CHAPTER XXV

THE SKEPTICISM OF SERGEANT TISH

The doctor had found Constable Griggs' injury worse than he had anticipated, for Haskins had struck a vicious blow with the doorknob wickedly concealed within the toe of his sock; there was a bad skull fracture that threatened fatal results. With Bates to help him, Doctor Bushnell had placed Ham Griggs upon the discarded couch and had just completed a painstaking examination, when Wiggly Price came pounding up the third floor stairs to the storeroom.

"Quick, doc!" panted the newspaper man. "Haskins is dying; he's got another hemorrhage--a worse one. I'm afraid he's a goner."

The doctor motioned to the butler.

"You stay here with the constable, Bates," he ordered. "I'll be back in a moment; we've got to get this man to the hospital. He's dangerously hurt, Price; a bad skull fracture." As he spoke, he was following the reporter back down the stairs. "I'm not surprised about Haskins. But there was nothing more than I could do for him, and Griggs needed me, too."

"The other doctor, the surgeon, you telephoned for----"

"Is operating at a hospital in New York this morning; I was unable to reach him. But, for that matter, I do not believe any human agency could have saved Haskins. Perhaps, after all, it's better this way; circumstances are doing what the State would doubtless have done--exacted his life in payment."

They had reached the door of the guest room. Sergeant Tish still sat in his chair beside the bed; he turned slowly, painfully.

"You're too late," he said.

Doctor Bushnell stepped forward, was silent for moment; then he inclined his head.

"Yes," he agreed. "I'm too late, but it doesn't matter; even an operation was a forlorn hope. I could not have kept him alive; nothing could have done that, I think." He stared down at the dead man's contorted features. "An evil face," he murmured. "An evil end for an evil life. Did he make a confession, sergeant?"

"No, confound his stubbornness!" growled Sergeant Tish. "He gave us a wild kind of yarn that explained his connection with the Gilmore woman, his hold on her, and how he got into the house, but denied that he did the shooting. Of course he was lying."

Doctor Bushnell nodded. "He killed her--certainly," he agreed. "The way he knocked out Griggs and shot you is proof that he was a cold-blooded killer. What was the hold that he had over the dead woman?"

"She was Haskins' wife--his legal wife."

The physician gasped and, thinking of the beautiful Helen Gilmore, stared down at the hideous face of the dead criminal, with a look of amazement that bordered upon incredulity.

"What--the wife of that man? It seems absurd, absolutely preposterous! I find it next to impossible to believe it. Then, when she married Kirklan, she----"

"Committed bigamy," finished Sergeant Tish with a jerk of his head that sent another stab of pain through his wounded shoulder. "That's it, doctor; and that is what gave him a hold on her--why he was able to have her visit him at Eighth Avenue Annie's day before yesterday, give him money and agree to give him still more; that was why he fled to her for protection and was hiding when I stumbled onto him. I guess that part of it is true, all right.

"Perhaps not so amazing as it would seem. Haskins was not always the bum he is now. They used to call him Nifty Don in his palmy days; he's hit the skids since then. He blames her for slipping; she threw him over, as I got it. I wish you'd take a look at this shoulder of mine, doc; the wound is throbbing like a sixty-horse-power engine."

Doctor Bushnell murmured a hasty apology for neglecting him so long.

"I'll have a look at that right now, Sergeant Tish. Three emergency cases all at one time is a big order for a doctor. Price, will you get my kit from the third floor? I'm hoping there's enough gauze and bandages to do."

"The constable come around all right?" asked Tish, as the newspaper man hurried from the room.

"A bad skull fracture, sergeant, where Haskins struck him a terrific blow on the side of the head. I'm taking him to the hospital just as quickly as I've got you patched up a bit. You, too, if there is need."

"Don't think it'll be necessary, doc. Lord, what a wild morning it's been!" He gritted his teeth, as the physician slipped down the coat sleeve and began ripping away the shirt. "What's happened to Gilmore? Strange that he didn't show up with all the racket."

"Probably asleep under the influence of the opiate that I gave him to relax his strain," answered Doctor Bushnell. "He's one of those high-strung, emotional fellows, and I couldn't risk too much nervous tension with him. He was on the verge of a collapse. Poor devil! He's a good sort; doesn't deserve what that woman has done to him."

Wiggly returned with the doctor's kit, and Bushnell began to work swiftly; the wound in the detective's shoulder had bled but little. The bullet, he found, had struck the collar bone at a deflecting angle, plowing for a brief distance along the top of the clavicle, where it was imbedded just beneath the skin.

"You're a lucky man, Sergeant Tish," grunted the doctor. "If that had been a little lower there would have been the very devil to pay. The worst danger is that the bone has been cracked, and I do not think it has been. This treatment, of course, is only temporary; I'll look after you again later."

It was the work of but a few minutes to make a shallow incision which removed the bullet, cauterize the wound, and apply dressings.

"I shall take Griggs to the hospital in my car," said Bushnell, as he finished. "The butler can go along with me. We'll be back within an hour or so--just as soon as I can manage it. I suppose Sarbella will have to stay in jail until Griggs recovers consciousness and releases him."

Wiggly broke a considerable silence.

"It's my notion," he said, "that Sarbella had better stay right where he is until--well, until the case has been cleared up completely."

The doctor stared in surprise. "What do you mean by that?" he exclaimed. "Not that there's any doubt but Haskins killed the woman?"

"Not the slightest doubt that Haskins did it," Tish declared in a positive tone. "I don't take any stock in his story--that is, the part of it in which he denied doing the shooting. I suppose the rest of it is straight enough."

Doctor Bushnell looked reprovingly at the newspaper man. "I must say," he said severely, "that you are a most perverse young man. When the weight of all the evidence was strictly against Sarbella, you were trying to prove his innocence. Yet now, when the discovery and capture of this desperate criminal--the legal husband of the dead woman--makes it practically certain that Haskins was the murderer, you suddenly change front and----"

"Perhaps it's because I've got more faith in the truth of Haskins' story than Sergeant Tish has," broke in Wiggly Price. "In my mind the case against Sarbella is stronger than ever--circumstantially. But, with what we've got, I don't think for a minute that a jury would ever convict him. Haskins' account of things does explain how Sarbella, or"--he hesitated cautiously--"or some other person might have got possession of the gun."

"Or some other person!" exclaimed the doctor impatiently. "Tut, Price, don't be such an utter ass. I've something more important to do than listen to a new crop of empty theories. What other person, pray, have you in mind?"

Wiggly felt that any mention of Joan Sheridan would arouse the physician's antagonism; moreover it would serve no purpose. So he chose the wise course of answering the question only with a shrug of the shoulders.

"The constable is a heavy man, and the butler old and rather feeble," he said, abruptly switching the subject; "perhaps I'd better help you get him downstairs and into your car."

"Yes; please," grunted Doctor Bushnell.

Tish trailed along behind the two and waited on the second floor, while the physician and Wiggly went to the storeroom to carry down the unconscious Ham Griggs.

"He hasn't moved a muscle since you left, Doctor Bushnell," reported the butler. "Except that I can see him breathing I'd think he was dead."

The doctor issued brief, terse instructions, and he and Wiggly formed a human packsaddle by grasping each other's wrists. In this way, their heavy burden between them, they made their way down from the third floor, while Bates hurried off to get a supply of pillows for padding the tonneau of the doctor's car.

"I was going to suggest that you come along," Bushnell suggested; but Wiggly shook his head.

"No, I'd like to stay here," he answered. "Bates will do as well as I for your trip."

"Oh, I see," the physician said shortly, "you want to gather some new theories about the tragedy. You're making a fool of yourself, Price; the case, thank Heaven, is solved."

"Hope so, doctor, but that remains to be seen."

"Certainly it's solved!" exclaimed Bushnell with asperity. "As deputy coroner I shall convene a jury and hold an inquest as quickly as possible--this afternoon. I'll bring the district attorney back with me when I return from the hospital. The verdict will be a mere matter of formality."

"Yes," agreed Wiggly, "a mere matter of formality, unless we turn up something new."

The butler came hurrying out of the house with the pillows; the doctor took them from him and arranged them supportingly behind the unconscious constable's shoulders.

"Get your hat, Bates," he instructed; "you'll have to go along."

Three or four minutes later the physician's machine, Bushnell at the wheel and Bates in the rear seat with the insensible Griggs, rolled down the white-graveled driveway, and Wiggly returned to the house, wondering a little what had happened to Tip Gregory, reporter for the rival paper, _The Transcript_. Probably Tip, rebuffed at Greenacres, had gone to the village in search of information.

Sergeant Tish had come down from the second floor and had established himself in one of the library's roomy chairs, making himself as comfortable as his twinging shoulder would permit. His roundish face was still gray with the throbbing pain, but he endured it with fortitude.

"Well, young man," he grunted, "you've got a darn good story, and you ought to be satisfied. Seems to me that it's good enough to suit your paper without your trying to add anything imaginative."

"Meaning," replied Wiggly, "that you'd have me quit thinking. Nope, I stick to my hunch that Haskins' story was what he said it was--strictly on the level."

"Bunk!" snorted Tish.

"Let's talk it over, sergeant," Wiggly urged earnestly as, hands rammed deep into his pockets, he strode up and down the room, his ears twitching slightly. "Does it seem reasonable to you that Haskins would have left the automatic behind him after the shooting?"

"Humph!" the New York detective grunted non-committally.

"That gun," went on the newspaper man, "was his one friend, the only hope that he had if he were cornered. Besides, leaving the gun behind served no purpose--no purpose whatever. In fact, if he had the brains to reason it out, he would have known that there was a chance--a serious chance--of the automatic being identified as your gun. It's the common thing to trace a gun by its serial number."

"He might have dropped the gun accidentally and didn't have a chance to get his hands on it again."

"Oh, I say, sergeant, that's too thin!" exclaimed Wiggly. "It's taking too much for granted to presume that the gun accidentally fell in a position directly beneath the murdered woman's hand. No, that was done with the deliberate intention of having her death appear suicide."

"It's a good point, and it's reasonable," admitted Tish, "but it doesn't prove anything. I got to admit it does seem a little queer that Haskins would have left the gun behind."

"And it hooks up with Haskins' story about missing the gun, realizing that the Gilmore woman had lifted it out of his pocket, and his determination to risk a trip downstairs again in an effort to get it back."

"Humph!" Tish said again.

"When you identified the gun as yours--the one that Haskins took away from you when he knocked you out at Eighth Avenue Annie's yesterday--it did seem impossible that Sarbella, or any one else, could have done the shooting. But let us suppose that Haskins' dying statement was true. The Gilmore woman had the gun; maybe she took it because she was afraid of her legal husband."

"Whatcha mean--'or any one else?'" growled Tish. "You keep hinting at something you haven't let me in on. If it wasn't Haskins or Sarbella----Aw, you talk like a fool!"

Wiggly hesitated for a moment. "Tish," he said slowly, "I don't know that I'm exactly holding any aces, but I'm going to lay all my cards on the table and let you have a look at 'em. We know why Sarbella might have killed the woman."

"Motive ain't strong enough," broke in the detective with a shake of the head. "His kid brother lost his head over her and killed himself; that's all."

"Ordinarily I'd agree with you, but when we think of Sarbella's motive we've got to think of a race that is credited with a passion for personal vengeance. The Latins are hot-blooded, and their blood does not cool quickly like ours. They nurse a grudge for years.

"Let us suppose that Sarbella went to the Gilmore woman's room, not with the intention of killing her, but to tell her that, unless she made a full confession to her husband, he would tell Gilmore, himself. The gun was there--the gun that she had taken away from Haskins--and the man's hatred for this bronze-haired vampire who caused the suicide of his brother and the ultimate death of their mother, mastered him."

"Suppose anything you darn please," grunted Tish. "It's easy enough to cook up stuff, but making it hold water is something else. Yeah, I'll say it is."

"But there's something else," persisted Wiggly. "You've missed the hidden undercurrent that I've sensed. I tell you, Tish, there's something beneath the surface of things in this house."

"Meaning just what?" the detective asked skeptically.

"Did you notice Gilmore's stepsister--Joan Sheridan her name is--when she came out into the hall after the cook fainted?"

Tish eyed the newspaper man half curiously, half disgustedly.

"I saw her," he answered.

"Yes, you saw her, but did you see the expressions of her face? Did you notice how excited she became----"

"Say, I guess any woman would be excited, after what had happened, to hear a woman screaming like that cook did, and her face all bloody on top of it."

"When the doctor told her that Sarbella had been removed from suspicion, and that some one else had done the shooting," Wiggly went on, "well, I saw it, Tish; and I saw, too, what a look of relief came into her face when Bushnell told her that it was Haskins, the crook. The human emotions seldom lie, Tish, and, take it from me, that Sheridan girl knows a lot more about this thing than she is willing to tell."

"Rave on!" growled Sergeant Tish. "I'd given you credit for having a balance wheel, but that's nut stuff you're pulling now."

"Wait a minute," Wiggly pressed on, not discouraged by the other's derision. "Maybe you remember that Haskins refused to answer me when I asked him if it was a man or a woman he saw coming out of the Gilmore woman's room after he heard the shot."

"I can answer it, even if Haskins didn't; it was a man come out of the room, and it was Haskins himself. Whatcha trying to do now--hang it onto the Sheridan girl? Think it would make a better story for you, huh? Aw, forget it! Why would she have done it?" The question came in a triumphant tone.

"Oh, I've got you an answer for that, Tish," Wiggly replied. "So you demand a motive; all right, I'll furnish that, too. The strongest and most unreasoning of motives, the most deadly--jealousy!"

"Huh?"

"Joan Sheridan is in love with her stepbrother. I got that from the constable's daughter this morning."

"A woman's gossip!" snorted Tish. "I wouldn't go two cents on no kind of talk like that."

"And verified it by the butler," Wiggly added doggedly. "The constable's daughter is a great little gabber, and I wouldn't take her unsupported word; so I felt out Bates, and he admitted that the household had rather hoped for a match between Gilmore and Miss Sheridan. Yes, she's in love with her stepbrother; used to help him with his work and that sort of thing. The butler told me that it was a great shock to Miss Sheridan when she returned home from Europe and found that he had married during her absence.

"There's another little point; it might not seem so much, but I can imagine how it must have added to the blow. Miss Sheridan also returned home to find this strange woman--Gilmore's bride--had taken possession of her own room, a room that she had occupied for years and had formed a deep attachment for. I gather that a very strained situation resulted; even the servants took a dislike to the new Mrs. Gilmore.

"Man, I tell you there's something under the surface; I tell you that we've only scratched the surface, so to speak, of the Gilmore mystery. If Miss Sheridan would talk, we might learn something interesting." He tossed up his hands in a helpless gesture. "It would be silly to try and quiz her until we've got something to face her with; that would only spoil whatever chances we may have of getting to the bottom of it."

Sergeant Tish frowned and puffed out his plump cheeks; he was thinking things over now; then he shook his head.

"Don't take much stock in it," he declared.

"Jealousy is a primitive passion," argued Wiggly. "I'd consider it a stronger motive than revenge. Between Sarbella and the girl----"

"No," Tish corrected himself, "I don't take any stock in it at all. Haskins did the murder; Haskins is dead, and the case is closed. Don't bother me with any more of this stuff."

"There's one more thing that I haven't told you," said the newspaper man. "You remember the color of the murdered woman's hair?"

"Sort of a dull gold, isn't it?" grunted Tish, interested in spite of himself. "What's the color of her hair got to do with it?"

"Bronze is the right color, Tish; naturally she uses bronze hairpins, as I verified by a look at her dressing table. And yet on the floor beside the chaise longue I found a black hairpin, and Miss Sheridan's hair is dark."

Sergeant Tish puffed out his cheeks, looking up slowly. For a full minute he debated this information before he stirred.

"Women are always dropping hairpins outta their heads; might have been a servant, or Miss Sheridan, for that matter, paying a perfectly innocent visit to the room." Yet the detective's tone was deliberate, thoughtful.

"Remember the Hitchcock murder--solved by a black mourning pin?"

Moving cautiously in an effort to keep any painful strain from his shoulder muscles, Tish stood to his feet.

"Mind you," he warned, "I don't say that I think you're within a hundred miles of being right, but it'll do no harm to go upstairs and have another look around."

In the light of Tish's previously derisive skepticism, Wiggly felt that he had achieved something of a victory.