SARBELLA SPEAKS
No longer was Wiggly Price an interloper, an unwelcome intruder facing
eviction; for, instead of asking for facts, he was supplying facts, and
extremely vital facts they seemed to be. Both the constable and Doctor
Bushnell, since the Sarbella case stirred no memories, were both eager
for further enlightenment.
"Yes," said Wiggly, "I am sure of it now; this woman was the girl in
the Sarbella case. I think I must have written five or six columns
about it; queer that I shouldn't have spotted her the minute I put eyes
on her, but a fellow's memory does slip sometimes. The minute I heard
the name just now it all came back to me with a rush."
"I knew you was hidin' something," grunted Constable Griggs, fixing
Victor Sarbella with a stern eye. "I had a feelin' that you was lyin'
about never havin' set eyes on 'er until last night. I guess you killed
her, all right--that was the reason you wouldn't talk. Guess you
thought you was pretty slick." He turned to the newspaper man. "I guess
it wasn't nothin' short of Providence that let you get into the house
just now. Queer, ain't it, how things is always turnin' out?"
"My statement," said Sarbella, his voice husky, "was entirely true. I
had never seen the woman until last night--when my friend introduced
her as--as hees wife. She--she the wife of my good friend!"
"I guess you think we're a lotta country boobs to swaller a thin yarn
like that. Never seen her before, huh? That's likely--I guess not."
Doctor Bushnell looked eagerly at Wiggly Price, impatient to hear what
was meant by "the Sarbella case."
"Let's hear what he's got to say, Griggs," he urged.
"Sure," nodded Ham Griggs; "talk right up, mister. I guess we're all
wantin' to hear it--except Sarbella. You've put us on a hot trail, all
right, young feller."
"For all I know," said the reporter, "he may be telling the truth about
never having seen the woman before. It sounds reasonable enough, as you
shall see.
"The Sarbella case got into the newspapers a little over two years
ago. There was a young chap--handsome kid he was--a violinist. Born in
Italy--forget what place--and came to New York in concert work. His
first name"--he frowned meditatively--"I think it was Andrea."
"Yes, it was Andrea," muttered Victor Sarbella. "Poor Andrea! And that
woman--death was too good for her!"
"He fell in with a girl, a beautiful girl, with bronze hair. The
attraction of opposites, I suppose; he was dark--naturally, being
Italian. But this girl's past wasn't as pretty as her face. A lot of it
is coming back to me now--the details. She'd been raised on the fringe
of the underworld. Maybe you know what I mean. Her father and her
brother had served time. Oh, not her; she tried to pull away from that
sort of thing.
"Anyhow, the young violinist fell in love with this girl, madly in love
with her. I think they were planning to be married, and then he found
out the truth about her. How? I can't tell you that, but he did. The
note he left behind him told that--how she had lied to him, deceived
him.
"He went into the bathroom of his hotel and shot himself through the
heart. You see, this young Sarbella came of a very proud family--his
father related to the nobility and all that sort of thing. He couldn't
marry a girl like that, and he couldn't give her up. There was only one
way he could forget her, and he took that way.
"In brief, gentlemen, that's the Sarbella case. The girl disappeared;
the police didn't hold her, since it was so obviously a suicide. I saw
her at the inquest; she seemed pretty badly cut up over it, but--well,
you can't always tell about that."
"My word!" whispered Doctor Bushnell, aghast. "Kirklan Gilmore's
wife was that woman, a woman of the underworld? It seems incredible,
preposterous!"
"Sarbella," went on Wiggly Price, looking steadily at the guest
of Greenacres, "had a brother who was in Italy at the time of the
suicide. This brother caught the first boat to New York with the avowed
intention----"
"I think that I am the best qualified person to finish your narrative,"
the voice of Victor Sarbella broke in.
"So you've decided to start your tongue workin'," crowed Constable
Griggs; his chest bulged importantly. "It is my official duty to warn
you that anything you may say will be used against you."
Sarbella waved his hand impatiently. "This is an explanation, not a
confession," he retorted. "My first statement to you remains true,
although I admit that I did not tell you all the truth--for two reasons.
"Yes, this dead woman," his voice dripped with bitterness, "was the
girl in the Sarbella case. It is necessary for me to tell you that
Andrea, my younger brother, and I were born and reared in Florence. Our
mother was American, our father Italian.
"I came to America where I could find a better market for my drawings,
and I brought with me Andrea, who was a violinist and expected to
earn a great deal of money with his playing. He had wonderful talent,
Andrea; even so young, his playing was attracting attention. Would to
Heaven that I had left him in Italy. Then that woman would never have
set his brain on fire, driven him mad with the madness of infatuation.
"It was the first winter that we were in New York, and I returned to
Florence that I might accompany my mother back to America. She, too,
was to make her home in New York, my father having died. It was while
I was away that Andrea met this devil of a woman. How? I do not know,
but he loved her madly; the letter he left behind for me told me the
intensity of his passion for her.
"Andrea was young, idealistic; he thought her everything that was good,
noble. And then there came to him a man; a low, common person, who was
the woman's husband!
"You see how she had tricked him? She was not the innocent, lovely girl
she had led my brother to believe. He had thought to marry her--soon.
The shock of the truth dethroned reason; he could not have her, and he
could not give her up. There seemed to him only one way that he could
forget.
"If I could but show you his farewell letter to me, the letter that
he wrote a few minutes before he fired the bullet through his heart!"
Tears came into Victor Sarbella's eyes, and his voice trembled and
broke. "Could you read that letter of Andrea's you would understand
better.
"He was my brother, my only brother, and I loved him devotedly. News of
his death was cabled to me, but it was not until the boat docked in New
York that I knew how he had died--and why.
"My mother--Andrea was her very life. She--it killed her. This woman,
this vampire, killed both of them--Andrea and our mother--as surely as
though she had driven daggers into their hearts. And that--that would
have been a kindlier way." He pointed a dramatically accusing finger to
the couch. "There she is, a murderess, a moral murderess, and she has
reaped as she had sown!"
Victor Sarbella's voice came to a pause.
"All right," said Constable Griggs, "let's have the rest of it. You
killed her for revenge!"
"A life for a life!" murmured Wiggly Price, his ears twitching again,
as he thought of a dramatic line for this amazing story that he was to
write for _The Star_. "'The code of Latin vengeance!' Wow! What a whale
of a yarn!"
Victor Sarbella shook his head slowly.
"Time passes, and the deepest of wounds heal--although there may be a
scar," he said. "It is futile for me to deny that in my first grief
and rage against this woman I made bitter threats, that I said I would
hound her down and make her pay. I do not deny that I meant it--at the
moment; I do not deny that I sought her in vain."
"But you did find her yesterday," exclaimed Constable Griggs. "I've
heard tell of them Eyetalian vendettas. You hadda wait most three
years, but you got 'er all right. Ain't no use holdin' out on me no
longer, Mister Sarbella; we gotcha, an' we gotcha cold. Mebbe you can
get by with that revenge business over in Italy, but you can't work it
here."
Victor Sarbella looked tired, and his face was drawn, haggard.
"Yes, I found her here yesterday," he nodded. "I found her--this
murderess--married to my good friend, who loved her madly--as poor
Andrea loved her. While I had never seen her, I knew her from that
picture of her that lay beside Andrea when he died. Every detail of
that face was burned into my memory; I recognized her instantly. And
she--the name and the family resemblance--she, too, knew me for who I
am.
"Kirklan Gilmore saw that something was wrong, but I could not tell
him. He was my friend; she was his wife; my lips were sealed. I swear
to you that no thought of killing her entered my mind, although in the
past I had thought many times of putting my fingers about her throat
and----"
"Huh!" broke in Ham Griggs' grunt. "I guess you'd swear to most
anything to keep yourself from goin' to the chair. What made you hold
out on us about knowin' who she was, if you wasn't guilty?"
"As I told you a few minutes ago," answered Sarbella, "there were two
reasons. One was that I wished to spare Gilmore, my friend, the torture
of the truth."
"And the other reason," said Griggs, "was that you knowed blame well it
would make things look purty black for you. You knowed that it would
throw suspicion square on you."
Sarbella hesitated.
"At first," he replied slowly, "I had no other thought than that the
woman had ended her life--driven to suicide by fear, fear that I would
denounce her for what she was before her husband; but, when the butler
kept insisting that she had been murdered, I knew that I had a vitally
personal reason for keeping silent."
"But little good it did you--thanks to this feller," exulted the
constable, jerking his thumb toward the newspaper man. "Victor
Sarbella, you're under arrest for----"
"Be careful, sir--be careful," warned the guest of Greenacres, his face
gray. "The gun is not mine, and you will never be able to prove that it
was. If you subject me to false arrest----"
Ham Griggs hesitated, glancing at Doctor Bushnell for encouragement.
"I don't think you need worry about false arrest," advised the doctor.
"An officer has a perfect right to hold a man on suspicion. There need
not be positive proof, and there were but three persons on the second
floor when the shot was fired--Mrs. Gilmore, Miss Joan, and Sarbella."
Victor Sarbella leaned forward in his chair, and he seemed on the verge
of saying something further in his own defense, but did not speak. It
may have been that he realized how useless it would be to say anything
further in his own behalf.
The constable dragged from his pocket a pair of handcuffs. "Stick
out your mitts," he ordered, holding open the steel jaws to receive
Sarbella's wrists.