The porcelain mask A detective story

"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