The porcelain mask A detective story

Wiggly Price leaped forward and stood in front of her, lest Tish spoil whatever chance might be left. "Let me ask you something," he snapped out. "What made you so positive, hours before any one else in the house knew that such a person as Haskins existed, that Victor Sarbella was innocent of the murder?" Joan naturally was startled by this sudden verbal attack; all the blood had drained from her already pale face, leaving her features ghastly. Her eyes met his for a moment and then lowered. "Why--why, what a strange question!" she exclaimed, but there was a noticeable nervous catch in her voice. "I--I never doubted Mr. Sarbella's innocence." "I know you didn't, but what I want to know is--why?" Joan's head went still lower, but Wiggly could see that her lips were quivering. "I--I just knew it." "Intuition, eh?" "Call it anything you like." "Was it intuition or knowledge?" Wiggly demanded sharply. The girl gave a suppressed start, which Sergeant Tish missed entirely; in fact, Tish had not quite recovered from his surprise at the way the newspaper man had plunged in with these rapid-fire questions of his. Wiggly had a thrill of elation; his hunch had been right, and the girl knew something. His hand slid into his pocket, and his fingers closed about the bit of tallow that he had found on the floor of Helen Gilmore's bedroom. "Look at this!" he commanded. Joan's head raised at the compelling tone, but her gaze, as she stared at the misshapen, somewhat soiled lump of white, was merely blankly inquiring. It was quite clear, even to the suspicious reporter, that this meant nothing to her. Again his hand went to his pocket. "And look at this!" he ordered again, opening his fingers, revealing the black hairpin in his palm. "Look at it closely, Miss Sheridan, and tell if it doesn't belong to you." "How--how could I know that?" she stammered. "All hairpins are so much alike. What--what right have you to ask me all these questions in that tone?" She turned appealingly to Sergeant Tish. "Has this newspaper reporter a right to ask me these questions?" "I guess that's a reporter's main business, asking questions," grunted Tish, with a slow grin; quite evidently he wasn't taking Wiggly's cross-examination with any seriousness. "Might as well answer 'em, Miss Sheridan; no harm in that." "This hairpin," went on Wiggly, "was found on the floor beside Helen Gilmore's chaise longue. She didn't use black hairpins, and you do. Do you deny, Miss Sheridan, that you were in the woman's sleeping room last night?" For a moment, the barest instant, Joan hesitated. "Yes," she answered slowly, "I do deny it." "Evidently you do not know," Wiggly went on mercilessly, resorting to a trick in an effort to force the truth from her, "that just before Haskins died he made a statement. He told us that Helen managed to get the automatic out of his pocket before she sent him into hiding on the third floor. He was in the storeroom when he realized that she had got the gun away from him. He came back down the stairs with the intention of forcing her to return it to him. He was in the hall when he heard the scream and the shot. "The door was open, the light was burning inside, and Haskins saw the person who came out of that room!" This much, of course, was true, and for his purpose he did not consider it an unfair advantage, this failure to add that Haskins had refused to tell more. Joan Sheridan's hands were frozen tightly about the arms of the chair; her eyes met Wiggly's with a hunted, terrified look. She realized what he meant--that he was virtually accusing her of the murder. But she was a quick-witted girl, Joan Sheridan; she knew that Sergeant Tish's attitude would not have been so jovially casual if he too had suspected her of the shooting. She mastered herself wonderfully. "Why don't you proceed and say exactly what you mean?" she asked. "What you mean is that you think I----" "Didn't you?" whipped out Wiggly, leaning slightly forward until their eyes were level. This time her gaze did not falter; it met his without flinching. "No!" she answered firmly. "I deny everything you have said and intimated. If you have finished with your inquisition----" Price, realizing that his strategy had failed, offered no objection, as she moved to leave the room. But when her steps had receded up the stairs, he turned angrily upon Tish. "A nice mess you made of things!" he exclaimed hotly. "Why did you have to tell her that I am a newspaper man?" "Well, ain't you?" "You didn't give me a square shake. You queered any chance that I might have had to make her talk. You belittled me, and that took all the wind out of my sails. If you'd backed me up a little, we'd have had her dead to rights. If we could have made her believe that it was she whom Haskins saw coming out of the room after the shot was fired----" "Aw, forget it," growled Tish; "she didn't croak the woman any more than you did." "Probably not premeditatively, but there's one thing sure in my mind, and you'll never convince me any different: Either Joan Sheridan did the shooting, or she knows who did--and she knows it wasn't Haskins. She was on the edge of a breakdown, but you braced her right up. And you're called a detective!" Sergeant Tish's face flushed. "See here, I'm not going to have any newspaper scribbler talk that way to me! If I'd have let you have your way, you'd have made a fool out of me as well as yourself. Hairpins, tallow! Bah! I guess you think you are a detective--a real detective. That's the way with you newspaper guys--always hunting for a chance to make the police wrong, trying to make monkeys of the police department. You make me sick!" Wiggly's ears moved violently. "You wait and see!" he retorted. "Sneer at hairpins and tallow, but I know I'm on the right trail, and I'm going to stick on this job until I've followed it to the end." CHAPTER XXVII WIGGLY REMAINS UNCONVINCED For all of his asserted confidence, which bordered upon boasting, Wiggly Price realized that he had a hard nut to crack. Swinging out of the library and Sergeant Tish's presence, he went out to the porch and sat down to indulge himself in logic, speculation, guessing. He took the piece of tallow from his pocket again, staring at it fixedly; his belief that it had some vital part in the mystery had become an obsession; but there was one thing about it that discouraged him--Joan Sheridan had shown no perturbation when he had produced it before her eyes. Following a simple bit of logical reasoning, if the bit of tallow were so important as he insistently imagined, and if the girl had done the shooting, it was extremely strange that she had shown no signs of agitation when faced with this evidence. He had been favorably impressed with the girl's face; she seemed to be a sane, well-balanced young person. Certainly, he argued, it was difficult to believe that she would have committed the murder after cold premeditation; but might she not have yielded to a suddenly and insanely jealous impulse, suddenly overwhelmed by the proximity of the automatic pistol? No matter who did the murder, Wiggly reasoned, it had not been a premeditated crime; the slayer had not gone to Helen Gilmore's room with a weapon. The weapon was already there. These cogitations, of course, took it for granted that Haskins' dying statement had been entirely truthful; the reporter might have agreed with Tish that the whole yarn was a lie, except that he could not imagine a desperate man like Haskins deliberately leaving the gun behind. With the death of the only person who knew of his presence in the house, Haskins had nothing to gain by cloaking the crime under the guise of suicide. That Joan Sheridan knew more than she had told, Wiggly was flatly certain; he had studied every changing expression of her face and he had seen the emotions which Tish had missed. Either she had committed the crime, or else she knew who did. Presuming her innocence, whom was she protecting with her silence? Sarbella? That did not seem logical. Why should she go to such great lengths to protect Sarbella? Yet, other than Sarbella, Joan, and Haskins, there had been but one other person above the first floor when the shot was fired, and that was the other Mrs. Gilmore, Joan's mother. "Ah!" thought Wiggly with a tingle of excitement, as his mind canvassed this possibility. "There is the person that the girl would protect, her mother. And the mother has kept closely to her room; the doctor had to look after her. Now what could have been her motive?" That was a puzzler, particularly so since he had not so much as put eyes on the woman. Perhaps--this was guessing merely--the older Mrs. Gilmore had been mistress of Greenacres so long that she resented the appearance of an interloper; possibly she had taken the frenzied notion that she was to be dispossessed from this house which had been her home. Both Bates and Kirklan Gilmore, downstairs in the butler's pantry when the scream and the shot had sounded through the quiet house, had been positive that they had got up the stairs before any one would have had a chance to come down; even Haskins had verified that. Their coming had been so swift as to cut off his chance of escape. Yes, decided Wiggly, counting Haskins out of it, there remained just three possible suspects. Joan, Sarbella, and the elder Mrs. Gilmore. But the piece of tallow--he was not getting the answer to that. He was still considering it when Doctor Bushnell's automobile turned in at the Greenacres driveway. The doctor was returning from the hospital with the butler. A moment later the physician's touring car came to a pause near the porch, and Wiggly got quickly to his feet. "How about Constable Griggs?" he asked. "He'll make the grade, but it was a close call for him," answered Doctor Bushnell. "Mighty bad fracture. He'll have to spend a week or better in the hospital. I've explained the whole situation, and he's given me the jail keys and his permission to release Sarbella, which I shall do immediately. Has the district attorney arrived yet?" "Haven't seen him," replied Wiggly, eager for an opening that he might have a frank talk with the deputy coroner. "I telephoned him from the hospital and explained the situation in detail. He agreed with me that there seemed to be no doubt that Haskins killed the woman; said he'd come right over. I'll drum up enough men for the coroner's jury when I get to the village and release Sarbella. Whew! I'll bet it's a load off of his mind; it certainly looked bad for that fellow--mighty bad." Bates had gone on into the house; the doctor had not got out of the car, his purpose in stopping evidently being merely to let out the butler. His hand was upon the gear lever, ready to start his car in motion again, but Wiggly put detaining fingers on his arm. "Just a moment, Doctor Bushnell," he urged earnestly. "I know you've made up your mind that Haskins did the shooting, and that, since Haskins is dead, the case is virtually closed." "Certainly it is," nodded the physician. "I thought about it all the way on the drive to the hospital and back. The evidence against Haskins is all that any reasonable man would ask. Practically a matter of legal formality, the inquest." "I'm going to ask that you listen to me, with an open mind," Wiggly insisted. "I want to talk with you about the case in utmost seriousness; I feel that you're on the verge of making a grave blunder. I've found something----" "Not more hairpins?" broke in the doctor with a faint smile. "Doctor, I'm no novice in contact with crime; and, while I'm not