"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."