarbella let himself into the indicated chair, facing the shrouded body
without flinching. "Nothing," he answered steadily.

Griggs whipped the automatic from his pocket and thrust it before the
man's eyes with what might have been considered an accusing gesture.

"Ever see this before?" he demanded, and, when Sarbella nodded, he went
on with a triumphant exclamation: "Oh, you admit it, do you?"

"Yes," answered the artist, "I saw it on the floor, where it must have
fallen from her hand, after she shot herself."

"She didn't do no such thing," the constable retorted belligerently.
"It was murder."

Sarbella's head jerked up, and his hands suddenly froze rigidly
about the arms of the chair. Into his intense black eyes there came
a startled, narrow-lidded gleam that Doctor Bushnell, watching him
closely, decided could have been guilt. But he recovered himself
quickly.

"I don't believe it," he said flatly. "I begin to understand. You are
hinting that I----"

"Matter of fact, now, ain't this your gun?" broke in Ham Griggs. "No
use lyin'; we can trace it easy enough."

Sarbella did not become angry; he did not bluster.

"I do not know what has given you this ridiculous idea," he said
quietly, "but I shall make a statement that, in so far as I am
concerned, covers everything. The gun is not mine; I have never seen
the gun until, aroused by the pistol shot, I saw Gilmore's wife dead.
Never in my life had I ever seen the woman until I was introduced to
her before dinner last evening. It did not for a moment enter my mind
that it was other than suicide. If, as you claim, it is murder, I did
not do it, and I do not know who did, or why. That is all I have to
say." His tone had a firm finality that was discouraging to further
questioning; over the room there fell a silence, a silence so tense and
absorbed that none of the three men heard the automobile that sped into
the Greenacres driveway and came to a halt beneath the portico.

Constable Griggs reached behind him and drew the sheet from the dead
woman's face. Even the bosom of her crimson-stained silk robe was
exposed to view. But no cry of guilty horror came from Sarbella; in
fact, he seemed a little contemptuous of this dramatic play. His face
was stonily hard.

Below, the taxicab bearing Wiggly, otherwise Jimmy Price, had arrived
at Greenacres, and Wiggly, bidding the driver wait, leaped across the
porch to the entrance. His finger pressed the bell button with one
brief, curt ring. He waited grimly.

Now, Wiggly Price was wise in the ways of his craft; he knew that
in a case like this, among such people, a reporter is emphatically
unwelcome. From countless previous experiences he had learned that the
big thing is to keep the door from being slammed in one's face. There
was an old trick that he had used with success before; possibly it was
chicanery, but the good reporter must get the story to hold his job.
There are times when the exigency of the situation demands a blind
eye toward strict ethics, and he knew that, unless he made good on the
Gilmore murder yarn, Scoggins would complete the fatefully interrupted
business of firing him.

There had been a day when New York newspaper men were given neat
nickeled and numbered badges, issued by the police department to
identify them in getting past the police lines at fires, parades, and
the like. They looked official, these badges, and, although they had
long since been withdrawn by the department, Wiggly Price had retained
his; that word "Police" stamped upon the metal in much larger lettering
than "Press" had more than once been the open sesame for him.

So when Bates, the Gilmore butler, opened the door in answer to the
ring, Wiggly Price flipped back the lapel of his coat so that the
servant might be misled by the brief flash and glisten of the metal.

"I'm here on the case," Wiggly announced briskly, knowing full well
that if he revealed his true identity he would get about so far as "I
am a reporter." Then the door would have closed in his face.

Bates readily admitted him. "Doctor Bushnell is expecting you?"

Wiggly, having no notion of committing himself, evaded the question.

"Hum!" he said. "Bad business, I understand. How long since it
happened? I'll hear what you know about it before I see Doctor
Bushnell."

Thus Bates, who would have let his tongue be cut out before he would
have divulged so much as a grain of information to a reporter,
was misled into telling all he knew. Thinking he was talking to
a detective summoned by the doctor, he pridefully told of his own
deductions of murder; he omitted nothing, and Jimmy Price's animated
ears wiggled delightedly, as he realized how lucky he was.

"Fine!" he murmured. "You're a pretty good detective yourself. Now just
between us--strictly confidential, y' understand--who do you think
killed her?"

Bates looked around cautiously, and then lowered his voice to a mere
thread of a whisper.

"Things began to be queer, sir, after Mr. Sarbella arrived. Mind you,
I don't say that he did it, but----" His voice tailed off meaningly.
Jimmy Price's ears moved rapidly--swift thinking.

"Sarbella?" he said under his breath. "Sarbella? I've heard that name
somewhere before." And then aloud: "Where is the doctor now?"

"Upstairs with the constable; I think they are in the room where it
happened. Who shall I tell him is here, sir?"

"Oh, don't bother about that," Wiggly Price said carelessly. "I'll go
right on up. No, don't bother. Which room?"

"At the head of the stairs."

"Gee, but I'm one lucky bird!" chuckled Wiggly, as he hurried up the
steps. "Now what's going to happen? Get pitched out on my ear, most
likely."

Reaching the top of the stairway, there was no need for him to seek
further directions. The door of the tragedy chamber was not fully
closed, and there came to his ears the voice of Constable Griggs,
badgeringly insistent, as he sought in vain to batter down Victor
Sarbella's brief statement.

The guest of Greenacres remained calm. "I have told you all that I can
about the case--the murder, as you insist," he was saying. "I have
nothing more to say."

Wiggly edged closer to the crack of the door, peering within, and saw
the face of the dead woman across which Griggs had not replaced the
sheet. As he stared, his ears began to wiggle violently. Without any
more hesitation he walked into the room. Ham Griggs looked up with a
hostile and questioning frown.

"Who're you?" he barked. "Where'd you come from?"

"Price, Price of _The Star_," Wiggly murmured mechanically, as he
continued staring at Helen Gilmore.

Doctor Bushnell took an angry step forward. "Mr. Gilmore issued
specific instructions that no newspaper men were to be admitted," he
said. "I don't know how you managed to get in, but I know how you're
going to get out."

"Wait a minute!" muttered the reporter. "I've seen her somewhere. I
never forget faces, and she----Wait a minute, I tell you, and I'll
place her. Let a fellow think, can't you!" He moved a little closer,
staring at the beautiful features. Victor Sarbella had strained forward
in his chair, and there was something so tense in his attitude that
Doctor Bushnell signaled to the constable that the intruding newspaper
man was not to be interfered with for a moment. The constable did not
notice that; he seemed little short of hypnotized by Price's animated
ears.

"She must have figured in some story that I worked on," went on Jimmy
Price, hardly conscious that he was thinking aloud. "And it must have
been some time ago, or I wouldn't have so much trouble remembering."

The doctor made a suggestion that bore more fruit than he could have
expected.

"Take a look at this gentleman," he said, pointing to the artist; "you
don't happen to remember him, I suppose?"

Jimmy Price shook his head slowly and positively. "I am quite sure," he
answered, "that I have never seen Mr.--Mr.----"

"Mr. Sarbella," supplied the doctor.

The effect of that name on Jimmy Price was startling. It seemed that
his ears would surely work themselves loose from the side of his head.

"Sarbella?" he exclaimed, turning swiftly and looking again at the dead
woman. "Sarbella? Yes, I know her now; she was the girl--the girl in
the Sarbella case!"

A grunt of elation escaped Constable Griggs, as he stared triumphantly
at the artist; this reporter had supplied the missing link between
the dead woman and the suspect. Victor Sarbella's body stiffened and
relaxed, as his shoulders moved with a sigh of weariness and defeat.
The secret which he had guarded with his silence was out.

CHAPTER XV

SARBELLA SPEAKS

No longer was Wiggly Price an interloper, an unwelcome intruder facing
eviction; for, instead of asking for facts, he was supplying facts, and
extremely vital facts they seemed to be. Both the constable and Doctor
Bushnell, since the Sarbella case stirred no memories, were both eager
for further enlightenment.

"Yes," said Wiggly, "I am sure of it now; this woman was the girl in
the Sarbella case. I think I must have written five or six columns
about it; queer that I shouldn't have spotted her the minute I put eyes
on her, but a fellow's memory does slip sometimes. The minute I heard
the name just now it all came back to me with a rush."

"I knew you was hidin' something," grunted Constable Griggs, fixing
Victor Sarbella with a stern eye. "I had a feelin' that you was lyin'
about never havin' set eyes on 'er until last night. I guess you killed
her, all right--that was the reason you wouldn't talk. Guess you
thought you was pretty slick." He turned to the newspaper man. "I guess
it wasn't nothin' short of Providence that let you get into the house
just now. Queer, ain't it, how things is always turnin' out?"

"My statement," said Sarbella, his voice husky, "was entirely true. I
had never seen the woman until last night--when my friend introduced
her as--as hees wife. She--she the wife of my good friend!"

"I guess you think we're a lotta country boobs to swaller a thin yarn
like that. Never seen her before, huh? That's likely--I guess not."

Doctor Bushnell looked eagerly at Wiggly Price, impatient to hear what
was meant by "the Sarbella case."

"Let's hear what he's got to say, Griggs," he urged.

"Sure," nodded Ham Griggs; "talk right up, mister. I guess we're all
wantin' to hear it--except Sarbella. You've put us on a hot trail, all
right, young feller."

"For all I know," said the reporter, "he may be telling the truth about
never having seen the woman before. It sounds reasonable enough, as you
shall see.

"The Sarbella case got into the newspapers a little over two years
ago. There was a young chap--handsome kid he was--a violinist. Born in
Italy--forget what place--and came to New York in concert work. His
first name"--he frowned meditatively--"I think it was Andrea."

"Yes, it was Andrea," muttered Victor Sarbella. "Poor Andrea! And that
woman--death was too good for her!"

"He fell in with a girl, a beautiful girl, with bronze hair. The
attraction of opposites, I suppose; he was dark--naturally, being
Italian. But this girl's past wasn't as pretty as her face. A lot of it
is coming back to me now--the details. She'd been raised on the fringe
of the underworld. Maybe you know what I mean. Her father and her
brother had served time. Oh, not her; she tried to pull away from that
sort of thing.

"Anyhow, the young violinist fell in love with this girl, madly in love
with her. I think they were planning to be married, and then he found
out the truth about her. How? I can't tell you that, but he did. The
note he left behind him told that--how she had lied to him, deceived
him.

"He went into the bathroom of his hotel and shot himself through the
heart. You see, this young Sarbella came of a very proud family--his
father related to the nobility and all that sort of thing. He couldn't
marry a girl like that, and he couldn't give her up. There was only one
way he could forget her, and he took that way.

"In brief, gentlemen, that's the Sarbella case. The girl disappeared;
the police didn't hold her, since it was so obviously a suicide. I saw
her at the inquest; she seemed pretty badly cut up over it, but--well,
you can't always tell about that."

"My word!" whispered Doctor Bushnell, aghast. "Kirklan Gilmore's
wife was that woman, a woman of the underworld? It seems incredible,
preposterous!"

"Sarbella," went on Wiggly Price, looking steadily at the guest
of Greenacres, "had a brother who was in Italy at the time of the
suicide. This brother caught the first boat to New York with the avowed
intention----"

"I think that I am the best qualified person to finish your narrative,"
the voice of Victor Sarbella broke in.

"So you've decided to start your tongue workin'," crowed Constable
Griggs; his chest bulged importantly. "It is my official duty to warn
you that anything you may say will be used against you."

Sarbella waved his hand impatiently. "This is an explanation, not a
confession," he retorted. "My first statement to you remains true,
although I admit that I did not tell you all the truth--for two reasons.

"Yes, this dead woman," his voice dripped with bitterness, "was the
girl in the Sarbella case. It is necessary for me to tell you that
Andrea, my younger brother, and I were born and reared in Florence. Our
mother was American, our father Italian.

"I came to America where I could find a better market for my drawings,
and I brought with me Andrea, who was a violinist and expected to
earn a great deal of money with his playing. He had wonderful talent,
Andrea; even so young, his playing was attracting attention. Would to
Heaven that I had left him in Italy. Then that woman would never have
set his brain on fire, driven him mad with the madness of infatuation.

"It was the first winter that we were in New York, and I returned to
Florence that I might accompany my mother back to America. She, too,
was to make her home in New York, my father having died. It was while
I was away that Andrea met this devil of a woman. How? I do not know,
but he loved her madly; the letter he left behind for me told me the
intensity of his passion for her.

"Andrea was young, idealistic; he thought her everything that was good,
noble. And then there came to him a man; a low, common person, who was
the woman's husband!

"You see how she had tricked him? She was not the innocent, lovely girl
she had led my brother to believe. He had thought to marry her--soon.
The shock of the truth dethroned reason; he could not have her, and he
could not give her up. There seemed to him only one way that he could
forget.

"If I could but show you his farewell letter to me, the letter that
he wrote a few minutes before he fired the bullet through his heart!"
Tears came into Victor Sarbella's eyes, and his voice trembled and
broke. "Could you read that letter of Andrea's you would understand
better.

"He was my brother, my only brother, and I loved him devotedly. News of
his death was cabled to me, but it was not until the boat docked in New
York that I knew how he had died--and why.

"My mother--Andrea was her very life. She--it killed her. This woman,
this vampire, killed both of them--Andrea and our mother--as surely as
though she had driven daggers into their hearts. And that--that would
have been a kindlier way." He pointed a dramatically accusing finger to
the couch. "There she is, a murderess, a moral murderess, and she has
reaped as she had sown!"

Victor Sarbella's voice came to a pause.

"All right," said Constable Griggs, "let's have the rest of it. You
killed her for revenge!"

"A life for a life!" murmured Wiggly Price, his ears twitching again,
as he thought of a dramatic line for this amazing story that he was to
write for _The Star_. "'The code of Latin vengeance!' Wow! What a whale
of a yarn!"

Victor Sarbella shook his head slowly.

"Time passes, and the deepest of wounds heal--although there may be a
scar," he said. "It is futile for me to deny that in my first grief
and rage against this woman I made bitter threats, that I said I would
hound her down and make her pay. I do not deny that I meant it--at the
moment; I do not deny that I sought her in vain."

"But you did find her yesterday," exclaimed Constable Griggs. "I've
heard tell of them Eyetalian vendettas. You hadda wait most three
years, but you got 'er all right. Ain't no use holdin' out on me no
longer, Mister Sarbella; we gotcha, an' we gotcha cold. Mebbe you can
get by with that revenge business over in Italy, but you can't work it
here."

Victor Sarbella looked tired, and his face was drawn, haggard.

"Yes, I found her here yesterday," he nodded. "I found her--this
murderess--married to my good friend, who loved her madly--as poor
Andrea loved her. While I had never seen her, I knew her from that
picture of her that lay beside Andrea when he died. Every detail of
that face was burned into my memory; I recognized her instantly. And
she--the name and the family resemblance--she, too, knew me for who I
am.

"Kirklan Gilmore saw that something was wrong, but I could not tell
him. He was my friend; she was his wife; my lips were sealed. I swear
to you that no thought of killing her entered my mind, although in the
past I had thought many times of putting my fingers about her throat
and----"

"Huh!" broke in Ham Griggs' grunt. "I guess you'd swear to most
anything to keep yourself from goin' to the chair. What made you hold
out on us about knowin' who she was, if you wasn't guilty?"

"As I told you a few minutes ago," answered Sarbella, "there were two
reasons. One was that I wished to spare Gilmore, my friend, the torture
of the truth."

"And the other reason," said Griggs, "was that you knowed blame well it
would make things look purty black for you. You knowed that it would
throw suspicion square on you."

Sarbella hesitated.

"At first," he replied slowly, "I had no other thought than that the
woman had ended her life--driven to suicide by fear, fear that I would
denounce her for what she was before her husband; but, when the butler
kept insisting that she had been murdered, I knew that I had a vitally
personal reason for keeping silent."

"But little good it did you--thanks to this feller," exulted the
constable, jerking his thumb toward the newspaper man. "Victor
Sarbella, you're under arrest for----"

"Be careful, sir--be careful," warned the guest of Greenacres, his face
gray. "The gun is not mine, and you will never be able to prove that it
was. If you subject me to false arrest----"

Ham Griggs hesitated, glancing at Doctor Bushnell for encouragement.

"I don't think you need worry about false arrest," advised the doctor.
"An officer has a perfect right to hold a man on suspicion. There need
not be positive proof, and there were but three persons on the second
floor when the shot was fired--Mrs. Gilmore, Miss Joan, and Sarbella."

Victor Sarbella leaned forward in his chair, and he seemed on the verge
of saying something further in his own defense, but did not speak. It
may have been that he realized how useless it would be to say anything
further in his own behalf.

The constable dragged from his pocket a pair of handcuffs. "Stick
out your mitts," he ordered, holding open the steel jaws to receive
Sarbella's wrists.

CHAPTER XVI

THE FOUR CLEWS

As Constable Griggs, proud as a pouter pigeon, departed with his
prisoner, Doctor Bushnell replaced the sheet over the face of the dead
woman, but not until he had looked again at the beautiful features,
shaking his head, as if he could not understand the anomaly of
countenance and character.

"A--a woman of the underworld! It's just a little hard to believe that
a woman with that face----"

"On the fringe of the underworld, I think I said," corrected Wiggly
Price. "Her associations were criminal, but I hardly imagine that she
had led a vicious life, for that _would_ show." He paused for a moment.
"Sarbella told me something about her that I hadn't known before--that
it was her husband who came to Andrea Sarbella and told him the truth
about her. I was just wondering if--if she had gone to the trouble of
divorcing him. It's a difficult thing, getting a divorce in New York
State."

Doctor Bushnell looked grave. "Sarbella was right; she was a vampire.
She tricked Gilmore, fooled him with her pretty face, as she fooled the
other one--young Sarbella. I am apprehensive of the effect that this
is going to have on Kirklan; already he is on the verge of a nervous
breakdown, and when he learns the truth--well, I hope it can be
withheld from him until he has had a chance to pull together." He made
a move to depart, but Wiggly stopped him with a gesture.

"Just a moment, doctor. You're satisfied that Sarbella did the
shooting?"

The physician seemed surprised by the question.

"Certainly," he answered promptly. "There were but five persons in the
house; two of them downstairs, three upstairs, when the fatal shot
was fired. You don't mean to tell me that you have any doubts----" He
broke off, disturbed by the recollection of Joan's evasiveness and
perturbation.

"I'm not saying Sarbella isn't the guilty man," answered Wiggly; "but I
do say that it would be next to impossible to have a jury convict him
on such evidence."

"But he was the only person in the house who could have any possible
motive for the crime," argued Doctor Bushnell. "Revenge, young man--a
trait that is strong with the Latins, particularly the Italian. You
don't for a moment entertain a notion that Mrs. Gilmore, the gentlest
soul I have ever known, or Miss Sheridan----"

"I admit the motive," interrupted Wiggly; "I admit the opportunity, and
I admit that, on the face of things so far, he is the guilty man. But
where is the proof--the proof that will convict him before a jury?

"The proof of guilt is somewhere--somewhere in this house; it may be
right in this room. I have been a newspaper reporter for ten years, and
a lot of my assignments have been crime stories. I did headquarters for
nearly five years; experience tells me that there are clews, definite
and convincing clews, that will convict. There are always clews."

"Yes, so I have gathered; but the room here--there is no evidence of a
struggle--nothing visible----"

"The same things, doctor, are not visible to all eyes; seeing a clew
is one thing, and observing it is quite another thing. A newspaper
reporter gets to be a sort of detective, sometimes he's a darn good
detective, and, if you have no objection, I'll look around a bit and
see what I can find to clinch the case against Sarbella."

Doctor Bushnell hesitated. "Kirklan Gilmore gave orders that no
newspaper men were to be admitted," he said; "still you have rendered
valuable assistance, and----"

"And," added Wiggly with a faint smile, "I've already got my story.
Even if you pitch me out, it won't stop my paper from printing the
facts that I have gathered."

"Yes, that's true," nodded the physician, "and personally I've a
profound respect for a good newspaper reporter. Gilmore naturally
shrinks from the thought of having this thing blazoned across the front
page; but, if he understood the situation, I feel sure that he would
give you every chance to fix the guilt where it belongs. He seemed
to resent the suggestion I made, that Sarbella was the most obvious
suspect, but he did not know the past which linked the lives of his
wife and his friend.

"The constable is little better than helpless in a case like this;
his job is catching automobile speeders, and a murder is outside of
his experience. It was nothing short of luck for Ham Griggs that you
happened in and gave him the right tack. I intended urging Gilmore to
employ a private detective, but if you can make any progress--well, I
shan't stop you."

"That's mighty decent of you, Doctor Bushnell, and, before I start in
Sherlocking, I'd like to ask you a question or two about the wound. The
bullet pierced her heart?"

"No, it did not; I followed the course of the bullet with a probe, and
it missed the heart by a fraction of an inch."

"Good Lord, you don't mean it! Then death was caused----"

"From the best I can determine, a punctured artery."

"In other words, she bled to death; isn't that what you mean, doctor?"

"Yes."

"Would she have bled to death so quickly?"

"That is hard to say--evidently very quickly. Both Gilmore and the
butler are positive that she was dead when they reached the room here.
They rushed upstairs immediately after hearing her scream and the shot."

"And that was a matter of less than minutes--seconds," mused Wiggly
Price. "The bullet must have pierced the aorta, or one of its main
branches."

"So it would seem, and I see that you know the anatomical terms."

"Some of them; a reporter has to know a little about everything. I was
just wondering if perhaps she wasn't still alive when her husband and
the butler reached the room."

"Bates thought he saw the last breath leave her body, but I wouldn't
accept that with absolute finality. He is, of course, not a medical
man, and he might have easily imagined it."

Wiggly Price's eyes searched the room with a slowly moving gaze, his
animated ears twitching faintly. He seemed to be studying the rug,
which was of a neutral shade; any discolorment, such as a bloodstain,
would have stood out glaringly, and there was none.

"I've been thinking," he said, "that she might have been placed on the
couch there--after she was shot. Yet, with all the profuse bleeding, if
she had fallen to the floor there would be some signs of it. I wonder
if you noticed whether she was shot while reclining on the lounge, or
if the bullet was fired while she was standing?"

The doctor looked bewildered. "Great Heavens, man, how could you expect
me to know that?" he exclaimed with a hint of asperity, suspecting that
the reporter was trying to "show off." But he was mistaken about that.

"I feel that we may be able to determine that, if we take another look
at the dead woman's clothing," Wiggly told him. "There's the law of
gravity you know."

"Gravity? What's the law of gravity got to do with it?" Puzzled, the
physician lifted the sheet to permit the reporter's examination. The
latter leaned forward for a moment and took note, also, that the silk
robe was powder burned--in fact, that the explosion had been so close
as to scorch the undergarments as well.

Wiggly Price pointed to the meandering line of dried crimson which
dyed the expensive dressing gown almost to the fur-edged hem of the
garment. "Blood, like water," he said, "must obey the law of gravity
and flow downward; she had to be standing on her feet for the crimson
stream to seep down, almost level with her ankles. She was placed on
the lounge by whoever shot her; that is evident. Gad, but she was
a beautiful woman, wasn't she? It's no wonder that men lost their
heads over her. You know, doctor, I've always felt sorry for a truly
beautiful woman; so many of them end up in misery. But that's neither
here nor there. The wound is in the side, isn't it?"

Doctor Bushnell nodded slowly. "I understand now what you're getting
at. Yes, I can see that she must have been shot while standing on
her feet, and either she staggered back to the couch herself, or was
supported to the couch by the slayer. The wound--under the armpit?"

"The weapon must have been pressed close to her body judging from the
evidence of burned powder. I see that the robe was set on fire, which
burned quite a hole before it smoldered out. Doctor, wouldn't you say
that it was a most unusual place for an intentionally mortal wound? Her
arm would have to have been raised away from her body."

The doctor agreed with a tight-lipped "Yes."

"Of course," went on the newspaper man, "she might have turned
suddenly, squirmed in the slayer's grip--I am taking it for granted
that he was close enough to have seized her--but that's only
speculation. What became of the gun?"

"Ham Griggs took it with him. It was an automatic, a large-caliber .44,
I think."

"Finger prints?"

"The butt plates had a corrugated surface."

"I see; in that case there would have been no finger prints on the gun.
Probably wouldn't have been, since the slayer deliberately left the gun
behind. Only a very stupid person would have neglected to wipe away
finger prints had there been any. Hello, what's this!"

Wiggly's foot had crunched against a bit of porcelain, and he leaned
forward swiftly, picking it up; it was a rough-surfaced piece of
pottery, black in color and, as much as he could judge from the
fragment, had belonged to some convex object of which it was a
shattered part.

"A broken piece of something--but what?" he murmured, holding it up for
the doctor's inspection.

"I'm sure I couldn't say," answered Doctor Bushnell, who was not
greatly interested. He considered it a waste of time to speculate over
such an insignificant trifle, when there was murder evidence to be
looked for.

"The Hitchcock murder last summer--remember that, doctor? It was solved
by nothing more noticeable than a black pin, a mourning pin, and the
widow of a man whom Hitchcock had ruined, confessed when she was faced
with that pin. This is larger than a pin, doctor, but, to be frank, I
doubt there's much value to it." He was near a small mahogany table by
the room's north wall; the light was not very good, the chamber being
lighted only by wall fixtures, and the incandescent rays were softened
by parchment shades; but his eyes pierced the shadows and saw, on the
floor beside the table, several other pieces like the one which he held
in his hand.

"Ah!" he exclaimed. "Here's the answer to it, doctor. It's a vase, a
black pottery vase; yes, here's the neck of it."

"That might be evidence of a struggle," suggested Doctor Bushnell.
"The vase might have been knocked off the edge of the table, don't
you think, when the woman tried to escape Sarbella's vengeance? She
probably knew, the minute he got into the room, that his intention was
to kill her."

Price's ears wiggled briefly, as he considered the matter of the broken
vase, and with a dismissing gesture tossed down the broken bit which he
held in his fingers.

"You may be right," he agreed, "it doesn't seem important enough
to bother about, but----" His voice broke off sharply, as he stared
toward the window directly in front of him; he had noticed the sagging
curtain, where it had been ripped some two and a half hours earlier,
when Don Haskins had made his surprise entrance into Helen's room. But,
of course, Wiggly had no way of being aware of the fleeing crook's
existence.

"Take a look at this, Doctor Bushnell," said the reporter; "this torn
curtain. Funny we didn't notice that before; it's mighty near jerked
off the rod."

"And what do you make of that?"

Wiggly's eyes were meditatively half closed, and his ears as well as
his mind were active.

"I'd say one of three things," he answered slowly. "Either the murderer
barred Mrs. Gilmore's flight through the door, and she was trying to
get out the window--which somehow I don't take much stock in--or the
murderer himself came in through the window, or, thirdly, that he
got out through the window. In the last two cases it doesn't seem
reasonable that he would have taken the time to shut the window behind
him. It seems to me that the best thing to do is just store this away
for future reference. It doesn't seem to mean much in itself."

"No, it doesn't," grunted the physician. "It might not have been torn
to-night."

Wiggly glanced about the neat, precisely kept room. "She was particular
about the orderliness of things," he said. "I don't believe she would
have left a torn window curtain unrepaired for long. No, the curtain
was torn to-night; but, as I said, we'll just store that away for
future reference."

And then Doctor Bushnell made a discovery of his own, a half-burned
cigarette that had been mashed down into the heavy nap of the rug, some
eight feet from the chaise longue and even a farther distance from the
door. He gave a brief exclamation, as he pointed to his find.

"Sarbella is a cigarette smoker; if this is his brand----"

Wiggly Price picked up the cigarette, which evidently had been
flattened out beneath the pressure of a shoe.

"It's a little hard to believe, doctor, that a man with premeditated
murder in his mind, would walk into his victim's room smoking a
cigarette," he said quickly. "For that matter, it might be the murdered
woman's cigarette--so many women do smoke 'em these modern days." He
examined the flattened thing which, as it happened, bore the name of
the brand. "Cheap--ten cents a pack. Hardly a woman's cigarette, I'd
say. Perhaps Gilmore himself dropped it."

"Not Gilmore; I happen to know that he doesn't smoke anything except
an occasional after-dinner cigar; but I do recall very clearly that
Sarbella was smoking a cigarette downstairs. If he smokes that kind,
it's clinching proof that he is the guilty man!" The doctor was
becoming quite excited over this clew. "Since Gilmore doesn't smoke
them, who else could have dropped it on the rug? Answer me that!"

Wiggly took a piece of copy paper from his pocket, carefully wrapped
the cigarette butt in it, and tucked this important, or unimportant,
bit of evidence in his vest pocket.

"As you say, doctor, if it's Sarbella's brand of cigarette it means
something--but it's rather difficult to imagine a chap like Sarbella
smoking this cheap fag; just about as hard as it is to imagine him
walking into this room, a gun in one hand and a cigarette in another,
ready to avenge his dead brother. However, when I get to the jail, I'll
see the constable and check up on this. I'll have a look at Sarbella's
cigarette case."

Although, as he had just said, it hardly looked like the sort of
cigarette a woman might be expected to smoke, he was thorough enough to
look about the room, and he even went to the dressing table in search
of any proof that Helen Gilmore herself had been addicted to a little
puffing now and then. But there was no telltale flickings of ashes, not
so much as an ash receiver.

Wiggly compressed his lips.

"You know, doctor," he said slowly, "this cigarette thing bothers me
a little--quite a little, too. She isn't a smoker unless she does it
on the sly and----Oh, confound it, it just isn't reasonable that this
is Sarbella's cigarette butt. I've got a hunch that this business runs
deeper than we think."

Doctor Bushnell gave an impatient gesture. "Stuff! You're trying
to manufacture a mystery; the papers like mysteries so that they
can spread the story out over days and days. You're afraid that the
solution is going to be too easy, too tame."

"Tame?" exploded Wiggly Price. "I can imagine nothing more dramatic
than Sarbella being the guilty man--beautiful vamp, handsome, talented
young foreigner, related to nobility, a suicide, a brother's vendetta,
an unexpected meeting, arranged by Fate, at the home of a friend who is
a popular novelist, and then--revenge!

"Good Lord, I hope you don't call a yarn like that tame! Scoggins, my
city editor, will weep with joy if it pans out that way--and probably
give me a raise in salary, although it's his burning desire to fire me.
But I'm making the guess that the cigarette butt that we've picked up
out of the rug didn't belong to Victor Sarbella." He paused, looking
about the room again. "Electric lights are so tricky to the eyes;
it's so easy to overlook something, some little thing that might be
tremendously important. It still lacks some time of being daylight, and
I'm anxious to scoot over to the jail and check up on this cigarette
clew--make sure whether or not it's Sarbella's. Are you going to remain
here for a little while, doctor?"

Doctor Bushnell glanced at his watch.

"Yes," he answered; "at least until the undertaker arrives--probably
later. It's my official duty to remain, I suppose."

"Your official duty?"

"As it happens, I am a deputy coroner."

Wiggly showed his surprise. "You hadn't mentioned that; I hardly think
that even the constable realized it. Of course you understand, doctor,
that, in a case like this, your authority exceeds that of any other
official. You are the commanding officer, so to speak."

Doctor Bushnell nodded. "In a way my position is somewhat embarrassing.
I have been the Gilmore family physician for a good many years."

"I was wondering if I should be able to get inside the house again,"
said the reporter; "but, if you are the----"

"Deputy coroner," corrected the physician. "Doctor Whitestone, the
coroner, is vacationing at Saranac Lake."

"Anyhow, doctor, you are in charge, and all I need is your permission."

"Probably it can be arranged," Doctor Bushnell said after a moment
of hesitation. "Of course it will be rather difficult to admit one
reporter and bar the others, and there will be a regiment of them
swooping down on us; but you have rendered valuable assistance that
makes it very hard for me to refuse you. You will let me know, just as
soon as you have clinched the matter, whether the cigarette butt was
dropped by Sarbella." He was taking the door key from his pocket and
was starting to leave the room.

"Certainly," answered Wiggly, moving to follow. "I came out from the
office in a taxi, and it's waiting downstairs. I shall come back
immediately after I have----" His voice trailed off, as he squinted at
the floor, where the chaise longue with its tragic burden cast a shadow
over the rug. Swiftly he bent forward and picked up something.

Doctor Bushnell stared; it was nothing more startling than a hairpin,
and he was rather impatient that the newspaper man should subject it to
such an apparently interesting scrutiny.

"As I said," murmured Wiggly, "artificial light is tricky. Either one
of us should have noticed this before."

"It's nothing but a common, ordinary hairpin," grunted the physician;
"there's nothing in that--probably fell out of her hair."

Price's forehead was wrinkled into a frown, and his ears were wiggling
again.

"It dropped from some one's hair," he muttered. "Her hair? I wonder if
it did?"

"Don't be ridiculous," snapped Doctor Bushnell.

"Look at it!" the other commanded tersely. "What color is that hairpin?"

"Black, of course," the doctor said impatiently.

"Exactly--black! The dead woman's hair is blond. Step over to her
dressing table, and perhaps you'll be puzzled, too. See, she uses
bronze hairpins, doctor. Any woman with hair the color of hers, would.
A black hairpin! I wonder if this is a clew, a real clew?"

"Rot!" retorted the physician. "Any one might have dropped it; the
maid----"

"Where is the maid?"

"Bates said that she went to Yonkers."

"And has the maid black hair?"

Doctor Bushnell considered for a moment, trying to remember. "Dark
hair," he nodded; "perhaps not black. I couldn't say as to the
identical shade."

"The other Mrs. Gilmore?"

"Quite gray."

"And the other--what is her name?"

The doctor frowned indignantly. "Such a suspicion is too ridiculous,
too absurd!" he protested. Yet with a vaguely uneasy feeling he
remembered Joan Sheridan's strange behavior, her anguished protest of
Victor Sarbella's innocence--and Joan's hair was black, jet black!

CHAPTER XVII

KIRKLAN PROTESTS

Hint of the physician's disturbed thoughts must have shown in his
face, for Wiggly Price gave him a keen, curious look, which seemed
to increase the former's discomfiture; he dallied nervously with the
fraternal charm attached to his watch chain.

"What color did you say, doctor?" pressed the newspaper man.

"It's ridiculous, absurd!" Bushnell repeated explosively. "What if
Joan's hair is dark? Confound it, you make me downright angry, casting
an insinuation like that, just because of an inconsequential thing like
a hairpin."

Wiggly gave a faint smile which was grim rather than humorous.

"I haven't insinuated anything, doctor; just asked a question, that's
all. Oh, I admit there's nothing conclusive about a hairpin, and
yet--well, there was the Hitchcock case that I mentioned, solved by a
black mourning pin."

"For murder there's got to be a motive," argued Doctor Bushnell; "no
one besides Sarbella had a motive. I don't care what you find, I'd
never believe that any one except Sarbella----"

The door was flung open with a startling violence, and Kirklan Gilmore
lunged into the room, hair disheveled, eyes wide and staring.

"What--what does this mean?" he cried hoarsely. "Bates tells me that
the constable has arrested Sarbella. Is that true? Come, answer me,
what does it mean?"

Under his breath the doctor cursed the butler for adding this to the
man's nervous strain.

"I thought I gave you a sleeping tablet, Kirklan. Bates should not have
excited you by----"

"Certainly he should have," Gilmore broke in. "I've a right to know
what's going on in my own house. Bates was perfectly right; but what
does it mean? Bates says that Sarbella was taken away--handcuffed. It's
true, isn't it?"

Doctor Bushnell nodded. "Yes, Kirklan, it's true; Sarbella is
being--ah--detained, pending--well, at least pending further
investigation of your wife's murder. Certain things developed which
made it advisable and necessary."

"Great Lord!" whispered Gilmore, his shaking fingers raking back a
tangled shock of hair that fell across his forehead. "You mean--you
mean that Sarbella has been arrested for--for that?" His other hand
went out, pointing to the couch.

"Try and calm yourself, Kirklan," soothed the physician. "I hadn't
intended that you should know this until you had pulled yourself
together somewhat. I knew that it would be a tremendous shock for you
to know that your friend, a guest in your home----"

"Why," broke in the novelist, "was Sarbella arrested?"

Doctor Bushnell hesitated over the answer, and Wiggly Price drew back
to one side, making himself as inconspicuous as possible.

"I demand to know," insisted Gilmore, and the doctor saw that there
could be no further evasion.

"As I told you downstairs, Kirklan," said Bushnell, "we have
established beyond all question that it was murder. Since she was
killed, some one had to kill her."

"But why Sarbella?" the author pressed impatiently.

"Obviously," went on the doctor, "an effort has been made to make it
appear suicide, but the effort failed; such efforts usually do. It's
hard to destroy evidence, next to the impossible. There were but five
persons in the house; you and Bates downstairs, your stepmother, Joan
and Sarbella upstairs. Taking the list into consideration it was only
natural that suspicion should turn to Sarbella. And then----"

"But that's not proof, doctor--that's only suspicion," broke in
Gilmore. "If you had no evidence, I don't see how you dared----"

"We had a little more than that," said Doctor Bushnell with obvious
reluctance, realizing that circumstances had made it unavoidable that
Kirklan should know the terrible truth about Helen's past life. "You
see, Kirklan, we discovered that Sarbella had a motive."

"A motive?" Gilmore muttered dully. "What do you mean by that? What
reason could he have had? Out with it! Why do you torture me with this
suspense?"

Doctor Bushnell stepped forward and put a hand on the other's shoulder.

"Heaven knows that I wish I could spare you this, Kirklan, but it's
bound to come out at the trial and in the newspapers. You were not
aware, I suppose, that there was a previous relationship between----"
He had phrased it clumsily and Gilmore started back with a shudder, a
look of anguished horror on his face.

"You mean that Sarbella and my wife were----He lied to me--he lied to
me--gave me his word of honor that he had never seen her before. I knew
there was something wrong; I saw her face when she met him; I knew----"

"No you misunderstand me, Kirklan. There was nothing like that. Perhaps
you did not know that Sarbella had a brother, a younger brother named
Andrea, who----"

"Who shot himself," finished Gilmore. "Yes, I'd heard of it; that
happened before I knew Victor. But what has that got to do with this?"

"Young Sarbella shot himself because of a woman," went on Doctor
Bushnell. "Because a woman, a very beautiful woman whom he loved
madly, had misled him about herself. She lied to him, tricked him, and
then--the woman's husband came to him and told him the truth."

Kirklan Gilmore stared dully; he seemed not to grasp the inference of
it all. The room was tensely quiet.

"I--I don't understand," he muttered thickly, "what that has to do with
Sarbella and my wife."

"Andrea Sarbella," the doctor went on gently, "was the idol of his
mother and his brother. Shock of the tragedy cost the mother's life,
and Victor, it seems, took an oath that he would avenge himself on the
woman responsible for his double bereavement."

The dawning light of comprehension showed in Gilmore's horror-stricken
eyes; a cry arose in his throat, as he staggered back into a chair and
buried his head within his hands.

"You mean," he choked, "that the woman was--was--my wife!"

"Yes, Kirklan, your wife was that woman. Now you can understand why
Sarbella has been placed under arrest."

Again the room was silent, silent except for the choking sob which came
from the man huddled low in the chair. After a moment he staggered to
his feet and flung his arms wildly.

"It's a lie!" he shouted. "It's a lie! I don't believe it; I'll never
believe it. Why, if what you say is true, she----"

"Calm yourself, Kirklan. Sarbella has admitted what I have told you. We
might have never known the truth except that this young man recognized
her and put us on the right track."

Gilmore, for the first time, seemed aware of Wiggly Price's presence.

"Who are you?" he demanded hoarsely. "What do you mean by coming here
with these lies--about my wife? Answer me--who are you?"

"My name is Price, and I am a newspaper man."

Gilmore wheeled accusingly upon the doctor. "Who let him in?" he
shouted. "Didn't I tell you----"

"Easy, Kirklan, easy now. I can't answer as to how Price got into the
house, but I'll say it's a lucky thing for us that he did. Except for
him we might still be beating our heads against a stone wall. When
you've calmed down you'll thank him instead of berating him. It may be
that he is the agent who will bring your wife's murderer to justice.
No matter what the woman did, a murder has been done; Sarbella had no
right to take vengeance into his own hands."

The novelist dropped limply back into the chair, his muscles twitching,
as he stared at the sheet-covered body.

"Sarbella?" he muttered thickly. "What--what does Sarbella say?"

"Naturally he denies it," answered the doctor. "We hope to find proof.
We must find proof; I doubt if he could be convicted on the purely
circumstantial evidence that we have so far. Unless we can establish
his ownership of the automatic pistol, we will have to find something
else. If he thought the gun could be traced he surely would not have
left it behind."

Gilmore lifted his head slowly.

"Then there is no proof--only--only suspicion?" He paused for a moment
and then added: "I can't believe it! I can't believe that Sarbella
killed her. And she--she was--that kind of a woman!"

Doctor Bushnell touched his shoulder. "Try not to grieve, Kirklan," he
urged quietly. "You were in love with the woman you thought her to be,
and she did not exist. She wasn't worth a good man's grief. We do not
even know--in fact, I doubt--if her marriage was legal."

"I can't believe that Sarbella did it," repeated Gilmore dully.
"She--she must have killed herself to escape the truth."

"Did you happen to notice the brand of cigarettes that Sarbella
smokes?" asked Wiggly Price.

Gilmore's resentment against the newspaper man seemed to have vanished;
he displayed no curiosity over this apparently idle question, only
shook his head absently, like a man in a daze.

"And your wife," pressed Wiggly, "I don't suppose that she used a
cigarette now and then?"

Again Gilmore shook his head, almost stupidly and without verbal
response, his hands dangling inertly across the arms of the chair.

"Sarbella didn't do it," he muttered again, as if talking to
himself; "she did it to escape the truth. Nothing will ever convince
me--nothing!"

Around the edges of the drawn curtain was creeping the light of a
graying dawn. Price moved toward the door.

"I'm going down to the village," he said in an undertone to the doctor;
"I'll come back when I've talked with Sarbella about his brand of
cigarettes. Remember my hunch and the black hairpin."

With that he hurried down the stairs and to the still waiting taxicab,
with its driver napping behind the wheel.

CHAPTER XVIII

TWO BRANDS OF CIGARETTES

The Ardmore jail was located in the basement of Borough Hall, and,
since it was but a place of temporary detention until prisoners could
be removed to the county seat, it consisted of a single cell, a narrow
steel cage tucked away in one corner adjoining the furnace room. It was
here that Victor Sarbella, who had ceased his protests and had lapsed
into a stony silence, that took no cognizance of Constable Griggs'
persistent and exasperating questioning, had been lodged.

Wiggly Price found Borough Hall locked, and the place was in darkness.
Griggs had decided to let the prisoner "cool his heels" for a while,
and he had gone home to freshen himself with a nap before continuing
the cross-examination. The village was still soundly asleep, and
Wiggly, thinking that the constable must return shortly, made himself
as comfortable as possible in the cab.

Time dragged past, and the reporter considered the Greenacres tragedy
and its various angles. A great little rider of hunches was Wiggly,
and, in the face of the obvious, he was riding the hunch that Sarbella
hadn't shot Helen Gilmore. And the black hairpin, small a thing as it
was, occupied a conspicuous corner of his thoughts. The broken vase he
thought of only casually. The half-burned cigarette butt he admitted
might have some importance, but he much doubted that it had belonged
to Sarbella. As he had told Doctor Bushnell, he couldn't conceive a
murderer, smoking a cigarette, would walk in on his victim. It just
wasn't reasonable.

The east was bright with the dawn of a brilliant day; the sun mounted
higher, and still Ham Griggs had not returned. Wiggly glanced at his
watch with a growl of impatience; he knew that it wouldn't be long
until other news hounds would be keen on the scent of the big story.

"Confound that fellow!" he muttered. "Where's he gone to? More than
likely he considers the case solved and has gone home to tell his folks
what a great detective he is!"

From far up the deserted street just one sound broke the stillness,
a particularly cheerful, but tuneless, whistle which, as it came
nearer, brought into view an elephantine youth who approached with a
flat-footed shuffle, his shoes flapping noisily, as if they might be
trying to mark time to their owner's musical efforts. The village fat
boy, drawing closer, left off whistling and turned to song, singing in
a shrill treble, "Yes, we have no bananas. We have no bananas to-day."

Wiggly stepped from the cab to intercept him, and for no reason at all,
unless it were taken for granted that it was outward evidence of an
otherwise unexpressed mirth, Wiggly's ears twitched.

"Say, son," Wiggly said briskly, "do you know where Constable Griggs
lives?"

For the moment Master Frederick Throgmorton, as the local juvenile
heavyweight was named, was totally bereft of speech, completely
hypnotized by the amazing gymnastics of Jimmy Price's ears.

"Huh?" he finally gulped. "Whatcha--whatcha say?"

"I said: Do you know where Constable Griggs lives?"

"Sure--sure thing," gasped Fatty Frederick. "Right--right down this
street--third block, second house from the corner. Say, mister, tell a
feller somethin'--how did you learn to do it?"

Wiggly flushed, as he always did when reminded of his refractory
appendages, and he dived swiftly back into the cab, as he gave the
chauffeur further directions. The taxi shot forward with a jerk. Less
than a minute later they had negotiated the three blocks, and the New
York newspaper man was on the sidewalk and at the picket gate of the
Griggs cottage.

Etta, the constable's daughter, was ambitious, but her ambition was
centered upon becoming a playwright and did not, as a rule, extend to
early rising. But this morning she was up, fully dressed, and, at
the moment of Wiggly Price's ring, pressing her father for further
details of the Greenacres murder. For once in her life she was actually
taking some pride in the fact that her parent was a constable. And Ham
Griggs willingly sacrificed his intended "forty winks" that he might
elaborate, none too modestly, on the part he had played; after all, it
was something to be a hero to the critical and exacting Etta.

"I wouldn't be a lot surprised," he was saying, "that the reporter
feller will be wantin' my pitcher to put in the paper. There ain't no
use for me to deny, Etty, that I done a purty slick piece of work. I
knowed the minute I clapped eyes on the Eyetalian that he was the one
that done it. Wouldn't be surprised but what I'd better scoot down to
Jess Burnside's pitcher gallery an' have some new pitchers struck; I
ain't set for a pitcher since----" He was interrupted by the ringing of
the doorbell. Father and daughter had been so absorbed that they had
not heard the arrival of the taxi.

"I'll answer it, fawther," said Etta, and for once Ham Griggs did not
correct the affectation which ordinarily so annoyed him. They had been
sitting in the kitchen, and Etta had put on a pot of coffee which,
entirely unnoticed, had boiled over. Ham tilted back in a chair,
uniform coat thrown open, snapping his suspenders smartly against his
chest.

Etta frisked through the brief hallway to the front of the cottage.
As she opened the door, the upper portion of which was glass, with a
frosted design alleged to be artistic, she faced Wiggly Price, who
neglected the polite formality of removing his hat.

"Constable Griggs live here?"

"He does," admitted Etta, one hand resting upon her practically hipless
waist, chin slightly tilted. "Who shall I tell fawther is calling,
please?"

"Price, of _The Morning Star_."

"O--oh," gasped Etta, flustered. "Come--come right in; I'll tell him."

But there was no need to tell him. Ham Griggs, the intervening doors
being open, had heard him and came striding out from the kitchen,
morally certain that his prediction was well founded, and that the
reporter had come for a photograph.

"Come right on in, son," he boomed hospitably. "Etty's just fixin' me
up a cup of Java, an' I guess she can scare up a flock of eggs. Guess
you ain't had no breakfast, huh? Come right on into the kitchen an'
make yourself to home."

"Fawther!" cried Etta in embarrassed indignation. "Ain't you--haven't
you forgotten your manners? In the kitchen? Why the very idea! I'll set
the table in the dining room, and----"

"The kitchen for mine! Don't bother, Miss Griggs. I'm in pretty much
of a hurry, but I can't turn down a cup of coffee after being up all
night."

"Sure," the constable nodded complacently and then added: "Guess
nothin' new turned up out at Greenacres, huh? I nailed the right man,
all right; not a bad piece of work for a hick constable, if I do
say so myself." With a laugh he led the way into the kitchen, while
the mortified Etta bit her lip in chagrin; but there was no choice
in accepting the situation. She recalled a line from her "Social
Etiquette" which told her, "When embarrassed by an unexpected caller,
the hostess should at once accept the situation in good grace and
make her guest feel welcome." But a guest in the kitchen! Her little
reference book was mute as to that.

"I want to see Sarbella just as quickly as I can," said Wiggly, sitting
down and hitching his chair close to the table. He sniffed avidly. "Ah,
that coffee does smell good!"

"Sure," agreed Ham Griggs. "But whatcha want to see him about? What's
happened?"

"Nothing's happened--exactly," Wiggly answered cautiously, knowing
that the constable would in all probability resent any intimation of
Sarbella's possible innocence. Even a seasoned detective, once he has
made up his mind, does not relish the idea of being shown that he had
been wrong. In Griggs' case, it would be a hard blow to his exuberant
vanity. "But, as you may realize, our evidence against the man is so
far purely circumstantial."

"Oh, don't you worry about that," the constable said complacently;
"he'll come through with a confession, after he's had a good taste of
jail. Stubborn as a mule he is so far, but he'll break down; they all
do."

"Isn't it thrilling!" broke in Etta, pouring coffee. "It's what you
call a big story, isn't it?"

Wiggly gave a smiling nod. "It's about the best murder story I've ever
worked on."

Etta beamed. "It was I who called up your editor and told him about
it," she announced.

"The thunder you did!" grunted Ham Griggs.

"If it's a scoop," promised Wiggly; "I'll tell the city editor to have
the business office mail you a fat little check for the tip."

"Oh, no! I didn't do it for any mercenary reasons. But, if the editor
wants to say something nice about my play----"

"Eh--your play?"

"I expect it to be produced this fall. It's nearly finished; I have
promised to let a New York producer stage it."

"Yes, I see," murmured Wiggly gravely. He had the good sense not to
indulge in a smile, but his ears moved faintly. "And I'll certainly
speak to the dramatic critic about it--I certainly will." Under his
breath he added: "Lord, what the play bug does to people!"

Etta was so excited by what she considered the total success of her
plan to establish a cordial personal relationship with the press that
she tipped a cup, spilling hot coffee over the back of her father's
hand.

"The murder at Greenacres has given me the inspiration for another
play," she said. "It shall be a mystery play; they're so popular in New
York."

"A good mystery is about the most interesting thing in the world,"
declared Wiggly, dropping a spoonful of sugar and stirring vigorously.

"And the Gilmore tragedy--fawther has just finished telling me all
about it--isn't it dramatic?"

"It certainly is, Miss Griggs," agreed the reporter, wishing the girl
were in Halifax.

"And to think," she rushed on, "that Kirklan Gilmore's new wife was
such an awful woman. So pretty, too; I saw her only the other day. You
know it was such a surprise when he married her. Mrs. Huggins--she's
a seamstress and used to sew for the Gilmores--thought it was certain
that he would marry Joan; such a sweet girl, Joan."

Wiggly's wandering thoughts suddenly became centered upon what the
gushing Etta was saying.

"Joan?" he murmured.

"Young Mr. Gilmore's stepsister, you know. Didn't you see her? Such a
sweet girl! Oh, I suppose some people would consider it unusual for a
man to marry his stepsister, but Mrs. Huggins thought it would turn out
that way. She's got sharp eyes, Mrs. Huggins has, and she said that
Joan was simply in love with Mr. Gilmore; she used to help him so much
with his work, I understand. And then, while she was away in Europe, he
married the other one. It was such a terrible surprise to everybody.
And Mrs. Huggins said----" Her gossip broke off into a gasp, as she
stared at the reporter's ears which were now wiggling almost violently.

So Joan was in love with her stepbrother; she had dark hair; and he
had found a black hairpin on the floor beside the slain woman's body!
This certainly was food for thought--not only food, but a feast! The
Greenacres story gave promise of being a live mystery.

And there was the cigarette butt; the husband did not smoke cigarettes;
therefore it could not be explained by his dropping it there, and, if
it wasn't Sarbella's----There was another angle.

During Etta's moment of speechlessness, Wiggly debated these matters
swiftly, as he gulped down his coffee, and Constable Griggs embraced
the opportunity to get back into the conversation.

"Whatcha say you wanted to see Sarbella about?" he demanded.

"As I said," answered Wiggly; "there's no proof against him except
that he might be considered to have a motive, and that he also had an
opportunity to commit the crime. Juries don't send men to the death
chair on that sort of evidence. Of course, if he makes a confession
or we can trace the murder gun to him, that automatically solves our
difficulty; but Sarbella is probably shrewd enough to realize what a
weak case you've got against him; if he does realize that, and if he is
guilty, he'll have sense enough to keep his mouth shut."

"Whatcha hittin' at?" growled Ham Griggs.

"After you left Greenacres, Doctor Bushnell and I looked around a
little, and we found a half-burned cigarette mashed down into the
rug of the room where the woman was killed. Since Gilmore doesn't
smoke----"

"Sarbella smokes 'em," broke in the constable. "Sure he does; purty
near one right after the other. Regular cigarette fiend, the feller is.
That clinches the case on him, huh? Is that what you're drivin' at?"

"If he smokes the same sort of cigarette as the one Doctor Bushnell
found on the rug, I'd say it was pretty much a clincher. It would be
evidence that he had been in the room."

"Of course it's his cigarette!" exclaimed Ham Griggs, lumbering swiftly
to his feet. "I'd bet a hundred dollars on it. Come on, son, we'll get
right down to the jail and prove it."

"Why, fawther!" came Etta's protest. "Won't you let Mr. Price wait
until I have cooked the eggs? I was going to put them on the fire this
minute."

"Speaking for Mr. Price," said Wiggly, "the coffee is sufficient.
Thanks just the same." He pushed back his chair and moved to follow the
constable.

"Like as not when we face 'im with this," suggested Griggs, "he'll
break down an' make a clean breast of it."

"Oh, Mr. Price," called Etta, "you won't forget to--to speak to the
dramatic critic about my play?"

Wiggly promised, without committing himself as to just how he would
speak of it; there are some things, from a diplomatic standpoint, best
left unsaid.

The constable clumped briskly out of the house with the reporter
following. As they got into the taxi, Ham Griggs wondered if he were
not to be asked for a photograph with which to adorn the first page of
_The Star_; already he had visualized the caption: "Figures in Gilmore
Murder Case--Local Officer Who Solved Baffling Mystery."

"If you want my pitcher for the paper," he suggested, "I'd better see
about havin' one struck. Of course I ain't lookin' for no puff, but----"

"No use going to that expense," Wiggly broke in; "we'll probably have
a staff photographer down during the day, and he can snap you on the
scene--examining the murder gun, you know, or something like that.
Action pictures always more interesting, Mr. Constable," he ended
emphatically.

The brief trip was completed, and, as the machine again drew to a halt
in front of Borough Hall, the chauffeur entered a protest.

"Say, boss," he exclaimed, "you don't expect a guy to sit at the wheel
forever, do you? A man's gotta sleep some time. Guess you'd better pay
what the meter reads an' let me skim back to the big town."

Wiggly paid the charge, which was twenty-seven dollars, gave a
three-dollar tip, and let him go. Griggs entered the village's public
building and led the way down into the basement, where Sarbella was
lodged. At the sound of their footsteps, ringing on the concrete floor,
the prisoner left off his nervous pacing of the cell's narrow confines
and came to the steel door of the cage. His attitude was weary,
dejected.

"Mebbe you're ready to speak up, huh?" grunted Ham Griggs, facing him
from the other side of the bars.

"I have nothing to add," Victor Sarbella answered; "you already have
the only statement I care to make," he paused briefly and then added,
"for the present."

"Silence ain't goin' to do you no good, for I aim to keep you right
where you are until you get ready to start talkin'," blustered the
constable. "We know you killed her; we've dug up some more evidence on
you--little matter of a cigarette that you dropped on the floor of that
room out to Greenacres."

"Cigarette?" muttered Sarbella.

"May I have your cigarette case for a moment, Mr. Sarbella?" requested
Wiggly.

The prisoner hesitated, gave the newspaper man a wary glance, and,
evidently realizing that they would take it away from him by force,
if he refused, slid his hand into his pocket, producing a silver case
inlaid with gold stripes. He shrugged his shoulders.

"I don't know what it's all about, but you're welcome; please do not
destroy the smokes. I've only two left."

Wiggly Price took the elaborate case, which Sarbella passed through
the bars, and snapped it open. One glance was sufficient to verify
his logical doubts that the butt of the cheap cigarette which Doctor
Bushnell had discovered on the floor of the tragedy chamber had not
been the artist's. The two cigarettes before him were of an expensive
imported brand, straw-tipped and monogrammed with the man's initials.

The constable was looking over his shoulder, as Wiggly extracted from
his vest pocket the flattened bit of evidence upon which both Doctor
Bushnell and Ham Griggs had expressed so much faith. He unfolded the
strip of paper that enwrapped it.

"They are not the same," he announced. "I didn't expect them to be.
The question now is--to whom did this belong? It looks very much like
another man--a man with cheap tastes in tobacco--was in that room last
night!"

Victor Sarbella pressed his body tensely against the bars, but not so
much as a syllable passed his lips. Perhaps there was a look of relief
in his face.

CHAPTER XIX

ENTER SERGEANT TISH

The constable and Wiggly had left the basement, and Griggs was almost
apoplectic with anger. He glared at the reporter with indignant disgust
and, as they entered the room used for the sessions of the borough
council, flopped down in a chair.

"Now if you ain't made a fine mess of things! An' I give you credit for
havin' some sense! I might have got a confession outta him except for
your meddlin'. Dog-gone you, anyhow! He'll think now that he's got a
chance to get out of it after you tellin' him that there must have been
another man in the room where the woman was killed."

"You've got to admit that it isn't Sarbella's cigarette butt," defended
Wiggly.

"If I'd have known you was goin' to pull a stunt like that, I'd never
have let you in to see him," raged Ham Griggs. "Next time I'll have
better gumption than to let some fool reporter gum the cards for
me--you just bet I will."

"Let's talk it over," Wiggly urged placatingly. "Let's use a little
simple logic. You admit, don't you, that this isn't Sarbella's brand?"

"I don't admit nothin' of the sort," raged the constable. "Chances are
that he dropped that cheap cigarette on the floor as a blind, tryin' to
leave a false scent to fool us."

Wiggly shook his head. "That won't hold water, constable; you forget
that the murderer tried to make it appear suicide. And, as I tried
to impress on Doctor Bushnell, can you imagine a man set on murder
slipping in on his victim--smoking a cigarette?"

But Ham Griggs was in no mood for logic; he considered that he had
solved the case in arresting Sarbella, and he wanted it to stay solved.
A re-opening of the facts led him into water over his head, and he
foresaw himself floundering helplessly beyond his depth.

"Sarbella done it!" he shouted. "He killed the Gilmore woman; he shot
her to get even. He shot her--with this gun." Dramatically he dragged
forth the automatic pistol and waved it almost wildly. "And you've
gone and messed things up by lettin' him think he had a chance to get
off--darn your hide!"

The outburst was checked by the opening of the door which led into the
council room from the outside entrance, and there entered a short,
rotund man who wore his hat perched upon a bandaged head.

"Where's the chief of police?" was the stranger's greeting.

"I'm the constable; it amounts to the same thing in Ardmore," Griggs
answered shortly, "but I ain't got no time to be bothered."

The corpulent little visitor moved back the edge of his coat, revealing
a badge of the New York police department.

"I'm Detective Sergeant Tish--New York headquarters," he announced.
"Your name Griggs? You telephoned last night to the Consolidated
Taxicab Company that you'd picked up an abandoned taxi on one of the
roads near Ardmore?"

"Yes, I did," grunted Constable Griggs, "but I ain't got no time to
bother about taxicabs now. I've got a murder on my hands."

"And I want to get my hands on a murderer," shot back Sergeant John
Henry Tish. "That taxicab was stolen by----"

"Don't give a hoot if it was!" shouted the constable. "The taxi's at
Presley's garage. Go get it, if you want it." He even forgot that he
had expected to receive a ten-dollar gift from the taxicab company.

Sergeant Tish, however, was not to be put off so easily. He projected
his short, portly form closer and occupied a chair beside the council
table, with the air of having something to say and being determined to
say it. He wasted no time.

"Listen!" he commanded, wagging a pudgy forefinger with a forceful
gesture. "This is just as important to me as your case is to you. See
this?" He tapped his bandaged head. "The man I'm after did this to me,
and I'm going to get him. He knocked me cold--after I had the nippers
on him, see? I've got to get him.

"There may be some time when you'll want a favor from the New York
department. I want a little information--and a little courtesy. I'm no
windbag, and I won't keep you long."

"All right," grunted Constable Griggs. "What is it you want?"

"Thanks," said Sergeant Tish. "First, where was it that you picked up
the machine?"

"Out on the Hudson Road, 'bout half a mile from the village proper. I
called Presley's garage an' had 'em drive the bus into their shop--and
that's all I can tell you about it, every blessed thing. I notified
the taxicab company."

"Sure, I know that, and they flashed it right to headquarters.
There was a general alarm out for that taxi. So it was run into the
garage--under its own power, huh? That means Haskins didn't ditch the
car because something went wrong with the engine. That may help some.
Pretty swell folks live out on the Hudson Road, eh?"

Griggs nodded. "Most of 'em is rich," he agreed; "either rich or pretty
well fixed."

"Sounds like it might be a warm trail," said Sergeant Tish, puffing out
his plump cheeks. "Y'see--well, I'll have to give you the inside for
you to understand just what the situation is."

Despite his first impatience, Constable Griggs became interested and
offered no protest.

"This bird I'm after," pursued Tish, "is named Don Haskins. He's got
a record as long as an income-tax report. Done a couple of short
stretches at Sing Sing, one out West--Illinois--and has been in the
line-up down at headquarters and in the Tombs. It would take an expert
accountant to keep the count. He used to be a slick crook, nifty
dresser and free spender, but he'd started slippin'. They all do.
Clever--and hard-boiled."

Here Tish told the constable of his encounter with Haskins.

"Humph!" grunted Constable Griggs. "I see. And you're looking for your
man in these parts. Sorry I ain't got the time to help, but----"

"Just a minute," broke in Sergeant Tish. "I ain't quite through yet.
I'm right at the nub of it. Eighth Avenue Annie, I guess, wanted to
cover up; anyhow, she runs out on the street yellin' bloody murder,
and a couple of uniform men rushes in to find me laid out, dead to the
world. But they brings me around, and then--oh, the grillin' we did
give old Annie! We still got her locked up on a technical charge.

"Before we got through with her, she comes through with a lot of dope
she didn't want to cough up. She hadda admit that Haskins had paid her
big for his hide-out, and that he was gettin' ready to make the big
jump out of town; that he had a rich sister, a real swell, who made him
a visit and give him some dough. She was goin' to come back with more.

"Now, that's the funny part of it; one of the boys down at headquarters
knows Don Haskins from the first time he went to Elmira Reformatory,
and he says that Haskins did have a sister, but that she died eight or
nine years ago, and that she didn't fit the description which Annie
give us. No matter about that, it's a cinch that some swell jane did
bring him the money. Annie says she was the class.

"Now, I was just wondering, gents--Haskins leaves the swiped taxi out
on Hudson Road. The engine was O. K. That's proof that he left it there
because he wanted to, and not because the car stopped on him. Where was
he headin' for? Mebbe this swell who calls herself his sister lives
around here. Now, you've got the whole works. I want somebody to help
me check up. See?"

Ham Griggs' cap was on the desk which belonged officially to the
borough council's president, his honor, Mayor Ripley. The cap
accidentally--not from any design--covered the automatic pistol which
had killed Helen Gilmore.

"As I told you," reiterated the constable, "I'm too busy this mornin'
to do anything for you. Mebbe this afternoon, when I've got a
confession outta the prisoner I got downstairs, I'll have more time."
He reached for his uniform cap with a gesture of unshakable finality.

Sergeant Tish suddenly strained forward, his eyes bulging from out of
his plump round face, staring in open-mouthed and bewildered amazement
at the .44 on the desk.

"Where did you get that gun?" he gasped, lunging out of the chair and
making a dive for it, getting his hands on it before Griggs could stop
him. "Where did you get my gun?"

Ham Griggs snorted derisively. "Your gun? This here ain't your gun. It
belongs to that prisoner I got downstairs, and he shot a woman with it
last night. That's the murder case I'm workin' on."

Tish's face was a strange study of emotion. "It's my gun!" he shouted.
"Here's a little place chipped off one of the butt plates. Sure it's my
gun. Police department issue--you can tell that by the serial number.
Sure, it's my gun--the one Don Haskins took off of me yesterday when he
knocked me out. And you say that a woman was shot with it--murdered?
You say that you took it off a prisoner, and that you've got him here?
You mean that you've got Haskins locked up?"

The questions all jerked out with no pause, leaving him breathless,
his fat cheeks quivering. Constable Griggs was speechless, and Wiggly
Price's ears seemed determined to work themselves loose from his head.

"You're dead sure, sergeant, that it is your gun?" Wiggly demanded
tensely. "It--it's very important that there should be no mistake about
this."

"Don't you suppose I know my own gun?" snapped Sergeant Tish. "That's a
funny question, askin' a cop if he knows his own gun. I want Haskins,
and I want him now."

Constable Griggs found things happening just a little too fast for
his slow wits. "I think you must be plumb crazy," he sputtered. "The
prisoner we got is named Sarbella, an Eyetalian feller; he's the one
that shot the woman with the gun. Gimme it back."

"Like thunder I'll give it back!" retorted Sergeant Tish.

"Wait!" said Wiggly. "I--I think I'm beginning to see some daylight.
Haskins was a crook; some good-looking, swell-dressed woman brought him
money--posed as his rich sister. And the minute Haskins got nabbed he
made tracks for Ardmore. The cheap, ten-cents-a-pack cigarettes! Just
the kind that Haskins might be expected to smoke. Haskins had Sergeant
Tish's gun--and that's the gun that killed her. Don't you understand,
constable? We've made a bad mistake because we didn't know anything
about Haskins. The murderer was Haskins--the crook!"

And for the moment Wiggly forgot all about the black hairpin.

CHAPTER XX

A QUEER JUMBLE

"Haskins killed her!" Wiggly Price repeated excitedly. "We're on the
right trail; there doesn't seem to be any other explanation now.
Haskins, the crook, shot her--with that gun."

While Sergeant Tish's identification of the murder gun, as the same
automatic pistol that Don Haskins had taken from his unconscious person
the previous afternoon, plus the certainty that Haskins had deserted
the stolen taxicab at no great distance from Greenacres, made it an
obvious theory that it might have been the crook who had murdered Helen
Gilmore, Constable Griggs sputtered protestingly. No man likes to admit
a mistake. For a moment he was too eternally flabbergasted for words;
this sudden development, the appearance of a new and unknown suspect,
floundered him helplessly in a sea of bewilderment.

Possibility of Victor Sarbella's innocence endangered his triumph and
put the brakes on his ego, for, by that mental process which makes men
heroes in their own eyes, Ham Griggs had given himself a good deal more
credit than he was really entitled to. He forgot that it had been the
newspaper reporter's well-functioning memory, identifying the slain
woman as "the girl in the Sarbella case," which had supplied the vital
link, the possible motive, and that, except for Wiggly, there would
have been nothing upon which to have detained the artist.

Not that Wiggly Price begrudged the constable feeding his vanity
fat; for Wiggly was interested only in the story and concerned not
at all with whatever transitory fame might attach to the solver of
the mystery. Give Wiggly the story, and he was willing that Constable
Griggs should monopolize the credit.

Sergeant John Henry Tish, realizing the importance that attached to
a positive identification of the automatic, examined it still more
carefully, reaffirming an already firm conviction that it was his. His
own excitement, too, matched that of the newspaper reporter.

"There's no doubt about it, gents," he declared. "It's my gun."

"Huh!" grunted Constable Griggs, at last finding his tongue. "There
must be hundreds of guns like that, as much the same as peas in a pod."
His skepticism was, of course, backed by the wish that it be a mistake.
"Mebbe it looks like your gun, mebbe it _has_ got a busted place on the
butt plates, but that don't prove----"

"A cop gets pretty well acquainted with a gun when he's packed it as
long as I've packed this one. There's a lot of little marks on it that
I recognize. I know it's my gat, and the serial number will prove it;
the department keeps a record of the numbers."

"It's a police regulation, all right," grunted Wiggly Price. "I ought
to have noticed that the first thing, but I didn't. I don't think
there's much chance of Sergeant Tish being mistaken, constable,
especially since the deserted taxi gives us proof that Haskins did come
to Ardmore last night."

"Well, I ain't sayin' that it ain't, but at the same time I ain't
sayin' that it is," growled Ham Griggs. "Nor am I goin' to admit that
Sarbella didn't do the killin'; if he's so all-fired innocent, what
makes him keep his mouth shut so tight? If you think I'm goin' to turn
him loose just because somebody else _might_ have done it----"

"Oh, I'm not trying to have you turn Sarbella out of jail, constable,"
said Wiggly. "I've no interest in him, personal or otherwise, beyond
seeing you put hands on the guilty man. Detain him long as you like, so
far as I'm concerned."

"You betcha life I'll detain him long as I like!" blustered the
constable with a glare.

The rotund Sergeant Tish stood impatiently to his feet, shoving the
automatic into the empty holster, where it belonged.

"It sure looks like Haskins is wanted now for two croaks instead of
one," he said gruffly. "Suppose we make tracks for the place where the
woman was killed. Just wasting time here."

"Huh!" sneered Constable Griggs. "You don't think the feller you're
after will still be out to Greenacres?"

"Hardly," answered Tish, "but we've got to start from there, anyhow.
Haskins won't get far, I guess; there's already a general alarm out for
him. When they do nab him, I aim to have the goods on him--right."

"Yes, we've got to go back to the Gilmore place," agreed Wiggly.
"We've got an entirely new angle to work on now."

Ham Griggs, still voicing a half-hearted protest, perhaps further
embittered that this New York detective was now upon the scene and
would probably try to take all the glory for himself, got grudgingly to
his feet. The three men left Borough Hall and went out to the street.

"Confound it!" complained Wiggly. "It must be a two-mile walk out there
to Greenacres. Why didn't I keep that taxi? And there's a real hurry,
too. Where can we get a machine, constable?"

"Presley's garage--if Presley has opened up," Ham Griggs answered
sourly. "It's right around the corner."

"Ain't necessary," said Sergeant Tish. "I came out in one of the
department's flivvers. Got it parked just around the corner. It's only
a two-seater, but I guess we can manage it. The main thing is to get
out to that place quick as we can."

He led the way around the corner, where stood the roadster with "Police
Dept." painted upon the sides. The New York plain-clothes man got in
first, wedging his portly form in behind the steering wheel. Constable
Griggs, too, was a man of considerable bulk so that, even without
Wiggly, all available seat room was occupied.

"The running board for mine," Price said cheerfully and climbed up.
"Let 'er go, sergeant."

Tish started the engine, manipulated the foot pedals somewhat
awkwardly, and the little car started forward with a violence that
almost jerked the newspaper man to the ground; to save himself what
might have been a bad spill, one arm encircled Ham Griggs' neck, adding
to the latter's ill humor.

"I've always heard that you newspaper fellers was a pesky nuisance," he
muttered.

If Wiggly was tempted to a retort, he gave no signs of it, merely
murmured an apology. There was a moment of silence, the constable
frowning deeply.

"We do know why Sarbella would have killed her," he argued; "because
she vamped his brother and drove him to suicide, but why would this
Haskins feller have done it? Answer me that!"

"Haskins is a hard guy," growled Sergeant Tish. "He wouldn't have
needed much motive, that bird. Look at the way he clouted me over the
head with his handcuffs. Like as not he had some sort of hold on her.
The murdered woman must of been the swell dame that Haskins told Eighth
Avenue Annie was his sister. See?"

"That ain't nothin' but guessin'," said Constable Griggs. "How are you
goin' to know if she was?"

"It may be guessing, but it's a darn' good guess," replied Tish. "And,
far as that's concerned, we can have Annie down to look at the body
and tell us whether or not it was the skirt who come to her place and
handed Haskins some dough."

"But _why_ would Haskins have killed her?" persisted Ham Griggs.

"Well, I can't say positive as to that," answered Tish, "but it would
be a pretty safe bet to figure it out. When I dropped in on him at old
Annie's yesterday afternoon, he had to beat it in such a hurry that he
left his money under the mattress; perhaps he made tracks for this
Greenacres place to get money. Y'see, constable, she was going to bring
him some more jack Wednesday--which is to-day--but I spoiled that.
Since she couldn't come to him with the dough, he come to her. Like
as not she was a little slow in coming across with the money, and he
croaked her."

"Robbery, huh?" demanded Ham Griggs. "Ain't that what you're drivin'
at?"

Sergeant Tish admitted that this was his tentative theory regarding the
murder at Greenacres. The constable's grim face broke into a triumphant
smile, for he had led the New York detective into a deliberate trap.

"That ain't no good," he said with a grunt of satisfaction. "There
wasn't no robbery, Mr. Tish, for the Gilmore woman was still wearin'
her jewelry when we found her dead. There must have been diamonds and
the like worth a good many hundred dollars. Wouldn't he have taken the
jewelry? I ask you, wouldn't he?"

"Well, I didn't know about that," answered Sergeant Tish, looking
not so crestfallen as Griggs would have liked. "That seemed the most
plausible, and it's still not impossible, for Haskins may have taken
money and have been too pressed for time--you haven't told me anything
about the facts, you know--to strip off the jewelry.

"Anyhow what we _do_ know is that Haskins did go to Greenacres, and
that murder was done with the gun which was in his possession. If
Haskins didn't kill her, then--how did the murderer get this automatic
pistol?"

Constable Griggs could not, of course, answer this question. Wiggly
Price, his feet planted firmly upon the running board of the little
car, and his fingers wrapped tightly about the rods supporting the top,
thought of something which added, to his mind, a fresh puzzler to the
whole mysterious business.

"There's something else, Sergeant Tish," he said, raising his voice so
that he might be heard above the sound of the motor and the rush of the
wind, as they hurried along. "If Haskins killed her, why did he leave
the gun behind? He is a desperate man, already in open flight to escape
one charge of murder, and a man in a position such as his would want to
be armed. Chances are that he would shoot it out before submitting to
capture. You say that Haskins is a clever crook, and----"

"Used to be," broke in Tish. "Been going down grade for some time.
Booze--dope, too, likely as not."

"If he had any head on him at all," continued Wiggly, "he would have
known that there was every chance in the world of that gun being
traced. There's something else. The gun was planted beside the dead
woman's body, an effort to give it every appearance of suicide. Why
should Haskins have done that?"

"I wish you'd give me the low-down on the case," urged Sergeant Tish.
"How do you expect me to get anywhere when you gimme the facts in jerks
and starts like that?"

Constable Griggs' face wore an elated expression as he listened to
Wiggly. The reporter had declared his positive conviction of Haskins'
guilt, and yet here he was shooting his own theory full of holes.

"So you've come back to my way of thinkin', eh?" he crowed. "Come on
now and admit that I put the handcuffs on the right man. The Eyetalian
done it. Sure he did. I was right all the time."

The reporter's ears twitched meditatively.

"I'm not saying positively that Haskins didn't kill the woman," he
answered. "But I do say that I can't understand why _he_ should have
been so anxious for it to appear suicide. It's very easy to understand
a possible link between this crook and Gilmore's wife; she began life,
I think I told you, on the fringe of the underworld. Oh, I admit that
I'm stumped--bad, but there must be a hidden something, somewhere, that
will put us right."

The detective sergeant's car was now at that point of the road where it
ran in front of the Gilmore place.

"Turn in here, Sergeant Tish," grunted the constable, as they neared
the driveway, and Tish turned the wheel sharply. Before they had quite
reached the house, Tish stopped the machine.

"Listen, gents," he said crisply, "let's get down to cases. It looks
to me as if Haskins did the job here at this place, although, as our
reporter friend says, it _is_ queer that he left the gat behind. I want
to put my mitts on Don Haskins, whether he did the croak or not. And
you wanna get hold of the same bird, for, if he didn't do it, you want
him to tell you how this gun of mine got away from him.

"I want Haskins, and you want Haskins. Circumstances puts us in
the same boat, and we ought to work together on this business." He
suppressed a wise grin, as he saw the look of displeasure on Griggs'
face. "Aw, don't worry, constable, I'm not going to butt in on your
territory. I'm not tryin' to steal your thunder."

Sergeant Tish paused for a reply.

"Humph!" grunted Ham Griggs, not finding any valid excuse for refusing
this offer of coöperation.

"About all I know to date," pursued Sergeant Tish, "is that a woman
was bumped off with my gun, the one that Haskins lifted from me, when
he handed me a knock-out at Eighth Avenue Annie's, that the pistol was
left beside the body to make it look like suicide, and that you've
gathered in a guy named Sarbella. If I'm goin' to help you any, I've
got to have the low-down. See?"

"Yes, constable, we'd better tell him," said Wiggly Price, as Griggs
remained silent. "If you've no objection, I'll give him a brief outline
of the facts."

"All right," agreed Griggs, and Price related to Tish the facts in the
case.

Sergeant Tish listened thoughtfully to Wiggly Price's digest of the
tragedy, and, puffing out his plump cheeks to a balloonlike roundness,
nodded his head.

"It's sure a queer jumble, ain't it?" he grunted. "I don't blame you,
Griggs, for thinkin' this Sarbella fellow pulled the job, but how would
Sarbella have got hold of the gun? No, it still looks like Don Haskins
to me. Nobody else to be suspected, I suppose?"

Wiggly thought of the black hairpin and that germ of suspicion which
Etta Griggs had planted in his mind by telling him of the suspected
one-sided romance between Joan Sheridan and her stepbrother. He
hesitated a moment and decided to keep this to himself, at least for
the present. Let Sarbella and Don Haskins, walking so unexpectedly into
the mystery, be eliminated before other complications were added. He
sidestepped this question by ignoring it entirely.

"Surely," he said, "if Bates had let Haskins into the house, he would
have mentioned it."

"Why don't we ask him whether he did or not?" grunted Constable Griggs,
for at this moment the butler had stepped out of the house into the
warming sunlight of the wide porch.

CHAPTER XXI

A CRY OF TERROR

The three men left the little police car where it stood and walked the
remaining few yards to the house. Bates saw their coming; as a matter
of fact, he had from within noticed their approach, and he had come out
to meet them. Despite his evident weariness, he was patently eager for
any news. Constable Griggs, quickly forestalling any move that might
tend to crowd himself out of the major role, planted himself directly
in front of the butler, frowning sternly.

"When was the last time you saw the dead woman alive?" he demanded.

"Immediately after dinner," answered Bates; "she went directly
upstairs, and I did not see her again until--until she was dead."

"How long had you been in bed when it happened?"

"It was some time, sir; at least two hours, I am sure."

"What I'm hittin' at is this," explained Griggs; "we've got some new
dope that may mean something, and then again it may not. Did you let a
strange man into the house last night, or did you see any strange man
prowlin' about the place?"

"I--I don't believe I understand," murmured Bates. "A strange man,
sir--prowling about the house?"

"That's what I said," grunted the constable, "and it's evident that you
didn't. Was the doors locked?"

"Absolutely," Bates answered firmly. "I always lock up before turning
in for the night. I have been very careful about that, especially since
the burglar scare that we had last year."

"Then the man couldn't have got into the house unless you had let him
in?" pressed Griggs.

"The woman herself might have let him in, constable," interposed
Sergeant Tish. "If the butler had gone to bed she might have done it
without any one hearing her."

"Huh!" retorted Ham Griggs, with a quicker flash of reasoning than
might have been expected. "How would she have known Haskins was about,
unless he rung the doorbell, or called her on the phone, or something
like that? Until you, Sergeant Tish, trapped 'im in that place in New
York, he didn't know his own self that he was comin' to Greenacres."

"I am positive that there was no ring of any sort, either doorbell or
telephone, until Mr. Gilmore got me up to let him in--just before the
shot," offered Bates. "Any sort of ringing would have awakened me. But
this strange man--I do not understand. Who----"

"Might as well tell you, I suppose," grunted the constable. "We've
found out that the murder gun most likely belongs to this man"--he
jerked his head toward Tish--"who is a detective from New York. The gun
was taken away from him by a feller named Haskins, who swiped a taxi in
New York to make his get-away, and that same taxi was found by myself
out on the road, 'bout one and a half or two miles from here. So----"

"Then it isn't Mr. Sarbella's gun?" broke in Bates with a gasp of
surprise.

"That don't mean I've turned Sarbella out of jail, not by a whole lot,
it don't," growled Ham Griggs. "He might have got hold of the gun
somehow; he might----" But, being unable to supply any further theory
of Sarbella's guilt, his voice stopped abruptly. There was a moment of
silence, broken by Bates.

"Did I tell you about the letter?" he asked in his thin voice. "No, I
think not. It was Doctor Bushnell that I told about the letter."

"What letter?" demanded Griggs.

"The letter that came for Mrs. Gilmore on Monday," supplied the butler.
"I considered it most peculiar at the time, a very dirty envelope,
addressed with a lead pencil. She seemed much upset over it, although
she tried to pass it off."

"It might have been from Haskins at that," spoke up Wiggly Price,
and he turned to Sergeant Tish. "It was yesterday--Tuesday--that you
cornered Haskins in the place you call Eighth Avenue Annie's. What day
was it that the swell-dressed woman called on the man at that place?"

"Monday," answered Tish.

"Ah!" exclaimed the newspaper man triumphantly, and his ears wiggled a
bit. "It was Monday that the murdered woman got this letter that Bates
tells about. Bates, did she go to New York on Monday?"

"I don't think to New York, but she did drive somewhere in the
motor--out into the country, I believe she said."

"Yes, so she said," nodded Wiggly with meaning emphasis. "That doesn't
make it true that she didn't go to New York. Any one accompany her on
this motor trip?"

"She went alone; she returned late in the afternoon."

"Say!" exploded Ham Griggs with a glare. "One would think _you_ was the
officer in charge the way you're bustin' in with all these questions."

"Just one question more, Constable Griggs," urged Wiggly. "I'm not
trying to be officious. Bates, let us suppose for a moment that this
man, Don Haskins, did get into the house in some way or another, would
he have had time to get down the stairs before you and Mr. Gilmore
rushed up--and then let himself out of the house, while you and Mr.
Gilmore were upstairs?"

Bates debated this question for a moment and then shook his head
positively.

"He would not," he replied; "but he might have easily found a place
to conceal himself in one of the rooms upstairs. There is one bit of
detail that I may have forgotten to mention. When Mr. Gilmore and I
were about halfway up the stairway, I am positive that I heard a door
slam very loudly--very loudly, indeed."

"Huh!" grunted the constable. "That don't mean anything much. It might
just as well have been Sarbella rushin' back to his room after havin'
shot her." And then he indulged in another bit of reasoning which did
him credit. "If it was the Gilmore woman who went to see Haskins in
New York, we know she wasn't too afraid of him to go see him in that
cheap joint Sergeant Tish told us about. And yet she was afraid of the
one who come in on her last night--because she screamed. Why did she
scream? I'll tell you why she screamed; it was because she knowed that
Sarbella had come to kill her! Just put that in your pipe and smoke it
a while."

"Not a bad deduction," nodded Sergeant Tish, "but the thing that
puzzles all of us is--how did Sarbella get the gun away from Haskins?
We're just wastin' good time arguing back and forth. Let's go upstairs
and see if we can't pick up something new."

"The--the body has been removed," the butler informed them. "The
undertaker left an hour since. Doctor Bushnell was very careful that
nothing else should be disturbed, and the room is locked. Doctor
Bushnell----"

"And took the key off with him, I suppose," growled Constable Griggs.

"Doctor Bushnell, as I started to say," went on Bates, "is still here.
Mr. Gilmore seems to be in quite a bad way, and the doctor is looking
after him."

"We'll go on upstairs," declared Griggs. "Tell the doc that we want him
to come right on up and let us into that room."

Wiggly Price did not follow them immediately; he loitered downstairs
until Bates had delivered the message to the doctor and had returned.
The butler, luckily for Wiggly, had not been told the reporter's true
interest in the case, else he would have doubtless guarded his tongue
most carefully.

"It's a bad business, Bates," said the newspaper man to begin the
conversation.

"A terrible business," agreed the butler. "You don't think that Mr.
Sarbella killed her?"

"You do?"

"What else could I believe, with all the queer happenings? But I hope
not--as much for Mr. Gilmore's sake as anything, sir; he seems to take
Mr. Sarbella's arrest almost as hard as the murder."

"She was a bad lot, your master's slain wife, Bates."

"I am not surprised at that," murmured the servant. "I sensed that
she wasn't the right sort. I think we all realized that--except Mr.
Kirklan."

"Of course he wouldn't; she was a remarkably beautiful woman, and he
was in love with her. Quite a sudden marriage, I understand."

"Very sudden; a surprise and a shock to all of us."

"It's much too bad, Bates, that Mr. Gilmore did not marry a woman
of the right kind--Miss Joan, say." Wiggly's tone was disarmingly
careless, and Bates did not understand that information was being
sought.

"Yes, it certainly is," agreed the butler earnestly, falling
straightway into the little trap. "We were all hoping that it would
turn out that way. All of us, except Mr. Kirklan, could see with
half an eye that Miss Joan was in love with him, even if she is his
stepsister; it cut her up terribly when she came home from Europe and
found her here. Not only here, sir, but in Miss Joan's own room."

"The room where the murder was committed?"

"Exactly, sir; that was Miss Joan's old room--the one that she had
occupied since she was quite a small girl. When she came back I didn't
have the heart to tell her about the room. 'Bates,' she says to me,
'take the bags up to my room.' And I didn't have the heart to tell
her--knowing how much store she put by it."

This information, verification of what Etta Griggs had told him, might
mean something or nothing, Wiggly knew; probably nothing. It was just
that he had that avidity of the trained newspaper reporter for all
the facts, because experience had taught him it is often the smallest
detail which, in the light of other things, achieves prime importance.
And there was the black hairpin; he was thinking of that again.

That could not be overlooked.

At this moment Doctor Bushnell appeared from the room on the first
floor, where he had placed Kirklan Gilmore, and whose bedside he was
just leaving.

"Gilmore is in a bad, nervous state," he imparted after a nod to the
reporter. "You saw him upstairs before you left for the village; he was
bad enough then, but I'm afraid of a complete collapse--one of those
high-strung, emotional chaps, you know. If his thoughts are allowed to
torture him, they might even drive him to insanity; he must be kept
quiet. Poor devil! It's much too bad that a love like that should have
to be wasted on a woman like her. Then, to make matters worse, to make
the shock double, the man whom he considered his friend----"

He paused, remembering the cigarette butt that Wiggly had taken down to
the village.

"What did you discover?"

"That it was not Victor Sarbella's cigarette that had been dropped upon
the rug. More than that, doctor, we've got another suspect now."

"Another suspect? What other suspect could there be?"

Briefly Wiggly Price told the physician of Sergeant Tish's appearance
at Borough Hall, his identification of the murder gun, and the other
matters which turned the finger of suspicion so strongly toward Don
Haskins, the crook who had already been in flight from one murder
charge. This information left Doctor Bushnell almost speechless.

"It's astounding!" he gasped. "Positively astounding! It--it does have
a plausible sound, for a fact."

"The thing that bothers us," Wiggly told him, "is why Haskins should
have been so careful to have it appear suicide. Surely no one besides
Helen Gilmore knew that he was inside the house. Obviously he came for
money--he had a hold of some kind on her; probably knew about her past
and was levying blackmail; but there's no evidence that he got any
money, and he didn't touch her jewelry."

"You can't spend jewelry without first pawning or selling it," the
doctor said shrewdly; "possibly he realized that it would be too
dangerous for him to risk appearing in a pawnshop. Perhaps he did get
money."

"He wouldn't have had to kill her for that," countered Wiggly. "If
he did know of her past, this knowledge alone was sufficient to
extort money. He wouldn't have had to kill her. But let's be getting
upstairs. Griggs and Sergeant Tish are waiting for you to let them into
the murder room. Now that we're working from a new angle, it's best to
go over the ground again, and we've daylight now."

The physician nodded and started for the stairs.

"The crook's guilt would be the most satisfactory solution," he said,
"but it did look bad for Sarbella. Is he still being detained?"

"Yes. You can't blame Griggs for holding him; the murder isn't solved
yet, and it won't be, to my notion, until a number of points are
cleared up," answered Wiggly.

As they reached the second floor, Ham Griggs and Sergeant Tish were
waiting, the former with considerable impatience. Doctor Bushnell
unlocked the door of the murder chamber and threw it wide. The body of
Helen Gilmore, as the butler had informed them, had been removed, but
the chaise longue, its creton upholstering stained with dark splotches,
bore its mute testimony of the tragedy.

"Here we are," grunted the constable, "but I dunno what you expect to
find more'n has already been found."

Sergeant Tish projected his rotund form to the center of the room,
glanced about briefly, and then went to the windows, raising the shades
to their full height so that all possible light would be admitted. At
the second window the ripped curtain dangled before him and drew his
attention.

"It would be my guess," he said, pointing to the curtain, "that this
means one of two things: Either it was done in a struggle with the
murdered woman, or when the murderer beat it through the window." He
paused a moment and added: "Still, it doesn't look as if he'd have
taken the time to shut the window behind him."

He peered through the glass to the roof of the porch, puffed out his
round cheeks, and quickly threw up the sash. There had been no rain in
weeks, and the porch shingles were covered with a coating of dust. This
film was broken where Don Haskins' body had wiggled upward from the
cornice in his careful approach to the window, and, in more places than
one, the imprint of the man's stockinged feet showed. At Tish's grunt
of elation, Constable Griggs dashed forward, with Doctor Bushnell and
Wiggly behind him.

"Somebody either entered or left this room through the window!"
exclaimed Tish. "There's his trail in the dust on the shingles."

"Entered!" said the newspaper reporter, his ears twitching. "You can
see that those footprints--and the man was in his stockings--are all
turned this way. Yes, he came in by the window, but he didn't leave by
the window. Another check in Sarbella's favor.

"The man must have torn the curtain here, as he came into the room."

Constable Griggs gulped, but said nothing. Sergeant Tish bent forward
and examined the pane of the raised sash. Clear and distinct there were
the prints of a man's fingers--on the inside of the glass. These prints
were punctuated with downward streaks, as if the fingers had slipped,
but the whorls had not been obliterated; in fact they were clear and
distinct.

Tish reached his pudgy fingers to the breast pocket of his coat and
drew forth a Bertillon card which he had borrowed from headquarters,
and which bore, in addition to rogues' gallery photographs, full-face
and profile, of Don Haskins, the crook's finger prints.

He bobbled his head back and forth, getting the light at the best
possible angle, and then he compared the finger prints on the window
glass with those upon the card. He gave a grunt of satisfaction and
nodded his head in affirmation.

"Yep, this clinches it, gents. These are Haskins' finger prints on
the window. Good thing I brought this card along, huh?" It is hard
for a man with a chubby face like Tish's to look grim, but his voice
certainly was grim, as he added, "Haskins is wanted now for two
murders. The job now is--find Haskins."

Wiggly Price leaned closer, and he, too, observed that the finger
prints were on the inside of the pane.

"That means," he said, "that Haskins came in the window and closed
it behind him. Those smudges at the top of the prints show that his
fingers slipped a little on the glass, and that his pressure was
downward. And, had he been raising the window, the finger prints would
have been at the top of the sash rather than at the bottom."

"That's true," Tish agreed absently, returning the Bertillon card to
his pocket and turning away from the window. "Haskins must have climbed
to the roof from the porch below. Guess we'll find evidence of that,
too, on the porch pillars, although it's not particularly important how
he got up; the thing that counts is that he did, that the man was in
the house, in this very room."

Ham Griggs realized that this new evidence, the incontrovertible proof
of the finger prints, completely knocked the legs out from under
his persistent theory of Sarbella's guilt, and for the moment he
surrendered to a stunned and bewildered helplessness.

Doctor Bushnell's eyes remained upon the windowpane, with an intent and
fascinated interest.

"Most remarkable!" he murmured. "How much can be proven by such a small
thing as the touch of a man's finger! The one witness, I understand,
that cannot lie. But what is the next move?"

"Find Don Haskins," Tish answered promptly.

"And that's a big order," sighed Wiggly Price. "The man's probably
miles away from Greenacres by now. However there's nothing like being
thorough, and, if Constable Griggs can get a posse together----"

"Huh!" snorted the constable. "You don't think he'd still be hangin'
anywhere around Ardmore?"

"That depends on whether he got hold of any money," replied Sergeant
Tish. "He was broke when he left New York, y'know." He took a step
across the room and bent forward, as his foot crunched down upon a
piece of the broken vase on the floor beside the table. He picked it up
and held it in his fingers.

"Haskins probably lurched against the table and knocked it off," said
Wiggly, explaining what it was. Tish glanced with slight interest at
the shattered bit of porcelain and tossed it down. It did, of course,
seem too trivial a thing for any serious consideration.

"We've put in a pretty good quarter of an hour here," grunted Tish,
"and I guess we've done about all----Good Lord! What was that?"

From out in the hallway there had come to the ears of the four men the
sound of a choking, terrified cry, a jarring, dull thud, a rending
crash of broken glass. And then--silence.

CHAPTER XXII

WHAT THE COOK SAW

There is no drama greater than the drama of life. The actors are more
than often thrust into rôles that are not of their choosing, and they
respond to cues that they do not recognize as cues, blindly obeying the
director as he plunges them into unsought situations.

Mrs. Bogart, the Gilmore cook, who came to Greenacres each morning and
returned to her home on the outskirts of Ardmore each evening, was in
the kitchen; and, although it was baking day, not so much as a cup of
flour had been sifted. She had arrived shortly after daybreak, to be
greeted with news of the murder, and immediately she gave herself over
to intermittent outbursts of weeping. Not that Mrs. Bogart, wide of
hips, ample of bosom and stolid of countenance, with straight, black
hair brushed severely back from her low and usually damp forehead,
had any great feeling of bereavement; but, for all of her phlegmatic
aspect, the cook was given to strong emotions. At the funeral of a
comparative stranger, for instance, it was the sound of her sobs which
arose above the muffled grief of the immediate family.

So Mrs. Bogart, except for brewing a bit of breakfast tea and toasting
some slices of bread--badly burned, at that--neglected her kitchen
work and gave way to her emotional nature. From Bates she had learned
that the undertaker had arrived, and that "the new Mrs. Gilmore" had
been, as she phrased it, "laid out" in one of the spare bedrooms on the
second floor.

Now, Mrs. Bogart, her attendance at funerals amounting to an obsession,
had gazed into the face of death innumerable times, but she had never
known the thrill of looking into the features of one who had been
murdered. People about Ardmore were in the habit of dying prosaically
in their beds. This was an opportunity that might never come to her
again; and well-to-do folks, she had observed, frequently had their
funerals conducted privately, turning back the pryingly curious.

For some time Mrs. Bogart, whose place was strictly the kitchen, and
who had no other household duties, had been trying to think up an
excuse to visit the second floor, considering that this might offer her
an opportunity of viewing the dead woman. Not possessing a particularly
agile mind, it took her some little time to arrive at this bit of
pretense, and she wouldn't have thought of it then except for some
empty fruit jars. And, while the jars might have better gone to the
basement, Mrs. Bogart craftily decided to carry them upstairs to the
third floor and into the seldom-used storeroom.

"Goodness knows," she murmured, "I've been threatenin' for days upon
days to get 'em out of the kitchen."

Straightway she mounted to a chair, took the fruit jars from the
shelf where they had been temporarily placed, used a dish cloth in
improvising a sling which would carry the full ten of them, and
started for the third floor. At some time or another there had been
a back stairs to the Gilmore house, but this had been closed off in
making some modernizing alterations, so that Mrs. Bogart perforce
had to wend her way to the reception hall and up the wide front
stairway--hoping that Bates would not see her and order her back to her
own domain.

Bates, however, did not appear to interrupt her little pilgrimage of
morbid curiosity. She reached the second floor and, having to pass the
room wherein Helen Gilmore had been shot to death, paused for a moment
outside the narrowly open door, as she sought in vain to get anything
like a good look inside. And, while she could not see much, her ears
certainly got her a thrill, for it was at this moment that Sergeant
Tish had said: "Yep, this clinches it, gents. These are Haskins' finger
prints on the window. Good thing I brought this card along, huh?
Haskins is wanted now for two murders. The job now is--find Haskins."

Mrs. Bogart's eyes bulged, and the empty fruit jars came perilously
near crashing to the floor. Two murders! What did they mean? Who else
had been murdered, and who was Haskins? Up to the moment of her last
talk with Bates about the tragedy all suspicion had been leveled at
Sarbella.

She tarried a moment, but there was nothing of the conversation on the
other side of the door to enlighten her; not wishing to run the risk of
being caught at eavesdropping, she moved on down the hall toward the
stairs, the top of the house, and the seldom-used storeroom.

The entrance to the third floor stairway was inclosed, and it was
reached by means of a door. Mrs. Bogart's hand went out to the knob;
her strong fingers closed about it with a muscular grip, and then a
startled gasp sounded on her lips, and a chill swept over her body.
The door had yielded a bare inch when she felt a retarding pressure,
holding it shut against her. Some one was on the other side!

"Mebbe--mebbe it's just stuck a little," she muttered in a gulping
whisper. "Mebbe I imagined it." She braced her body, took a fresh and
determined grip on the knob, and tried it again. Under exertion of
this strong pull the door, still in the grasp of that opposing, unseen
force, came toward her a bare inch or so, revealing to her staring
eyes, indistinct in the shadows of the inclosed stairs, a bleary,
unshaven face--a face hideously haggard, terrifying.

Mrs. Bogart staggered back with a choking, frightened cry upon her
lips; the fruit jars crashed to the floor, with a thud and the sound of
splintering glass, and the woman herself toppled over in a dead faint.
From the side of her face there gushed a stream of blood, where the
ragged edge of a broken jar had slashed the flesh. After the woman's
cry, the four men in the room up the hall stood staring at each other
for a brief moment.

"What's happened now?" gasped Wiggly Price, and Constable Griggs was
too utterly stupefied to make a sound.

"It sounds like a woman's scream," said Doctor Bushnell, looking no
less dazed than the rest.

Sergeant Tish was the first to leap into motion, projecting his pudgy
body out into the hall with the other three at his heels. At the sight
of the prostrate Mrs. Bogart, surrounded by broken and unbroken fruit
jars, with the blood still streaming from her face, the New York
detective stopped dead in his tracks.

"What's this?" he shouted. "Who is this woman, and what's happened to
her?"

Constable Griggs edged forward and made a number of queer sounds before
he finally found voice.

"It--it's Mrs. Bogart--she that does the cookin' for the Gilmores!" he
gulped. "She's all bloody. Do--do you reckon that she's been murdered,
too?"

Doctor Bushnell brushed past and knelt quickly to the floor at the side
of the unconscious woman.

"She's not dead!" exclaimed Wiggly Price, noting the rapid rise and
fall of Mrs. Bogart's bosom.

"Nor badly hurt, I think," said the physician, as he made a rapid
examination. "The blood here is from a superficial wound; she's been
cut by this broken glass. I wonder what _has_ happened to her?" He
jerked his head toward the newspaper man. "Get my medicine kit, Price,"
he commanded. "You'll find it downstairs; I left it on the table in the
library."

Wiggly dashed down the stairs in instant response. Yes, what had
happened to this woman whom Griggs identified as the Gilmore cook? Was
this another angle to complicate the Greenacres tangle?

Passing through the hall into the library he heard a familiar
voice; it was "Tip" Gregory, a star reporter for a rival New York
newspaper, _The Transcript_, pleading with the butler for admittance
and information, and Bates was sternly refusing him either. Wouldn't
Gregory have gnashed his teeth in baffled rage if he had known that
Wiggly Price had things so sweetly to himself!

But the situation was too tense for wasting any time or thoughts upon
what was, after all, only an accidental triumph. He had the silly Etta
Griggs to thank for being here, on the inside of a big story, instead
of spending the morning canvassing the other papers for a job. In the
library was Doctor Bushnell's medicine kit; he grabbed the handle of
the little bag, wheeled and raced up the stairway again.

Mrs. Bogart was stirring, a moan passed her lips, but she had not
returned to consciousness.

"Is she badly hurt, doctor?" Wiggly asked, as he placed the kit upon
the floor.

"No, this cut would not cause unconsciousness. She must either have
fainted and fallen, or fainted because she fell. Sometimes sudden and
profuse bleeding causes----"

The physician's words broke off at the sound of a stifled cry coming
from the turn of the hall, where the corridor led off to the wing of
the house. Joan Sheridan, alarmed by Mrs. Bogart's scream of fright,
had hurriedly left her room to investigate. Her face told of a
sleepless, harrowed night, and now her eyes were wide and startled with
this threat of fresh terror.

"Oh," she whispered, "it's Mrs. Bogart. In Heaven's name what--what has
happened now?"

"That's what we are not exactly certain of, Miss Joan," answered Doctor
Bushnell, as he cut a dressing for the wound in the cook's face. "She
must have fallen. It is nothing serious; do not let it agitate you."

Wiggly Price had looked up quickly at the name of "Joan," for this was
the first time that he had seen her, the stepsister who was so much in
love with Kirklan Gilmore. She was not aware of his scrutiny, so he had
ample opportunity to study her closely. His experience at reporting had
given him a sort of instinctive ability to gauge the human emotions,
and he had a feeling that there was more than horror in the girl's dark
eyes, and he read it with one brief word--fear.

This look of fear was not dissipated by the physician's assurance that
Mrs. Bogart's injury was superficial. It remained, a peculiar, almost
indescribable expression.

"Your mother, Miss Joan, is resting quietly after the shock?" murmured
Doctor Bushnell, stanching the flow of blood in the unconscious woman's
cheek. "I will see her again presently."

"Y-yes," Joan Sheridan said faintly; "mother is sleeping, and Bates has
told me that Mr. Sarbella had been placed under arrest."

"That's true," nodded the doctor, "but it looks now that he will
be released very shortly. You were right when you were so sure
that Sarbella was innocent, and I have a new respect for a woman's
intuition. I think you'd better go back to your room, please."

But the doctor's reassuring words seemed to have other than a soothing
effect upon Joan; if possible, her face became a shade more pale.
Certainly she gave a violent start, and that smoldering light of fear
leaped into a wild light of terror.

"You mean----" The shaking whisper that came from her lips was hardly
audible.

"Please, Joan, please!" exclaimed the doctor. "This is no time for
questions. I've a fainting woman on my hands, and a new suspect
entirely, a crook who got in by the window. The gun was his. No more
questions now."

A gasp that seemed to be at the same time amazement and relief came
from the girl; a look of bewilderment showed in her face. Her hands,
so tightly clenched at her sides, relaxed; swiftly she turned and
disappeared around the bend in the hall.

Wiggly Price's ears twitched violently, for he, unlike the others--and
he, too, would have doubtless overlooked it but for the black hairpin
and the gossip Etta Griggs had given him--had observed her agitation
when told that Sarbella had practically been removed as a suspect, and
her surprise and the relaxing tenseness when she learned of the other.

Did this mean that she had knowledge of the crime, which, for reasons
of her own, she had kept to herself? With this Wiggly linked still
another question: Why had Joan Sheridan been so positive of Victor
Sarbella's innocence? For Wiggly was of the opinion that "woman's
intuition" is something greatly exaggerated. The answer to the latter
question was in itself unimportant; for that matter, so had Kirklan
Gilmore been certain, to the point of vigorous protest, that the
artist had not fired the fatal shot.

Wiggly made up his mind then and there that, while Constable Griggs was
searching for Don Haskins, he would be searching for the answer to Joan
Sheridan's puzzling behavior. He was certain there must be something
behind it, a vital something that would have an important bearing on
the crime.

Doctor Bushnell had completed dressing Mrs. Bogart's wound, having
delayed restoratives until this was done. Now he was chafing her wrists
briskly, and the woman was showing signs of coming to her senses. With
startling suddenness her eyes flew open, and she sat erect; since
her first conscious thought was a return to the moment of her swoon,
a fresh cry of terror burst from her throat. It trailed off into a
gurgle, as she realized that she was not now alone.

"It's all right, Mrs. Bogart," the physician told her soothingly.
"You've had a nasty fall and cut yourself a little on those broken
jars; but it's nothing to worry about."

"That man!" cried Mrs. Bogart. "Where--where did he go? It's Heaven's
own blessing that he didn't murder me in my tracks. He was peering out
at me, and everything went dizzy black in front of me. I----"

"Her head ain't right yet," grunted Constable Griggs. Mrs. Bogart,
letting her heavy fingers touch gingerly to her bandaged face, heard
the local officer's skeptical remark and bridled in indignation.

"I tell you I seen him!" she shrilled, pointing to the door which
closed off the third-floor stairs. "I seen him behind there. He
was holdin' the door shut on me. I was takin' these jars up to the
storeroom. I seen him--lookin' out at me through the crack. He's there
now, if he didn't run out. I tell you I seen him!"

All four of the men exchanged quick, startled, almost incredulous
glances. The same thought had leaped into all their minds. Sergeant
Tish, staring at the closed door, mechanically hitched his gun holster
within easier reach.

"Do you think it's possible, men, that she did see a man, and that he
is----" began Doctor Bushnell.

"Yes, it must be Haskins!" cried Wiggly. "Haskins is still in the
house! We dashed out into the hall when she screamed. The man's had no
chance of escape."

Sergeant Tish pursed his lips, frowned, and shook his head. "I can't
believe it," he muttered. "I can't believe Haskins would be such a
boob, hiding on the scene of the crime all these hours after the murder
has been committed. It's ridiculous."

Constable Ham Griggs decided he had been in the background long
enough; events had been developing too fast for him to keep pace with
them, but here was a situation that he could cope with. It required
no deductions, only action. He took a decisive step forward, dragging
forth a somewhat ancient forty-five-caliber revolver, which he gave a
dramatic flourish.

"Stand back!" he roared. "I'm the officer in charge here, and I'm goin'
up there to get my man!"

CHAPTER XXIII

THE TRAPPED RAT

With the breath wheezing noisily through his parted lips, which were
twisted back so that his clenched teeth were bared, Don Haskins leaned
tensely against the wall of the storeroom on the third floor of the
Gilmore house. Grim and desperate terror held him in its grip.

"They've got me--they've got me now!" he groaned. "Caught like a rat in
a trap!"

Half the night and all of the morning he had tried in vain to slip out
of the house--somewhere, anywhere. Each effort had been frustrated
by the danger of discovery; at each attempt there had been voices
or footsteps in the hall, or floating warningly up the stairs. Then
the coming of daylight had made the contemplated dash all the more
hazardous.

He had about made up his mind to wait for another coming of darkness,
when he had heard the arrival of a car, and, peering down from the
narrow dormer window, he had seen the arrival of Detective Sergeant
Tish. The coming of Tish naturally filled him with wild terror, for
that could mean but one thing--the New York detective had trailed him
to Greenacres!

So, after several minutes of tortured indecision, he had crept down the
inclosed stairs, determined to make a break for it.

He could not put up a fight, for he had no weapon. While he had
crouched at the foot of the stairs, ears straining in an effort to
catch any sound of warning from the other side of the panel, Mrs.
Bogart had turned the knob, and Haskins had seized it from the inside,
holding the door fast. Then she had yanked it again, the eyes of the
two met through the narrow crack, and the woman had screamed.

For Don Haskins there had been but one choice, that was to hurry back
to the storeroom and wait. There was no bolt on the door, but he
barricaded it with a packing box filled with non-descript odds and
ends, such as people relegate to the garret. There was no means of
escape except the stairs; the dormer window mocked him with its deep,
unbroken drop downward. And no weapon; even the clutter of stuff that
half filled the storeroom offered him nothing that would serve as a
cudgel. So, helpless, defenseless, muttering curses between his locked
teeth, he waited. He wondered why it was so long, why the New York
copper did not come pounding up the stairs to get him. His eyes were
upon the door, his gaze intent upon the knob--watching for it to turn.
And then he got an idea!

The knob was held in place by a screw, and, for lack of a screw driver,
he went to the task with his finger nail. The screw was set fast, and
the nail tore down to the quick, but he did not notice the twinge of
pain, merely attacked the screw with the thumb nail of the other hand.
At last it turned, and the heavy metal knob was free.

Haskins, that his shoes might make no alarming sound upon the bare
boards of the storeroom, was in his stockings. Hastily he tore one of
his socks free from his foot, dropped the doorknob into it and he had
a deadly slung shot that he could swing with telling effect. Not much
of a weapon, perhaps, but vastly better than no weapon at all. He put
on both shoes, the one over a bare foot, and again waited with tense,
twitching nervousness.

It must have been another five minutes--to Haskins the minutes dragged
into the length of hours--before he heard a voice raised to a bellow
and the tramp of heavy feet upon the stairs. He flattened his body even
closer to the wall, at a point where he would be behind the door when
it opened, as he took a tighter grip about the weighted sock.

There may have been some doubts as to Constable Griggs' nimbleness of
mind, but there could be no doubt as to his personal courage, as, yards
ahead of Sergeant Tish, he dashed, two and three steps at a time, to
the third floor.

"Come on outta there an' surrender!" roared Ham Griggs. "Dead or alive,
Haskins--that goes for you!"

But Don Haskins did not come out to surrender. He made not the
slightest sound. Griggs again shouted, but still there was no response,
and he began to share Tish's doubts of the wanted man being in the
house. Perhaps Mrs. Bogart's story had been purely a figment of the
imagination.

Without, however, relaxing the vigilant position of his gun, he reached
forward and tried the door. It moved back a little, and he met the
obstruction of the barricading packing box. The constable applied the
pressure of his shoulder, and his free hand cautiously cocked the
hammer of the revolver. The door was forced back another few inches.

The barred door, of course, was proof that the storeroom was occupied;
he paused a moment to peer through the narrow opening. No signs of
Haskins.

"He's here," he yelled down the stairs to Tish, who was looking up from
the bottom. "He's got the door blocked. I'm goin' in, and I'm goin' in
a-shootin'." Again his body battered against the door.

Don Haskins, his mouth parted into a terrible grimace, swung back his
arm. As the constable's head and shoulders appeared at the edge of the
door, the sock, the metal knob stuffed wickedly in the toe, described a
swift arc and caught Griggs a heavy blow on the skull.

With a grunt he pitched forward to the floor in a senseless heap; the
convulsion of his body pulled the trigger of the revolver, and its
roaring, angry voice thundered through the upper part of the house. The
gun slid across the boards and bumped against the leg of the discarded
couch.

Haskins dropped his improvised weapon and leaped for the gun; his body
had scarcely straightened when Sergeant Tish came pounding and panting
up the steps, drawn automatic in his hand. As Haskins whirled, he again
faced this Nemesis who had trapped him at Eighth Avenue Annie's. No
word was spoken; both knew it was one or the other.

Haskins fired first, but only by the difference of a split second;
the two shots rang out almost as one. Sergeant Tish's shoulder became
suddenly numb, a searing numbness, as hot lead bored the flesh. His arm
dropped limply helpless to his side, and a sickening nausea paled the
chubby roundness of his cheeks.

The other man reeled on his feet and steadied himself against the wall.
A gasping gurgle, that trailed off into a curse, burst through his
hideously parted lips, and his left hand, pressing to his waist, became
red with a trickle of crimson.

But Haskins did not fire again; there was no need. Sergeant Tish's
fingers had lost all their strength, and the automatic clumped to the
floor. He could offer no resistance when Haskins stumbled forward,
cleared the body of the unconscious constable, and went plunging down
the stairs. In the doorway at the foot of the steps Wiggly Price and
Doctor Bushnell were staring upward. Haskins lifted the revolver
menacingly.

"Get outta my way!" he gritted. "I'll kill the first man that tries to
stop me."

It would have been a foolhardy thing to have opposed the flight of this
armed, desperate man, wanted for murder, trying to beat the electric
chair. Doctor Bushnell, clutching Wiggly Price's arm, made haste to get
out of Haskins' path. Mrs. Bogart screamed shrilly and dashed wildly
for the first door. She hurled herself into the room and braced her
body against the panel.

Haskins, as he reached the second floor, was reeling like a drunken
man. His left hand, still clutching his body near the top of his
trousers was hot and sticky with his own blood. He reached the top
of the second stairway which led down to the first floor--and what?
Even in his desperately chaotic state of mind, he knew that the odds
were against him. But anything was better than the chair, and it was
that--or this. He felt his strength swiftly ebbing from his body,
slipping away from him through that hot, burning hole in his abdomen.

Downstairs, Bates, the butler, had heard the double shot and for a
moment was incapable of movement. It was only with supreme effort
that he got his frail old legs in motion and propelled himself toward
the stairs. Halfway up he faced Haskins, who held weavingly to the
bannister rail.

"Out--out of my way!" ordered Haskins, but his voice was thick,
hoarsely unsteady. The revolver wabbled with the lurching of his body.
Before Bates, petrified with terror at the menace of the pointing gun,
could obey, the wounded man at the top of the stairs sagged forward and
went crashing down, sliding, bumping, clawing, and his body came to a
halt on the first landing at Bates' feet. He had just enough strength
to lift himself weakly to his elbow.

"That dirty dick--got me--good!" he muttered. "I--I hope I
croaked--him. Curse the cops! The cops and the skirts--to hell with
both of 'em!" He coughed chokingly. "I'm dyin'," he screeched. "I'm
bleedin' to death--inside."

His distorted mouth was flecked with red.

CHAPTER XXIV

HASKINS KEEPS HIS SECRET

Stunned and sick from the paralyzing impact of Haskins' bullet,
Sergeant Tish did not realize that his own shot had found an even more
vital mark; he had failed to see the trickle of crimson that welled
from between the wanted man's fingers, as the latter had pressed his
hand hard against his body. In a daze the New York detective only
realized that the desperate fugitive was escaping from him a second
time, and that his flight must be stopped. As his thoughts cleared
a little, it occurred to him that Haskins might try to leave in the
police car out in front of the house, but he would have a hard job of
that, for the plain-clothes man had the key to the ignition switch in
his pocket.

The local constable still lay in a huddled, grotesque heap on
the floor, and he had not moved. Despite his own haste to pursue
Haskins--his injury would not stop that--Tish leaned over Ham Griggs,
puzzled that there was no evidence of a terrible, lethal wound. He
had taken it for granted that Haskins must have had another weapon in
addition to the one left beside the body of the murdered Helen Gilmore,
and that he had shot down Griggs, as the latter had burst in upon him
in the attempted capture. All he could find was a purpling swelling at
the edge of Griggs' temple; and then he saw the improvised weapon, the
strangest that had ever come to his notice--the sock weighted with the
doorknob.

"Huh!" said Sergeant Tish, with a grunt that was more than half a
groan. He saw what had happened. "Haskins beaned 'im with that thing,
handed him a knock-out, and then took his gun away from him." He bent
still a little lower and perceived that the constable's breathing was
reassuringly regular. "Don't look like he was goin' to croak."

As Don Haskins collapsed and went crashing down the stairs, Wiggly
Price and Doctor Bushnell stood gaping at each other, both struggling
with indecision as to which direction they would turn as their first
move to follow this breathless race of happenings. What had happened
upstairs they did not know, only that to their ears had come the
ominous sound of three pistol shots, and that neither Constable Griggs
nor Sergeant Tish had come down.

"What's happened to the two officers?" cried Doctor Bushnell.
"Perhaps----" Before he could finish the sentence, Tish appeared at the
head of the inclosed stairway, his right arm dangling limply, a trickle
of blood seeping down beneath the edge of his coat sleeve, twisting
into a fantastic crimson design about his wrist and the back of his
hand.

"What's happened up there?" shouted the physician. "Heavens, man,
you're wounded! Griggs----"

Tish had retrieved the automatic and held it in his left hand rather
awkwardly, but determined to use it if he could.

"The constable is knocked cold," he said, as he came down the steps.
"You'd better look after him, doctor. Haskins has----"

Wiggly Price had rushed to the head of the other stairs, from where
he could see Don Haskins sprawled upon the first landing, gasping for
breath and mopping the foam from his mouth with the back of his hand.
The revolver had slid several steps down and was safely out of the
man's reach.

"Here he is, sergeant!" shouted the newspaper man. "He nicked you, but
you got him worse than that."

Again Doctor Bushnell struggled with indecision. Three men wounded!
Which of them should have first call upon his professional services?
Don Haskins' choking wail, coming from down the front stairs, decided
him.

"I'm dyin'!" he croaked. "I say I'm dyin'." And with the next breath
he muttered a vicious curse upon "the cops." But, before the doctor
could move out of his tracks, Joan Sheridan had again come flying from
the east wing of the house and clutched his arm. At the moment of her
appearance she saw Tish.

"Those shots--what do they mean?" she panted. "What--what has happened
now?"

"We have caught the murderer," answered Doctor Bushnell, gently
pushing her away. "The crook who killed Kirklan's wife was in hiding
on the third floor." Another groan came from Haskins. "There was some
shooting; the man's desperately wounded. I am going to see now. Go back
to your room, Joan; you've had enough horror."

But the girl crept to the top of the stairs after him and stared down
with a shudder.

"I--I can't understand!" she whispered. "They say that man killed her.
I--I can't understand!" she whispered. "They say that man killed her.
I can't understand!"

Had Wiggly Price been privileged to hear those whispered words of
Joan's it would have added fresh fuel to his smoldering suspicion that
she knew more about the death of Helen Gilmore than she was willing
to tell. The newspaper man had hurried down the stairs and, elbowing
the butler out of the way, bent over Haskins. A moment later Doctor
Bushnell had joined him, Tish close behind. The doctor shook his head
gravely, as he saw the bloodstained saliva about Haskins' lips.

"Internal hemorrhage," he murmured. "I don't think there's much chance
for him."

As if to verify this diagnosis, Haskins gave a gasping cough, and the
crimson foam became a trickle.

"Ain'tcha gonna call a priest?" he murmured. "I'm dyin', I tell
you--dyin'."

"Keep him alive, doc, until I get a full confession out of him," urged
Sergeant Tish. "Haskins, come through; make a clean breast of----"

"No questions for a moment," broke in the physician. "Let him be quiet
until I see what can be done for him. No matter what he's done, he's
entitled to the best a doctor can give him. It's barely possible that
an immediate operation----"

Don Haskins made a half-sobbing, half-growling protest.

"Nix on the--operation stuff. It wouldn't do me no good--anyhow; I tell
you that I'm bleedin' to death--inside of me."

Doctor Bushnell jerked his head toward Wiggly.

"Help me with him," he ordered. "We'll have to get him somewhere, so
that I can see what can be done for him." And to the butler: "Bates, up
the stairs quick--get my bag. It's on the floor in the hall--near the
other stairs. And, Bates, where can we take this man?"

"There are but two guest rooms, sir; one Mr. Sarbella occupied, and the
other--the body has been placed there."

"Then it will have to be Sarbella's room," declared the doctor. "Help
me up with him, Mr. Price. Careful, Haskins; the more exertion the more
the bleeding and the slimmer your chances."

Sergeant Tish's bullet-punctured shoulder, now that the numbness of the
thudding impact was passing, throbbed with an excruciating agony, but
he clamped his teeth together, having no intention of making a demand
upon Doctor Bushnell's professional services until a statement was had
from the possibly dying prisoner. He could offer no assistance, but he
followed back up the stairs, as Bushnell and the newspaper reporter
supported Haskins to the second floor and along the hall to the guest
room which had been Sarbella's.

Joan Sheridan tarried indecisively another moment or so and then
she returned to her own room, her mind in no way cleared of the
bewilderment. She longed for explanations, but knew this was no time to
ask questions.

In the guest room Haskins was placed upon the bed where, as his first
act in an effort to save the mans' life, Doctor Bushnell quickly
prepared an internal astringent, a drug calculated to check the inward
bleeding. Then he examined the wound with the aid of a probe; Haskins'
slowing pulse warned the physician that life was ebbing, and that
there was no hope.

"The nearest hospital is fifteen miles away, and the trip would be
fatal," he said. "And I have never specialized in surgery. I have tried
to check the internal blood flow, but there is nothing else I can do.
All that I can suggest is to call Doctor Hollis, who is a surgeon. If
the man is still alive when Hollis gets here----"

"It--it ain't no use," gasped Don Haskins. "I'm gonna croak, and I know
I'm gonna croak."

"Yes, Haskins, it looks that way," nodded Doctor Bushnell; "if you've
got any statement to make you'd better make it now. Anyhow I'll
telephone Doctor Hollis and then look after Ham Griggs. Unconscious,
didn't you say, Sergeant Tish? Lord, the house has suddenly become a
hospital! What about your own injury?"

Tish shook his head. "I can wait--until Haskins has talked," he said.
"You'd better look after the constable first, anyhow. It may be worse
than it seemed to me."

Don Haskins was breathing heavily, his eyes closed, his hands clenched.
As the doctor left the room, Tish leaned forward, but became dizzily
faint and had to seek the support of a chair.

"You might as well talk, Haskins," he said. "What made you shoot
Gilmore's wife?"

The prisoner's lips twisted. "You're gonna give me the rap for that?"
he muttered weakly. "Tryin' to hang two croaks onto me--and I never did
either one of 'em." His eyes opened slowly. "Dago Mike--did he tell the
cops that I did for the watchman--that loft job in the Bronx?"

Tish nodded. "Yes, that's what he told the inspector," he answered.

"It's a lie," said Haskins, but without any great emotion of
indignation; perhaps, being so sure that he was dying, he did not
care, or it might have been that he did not have the strength left for
vehemence. Still, again, it was possible that it sounded so flat and
colorless, this denial, because it lacked the ring of truth. "Dago Mike
done it. I knowed he'd squeal; he always was a dirty rat. I was a fool
to go into a job with that--that scum. Yeah, Dago Mike was the one that
did the watchman."

Tish winced with a fresh throb of pain from his shoulder. "Why did you
shoot Gilmore's wife?" he repeated.

Haskins turned his head, let his mouth twist into a harsh smile, and,
lifting his hand slowly, wiped his lips with the back of his hand.
There was again a little blood.

"Gilmore's wife?" he retorted in a hoarse whisper. "She was--my wife!"

Wiggly Price started forward with an exclamation of amazement, and his
ears danced with excitement.

"W-what?" he gasped. "Y-your wife? You mean that? Great heavens, Tish,
I believe he's telling the truth!"

The New York detective gestured for silence with his uninjured arm.

"Shut up!" he commanded tersely.

"Yeah, that's--that's what she was--my wife," went on Don Haskins in a
whisper, which, as he continued to talk, was at times hardly audible.
"She done bigamy when she married--Gilmore. She--she never got no
divorce--from me.

"I'm gonna talk, see. What I'm tellin' you is strictly on the level. I
know I'm goin'--fast; there ain't no use for me to--cover up. Curse the
skirts! If it wasn't--for her----" His voice trailed off in a choking
excitement, his eyes closed momentarily, and the two eagerly listening
men were afraid that it was all over with him, but Haskins looked at
them again.

"I--I guess she thought she'd shook me--after I busted up a mash she
had on a guy named Sarbella; but I kept cases on her--got a line on her
when I come back from Chi--parole from a long stretch at Joliet.

"Then I gets into that Bronx job jam, and I needs dough--bad. And
quick. So I send for--for her, and she----" He had to stop again to
wipe his mouth free of that trickle of blood which oozed upward from
his punctured stomach.

"And she came to Eighth Avenue Annie's," supplied Tish. "She gave you
some money. We know that much; go on, Haskins."

"She was comin' back--to-day--with a thousand iron men," proceeded the
prisoner's weakening whisper. "Then Annie tipped off the cops. Curse
the old hag! I dunno why Annie----"

"She did not," grunted Sergeant Tish; "I saw her buying some duds and
trailed her. Annie didn't double cross you."

"When I lays you out--and beats it," went on Haskins, "I--I guess
you know part of it, how I swipes a taxi an' blows out here?" Tish
nodded. "I sneaks around the house an' spots--Helen's window, does a
porch-climber stunt to the roof, gets into her room, an'----"

"And shot her--with my gun," prompted the detective. But, if Haskins
was the murderer, he did not fall into this trap of suggestion.

"I'm givin' it to you--straight," his whisper went on. "I didn't croak
her; I--I grabbed her, and she--got the gat--outta my pocket, but
I didn't know that--then. We hears a door slam, an' we thinks it's
Gilmore--in the--next room. She sneaks me into the hall and tells me to
hide--third floor. Says she'll get me some dough and get me--away."

The man's words were so faint and came from his lips in such a jerky
tumble that both Tish and Wiggly Price had to lean close in order to
hear the rest of his story.

"When I gets up there--third floor, I knows it was her--took--the gun.
I--I guess she was afraid I was gonna--use it--on her. She knowed she'd
done me dirt. Curse her--she made a bum--outta me.

"I--I wants that gun, see! After a while I sneaks back down to--second
floor--to make her--gimme the gat. As I gets to--to the foot of the
stairs I hears a scream. It comes from--from her room. Then--then
there's--a shot."

Both Tish and Wiggly looked skeptical at this, but neither of them
spoke; both sensed that Don Haskins had something to add. They were
right; he had. After another moment of silence, Haskins' lips moved
again.

"The--the door--was open; the--the light was burnin'--inside, an' I
seen--the one who did the job--comin' out--of the room."

Sergeant Tish snorted derisively.

"Haskins," he flung out, "you're lying! Are you going to face your
Maker with that lie on your conscience? That stuff's the bunk. You
killed her, and you might as well come through."

"Wait a minute, sergeant," whispered Wiggly; "ask him whom he saw
coming out of the room. There's a chance that he may be telling us the
truth!"

Tish hesitated a moment, stirred in his chair, winced with the pain of
the movement, and then accepted the suggestion.

"There's just one way that you can prove that you are giving us
straight goods, Haskins," he said, "and that's to tell us who came out
of the room."

Don Haskins closed his eyes again, and a queer, crooked, mirthless
grimace caught up the corners of his mouth, a grimace all the more
horrible because a fresh trickle of crimson seeped across his lips
and trickled down his unshaven chin. Whether he had begun his story
with the intention of ending it at this most unsatisfactory point, or
whether the abrupt termination was a matter of sudden decision, can
never be known.

"She--she was--no good," he told them in an almost inaudible whisper.
"She--she made a bum outta me when--when she gimme the go-by. She made
that Sarbella kid do a Dutch, and she handed Gilmore--a mean wallop.
She got--what was comin' to her. If I wasn't gonna croak--I'd have
to talk to save--my own self; but I ain't gonna make no trouble--for
nobody--on account--killin' her. That's all you get--from me."

"He's lying!" gritted Tish. "Sure he's lying. He killed her."

But Wiggly Price was not so sure. If Haskins, as it seemed, knew he was
dying, why should he lie? There was one possibility why he should; it
might have occurred to him that he still had a chance to cheat death,
and he had cunningly concocted this yarn out of the whole cloth.

Thoughts and theories leaped through Wiggly's mind. If Haskins' story,
improbable as it sounded, were true, the Greenacres mystery had been
returned to its first status, and suspicion returned even more strongly
to Victor Sarbella. Guilt lay between the artist and Joan Sheridan.
Again the newspaper man thought of the girl's agitation when told
that suspicion had turned away from Sarbella, her relief and yet
bewilderment when she had heard that circumstances pointed to Haskins,
the crook; and he thought, too, of the black hairpin.

"You're lying, Haskins," Tish said again; "but what gets me is that you
didn't make a break for it after the shooting."

The wounded man stirred slightly. "I--I tried--to make--my get-away,"
he whispered, "but there was two guys comin' up the front stairs, an' I
hadda dodge back--to--the attic."

"Haskins," burst out Wiggly, "the person you saw coming out of that
room--was it a man or a woman?"

But Don Haskins shook his head feebly. He made no other response.
A little later, while Tish still plied insistent and exasperated
questions, the man's body twitched and relaxed; then a gush of crimson
poured from his mouth.

"He's dying!" cried Wiggly and made a leap toward the door to summon
Doctor Bushnell.

It was too late. Haskins' eyes had opened and were fixed glassily upon
the ceiling. He was dying with his last, stubborn silence unbroken; and
the Gilmore tragedy was yet to be solved.

CHAPTER XXV

THE SKEPTICISM OF SERGEANT TISH

The doctor had found Constable Griggs' injury worse than he had
anticipated, for Haskins had struck a vicious blow with the doorknob
wickedly concealed within the toe of his sock; there was a bad skull
fracture that threatened fatal results. With Bates to help him, Doctor
Bushnell had placed Ham Griggs upon the discarded couch and had just
completed a painstaking examination, when Wiggly Price came pounding up
the third floor stairs to the storeroom.

"Quick, doc!" panted the newspaper man. "Haskins is dying; he's got
another hemorrhage--a worse one. I'm afraid he's a goner."

The doctor motioned to the butler.

"You stay here with the constable, Bates," he ordered. "I'll be back in
a moment; we've got to get this man to the hospital. He's dangerously
hurt, Price; a bad skull fracture." As he spoke, he was following the
reporter back down the stairs. "I'm not surprised about Haskins. But
there was nothing more than I could do for him, and Griggs needed me,
too."

"The other doctor, the surgeon, you telephoned for----"

"Is operating at a hospital in New York this morning; I was unable to
reach him. But, for that matter, I do not believe any human agency
could have saved Haskins. Perhaps, after all, it's better this
way; circumstances are doing what the State would doubtless have
done--exacted his life in payment."

They had reached the door of the guest room. Sergeant Tish still sat in
his chair beside the bed; he turned slowly, painfully.

"You're too late," he said.

Doctor Bushnell stepped forward, was silent for moment; then he
inclined his head.

"Yes," he agreed. "I'm too late, but it doesn't matter; even an
operation was a forlorn hope. I could not have kept him alive; nothing
could have done that, I think." He stared down at the dead man's
contorted features. "An evil face," he murmured. "An evil end for an
evil life. Did he make a confession, sergeant?"

"No, confound his stubbornness!" growled Sergeant Tish. "He gave us a
wild kind of yarn that explained his connection with the Gilmore woman,
his hold on her, and how he got into the house, but denied that he did
the shooting. Of course he was lying."

Doctor Bushnell nodded. "He killed her--certainly," he agreed. "The way
he knocked out Griggs and shot you is proof that he was a cold-blooded
killer. What was the hold that he had over the dead woman?"

"She was Haskins' wife--his legal wife."

The physician gasped and, thinking of the beautiful Helen Gilmore,
stared down at the hideous face of the dead criminal, with a look of
amazement that bordered upon incredulity.

"What--the wife of that man? It seems absurd, absolutely preposterous!
I find it next to impossible to believe it. Then, when she married
Kirklan, she----"

"Committed bigamy," finished Sergeant Tish with a jerk of his head that
sent another stab of pain through his wounded shoulder. "That's it,
doctor; and that is what gave him a hold on her--why he was able to
have her visit him at Eighth Avenue Annie's day before yesterday, give
him money and agree to give him still more; that was why he fled to her
for protection and was hiding when I stumbled onto him. I guess that
part of it is true, all right.

"Perhaps not so amazing as it would seem. Haskins was not always the
bum he is now. They used to call him Nifty Don in his palmy days; he's
hit the skids since then. He blames her for slipping; she threw him
over, as I got it. I wish you'd take a look at this shoulder of mine,
doc; the wound is throbbing like a sixty-horse-power engine."

Doctor Bushnell murmured a hasty apology for neglecting him so long.

"I'll have a look at that right now, Sergeant Tish. Three emergency
cases all at one time is a big order for a doctor. Price, will you
get my kit from the third floor? I'm hoping there's enough gauze and
bandages to do."

"The constable come around all right?" asked Tish, as the newspaper man
hurried from the room.

"A bad skull fracture, sergeant, where Haskins struck him a terrific
blow on the side of the head. I'm taking him to the hospital just as
quickly as I've got you patched up a bit. You, too, if there is need."

"Don't think it'll be necessary, doc. Lord, what a wild morning it's
been!" He gritted his teeth, as the physician slipped down the coat
sleeve and began ripping away the shirt. "What's happened to Gilmore?
Strange that he didn't show up with all the racket."

"Probably asleep under the influence of the opiate that I gave him
to relax his strain," answered Doctor Bushnell. "He's one of those
high-strung, emotional fellows, and I couldn't risk too much nervous
tension with him. He was on the verge of a collapse. Poor devil! He's a
good sort; doesn't deserve what that woman has done to him."

Wiggly returned with the doctor's kit, and Bushnell began to work
swiftly; the wound in the detective's shoulder had bled but little. The
bullet, he found, had struck the collar bone at a deflecting angle,
plowing for a brief distance along the top of the clavicle, where it
was imbedded just beneath the skin.

"You're a lucky man, Sergeant Tish," grunted the doctor. "If that had
been a little lower there would have been the very devil to pay. The
worst danger is that the bone has been cracked, and I do not think it
has been. This treatment, of course, is only temporary; I'll look after
you again later."

It was the work of but a few minutes to make a shallow incision which
removed the bullet, cauterize the wound, and apply dressings.

"I shall take Griggs to the hospital in my car," said Bushnell, as he
finished. "The butler can go along with me. We'll be back within an
hour or so--just as soon as I can manage it. I suppose Sarbella will
have to stay in jail until Griggs recovers consciousness and releases
him."

Wiggly broke a considerable silence.

"It's my notion," he said, "that Sarbella had better stay right where
he is until--well, until the case has been cleared up completely."

The doctor stared in surprise. "What do you mean by that?" he
exclaimed. "Not that there's any doubt but Haskins killed the woman?"

"Not the slightest doubt that Haskins did it," Tish declared in a
positive tone. "I don't take any stock in his story--that is, the part
of it in which he denied doing the shooting. I suppose the rest of it
is straight enough."

Doctor Bushnell looked reprovingly at the newspaper man. "I must say,"
he said severely, "that you are a most perverse young man. When the
weight of all the evidence was strictly against Sarbella, you were
trying to prove his innocence. Yet now, when the discovery and capture
of this desperate criminal--the legal husband of the dead woman--makes
it practically certain that Haskins was the murderer, you suddenly
change front and----"

"Perhaps it's because I've got more faith in the truth of Haskins'
story than Sergeant Tish has," broke in Wiggly Price. "In my mind the
case against Sarbella is stronger than ever--circumstantially. But,
with what we've got, I don't think for a minute that a jury would ever
convict him. Haskins' account of things does explain how Sarbella,
or"--he hesitated cautiously--"or some other person might have got
possession of the gun."

"Or some other person!" exclaimed the doctor impatiently. "Tut, Price,
don't be such an utter ass. I've something more important to do than
listen to a new crop of empty theories. What other person, pray, have
you in mind?"

Wiggly felt that any mention of Joan Sheridan would arouse the
physician's antagonism; moreover it would serve no purpose. So he chose
the wise course of answering the question only with a shrug of the
shoulders.

"The constable is a heavy man, and the butler old and rather feeble,"
he said, abruptly switching the subject; "perhaps I'd better help you
get him downstairs and into your car."

"Yes; please," grunted Doctor Bushnell.

Tish trailed along behind the two and waited on the second floor,
while the physician and Wiggly went to the storeroom to carry down the
unconscious Ham Griggs.

"He hasn't moved a muscle since you left, Doctor Bushnell," reported
the butler. "Except that I can see him breathing I'd think he was dead."

The doctor issued brief, terse instructions, and he and Wiggly formed
a human packsaddle by grasping each other's wrists. In this way, their
heavy burden between them, they made their way down from the third
floor, while Bates hurried off to get a supply of pillows for padding
the tonneau of the doctor's car.

"I was going to suggest that you come along," Bushnell suggested; but
Wiggly shook his head.

"No, I'd like to stay here," he answered. "Bates will do as well as I
for your trip."

"Oh, I see," the physician said shortly, "you want to gather some new
theories about the tragedy. You're making a fool of yourself, Price;
the case, thank Heaven, is solved."

"Hope so, doctor, but that remains to be seen."

"Certainly it's solved!" exclaimed Bushnell with asperity. "As deputy
coroner I shall convene a jury and hold an inquest as quickly as
possible--this afternoon. I'll bring the district attorney back with me
when I return from the hospital. The verdict will be a mere matter of
formality."

"Yes," agreed Wiggly, "a mere matter of formality, unless we turn up
something new."

The butler came hurrying out of the house with the pillows; the
doctor took them from him and arranged them supportingly behind the
unconscious constable's shoulders.

"Get your hat, Bates," he instructed; "you'll have to go along."

Three or four minutes later the physician's machine, Bushnell at the
wheel and Bates in the rear seat with the insensible Griggs, rolled
down the white-graveled driveway, and Wiggly returned to the house,
wondering a little what had happened to Tip Gregory, reporter for the
rival paper, _The Transcript_. Probably Tip, rebuffed at Greenacres,
had gone to the village in search of information.

Sergeant Tish had come down from the second floor and had established
himself in one of the library's roomy chairs, making himself as
comfortable as his twinging shoulder would permit. His roundish
face was still gray with the throbbing pain, but he endured it with
fortitude.

"Well, young man," he grunted, "you've got a darn good story, and you
ought to be satisfied. Seems to me that it's good enough to suit your
paper without your trying to add anything imaginative."

"Meaning," replied Wiggly, "that you'd have me quit thinking. Nope, I
stick to my hunch that Haskins' story was what he said it was--strictly
on the level."

"Bunk!" snorted Tish.

"Let's talk it over, sergeant," Wiggly urged earnestly as, hands
rammed deep into his pockets, he strode up and down the room, his ears
twitching slightly. "Does it seem reasonable to you that Haskins would
have left the automatic behind him after the shooting?"

"Humph!" the New York detective grunted non-committally.

"That gun," went on the newspaper man, "was his one friend, the only
hope that he had if he were cornered. Besides, leaving the gun behind
served no purpose--no purpose whatever. In fact, if he had the brains
to reason it out, he would have known that there was a chance--a
serious chance--of the automatic being identified as your gun. It's the
common thing to trace a gun by its serial number."

"He might have dropped the gun accidentally and didn't have a chance to
get his hands on it again."

"Oh, I say, sergeant, that's too thin!" exclaimed Wiggly. "It's taking
too much for granted to presume that the gun accidentally fell in a
position directly beneath the murdered woman's hand. No, that was done
with the deliberate intention of having her death appear suicide."

"It's a good point, and it's reasonable," admitted Tish, "but it
doesn't prove anything. I got to admit it does seem a little queer that
Haskins would have left the gun behind."

"And it hooks up with Haskins' story about missing the gun, realizing
that the Gilmore woman had lifted it out of his pocket, and his
determination to risk a trip downstairs again in an effort to get it
back."

"Humph!" Tish said again.

"When you identified the gun as yours--the one that Haskins took away
from you when he knocked you out at Eighth Avenue Annie's yesterday--it
did seem impossible that Sarbella, or any one else, could have done the
shooting. But let us suppose that Haskins' dying statement was true.
The Gilmore woman had the gun; maybe she took it because she was afraid
of her legal husband."

"Whatcha mean--'or any one else?'" growled Tish. "You keep hinting
at something you haven't let me in on. If it wasn't Haskins or
Sarbella----Aw, you talk like a fool!"

Wiggly hesitated for a moment. "Tish," he said slowly, "I don't know
that I'm exactly holding any aces, but I'm going to lay all my cards on
the table and let you have a look at 'em. We know why Sarbella might
have killed the woman."

"Motive ain't strong enough," broke in the detective with a shake of
the head. "His kid brother lost his head over her and killed himself;
that's all."

"Ordinarily I'd agree with you, but when we think of Sarbella's motive
we've got to think of a race that is credited with a passion for
personal vengeance. The Latins are hot-blooded, and their blood does
not cool quickly like ours. They nurse a grudge for years.

"Let us suppose that Sarbella went to the Gilmore woman's room, not
with the intention of killing her, but to tell her that, unless she
made a full confession to her husband, he would tell Gilmore, himself.
The gun was there--the gun that she had taken away from Haskins--and
the man's hatred for this bronze-haired vampire who caused the suicide
of his brother and the ultimate death of their mother, mastered him."

"Suppose anything you darn please," grunted Tish. "It's easy enough to
cook up stuff, but making it hold water is something else. Yeah, I'll
say it is."

"But there's something else," persisted Wiggly. "You've missed the
hidden undercurrent that I've sensed. I tell you, Tish, there's
something beneath the surface of things in this house."

"Meaning just what?" the detective asked skeptically.

"Did you notice Gilmore's stepsister--Joan Sheridan her name is--when
she came out into the hall after the cook fainted?"

Tish eyed the newspaper man half curiously, half disgustedly.

"I saw her," he answered.

"Yes, you saw her, but did you see the expressions of her face? Did you
notice how excited she became----"

"Say, I guess any woman would be excited, after what had happened, to
hear a woman screaming like that cook did, and her face all bloody on
top of it."

"When the doctor told her that Sarbella had been removed from
suspicion, and that some one else had done the shooting," Wiggly went
on, "well, I saw it, Tish; and I saw, too, what a look of relief
came into her face when Bushnell told her that it was Haskins, the
crook. The human emotions seldom lie, Tish, and, take it from me, that
Sheridan girl knows a lot more about this thing than she is willing to
tell."

"Rave on!" growled Sergeant Tish. "I'd given you credit for having a
balance wheel, but that's nut stuff you're pulling now."

"Wait a minute," Wiggly pressed on, not discouraged by the other's
derision. "Maybe you remember that Haskins refused to answer me when I
asked him if it was a man or a woman he saw coming out of the Gilmore
woman's room after he heard the shot."

"I can answer it, even if Haskins didn't; it was a man come out of the
room, and it was Haskins himself. Whatcha trying to do now--hang it
onto the Sheridan girl? Think it would make a better story for you,
huh? Aw, forget it! Why would she have done it?" The question came in a
triumphant tone.

"Oh, I've got you an answer for that, Tish," Wiggly replied. "So you
demand a motive; all right, I'll furnish that, too. The strongest and
most unreasoning of motives, the most deadly--jealousy!"

"Huh?"

"Joan Sheridan is in love with her stepbrother. I got that from the
constable's daughter this morning."

"A woman's gossip!" snorted Tish. "I wouldn't go two cents on no kind
of talk like that."

"And verified it by the butler," Wiggly added doggedly. "The
constable's daughter is a great little gabber, and I wouldn't take
her unsupported word; so I felt out Bates, and he admitted that the
household had rather hoped for a match between Gilmore and Miss
Sheridan. Yes, she's in love with her stepbrother; used to help him
with his work and that sort of thing. The butler told me that it was
a great shock to Miss Sheridan when she returned home from Europe and
found that he had married during her absence.

"There's another little point; it might not seem so much, but I can
imagine how it must have added to the blow. Miss Sheridan also returned
home to find this strange woman--Gilmore's bride--had taken possession
of her own room, a room that she had occupied for years and had
formed a deep attachment for. I gather that a very strained situation
resulted; even the servants took a dislike to the new Mrs. Gilmore.

"Man, I tell you there's something under the surface; I tell you that
we've only scratched the surface, so to speak, of the Gilmore mystery.
If Miss Sheridan would talk, we might learn something interesting." He
tossed up his hands in a helpless gesture. "It would be silly to try
and quiz her until we've got something to face her with; that would
only spoil whatever chances we may have of getting to the bottom of it."

Sergeant Tish frowned and puffed out his plump cheeks; he was thinking
things over now; then he shook his head.

"Don't take much stock in it," he declared.

"Jealousy is a primitive passion," argued Wiggly. "I'd consider it a
stronger motive than revenge. Between Sarbella and the girl----"

"No," Tish corrected himself, "I don't take any stock in it at all.
Haskins did the murder; Haskins is dead, and the case is closed. Don't
bother me with any more of this stuff."

"There's one more thing that I haven't told you," said the newspaper
man. "You remember the color of the murdered woman's hair?"

"Sort of a dull gold, isn't it?" grunted Tish, interested in spite of
himself. "What's the color of her hair got to do with it?"

"Bronze is the right color, Tish; naturally she uses bronze hairpins,
as I verified by a look at her dressing table. And yet on the floor
beside the chaise longue I found a black hairpin, and Miss Sheridan's
hair is dark."

Sergeant Tish puffed out his cheeks, looking up slowly. For a full
minute he debated this information before he stirred.

"Women are always dropping hairpins outta their heads; might have
been a servant, or Miss Sheridan, for that matter, paying a perfectly
innocent visit to the room." Yet the detective's tone was deliberate,
thoughtful.

"Remember the Hitchcock murder--solved by a black mourning pin?"

Moving cautiously in an effort to keep any painful strain from his
shoulder muscles, Tish stood to his feet.

"Mind you," he warned, "I don't say that I think you're within a
hundred miles of being right, but it'll do no harm to go upstairs and
have another look around."

In the light of Tish's previously derisive skepticism, Wiggly felt that
he had achieved something of a victory.

CHAPTER XXVI

BITS OF TALLOW

Presently Tish and Wiggly Price were once more within the room where
Helen Gilmore had met death, again seeking from the mute furnishings
some vital clew that previous examinations might have overlooked. The
newspaper man was all eagerness, but the interest of the detective had
already cooled. There was the window with Haskins' finger prints; he
had the sort of mind that readily accepts the obvious, and his police
experience had taught him that, nine chances to ten, the obvious is the
true.

It was a little hard to think of this cheerful bed-chamber as a
place of dark deeds. The north windows looked out upon the wide and
shimmering bosom of the Hudson; a sailboat clipped daintily over the
water, and in its wake the sunlight made the ripples scintillate like
diamonds. Across the Tappan Zee the stern ruggedness of the New Jersey
Palisades was softened with a verdant touch and splash of summer
greenness.

"The answer to it all is here," said Wiggly. "There must be something
more for us than just a woman's hairpin."

"Sure," grunted Tish; "my gun and Haskins' finger prints on the glass."
He had returned even more positively to the conviction that he had been
right in the first place.

"Ah, but what we're after now, Tish, is a clew that will outweigh the
finger prints and the gun. There must be something more than that;
there's got to be."

"That stuff about there always being a clew is the bunk," said Tish.
"I've seen dozens of cases where there wasn't a thing for us cops to go
on. But this is different. All the evidence points straight at Haskins.
What else have you got? A hairpin and an imagination!"

Wiggly was not discouraged; beginning at the side of the room, he began
to walk slowly, bent nearly double, his eyes searching, searching,
while Tish watched him in a half-amused, half-contemptuous silence.
Again the reporter came upon the shattered pieces of the broken vase
which lay on the rug near the little mahogany table, but he had
already rejected these fragments as things of no importance; proof, if
anything, that some one, probably the murderer, had struck against the
table, crashing the vase to the floor. Perhaps it was to his discredit
as an investigator that it did not occur to him as strange that the
vase should have been broken into as many pieces.

Near the table, however, he did find something that he had overlooked
until now; it was a bit of whitish substance which, as he picked it up
from where it had been crushed flat into the rug, was moderately soft
between his fingers. He frowned over it, puzzled.

"Tallow!" he exclaimed. "The sort of tallow they make candles of."

"Huh!" grunted Tish.

"People seldom use tallow candles these days, except for those
decorative candlesticks." His gaze roved swiftly about the room.
"No candlestick in this room, either. This piece is too chunky to be
candle drip; besides, why should any one have been walking around with
a lighted candle last night? If the lights had been out of commission,
some one would surely have mentioned it. Wouldn't you consider this
just a little queer, Tish?"

"If you're asking me to speak my mind, I'd be more apt to say that
you're a little queer, always jumping at little things that don't
amount to anything. What if it is a piece of tallow? That don't prove
anything--any more than a hairpin does."

Speculatively Wiggly turned the find over in his hand; it was grained
with black specks. He looked to the floor again and, some three or four
feet away, saw another bit of it.

"No children in the house," he mused. "Children might explain it; when
I was a kid I used to take a candle and mold it into odd sorts of
shapes--a juvenile attempt at sculpture--human heads, animals, and the
like. Yes, Tish, this is queer--darned queer!" Completely baffled in
his effort to account for the presence of the tallow, he put it into
his pocket along with the black hairpin.

"Something else to think about, anyhow," he told himself and continued
his literally inch-by-inch survey of the room. It was at the far end of
the chamber that, almost completely hidden in the thick nap of the rug,
he found another piece of the broken vase, this one little more than a
sliver, and still another bit of the tallow.

"Tish!" he fairly shouted. "Come here! Here's a little mystery all in
itself."

"What now?"

Wiggly exhibited the fragment of porcelain and pointed dramatically to
the spot on the rug where he had discovered it.

"We've been presuming all along, Tish," he said almost breathlessly,
"that the vase was broken when some one bumped into the table. It's a
dozen feet from the table to this spot; it isn't reasonable to think
that one of the pieces could have shattered for such a distance. As a
matter of fact, Tish, there's something that I've been a blockhead not
to think of before. This rug is pretty thick; it's only three feet from
the top of the table to the floor, and yet that vase is broken into a
hundred and one pieces. And here's a bit of it twelve feet away!"

"Humph!" grunted Tish.

"What do you make of it anyhow?"

"Maybe the Gilmore woman threw it at Haskins," suggested the detective,
puffing out his cheeks and frowning; "maybe she saw what was coming,
picked up the vase, and flung it at his head--something like that, huh?"

"Y-yes," Wiggly admitted hesitatingly; "that might explain it being
broken into so many pieces, but that doesn't explain the tallow. I've
got a feeling that those are the two things that are going to add up to
four."

"Oh, forget the tallow!" Tish muttered peevishly. "What's a little
tallow got to do with a murder--or a smashed vase, for that matter? You
better stick to digging up news and let this Sherlock business alone."

Wiggly shook his head stubbornly.

"It's a puzzle, Tish, but I'm going to stick until these peculiar
little things you scoff at are explained." He again took up his
search, but further results were nil. Tish was growing impatient.

"I'm going back downstairs," he announced.

"Wonder where this door leads to?" murmured the reporter, as he reached
for the knob. It did not yield to his touch, but the key was in the
lock; a moment later he was looking within Kirklan Gilmore's sleeping
chamber.

"Ah!" he mused. "She had the door locked against her husband. Wonder if
that means there was discord in the new love nest?"

Sergeant Tish snorted derisively. "Next," he said with withering
sarcasm, "you'll be trying to hang it onto the husband--and him
downstairs when the shot was fired."

"Oh, not at all," Wiggly answered without resentment; "that was just
an aside." He entered the room, gave it a brief survey, and then,
satisfied that it had nothing to offer him, returned, closing the door
and relocking it behind him. "Nothing in there that could interest us,
Tish. The net result so far seems to be one black hairpin and a few
pieces of tallow candle--perhaps a broken vase. I'm not so sure but
that you've given a pretty logical explanation of the vase." He sighed
in discouragement. "Not much to go on, eh? Wish I could figure out the
tallow thing."

"Forget it," advised Tish.

"If we could only get Miss Sheridan to talk. Wish I had the authority
to put her through a sprout of questions!"

Tish tenderly massaged the wrist of his injured arm; the bandages
interfered with his circulation.

"Well, you haven't got the authority; neither have I. And I wouldn't
waste my time quizzing her, if I had. So far as I'm concerned, the case
is solved. Haskins did the killing. I've messed around here and let you
play at the detective business long enough; me for one of those comfy
chairs down in the library. Guess I'll stick around for the inquest.
Coming down?"

Wiggly hesitated for a moment and then nodded. "Yes, I suppose I might
as well," he agreed; "I think I've exhausted the possibilities here."

The two men went downstairs and into the library, Tish to take what
comfort he could in one of the easy-chairs, and the newspaper man
to speculate with discouraging futility on the puzzle of the candle
tallow. He felt as if he had told the New York detective sergeant that
the next move was to question Joan Sheridan. While he had no authority
in the matter, he was several times on the verge of taking this course
into his own hands.

Doctor Bushnell, he felt very sure, would resent any hint that the
girl had a criminal knowledge of the murder; the physician would be
prejudiced in her favor and wave aside the suggestion indignantly.
It would be his natural inclination to consider Haskins guilty and
brush aside any other theory. A cross-examination of Miss Sheridan,
in the doctor's hands, was liable to be a perfunctory and negligible
proceeding.

"Well, young un, got it figured out yet?" grunted Tish, breaking a
considerable silence.

"Not yet," admitted Wiggly, "but I haven't given it up. I'm still
struggling with it."

Again silence.

"Where's Gilmore?" asked Tish presently. "I haven't had eyes on the
man since I've been here. Wasn't in his room when you opened that door,
huh?"

"The doctor put him to bed somewhere here on the ground floor--gave him
a shot of dope, I believe, to quiet him. I saw him last night; he was
pretty well cut up over it, naturally. He'll get another jolt between
the eyes when he's told that the woman wasn't legally married to him.
It's pretty tough on a chap, losing illusions of the woman you're in
love with."

"Uh-huh," grunted Tish. "A pretty woman sure can stir up a lot of hell
for a man--when she's the wrong sort."

Wiggly turned in his chair, as there came to his ears the sound of a
step on the stairs outside the archway dividing the library from the
reception hall, the tap of a woman's high-heeled shoes.

"Perhaps----" he murmured and leaped to his feet; he was thinking it
might be Joan Sheridan, and that he could manufacture some excuse to
get her in conversation. His hopeful guess was right; it was Joan. She
came slowly down the stairs, her face white and drawn. As the newspaper
man, although she had no knowledge of his profession, appeared before
her, she paused.

"I am looking for Doctor Bushnell," she murmured; "I am anxious to
know----" Her voice trailed off.

"Doctor Bushnell has taken the constable to the hospital," he
explained, "but, if there is anything I can do, I am at your service."
He stepped aside with a gesture that she was to come into the library
and, turning his head, gave Tish an entreating look. Now that the
opportunity had presented itself he decided to play a colossal game of
bluffing.

"Miss Sheridan, this is Detective Sergeant Tish of the New York police
department. Sergeant Tish has been wounded--in the shooting on the
third floor, you know."

"I--I am afraid I don't know exactly what has happened; everything has
been such a terrible, excited jumble."

"One would hardly think so many things could happen in a quiet country
place like this," said Wiggly.

Joan shuddered.

"It's been horrible! The man--the wounded man I saw on the stairs----"
Her eyes were upon Tish; perhaps not so much upon Tish as his bandaged
shoulder, where brown stains had seeped through the bandages.

"Haskins is dead, ma'am," Tish answered promptly, which was precisely
one of the things Wiggly had not wanted him to say--not just yet. "I
plugged him when he winged me with the constable's gun, up in the
storeroom."

"Doctor Bushnell told me," Joan went on tremulously, "that it was this
man who--who killed Kirklan's wife."

Sergeant Tish caught Wiggly's pleading signal, hesitated a moment, and
then temporized.

"W-well," he answered slowly, "I guess there's what you'd call a
division of opinion on that. Our newspaper friend don't think so."
Wiggly could have choked him. Why did he have to tell her that he was
a reporter! And why couldn't Tish have given him a square show? Under
his breath he cursed the headquarters man's stubbornness.

"Oh!" exclaimed Joan. "So he's a newspaper reporter. I thought he must
be a detective, too."

"Give 'im credit," grunted Tish; "he's trying hard enough to be one."
He chuckled at his little joke.

"This--this man," pressed Joan Sheridan, now ignoring Wiggly entirely,
"what was he doing in the house--in the storeroom? Was he a--a burglar?"

"As a matter of fact, Miss Sheridan, Haskins was the woman's husband."

Joan gasped.

"You don't mean--you can't mean Helen?"

"That's it, ma'am; seems that she had not taken the trouble to get
herself a divorce before she married Gilmore." Briefly he recounted
Haskins' trouble with the New York police, his criminal record, his
flight from Eighth Avenue Annie's with the automatic, his coming to
Greenacres, and his method of gaining entrance to the house.

Joan, leaning forward tensely, listened with wide eyes and parted lips.

"It was the gun--the gun that this criminal took away from you in New
York that killed Helen?" she demanded breathlessly. Tish nodded.

"Then," she rushed on, her voice sinking to a whisper, "there--there
doesn't seem to be much doubt that the man--Haskins--her--her legal
husband--killed her? Did he say anything before he died?"

Wiggly Price leaped forward and stood in front of her, lest Tish spoil
whatever chance might be left.

"Let me ask you something," he snapped out. "What made you so positive,
hours before any one else in the house knew that such a person as
Haskins existed, that Victor Sarbella was innocent of the murder?"

Joan naturally was startled by this sudden verbal attack; all the blood
had drained from her already pale face, leaving her features ghastly.
Her eyes met his for a moment and then lowered.

"Why--why, what a strange question!" she exclaimed, but there was
a noticeable nervous catch in her voice. "I--I never doubted Mr.
Sarbella's innocence."

"I know you didn't, but what I want to know is--why?"

Joan's head went still lower, but Wiggly could see that her lips were
quivering.

"I--I just knew it."

"Intuition, eh?"

"Call it anything you like."

"Was it intuition or knowledge?" Wiggly demanded sharply. The girl gave
a suppressed start, which Sergeant Tish missed entirely; in fact, Tish
had not quite recovered from his surprise at the way the newspaper
man had plunged in with these rapid-fire questions of his. Wiggly
had a thrill of elation; his hunch had been right, and the girl knew
something.

His hand slid into his pocket, and his fingers closed about the bit of
tallow that he had found on the floor of Helen Gilmore's bedroom.

"Look at this!" he commanded. Joan's head raised at the compelling
tone, but her gaze, as she stared at the misshapen, somewhat soiled
lump of white, was merely blankly inquiring. It was quite clear, even
to the suspicious reporter, that this meant nothing to her. Again his
hand went to his pocket.

"And look at this!" he ordered again, opening his fingers, revealing
the black hairpin in his palm. "Look at it closely, Miss Sheridan, and
tell if it doesn't belong to you."

"How--how could I know that?" she stammered. "All hairpins are so much
alike. What--what right have you to ask me all these questions in that
tone?" She turned appealingly to Sergeant Tish. "Has this newspaper
reporter a right to ask me these questions?"

"I guess that's a reporter's main business, asking questions," grunted
Tish, with a slow grin; quite evidently he wasn't taking Wiggly's
cross-examination with any seriousness. "Might as well answer 'em, Miss
Sheridan; no harm in that."

"This hairpin," went on Wiggly, "was found on the floor beside Helen
Gilmore's chaise longue. She didn't use black hairpins, and you do. Do
you deny, Miss Sheridan, that you were in the woman's sleeping room
last night?"

For a moment, the barest instant, Joan hesitated. "Yes," she answered
slowly, "I do deny it."

"Evidently you do not know," Wiggly went on mercilessly, resorting to
a trick in an effort to force the truth from her, "that just before
Haskins died he made a statement. He told us that Helen managed to get
the automatic out of his pocket before she sent him into hiding on the
third floor. He was in the storeroom when he realized that she had got
the gun away from him. He came back down the stairs with the intention
of forcing her to return it to him. He was in the hall when he heard
the scream and the shot.

"The door was open, the light was burning inside, and Haskins saw the
person who came out of that room!" This much, of course, was true,
and for his purpose he did not consider it an unfair advantage, this
failure to add that Haskins had refused to tell more.

Joan Sheridan's hands were frozen tightly about the arms of the chair;
her eyes met Wiggly's with a hunted, terrified look. She realized what
he meant--that he was virtually accusing her of the murder. But she
was a quick-witted girl, Joan Sheridan; she knew that Sergeant Tish's
attitude would not have been so jovially casual if he too had suspected
her of the shooting. She mastered herself wonderfully.

"Why don't you proceed and say exactly what you mean?" she asked. "What
you mean is that you think I----"

"Didn't you?" whipped out Wiggly, leaning slightly forward until their
eyes were level. This time her gaze did not falter; it met his without
flinching.

"No!" she answered firmly. "I deny everything you have said and
intimated. If you have finished with your inquisition----"

Price, realizing that his strategy had failed, offered no objection,
as she moved to leave the room. But when her steps had receded up the
stairs, he turned angrily upon Tish.

"A nice mess you made of things!" he exclaimed hotly. "Why did you have
to tell her that I am a newspaper man?"

"Well, ain't you?"

"You didn't give me a square shake. You queered any chance that I might
have had to make her talk. You belittled me, and that took all the wind
out of my sails. If you'd backed me up a little, we'd have had her
dead to rights. If we could have made her believe that it was she whom
Haskins saw coming out of the room after the shot was fired----"

"Aw, forget it," growled Tish; "she didn't croak the woman any more
than you did."

"Probably not premeditatively, but there's one thing sure in my mind,
and you'll never convince me any different: Either Joan Sheridan did
the shooting, or she knows who did--and she knows it wasn't Haskins.
She was on the edge of a breakdown, but you braced her right up. And
you're called a detective!"

Sergeant Tish's face flushed. "See here, I'm not going to have any
newspaper scribbler talk that way to me! If I'd have let you have your
way, you'd have made a fool out of me as well as yourself. Hairpins,
tallow! Bah! I guess you think you are a detective--a real detective.
That's the way with you newspaper guys--always hunting for a chance to
make the police wrong, trying to make monkeys of the police department.
You make me sick!"

Wiggly's ears moved violently.

"You wait and see!" he retorted. "Sneer at hairpins and tallow, but I
know I'm on the right trail, and I'm going to stick on this job until
I've followed it to the end."

CHAPTER XXVII

WIGGLY REMAINS UNCONVINCED

For all of his asserted confidence, which bordered upon boasting,
Wiggly Price realized that he had a hard nut to crack. Swinging out
of the library and Sergeant Tish's presence, he went out to the porch
and sat down to indulge himself in logic, speculation, guessing. He
took the piece of tallow from his pocket again, staring at it fixedly;
his belief that it had some vital part in the mystery had become an
obsession; but there was one thing about it that discouraged him--Joan
Sheridan had shown no perturbation when he had produced it before her
eyes.

Following a simple bit of logical reasoning, if the bit of tallow were
so important as he insistently imagined, and if the girl had done
the shooting, it was extremely strange that she had shown no signs
of agitation when faced with this evidence. He had been favorably
impressed with the girl's face; she seemed to be a sane, well-balanced
young person. Certainly, he argued, it was difficult to believe that
she would have committed the murder after cold premeditation; but
might she not have yielded to a suddenly and insanely jealous impulse,
suddenly overwhelmed by the proximity of the automatic pistol?

No matter who did the murder, Wiggly reasoned, it had not been a
premeditated crime; the slayer had not gone to Helen Gilmore's room
with a weapon. The weapon was already there. These cogitations, of
course, took it for granted that Haskins' dying statement had been
entirely truthful; the reporter might have agreed with Tish that the
whole yarn was a lie, except that he could not imagine a desperate man
like Haskins deliberately leaving the gun behind. With the death of the
only person who knew of his presence in the house, Haskins had nothing
to gain by cloaking the crime under the guise of suicide.

That Joan Sheridan knew more than she had told, Wiggly was flatly
certain; he had studied every changing expression of her face and he
had seen the emotions which Tish had missed. Either she had committed
the crime, or else she knew who did.

Presuming her innocence, whom was she protecting with her silence?
Sarbella? That did not seem logical. Why should she go to such great
lengths to protect Sarbella? Yet, other than Sarbella, Joan, and
Haskins, there had been but one other person above the first floor when
the shot was fired, and that was the other Mrs. Gilmore, Joan's mother.

"Ah!" thought Wiggly with a tingle of excitement, as his mind canvassed
this possibility. "There is the person that the girl would protect, her
mother. And the mother has kept closely to her room; the doctor had to
look after her. Now what could have been her motive?"

That was a puzzler, particularly so since he had not so much as put
eyes on the woman. Perhaps--this was guessing merely--the older Mrs.
Gilmore had been mistress of Greenacres so long that she resented the
appearance of an interloper; possibly she had taken the frenzied
notion that she was to be dispossessed from this house which had been
her home.

Both Bates and Kirklan Gilmore, downstairs in the butler's pantry when
the scream and the shot had sounded through the quiet house, had been
positive that they had got up the stairs before any one would have had
a chance to come down; even Haskins had verified that. Their coming
had been so swift as to cut off his chance of escape. Yes, decided
Wiggly, counting Haskins out of it, there remained just three possible
suspects. Joan, Sarbella, and the elder Mrs. Gilmore.

But the piece of tallow--he was not getting the answer to that. He was
still considering it when Doctor Bushnell's automobile turned in at the
Greenacres driveway. The doctor was returning from the hospital with
the butler. A moment later the physician's touring car came to a pause
near the porch, and Wiggly got quickly to his feet.

"How about Constable Griggs?" he asked.

"He'll make the grade, but it was a close call for him," answered
Doctor Bushnell. "Mighty bad fracture. He'll have to spend a week or
better in the hospital. I've explained the whole situation, and he's
given me the jail keys and his permission to release Sarbella, which I
shall do immediately. Has the district attorney arrived yet?"

"Haven't seen him," replied Wiggly, eager for an opening that he might
have a frank talk with the deputy coroner.

"I telephoned him from the hospital and explained the situation in
detail. He agreed with me that there seemed to be no doubt that Haskins
killed the woman; said he'd come right over. I'll drum up enough men
for the coroner's jury when I get to the village and release Sarbella.
Whew! I'll bet it's a load off of his mind; it certainly looked bad for
that fellow--mighty bad."

Bates had gone on into the house; the doctor had not got out of the
car, his purpose in stopping evidently being merely to let out the
butler. His hand was upon the gear lever, ready to start his car in
motion again, but Wiggly put detaining fingers on his arm.

"Just a moment, Doctor Bushnell," he urged earnestly. "I know you've
made up your mind that Haskins did the shooting, and that, since
Haskins is dead, the case is virtually closed."

"Certainly it is," nodded the physician. "I thought about it all the
way on the drive to the hospital and back. The evidence against Haskins
is all that any reasonable man would ask. Practically a matter of legal
formality, the inquest."

"I'm going to ask that you listen to me, with an open mind,"
Wiggly insisted. "I want to talk with you about the case in utmost
seriousness; I feel that you're on the verge of making a grave blunder.
I've found something----"

"Not more hairpins?" broke in the doctor with a faint smile.

"Doctor, I'm no novice in contact with crime; and, while I'm not
nursing any notion that I'm a born detective, I've got eyes in my head
and a logical sort of thinking apparatus. Without trying to toot my own
horn, I might add that I've helped my paper solve a puzzle or so, after
the police had fallen down on the job. I'm not saying that to boast;
just want you to take me seriously."

Doctor Bushnell gave him a quick, sharp glance. "I'll listen, as we
drive to the village," he said. "Hop in."

Wiggly hopped in, and, as the car got into motion, so did his tongue.
Absolute conviction that he was right enabled him to give a forceful
presentation of his theories, and his short, punchy sentences were
punctuated by frequent twitchings of his ears.

He began by repeating in substance Haskins' dying statement and
emphasizing the improbability of Haskins leaving the gun behind, the
utter uselessness of Haskins covering up the murder beneath the guise
of suicide. From there he switched to the piece of tallow, saving
any mention of Joan Sheridan until the last. The doctor, listening
patiently, gave him a fair hearing; but it is a difficult job to
convince a man who has already made up his mind to the contrary.

"Now we come down to the nub of things," Wiggly went on; swiftly he
voiced his suspicions concerning Joan and his reasons for them. He told
of his effort to cross-examine the girl and the results.

Doctor Bushnell had an uneasy feeling, as he himself recalled Joan's
perturbation of the previous night, but he brushed these thoughts aside.

"Do you realize," he demanded sternly, "that you are intimating that
Joan Sheridan might have----Oh, it's absurd, preposterous! I refuse
even to consider such a ridiculous notion. Why, I've known Joan all
her life; a sweeter, finer young woman never lived."

"Did you happen to know that she's in love with Gilmore?" Wiggly
demanded, and at this suggestion of a motive the doctor's eyes snapped
angrily.

"So that's what you base all this wild talk on, eh? That reduces your
reasoning to further absurdity."

"I'm not accusing her of the shooting, doctor, but I'm absolutely
certain that she's hiding something; if not to protect herself, then to
protect some one else. Her agitation----"

"Humph!" broke in Doctor Bushnell. "What sort of a woman wouldn't be
agitated with all that's happened at Greenacres during the past few
hours. Whom would she be protecting? Answer me that!"

"It would have to be some one who was on the second floor when the
shot was fired. Tell me something--does Gilmore or his stepmother own
Greenacres?"

"Gilmore does," the doctor answered. "His stepmother's share of the
estate was in cash and other realty, but I'm afraid she managed it
poorly."

"Ah!" murmured Wiggly. "Then she was virtually dependent upon her
stepson. If things had become so unpleasant for her at Greenacres after
the arrival of the house's new mistress that she could not stay----"

The physician's indignation became more pronounced.

"Gad, what a villainous imagination you've got!" he exploded. "You mean
now, I suppose, that Mrs. Gilmore did the shooting, and that Joan is
shielding her? Young man, I've lost all patience with such nonsense.
I refuse to listen to these ravings any longer. Any one, except a
hare-brained idiot, would know that Haskins did the shooting. No more
of this twaddle; I simply won't listen to you!"

"Then you won't help me with a further investigation?"

"I shall certainly have no hand in such foolishness," answered Doctor
Bushnell with a tone of absolute finality. "Talk to the district
attorney, if you insist, but I warn you that he'll take no stock in it."

"Probably not," Wiggly agreed gloomily, "but just the same I know I'm
right."

They had reached the village, and the doctor's car came to a halt in
front of Borough Hall.

"I'll release Sarbella and then get busy drumming up my men for the
coroner's jury," said Bushnell. "You've got a sensational enough story
for your paper, as it is; forget that silly rubbish you've been talking
to me."

Wiggly made no response, but followed the physician from the machine
into the village building and downstairs into the basement, where
Victor Sarbella was a prisoner. At the sound of their approach,
Sarbella came to the door of the narrow cage and peered out between
the rusting steel bars, but he uttered no word of protest, of outraged
innocence; only stared in a stony, narrow-eyed silence.

"I've the best of news for you, Mr. Sarbella!" Doctor Bushnell
exclaimed heartily. "I've come to let you out."

The prisoner's head jerked up, his fingers tightened their grip about
the bars of the cell door, his lips parted, and his eyes brightened
with the look of relief that flashed across his face.

"You mean," he asked slowly, "that I am to be released
unconditionally--that I have been removed from suspicion?"

The doctor, with the constable's keys, was struggling with the lock
that would unfasten the bolts; the mechanism was badly in need of
oiling, and it was giving him trouble.

"Yes, unconditionally," he answered. "We find that we have done you
an injustice, although you must admit that we were within our rights,
everything considered. The murderer of the Gilmore woman----Oh, curse
this lock!"

Sarbella pressed his body closer to the bars. "Yes?" he demanded with
an eager impatience. "The murderer--go on, man!"

The lock finally yielded, enabling the physician to turn the handle
that slid the bolts, and the door opened. Victor Sarbella was a free
man.

"Tell me," he commanded again. "Who----" The newspaper reporter sensed
his grave concern, his anxiety--and wondered.

"Luckily for you," answered Doctor Bushnell, "the slayer was still in
the house--a criminal who, it developed, was the woman's undivorced
husband."

"Thank Heaven!" breathed Sarbella, and it was apparent that this news
was a great relief to him.

Briefly the doctor related the facts.

"What a blessedly fortunate ending!" murmured the artist. "I was
afraid of other things--something more terrible."

"I'm driving back to Greenacres after I get together a jury for the
inquest," went on the physician. "I'm anxious to get it over with as
quickly as possible, for my private practice has to wait until this
official business is disposed of, and my patients are liable to lose
their patience." He chuckled a little at his own pun. "You may ride
back to Greenacres with me, if you choose."

"Thanks," nodded Sarbella, "I will."

The three men made their way out of the basement cell room and to the
street, where the doctor said that they could wait in his car, if they
liked. A moment later he was hurrying along the village thoroughfare in
quest of his jurors, picking up practically the first citizens that he
encountered. Sarbella got into the rear of the touring car, and Wiggly
Price sat beside him.

"You seem to be well out of a bad situation," said the newspaper man.

The released suspect nodded soberly. "Yes," he agreed, "a bad
situation--an overwhelming situation. Circumstantial evidence can be a
damning thing. Perhaps I owe something to you; your attitude, when you
came to the cell about the cigarette----"

"You do not owe your release to me, Sarbella; it was the appearance
of Sergeant Tish, his identification of the gun and the presence of
Haskins in the house." Wiggly paused for a moment with his eyes on the
other's face. "You were greatly relieved when you heard the doctor's
explanation of the tragedy?"

Victor Sarbella inclined his head.

"I was!" he exclaimed fervently. "Knowing my own innocence, I am afraid
that I was as much inclined to suspect other people as other people to
suspect me. I am afraid that I even suspected my friend Gilmore."

"Why Gilmore?" asked Wiggly. "He had a perfect alibi--downstairs when
the shot was fired."

"Yes, I know," murmured Sarbella, "but the poor chap was so
overwrought, so beside himself, so obsessed with the suspicion that
there had been an--ah--affair between me and--and his wife--but let us
not talk of that."

"I wonder," pressed Wiggly, but careful to make his tone carelessly
casual, "if you also suspected Miss Sheridan?"

"Eh?" exclaimed Sarbella, turning quickly, and then he laughed briefly.
"Yes, I think I even suspected her. Her attitude it was--ah--very
strange, it seemed to me. Only excitement, of course, as we know the
facts now; but at the time--well, I hardly knew what to think."

Wiggly's ears twitched slightly. Further confirmation of his theory!
Yet it convinced no one except himself.

"I condemn myself for harboring any such suspicions," went on Sarbella
musingly, "but it was strange. She was up, had not retired, and yet she
had not heard the scream or the shot."

"What!" exclaimed Wiggly; this was something new to him. He had not
known that. "You mean that she was up and dressed?"

Sarbella shot him a quick, curious glance, saw his eagerness, and was
warned to sudden silence.

"Let us talk of something else," he said. "Am I to understand that
there are still any doubts in your mind----"

"Haskins made a dying statement in which he denied the murder," said
Wiggly; "he said, however, that he did see the murderer coming out of
the room after the shot was fired."

Sarbella gave no guilty start, such as might have been expected, if
Haskins' story was true, and it had been himself that Haskins had seen
coming out of Helen Gilmore's room.

"What could you expect but lies from the lips of such a man?" the
artist asked. "Thank Heaven that the ending is as it is. This man,
this Haskins, must have been the husband who went to my poor brother
with the story that unbalanced his reason and sent him to his death.
Poor Andrea! The hand of Fate has avenged him! There is a God of
retribution!"

Wiggly Price made one more effort. His fingers went to his pocket for
that puzzling piece of tallow.

"Had another look around that room this morning," he said. "On the
floor I found several pieces of this."

Victor Sarbella turned and glanced at the white, black-flecked,
shapeless lump, but he betrayed no more visible signs of emotion than
had Joan Sheridan.

"What is it?" he asked, frowning. "What of it?"

"Nothing!" grunted Wiggly Price, as his arm raised in a disgustedly
impulsive gesture to toss it into the street. Even his own persistent
faith in this as a vital clew was being badly shaken. Yet his fingers
closed about the bit of tallow, and he returned it to his pocket again.
His mouth tightened.

"Nothing--so far," he added. He was one of those chaps who just
naturally can't quit.

Sarbella gave him a curious glance, shrugged his shoulders, and
dismissed both the man and the bit of tallow as of no further
importance; then he lapsed into a moody sort of silence. A moment later
Doctor Bushnell returned to the car; it had taken him no time at all to
drum his jury for the inquest.

"All right," he announced, "we'll be getting back and having things
over with. Shouldn't take much longer than an hour: Presley, our local
garage man, will bring the jurors out in a bus, and they'll be no great
distance behind us."

He took the wheel, started the motor, and the three men were on their
way back to Greenacres. Wiggly sat stiffly in the seat beside Sarbella,
trying in vain to drive his brain over the hurdles. Time with him was
short, for, as the doctor had just said, in another hour or so it would
be over. The law would have finished with the Gilmore affair and write
the easiest, most obvious ending to the dramatic business of the past
night, charging the whole tragic account to Don Haskins and, through
his death, mark the whole deed as "Paid."

Once the verdict of the coroner's jury was in, Wiggly knew, it would
be next to the impossible to have the case reopened again. He had just
about sixty minutes longer to prove he was right, and that the rest of
them were wrong.

CHAPTER XXVIII

THE BLACK SMUDGE

Along the ribbon-smooth road Doctor Bushnell shot the car at a lively
clip; one couldn't blame him, of course, for thinking of his private
practice, and one of his patients had been telephoning for him all
morning. He would have been the last man to hurry the Gilmore case to
a legal finish, if he had thought there was anything to be gained by
prolonging the investigation; but he considered that the affair had
been solved to all reasonable satisfaction.

In less than five minutes they arrived at Greenacres, and hardly had
the three men stepped from the machine to the porch of the house when
Kirklan Gilmore, evidently having seen them from a window, came rushing
out, both hands stretched out toward the artist. There were tears in
his eyes, and his voice was husky, trembling with emotion.

"Thank God, Victor!" he cried. "I've just heard the whole inside
of things from a man, the New York detective, that you're cleared,
absolutely cleared! You don't know what a relief it has been to me,
although I never did think, even when things were the blackest, that
you did it."

"And I appreciate your loyalty, Kirklan," answered Sarbella. The hands
of the two men remained clasped.

"Forgive me, Victor, for thinking last night that you--that you and
Helen----"

"That there had been an--ah--affair between your wife and me," finished
Sarbella. "Yes, I was afraid that my silence would put dark thoughts
into your head, but----"

"Why didn't you tell me?" broke in Gilmore, and a peculiar expression
convulsed his features. "Why didn't you tell me last night, out in the
study, that she was the woman over whom your brother----"

Sarbella shook his head.

"No! I could not in honor do that," he protested. "You were my friend,
and the woman was your wife. My lips were sealed. She was your wife;
you loved her."

Kirklan Gilmore's face was still white, haggardly drawn, but he was
no longer the broken wreck of a man, tottering upon the brink of a
mental collapse, that he had been some hours before. He seemed to
have recovered from the first over-powering shock of horror; Doctor
Bushnell's course in placing him under the influence of a sedative had
apparently been a most wise one.

At Sarbella's words his lips twitched piteously, but he managed to keep
control of himself.

"No," he said slowly, huskily, "I was in love with--with the woman
I thought her to be--in love with an ideal, a creation of my own
imagination. The woman I thought her to be did not exist--except in
my own infatuated fancies. And she was not my wife. She----Oh, what a
nightmare it's been--what a nightmare!"

Doctor Bushnell stepped swiftly to his side and, taking his arm, urged
him toward the house.

"Keep a grip on yourself, Kirklan," he murmured in a kindly, paternal
tone. "It's been a pretty terrible business, old man, but that thing
we mortals call fate has cut a lot of the strings to the tangle for
you. It is better that things are as they are; it saves a vast number
of troublesome complications. It saves--well, trucking a lot of mire
through the courts."

Gilmore compressed his lips and lowered his head. "Yes," he agreed
dully, "you're right about that; it saves the courts."

"Buck up, Kirklan! As you say, the woman you thought her to be did not
exist."

"Ah," murmured Victor Sarbella, "but losing an ideal is one of the
hardest things in life."

The novelist, leaning a little on the doctor's friendly arm, made his
way slowly into the house. Sarbella and Wiggly Price followed.

"Have all the legal details been satisfied?" asked Gilmore, as he
lowered himself into a chair. "There is, of course, no question but
that----"

"But that Haskins killed her," finished Doctor Bushnell. "Absolutely
none, Kirklan. There remains now only the inquest--a double inquest in
this case. One jury will suffice for both; the verdict, of course, is a
foregone conclusion."

There fell a brief silence, Gilmore's eyes staring straight in front of
him, with a dull, vacant expression. No doubt he was thinking of the
bronze-haired, beautiful woman who lay upstairs, cold in death--the
woman who might have been.

"Everything has become quite clear to me," he said slowly, more as if
speaking to himself. "She was making a visit to this Haskins in New
York day before yesterday, when Atchinson saw her on the street. She
must have gone there in answer to a letter that my butler tells me she
received that morning."

"Atchinson?" Doctor Bushnell asked inquiringly.

"My publisher," Gilmore replied. "Since she was employed by the
publishing firm before our marriage, Atchinson knew her quite well. He
said it was she, but I thought he must be mistaken. She had told me
that she was going to motor into the country. I wonder how it would
have all come out if the man, Haskins, had not been trapped in the
storeroom?"

No one responded to that musing question. Withdrawn unobtrusively
into one corner, Wiggly had again taken the lump of tallow from his
pocket and was meditatively rubbing his fingers over it. Suddenly
his attention centered upon those black specks that he had taken for
granted were dirt, caused, perhaps, by a soiled shoe sole pressing down
on it, as it had lain upon the floor of the room upstairs; he saw now
that those dark, almost pin-point discolorations were imbedded into the
substance. This, however, increased rather than solved the puzzle.

"The district attorney has come, hasn't he?" asked Doctor Bushnell.
"I took it for granted that it was his car I saw at the side of the
driveway, as we came up."

Kirklan Gilmore nodded absently. "Yes," he said, "a young fellow--the
assistant district attorney, I believe. Lasker, I think his name is.
He's upstairs looking around with that detective fellow, Sergeant Fish."

"Tish," corrected the physician. "Quite a game sort, Tish; it was he
who shot Haskins."

Again Gilmore nodded. "So he told me," he said.

"I think I'll go upstairs," added the physician. "It won't be long
now until the men who are to serve on the jury arrive." He glanced at
Wiggly with a patronizing sort of smile. "Are you coming up with me to
look for more--more hairpins, young man?"

The newspaper man smiled grimly.

"I'll go up with you," he said, "but it's not hairpins that I'm mainly
interested in right now; it's this confounded piece of tallow." He
turned his eyes toward the novelist and thought he saw a sudden
tightening of Gilmore's muscles, a suppressed start. He was not so sure
about it. "Tell me, Mr. Gilmore, were candles used frequently in the
house here?"

Gilmore did not reply for a moment. "Candles?" he murmured. "Why, my
dear sir, what a peculiar question. I don't believe I understand."

Doctor Bushnell, moving toward the stairway, paused with a brief,
discounting laugh.

"Our enthusiastic newspaper friend, Kirklan," he explained, "thinks we
haven't begun to get at the bottom of things. He's found a few pieces
of tallow candle on the floor of the room upstairs; he's trying to
attach some importance to it--just because he doesn't hit upon a ready
explanation to it, I suppose. I'm afraid we've humored him a little
too much, in gratitude for the first assistance that he gave us in
identifying your wife."

Gilmore was frowning slightly.

"And I'm afraid that I can't help him explain his little mystery,
doctor," he said. "So far as I can recall, there aren't any
candlesticks in Helen's room; nor in my room, which is adjoining.
Still"--he paused for a moment--"it does occur to me, gentlemen, that
the third floor has never been wired for electricity; the storeroom
is so seldom visited. If Haskins had wanted to have a light up there,
a candle would have afforded about the only possible illumination for
him."

"Ah!" exclaimed the doctor. "See, Price, there's the explanation for
you! The woman must have got Haskins a candle, and he carried it down
with him when he shot her. He probably mashed it underfoot and----"

"No, that will hardly do," Wiggly interrupted with a quick negative
jerk of his head. "In the first place, I can't believe that Haskins
would have been fool enough to have taken a light with him to the
storeroom; too much chance of the illuminated window attracting
attention. Secondly, this tallow was broken into a good many small
pieces; the trodding of a foot on a candle wouldn't do that; it would
only have mashed it, and it wouldn't have scattered it several places
about the room."

Doctor Bushnell shrugged his shoulders. "Oh, what matter!" he exclaimed
impatiently. "Whatever explanation there is would probably be absurdly
simple."

Before the physician could gain the stairs, Sergeant Tish and the
assistant district attorney were coming down. The latter was a
youngish, blond fellow, with rimless spectacles glistening in front of
pale-blue eyes; one could see that he appreciated the gravity of the
situation and the importance of his own official position, and that,
beneath his outward pretense of grim poise, he was a rather nervous and
inexperienced young man.

One look at young Lasker told Wiggly how futile it would be to approach
him with any theory calculated to upset the accepted situation; the
lawyer's words confirmed this impression.

"Ah, Doctor Bushnell!" he exclaimed, frowning his best official frown
and clearing his throat several times. "I have just been over the
ground with Sergeant Tish, who has been kind enough to lay all of the
facts before me--in quite a comprehensive manner. I have canvassed
the evidence thoroughly. I quite agree with you, doctor, that but
one sensible hypothesis can be drawn. I would even call it more than
an hypothesis. The evidence is quite clear-cut and incontrovertible.
Sergeant Tish's markmanship has--fortunately for him, however--cheated
the electric chair of its grim function. There can be no question of
Haskins' guilt; absolutely no question."

"In spite of hairpins, tallow, and such stuff," grunted Tish, with a
grin at Wiggly, evidently taking a keen delight in belittling him. The
young assistant district attorney glanced at the newspaper man and
lifted his hands in a gesture of depreciation.

"So this is the journalist you were telling me about. If positive
evidence were lacking, my dear sir, it might be very well to bear
these things in mind, but in a clear-cut case of this kind such minor
trifles become entirely irrelevant and immaterial. Any other theory
than that of Haskins' guilt is absolutely untenable. I am willing,
Doctor Bushnell, that the inquest shall proceed with the evidence in
hand."

"I think I hear Presley's bus coming along the road now," nodded the
doctor. "He's bringing the men from the village."

From outside there came the sound of the lumbering, noisy conveyance,
bearing the coroner's jury. All attention at the moment was focused in
this direction, and Wiggly, without a word to any one--he was playing
an absolutely lone hand now--made for the stairs. No one registered any
objection to his taking another visit to the second floor, but halfway
up he turned and saw Kirklan Gilmore's eyes fixed upon him in a sort of
set, expressionless stare. Was it expressionless? Wiggly had a feeling
that the blank look might be concealing a degree of--well, perhaps of
wary apprehension.

"Humph!" Wiggly said under his breath. "Gilmore was downstairs when
his wife was killed; he couldn't have had a hand in it, and yet, dash
it all, I did get a reflex from him when it came to mentioning the
tallow. And he was pretty prompt in trying to find an explanation for
the stuff being in the room. I wonder----" But what he wondered was too
vague even for his thoughts. Passing on up the steps to the head of the
stairs, he let himself into the murdered woman's bed-chamber.

"I don't know what I can expect to find more than I have," he told
himself discouragingly, "but the old line in the copy book used to tell
me: 'If at first you don't succeed, try, try again.' Here goes for
another try. Gilmore was startled when I mentioned tallow candles. Why?"

Obviously that question could never be answered until he found out for
himself what part the tallow had played in the tragedy, until he had
explained its mysterious presence in the room. He walked about the room
slowly several times and then dropped to hands and knees, crawling back
and forth, his eyes close to the rug, picking up all of the tallow that
he could find. Presently he had quite a little accumulation of the
stuff, gathered from a surprisingly wide radius.

The palm of his hand was pricked by a sharp surface hidden from view
in the nap of the rug--another fragment of the broken vase. The vase
hadn't impressed him greatly; for that was one thing that could be
explained. As Tish had suggested, if it hadn't been tipped from the
table, Helen Gilmore might have flung it at the murderer in a desperate
effort at self-defense.

Yet, as he was about to toss aside the fragment of porcelain, his jaw
sagged, and a startled exclamation came from his parted lips, for there
clung to what had once been the inside of the vase, a small particle of
tallow!

"Gosh!" breathed Wiggly, his ears twitching violently. "The tallow was
inside of the vase when it was broken! The two go together; I'd never
thought of that. By George, I've been missing something!"

The shattered porcelain vase had, in light of this discovery, taken
on a real importance within Wiggly's mind. Hastily he began crawling
on hands and knees about the room, retrieving every piece of it that
he could find. When he had got together all of it he could find, he
placed all the pieces on the table, with the tallow in a separate
pile and, drawing up a chair, sat down and began to study it. Still
no inspirational solution flashed through his mind; he began at
nowhere and ended at the same place. Times without number he handled
the pieces, absently sorting and resorting them, and at last, with a
hopeless sigh of defeat, he realized that an explanation was beyond his
powers of either deduction or imagination; he was simply beating his
head against a stone wall.

"Its no use!" he muttered under his breath. "Possibly I'm wrong after
all! Possibly----"

Outside the closed door in the hall he heard voices. Bates had come
upstairs to call Joan Sheridan and her mother to attend the proceedings
down in the library. Wiggly wondered if they would ask him to testify;
probably not. Doctor Bushnell and the assistant district attorney would
not want him upsetting things and confusing the accepted explanation by
flinging his unproven theories at the jury.

For a moment or so the newspaper man debated.

"I know I've no authority to do it, and I will probably get thrown out
on my ear, if I'm caught at it; but I've got a notion to have one more
try."

Leaving the piece of broken vase and the lumps of tallow on the table
where he had been studying them with so little result, he turned
toward the door, slipping quietly into the hall. The sound of voices
came up the open stairway; Doctor Bushnell, in his capacity as deputy
coroner, was swearing in the jury.

Wiggly made for the wing of the house where he knew Joan Sheridan's
room to be. He had never rid himself of the notion that she knew
something about the murder that she would never tell unless it was
forced from her unwilling lips; and the only force to which she would
respond would be evidence.

Her room was unlocked. He let himself in with the unconscious
stealthiness that overtakes a man who finds himself entering unbidden
places. Closing the door gently behind him, the reporter straightway
went about the business in hand, which was to determine whether or
not the room might not reveal something that would incriminate Joan
Sheridan.

First, he went to the girl's dressing table; the top of it, except for
some silver-backed toilet articles, was barren; but in the right-hand
drawer he did find hairpins. Quickly he compared them with the one in
his pocket; they were of the same size, color, and pattern. As alike as
the proverbial two peas in a pod; yet that in itself was slim proof,
for, as Joan herself had said, all hairpins are so much alike. He had
to have more than that--a great deal more than that.

Wiggly was closing the drawer when he noted for the first time the
black smudge on his finger--a smallish streak which flecked free from
the skin, as he rubbed at it with the ball of his thumb.

"Hello!" he exclaimed under his breath. "What's that? Where did I get
it?" With a curious and puzzled frown he stared at the dark spot on his
finger, as he continued to fleck off the black, grainy particles. He
lifted his hand to his nose and sniffed, and, as he caught the faint,
but unmistakable, odor, his ears fairly did a dance at the sides of his
head.

"Great guns," he whispered. "It's powder--burned gunpowder! Where did
I get that?" His bulging eyes swept the dressing table and the only
articles that he had touched since coming into Helen Gilmore's room.
And then he thought of the candle tallow and the black specks that had
mocked him with their enigma. Slowly, through a fog of bewilderment and
incredulity, there pierced a dawning light of understanding. He had
solved the murder!

CHAPTER XXIX

"LET THE GUILTY MAN SPEAK!"

The young assistant district attorney and Doctor Bushnell had indeed
reduced the double inquest to a cut-and-dried formality, and the
proceeding was heading swiftly toward its anticipated conclusion. Extra
chairs had been brought into the library, and it was here that the
hearing was in progress.

In his capacity as deputy coroner, Bushnell presided at a small table,
and near him, at his right, was the young attorney, blinking with
official severity from behind his rimless glasses; at the doctor's left
was the witness chair which faced the jury. The latter were an assorted
lot of village types--Mr. Judson, the ordinarily genial grocer, with
his fat, stubby fingers locked tightly in front of his ample middle;
Henry Blackburn, a local fire-insurance agent, who was tall, lean and
hatchet faced; Jim Striker, local manager of the telephone company; and
so on down the list.

There had been no move to bar any one from hearing the testimony of
the other witnesses. Behind the jury chairs Joan Sheridan murmured
soothingly in an effort to calm her mother's muffled, hysterical
sobbing; a little apart sat Kirklan Gilmore, slumped deep into a chair,
chin on his chest and his eyes half closed; but he was listening
carefully; not a syllable was escaping him. Victor Sarbella was seated
nearest the door; his dark eyes were roving restlessly about the room.

Sergeant Tish had been the first witness, identifying the gun which
had killed Helen Gilmore and recounting, for the benefit of the jury,
how it had got to Greenacres. Doctor Bushnell previously had given an
outline of the facts, as he had found them.

Bates, the butler, followed Tish and did not forget to color his
account of the happenings with a none-too-modest tribute to his own
shrewd deductions that it had been murder and not suicide. He was proud
of that little achievement. He told how he had been fast asleep when
the ringing of the doorbell had awakened him, and he had got up to
admit Gilmore, who had been out at the studio and had forgotten his
keys; he described how he had been in the butler's pantry; that he had
just finished making Gilmore a toddy, which the latter was drinking,
when both of them had heard the scream, closely followed by the shot.

Joan Sheridan suppressed a shiver, but no one noticed that.

"After that, Bates?" urged Doctor Bushnell.

"Mr. Gilmore and I hurried upstairs. When we was about halfway up we
heard a door slam shut--Haskins when he scooted back up to the attic,
I guess. The door to the younger Mrs. Gilmore's room was open, and the
light was burning. I went in first, and there she was--all covered with
blood, the gun on the floor beside the couch. It looked like suicide,
but I knew it wasn't, because she wouldn't have screamed before
shooting herself. She might have screamed after she did it, but the
shot was fired after she screamed. More than that; the door was open,
and, like I said, people don't shoot themselves with the door open."

"A very good deduction, Bates," nodded the doctor.

"Yes, sir; I rather thought so myself," agreed Bates.

Other questions and answers followed, and the entire ground was covered
swiftly, but thoroughly. The jurors were then asked if they wished to
interrogate the witness. None of them did, and Bates was excused.

"Miss Sheridan, merely as a matter of formality, will you please take
the witness chair?" murmured Doctor Bushnell, and Joan, her face
becoming a shade more pale with the ordeal, got slowly to her feet and
walked to the front of the room. Kirklan Gilmore's body tensed, and his
hand clenched, but he did not lift his eyes.

"I want you to understand," the doctor told her gently, after taking
her oath as a witness, "that this is a mere formality. You will please
tell us, in your own words, just what you know about the tragedy."

Joan Sheridan was plainly nervous; her fingers, resting in her lap,
were twisting about each other, and for a moment she did not answer.

"There is nothing--nothing that I can tell," she answered in a
strained, muffled voice.

"As I understand--in fact, from what you told me--you did not hear the
fatal shot."

Joan's voice became a little clearer, as she answered: "No, I did not
hear the fatal shot."

"I might explain to the jury," added the doctor, "that Miss Sheridan's
room is in another part of the house."

From outside the library came the sound of hurrying feet, as Wiggly
Price came down the stairs, two steps at a time. Just outside the
library he paused, screened behind the portières. Across his arm was a
woman's silk dressing gown, and in his hand was a handkerchief, caught
up at the corners and sagging with the weight of the broken vase and
the particles of candle tallow.

"Just the psychological moment!" he said under his breath. "It's made
to order."

"And there is nothing more that you can add, Miss Sheridan?" asked
Doctor Bushnell.

"There is nothing more that I can say," she answered.

"That will be all," murmured the doctor.

Wiggly Price entered the room, billowing aside the portières, as he
swept past them, and his ears were wiggling for all they were worth.
The silk dressing gown across his arm added to the dramatic effect of
his entrance.

"Just a moment, Miss Sheridan!" he exclaimed. "What you really mean is
that there is nothing more you want to say. But I am very much afraid
that you will have to say something, whether you want to or not."

Doctor Bushnell leaped angrily to his feet, his eyes snapping.

"What do you mean by this, Price?" he shouted. "I forbid----"

"I demand," broke in Wiggly, "that Miss Sheridan be forced to explain
several things, including why she tried to clean spots from the sleeve
of this dressing gown that she was wearing last night." Joan had
started to her feet, but sank limply back in her chair, a moan upon her
lips.

"Look at her face!" cried Wiggly. "Isn't that proof enough for you?
Don't look at me--look at her!"

Joan's face was chalk white, and she swayed in her chair and would
have fallen, had not the assistant district attorney leaped forward to
support her.

"Look at this dressing gown!" went on Wiggly in a rush of words. "Look
at the sleeve, here. I just took it out of her closet a minute ago; the
odor of a cleaning fluid, chloroform, can still be detected. And it
didn't take out the spots. She didn't know that cold water was the best
thing to remove bloodstains." He swung upon Joan. "Do you deny, Miss
Sheridan, that these are bloodstains? Do you deny that you attempted to
remove them after the murder?"

Joan's mother screamed shrilly. "It's a lie!" she moaned. "It's a lie.
He's trying to make it appear that my little girl----" A merciful
unconsciousness gathered her in.

Doctor Bushnell, dazed to a point of speechlessness, stared from the
accusing newspaper man to Joan. There could be no denying the wild
terror that gripped her.

"If she does deny it," went on Wiggly, "a chemical analysis will
establish that it is blood--human blood."

Doctor Bushnell at last found voice. "Joan," he cried, "do you
understand what this means? This man is virtually accusing you of
murder. In Heaven's name, say something!"

But Joan Sheridan, her lips twitching, shook her head. "I--I
didn't--do it!" she whispered. "I didn't do it, but I have nothing to
say--absolutely nothing to say."

"But, you've got to say something!" the doctor urged desperately.
"Silence like this----"

Again she shook her head. "I've nothing to say," she repeated.

In the excitement that had accompanied this sudden and amazing turn of
things, all attention had been centered upon the quivering, ashen-faced
girl in the witness chair, and no one--unless, perhaps, it was Wiggly
Price from the corner of his eye--had observed Kirklan Gilmore. The
novelist had leaped to his feet and clutched at the back of his chair
with palsied fingers. Tears were streaming down his cheeks.

"Great God!" he whispered. "That she would make a sacrifice like that!"
His voice raised. "Tell them!" he commanded hoarsely. "Tell them,
Joan--the truth!"

Joan sobbed wildly, uncontrollably. "Oh, Kirk!" she moaned.
"Kirk--don't! In Heaven's name--don't!"

"Since Joan will not talk," said Kirklan Gilmore, "I will."

Wiggly Price dropped his handkerchief to the table, and the loosened
corners fell back, revealing the little pile of broken porcelain and
the bits of tallow.

"Let the guilty man speak!" he said. "If he does not--the evidence is
here."

CHAPTER XXX

WIGGLY MAKES A WAGER

The room was tensely silent, as Kirklan Gilmore made his way slowly to
the front of the room and, with a shaking hand, took the glass of water
that rested upon the coroner's table. He gulped a drink nervously. He
put the glass down clumsily.

"It's impossible--utterly impossible!" Doctor Bushnell muttered
helplessly. "Gilmore was downstairs--Bates was with him--when the shot
was fired on the second floor. I can't understand----"

Kirklan Gilmore did not sit down, but stood there, leaning heavily
against the table, facing the coroner's jury.

"The truth," he said huskily, "would have been best in the first place;
the truth is always best. I suppose any chance that I may have had
is gone now. Yes, I--I killed her--with that gun." He pointed to the
broken bits on Wiggly's handkerchief. "The evidence is there. I felt
that it was coming when--when this reporter started talking--about the
tallow."

"Suffering cats!" This interruption came from Sergeant Tish, who gave
Wiggly Price an uncanny look of reluctant admiration.

"It began," went on Gilmore in a heavy, toneless voice, "on Monday,
when Helen went to New York to meet Haskins, her--her husband." He
winced, as he said that. "That night she wanted money to pay the
blackmail of the man's silence. She lied to me, and I knew that she
lied, but she would not tell me the truth.

"The next day Sarbella came, and I saw--we all saw--that there was
something--something that terrified her. I got Sarbella out to the
studio, tried to force him to tell. I suspected a--a love affair. I was
mad with jealousy. He gave me his word that he had never so much as
seen her before, but I thought that was a gentleman's lie. It was true.

"That night--last night only, but it seems an eternity--I stayed for
a long time out at the studio, tortured by those black thoughts. It
was after eleven o'clock when I came back to the house. Everybody had
retired. I went upstairs to my room. It was next to Helen's. I was
trying to compose myself before I went in to her to demand the truth. I
had no weapon; there was no thought of violence.

"The connecting door between our rooms was locked--from her side, but
through the panel I thought I heard hushed voices. I thought--what
could I think other than that Sarbella might be in there with her?
Somehow I hesitated, and it must have been while I debated, trying to
think, that she got Haskins out and to the third floor.

"And then I went in to her. She was sitting in a chair, facing the
door. I didn't see the gun; it was on the floor at her feet. My mind
was in such a daze that I hardly think I can make it clear just how it
happened. I think I told her that there had been a man in her room,
that I had heard them talking.

"I know that I was wild looking, disheveled, haggard. I had not slept
at all the night before. Perhaps she thought I meant to kill her.
Anyhow, she leaned over and picked up the gun swiftly. That was the
first time I had noticed it.

"'Go away,' she told me. But I did not go away; I had come for the
truth, the truth from her own lips. I told her to put down the gun, and
when she did not, I did a very foolish thing; I attempted to take it
from her by force. I couldn't control myself.

"That was when it happened--in the struggle for the gun. It was her own
hand that pulled the trigger. I swear before Heaven that is true." He
paused a moment, breathing heavily.

"The muzzle must have been pressed close to her body," he went on;
"that was why there was scarcely any explosion; her body muffled the
shot. She collapsed, and I put her on the couch. She did not move or
speak. That is how it happened."

The young assistant district attorney gulped, as if he were choking,
and Doctor Bushnell stared in dazed bewilderment.

"But there--there was a shot!" he gasped. "A shot--and her scream. I
can't understand----"

"He hasn't finished his story, doctor," said Wiggly Price. "He hasn't
told you how he worked the clever scheme of covering up the shooting,
trying to make it appear suicide." He pointed to the bits of porcelain
and the tallow. "There's the answer to that. He took the black
porcelain vase as his alibi, put gunpowder into it and tamped it in
with candle tallow, made a sort of firecracker. The wick of the candle,
from which he stripped the tallow, was his fuse. He lighted it and went
out of the house again, pretending that he'd forgotten his keys and
had been locked out; that was an excuse to get the butler up and to
have a witness to his alibi. Bates could truthfully swear that he was
downstairs when the explosion sounded.

"Those black specks in the tallow that have been worrying me all
morning, were burned gunpowder. Don't think I'd have obtained the
answer to it, though, if I hadn't handled the pieces of the vase, and a
black smudge--burned powder again--came free on my fingers.

"After that it was clear; the murderer was some one who wasn't on the
second floor; that could mean only one person--Gilmore himself."

Lasker, the assistant district attorney, leaped to his feet.

"But in that case," he demanded, "what about the scream and Joan
Sheridan's silk dressing gown and the bloodstains?"

"I fancy," answered Wiggly, "that it was Miss Sheridan who screamed."

Bates, the butler, gave a violent start.

"It was!" he exclaimed. "I said at the time it sounded just like the
time she had screamed when Mr. Kirklan was thrown by his horse."

Gilmore spoke again. "Yes," he said, "the shot that awakened the house
was not a shot, but the explosion of the powder in the vase. When I
thought Helen was dead, I was suddenly afraid.

"Who would believe that was the way it had happened? They would arrest
me, send me to prison, and I was suddenly a coward. I--I don't know how
I happened to think of what I did; it just came to me suddenly, every
detail of it.

"In my own room, in a closet, was a box of shotgun shells that I had
used for duck hunting last fall. It was a simple matter to remove the
wads and take out the powder from two shells and pour it into the vase.
I had to go downstairs for the candle. That is all; it would take ten
minutes or so for the candle wick to burn down to the powder. I went
out of the house, but returned almost immediately and rang the bell.
Bates let me in; I--I had to detain him downstairs until the explosion.

"When the scream came, I was even more startled than Bates. I could not
understand that. And then when we got to the top of the stairs a door
slammed, and the door to her room was open. I had left it closed; also
I had turned off the lights, and they were burning.

"You can imagine the torture I was in. I tried to make myself speak,
but I was a coward. I was afraid of the consequences. I would
have spoken, if the net had tightened about Sarbella; I want that
understood, that I should not have let an innocent man suffer.

"Then Haskins in the house--dead--it seemed to make me safe, to solve
the whole terrible situation. And it was not murder. Believe me or not,
I have told the truth."

Joan Sheridan lifted her head. "Yes," she said, "he has told the truth.
I had it from--from her own lips."

"What!" cried Gilmore. "You can't mean that she--she was still alive.
Merciful Heaven, I let her die!"

"I was unable to sleep," Joan went on slowly. "I had started downstairs
for a book. As I passed the door of her room I heard her moaning. I
opened the door and went in. I switched on the lights, bent over her;
that must have been when the hairpin fell from my hair, and I got the
blood on my sleeve. She was dying. She gasped out that Kirklan had shot
her by accident. And that was when I screamed. The vase exploded an
instant later." Her head lifted. "I realize that I am under oath; Helen
told me with her own lips that it was an accident."

Wiggly Price wondered if this were true, or a superb falsehood to save
the man she loved.

"If it was an accident, why didn't you talk?" Wiggly countered.

"The vase, his effort to hide by a porcelain mask what had really
happened," she answered.

"And that was why you were so sure that Sarbella was innocent?"

Joan nodded.

"But you stated on your oath," pressed Wiggly, "that you did not hear
the shot."

"That was the technical truth," answered Joan. "It was not a shot."

There fell silence; Doctor Bushnell fussed nervously with some papers
on the table, notes he had been taking of the testimony. The jurors,
although still dazed by it all, looked toward him expectantly.

"Gentlemen," he said slowly, "you have heard the evidence and
the--er--confession. You have heard Miss Sheridan's statement of
the dying words from the Gilmore woman's lips. I might add, as the
examining physician, that the nature of the wound makes it plausible
that it could have been inflicted in such a struggle for possession
of the pistol as Mr. Gilmore has described. Mind you, gentlemen, I am
not trying to sway your verdict; I merely state that the nature of the
wound makes it plausible. Are there any questions that you wish to ask
of any witness?" There were no questions; perhaps the jury was still
too aghast to think of any. "Very well, the witnesses will retire,
while the coroner's jury considers the case."

When Wiggly Price stepped out to the porch he found himself beside
Sergeant Tish.

"Well, Tish," he said. "I told you that I was going to do it, and I
did."

Sergeant Tish grinned feebly. "I gotta hand it to you, you did," he
admitted. "And to think it was Gilmore that did the croak! You didn't
have _that_ doped out. Ain't it funny now that he didn't watch his
chance and make away with the evidence? Guess he thought it was so
clever nobody would get wise. I wonder if the girl was lying about the
Gilmore woman telling her it was an accident."

Wiggly pursed his lips and toyed with something in his hand, the black
hairpin.

"I wonder, too," he murmured. "But, whether she was or not, Gilmore's
story was straight, dead straight. It was an accident, but he got panic
and tried to cover it up by--what did Miss Sheridan call it?--the
porcelain mask."

"Aw, g'wan!" grunted Tish derisively.

"Tish, I'll lay you three wagers: First, that the coroner's jury brings
in a verdict of death by accident; second, that the district attorney's
office will never go behind that verdict and bring Gilmore to trial;
third, that Gilmore and Joan Sheridan are married within a year."

Tish snorted, but did not accept; had he done so, Wiggly would have won
the first two and lost the third. It was almost two years before the
last prophecy was fulfilled.

THE END.

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