"Whatcha mean--'or any one else?'" growled Tish. "You keep hinting at something you haven't let me in on. If it wasn't Haskins or Sarbella----Aw, you talk like a fool!" Wiggly hesitated for a moment. "Tish," he said slowly, "I don't know that I'm exactly holding any aces, but I'm going to lay all my cards on the table and let you have a look at 'em. We know why Sarbella might have killed the woman." "Motive ain't strong enough," broke in the detective with a shake of the head. "His kid brother lost his head over her and killed himself; that's all." "Ordinarily I'd agree with you, but when we think of Sarbella's motive we've got to think of a race that is credited with a passion for personal vengeance. The Latins are hot-blooded, and their blood does not cool quickly like ours. They nurse a grudge for years. "Let us suppose that Sarbella went to the Gilmore woman's room, not with the intention of killing her, but to tell her that, unless she made a full confession to her husband, he would tell Gilmore, himself. The gun was there--the gun that she had taken away from Haskins--and the man's hatred for this bronze-haired vampire who caused the suicide of his brother and the ultimate death of their mother, mastered him." "Suppose anything you darn please," grunted Tish. "It's easy enough to cook up stuff, but making it hold water is something else. Yeah, I'll say it is." "But there's something else," persisted Wiggly. "You've missed the hidden undercurrent that I've sensed. I tell you, Tish, there's something beneath the surface of things in this house." "Meaning just what?" the detective asked skeptically. "Did you notice Gilmore's stepsister--Joan Sheridan her name is--when she came out into the hall after the cook fainted?" Tish eyed the newspaper man half curiously, half disgustedly. "I saw her," he answered. "Yes, you saw her, but did you see the expressions of her face? Did you notice how excited she became----" "Say, I guess any woman would be excited, after what had happened, to hear a woman screaming like that cook did, and her face all bloody on top of it." "When the doctor told her that Sarbella had been removed from suspicion, and that some one else had done the shooting," Wiggly went on, "well, I saw it, Tish; and I saw, too, what a look of relief came into her face when Bushnell told her that it was Haskins, the crook. The human emotions seldom lie, Tish, and, take it from me, that Sheridan girl knows a lot more about this thing than she is willing to tell." "Rave on!" growled Sergeant Tish. "I'd given you credit for having a balance wheel, but that's nut stuff you're pulling now." "Wait a minute," Wiggly pressed on, not discouraged by the other's derision. "Maybe you remember that Haskins refused to answer me when I asked him if it was a man or a woman he saw coming out of the Gilmore woman's room after he heard the shot."