Vicky Van Part 39

"Impossible!" I cried. "I won't allow these libels. You'll be saying next that Ruth Schuyler killed her husband!"

"She did," a.s.serted Fleming Stone, gravely. "She did kill him, in her character as Vicky Van. Don't you see it all? Schuyler came here as Somers, never dreaming that Vicky Van was his own wife in disguise.

Or, he may have suspected it, and may have come to verify his suspicion. Any way, when she saw and recognized him, whether he knew her or not, she lured him out to the dining room and stabbed him with the caterer's knife."

"Never!" I said. I was not ranting now, I was stunned by the revelations that were coming so thick and fast. I couldn't believe and yet I couldn't doubt. Of one thing I was certain, I would defend Ruth Schuyler to the end of time. I would defend her against Vicky Van--why, if Ruth was Vicky Van--where was this moil to end! I couldn't think coherently. But I suddenly realized that what they told me was true. I realized that all along there were things about Ruth that had reminded me of Vicky. I had never put this into words, never had really sensed it, but I saw now, looking back, that they had much in common.

Appearance! Ah, I hadn't yet thought of that.

"Why," I exclaimed, "the two are not in the least alike, physically!"

"Miss Van Allen wore a black wig," said Stone. "A most cleverly constructed one, and she rouged her cheeks, penciled her eyelashes and reddened her lips to produce the high coloring that marked her from Mrs. Schuyler."

I thought this over, dully. Yes, they were the same height and weight, they had the same slight figure, but it had never occurred to me to compare their physical effects. I was a bit near-sighted and I had never taken enough real personal interest in Vicky to learn to love her features as I had Ruth's.

"You see," Fleming Stone was saying, though I scarce listened, "you are the only person that I have been able to find who knows both Miss Van Allen and Mrs. Schuyler. No one else has testified who knows them both. So much depends on you."

"You'll get nothing from me!" I fairly shouted. "They're not the same woman at all. You're all wrong, you and your lying boy there!"

"Your vehemence stultifies your own words," said Stone, quietly; "it proves your own realization of the truth and your anger and fury at that realization. I don't blame you. I know your regard for Mrs.

Schuyler, I know you have always been a friend of Miss Van Allen. It is not strange that one woman attracts you, since the other did. But you've got to face this thing, so be a man and look at it squarely.

I'll help you all I can, but I a.s.sure you there's nothing to be gained by denial of the self-evident truth."

"But, man," I said, trying to be calm, "the whole thing is impossible!

How could Mrs. Randolph Schuyler, a well-known society lady, live a double life and enact Miss Van Allen, a gay b.u.t.terfly girl? How could she get from one house to the other un.o.bserved? Why wouldn't her servants know of it, even if her family didn't? How could she hoodwink her husband, her sisters-in-law, and her friends? Why didn't people see her leaving one house and entering the other? Why wasn't she missed from one house when she was in the other?"

"All answerable questions," said Stone. "You know Miss Van Allen went away frequently on long trips, and was in and out of her home all the time. Here to-day and gone to-morrow, as every one testifies who knew her."

This was true enough. Vicky was never at home more than a few days at a time and then absent for a week or so. Where? In the Fifth Avenue house as Ruth Schuyler? Incredible! Preposterous! But as I began to believe at last, true.

"How?" I repeated; "how could she manage?"

"Walls have tongues," said Stone. "These walls and this house tell me all the story. That is, they tell me this wonderful woman did accomplish this seemingly impossible thing. They tell me how she accomplished it. But they do not tell me why."

"There's no question about the why," I returned. "If Ruth Schuyler did live two lives it's easily understood why. Because that brute of a man allowed her no gayety, no pleasure, no fun of any sort compatible with her youth and tastes. He let her do nothing, have nothing, save in the old, humdrum ways that appealed to his notion of propriety.

But he himself was no Puritan! He ran his own gait, and, unknown to his wife and sisters, he was a roue and a rounder! Whatever Ruth Schuyler may have done, she was amply justified---"

"Even in killing him?"

"She didn't kill him! Look here, Mr. Stone, even if all you've said is true, you haven't convicted her of murder yet. And you shan't! I'll protect that woman from the breath of scandal or slander--and that's what it is when you accuse her of killing that man! She never did it!"

"That remains to be seen," and Fleming Stone's deep gray eyes showed a sad apprehension. "But nothing can be done to-night. Can there, Terence?"

"No, Mr. Stone, not to-night. No, by no means, not to-night! It wouldn't do!" The boy's earnestness seemed to me out of all proportion to his simple statement, but I could stand no more and I went home, to spend the night in a dazed wonder, a furious disbelief, and finally an enforced conviction that Vicky Van and Ruth Schuyler were one and the same.

CHAPTER XX

THE TRUTH FROM RUTH

Next morning I was conscious of but one desire, to get to Ruth and tell her of my love and faith in her, and a.s.sure her of my protection and a.s.sistance whatever happened.

Whatever happened! The thought struck me like a knell. What could happen but her arrest and trial?

But as I went out of my own door--I left the house early, for I couldn't face Aunt Lucy and Winnie--I suddenly decided it would be better to see Stone first and learn if anything had transpired since I left him.

I rang the bell at Vicky Van's house with a terrible feeling of impending disaster, that might be worse than any yet known.

Fibsy let me in. I wanted to hate that boy and yet his very evident adoration of Ruth Schuyler made me love him. I knew all that he had discovered had been as iron entering his soul, but his duty led him on and he dared not pause or falter.

"We may as well tell him," he said to Stone, and the detective nodded.

"But come downstairs with us and have a cup of coffee first," Stone said; "you'll need it, as you say you've had no breakfast. Fibsy makes first-rate coffee, and I can tell you, Calhoun, you've a hard day before you."

"Have you learned anything further?" I managed to stammer out as we went down to the bas.e.m.e.nt room that they used as a dining-room now.

"Yes; as I told you, walls have tongues, and the walls have given up the secret of how Mrs. Schuyler managed her two-sided existence."

But he would not tell me the secret until I had been fortified with two cups of steaming Mocha, which fully justified his praise of Fibsy's culinary prowess.

Fibsy himself said nothing beyond a brief "good morning," and the lad's eyes were red and his voice shook as he spoke.

"I knew," Stone said, as we finished breakfast, "that there must be some means, some secret means of communication between the two houses, the Schuyler house and this. You see, the Schuyler house, fronting on Fifth Avenue, three doors from the corner, runs back a hundred feet, and abuts on the rear rooms of this house, which runs back from the side street. In a word, the two houses form a right angle, and the back wall of the Schuyler house is directly against the side wall of the rear rooms of this house. Therefore, I felt sure there must be an entrance from one house to the other, not perceivable to an observer.

And, of course, it must be in Mrs. Schuyler's own rooms; it couldn't be in their dining-room or halls. A few questions made me realize that Miss Van Allen's boudoir was separated from Mrs. Schuyler's bath room by only the part.i.tion wall of the houses. And I said that wall must speak to me. And it did."

We were now on our way upstairs, Stone ready at last to let me into the secret he had discovered.

We went to Vicky's boudoir, and he continued: "You know you found the strand of gilt beads caught in this mirror frame. We all a.s.sumed Miss Van Allen had flirted it there as she dressed for her party, but I reasoned that it might have caught there as she escaped to the Schuyler house the night of the murder. Yes, she did escape this way--look."

Stone touched a hidden spring and the mirror in the Florentine frame slid silently aside into the wall, leaving an aperture that without doubt led into the next house. The frame remained stationary, but the mirror slid away as a sliding door works, and so smoothly that there was absolutely no sound or jar.

I saw what was like a small closet, about two feet deep and perhaps three feet wide. At the back of it, that is, against the walls of the adjoining room in the other house, we could see the shape of a similar door, and the secret was out. There was no need to open that other door to know that it led to Ruth Schuyler's rooms. There was yet more telltale evidence. In the little cupboard between the houses was a small safe. This Stone had opened and in it was the black wig of Vicky Van and also a brown wig which I recognized at once as Julie's well-remembered plainly parted front hair.

"You see, Tibbetts is Julie," said Fibsy, in such a heart-broken and despairing voice that I felt the tears rush to my own eyes.

Vicky's wig! The loops of sleek black hair, the soft loose knot behind, the delicate part, all just as it crowned her little head--Ruth's head! Oh, I couldn't stand it! It was too fearful!

"This other door," Stone said, "opens into Mrs. Schuyler's bathroom.

That I know. You see, she had to have this entrance from some room absolutely her own. Her bathroom was safe from interruption, and when she chose she slipped through from one house to the other and back at will."

"No, I can't understand it," I insisted, shaking my head. "If she came in here as Ruth Schuyler why wasn't she seen?"

"Because, before she was seen, she had made herself over into Victoria Van Allen. She had donned wig and make-up, safe from interruption, here in her boudoir. This make-up she removed before returning to the Schuyler house in her role of Mrs. Schuyler."

"It is too unbelievable!"