"That night--last night only, but it seems an eternity--I stayed for a long time out at the studio, tortured by those black thoughts. It was after eleven o'clock when I came back to the house. Everybody had retired. I went upstairs to my room. It was next to Helen's. I was trying to compose myself before I went in to her to demand the truth. I had no weapon; there was no thought of violence. "The connecting door between our rooms was locked--from her side, but through the panel I thought I heard hushed voices. I thought--what could I think other than that Sarbella might be in there with her? Somehow I hesitated, and it must have been while I debated, trying to think, that she got Haskins out and to the third floor. "And then I went in to her. She was sitting in a chair, facing the door. I didn't see the gun; it was on the floor at her feet. My mind was in such a daze that I hardly think I can make it clear just how it happened. I think I told her that there had been a man in her room, that I had heard them talking. "I know that I was wild looking, disheveled, haggard. I had not slept at all the night before. Perhaps she thought I meant to kill her. Anyhow, she leaned over and picked up the gun swiftly. That was the first time I had noticed it. "'Go away,' she told me. But I did not go away; I had come for the truth, the truth from her own lips. I told her to put down the gun, and when she did not, I did a very foolish thing; I attempted to take it from her by force. I couldn't control myself. "That was when it happened--in the struggle for the gun. It was her own hand that pulled the trigger. I swear before Heaven that is true." He paused a moment, breathing heavily. "The muzzle must have been pressed close to her body," he went on; "that was why there was scarcely any explosion; her body muffled the shot. She collapsed, and I put her on the couch. She did not move or speak. That is how it happened." The young assistant district attorney gulped, as if he were choking, and Doctor Bushnell stared in dazed bewilderment. "But there--there was a shot!" he gasped. "A shot--and her scream. I can't understand----" "He hasn't finished his story, doctor," said Wiggly Price. "He hasn't told you how he worked the clever scheme of covering up the shooting, trying to make it appear suicide." He pointed to the bits of porcelain and the tallow. "There's the answer to that. He took the black porcelain vase as his alibi, put gunpowder into it and tamped it in with candle tallow, made a sort of firecracker. The wick of the candle, from which he stripped the tallow, was his fuse. He lighted it and went out of the house again, pretending that he'd forgotten his keys and had been locked out; that was an excuse to get the butler up and to have a witness to his alibi. Bates could truthfully swear that he was downstairs when the explosion sounded.