"Yes, it must be Haskins!" cried Wiggly. "Haskins is still in the house! We dashed out into the hall when she screamed. The man's had no chance of escape." Sergeant Tish pursed his lips, frowned, and shook his head. "I can't believe it," he muttered. "I can't believe Haskins would be such a boob, hiding on the scene of the crime all these hours after the murder has been committed. It's ridiculous." Constable Ham Griggs decided he had been in the background long enough; events had been developing too fast for him to keep pace with them, but here was a situation that he could cope with. It required no deductions, only action. He took a decisive step forward, dragging forth a somewhat ancient forty-five-caliber revolver, which he gave a dramatic flourish. "Stand back!" he roared. "I'm the officer in charge here, and I'm goin' up there to get my man!" CHAPTER XXIII THE TRAPPED RAT With the breath wheezing noisily through his parted lips, which were twisted back so that his clenched teeth were bared, Don Haskins leaned tensely against the wall of the storeroom on the third floor of the Gilmore house. Grim and desperate terror held him in its grip. "They've got me--they've got me now!" he groaned. "Caught like a rat in a trap!" Half the night and all of the morning he had tried in vain to slip out of the house--somewhere, anywhere. Each effort had been frustrated by the danger of discovery; at each attempt there had been voices or footsteps in the hall, or floating warningly up the stairs. Then the coming of daylight had made the contemplated dash all the more hazardous. He had about made up his mind to wait for another coming of darkness, when he had heard the arrival of a car, and, peering down from the narrow dormer window, he had seen the arrival of Detective Sergeant Tish. The coming of Tish naturally filled him with wild terror, for that could mean but one thing--the New York detective had trailed him to Greenacres! So, after several minutes of tortured indecision, he had crept down the inclosed stairs, determined to make a break for it. He could not put up a fight, for he had no weapon. While he had crouched at the foot of the stairs, ears straining in an effort to catch any sound of warning from the other side of the panel, Mrs. Bogart had turned the knob, and Haskins had seized it from the inside, holding the door fast. Then she had yanked it again, the eyes of the two met through the narrow crack, and the woman had screamed.