The porcelain mask A detective story
nursing any notion that I'm a born detective, I've got eyes in my head
and a logical sort of thinking apparatus. Without trying to toot my own
horn, I might add that I've helped my paper solve a puzzle or so, after
the police had fallen down on the job. I'm not saying that to boast;
just want you to take me seriously."
Doctor Bushnell gave him a quick, sharp glance. "I'll listen, as we
drive to the village," he said. "Hop in."
Wiggly hopped in, and, as the car got into motion, so did his tongue.
Absolute conviction that he was right enabled him to give a forceful
presentation of his theories, and his short, punchy sentences were
punctuated by frequent twitchings of his ears.
He began by repeating in substance Haskins' dying statement and
emphasizing the improbability of Haskins leaving the gun behind, the
utter uselessness of Haskins covering up the murder beneath the guise
of suicide. From there he switched to the piece of tallow, saving
any mention of Joan Sheridan until the last. The doctor, listening
patiently, gave him a fair hearing; but it is a difficult job to
convince a man who has already made up his mind to the contrary.
"Now we come down to the nub of things," Wiggly went on; swiftly he
voiced his suspicions concerning Joan and his reasons for them. He told
of his effort to cross-examine the girl and the results.
Doctor Bushnell had an uneasy feeling, as he himself recalled Joan's
perturbation of the previous night, but he brushed these thoughts aside.
"Do you realize," he demanded sternly, "that you are intimating that
Joan Sheridan might have----Oh, it's absurd, preposterous! I refuse
even to consider such a ridiculous notion. Why, I've known Joan all
her life; a sweeter, finer young woman never lived."
"Did you happen to know that she's in love with Gilmore?" Wiggly
demanded, and at this suggestion of a motive the doctor's eyes snapped
angrily.
"So that's what you base all this wild talk on, eh? That reduces your
reasoning to further absurdity."
"I'm not accusing her of the shooting, doctor, but I'm absolutely
certain that she's hiding something; if not to protect herself, then to
protect some one else. Her agitation----"
"Humph!" broke in Doctor Bushnell. "What sort of a woman wouldn't be
agitated with all that's happened at Greenacres during the past few
hours. Whom would she be protecting? Answer me that!"
"It would have to be some one who was on the second floor when the
shot was fired. Tell me something--does Gilmore or his stepmother own
Greenacres?"
"Gilmore does," the doctor answered. "His stepmother's share of the
estate was in cash and other realty, but I'm afraid she managed it
poorly."
"Ah!" murmured Wiggly. "Then she was virtually dependent upon her
stepson. If things had become so unpleasant for her at Greenacres after
the arrival of the house's new mistress that she could not stay----"
The physician's indignation became more pronounced.
"Gad, what a villainous imagination you've got!" he exploded. "You mean
now, I suppose, that Mrs. Gilmore did the shooting, and that Joan is
shielding her? Young man, I've lost all patience with such nonsense.
I refuse to listen to these ravings any longer. Any one, except a
hare-brained idiot, would know that Haskins did the shooting. No more
of this twaddle; I simply won't listen to you!"
"Then you won't help me with a further investigation?"
"I shall certainly have no hand in such foolishness," answered Doctor
Bushnell with a tone of absolute finality. "Talk to the district
attorney, if you insist, but I warn you that he'll take no stock in it."
"Probably not," Wiggly agreed gloomily, "but just the same I know I'm
right."
They had reached the village, and the doctor's car came to a halt in
front of Borough Hall.
"I'll release Sarbella and then get busy drumming up my men for the
coroner's jury," said Bushnell. "You've got a sensational enough story
for your paper, as it is; forget that silly rubbish you've been talking
to me."
Wiggly made no response, but followed the physician from the machine
into the village building and downstairs into the basement, where
Victor Sarbella was a prisoner. At the sound of their approach,
Sarbella came to the door of the narrow cage and peered out between
the rusting steel bars, but he uttered no word of protest, of outraged
innocence; only stared in a stony, narrow-eyed silence.
"I've the best of news for you, Mr. Sarbella!" Doctor Bushnell
exclaimed heartily. "I've come to let you out."
The prisoner's head jerked up, his fingers tightened their grip about
the bars of the cell door, his lips parted, and his eyes brightened
with the look of relief that flashed across his face.
"You mean," he asked slowly, "that I am to be released
unconditionally--that I have been removed from suspicion?"
The doctor, with the constable's keys, was struggling with the lock
that would unfasten the bolts; the mechanism was badly in need of
oiling, and it was giving him trouble.
"Yes, unconditionally," he answered. "We find that we have done you
an injustice, although you must admit that we were within our rights,
everything considered. The murderer of the Gilmore woman----Oh, curse
this lock!"
Sarbella pressed his body closer to the bars. "Yes?" he demanded with
an eager impatience. "The murderer--go on, man!"
The lock finally yielded, enabling the physician to turn the handle
that slid the bolts, and the door opened. Victor Sarbella was a free
man.
"Tell me," he commanded again. "Who----" The newspaper reporter sensed
his grave concern, his anxiety--and wondered.
"Luckily for you," answered Doctor Bushnell, "the slayer was still in
the house--a criminal who, it developed, was the woman's undivorced
husband."
"Thank Heaven!" breathed Sarbella, and it was apparent that this news
was a great relief to him.
Briefly the doctor related the facts.
"What a blessedly fortunate ending!" murmured the artist. "I was
afraid of other things--something more terrible."
"I'm driving back to Greenacres after I get together a jury for the
inquest," went on the physician. "I'm anxious to get it over with as
quickly as possible, for my private practice has to wait until this
official business is disposed of, and my patients are liable to lose
their patience." He chuckled a little at his own pun. "You may ride
back to Greenacres with me, if you choose."
"Thanks," nodded Sarbella, "I will."
The three men made their way out of the basement cell room and to the
street, where the doctor said that they could wait in his car, if they
liked. A moment later he was hurrying along the village thoroughfare in
quest of his jurors, picking up practically the first citizens that he
encountered. Sarbella got into the rear of the touring car, and Wiggly
Price sat beside him.
"You seem to be well out of a bad situation," said the newspaper man.
The released suspect nodded soberly. "Yes," he agreed, "a bad
situation--an overwhelming situation. Circumstantial evidence can be a
damning thing. Perhaps I owe something to you; your attitude, when you
came to the cell about the cigarette----"
"You do not owe your release to me, Sarbella; it was the appearance
of Sergeant Tish, his identification of the gun and the presence of
Haskins in the house." Wiggly paused for a moment with his eyes on the
other's face. "You were greatly relieved when you heard the doctor's
explanation of the tragedy?"
Victor Sarbella inclined his head.
"I was!" he exclaimed fervently. "Knowing my own innocence, I am afraid
that I was as much inclined to suspect other people as other people to
suspect me. I am afraid that I even suspected my friend Gilmore."
"Why Gilmore?" asked Wiggly. "He had a perfect alibi--downstairs when
the shot was fired."
"Yes, I know," murmured Sarbella, "but the poor chap was so
overwrought, so beside himself, so obsessed with the suspicion that
there had been an--ah--affair between me and--and his wife--but let us
not talk of that."
"I wonder," pressed Wiggly, but careful to make his tone carelessly
casual, "if you also suspected Miss Sheridan?"
"Eh?" exclaimed Sarbella, turning quickly, and then he laughed briefly.
"Yes, I think I even suspected her. Her attitude it was--ah--very
strange, it seemed to me. Only excitement, of course, as we know the
facts now; but at the time--well, I hardly knew what to think."
Wiggly's ears twitched slightly. Further confirmation of his theory!
Yet it convinced no one except himself.
"I condemn myself for harboring any such suspicions," went on Sarbella
musingly, "but it was strange. She was up, had not retired, and yet she
had not heard the scream or the shot."
"What!" exclaimed Wiggly; this was something new to him. He had not
known that. "You mean that she was up and dressed?"
Sarbella shot him a quick, curious glance, saw his eagerness, and was
warned to sudden silence.
"Let us talk of something else," he said. "Am I to understand that
there are still any doubts in your mind----"
"Haskins made a dying statement in which he denied the murder," said
Wiggly; "he said, however, that he did see the murderer coming out of
the room after the shot was fired."
Sarbella gave no guilty start, such as might have been expected, if
Haskins' story was true, and it had been himself that Haskins had seen
coming out of Helen Gilmore's room.
"What could you expect but lies from the lips of such a man?" the
artist asked. "Thank Heaven that the ending is as it is. This man,
this Haskins, must have been the husband who went to my poor brother
with the story that unbalanced his reason and sent him to his death.
Poor Andrea! The hand of Fate has avenged him! There is a God of
retribution!"
Wiggly Price made one more effort. His fingers went to his pocket for
that puzzling piece of tallow.
"Had another look around that room this morning," he said. "On the
floor I found several pieces of this."
Victor Sarbella turned and glanced at the white, black-flecked,
shapeless lump, but he betrayed no more visible signs of emotion than
had Joan Sheridan.
"What is it?" he asked, frowning. "What of it?"
"Nothing!" grunted Wiggly Price, as his arm raised in a disgustedly
impulsive gesture to toss it into the street. Even his own persistent
faith in this as a vital clew was being badly shaken. Yet his fingers
closed about the bit of tallow, and he returned it to his pocket again.
His mouth tightened.
"Nothing--so far," he added. He was one of those chaps who just
naturally can't quit.
Sarbella gave him a curious glance, shrugged his shoulders, and
dismissed both the man and the bit of tallow as of no further
importance; then he lapsed into a moody sort of silence. A moment later
Doctor Bushnell returned to the car; it had taken him no time at all to
drum his jury for the inquest.
"All right," he announced, "we'll be getting back and having things
over with. Shouldn't take much longer than an hour: Presley, our local
garage man, will bring the jurors out in a bus, and they'll be no great
distance behind us."
He took the wheel, started the motor, and the three men were on their
way back to Greenacres. Wiggly sat stiffly in the seat beside Sarbella,
trying in vain to drive his brain over the hurdles. Time with him was
short, for, as the doctor had just said, in another hour or so it would
be over. The law would have finished with the Gilmore affair and write
the easiest, most obvious ending to the dramatic business of the past
night, charging the whole tragic account to Don Haskins and, through
his death, mark the whole deed as "Paid."
Once the verdict of the coroner's jury was in, Wiggly knew, it would
be next to the impossible to have the case reopened again. He had just