"Those black specks in the tallow that have been worrying me all morning, were burned gunpowder. Don't think I'd have obtained the answer to it, though, if I hadn't handled the pieces of the vase, and a black smudge--burned powder again--came free on my fingers. "After that it was clear; the murderer was some one who wasn't on the second floor; that could mean only one person--Gilmore himself." Lasker, the assistant district attorney, leaped to his feet. "But in that case," he demanded, "what about the scream and Joan Sheridan's silk dressing gown and the bloodstains?" "I fancy," answered Wiggly, "that it was Miss Sheridan who screamed." Bates, the butler, gave a violent start. "It was!" he exclaimed. "I said at the time it sounded just like the time she had screamed when Mr. Kirklan was thrown by his horse." Gilmore spoke again. "Yes," he said, "the shot that awakened the house was not a shot, but the explosion of the powder in the vase. When I thought Helen was dead, I was suddenly afraid. "Who would believe that was the way it had happened? They would arrest me, send me to prison, and I was suddenly a coward. I--I don't know how I happened to think of what I did; it just came to me suddenly, every detail of it. "In my own room, in a closet, was a box of shotgun shells that I had used for duck hunting last fall. It was a simple matter to remove the wads and take out the powder from two shells and pour it into the vase. I had to go downstairs for the candle. That is all; it would take ten minutes or so for the candle wick to burn down to the powder. I went out of the house, but returned almost immediately and rang the bell. Bates let me in; I--I had to detain him downstairs until the explosion. "When the scream came, I was even more startled than Bates. I could not understand that. And then when we got to the top of the stairs a door slammed, and the door to her room was open. I had left it closed; also I had turned off the lights, and they were burning. "You can imagine the torture I was in. I tried to make myself speak, but I was a coward. I was afraid of the consequences. I would have spoken, if the net had tightened about Sarbella; I want that understood, that I should not have let an innocent man suffer. "Then Haskins in the house--dead--it seemed to make me safe, to solve the whole terrible situation. And it was not murder. Believe me or not, I have told the truth." Joan Sheridan lifted her head. "Yes," she said, "he has told the truth. I had it from--from her own lips." "What!" cried Gilmore. "You can't mean that she--she was still alive. Merciful Heaven, I let her die!"