The porcelain mask A detective story
"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