CHAPTER XXI

A CRY OF TERROR

The three men left the little police car where it stood and walked the remaining few yards to the house. Bates saw their coming; as a matter of fact, he had from within noticed their approach, and he had come out to meet them. Despite his evident weariness, he was patently eager for any news. Constable Griggs, quickly forestalling any move that might tend to crowd himself out of the major role, planted himself directly in front of the butler, frowning sternly.

"When was the last time you saw the dead woman alive?" he demanded.

"Immediately after dinner," answered Bates; "she went directly upstairs, and I did not see her again until--until she was dead."

"How long had you been in bed when it happened?"

"It was some time, sir; at least two hours, I am sure."

"What I'm hittin' at is this," explained Griggs; "we've got some new dope that may mean something, and then again it may not. Did you let a strange man into the house last night, or did you see any strange man prowlin' about the place?"

"I--I don't believe I understand," murmured Bates. "A strange man, sir--prowling about the house?"

"That's what I said," grunted the constable, "and it's evident that you didn't. Was the doors locked?"

"Absolutely," Bates answered firmly. "I always lock up before turning in for the night. I have been very careful about that, especially since the burglar scare that we had last year."

"Then the man couldn't have got into the house unless you had let him in?" pressed Griggs.

"The woman herself might have let him in, constable," interposed Sergeant Tish. "If the butler had gone to bed she might have done it without any one hearing her."

"Huh!" retorted Ham Griggs, with a quicker flash of reasoning than might have been expected. "How would she have known Haskins was about, unless he rung the doorbell, or called her on the phone, or something like that? Until you, Sergeant Tish, trapped 'im in that place in New York, he didn't know his own self that he was comin' to Greenacres."

"I am positive that there was no ring of any sort, either doorbell or telephone, until Mr. Gilmore got me up to let him in--just before the shot," offered Bates. "Any sort of ringing would have awakened me. But this strange man--I do not understand. Who----"

"Might as well tell you, I suppose," grunted the constable. "We've found out that the murder gun most likely belongs to this man"--he jerked his head toward Tish--"who is a detective from New York. The gun was taken away from him by a feller named Haskins, who swiped a taxi in New York to make his get-away, and that same taxi was found by myself out on the road, 'bout one and a half or two miles from here. So----"

"Then it isn't Mr. Sarbella's gun?" broke in Bates with a gasp of surprise.

"That don't mean I've turned Sarbella out of jail, not by a whole lot, it don't," growled Ham Griggs. "He might have got hold of the gun somehow; he might----" But, being unable to supply any further theory of Sarbella's guilt, his voice stopped abruptly. There was a moment of silence, broken by Bates.

"Did I tell you about the letter?" he asked in his thin voice. "No, I think not. It was Doctor Bushnell that I told about the letter."

"What letter?" demanded Griggs.

"The letter that came for Mrs. Gilmore on Monday," supplied the butler. "I considered it most peculiar at the time, a very dirty envelope, addressed with a lead pencil. She seemed much upset over it, although she tried to pass it off."

"It might have been from Haskins at that," spoke up Wiggly Price, and he turned to Sergeant Tish. "It was yesterday--Tuesday--that you cornered Haskins in the place you call Eighth Avenue Annie's. What day was it that the swell-dressed woman called on the man at that place?"

"Monday," answered Tish.

"Ah!" exclaimed the newspaper man triumphantly, and his ears wiggled a bit. "It was Monday that the murdered woman got this letter that Bates tells about. Bates, did she go to New York on Monday?"

"I don't think to New York, but she did drive somewhere in the motor--out into the country, I believe she said."

"Yes, so she said," nodded Wiggly with meaning emphasis. "That doesn't make it true that she didn't go to New York. Any one accompany her on this motor trip?"

"She went alone; she returned late in the afternoon."

"Say!" exploded Ham Griggs with a glare. "One would think _you_ was the officer in charge the way you're bustin' in with all these questions."

"Just one question more, Constable Griggs," urged Wiggly. "I'm not trying to be officious. Bates, let us suppose for a moment that this man, Don Haskins, did get into the house in some way or another, would he have had time to get down the stairs before you and Mr. Gilmore rushed up--and then let himself out of the house, while you and Mr. Gilmore were upstairs?"

Bates debated this question for a moment and then shook his head positively.

"He would not," he replied; "but he might have easily found a place to conceal himself in one of the rooms upstairs. There is one bit of detail that I may have forgotten to mention. When Mr. Gilmore and I were about halfway up the stairway, I am positive that I heard a door slam very loudly--very loudly, indeed."

"Huh!" grunted the constable. "That don't mean anything much. It might just as well have been Sarbella rushin' back to his room after havin' shot her." And then he indulged in another bit of reasoning which did him credit. "If it was the Gilmore woman who went to see Haskins in New York, we know she wasn't too afraid of him to go see him in that cheap joint Sergeant Tish told us about. And yet she was afraid of the one who come in on her last night--because she screamed. Why did she scream? I'll tell you why she screamed; it was because she knowed that Sarbella had come to kill her! Just put that in your pipe and smoke it a while."

"Not a bad deduction," nodded Sergeant Tish, "but the thing that puzzles all of us is--how did Sarbella get the gun away from Haskins? We're just wastin' good time arguing back and forth. Let's go upstairs and see if we can't pick up something new."

"The--the body has been removed," the butler informed them. "The undertaker left an hour since. Doctor Bushnell was very careful that nothing else should be disturbed, and the room is locked. Doctor Bushnell----"

"And took the key off with him, I suppose," growled Constable Griggs.

"Doctor Bushnell, as I started to say," went on Bates, "is still here. Mr. Gilmore seems to be in quite a bad way, and the doctor is looking after him."

"We'll go on upstairs," declared Griggs. "Tell the doc that we want him to come right on up and let us into that room."

Wiggly Price did not follow them immediately; he loitered downstairs until Bates had delivered the message to the doctor and had returned. The butler, luckily for Wiggly, had not been told the reporter's true interest in the case, else he would have doubtless guarded his tongue most carefully.

"It's a bad business, Bates," said the newspaper man to begin the conversation.

"A terrible business," agreed the butler. "You don't think that Mr. Sarbella killed her?"

"You do?"

"What else could I believe, with all the queer happenings? But I hope not--as much for Mr. Gilmore's sake as anything, sir; he seems to take Mr. Sarbella's arrest almost as hard as the murder."

"She was a bad lot, your master's slain wife, Bates."

"I am not surprised at that," murmured the servant. "I sensed that she wasn't the right sort. I think we all realized that--except Mr. Kirklan."

"Of course he wouldn't; she was a remarkably beautiful woman, and he was in love with her. Quite a sudden marriage, I understand."

"Very sudden; a surprise and a shock to all of us."

"It's much too bad, Bates, that Mr. Gilmore did not marry a woman of the right kind--Miss Joan, say." Wiggly's tone was disarmingly careless, and Bates did not understand that information was being sought.

"Yes, it certainly is," agreed the butler earnestly, falling straightway into the little trap. "We were all hoping that it would turn out that way. All of us, except Mr. Kirklan, could see with half an eye that Miss Joan was in love with him, even if she is his stepsister; it cut her up terribly when she came home from Europe and found her here. Not only here, sir, but in Miss Joan's own room."

"The room where the murder was committed?"

"Exactly, sir; that was Miss Joan's old room--the one that she had occupied since she was quite a small girl. When she came back I didn't have the heart to tell her about the room. 'Bates,' she says to me, 'take the bags up to my room.' And I didn't have the heart to tell her--knowing how much store she put by it."

This information, verification of what Etta Griggs had told him, might mean something or nothing, Wiggly knew; probably nothing. It was just that he had that avidity of the trained newspaper reporter for all the facts, because experience had taught him it is often the smallest detail which, in the light of other things, achieves prime importance. And there was the black hairpin; he was thinking of that again.

That could not be overlooked.

At this moment Doctor Bushnell appeared from the room on the first floor, where he had placed Kirklan Gilmore, and whose bedside he was just leaving.

"Gilmore is in a bad, nervous state," he imparted after a nod to the reporter. "You saw him upstairs before you left for the village; he was bad enough then, but I'm afraid of a complete collapse--one of those high-strung, emotional chaps, you know. If his thoughts are allowed to torture him, they might even drive him to insanity; he must be kept quiet. Poor devil! It's much too bad that a love like that should have to be wasted on a woman like her. Then, to make matters worse, to make the shock double, the man whom he considered his friend----"

He paused, remembering the cigarette butt that Wiggly had taken down to the village.

"What did you discover?"

"That it was not Victor Sarbella's cigarette that had been dropped upon the rug. More than that, doctor, we've got another suspect now."

"Another suspect? What other suspect could there be?"

Briefly Wiggly Price told the physician of Sergeant Tish's appearance at Borough Hall, his identification of the murder gun, and the other matters which turned the finger of suspicion so strongly toward Don Haskins, the crook who had already been in flight from one murder charge. This information left Doctor Bushnell almost speechless.

"It's astounding!" he gasped. "Positively astounding! It--it does have a plausible sound, for a fact."

"The thing that bothers us," Wiggly told him, "is why Haskins should have been so careful to have it appear suicide. Surely no one besides Helen Gilmore knew that he was inside the house. Obviously he came for money--he had a hold of some kind on her; probably knew about her past and was levying blackmail; but there's no evidence that he got any money, and he didn't touch her jewelry."

"You can't spend jewelry without first pawning or selling it," the doctor said shrewdly; "possibly he realized that it would be too dangerous for him to risk appearing in a pawnshop. Perhaps he did get money."

"He wouldn't have had to kill her for that," countered Wiggly. "If he did know of her past, this knowledge alone was sufficient to extort money. He wouldn't have had to kill her. But let's be getting upstairs. Griggs and Sergeant Tish are waiting for you to let them into the murder room. Now that we're working from a new angle, it's best to go over the ground again, and we've daylight now."

The physician nodded and started for the stairs.

"The crook's guilt would be the most satisfactory solution," he said, "but it did look bad for Sarbella. Is he still being detained?"

"Yes. You can't blame Griggs for holding him; the murder isn't solved yet, and it won't be, to my notion, until a number of points are cleared up," answered Wiggly.

As they reached the second floor, Ham Griggs and Sergeant Tish were waiting, the former with considerable impatience. Doctor Bushnell unlocked the door of the murder chamber and threw it wide. The body of Helen Gilmore, as the butler had informed them, had been removed, but the chaise longue, its creton upholstering stained with dark splotches, bore its mute testimony of the tragedy.

"Here we are," grunted the constable, "but I dunno what you expect to find more'n has already been found."

Sergeant Tish projected his rotund form to the center of the room, glanced about briefly, and then went to the windows, raising the shades to their full height so that all possible light would be admitted. At the second window the ripped curtain dangled before him and drew his attention.

"It would be my guess," he said, pointing to the curtain, "that this means one of two things: Either it was done in a struggle with the murdered woman, or when the murderer beat it through the window." He paused a moment and added: "Still, it doesn't look as if he'd have taken the time to shut the window behind him."

He peered through the glass to the roof of the porch, puffed out his round cheeks, and quickly threw up the sash. There had been no rain in weeks, and the porch shingles were covered with a coating of dust. This film was broken where Don Haskins' body had wiggled upward from the cornice in his careful approach to the window, and, in more places than one, the imprint of the man's stockinged feet showed. At Tish's grunt of elation, Constable Griggs dashed forward, with Doctor Bushnell and Wiggly behind him.

"Somebody either entered or left this room through the window!" exclaimed Tish. "There's his trail in the dust on the shingles."

"Entered!" said the newspaper reporter, his ears twitching. "You can see that those footprints--and the man was in his stockings--are all turned this way. Yes, he came in by the window, but he didn't leave by the window. Another check in Sarbella's favor.

"The man must have torn the curtain here, as he came into the room."

Constable Griggs gulped, but said nothing. Sergeant Tish bent forward and examined the pane of the raised sash. Clear and distinct there were the prints of a man's fingers--on the inside of the glass. These prints were punctuated with downward streaks, as if the fingers had slipped, but the whorls had not been obliterated; in fact they were clear and distinct.

Tish reached his pudgy fingers to the breast pocket of his coat and drew forth a Bertillon card which he had borrowed from headquarters, and which bore, in addition to rogues' gallery photographs, full-face and profile, of Don Haskins, the crook's finger prints.

He bobbled his head back and forth, getting the light at the best possible angle, and then he compared the finger prints on the window glass with those upon the card. He gave a grunt of satisfaction and nodded his head in affirmation.

"Yep, this clinches it, gents. These are Haskins' finger prints on the window. Good thing I brought this card along, huh?" It is hard for a man with a chubby face like Tish's to look grim, but his voice certainly was grim, as he added, "Haskins is wanted now for two murders. The job now is--find Haskins."

Wiggly Price leaned closer, and he, too, observed that the finger prints were on the inside of the pane.

"That means," he said, "that Haskins came in the window and closed it behind him. Those smudges at the top of the prints show that his fingers slipped a little on the glass, and that his pressure was downward. And, had he been raising the window, the finger prints would have been at the top of the sash rather than at the bottom."

"That's true," Tish agreed absently, returning the Bertillon card to his pocket and turning away from the window. "Haskins must have climbed to the roof from the porch below. Guess we'll find evidence of that, too, on the porch pillars, although it's not particularly important how he got up; the thing that counts is that he did, that the man was in the house, in this very room."

Ham Griggs realized that this new evidence, the incontrovertible proof of the finger prints, completely knocked the legs out from under his persistent theory of Sarbella's guilt, and for the moment he surrendered to a stunned and bewildered helplessness.

Doctor Bushnell's eyes remained upon the windowpane, with an intent and fascinated interest.

"Most remarkable!" he murmured. "How much can be proven by such a small thing as the touch of a man's finger! The one witness, I understand, that cannot lie. But what is the next move?"

"Find Don Haskins," Tish answered promptly.

"And that's a big order," sighed Wiggly Price. "The man's probably miles away from Greenacres by now. However there's nothing like being thorough, and, if Constable Griggs can get a posse together----"

"Huh!" snorted the constable. "You don't think he'd still be hangin' anywhere around Ardmore?"

"That depends on whether he got hold of any money," replied Sergeant Tish. "He was broke when he left New York, y'know." He took a step across the room and bent forward, as his foot crunched down upon a piece of the broken vase on the floor beside the table. He picked it up and held it in his fingers.

"Haskins probably lurched against the table and knocked it off," said Wiggly, explaining what it was. Tish glanced with slight interest at the shattered bit of porcelain and tossed it down. It did, of course, seem too trivial a thing for any serious consideration.

"We've put in a pretty good quarter of an hour here," grunted Tish, "and I guess we've done about all----Good Lord! What was that?"

From out in the hallway there had come to the ears of the four men the sound of a choking, terrified cry, a jarring, dull thud, a rending crash of broken glass. And then--silence.