Spots 
Joan Sheridan arrives at Greenacres excited after a month-long trip through France. Instead of finding familiar routines, she discovers a captivating bronze-haired stranger named Helen sleeping on the porch. Butler Bates drops ominous hints about recent upheavals, unable to break the news himself. Joan learns her stepbrother Kirklan has abandoned his novel writing, signaling trouble beneath the estate's calm surface.
CHAPTER I
Three weeks after marrying novelist Kirklan Gilmore, Helen receives a smudgy, pencil-scrawled letter from New York City. The crude missive demands a meeting via a contact named Joe, terrifying Helen into hiding the paper inside her gown. She attempts to dismiss the letter as word from a young nephew, but Bates recognizes masculine handwriting. Helen's hidden past instantly threatens the polished life she constructed at Greenacres.
CHAPTER II
Helen travels covertly to an Eighth Avenue tenement managed by a notorious woman known as Annie. Upstairs, she confronts Don Haskins, her legitimate husband whom she believed she had left behind forever. Calling himself Nifty Don, Haskins demands one thousand dollars to fund his escape from the police and clear his local debts. Helen shudders at his grasp, trapped between bigamy charges and extortion.
CHAPTER III
Kirklan Gilmore returns home frustrated when Helen fails to meet him at the train station. Publisher Atchinson claims to have seen Helen on a New York street, casting doubt on her story of driving to Tuxedo. Locked inside his studio, Kirklan finds himself unable to write as doubts destroy his peace of mind. Tracing chaotic scribbles across blank pages, he realizes how little he actually knows about his bride's history.
CHAPTER IV → CHAPTER V
Dinner at Greenacres turns agonizing when guest artist Victor Sarbella meets Helen face-to-face. Both react with frozen horror, forcing Joan to improvise toasts to cover the awkward silence. Sensing an unspoken history, Kirklan leads Sarbella out to the secluded studio under the pretense of discussing a novel manuscript. Once isolated, Kirklan demands the complete truth about what connects his wife to his guest.
CHAPTER VI
Don Haskins counts down the hours in his hidden room while awaiting Helen's final payment. He sends Annie to secondhand clothing shops along Eighth Avenue to purchase an inconspicuous blue serge suit. Detective Sergeant John Henry Tish spots the notorious woman leaving a shop with a bundle and quietly shadows her back to her hideout. Haskins' precise get-away calculations intersect unexpectedly with police surveillance.
CHAPTER VII
Intimidated by Sarbella's presence, Helen dreads that her past secrets will be exposed before morning. She prepares for flight while trapped inside her second-floor room by nightfall and lack of transport. Below her window, Haskins creeps across the lawn, removes his shoes, and prepares to climb the porch roof. Desperation drives the fugitive to break into Greenacres directly.
CHAPTER VIII
Bates answers the door after midnight to admit Kirklan, who claims he locked himself out while working in the studio. Moments later, a piercing scream and a gunshot echo down the upstairs corridor. They discover Helen lying dead on her lounge from a chest wound, an automatic pistol beside her. Kirklan insists it was suicide, but Bates argues that a victim would not scream before firing with the door open.
CHAPTER IX → CHAPTER X
Doctor Bushnell arrives and examines Helen's mortal wound, noting its awkward downward angle beneath the left armpit. Medically, self-inflicting such a bullet trajectory remains nearly impossible, confirming Bates' belief in murder. Bushnell takes a phone call from a local newspaper, realizing word of the tragedy has already leaked. Suspicion shifts heavily toward the few people present on the second floor when the shot fired.
CHAPTER XI
Constable Hamilton Griggs receives a late-night phone call at home just after finishing his traffic patrol. Celebrating a profitable evening of speeding fines, Griggs rushes to Greenacres upon hearing of the murder. Meanwhile, energetic reporter Wiggly Price arrives from the New York Star, eager to scoop rival papers. Local authority collides with urban journalism as the search for answers begins.
CHAPTER XII
Inside the den, Doctor Bushnell explains to Kirklan why the physical evidence points away from suicide. Bushnell demonstrates how weapon placement and entry angles make self-inflicted wounds improbable. Kirklan worries bitterly about incoming media scandals and demands that reporters stay off the property. Outside, Wiggly Price maneuvers to gain access and secure exclusive details for his story.
CHAPTER XIII
Wiggly Price recognizes Helen as the central figure from a tragic scandal two years prior. In that case, violinist Andrea Sarbella took his own life after Helen's husband revealed her criminal past. Hearing this connection, Constable Griggs promptly arrests Victor Sarbella, assuming revenge drove Andrea's brother to commit murder. Victor maintains his innocence, insisting he never encountered Helen before dinner.
CHAPTER XIV → CHAPTER XV
Disagreeing with Griggs' hasty arrest, Wiggly Price gets permission from Doctor Bushnell to inspect the murder room. Wiggly argues that circumstantial evidence alone will never secure a jury conviction without concrete physical proof. He searches the carpet for overlooked items, convinced that every crime scene contains decisive clues. Bushnell respects the reporter's sharp instincts as Wiggly begins his methodical examination.
CHAPTER XVI
Kirklan bursts into the room outraged after learning of Sarbella's arrest and demands explanations. Doctor Bushnell gently reveals Helen's involvement in Andrea Sarbella's death, forcing Kirklan to face his wife's deceit. The realization that Helen lied about her identity shatters Kirklan's emotional composure. Grief turns to shock as the web of falsehoods collapses around the Gilmore family.
CHAPTER XVII
Sarbella sits locked in the borough jail cell while Griggs celebrates what he considers a solved case. Wiggly Price visits the Griggs household and points out flaws in the official theory, such as a discarded cigarette butt of a different brand. A lone dark hairpin found on the rug further suggests another presence in the room. Wiggly follows his intuition, convinced the true killer remains at large.
CHAPTER XVIII
Detective Sergeant Tish arrives from New York and identifies the murder weapon as his own stolen service automatic. Tish explains how Don Haskins assaulted him, took the gun, and stole a taxi that was later found near Greenacres. This discovery shatters Griggs' case against Sarbella, shifting focus entirely to Haskins. Wiggly and Tish realize the armed fugitive has been lurking near the estate all along.
CHAPTER XIX → CHAPTER XX
Tish, Griggs, and Wiggly question Bates regarding any unexpected visitors or messages received by Helen. Bates recalls the crude pencil-addressed letter Helen received earlier in the week, linking her to Haskins' visit. Wiggly realizes Haskins could not have escaped the house before Kirklan and Bates rushed upstairs. The search narrows as investigators realize the killer is trapped somewhere within Greenacres.
CHAPTER XXI
Cook Mrs. Bogart carries empty fruit jars up to the third-floor storeroom to clear her kitchen space. Overhearing detectives discuss Haskins on the floor below, she nervously approaches the attic door. As she turns the knob, strong resistance pulls the door shut from the inside, and eyes glare through the crack. Mrs. Bogart screams, raising the alarm that the killer is cornered in the garret.
CHAPTER XXII
Don Haskins realizes detectives have located his hideout in the attic storeroom. Defenseless and trapped, he painstakingly unscrews the door handle using his fingernails. He drops the heavy metal knob into a sock, creating a dangerous improvised flail. When Constable Griggs breaks through the barricaded door, Haskins strikes viciously, determined to fight his way out.
CHAPTER XXIII
Sergeant Tish shoots Haskins during the struggle, but Haskins knocks Griggs unconscious and wounds Tish before collapsing. Brought downstairs, Haskins suffers a fatal hemorrhage without offering a formal confession. He admits blackmailing Helen and his secret marriage, but denies pulling the trigger. Haskins dies leaving detectives convinced of his guilt, despite his final protestations of innocence.
CHAPTER XXIV → CHAPTER XXV
Wiggly Price re-examines the murder room while Tish relies on Haskins' window fingerprints as final proof. Searching the carpet inch by inch, Wiggly discovers soft bits of candle tallow embedded in the rug. He also notices fragments of a shattered porcelain vase scattered twelve feet away from its table. These physical anomalies convince Wiggly that the scene was deliberately staged beyond simple physical assault.
CHAPTER XXVI
Dr. Bushnell releases Sarbella from jail as authorities prepare to close the case around Haskins. Wiggly sits on the porch analyzing remaining suspects, including Joan and the elder Mrs. Gilmore. He reasons that the tallow was not dropped by accident, but served a specific purpose during the crime. Refusing to accept easy answers, Wiggly pushes forward to solve the lingering anomalies.
CHAPTER XXVII
Sarbella returns to Greenacres and reconciles with Kirklan, both men relieved that Sarbella is cleared. Wiggly inspects the tallow sample under a magnifying lens, noticing dark specks scattered throughout the wax. He realizes the spots are not ordinary dirt, but black powder smudges from a fired gun. This single discovery proves the tallow was present at the exact instant of the fatal shot.
CHAPTER XXVIII
During the library inquest, Wiggly presents his findings regarding the wax and shattered porcelain mask. Confronted by the physical proof, Kirklan Gilmore steps forward and confesses to murdering Helen. Kirklan explains how jealousy drove him to confront her, leading to a frantic struggle and a staged scene using wax mechanisms to delay discovery. The true killer is revealed, bringing the tragic mystery of Greenacres to a close.
CHAPTER XXIX → CHAPTER XXX
A complete chapter-by-chapter walkthrough of the dark secrets, extortion, and detective work behind the murder at Greenacres.