CHAPTER XXIX

"LET THE GUILTY MAN SPEAK!"

The young assistant district attorney and Doctor Bushnell had indeed reduced the double inquest to a cut-and-dried formality, and the proceeding was heading swiftly toward its anticipated conclusion. Extra chairs had been brought into the library, and it was here that the hearing was in progress.

In his capacity as deputy coroner, Bushnell presided at a small table, and near him, at his right, was the young attorney, blinking with official severity from behind his rimless glasses; at the doctor's left was the witness chair which faced the jury. The latter were an assorted lot of village types--Mr. Judson, the ordinarily genial grocer, with his fat, stubby fingers locked tightly in front of his ample middle; Henry Blackburn, a local fire-insurance agent, who was tall, lean and hatchet faced; Jim Striker, local manager of the telephone company; and so on down the list.

There had been no move to bar any one from hearing the testimony of the other witnesses. Behind the jury chairs Joan Sheridan murmured soothingly in an effort to calm her mother's muffled, hysterical sobbing; a little apart sat Kirklan Gilmore, slumped deep into a chair, chin on his chest and his eyes half closed; but he was listening carefully; not a syllable was escaping him. Victor Sarbella was seated nearest the door; his dark eyes were roving restlessly about the room.

Sergeant Tish had been the first witness, identifying the gun which had killed Helen Gilmore and recounting, for the benefit of the jury, how it had got to Greenacres. Doctor Bushnell previously had given an outline of the facts, as he had found them.

Bates, the butler, followed Tish and did not forget to color his account of the happenings with a none-too-modest tribute to his own shrewd deductions that it had been murder and not suicide. He was proud of that little achievement. He told how he had been fast asleep when the ringing of the doorbell had awakened him, and he had got up to admit Gilmore, who had been out at the studio and had forgotten his keys; he described how he had been in the butler's pantry; that he had just finished making Gilmore a toddy, which the latter was drinking, when both of them had heard the scream, closely followed by the shot.

Joan Sheridan suppressed a shiver, but no one noticed that.

"After that, Bates?" urged Doctor Bushnell.

"Mr. Gilmore and I hurried upstairs. When we was about halfway up we heard a door slam shut--Haskins when he scooted back up to the attic, I guess. The door to the younger Mrs. Gilmore's room was open, and the light was burning. I went in first, and there she was--all covered with blood, the gun on the floor beside the couch. It looked like suicide, but I knew it wasn't, because she wouldn't have screamed before shooting herself. She might have screamed after she did it, but the shot was fired after she screamed. More than that; the door was open, and, like I said, people don't shoot themselves with the door open."

"A very good deduction, Bates," nodded the doctor.

"Yes, sir; I rather thought so myself," agreed Bates.

Other questions and answers followed, and the entire ground was covered swiftly, but thoroughly. The jurors were then asked if they wished to interrogate the witness. None of them did, and Bates was excused.

"Miss Sheridan, merely as a matter of formality, will you please take the witness chair?" murmured Doctor Bushnell, and Joan, her face becoming a shade more pale with the ordeal, got slowly to her feet and walked to the front of the room. Kirklan Gilmore's body tensed, and his hand clenched, but he did not lift his eyes.

"I want you to understand," the doctor told her gently, after taking her oath as a witness, "that this is a mere formality. You will please tell us, in your own words, just what you know about the tragedy."

Joan Sheridan was plainly nervous; her fingers, resting in her lap, were twisting about each other, and for a moment she did not answer.

"There is nothing--nothing that I can tell," she answered in a strained, muffled voice.

"As I understand--in fact, from what you told me--you did not hear the fatal shot."

Joan's voice became a little clearer, as she answered: "No, I did not hear the fatal shot."

"I might explain to the jury," added the doctor, "that Miss Sheridan's room is in another part of the house."

From outside the library came the sound of hurrying feet, as Wiggly Price came down the stairs, two steps at a time. Just outside the library he paused, screened behind the portières. Across his arm was a woman's silk dressing gown, and in his hand was a handkerchief, caught up at the corners and sagging with the weight of the broken vase and the particles of candle tallow.

"Just the psychological moment!" he said under his breath. "It's made to order."

"And there is nothing more that you can add, Miss Sheridan?" asked Doctor Bushnell.

"There is nothing more that I can say," she answered.

"That will be all," murmured the doctor.

Wiggly Price entered the room, billowing aside the portières, as he swept past them, and his ears were wiggling for all they were worth. The silk dressing gown across his arm added to the dramatic effect of his entrance.

"Just a moment, Miss Sheridan!" he exclaimed. "What you really mean is that there is nothing more you want to say. But I am very much afraid that you will have to say something, whether you want to or not."

Doctor Bushnell leaped angrily to his feet, his eyes snapping.

"What do you mean by this, Price?" he shouted. "I forbid----"

"I demand," broke in Wiggly, "that Miss Sheridan be forced to explain several things, including why she tried to clean spots from the sleeve of this dressing gown that she was wearing last night." Joan had started to her feet, but sank limply back in her chair, a moan upon her lips.

"Look at her face!" cried Wiggly. "Isn't that proof enough for you? Don't look at me--look at her!"

Joan's face was chalk white, and she swayed in her chair and would have fallen, had not the assistant district attorney leaped forward to support her.

"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."