The porcelain mask A detective story
about sixty minutes longer to prove he was right, and that the rest of
them were wrong.
CHAPTER XXVIII
THE BLACK SMUDGE
Along the ribbon-smooth road Doctor Bushnell shot the car at a lively
clip; one couldn't blame him, of course, for thinking of his private
practice, and one of his patients had been telephoning for him all
morning. He would have been the last man to hurry the Gilmore case to
a legal finish, if he had thought there was anything to be gained by
prolonging the investigation; but he considered that the affair had
been solved to all reasonable satisfaction.
In less than five minutes they arrived at Greenacres, and hardly had
the three men stepped from the machine to the porch of the house when
Kirklan Gilmore, evidently having seen them from a window, came rushing
out, both hands stretched out toward the artist. There were tears in
his eyes, and his voice was husky, trembling with emotion.
"Thank God, Victor!" he cried. "I've just heard the whole inside
of things from a man, the New York detective, that you're cleared,
absolutely cleared! You don't know what a relief it has been to me,
although I never did think, even when things were the blackest, that
you did it."
"And I appreciate your loyalty, Kirklan," answered Sarbella. The hands
of the two men remained clasped.
"Forgive me, Victor, for thinking last night that you--that you and
Helen----"
"That there had been an--ah--affair between your wife and me," finished
Sarbella. "Yes, I was afraid that my silence would put dark thoughts
into your head, but----"
"Why didn't you tell me?" broke in Gilmore, and a peculiar expression
convulsed his features. "Why didn't you tell me last night, out in the
study, that she was the woman over whom your brother----"
Sarbella shook his head.
"No! I could not in honor do that," he protested. "You were my friend,
and the woman was your wife. My lips were sealed. She was your wife;
you loved her."
Kirklan Gilmore's face was still white, haggardly drawn, but he was
no longer the broken wreck of a man, tottering upon the brink of a
mental collapse, that he had been some hours before. He seemed to
have recovered from the first over-powering shock of horror; Doctor
Bushnell's course in placing him under the influence of a sedative had
apparently been a most wise one.
At Sarbella's words his lips twitched piteously, but he managed to keep
control of himself.
"No," he said slowly, huskily, "I was in love with--with the woman
I thought her to be--in love with an ideal, a creation of my own
imagination. The woman I thought her to be did not exist--except in
my own infatuated fancies. And she was not my wife. She----Oh, what a
nightmare it's been--what a nightmare!"
Doctor Bushnell stepped swiftly to his side and, taking his arm, urged
him toward the house.
"Keep a grip on yourself, Kirklan," he murmured in a kindly, paternal
tone. "It's been a pretty terrible business, old man, but that thing
we mortals call fate has cut a lot of the strings to the tangle for
you. It is better that things are as they are; it saves a vast number
of troublesome complications. It saves--well, trucking a lot of mire
through the courts."
Gilmore compressed his lips and lowered his head. "Yes," he agreed
dully, "you're right about that; it saves the courts."
"Buck up, Kirklan! As you say, the woman you thought her to be did not
exist."
"Ah," murmured Victor Sarbella, "but losing an ideal is one of the
hardest things in life."
The novelist, leaning a little on the doctor's friendly arm, made his
way slowly into the house. Sarbella and Wiggly Price followed.
"Have all the legal details been satisfied?" asked Gilmore, as he
lowered himself into a chair. "There is, of course, no question but
that----"
"But that Haskins killed her," finished Doctor Bushnell. "Absolutely
none, Kirklan. There remains now only the inquest--a double inquest in
this case. One jury will suffice for both; the verdict, of course, is a
foregone conclusion."
There fell a brief silence, Gilmore's eyes staring straight in front of
him, with a dull, vacant expression. No doubt he was thinking of the
bronze-haired, beautiful woman who lay upstairs, cold in death--the
woman who might have been.
"Everything has become quite clear to me," he said slowly, more as if
speaking to himself. "She was making a visit to this Haskins in New
York day before yesterday, when Atchinson saw her on the street. She
must have gone there in answer to a letter that my butler tells me she
received that morning."
"Atchinson?" Doctor Bushnell asked inquiringly.
"My publisher," Gilmore replied. "Since she was employed by the
publishing firm before our marriage, Atchinson knew her quite well. He
said it was she, but I thought he must be mistaken. She had told me
that she was going to motor into the country. I wonder how it would
have all come out if the man, Haskins, had not been trapped in the
storeroom?"
No one responded to that musing question. Withdrawn unobtrusively
into one corner, Wiggly had again taken the lump of tallow from his
pocket and was meditatively rubbing his fingers over it. Suddenly
his attention centered upon those black specks that he had taken for
granted were dirt, caused, perhaps, by a soiled shoe sole pressing down
on it, as it had lain upon the floor of the room upstairs; he saw now
that those dark, almost pin-point discolorations were imbedded into the
substance. This, however, increased rather than solved the puzzle.
"The district attorney has come, hasn't he?" asked Doctor Bushnell.
"I took it for granted that it was his car I saw at the side of the
driveway, as we came up."
Kirklan Gilmore nodded absently. "Yes," he said, "a young fellow--the
assistant district attorney, I believe. Lasker, I think his name is.
He's upstairs looking around with that detective fellow, Sergeant Fish."
"Tish," corrected the physician. "Quite a game sort, Tish; it was he
who shot Haskins."
Again Gilmore nodded. "So he told me," he said.
"I think I'll go upstairs," added the physician. "It won't be long
now until the men who are to serve on the jury arrive." He glanced at
Wiggly with a patronizing sort of smile. "Are you coming up with me to
look for more--more hairpins, young man?"
The newspaper man smiled grimly.
"I'll go up with you," he said, "but it's not hairpins that I'm mainly
interested in right now; it's this confounded piece of tallow." He
turned his eyes toward the novelist and thought he saw a sudden
tightening of Gilmore's muscles, a suppressed start. He was not so sure
about it. "Tell me, Mr. Gilmore, were candles used frequently in the
house here?"
Gilmore did not reply for a moment. "Candles?" he murmured. "Why, my
dear sir, what a peculiar question. I don't believe I understand."
Doctor Bushnell, moving toward the stairway, paused with a brief,
discounting laugh.
"Our enthusiastic newspaper friend, Kirklan," he explained, "thinks we
haven't begun to get at the bottom of things. He's found a few pieces
of tallow candle on the floor of the room upstairs; he's trying to
attach some importance to it--just because he doesn't hit upon a ready
explanation to it, I suppose. I'm afraid we've humored him a little
too much, in gratitude for the first assistance that he gave us in
identifying your wife."
Gilmore was frowning slightly.
"And I'm afraid that I can't help him explain his little mystery,
doctor," he said. "So far as I can recall, there aren't any
candlesticks in Helen's room; nor in my room, which is adjoining.
Still"--he paused for a moment--"it does occur to me, gentlemen, that
the third floor has never been wired for electricity; the storeroom
is so seldom visited. If Haskins had wanted to have a light up there,
a candle would have afforded about the only possible illumination for
him."
"Ah!" exclaimed the doctor. "See, Price, there's the explanation for
you! The woman must have got Haskins a candle, and he carried it down
with him when he shot her. He probably mashed it underfoot and----"
"No, that will hardly do," Wiggly interrupted with a quick negative
jerk of his head. "In the first place, I can't believe that Haskins
would have been fool enough to have taken a light with him to the
storeroom; too much chance of the illuminated window attracting
attention. Secondly, this tallow was broken into a good many small
pieces; the trodding of a foot on a candle wouldn't do that; it would
only have mashed it, and it wouldn't have scattered it several places
about the room."
Doctor Bushnell shrugged his shoulders. "Oh, what matter!" he exclaimed
impatiently. "Whatever explanation there is would probably be absurdly
simple."
Before the physician could gain the stairs, Sergeant Tish and the
assistant district attorney were coming down. The latter was a
youngish, blond fellow, with rimless spectacles glistening in front of
pale-blue eyes; one could see that he appreciated the gravity of the
situation and the importance of his own official position, and that,
beneath his outward pretense of grim poise, he was a rather nervous and
inexperienced young man.
One look at young Lasker told Wiggly how futile it would be to approach
him with any theory calculated to upset the accepted situation; the
lawyer's words confirmed this impression.
"Ah, Doctor Bushnell!" he exclaimed, frowning his best official frown
and clearing his throat several times. "I have just been over the
ground with Sergeant Tish, who has been kind enough to lay all of the
facts before me--in quite a comprehensive manner. I have canvassed
the evidence thoroughly. I quite agree with you, doctor, that but
one sensible hypothesis can be drawn. I would even call it more than
an hypothesis. The evidence is quite clear-cut and incontrovertible.
Sergeant Tish's markmanship has--fortunately for him, however--cheated
the electric chair of its grim function. There can be no question of
Haskins' guilt; absolutely no question."
"In spite of hairpins, tallow, and such stuff," grunted Tish, with a
grin at Wiggly, evidently taking a keen delight in belittling him. The
young assistant district attorney glanced at the newspaper man and
lifted his hands in a gesture of depreciation.
"So this is the journalist you were telling me about. If positive
evidence were lacking, my dear sir, it might be very well to bear
these things in mind, but in a clear-cut case of this kind such minor
trifles become entirely irrelevant and immaterial. Any other theory
than that of Haskins' guilt is absolutely untenable. I am willing,
Doctor Bushnell, that the inquest shall proceed with the evidence in
hand."
"I think I hear Presley's bus coming along the road now," nodded the
doctor. "He's bringing the men from the village."
From outside there came the sound of the lumbering, noisy conveyance,
bearing the coroner's jury. All attention at the moment was focused in
this direction, and Wiggly, without a word to any one--he was playing
an absolutely lone hand now--made for the stairs. No one registered any
objection to his taking another visit to the second floor, but halfway
up he turned and saw Kirklan Gilmore's eyes fixed upon him in a sort of
set, expressionless stare. Was it expressionless? Wiggly had a feeling
that the blank look might be concealing a degree of--well, perhaps of
wary apprehension.
"Humph!" Wiggly said under his breath. "Gilmore was downstairs when
his wife was killed; he couldn't have had a hand in it, and yet, dash
it all, I did get a reflex from him when it came to mentioning the
tallow. And he was pretty prompt in trying to find an explanation for
the stuff being in the room. I wonder----" But what he wondered was too