"I was unable to sleep," Joan went on slowly. "I had started downstairs for a book. As I passed the door of her room I heard her moaning. I opened the door and went in. I switched on the lights, bent over her; that must have been when the hairpin fell from my hair, and I got the blood on my sleeve. She was dying. She gasped out that Kirklan had shot her by accident. And that was when I screamed. The vase exploded an instant later." Her head lifted. "I realize that I am under oath; Helen told me with her own lips that it was an accident." Wiggly Price wondered if this were true, or a superb falsehood to save the man she loved. "If it was an accident, why didn't you talk?" Wiggly countered. "The vase, his effort to hide by a porcelain mask what had really happened," she answered. "And that was why you were so sure that Sarbella was innocent?" Joan nodded. "But you stated on your oath," pressed Wiggly, "that you did not hear the shot." "That was the technical truth," answered Joan. "It was not a shot." There fell silence; Doctor Bushnell fussed nervously with some papers on the table, notes he had been taking of the testimony. The jurors, although still dazed by it all, looked toward him expectantly. "Gentlemen," he said slowly, "you have heard the evidence and the--er--confession. You have heard Miss Sheridan's statement of the dying words from the Gilmore woman's lips. I might add, as the examining physician, that the nature of the wound makes it plausible that it could have been inflicted in such a struggle for possession of the pistol as Mr. Gilmore has described. Mind you, gentlemen, I am not trying to sway your verdict; I merely state that the nature of the wound makes it plausible. Are there any questions that you wish to ask of any witness?" There were no questions; perhaps the jury was still too aghast to think of any. "Very well, the witnesses will retire, while the coroner's jury considers the case." When Wiggly Price stepped out to the porch he found himself beside Sergeant Tish. "Well, Tish," he said. "I told you that I was going to do it, and I did." Sergeant Tish grinned feebly. "I gotta hand it to you, you did," he admitted. "And to think it was Gilmore that did the croak! You didn't have _that_ doped out. Ain't it funny now that he didn't watch his chance and make away with the evidence? Guess he thought it was so clever nobody would get wise. I wonder if the girl was lying about the Gilmore woman telling her it was an accident." Wiggly pursed his lips and toyed with something in his hand, the black hairpin. "I wonder, too," he murmured. "But, whether she was or not, Gilmore's story was straight, dead straight. It was an accident, but he got panic and tried to cover it up by--what did Miss Sheridan call it?--the porcelain mask." "Aw, g'wan!" grunted Tish derisively.