The porcelain mask A detective story
"Look at this dressing gown!" went on Wiggly in a rush of words. "Look
at the sleeve, here. I just took it out of her closet a minute ago; the
odor of a cleaning fluid, chloroform, can still be detected. And it
didn't take out the spots. She didn't know that cold water was the best
thing to remove bloodstains." He swung upon Joan. "Do you deny, Miss
Sheridan, that these are bloodstains? Do you deny that you attempted to
remove them after the murder?"
Joan's mother screamed shrilly. "It's a lie!" she moaned. "It's a lie.
He's trying to make it appear that my little girl----" A merciful
unconsciousness gathered her in.
Doctor Bushnell, dazed to a point of speechlessness, stared from the
accusing newspaper man to Joan. There could be no denying the wild
terror that gripped her.
"If she does deny it," went on Wiggly, "a chemical analysis will
establish that it is blood--human blood."
Doctor Bushnell at last found voice. "Joan," he cried, "do you
understand what this means? This man is virtually accusing you of
murder. In Heaven's name, say something!"
But Joan Sheridan, her lips twitching, shook her head. "I--I
didn't--do it!" she whispered. "I didn't do it, but I have nothing to
say--absolutely nothing to say."
"But, you've got to say something!" the doctor urged desperately.
"Silence like this----"
Again she shook her head. "I've nothing to say," she repeated.
In the excitement that had accompanied this sudden and amazing turn of
things, all attention had been centered upon the quivering, ashen-faced
girl in the witness chair, and no one--unless, perhaps, it was Wiggly
Price from the corner of his eye--had observed Kirklan Gilmore. The
novelist had leaped to his feet and clutched at the back of his chair
with palsied fingers. Tears were streaming down his cheeks.
"Great God!" he whispered. "That she would make a sacrifice like that!"
His voice raised. "Tell them!" he commanded hoarsely. "Tell them,
Joan--the truth!"
Joan sobbed wildly, uncontrollably. "Oh, Kirk!" she moaned.
"Kirk--don't! In Heaven's name--don't!"
"Since Joan will not talk," said Kirklan Gilmore, "I will."
Wiggly Price dropped his handkerchief to the table, and the loosened
corners fell back, revealing the little pile of broken porcelain and
the bits of tallow.
"Let the guilty man speak!" he said. "If he does not--the evidence is
here."
CHAPTER XXX
WIGGLY MAKES A WAGER
The room was tensely silent, as Kirklan Gilmore made his way slowly to
the front of the room and, with a shaking hand, took the glass of water
that rested upon the coroner's table. He gulped a drink nervously. He
put the glass down clumsily.
"It's impossible--utterly impossible!" Doctor Bushnell muttered
helplessly. "Gilmore was downstairs--Bates was with him--when the shot
was fired on the second floor. I can't understand----"
Kirklan Gilmore did not sit down, but stood there, leaning heavily
against the table, facing the coroner's jury.
"The truth," he said huskily, "would have been best in the first place;
the truth is always best. I suppose any chance that I may have had
is gone now. Yes, I--I killed her--with that gun." He pointed to the
broken bits on Wiggly's handkerchief. "The evidence is there. I felt
that it was coming when--when this reporter started talking--about the
tallow."
"Suffering cats!" This interruption came from Sergeant Tish, who gave
Wiggly Price an uncanny look of reluctant admiration.
"It began," went on Gilmore in a heavy, toneless voice, "on Monday,
when Helen went to New York to meet Haskins, her--her husband." He
winced, as he said that. "That night she wanted money to pay the
blackmail of the man's silence. She lied to me, and I knew that she
lied, but she would not tell me the truth.
"The next day Sarbella came, and I saw--we all saw--that there was
something--something that terrified her. I got Sarbella out to the
studio, tried to force him to tell. I suspected a--a love affair. I was
mad with jealousy. He gave me his word that he had never so much as
seen her before, but I thought that was a gentleman's lie. It was true.
"That night--last night only, but it seems an eternity--I stayed for
a long time out at the studio, tortured by those black thoughts. It
was after eleven o'clock when I came back to the house. Everybody had
retired. I went upstairs to my room. It was next to Helen's. I was
trying to compose myself before I went in to her to demand the truth. I
had no weapon; there was no thought of violence.
"The connecting door between our rooms was locked--from her side, but
through the panel I thought I heard hushed voices. I thought--what
could I think other than that Sarbella might be in there with her?
Somehow I hesitated, and it must have been while I debated, trying to
think, that she got Haskins out and to the third floor.
"And then I went in to her. She was sitting in a chair, facing the
door. I didn't see the gun; it was on the floor at her feet. My mind
was in such a daze that I hardly think I can make it clear just how it
happened. I think I told her that there had been a man in her room,
that I had heard them talking.
"I know that I was wild looking, disheveled, haggard. I had not slept
at all the night before. Perhaps she thought I meant to kill her.
Anyhow, she leaned over and picked up the gun swiftly. That was the
first time I had noticed it.
"'Go away,' she told me. But I did not go away; I had come for the
truth, the truth from her own lips. I told her to put down the gun, and
when she did not, I did a very foolish thing; I attempted to take it
from her by force. I couldn't control myself.
"That was when it happened--in the struggle for the gun. It was her own
hand that pulled the trigger. I swear before Heaven that is true." He
paused a moment, breathing heavily.
"The muzzle must have been pressed close to her body," he went on;
"that was why there was scarcely any explosion; her body muffled the
shot. She collapsed, and I put her on the couch. She did not move or
speak. That is how it happened."
The young assistant district attorney gulped, as if he were choking,
and Doctor Bushnell stared in dazed bewilderment.
"But there--there was a shot!" he gasped. "A shot--and her scream. I
can't understand----"
"He hasn't finished his story, doctor," said Wiggly Price. "He hasn't
told you how he worked the clever scheme of covering up the shooting,
trying to make it appear suicide." He pointed to the bits of porcelain
and the tallow. "There's the answer to that. He took the black
porcelain vase as his alibi, put gunpowder into it and tamped it in
with candle tallow, made a sort of firecracker. The wick of the candle,
from which he stripped the tallow, was his fuse. He lighted it and went
out of the house again, pretending that he'd forgotten his keys and
had been locked out; that was an excuse to get the butler up and to
have a witness to his alibi. Bates could truthfully swear that he was
downstairs when the explosion sounded.
"Those black specks in the tallow that have been worrying me all
morning, were burned gunpowder. Don't think I'd have obtained the
answer to it, though, if I hadn't handled the pieces of the vase, and a
black smudge--burned powder again--came free on my fingers.
"After that it was clear; the murderer was some one who wasn't on the
second floor; that could mean only one person--Gilmore himself."
Lasker, the assistant district attorney, leaped to his feet.
"But in that case," he demanded, "what about the scream and Joan
Sheridan's silk dressing gown and the bloodstains?"
"I fancy," answered Wiggly, "that it was Miss Sheridan who screamed."
Bates, the butler, gave a violent start.
"It was!" he exclaimed. "I said at the time it sounded just like the
time she had screamed when Mr. Kirklan was thrown by his horse."
Gilmore spoke again. "Yes," he said, "the shot that awakened the house
was not a shot, but the explosion of the powder in the vase. When I
thought Helen was dead, I was suddenly afraid.
"Who would believe that was the way it had happened? They would arrest
me, send me to prison, and I was suddenly a coward. I--I don't know how
I happened to think of what I did; it just came to me suddenly, every
detail of it.
"In my own room, in a closet, was a box of shotgun shells that I had
used for duck hunting last fall. It was a simple matter to remove the
wads and take out the powder from two shells and pour it into the vase.
I had to go downstairs for the candle. That is all; it would take ten
minutes or so for the candle wick to burn down to the powder. I went
out of the house, but returned almost immediately and rang the bell.
Bates let me in; I--I had to detain him downstairs until the explosion.
"When the scream came, I was even more startled than Bates. I could not
understand that. And then when we got to the top of the stairs a door
slammed, and the door to her room was open. I had left it closed; also
I had turned off the lights, and they were burning.
"You can imagine the torture I was in. I tried to make myself speak,
but I was a coward. I was afraid of the consequences. I would
have spoken, if the net had tightened about Sarbella; I want that
understood, that I should not have let an innocent man suffer.
"Then Haskins in the house--dead--it seemed to make me safe, to solve
the whole terrible situation. And it was not murder. Believe me or not,
I have told the truth."
Joan Sheridan lifted her head. "Yes," she said, "he has told the truth.
I had it from--from her own lips."
"What!" cried Gilmore. "You can't mean that she--she was still alive.
Merciful Heaven, I let her die!"
"I was unable to sleep," Joan went on slowly. "I had started downstairs
for a book. As I passed the door of her room I heard her moaning. I
opened the door and went in. I switched on the lights, bent over her;
that must have been when the hairpin fell from my hair, and I got the
blood on my sleeve. She was dying. She gasped out that Kirklan had shot
her by accident. And that was when I screamed. The vase exploded an
instant later." Her head lifted. "I realize that I am under oath; Helen
told me with her own lips that it was an accident."
Wiggly Price wondered if this were true, or a superb falsehood to save
the man she loved.
"If it was an accident, why didn't you talk?" Wiggly countered.
"The vase, his effort to hide by a porcelain mask what had really
happened," she answered.
"And that was why you were so sure that Sarbella was innocent?"
Joan nodded.
"But you stated on your oath," pressed Wiggly, "that you did not hear
the shot."
"That was the technical truth," answered Joan. "It was not a shot."
There fell silence; Doctor Bushnell fussed nervously with some papers
on the table, notes he had been taking of the testimony. The jurors,
although still dazed by it all, looked toward him expectantly.
"Gentlemen," he said slowly, "you have heard the evidence and
the--er--confession. You have heard Miss Sheridan's statement of
the dying words from the Gilmore woman's lips. I might add, as the
examining physician, that the nature of the wound makes it plausible
that it could have been inflicted in such a struggle for possession
of the pistol as Mr. Gilmore has described. Mind you, gentlemen, I am
not trying to sway your verdict; I merely state that the nature of the
wound makes it plausible. Are there any questions that you wish to ask
of any witness?" There were no questions; perhaps the jury was still
too aghast to think of any. "Very well, the witnesses will retire,
while the coroner's jury considers the case."
When Wiggly Price stepped out to the porch he found himself beside
Sergeant Tish.