Part 38 (1/2)

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.