CHAPTER XVII

KIRKLAN PROTESTS

Hint of the physician's disturbed thoughts must have shown in his face, for Wiggly Price gave him a keen, curious look, which seemed to increase the former's discomfiture; he dallied nervously with the fraternal charm attached to his watch chain.

"What color did you say, doctor?" pressed the newspaper man.

"It's ridiculous, absurd!" Bushnell repeated explosively. "What if Joan's hair is dark? Confound it, you make me downright angry, casting an insinuation like that, just because of an inconsequential thing like a hairpin."

Wiggly gave a faint smile which was grim rather than humorous.

"I haven't insinuated anything, doctor; just asked a question, that's all. Oh, I admit there's nothing conclusive about a hairpin, and yet--well, there was the Hitchcock case that I mentioned, solved by a black mourning pin."

"For murder there's got to be a motive," argued Doctor Bushnell; "no one besides Sarbella had a motive. I don't care what you find, I'd never believe that any one except Sarbella----"

The door was flung open with a startling violence, and Kirklan Gilmore lunged into the room, hair disheveled, eyes wide and staring.

"What--what does this mean?" he cried hoarsely. "Bates tells me that the constable has arrested Sarbella. Is that true? Come, answer me, what does it mean?"

Under his breath the doctor cursed the butler for adding this to the man's nervous strain.

"I thought I gave you a sleeping tablet, Kirklan. Bates should not have excited you by----"

"Certainly he should have," Gilmore broke in. "I've a right to know what's going on in my own house. Bates was perfectly right; but what does it mean? Bates says that Sarbella was taken away--handcuffed. It's true, isn't it?"

Doctor Bushnell nodded. "Yes, Kirklan, it's true; Sarbella is being--ah--detained, pending--well, at least pending further investigation of your wife's murder. Certain things developed which made it advisable and necessary."

"Great Lord!" whispered Gilmore, his shaking fingers raking back a tangled shock of hair that fell across his forehead. "You mean--you mean that Sarbella has been arrested for--for that?" His other hand went out, pointing to the couch.

"Try and calm yourself, Kirklan," soothed the physician. "I hadn't intended that you should know this until you had pulled yourself together somewhat. I knew that it would be a tremendous shock for you to know that your friend, a guest in your home----"

"Why," broke in the novelist, "was Sarbella arrested?"

Doctor Bushnell hesitated over the answer, and Wiggly Price drew back to one side, making himself as inconspicuous as possible.

"I demand to know," insisted Gilmore, and the doctor saw that there could be no further evasion.

"As I told you downstairs, Kirklan," said Bushnell, "we have established beyond all question that it was murder. Since she was killed, some one had to kill her."

"But why Sarbella?" the author pressed impatiently.

"Obviously," went on the doctor, "an effort has been made to make it appear suicide, but the effort failed; such efforts usually do. It's hard to destroy evidence, next to the impossible. There were but five persons in the house; you and Bates downstairs, your stepmother, Joan and Sarbella upstairs. Taking the list into consideration it was only natural that suspicion should turn to Sarbella. And then----"

"But that's not proof, doctor--that's only suspicion," broke in Gilmore. "If you had no evidence, I don't see how you dared----"

"We had a little more than that," said Doctor Bushnell with obvious reluctance, realizing that circumstances had made it unavoidable that Kirklan should know the terrible truth about Helen's past life. "You see, Kirklan, we discovered that Sarbella had a motive."

"A motive?" Gilmore muttered dully. "What do you mean by that? What reason could he have had? Out with it! Why do you torture me with this suspense?"

Doctor Bushnell stepped forward and put a hand on the other's shoulder.

"Heaven knows that I wish I could spare you this, Kirklan, but it's bound to come out at the trial and in the newspapers. You were not aware, I suppose, that there was a previous relationship between----" He had phrased it clumsily and Gilmore started back with a shudder, a look of anguished horror on his face.

"You mean that Sarbella and my wife were----He lied to me--he lied to me--gave me his word of honor that he had never seen her before. I knew there was something wrong; I saw her face when she met him; I knew----"

"No you misunderstand me, Kirklan. There was nothing like that. Perhaps you did not know that Sarbella had a brother, a younger brother named Andrea, who----"

"Who shot himself," finished Gilmore. "Yes, I'd heard of it; that happened before I knew Victor. But what has that got to do with this?"

"Young Sarbella shot himself because of a woman," went on Doctor Bushnell. "Because a woman, a very beautiful woman whom he loved madly, had misled him about herself. She lied to him, tricked him, and then--the woman's husband came to him and told him the truth."

Kirklan Gilmore stared dully; he seemed not to grasp the inference of it all. The room was tensely quiet.

"I--I don't understand," he muttered thickly, "what that has to do with Sarbella and my wife."

"Andrea Sarbella," the doctor went on gently, "was the idol of his mother and his brother. Shock of the tragedy cost the mother's life, and Victor, it seems, took an oath that he would avenge himself on the woman responsible for his double bereavement."

The dawning light of comprehension showed in Gilmore's horror-stricken eyes; a cry arose in his throat, as he staggered back into a chair and buried his head within his hands.

"You mean," he choked, "that the woman was--was--my wife!"

"Yes, Kirklan, your wife was that woman. Now you can understand why Sarbella has been placed under arrest."

Again the room was silent, silent except for the choking sob which came from the man huddled low in the chair. After a moment he staggered to his feet and flung his arms wildly.

"It's a lie!" he shouted. "It's a lie! I don't believe it; I'll never believe it. Why, if what you say is true, she----"

"Calm yourself, Kirklan. Sarbella has admitted what I have told you. We might have never known the truth except that this young man recognized her and put us on the right track."

Gilmore, for the first time, seemed aware of Wiggly Price's presence.

"Who are you?" he demanded hoarsely. "What do you mean by coming here with these lies--about my wife? Answer me--who are you?"

"My name is Price, and I am a newspaper man."

Gilmore wheeled accusingly upon the doctor. "Who let him in?" he shouted. "Didn't I tell you----"

"Easy, Kirklan, easy now. I can't answer as to how Price got into the house, but I'll say it's a lucky thing for us that he did. Except for him we might still be beating our heads against a stone wall. When you've calmed down you'll thank him instead of berating him. It may be that he is the agent who will bring your wife's murderer to justice. No matter what the woman did, a murder has been done; Sarbella had no right to take vengeance into his own hands."

The novelist dropped limply back into the chair, his muscles twitching, as he stared at the sheet-covered body.

"Sarbella?" he muttered thickly. "What--what does Sarbella say?"

"Naturally he denies it," answered the doctor. "We hope to find proof. We must find proof; I doubt if he could be convicted on the purely circumstantial evidence that we have so far. Unless we can establish his ownership of the automatic pistol, we will have to find something else. If he thought the gun could be traced he surely would not have left it behind."

Gilmore lifted his head slowly.

"Then there is no proof--only--only suspicion?" He paused for a moment and then added: "I can't believe it! I can't believe that Sarbella killed her. And she--she was--that kind of a woman!"

Doctor Bushnell touched his shoulder. "Try not to grieve, Kirklan," he urged quietly. "You were in love with the woman you thought her to be, and she did not exist. She wasn't worth a good man's grief. We do not even know--in fact, I doubt--if her marriage was legal."

"I can't believe that Sarbella did it," repeated Gilmore dully. "She--she must have killed herself to escape the truth."

"Did you happen to notice the brand of cigarettes that Sarbella smokes?" asked Wiggly Price.

Gilmore's resentment against the newspaper man seemed to have vanished; he displayed no curiosity over this apparently idle question, only shook his head absently, like a man in a daze.

"And your wife," pressed Wiggly, "I don't suppose that she used a cigarette now and then?"

Again Gilmore shook his head, almost stupidly and without verbal response, his hands dangling inertly across the arms of the chair.

"Sarbella didn't do it," he muttered again, as if talking to himself; "she did it to escape the truth. Nothing will ever convince me--nothing!"

Around the edges of the drawn curtain was creeping the light of a graying dawn. Price moved toward the door.

"I'm going down to the village," he said in an undertone to the doctor; "I'll come back when I've talked with Sarbella about his brand of cigarettes. Remember my hunch and the black hairpin."

With that he hurried down the stairs and to the still waiting taxicab, with its driver napping behind the wheel.