Constable Griggs could not, of course, answer this question. Wiggly Price, his feet planted firmly upon the running board of the little car, and his fingers wrapped tightly about the rods supporting the top, thought of something which added, to his mind, a fresh puzzler to the whole mysterious business. "There's something else, Sergeant Tish," he said, raising his voice so that he might be heard above the sound of the motor and the rush of the wind, as they hurried along. "If Haskins killed her, why did he leave the gun behind? He is a desperate man, already in open flight to escape one charge of murder, and a man in a position such as his would want to be armed. Chances are that he would shoot it out before submitting to capture. You say that Haskins is a clever crook, and----" "Used to be," broke in Tish. "Been going down grade for some time. Booze--dope, too, likely as not." "If he had any head on him at all," continued Wiggly, "he would have known that there was every chance in the world of that gun being traced. There's something else. The gun was planted beside the dead woman's body, an effort to give it every appearance of suicide. Why should Haskins have done that?" "I wish you'd give me the low-down on the case," urged Sergeant Tish. "How do you expect me to get anywhere when you gimme the facts in jerks and starts like that?" Constable Griggs' face wore an elated expression as he listened to Wiggly. The reporter had declared his positive conviction of Haskins' guilt, and yet here he was shooting his own theory full of holes. "So you've come back to my way of thinkin', eh?" he crowed. "Come on now and admit that I put the handcuffs on the right man. The Eyetalian done it. Sure he did. I was right all the time." The reporter's ears twitched meditatively. "I'm not saying positively that Haskins didn't kill the woman," he answered. "But I do say that I can't understand why _he_ should have been so anxious for it to appear suicide. It's very easy to understand a possible link between this crook and Gilmore's wife; she began life, I think I told you, on the fringe of the underworld. Oh, I admit that I'm stumped--bad, but there must be a hidden something, somewhere, that will put us right." The detective sergeant's car was now at that point of the road where it ran in front of the Gilmore place. "Turn in here, Sergeant Tish," grunted the constable, as they neared the driveway, and Tish turned the wheel sharply. Before they had quite reached the house, Tish stopped the machine. "Listen, gents," he said crisply, "let's get down to cases. It looks to me as if Haskins did the job here at this place, although, as our reporter friend says, it _is_ queer that he left the gat behind. I want to put my mitts on Don Haskins, whether he did the croak or not. And you wanna get hold of the same bird, for, if he didn't do it, you want him to tell you how this gun of mine got away from him.