The porcelain mask A detective story

"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."