Vicky Van Part 38

in there heavier an' wiser; but there isn't a single duplicate! Now, Miss Vicky Van likes good readin', you can see from her books an' all, so why don't she take Harper's an' Century? 'Cause she has 'em in her other home--"

"But, wait, child," I cried, getting bewildered; "you don't mean Vicky Van lives sometimes in this house and sometimes in the Schuyler house as its mistress!"

"That's jest what I do mean. I know it sounds like I was batty, but let me tell more. Well, it seemed queer that there shouldn't be any one magazine took in both houses, but, of course, that wasn't no real proof. I only noticed it, an' it set me a thinkin'. Then I sized up their situations. Mrs. Schuyler's dignified an' quiet in her ways, simple in her dress, wears only poils, no other sparklers whatever.

Vicky Van's gay of action, likes giddy rags, and adores gorgeous jewelry, even if it ain't the most realest kind. Now, wait--don't interrup' me, Lemme talk it out. 'Cause it's killin' me, an' I gotter get it over with. Well, all Mrs. Schuyler's things--furnicher, I mean--is big an' heavy an' ma.s.sive, an' terrible expensive. Yes, I know her husband made her have it that way. But never mind that. Vicky Van's furnicher is all gay an' light an' pretty an' dainty colorin'

and so forth. And the day the old sister-in-laws was in here they said, 'How Ruth would admire to have things like these! 'Member how she begged Randolph to do up her boodore in wicker an' pink silk?'

That's what they said! Oh, well, I got a bug then that the two ladies I'm talkin' about was just the very oppositest I ever did see! Then, another thing was the records. The phonygraft in here is full of light opery and poplar music like that. Not a smell o' fugues and cla.s.sic stuff. An' in at Schuyler's, as we seen to-night, there's no gay songs, no comic operas, no ragtime."

"But, Terence," I broke in, "that all proves nothing! The Schuylers don't care for ragtime and Vicky Van does. You mustn't distort those plain facts to fit your absurd theory!"

"Yes," he said, his eyes burning as they glared into mine. "An' Mr.

Schuyler he wouldn't never let his wife go to the light operas or vodyville, an' she hadn't any records, so how--_how_, I ask you, comes it that she's so familiar with the song about 'My Pearlie Girlie' that she joined in the singin' of it with me at the dinner table to-night?

That's what clinched it. Mrs. Schuyler, she knew that song's well as I did, and she picked it up where I left off and hummed it straight to the end--words _and_ music! How'd she know it, I say?"

"Why, she might have picked that up anywhere. She goes to see friends, I've no doubt, who are not so straight-laced as the Schuylers, and they play light tunes for her."

"Not likely. I've run down her friends, and they're all old fogies like the sister dames or like old man Schuyler himself. The old ladies are nearly sixty and Mr. Schuyler was fifty odd, and all their friends are along about those ages, and Mrs. Schuyler, she ain't got any friends of her own age at all. But, as Vicky Van, she has friends of her own age, yes, an' her own tastes, an' her own ways of life an'

livin.' An' she's got the record of 'My Pearlie Girlie.'"

"It's true, Calhoun," said Fleming Stone. "I know it's all incredible, but it's true. I couldn't believe it, myself, when Fibsy hinted it to me--for it's his find--to him belongs all the credit--"

"Credit!" I groaned. "Credit for fastening this lie, this base lie--oh, you are well named Fibsy!--on the best and loveliest woman that ever lived! For it is a lie! Not a word of truth in it. A distorted notion of a crazy brain! A--"

"Hold on, Calhoun," remonstrated Stone, and I dare say I was acting like a madman. "Listen to the rest of this more quietly or take your hat and go home."

Stone spoke firmly, but not angrily, and I sat still.

"Then, here's some more things," Fibsy continued. "I've gone over this house with a eye that sees more'n Mr. Stone's lens, an' it don't magnerfy, neither. I spotted a lot of stuff in the pantry and storeroom. It's all stuff that keeps, you know; little jugs an' pots of fine eatin'--imported table delicacies--that's what they call 'em.

Well, an' among 'em was lickures an' things like that. And boxes of candied rose leaves an' salted nuts--oh, all them things. An' that's why I wanted to go to dinner at Mrs. Schuyler's an' see if she liked to eat those things. An' she did! She had the rose leaves an' she had the kind o' lickure that's down in the pantry cupboard in this house.

An' she said it was her fav'rite, an' the old girls said she never used to have those things when her husband was runnin' the house--an'

oh, dear, can't you see it all?"

"Yes, I see it," said Stone, but I still shook my head doggedly and angrily.

"I don't see it!" I declared. "There's nothing to all this but a pipe dream! Why shouldn't two women like _Eau de vie de Dantzic_ as a liqueur? It's very fas.h.i.+onable--a sort of fad, just now."

"It ain't only this thing or that thing, Mr. Calhoun," said Fibsy, earnestly. "It's the pilin' up of all 'em. An' I ain't through yet.

Here's another point. Miss Van Allen, she ain't got any pitchers of nature views--no landscapes nor woodsy dells in this whole house. She jest likes pitchers of people--pretty girls, an' old cavalier gentlemen, an nymps, an' kiddy babies--but all human, you know. Now, Mrs. Schuyler, _she_ don't care anythin' special for nature, neither.

I piped up about the beauty scenery out Westchester way an' over in the park, an' it left her cold an' onintrusted. But she has portfolios of world masterpieces, or whatever you call 'em, over to that house, an' they're all figger pieces."

"And her writing desk," prompted Stone.

"Yessir, that checked up, too. You know, Mr. Calhoun, they ain't nothin' more intim'tly pers'nal than a writin' desk. Well, Miss Van Allen's has a certain make of pen, an' a certain number and kind of pencils. An' Mrs. Schuyler, she uses the same identical styles an'

numbers."

"And notepaper, I suppose," I flung back, sarcastically.

"No, sir, but that helps prove. The note paper in the two houses is teetumteetotally different! That was planned to be different! Mrs.

Schuyler's is a pale gray, plain paper. Miss Van Allen's is light pink, to match her boodore, I s'pose. An' it has that sort of indented frame round it, that's extry fas.h.i.+onable, an' a wiggly gold monogram, oh--quite a big one!"

I well remembered Vicky's stationery, and the boy described it exactly.

"Proves nothing!" I said, contemptuously, but I listened further.

"All right," Fibsy said, wearily pus.h.i.+ng back his shock of red hair.

"Well, then, how's this? On Mrs. Schuyler's desk the pen wiper is a fancy little contraption, but it's clean-I mean it's never had a pen wiped on it. Miss Van Allen's desk hasn't got any pen wiper. On each desk is a pencil sharpener, of the same sort. On each desk is a little pincus.h.i.+on, with the same size of tiny pins, like she was in the habit of pinnin' bills together or sumpum like that. On each desk the blotter is in the same place and is used the same way. There's a lot of pussonality 'bout the way folks use a blotter. Some uses both sides, some only one side. Some has their blotters all torn an' sorta nibbled round the edges, an' some has 'em neat and trim. Well, the blotters on these two desks is jest alike--"

"But, Fibsy," I cried in triumph, "I've seen the handwriting of these two ladies, over and over again, and they're not a bit alike!"

"I know it," and Fibsy nodded. "But, Mr. Calhoun, did you know that Miss Van Allen always writes with her left hand?"

"No, and I don't believe she does!"

"Yessir. I went to the bank an' they said so. An' I asked the sewin'

woman, an' she said so. An' I asked the caterer people an' they said so. And the inkstand is on the left-hand side of Miss Van Allen's desk."

"All right, then she is left-handed, but that proves nothing!"

"No, sir, Miss Van Allen ain't left-handed. You know she ain't yourself. You'd 'a' noticed it if she had been. But she writes left-handed, 'cause if she didn't she'd write like Mrs. Schuyler!"

"Oh, rubbis.h.!.+" I began, but Fleming Stone interrupted.

"Wait, Calhoun, don't fly to pieces. All Terence is saying is quite true. I vouch for it. Listen further."

"They ain't no use goin' further," said Fibsy, despondently. "Mr.

Calhoun knows I'm right, only he can't bring himself to believe it, an' I don't blame him. Why, even now, he's sizin' up the case an'

everything he thinks of proves it an' nothin' disproves it. But anyway, the prints prove it all."

"Prints?" I said, half dazedly.

"Yessir. I photographed a lot o' finger prints in both houses, an' the Headquarters people fixed 'em up for me, magnerfied 'em, you know, an'

printed 'em on little cards, an' as you can see, they're all the same."

I glanced at the sheaf of cards the boy had and Fleming Stone took them to scrutinize.

"I got those prints from all sorts of places," Fibsy went on. "Off of the gla.s.s bottles and things in the bathrooms and off of the hair brushes and such things, an' off of the envelopes of letters, an' off the chairbacks an' any polished wood surfaces, an' I got lots of 'em in both houses, an' the police people picked out the best an' cleanest an' fixed 'em up, an' there you are!"

They seemed to think this settled the matter. But I would not be convinced. Of course, I'd been told dozens of times that no two people in the world have finger prints alike, but that didn't mean a thing to me. It might be, I told them, that Vicky Van and Ruth Schuyler were friends, that Ruth had withheld this fact, and that--

"No," said Stone, "not friends, but identical--the same woman. And, listen to this. Mrs. Schuyler heard us say this evening that Fibsy could photograph the brushes and such things over here to get Miss Van Allen's finger prints, and what does she do? She sends Tibbetts over to scrub and wipe off those same brushes, also the mirrors, chairbacks and all such possible evidence. A hopeless task--for the woman couldn't eradicate all the prints in the house. And, also, it was too late, for Fibsy had already done his camera work."

"How do you know she did all that?" and I glowered at the detective.

"Because Fibsy just told me he found evidences of this cleaning up, and, too, because Mrs. Schuyler purposely kept us over there longer than we intended to stay. You know how, when we proposed to say good-night, she urged us to stay longer. That was to give her maid more time for the work. Now, Mr. Calhoun, go on with your objections to our conclusions. It helps our theory to answer your refutations."

"Her letters," I mumbled, scarce able to formulate my teeming thoughts. "Vicky Van sent a letter to Ruth Schuyler--"

"Of course, she did. Wrote it herself, with her left hand, and mailed it to her other personality, in order to make the police give up the search. And, too, the letter from Miss Van Allen, found in Randolph Schuyler's desk after his death, was written and placed there by Mrs.

Schuyler for us to find."