While Sergeant Tish's identification of the murder gun, as the same automatic pistol that Don Haskins had taken from his unconscious person the previous afternoon, plus the certainty that Haskins had deserted the stolen taxicab at no great distance from Greenacres, made it an obvious theory that it might have been the crook who had murdered Helen Gilmore, Constable Griggs sputtered protestingly. No man likes to admit a mistake. For a moment he was too eternally flabbergasted for words; this sudden development, the appearance of a new and unknown suspect, floundered him helplessly in a sea of bewilderment. Possibility of Victor Sarbella's innocence endangered his triumph and put the brakes on his ego, for, by that mental process which makes men heroes in their own eyes, Ham Griggs had given himself a good deal more credit than he was really entitled to. He forgot that it had been the newspaper reporter's well-functioning memory, identifying the slain woman as "the girl in the Sarbella case," which had supplied the vital link, the possible motive, and that, except for Wiggly, there would have been nothing upon which to have detained the artist. Not that Wiggly Price begrudged the constable feeding his vanity fat; for Wiggly was interested only in the story and concerned not at all with whatever transitory fame might attach to the solver of the mystery. Give Wiggly the story, and he was willing that Constable Griggs should monopolize the credit. Sergeant John Henry Tish, realizing the importance that attached to a positive identification of the automatic, examined it still more carefully, reaffirming an already firm conviction that it was his. His own excitement, too, matched that of the newspaper reporter. "There's no doubt about it, gents," he declared. "It's my gun." "Huh!" grunted Constable Griggs, at last finding his tongue. "There must be hundreds of guns like that, as much the same as peas in a pod." His skepticism was, of course, backed by the wish that it be a mistake. "Mebbe it looks like your gun, mebbe it _has_ got a busted place on the butt plates, but that don't prove----" "A cop gets pretty well acquainted with a gun when he's packed it as long as I've packed this one. There's a lot of little marks on it that I recognize. I know it's my gat, and the serial number will prove it; the department keeps a record of the numbers." "It's a police regulation, all right," grunted Wiggly Price. "I ought to have noticed that the first thing, but I didn't. I don't think there's much chance of Sergeant Tish being mistaken, constable, especially since the deserted taxi gives us proof that Haskins did come to Ardmore last night."