The porcelain mask A detective story
answered. "But I do say that I can't understand why _he_ should have
been so anxious for it to appear suicide. It's very easy to understand
a possible link between this crook and Gilmore's wife; she began life,
I think I told you, on the fringe of the underworld. Oh, I admit that
I'm stumped--bad, but there must be a hidden something, somewhere, that
will put us right."
The detective sergeant's car was now at that point of the road where it
ran in front of the Gilmore place.
"Turn in here, Sergeant Tish," grunted the constable, as they neared
the driveway, and Tish turned the wheel sharply. Before they had quite
reached the house, Tish stopped the machine.
"Listen, gents," he said crisply, "let's get down to cases. It looks
to me as if Haskins did the job here at this place, although, as our
reporter friend says, it _is_ queer that he left the gat behind. I want
to put my mitts on Don Haskins, whether he did the croak or not. And
you wanna get hold of the same bird, for, if he didn't do it, you want
him to tell you how this gun of mine got away from him.
"I want Haskins, and you want Haskins. Circumstances puts us in
the same boat, and we ought to work together on this business." He
suppressed a wise grin, as he saw the look of displeasure on Griggs'
face. "Aw, don't worry, constable, I'm not going to butt in on your
territory. I'm not tryin' to steal your thunder."
Sergeant Tish paused for a reply.
"Humph!" grunted Ham Griggs, not finding any valid excuse for refusing
this offer of coöperation.
"About all I know to date," pursued Sergeant Tish, "is that a woman
was bumped off with my gun, the one that Haskins lifted from me, when
he handed me a knock-out at Eighth Avenue Annie's, that the pistol was
left beside the body to make it look like suicide, and that you've
gathered in a guy named Sarbella. If I'm goin' to help you any, I've
got to have the low-down. See?"
"Yes, constable, we'd better tell him," said Wiggly Price, as Griggs
remained silent. "If you've no objection, I'll give him a brief outline
of the facts."
"All right," agreed Griggs, and Price related to Tish the facts in the
case.
Sergeant Tish listened thoughtfully to Wiggly Price's digest of the
tragedy, and, puffing out his plump cheeks to a balloonlike roundness,
nodded his head.
"It's sure a queer jumble, ain't it?" he grunted. "I don't blame you,
Griggs, for thinkin' this Sarbella fellow pulled the job, but how would
Sarbella have got hold of the gun? No, it still looks like Don Haskins
to me. Nobody else to be suspected, I suppose?"
Wiggly thought of the black hairpin and that germ of suspicion which
Etta Griggs had planted in his mind by telling him of the suspected
one-sided romance between Joan Sheridan and her stepbrother. He
hesitated a moment and decided to keep this to himself, at least for
the present. Let Sarbella and Don Haskins, walking so unexpectedly into
the mystery, be eliminated before other complications were added. He
sidestepped this question by ignoring it entirely.
"Surely," he said, "if Bates had let Haskins into the house, he would
have mentioned it."
"Why don't we ask him whether he did or not?" grunted Constable Griggs,
for at this moment the butler had stepped out of the house into the
warming sunlight of the wide porch.
CHAPTER XXI
A CRY OF TERROR
The three men left the little police car where it stood and walked the
remaining few yards to the house. Bates saw their coming; as a matter
of fact, he had from within noticed their approach, and he had come out
to meet them. Despite his evident weariness, he was patently eager for
any news. Constable Griggs, quickly forestalling any move that might
tend to crowd himself out of the major role, planted himself directly
in front of the butler, frowning sternly.
"When was the last time you saw the dead woman alive?" he demanded.
"Immediately after dinner," answered Bates; "she went directly
upstairs, and I did not see her again until--until she was dead."
"How long had you been in bed when it happened?"
"It was some time, sir; at least two hours, I am sure."
"What I'm hittin' at is this," explained Griggs; "we've got some new
dope that may mean something, and then again it may not. Did you let a
strange man into the house last night, or did you see any strange man
prowlin' about the place?"
"I--I don't believe I understand," murmured Bates. "A strange man,
sir--prowling about the house?"
"That's what I said," grunted the constable, "and it's evident that you
didn't. Was the doors locked?"
"Absolutely," Bates answered firmly. "I always lock up before turning
in for the night. I have been very careful about that, especially since
the burglar scare that we had last year."
"Then the man couldn't have got into the house unless you had let him
in?" pressed Griggs.
"The woman herself might have let him in, constable," interposed
Sergeant Tish. "If the butler had gone to bed she might have done it
without any one hearing her."
"Huh!" retorted Ham Griggs, with a quicker flash of reasoning than
might have been expected. "How would she have known Haskins was about,
unless he rung the doorbell, or called her on the phone, or something
like that? Until you, Sergeant Tish, trapped 'im in that place in New
York, he didn't know his own self that he was comin' to Greenacres."
"I am positive that there was no ring of any sort, either doorbell or
telephone, until Mr. Gilmore got me up to let him in--just before the
shot," offered Bates. "Any sort of ringing would have awakened me. But
this strange man--I do not understand. Who----"
"Might as well tell you, I suppose," grunted the constable. "We've
found out that the murder gun most likely belongs to this man"--he
jerked his head toward Tish--"who is a detective from New York. The gun
was taken away from him by a feller named Haskins, who swiped a taxi in
New York to make his get-away, and that same taxi was found by myself
out on the road, 'bout one and a half or two miles from here. So----"
"Then it isn't Mr. Sarbella's gun?" broke in Bates with a gasp of
surprise.
"That don't mean I've turned Sarbella out of jail, not by a whole lot,
it don't," growled Ham Griggs. "He might have got hold of the gun
somehow; he might----" But, being unable to supply any further theory
of Sarbella's guilt, his voice stopped abruptly. There was a moment of
silence, broken by Bates.
"Did I tell you about the letter?" he asked in his thin voice. "No, I
think not. It was Doctor Bushnell that I told about the letter."
"What letter?" demanded Griggs.
"The letter that came for Mrs. Gilmore on Monday," supplied the butler.
"I considered it most peculiar at the time, a very dirty envelope,
addressed with a lead pencil. She seemed much upset over it, although
she tried to pass it off."
"It might have been from Haskins at that," spoke up Wiggly Price,
and he turned to Sergeant Tish. "It was yesterday--Tuesday--that you
cornered Haskins in the place you call Eighth Avenue Annie's. What day
was it that the swell-dressed woman called on the man at that place?"
"Monday," answered Tish.
"Ah!" exclaimed the newspaper man triumphantly, and his ears wiggled a
bit. "It was Monday that the murdered woman got this letter that Bates
tells about. Bates, did she go to New York on Monday?"
"I don't think to New York, but she did drive somewhere in the
motor--out into the country, I believe she said."
"Yes, so she said," nodded Wiggly with meaning emphasis. "That doesn't
make it true that she didn't go to New York. Any one accompany her on
this motor trip?"
"She went alone; she returned late in the afternoon."
"Say!" exploded Ham Griggs with a glare. "One would think _you_ was the
officer in charge the way you're bustin' in with all these questions."
"Just one question more, Constable Griggs," urged Wiggly. "I'm not
trying to be officious. Bates, let us suppose for a moment that this
man, Don Haskins, did get into the house in some way or another, would
he have had time to get down the stairs before you and Mr. Gilmore
rushed up--and then let himself out of the house, while you and Mr.
Gilmore were upstairs?"
Bates debated this question for a moment and then shook his head
positively.
"He would not," he replied; "but he might have easily found a place
to conceal himself in one of the rooms upstairs. There is one bit of
detail that I may have forgotten to mention. When Mr. Gilmore and I
were about halfway up the stairway, I am positive that I heard a door
slam very loudly--very loudly, indeed."
"Huh!" grunted the constable. "That don't mean anything much. It might
just as well have been Sarbella rushin' back to his room after havin'
shot her." And then he indulged in another bit of reasoning which did
him credit. "If it was the Gilmore woman who went to see Haskins in
New York, we know she wasn't too afraid of him to go see him in that
cheap joint Sergeant Tish told us about. And yet she was afraid of the
one who come in on her last night--because she screamed. Why did she
scream? I'll tell you why she screamed; it was because she knowed that
Sarbella had come to kill her! Just put that in your pipe and smoke it
a while."
"Not a bad deduction," nodded Sergeant Tish, "but the thing that
puzzles all of us is--how did Sarbella get the gun away from Haskins?
We're just wastin' good time arguing back and forth. Let's go upstairs
and see if we can't pick up something new."
"The--the body has been removed," the butler informed them. "The
undertaker left an hour since. Doctor Bushnell was very careful that
nothing else should be disturbed, and the room is locked. Doctor
Bushnell----"
"And took the key off with him, I suppose," growled Constable Griggs.
"Doctor Bushnell, as I started to say," went on Bates, "is still here.
Mr. Gilmore seems to be in quite a bad way, and the doctor is looking
after him."
"We'll go on upstairs," declared Griggs. "Tell the doc that we want him
to come right on up and let us into that room."
Wiggly Price did not follow them immediately; he loitered downstairs
until Bates had delivered the message to the doctor and had returned.
The butler, luckily for Wiggly, had not been told the reporter's true
interest in the case, else he would have doubtless guarded his tongue
most carefully.
"It's a bad business, Bates," said the newspaper man to begin the
conversation.
"A terrible business," agreed the butler. "You don't think that Mr.
Sarbella killed her?"
"You do?"
"What else could I believe, with all the queer happenings? But I hope
not--as much for Mr. Gilmore's sake as anything, sir; he seems to take
Mr. Sarbella's arrest almost as hard as the murder."
"She was a bad lot, your master's slain wife, Bates."
"I am not surprised at that," murmured the servant. "I sensed that
she wasn't the right sort. I think we all realized that--except Mr.
Kirklan."
"Of course he wouldn't; she was a remarkably beautiful woman, and he
was in love with her. Quite a sudden marriage, I understand."
"Very sudden; a surprise and a shock to all of us."
"It's much too bad, Bates, that Mr. Gilmore did not marry a woman
of the right kind--Miss Joan, say." Wiggly's tone was disarmingly
careless, and Bates did not understand that information was being
sought.
"Yes, it certainly is," agreed the butler earnestly, falling
straightway into the little trap. "We were all hoping that it would
turn out that way. All of us, except Mr. Kirklan, could see with
half an eye that Miss Joan was in love with him, even if she is his
stepsister; it cut her up terribly when she came home from Europe and
found her here. Not only here, sir, but in Miss Joan's own room."