The porcelain mask A detective story
agile mind, it took her some little time to arrive at this bit of
pretense, and she wouldn't have thought of it then except for some
empty fruit jars. And, while the jars might have better gone to the
basement, Mrs. Bogart craftily decided to carry them upstairs to the
third floor and into the seldom-used storeroom.
"Goodness knows," she murmured, "I've been threatenin' for days upon
days to get 'em out of the kitchen."
Straightway she mounted to a chair, took the fruit jars from the
shelf where they had been temporarily placed, used a dish cloth in
improvising a sling which would carry the full ten of them, and
started for the third floor. At some time or another there had been
a back stairs to the Gilmore house, but this had been closed off in
making some modernizing alterations, so that Mrs. Bogart perforce
had to wend her way to the reception hall and up the wide front
stairway--hoping that Bates would not see her and order her back to her
own domain.
Bates, however, did not appear to interrupt her little pilgrimage of
morbid curiosity. She reached the second floor and, having to pass the
room wherein Helen Gilmore had been shot to death, paused for a moment
outside the narrowly open door, as she sought in vain to get anything
like a good look inside. And, while she could not see much, her ears
certainly got her a thrill, for it was at this moment that Sergeant
Tish had said: "Yep, this clinches it, gents. These are Haskins' finger
prints on the window. Good thing I brought this card along, huh?
Haskins is wanted now for two murders. The job now is--find Haskins."
Mrs. Bogart's eyes bulged, and the empty fruit jars came perilously
near crashing to the floor. Two murders! What did they mean? Who else
had been murdered, and who was Haskins? Up to the moment of her last
talk with Bates about the tragedy all suspicion had been leveled at
Sarbella.
She tarried a moment, but there was nothing of the conversation on the
other side of the door to enlighten her; not wishing to run the risk of
being caught at eavesdropping, she moved on down the hall toward the
stairs, the top of the house, and the seldom-used storeroom.
The entrance to the third floor stairway was inclosed, and it was
reached by means of a door. Mrs. Bogart's hand went out to the knob;
her strong fingers closed about it with a muscular grip, and then a
startled gasp sounded on her lips, and a chill swept over her body.
The door had yielded a bare inch when she felt a retarding pressure,
holding it shut against her. Some one was on the other side!
"Mebbe--mebbe it's just stuck a little," she muttered in a gulping
whisper. "Mebbe I imagined it." She braced her body, took a fresh and
determined grip on the knob, and tried it again. Under exertion of
this strong pull the door, still in the grasp of that opposing, unseen
force, came toward her a bare inch or so, revealing to her staring
eyes, indistinct in the shadows of the inclosed stairs, a bleary,
unshaven face--a face hideously haggard, terrifying.
Mrs. Bogart staggered back with a choking, frightened cry upon her
lips; the fruit jars crashed to the floor, with a thud and the sound of
splintering glass, and the woman herself toppled over in a dead faint.
From the side of her face there gushed a stream of blood, where the
ragged edge of a broken jar had slashed the flesh. After the woman's
cry, the four men in the room up the hall stood staring at each other
for a brief moment.
"What's happened now?" gasped Wiggly Price, and Constable Griggs was
too utterly stupefied to make a sound.
"It sounds like a woman's scream," said Doctor Bushnell, looking no
less dazed than the rest.
Sergeant Tish was the first to leap into motion, projecting his pudgy
body out into the hall with the other three at his heels. At the sight
of the prostrate Mrs. Bogart, surrounded by broken and unbroken fruit
jars, with the blood still streaming from her face, the New York
detective stopped dead in his tracks.
"What's this?" he shouted. "Who is this woman, and what's happened to
her?"
Constable Griggs edged forward and made a number of queer sounds before
he finally found voice.
"It--it's Mrs. Bogart--she that does the cookin' for the Gilmores!" he
gulped. "She's all bloody. Do--do you reckon that she's been murdered,
too?"
Doctor Bushnell brushed past and knelt quickly to the floor at the side
of the unconscious woman.
"She's not dead!" exclaimed Wiggly Price, noting the rapid rise and
fall of Mrs. Bogart's bosom.
"Nor badly hurt, I think," said the physician, as he made a rapid
examination. "The blood here is from a superficial wound; she's been
cut by this broken glass. I wonder what _has_ happened to her?" He
jerked his head toward the newspaper man. "Get my medicine kit, Price,"
he commanded. "You'll find it downstairs; I left it on the table in the
library."
Wiggly dashed down the stairs in instant response. Yes, what had
happened to this woman whom Griggs identified as the Gilmore cook? Was
this another angle to complicate the Greenacres tangle?
Passing through the hall into the library he heard a familiar
voice; it was "Tip" Gregory, a star reporter for a rival New York
newspaper, _The Transcript_, pleading with the butler for admittance
and information, and Bates was sternly refusing him either. Wouldn't
Gregory have gnashed his teeth in baffled rage if he had known that
Wiggly Price had things so sweetly to himself!
But the situation was too tense for wasting any time or thoughts upon
what was, after all, only an accidental triumph. He had the silly Etta
Griggs to thank for being here, on the inside of a big story, instead
of spending the morning canvassing the other papers for a job. In the
library was Doctor Bushnell's medicine kit; he grabbed the handle of
the little bag, wheeled and raced up the stairway again.
Mrs. Bogart was stirring, a moan passed her lips, but she had not
returned to consciousness.
"Is she badly hurt, doctor?" Wiggly asked, as he placed the kit upon
the floor.
"No, this cut would not cause unconsciousness. She must either have
fainted and fallen, or fainted because she fell. Sometimes sudden and
profuse bleeding causes----"
The physician's words broke off at the sound of a stifled cry coming
from the turn of the hall, where the corridor led off to the wing of
the house. Joan Sheridan, alarmed by Mrs. Bogart's scream of fright,
had hurriedly left her room to investigate. Her face told of a
sleepless, harrowed night, and now her eyes were wide and startled with
this threat of fresh terror.
"Oh," she whispered, "it's Mrs. Bogart. In Heaven's name what--what has
happened now?"
"That's what we are not exactly certain of, Miss Joan," answered Doctor
Bushnell, as he cut a dressing for the wound in the cook's face. "She
must have fallen. It is nothing serious; do not let it agitate you."
Wiggly Price had looked up quickly at the name of "Joan," for this was
the first time that he had seen her, the stepsister who was so much in
love with Kirklan Gilmore. She was not aware of his scrutiny, so he had
ample opportunity to study her closely. His experience at reporting had
given him a sort of instinctive ability to gauge the human emotions,
and he had a feeling that there was more than horror in the girl's dark
eyes, and he read it with one brief word--fear.
This look of fear was not dissipated by the physician's assurance that
Mrs. Bogart's injury was superficial. It remained, a peculiar, almost
indescribable expression.
"Your mother, Miss Joan, is resting quietly after the shock?" murmured
Doctor Bushnell, stanching the flow of blood in the unconscious woman's
cheek. "I will see her again presently."
"Y-yes," Joan Sheridan said faintly; "mother is sleeping, and Bates has
told me that Mr. Sarbella had been placed under arrest."
"That's true," nodded the doctor, "but it looks now that he will
be released very shortly. You were right when you were so sure
that Sarbella was innocent, and I have a new respect for a woman's
intuition. I think you'd better go back to your room, please."
But the doctor's reassuring words seemed to have other than a soothing
effect upon Joan; if possible, her face became a shade more pale.
Certainly she gave a violent start, and that smoldering light of fear
leaped into a wild light of terror.
"You mean----" The shaking whisper that came from her lips was hardly
audible.
"Please, Joan, please!" exclaimed the doctor. "This is no time for
questions. I've a fainting woman on my hands, and a new suspect
entirely, a crook who got in by the window. The gun was his. No more
questions now."
A gasp that seemed to be at the same time amazement and relief came
from the girl; a look of bewilderment showed in her face. Her hands,
so tightly clenched at her sides, relaxed; swiftly she turned and
disappeared around the bend in the hall.
Wiggly Price's ears twitched violently, for he, unlike the others--and
he, too, would have doubtless overlooked it but for the black hairpin
and the gossip Etta Griggs had given him--had observed her agitation
when told that Sarbella had practically been removed as a suspect, and
her surprise and the relaxing tenseness when she learned of the other.
Did this mean that she had knowledge of the crime, which, for reasons
of her own, she had kept to herself? With this Wiggly linked still
another question: Why had Joan Sheridan been so positive of Victor
Sarbella's innocence? For Wiggly was of the opinion that "woman's
intuition" is something greatly exaggerated. The answer to the latter
question was in itself unimportant; for that matter, so had Kirklan
Gilmore been certain, to the point of vigorous protest, that the
artist had not fired the fatal shot.
Wiggly made up his mind then and there that, while Constable Griggs was
searching for Don Haskins, he would be searching for the answer to Joan
Sheridan's puzzling behavior. He was certain there must be something
behind it, a vital something that would have an important bearing on
the crime.
Doctor Bushnell had completed dressing Mrs. Bogart's wound, having
delayed restoratives until this was done. Now he was chafing her wrists
briskly, and the woman was showing signs of coming to her senses. With
startling suddenness her eyes flew open, and she sat erect; since
her first conscious thought was a return to the moment of her swoon,
a fresh cry of terror burst from her throat. It trailed off into a
gurgle, as she realized that she was not now alone.
"It's all right, Mrs. Bogart," the physician told her soothingly.
"You've had a nasty fall and cut yourself a little on those broken
jars; but it's nothing to worry about."
"That man!" cried Mrs. Bogart. "Where--where did he go? It's Heaven's
own blessing that he didn't murder me in my tracks. He was peering out
at me, and everything went dizzy black in front of me. I----"
"Her head ain't right yet," grunted Constable Griggs. Mrs. Bogart,
letting her heavy fingers touch gingerly to her bandaged face, heard
the local officer's skeptical remark and bridled in indignation.
"I tell you I seen him!" she shrilled, pointing to the door which
closed off the third-floor stairs. "I seen him behind there. He
was holdin' the door shut on me. I was takin' these jars up to the
storeroom. I seen him--lookin' out at me through the crack. He's there
now, if he didn't run out. I tell you I seen him!"
All four of the men exchanged quick, startled, almost incredulous
glances. The same thought had leaped into all their minds. Sergeant
Tish, staring at the closed door, mechanically hitched his gun holster
within easier reach.
"Do you think it's possible, men, that she did see a man, and that he
is----" began Doctor Bushnell.