"But, you've got to say something!" the doctor urged desperately. "Silence like this----" Again she shook her head. "I've nothing to say," she repeated. In the excitement that had accompanied this sudden and amazing turn of things, all attention had been centered upon the quivering, ashen-faced girl in the witness chair, and no one--unless, perhaps, it was Wiggly Price from the corner of his eye--had observed Kirklan Gilmore. The novelist had leaped to his feet and clutched at the back of his chair with palsied fingers. Tears were streaming down his cheeks. "Great God!" he whispered. "That she would make a sacrifice like that!" His voice raised. "Tell them!" he commanded hoarsely. "Tell them, Joan--the truth!" Joan sobbed wildly, uncontrollably. "Oh, Kirk!" she moaned. "Kirk--don't! In Heaven's name--don't!" "Since Joan will not talk," said Kirklan Gilmore, "I will." Wiggly Price dropped his handkerchief to the table, and the loosened corners fell back, revealing the little pile of broken porcelain and the bits of tallow. "Let the guilty man speak!" he said. "If he does not--the evidence is here." CHAPTER XXX WIGGLY MAKES A WAGER The room was tensely silent, as Kirklan Gilmore made his way slowly to the front of the room and, with a shaking hand, took the glass of water that rested upon the coroner's table. He gulped a drink nervously. He put the glass down clumsily. "It's impossible--utterly impossible!" Doctor Bushnell muttered helplessly. "Gilmore was downstairs--Bates was with him--when the shot was fired on the second floor. I can't understand----" Kirklan Gilmore did not sit down, but stood there, leaning heavily against the table, facing the coroner's jury. "The truth," he said huskily, "would have been best in the first place; the truth is always best. I suppose any chance that I may have had is gone now. Yes, I--I killed her--with that gun." He pointed to the broken bits on Wiggly's handkerchief. "The evidence is there. I felt that it was coming when--when this reporter started talking--about the tallow." "Suffering cats!" This interruption came from Sergeant Tish, who gave Wiggly Price an uncanny look of reluctant admiration. "It began," went on Gilmore in a heavy, toneless voice, "on Monday, when Helen went to New York to meet Haskins, her--her husband." He winced, as he said that. "That night she wanted money to pay the blackmail of the man's silence. She lied to me, and I knew that she lied, but she would not tell me the truth. "The next day Sarbella came, and I saw--we all saw--that there was something--something that terrified her. I got Sarbella out to the studio, tried to force him to tell. I suspected a--a love affair. I was mad with jealousy. He gave me his word that he had never so much as seen her before, but I thought that was a gentleman's lie. It was true.