The porcelain mask A detective story
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.