The porcelain mask A detective story
"Certainly it's solved!" exclaimed Bushnell with asperity. "As deputy
coroner I shall convene a jury and hold an inquest as quickly as
possible--this afternoon. I'll bring the district attorney back with me
when I return from the hospital. The verdict will be a mere matter of
formality."
"Yes," agreed Wiggly, "a mere matter of formality, unless we turn up
something new."
The butler came hurrying out of the house with the pillows; the
doctor took them from him and arranged them supportingly behind the
unconscious constable's shoulders.
"Get your hat, Bates," he instructed; "you'll have to go along."
Three or four minutes later the physician's machine, Bushnell at the
wheel and Bates in the rear seat with the insensible Griggs, rolled
down the white-graveled driveway, and Wiggly returned to the house,
wondering a little what had happened to Tip Gregory, reporter for the
rival paper, _The Transcript_. Probably Tip, rebuffed at Greenacres,
had gone to the village in search of information.
Sergeant Tish had come down from the second floor and had established
himself in one of the library's roomy chairs, making himself as
comfortable as his twinging shoulder would permit. His roundish
face was still gray with the throbbing pain, but he endured it with
fortitude.
"Well, young man," he grunted, "you've got a darn good story, and you
ought to be satisfied. Seems to me that it's good enough to suit your
paper without your trying to add anything imaginative."
"Meaning," replied Wiggly, "that you'd have me quit thinking. Nope, I
stick to my hunch that Haskins' story was what he said it was--strictly
on the level."
"Bunk!" snorted Tish.
"Let's talk it over, sergeant," Wiggly urged earnestly as, hands
rammed deep into his pockets, he strode up and down the room, his ears
twitching slightly. "Does it seem reasonable to you that Haskins would
have left the automatic behind him after the shooting?"
"Humph!" the New York detective grunted non-committally.
"That gun," went on the newspaper man, "was his one friend, the only
hope that he had if he were cornered. Besides, leaving the gun behind
served no purpose--no purpose whatever. In fact, if he had the brains
to reason it out, he would have known that there was a chance--a
serious chance--of the automatic being identified as your gun. It's the
common thing to trace a gun by its serial number."
"He might have dropped the gun accidentally and didn't have a chance to
get his hands on it again."
"Oh, I say, sergeant, that's too thin!" exclaimed Wiggly. "It's taking
too much for granted to presume that the gun accidentally fell in a
position directly beneath the murdered woman's hand. No, that was done
with the deliberate intention of having her death appear suicide."
"It's a good point, and it's reasonable," admitted Tish, "but it
doesn't prove anything. I got to admit it does seem a little queer that
Haskins would have left the gun behind."
"And it hooks up with Haskins' story about missing the gun, realizing
that the Gilmore woman had lifted it out of his pocket, and his
determination to risk a trip downstairs again in an effort to get it
back."
"Humph!" Tish said again.
"When you identified the gun as yours--the one that Haskins took away
from you when he knocked you out at Eighth Avenue Annie's yesterday--it
did seem impossible that Sarbella, or any one else, could have done the
shooting. But let us suppose that Haskins' dying statement was true.
The Gilmore woman had the gun; maybe she took it because she was afraid
of her legal husband."
"Whatcha mean--'or any one else?'" growled Tish. "You keep hinting
at something you haven't let me in on. If it wasn't Haskins or
Sarbella----Aw, you talk like a fool!"
Wiggly hesitated for a moment. "Tish," he said slowly, "I don't know
that I'm exactly holding any aces, but I'm going to lay all my cards on
the table and let you have a look at 'em. We know why Sarbella might
have killed the woman."
"Motive ain't strong enough," broke in the detective with a shake of
the head. "His kid brother lost his head over her and killed himself;
that's all."
"Ordinarily I'd agree with you, but when we think of Sarbella's motive
we've got to think of a race that is credited with a passion for
personal vengeance. The Latins are hot-blooded, and their blood does
not cool quickly like ours. They nurse a grudge for years.
"Let us suppose that Sarbella went to the Gilmore woman's room, not
with the intention of killing her, but to tell her that, unless she
made a full confession to her husband, he would tell Gilmore, himself.
The gun was there--the gun that she had taken away from Haskins--and
the man's hatred for this bronze-haired vampire who caused the suicide
of his brother and the ultimate death of their mother, mastered him."
"Suppose anything you darn please," grunted Tish. "It's easy enough to
cook up stuff, but making it hold water is something else. Yeah, I'll
say it is."
"But there's something else," persisted Wiggly. "You've missed the
hidden undercurrent that I've sensed. I tell you, Tish, there's
something beneath the surface of things in this house."
"Meaning just what?" the detective asked skeptically.
"Did you notice Gilmore's stepsister--Joan Sheridan her name is--when
she came out into the hall after the cook fainted?"
Tish eyed the newspaper man half curiously, half disgustedly.
"I saw her," he answered.
"Yes, you saw her, but did you see the expressions of her face? Did you
notice how excited she became----"
"Say, I guess any woman would be excited, after what had happened, to
hear a woman screaming like that cook did, and her face all bloody on
top of it."
"When the doctor told her that Sarbella had been removed from
suspicion, and that some one else had done the shooting," Wiggly went
on, "well, I saw it, Tish; and I saw, too, what a look of relief
came into her face when Bushnell told her that it was Haskins, the
crook. The human emotions seldom lie, Tish, and, take it from me, that
Sheridan girl knows a lot more about this thing than she is willing to
tell."
"Rave on!" growled Sergeant Tish. "I'd given you credit for having a
balance wheel, but that's nut stuff you're pulling now."
"Wait a minute," Wiggly pressed on, not discouraged by the other's
derision. "Maybe you remember that Haskins refused to answer me when I
asked him if it was a man or a woman he saw coming out of the Gilmore
woman's room after he heard the shot."
"I can answer it, even if Haskins didn't; it was a man come out of the
room, and it was Haskins himself. Whatcha trying to do now--hang it
onto the Sheridan girl? Think it would make a better story for you,
huh? Aw, forget it! Why would she have done it?" The question came in a
triumphant tone.
"Oh, I've got you an answer for that, Tish," Wiggly replied. "So you
demand a motive; all right, I'll furnish that, too. The strongest and
most unreasoning of motives, the most deadly--jealousy!"
"Huh?"
"Joan Sheridan is in love with her stepbrother. I got that from the
constable's daughter this morning."
"A woman's gossip!" snorted Tish. "I wouldn't go two cents on no kind
of talk like that."
"And verified it by the butler," Wiggly added doggedly. "The
constable's daughter is a great little gabber, and I wouldn't take
her unsupported word; so I felt out Bates, and he admitted that the
household had rather hoped for a match between Gilmore and Miss
Sheridan. Yes, she's in love with her stepbrother; used to help him
with his work and that sort of thing. The butler told me that it was
a great shock to Miss Sheridan when she returned home from Europe and
found that he had married during her absence.
"There's another little point; it might not seem so much, but I can
imagine how it must have added to the blow. Miss Sheridan also returned
home to find this strange woman--Gilmore's bride--had taken possession
of her own room, a room that she had occupied for years and had
formed a deep attachment for. I gather that a very strained situation
resulted; even the servants took a dislike to the new Mrs. Gilmore.
"Man, I tell you there's something under the surface; I tell you that
we've only scratched the surface, so to speak, of the Gilmore mystery.
If Miss Sheridan would talk, we might learn something interesting." He
tossed up his hands in a helpless gesture. "It would be silly to try
and quiz her until we've got something to face her with; that would
only spoil whatever chances we may have of getting to the bottom of it."
Sergeant Tish frowned and puffed out his plump cheeks; he was thinking
things over now; then he shook his head.
"Don't take much stock in it," he declared.
"Jealousy is a primitive passion," argued Wiggly. "I'd consider it a
stronger motive than revenge. Between Sarbella and the girl----"
"No," Tish corrected himself, "I don't take any stock in it at all.
Haskins did the murder; Haskins is dead, and the case is closed. Don't
bother me with any more of this stuff."
"There's one more thing that I haven't told you," said the newspaper
man. "You remember the color of the murdered woman's hair?"
"Sort of a dull gold, isn't it?" grunted Tish, interested in spite of
himself. "What's the color of her hair got to do with it?"
"Bronze is the right color, Tish; naturally she uses bronze hairpins,
as I verified by a look at her dressing table. And yet on the floor
beside the chaise longue I found a black hairpin, and Miss Sheridan's
hair is dark."
Sergeant Tish puffed out his cheeks, looking up slowly. For a full
minute he debated this information before he stirred.
"Women are always dropping hairpins outta their heads; might have
been a servant, or Miss Sheridan, for that matter, paying a perfectly
innocent visit to the room." Yet the detective's tone was deliberate,
thoughtful.
"Remember the Hitchcock murder--solved by a black mourning pin?"
Moving cautiously in an effort to keep any painful strain from his
shoulder muscles, Tish stood to his feet.
"Mind you," he warned, "I don't say that I think you're within a
hundred miles of being right, but it'll do no harm to go upstairs and
have another look around."
In the light of Tish's previously derisive skepticism, Wiggly felt that
he had achieved something of a victory.
CHAPTER XXVI
BITS OF TALLOW
Presently Tish and Wiggly Price were once more within the room where
Helen Gilmore had met death, again seeking from the mute furnishings
some vital clew that previous examinations might have overlooked. The
newspaper man was all eagerness, but the interest of the detective had
already cooled. There was the window with Haskins' finger prints; he
had the sort of mind that readily accepts the obvious, and his police
experience had taught him that, nine chances to ten, the obvious is the
true.
It was a little hard to think of this cheerful bed-chamber as a
place of dark deeds. The north windows looked out upon the wide and
shimmering bosom of the Hudson; a sailboat clipped daintily over the
water, and in its wake the sunlight made the ripples scintillate like
diamonds. Across the Tappan Zee the stern ruggedness of the New Jersey
Palisades was softened with a verdant touch and splash of summer
greenness.
"The answer to it all is here," said Wiggly. "There must be something
more for us than just a woman's hairpin."
"Sure," grunted Tish; "my gun and Haskins' finger prints on the glass."
He had returned even more positively to the conviction that he had been
right in the first place.
"Ah, but what we're after now, Tish, is a clew that will outweigh the
finger prints and the gun. There must be something more than that;
there's got to be."