CHAPTER XXX

WIGGLY MAKES A WAGER

The room was tensely silent, as Kirklan Gilmore made his way slowly to the front of the room and, with a shaking hand, took the glass of water that rested upon the coroner's table. He gulped a drink nervously. He put the glass down clumsily.

"It's impossible--utterly impossible!" Doctor Bushnell muttered helplessly. "Gilmore was downstairs--Bates was with him--when the shot was fired on the second floor. I can't understand----"

Kirklan Gilmore did not sit down, but stood there, leaning heavily against the table, facing the coroner's jury.

"The truth," he said huskily, "would have been best in the first place; the truth is always best. I suppose any chance that I may have had is gone now. Yes, I--I killed her--with that gun." He pointed to the broken bits on Wiggly's handkerchief. "The evidence is there. I felt that it was coming when--when this reporter started talking--about the tallow."

"Suffering cats!" This interruption came from Sergeant Tish, who gave Wiggly Price an uncanny look of reluctant admiration.

"It began," went on Gilmore in a heavy, toneless voice, "on Monday, when Helen went to New York to meet Haskins, her--her husband." He winced, as he said that. "That night she wanted money to pay the blackmail of the man's silence. She lied to me, and I knew that she lied, but she would not tell me the truth.

"The next day Sarbella came, and I saw--we all saw--that there was something--something that terrified her. I got Sarbella out to the studio, tried to force him to tell. I suspected a--a love affair. I was mad with jealousy. He gave me his word that he had never so much as seen her before, but I thought that was a gentleman's lie. It was true.

"That night--last night only, but it seems an eternity--I stayed for a long time out at the studio, tortured by those black thoughts. It was after eleven o'clock when I came back to the house. Everybody had retired. I went upstairs to my room. It was next to Helen's. I was trying to compose myself before I went in to her to demand the truth. I had no weapon; there was no thought of violence.

"The connecting door between our rooms was locked--from her side, but through the panel I thought I heard hushed voices. I thought--what could I think other than that Sarbella might be in there with her? Somehow I hesitated, and it must have been while I debated, trying to think, that she got Haskins out and to the third floor.

"And then I went in to her. She was sitting in a chair, facing the door. I didn't see the gun; it was on the floor at her feet. My mind was in such a daze that I hardly think I can make it clear just how it happened. I think I told her that there had been a man in her room, that I had heard them talking.

"I know that I was wild looking, disheveled, haggard. I had not slept at all the night before. Perhaps she thought I meant to kill her. Anyhow, she leaned over and picked up the gun swiftly. That was the first time I had noticed it.

"'Go away,' she told me. But I did not go away; I had come for the truth, the truth from her own lips. I told her to put down the gun, and when she did not, I did a very foolish thing; I attempted to take it from her by force. I couldn't control myself.

"That was when it happened--in the struggle for the gun. It was her own hand that pulled the trigger. I swear before Heaven that is true." He paused a moment, breathing heavily.

"The muzzle must have been pressed close to her body," he went on; "that was why there was scarcely any explosion; her body muffled the shot. She collapsed, and I put her on the couch. She did not move or speak. That is how it happened."

The young assistant district attorney gulped, as if he were choking, and Doctor Bushnell stared in dazed bewilderment.

"But there--there was a shot!" he gasped. "A shot--and her scream. I can't understand----"

"He hasn't finished his story, doctor," said Wiggly Price. "He hasn't told you how he worked the clever scheme of covering up the shooting, trying to make it appear suicide." He pointed to the bits of porcelain and the tallow. "There's the answer to that. He took the black porcelain vase as his alibi, put gunpowder into it and tamped it in with candle tallow, made a sort of firecracker. The wick of the candle, from which he stripped the tallow, was his fuse. He lighted it and went out of the house again, pretending that he'd forgotten his keys and had been locked out; that was an excuse to get the butler up and to have a witness to his alibi. Bates could truthfully swear that he was downstairs when the explosion sounded.

"Those black specks in the tallow that have been worrying me all morning, were burned gunpowder. Don't think I'd have obtained the answer to it, though, if I hadn't handled the pieces of the vase, and a black smudge--burned powder again--came free on my fingers.

"After that it was clear; the murderer was some one who wasn't on the second floor; that could mean only one person--Gilmore himself."

Lasker, the assistant district attorney, leaped to his feet.

"But in that case," he demanded, "what about the scream and Joan Sheridan's silk dressing gown and the bloodstains?"

"I fancy," answered Wiggly, "that it was Miss Sheridan who screamed."

Bates, the butler, gave a violent start.

"It was!" he exclaimed. "I said at the time it sounded just like the time she had screamed when Mr. Kirklan was thrown by his horse."

Gilmore spoke again. "Yes," he said, "the shot that awakened the house was not a shot, but the explosion of the powder in the vase. When I thought Helen was dead, I was suddenly afraid.

"Who would believe that was the way it had happened? They would arrest me, send me to prison, and I was suddenly a coward. I--I don't know how I happened to think of what I did; it just came to me suddenly, every detail of it.

"In my own room, in a closet, was a box of shotgun shells that I had used for duck hunting last fall. It was a simple matter to remove the wads and take out the powder from two shells and pour it into the vase. I had to go downstairs for the candle. That is all; it would take ten minutes or so for the candle wick to burn down to the powder. I went out of the house, but returned almost immediately and rang the bell. Bates let me in; I--I had to detain him downstairs until the explosion.

"When the scream came, I was even more startled than Bates. I could not understand that. And then when we got to the top of the stairs a door slammed, and the door to her room was open. I had left it closed; also I had turned off the lights, and they were burning.

"You can imagine the torture I was in. I tried to make myself speak, but I was a coward. I was afraid of the consequences. I would have spoken, if the net had tightened about Sarbella; I want that understood, that I should not have let an innocent man suffer.

"Then Haskins in the house--dead--it seemed to make me safe, to solve the whole terrible situation. And it was not murder. Believe me or not, I have told the truth."

Joan Sheridan lifted her head. "Yes," she said, "he has told the truth. I had it from--from her own lips."

"What!" cried Gilmore. "You can't mean that she--she was still alive. Merciful Heaven, I let her die!"

"I was unable to sleep," Joan went on slowly. "I had started downstairs for a book. As I passed the door of her room I heard her moaning. I opened the door and went in. I switched on the lights, bent over her; that must have been when the hairpin fell from my hair, and I got the blood on my sleeve. She was dying. She gasped out that Kirklan had shot her by accident. And that was when I screamed. The vase exploded an instant later." Her head lifted. "I realize that I am under oath; Helen told me with her own lips that it was an accident."

Wiggly Price wondered if this were true, or a superb falsehood to save the man she loved.

"If it was an accident, why didn't you talk?" Wiggly countered.

"The vase, his effort to hide by a porcelain mask what had really happened," she answered.

"And that was why you were so sure that Sarbella was innocent?"

Joan nodded.

"But you stated on your oath," pressed Wiggly, "that you did not hear the shot."

"That was the technical truth," answered Joan. "It was not a shot."

There fell silence; Doctor Bushnell fussed nervously with some papers on the table, notes he had been taking of the testimony. The jurors, although still dazed by it all, looked toward him expectantly.

"Gentlemen," he said slowly, "you have heard the evidence and the--er--confession. You have heard Miss Sheridan's statement of the dying words from the Gilmore woman's lips. I might add, as the examining physician, that the nature of the wound makes it plausible that it could have been inflicted in such a struggle for possession of the pistol as Mr. Gilmore has described. Mind you, gentlemen, I am not trying to sway your verdict; I merely state that the nature of the wound makes it plausible. Are there any questions that you wish to ask of any witness?" There were no questions; perhaps the jury was still too aghast to think of any. "Very well, the witnesses will retire, while the coroner's jury considers the case."

When Wiggly Price stepped out to the porch he found himself beside Sergeant Tish.

"Well, Tish," he said. "I told you that I was going to do it, and I did."

Sergeant Tish grinned feebly. "I gotta hand it to you, you did," he admitted. "And to think it was Gilmore that did the croak! You didn't have _that_ doped out. Ain't it funny now that he didn't watch his chance and make away with the evidence? Guess he thought it was so clever nobody would get wise. I wonder if the girl was lying about the Gilmore woman telling her it was an accident."

Wiggly pursed his lips and toyed with something in his hand, the black hairpin.

"I wonder, too," he murmured. "But, whether she was or not, Gilmore's story was straight, dead straight. It was an accident, but he got panic and tried to cover it up by--what did Miss Sheridan call it?--the porcelain mask."

"Aw, g'wan!" grunted Tish derisively.

"Tish, I'll lay you three wagers: First, that the coroner's jury brings in a verdict of death by accident; second, that the district attorney's office will never go behind that verdict and bring Gilmore to trial; third, that Gilmore and Joan Sheridan are married within a year."

Tish snorted, but did not accept; had he done so, Wiggly would have won the first two and lost the third. It was almost two years before the last prophecy was fulfilled.

THE END.