The porcelain mask A detective story

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."