THE BLACK SMUDGE
Along the ribbon-smooth road Doctor Bushnell shot the car at a lively
clip; one couldn't blame him, of course, for thinking of his private
practice, and one of his patients had been telephoning for him all
morning. He would have been the last man to hurry the Gilmore case to
a legal finish, if he had thought there was anything to be gained by
prolonging the investigation; but he considered that the affair had
been solved to all reasonable satisfaction.
In less than five minutes they arrived at Greenacres, and hardly had
the three men stepped from the machine to the porch of the house when
Kirklan Gilmore, evidently having seen them from a window, came rushing
out, both hands stretched out toward the artist. There were tears in
his eyes, and his voice was husky, trembling with emotion.
"Thank God, Victor!" he cried. "I've just heard the whole inside
of things from a man, the New York detective, that you're cleared,
absolutely cleared! You don't know what a relief it has been to me,
although I never did think, even when things were the blackest, that
you did it."
"And I appreciate your loyalty, Kirklan," answered Sarbella. The hands
of the two men remained clasped.
"Forgive me, Victor, for thinking last night that you--that you and
Helen----"
"That there had been an--ah--affair between your wife and me," finished
Sarbella. "Yes, I was afraid that my silence would put dark thoughts
into your head, but----"
"Why didn't you tell me?" broke in Gilmore, and a peculiar expression
convulsed his features. "Why didn't you tell me last night, out in the
study, that she was the woman over whom your brother----"
Sarbella shook his head.
"No! I could not in honor do that," he protested. "You were my friend,
and the woman was your wife. My lips were sealed. She was your wife;
you loved her."
Kirklan Gilmore's face was still white, haggardly drawn, but he was
no longer the broken wreck of a man, tottering upon the brink of a
mental collapse, that he had been some hours before. He seemed to
have recovered from the first over-powering shock of horror; Doctor
Bushnell's course in placing him under the influence of a sedative had
apparently been a most wise one.
At Sarbella's words his lips twitched piteously, but he managed to keep
control of himself.
"No," he said slowly, huskily, "I was in love with--with the woman
I thought her to be--in love with an ideal, a creation of my own
imagination. The woman I thought her to be did not exist--except in
my own infatuated fancies. And she was not my wife. She----Oh, what a
nightmare it's been--what a nightmare!"
Doctor Bushnell stepped swiftly to his side and, taking his arm, urged
him toward the house.
"Keep a grip on yourself, Kirklan," he murmured in a kindly, paternal
tone. "It's been a pretty terrible business, old man, but that thing
we mortals call fate has cut a lot of the strings to the tangle for
you. It is better that things are as they are; it saves a vast number
of troublesome complications. It saves--well, trucking a lot of mire
through the courts."
Gilmore compressed his lips and lowered his head. "Yes," he agreed
dully, "you're right about that; it saves the courts."
"Buck up, Kirklan! As you say, the woman you thought her to be did not
exist."
"Ah," murmured Victor Sarbella, "but losing an ideal is one of the
hardest things in life."
The novelist, leaning a little on the doctor's friendly arm, made his
way slowly into the house. Sarbella and Wiggly Price followed.
"Have all the legal details been satisfied?" asked Gilmore, as he
lowered himself into a chair. "There is, of course, no question but
that----"
"But that Haskins killed her," finished Doctor Bushnell. "Absolutely
none, Kirklan. There remains now only the inquest--a double inquest in
this case. One jury will suffice for both; the verdict, of course, is a
foregone conclusion."
There fell a brief silence, Gilmore's eyes staring straight in front of
him, with a dull, vacant expression. No doubt he was thinking of the
bronze-haired, beautiful woman who lay upstairs, cold in death--the
woman who might have been.
"Everything has become quite clear to me," he said slowly, more as if
speaking to himself. "She was making a visit to this Haskins in New
York day before yesterday, when Atchinson saw her on the street. She
must have gone there in answer to a letter that my butler tells me she
received that morning."
"Atchinson?" Doctor Bushnell asked inquiringly.
"My publisher," Gilmore replied. "Since she was employed by the
publishing firm before our marriage, Atchinson knew her quite well. He
said it was she, but I thought he must be mistaken. She had told me
that she was going to motor into the country. I wonder how it would
have all come out if the man, Haskins, had not been trapped in the
storeroom?"
No one responded to that musing question. Withdrawn unobtrusively
into one corner, Wiggly had again taken the lump of tallow from his
pocket and was meditatively rubbing his fingers over it. Suddenly
his attention centered upon those black specks that he had taken for
granted were dirt, caused, perhaps, by a soiled shoe sole pressing down
on it, as it had lain upon the floor of the room upstairs; he saw now
that those dark, almost pin-point discolorations were imbedded into the
substance. This, however, increased rather than solved the puzzle.
"The district attorney has come, hasn't he?" asked Doctor Bushnell.
"I took it for granted that it was his car I saw at the side of the
driveway, as we came up."
Kirklan Gilmore nodded absently. "Yes," he said, "a young fellow--the
assistant district attorney, I believe. Lasker, I think his name is.
He's upstairs looking around with that detective fellow, Sergeant Fish."
"Tish," corrected the physician. "Quite a game sort, Tish; it was he
who shot Haskins."
Again Gilmore nodded. "So he told me," he said.
"I think I'll go upstairs," added the physician. "It won't be long
now until the men who are to serve on the jury arrive." He glanced at
Wiggly with a patronizing sort of smile. "Are you coming up with me to
look for more--more hairpins, young man?"
The newspaper man smiled grimly.
"I'll go up with you," he said, "but it's not hairpins that I'm mainly
interested in right now; it's this confounded piece of tallow." He
turned his eyes toward the novelist and thought he saw a sudden
tightening of Gilmore's muscles, a suppressed start. He was not so sure
about it. "Tell me, Mr. Gilmore, were candles used frequently in the
house here?"
Gilmore did not reply for a moment. "Candles?" he murmured. "Why, my
dear sir, what a peculiar question. I don't believe I understand."
Doctor Bushnell, moving toward the stairway, paused with a brief,
discounting laugh.
"Our enthusiastic newspaper friend, Kirklan," he explained, "thinks we
haven't begun to get at the bottom of things. He's found a few pieces
of tallow candle on the floor of the room upstairs; he's trying to
attach some importance to it--just because he doesn't hit upon a ready
explanation to it, I suppose. I'm afraid we've humored him a little
too much, in gratitude for the first assistance that he gave us in
identifying your wife."
Gilmore was frowning slightly.
"And I'm afraid that I can't help him explain his little mystery,
doctor," he said. "So far as I can recall, there aren't any
candlesticks in Helen's room; nor in my room, which is adjoining.
Still"--he paused for a moment--"it does occur to me, gentlemen, that
the third floor has never been wired for electricity; the storeroom
is so seldom visited. If Haskins had wanted to have a light up there,
a candle would have afforded about the only possible illumination for
him."
"Ah!" exclaimed the doctor. "See, Price, there's the explanation for
you! The woman must have got Haskins a candle, and he carried it down
with him when he shot her. He probably mashed it underfoot and----"
"No, that will hardly do," Wiggly interrupted with a quick negative
jerk of his head. "In the first place, I can't believe that Haskins
would have been fool enough to have taken a light with him to the
storeroom; too much chance of the illuminated window attracting
attention. Secondly, this tallow was broken into a good many small
pieces; the trodding of a foot on a candle wouldn't do that; it would
only have mashed it, and it wouldn't have scattered it several places
about the room."
Doctor Bushnell shrugged his shoulders. "Oh, what matter!" he exclaimed
impatiently. "Whatever explanation there is would probably be absurdly
simple."
Before the physician could gain the stairs, Sergeant Tish and the
assistant district attorney were coming down. The latter was a
youngish, blond fellow, with rimless spectacles glistening in front of
pale-blue eyes; one could see that he appreciated the gravity of the
situation and the importance of his own official position, and that,
beneath his outward pretense of grim poise, he was a rather nervous and
inexperienced young man.
One look at young Lasker told Wiggly how futile it would be to approach
him with any theory calculated to upset the accepted situation; the
lawyer's words confirmed this impression.
"Ah, Doctor Bushnell!" he exclaimed, frowning his best official frown
and clearing his throat several times. "I have just been over the
ground with Sergeant Tish, who has been kind enough to lay all of the
facts before me--in quite a comprehensive manner. I have canvassed
the evidence thoroughly. I quite agree with you, doctor, that but
one sensible hypothesis can be drawn. I would even call it more than
an hypothesis. The evidence is quite clear-cut and incontrovertible.
Sergeant Tish's markmanship has--fortunately for him, however--cheated
the electric chair of its grim function. There can be no question of
Haskins' guilt; absolutely no question."
"In spite of hairpins, tallow, and such stuff," grunted Tish, with a
grin at Wiggly, evidently taking a keen delight in belittling him. The
young assistant district attorney glanced at the newspaper man and
lifted his hands in a gesture of depreciation.
"So this is the journalist you were telling me about. If positive
evidence were lacking, my dear sir, it might be very well to bear
these things in mind, but in a clear-cut case of this kind such minor
trifles become entirely irrelevant and immaterial. Any other theory
than that of Haskins' guilt is absolutely untenable. I am willing,
Doctor Bushnell, that the inquest shall proceed with the evidence in
hand."
"I think I hear Presley's bus coming along the road now," nodded the
doctor. "He's bringing the men from the village."
From outside there came the sound of the lumbering, noisy conveyance,
bearing the coroner's jury. All attention at the moment was focused in
this direction, and Wiggly, without a word to any one--he was playing
an absolutely lone hand now--made for the stairs. No one registered any
objection to his taking another visit to the second floor, but halfway
up he turned and saw Kirklan Gilmore's eyes fixed upon him in a sort of
set, expressionless stare. Was it expressionless? Wiggly had a feeling
that the blank look might be concealing a degree of--well, perhaps of
wary apprehension.
"Humph!" Wiggly said under his breath. "Gilmore was downstairs when
his wife was killed; he couldn't have had a hand in it, and yet, dash
it all, I did get a reflex from him when it came to mentioning the
tallow. And he was pretty prompt in trying to find an explanation for
the stuff being in the room. I wonder----" But what he wondered was too
vague even for his thoughts. Passing on up the steps to the head of the
stairs, he let himself into the murdered woman's bed-chamber.
"I don't know what I can expect to find more than I have," he told
himself discouragingly, "but the old line in the copy book used to tell
me: 'If at first you don't succeed, try, try again.' Here goes for
another try. Gilmore was startled when I mentioned tallow candles. Why?"
Obviously that question could never be answered until he found out for
himself what part the tallow had played in the tragedy, until he had
explained its mysterious presence in the room. He walked about the room
slowly several times and then dropped to hands and knees, crawling back
and forth, his eyes close to the rug, picking up all of the tallow that
he could find. Presently he had quite a little accumulation of the
stuff, gathered from a surprisingly wide radius.
The palm of his hand was pricked by a sharp surface hidden from view
in the nap of the rug--another fragment of the broken vase. The vase
hadn't impressed him greatly; for that was one thing that could be
explained. As Tish had suggested, if it hadn't been tipped from the
table, Helen Gilmore might have flung it at the murderer in a desperate
effort at self-defense.
Yet, as he was about to toss aside the fragment of porcelain, his jaw
sagged, and a startled exclamation came from his parted lips, for there
clung to what had once been the inside of the vase, a small particle of
tallow!
"Gosh!" breathed Wiggly, his ears twitching violently. "The tallow was
inside of the vase when it was broken! The two go together; I'd never
thought of that. By George, I've been missing something!"
The shattered porcelain vase had, in light of this discovery, taken
on a real importance within Wiggly's mind. Hastily he began crawling
on hands and knees about the room, retrieving every piece of it that
he could find. When he had got together all of it he could find, he
placed all the pieces on the table, with the tallow in a separate
pile and, drawing up a chair, sat down and began to study it. Still
no inspirational solution flashed through his mind; he began at
nowhere and ended at the same place. Times without number he handled
the pieces, absently sorting and resorting them, and at last, with a
hopeless sigh of defeat, he realized that an explanation was beyond his
powers of either deduction or imagination; he was simply beating his
head against a stone wall.
"Its no use!" he muttered under his breath. "Possibly I'm wrong after
all! Possibly----"
Outside the closed door in the hall he heard voices. Bates had come
upstairs to call Joan Sheridan and her mother to attend the proceedings
down in the library. Wiggly wondered if they would ask him to testify;
probably not. Doctor Bushnell and the assistant district attorney would
not want him upsetting things and confusing the accepted explanation by
flinging his unproven theories at the jury.
For a moment or so the newspaper man debated.
"I know I've no authority to do it, and I will probably get thrown out
on my ear, if I'm caught at it; but I've got a notion to have one more
try."
Leaving the piece of broken vase and the lumps of tallow on the table
where he had been studying them with so little result, he turned
toward the door, slipping quietly into the hall. The sound of voices
came up the open stairway; Doctor Bushnell, in his capacity as deputy
coroner, was swearing in the jury.
Wiggly made for the wing of the house where he knew Joan Sheridan's
room to be. He had never rid himself of the notion that she knew
something about the murder that she would never tell unless it was
forced from her unwilling lips; and the only force to which she would
respond would be evidence.
Her room was unlocked. He let himself in with the unconscious
stealthiness that overtakes a man who finds himself entering unbidden
places. Closing the door gently behind him, the reporter straightway
went about the business in hand, which was to determine whether or
not the room might not reveal something that would incriminate Joan
Sheridan.
First, he went to the girl's dressing table; the top of it, except for
some silver-backed toilet articles, was barren; but in the right-hand
drawer he did find hairpins. Quickly he compared them with the one in
his pocket; they were of the same size, color, and pattern. As alike as
the proverbial two peas in a pod; yet that in itself was slim proof,
for, as Joan herself had said, all hairpins are so much alike. He had
to have more than that--a great deal more than that.
Wiggly was closing the drawer when he noted for the first time the
black smudge on his finger--a smallish streak which flecked free from
the skin, as he rubbed at it with the ball of his thumb.
"Hello!" he exclaimed under his breath. "What's that? Where did I get
it?" With a curious and puzzled frown he stared at the dark spot on his
finger, as he continued to fleck off the black, grainy particles. He
lifted his hand to his nose and sniffed, and, as he caught the faint,
but unmistakable, odor, his ears fairly did a dance at the sides of his
head.
"Great guns," he whispered. "It's powder--burned gunpowder! Where did
I get that?" His bulging eyes swept the dressing table and the only
articles that he had touched since coming into Helen Gilmore's room.
And then he thought of the candle tallow and the black specks that had
mocked him with their enigma. Slowly, through a fog of bewilderment and
incredulity, there pierced a dawning light of understanding. He had
solved the murder!