CHAPTER XV

SARBELLA SPEAKS

No longer was Wiggly Price an interloper, an unwelcome intruder facing eviction; for, instead of asking for facts, he was supplying facts, and extremely vital facts they seemed to be. Both the constable and Doctor Bushnell, since the Sarbella case stirred no memories, were both eager for further enlightenment.

"Yes," said Wiggly, "I am sure of it now; this woman was the girl in the Sarbella case. I think I must have written five or six columns about it; queer that I shouldn't have spotted her the minute I put eyes on her, but a fellow's memory does slip sometimes. The minute I heard the name just now it all came back to me with a rush."

"I knew you was hidin' something," grunted Constable Griggs, fixing Victor Sarbella with a stern eye. "I had a feelin' that you was lyin' about never havin' set eyes on 'er until last night. I guess you killed her, all right--that was the reason you wouldn't talk. Guess you thought you was pretty slick." He turned to the newspaper man. "I guess it wasn't nothin' short of Providence that let you get into the house just now. Queer, ain't it, how things is always turnin' out?"

"My statement," said Sarbella, his voice husky, "was entirely true. I had never seen the woman until last night--when my friend introduced her as--as hees wife. She--she the wife of my good friend!"

"I guess you think we're a lotta country boobs to swaller a thin yarn like that. Never seen her before, huh? That's likely--I guess not."

Doctor Bushnell looked eagerly at Wiggly Price, impatient to hear what was meant by "the Sarbella case."

"Let's hear what he's got to say, Griggs," he urged.

"Sure," nodded Ham Griggs; "talk right up, mister. I guess we're all wantin' to hear it--except Sarbella. You've put us on a hot trail, all right, young feller."

"For all I know," said the reporter, "he may be telling the truth about never having seen the woman before. It sounds reasonable enough, as you shall see.

"The Sarbella case got into the newspapers a little over two years ago. There was a young chap--handsome kid he was--a violinist. Born in Italy--forget what place--and came to New York in concert work. His first name"--he frowned meditatively--"I think it was Andrea."

"Yes, it was Andrea," muttered Victor Sarbella. "Poor Andrea! And that woman--death was too good for her!"

"He fell in with a girl, a beautiful girl, with bronze hair. The attraction of opposites, I suppose; he was dark--naturally, being Italian. But this girl's past wasn't as pretty as her face. A lot of it is coming back to me now--the details. She'd been raised on the fringe of the underworld. Maybe you know what I mean. Her father and her brother had served time. Oh, not her; she tried to pull away from that sort of thing.

"Anyhow, the young violinist fell in love with this girl, madly in love with her. I think they were planning to be married, and then he found out the truth about her. How? I can't tell you that, but he did. The note he left behind him told that--how she had lied to him, deceived him.

"He went into the bathroom of his hotel and shot himself through the heart. You see, this young Sarbella came of a very proud family--his father related to the nobility and all that sort of thing. He couldn't marry a girl like that, and he couldn't give her up. There was only one way he could forget her, and he took that way.

"In brief, gentlemen, that's the Sarbella case. The girl disappeared; the police didn't hold her, since it was so obviously a suicide. I saw her at the inquest; she seemed pretty badly cut up over it, but--well, you can't always tell about that."

"My word!" whispered Doctor Bushnell, aghast. "Kirklan Gilmore's wife was that woman, a woman of the underworld? It seems incredible, preposterous!"

"Sarbella," went on Wiggly Price, looking steadily at the guest of Greenacres, "had a brother who was in Italy at the time of the suicide. This brother caught the first boat to New York with the avowed intention----"

"I think that I am the best qualified person to finish your narrative," the voice of Victor Sarbella broke in.

"So you've decided to start your tongue workin'," crowed Constable Griggs; his chest bulged importantly. "It is my official duty to warn you that anything you may say will be used against you."

Sarbella waved his hand impatiently. "This is an explanation, not a confession," he retorted. "My first statement to you remains true, although I admit that I did not tell you all the truth--for two reasons.

"Yes, this dead woman," his voice dripped with bitterness, "was the girl in the Sarbella case. It is necessary for me to tell you that Andrea, my younger brother, and I were born and reared in Florence. Our mother was American, our father Italian.

"I came to America where I could find a better market for my drawings, and I brought with me Andrea, who was a violinist and expected to earn a great deal of money with his playing. He had wonderful talent, Andrea; even so young, his playing was attracting attention. Would to Heaven that I had left him in Italy. Then that woman would never have set his brain on fire, driven him mad with the madness of infatuation.

"It was the first winter that we were in New York, and I returned to Florence that I might accompany my mother back to America. She, too, was to make her home in New York, my father having died. It was while I was away that Andrea met this devil of a woman. How? I do not know, but he loved her madly; the letter he left behind for me told me the intensity of his passion for her.

"Andrea was young, idealistic; he thought her everything that was good, noble. And then there came to him a man; a low, common person, who was the woman's husband!

"You see how she had tricked him? She was not the innocent, lovely girl she had led my brother to believe. He had thought to marry her--soon. The shock of the truth dethroned reason; he could not have her, and he could not give her up. There seemed to him only one way that he could forget.

"If I could but show you his farewell letter to me, the letter that he wrote a few minutes before he fired the bullet through his heart!" Tears came into Victor Sarbella's eyes, and his voice trembled and broke. "Could you read that letter of Andrea's you would understand better.

"He was my brother, my only brother, and I loved him devotedly. News of his death was cabled to me, but it was not until the boat docked in New York that I knew how he had died--and why.

"My mother--Andrea was her very life. She--it killed her. This woman, this vampire, killed both of them--Andrea and our mother--as surely as though she had driven daggers into their hearts. And that--that would have been a kindlier way." He pointed a dramatically accusing finger to the couch. "There she is, a murderess, a moral murderess, and she has reaped as she had sown!"

Victor Sarbella's voice came to a pause.

"All right," said Constable Griggs, "let's have the rest of it. You killed her for revenge!"

"A life for a life!" murmured Wiggly Price, his ears twitching again, as he thought of a dramatic line for this amazing story that he was to write for _The Star_. "'The code of Latin vengeance!' Wow! What a whale of a yarn!"

Victor Sarbella shook his head slowly.

"Time passes, and the deepest of wounds heal--although there may be a scar," he said. "It is futile for me to deny that in my first grief and rage against this woman I made bitter threats, that I said I would hound her down and make her pay. I do not deny that I meant it--at the moment; I do not deny that I sought her in vain."

"But you did find her yesterday," exclaimed Constable Griggs. "I've heard tell of them Eyetalian vendettas. You hadda wait most three years, but you got 'er all right. Ain't no use holdin' out on me no longer, Mister Sarbella; we gotcha, an' we gotcha cold. Mebbe you can get by with that revenge business over in Italy, but you can't work it here."

Victor Sarbella looked tired, and his face was drawn, haggard.

"Yes, I found her here yesterday," he nodded. "I found her--this murderess--married to my good friend, who loved her madly--as poor Andrea loved her. While I had never seen her, I knew her from that picture of her that lay beside Andrea when he died. Every detail of that face was burned into my memory; I recognized her instantly. And she--the name and the family resemblance--she, too, knew me for who I am.

"Kirklan Gilmore saw that something was wrong, but I could not tell him. He was my friend; she was his wife; my lips were sealed. I swear to you that no thought of killing her entered my mind, although in the past I had thought many times of putting my fingers about her throat and----"

"Huh!" broke in Ham Griggs' grunt. "I guess you'd swear to most anything to keep yourself from goin' to the chair. What made you hold out on us about knowin' who she was, if you wasn't guilty?"

"As I told you a few minutes ago," answered Sarbella, "there were two reasons. One was that I wished to spare Gilmore, my friend, the torture of the truth."

"And the other reason," said Griggs, "was that you knowed blame well it would make things look purty black for you. You knowed that it would throw suspicion square on you."

Sarbella hesitated.

"At first," he replied slowly, "I had no other thought than that the woman had ended her life--driven to suicide by fear, fear that I would denounce her for what she was before her husband; but, when the butler kept insisting that she had been murdered, I knew that I had a vitally personal reason for keeping silent."

"But little good it did you--thanks to this feller," exulted the constable, jerking his thumb toward the newspaper man. "Victor Sarbella, you're under arrest for----"

"Be careful, sir--be careful," warned the guest of Greenacres, his face gray. "The gun is not mine, and you will never be able to prove that it was. If you subject me to false arrest----"

Ham Griggs hesitated, glancing at Doctor Bushnell for encouragement.

"I don't think you need worry about false arrest," advised the doctor. "An officer has a perfect right to hold a man on suspicion. There need not be positive proof, and there were but three persons on the second floor when the shot was fired--Mrs. Gilmore, Miss Joan, and Sarbella."

Victor Sarbella leaned forward in his chair, and he seemed on the verge of saying something further in his own defense, but did not speak. It may have been that he realized how useless it would be to say anything further in his own behalf.

The constable dragged from his pocket a pair of handcuffs. "Stick out your mitts," he ordered, holding open the steel jaws to receive Sarbella's wrists.