"I wonder," pressed Wiggly, but careful to make his tone carelessly casual, "if you also suspected Miss Sheridan?" "Eh?" exclaimed Sarbella, turning quickly, and then he laughed briefly. "Yes, I think I even suspected her. Her attitude it was--ah--very strange, it seemed to me. Only excitement, of course, as we know the facts now; but at the time--well, I hardly knew what to think." Wiggly's ears twitched slightly. Further confirmation of his theory! Yet it convinced no one except himself. "I condemn myself for harboring any such suspicions," went on Sarbella musingly, "but it was strange. She was up, had not retired, and yet she had not heard the scream or the shot." "What!" exclaimed Wiggly; this was something new to him. He had not known that. "You mean that she was up and dressed?" Sarbella shot him a quick, curious glance, saw his eagerness, and was warned to sudden silence. "Let us talk of something else," he said. "Am I to understand that there are still any doubts in your mind----" "Haskins made a dying statement in which he denied the murder," said Wiggly; "he said, however, that he did see the murderer coming out of the room after the shot was fired." Sarbella gave no guilty start, such as might have been expected, if Haskins' story was true, and it had been himself that Haskins had seen coming out of Helen Gilmore's room. "What could you expect but lies from the lips of such a man?" the artist asked. "Thank Heaven that the ending is as it is. This man, this Haskins, must have been the husband who went to my poor brother with the story that unbalanced his reason and sent him to his death. Poor Andrea! The hand of Fate has avenged him! There is a God of retribution!" Wiggly Price made one more effort. His fingers went to his pocket for that puzzling piece of tallow. "Had another look around that room this morning," he said. "On the floor I found several pieces of this." Victor Sarbella turned and glanced at the white, black-flecked, shapeless lump, but he betrayed no more visible signs of emotion than had Joan Sheridan. "What is it?" he asked, frowning. "What of it?" "Nothing!" grunted Wiggly Price, as his arm raised in a disgustedly impulsive gesture to toss it into the street. Even his own persistent faith in this as a vital clew was being badly shaken. Yet his fingers closed about the bit of tallow, and he returned it to his pocket again. His mouth tightened. "Nothing--so far," he added. He was one of those chaps who just naturally can't quit. Sarbella gave him a curious glance, shrugged his shoulders, and dismissed both the man and the bit of tallow as of no further importance; then he lapsed into a moody sort of silence. A moment later Doctor Bushnell returned to the car; it had taken him no time at all to drum his jury for the inquest.