Vicky Van Part 22

I raised the dragon-topped lid, and let the letters fall in. Replacing the lid, I still lingered. My errand was done, but I felt an impulse to stay. Everything spoke to me of Vicky Van. Where was she now?

Making sure that the opaque blinds were drawn, I dared to turn on one tiny electric lamp. The faint light made the shadowed room lovelier than ever. Could a girl of such cultivated tastes and such refinement of character be a--a wrong-doer? I couldn't say murderer even to myself. Then my common sense flared up, and told me that crime is no respecter of persons. That women who had slain human beings were not necessarily of this or that walk of life. Granted a woman had a motive to kill a man, that motive lay in the impulses of her feminine nature, and revenge, jealousy, fear, love or hate--whatever the motive, it was of deep and over-powering and might find its root in equal likeliness in the breast of queen or beggarmaid. I could not say Vicky was incapable of crime--indeed, her gay, volatile manner might hide a deeply perturbed spirit. She was an enigma, and I--I must solve the riddle. I felt I should never rest, until I knew the truth, and if Vicky were a martyr to circ.u.mstances, or a victim to Fate, I must know all about it.

Alone there, in the midnight hours, I resolved to devote my time, all I could spare, my energies, all I could command, and my life, so far as I might, to the discovery of the truth, and I might or might not reveal my findings as seemed to me best.

Leaving the music room, I went back through the long hall, and pa.s.sed the door of Vicky's bedroom. Reverently I looked inside. The very walls seemed crying for her to come back. Would she ever so do? I wandered on through the bedroom, and even looked in the dressing room.

I felt no compunction. It was not from idle curiosity, rather, I walked as one at a shrine. The exquisitely feminine boudoir was a mute witness to a love of beauty and art. I used only my flashlight, but on an impulse, I turned on one light by the side of the long mirror. I looked in it, as Vicky must often have done when dressing for her parties, as, indeed, she must have done, when dressing that last fatal night and seeing my own grim reflection, I gravely nodded my head at myself, and whispered, "We'll find the truth, old man, you see if we don't!"

In the ornate Florentine frame, with its branching arabesques, was a strand of the gold beads that had adorned Vicky's gown that night. I visualized her, whirling her skirts about before the mirror, with that quick, lithe grace of hers, and catching the fluttering fringe in the gilt protuberance. Perhaps she exclaimed in petulance, but, more likely, I thought, she laughed at the trivial accident. That was Vicky Van, as I knew her, to laugh at a mischance, and smile good-naturedly at an accident.

I lifted the strand of little beads from the entangling frame, and put it away in my pocketbook, as a dear and intimate souvenir of the girl I had known. Then, with a final glance that was a sort of farewell, I glimpsed the pretty, cosy nest, and went downstairs.

Here I paused again. Ca.s.sie Weldon had said she could see the staircase from the door of the living-room. I tried it. She was right.

A person standing just inside the living-room door, could catch sight of a person on the stairs. And, as Ca.s.sie, said, she was not looking that way, but was partly conscious of some one running up the stairs.

It might well be. She would naturally give the incident no thought at the moment--it was strange she had even remembered it. And it may have been Vicky. Then she might have descended by the rear staircase, there probably was one, I didn't know. And anyway, what mattered it how she had left the house? She had left it, and had not returned.

I remembered the allusion to the skylight. In a jiffy, I had run upstairs clear to the highest story. There was a skylight, or scuttle, rather, and it was bolted on the inside.

That settled that. Vicky Van had not climbed out that way, and I for one, never supposed she had.

Strangely reluctant to leave the house, I went downstairs again, looked into the living-room, and pa.s.sed on to the dining-room. I contemplated the sideboard, in front of which Randolph Schuyler had met his death. Many pieces of silver and gla.s.s stood upon it, and all was in order, as if it had been carefully looked after for the party occasion.

Without consciously noting details, I chanced to observe that a small silver-handled carving fork, was lacking its knife. I had no knowledge of Vicky Van's table appurtenances, but the way the fork lay looked to me as if the knife had lain across it, and had been removed.

I had no concern over it, for I knew the knife that had stabbed Schuyler was now in possession of the police, and this one had doubtless been used in preparation of the supper, if indeed, there was a knife belonging to the fork.

It was a matter of no moment, but somehow it stuck in my mind. If Vicky or rather, if Julie had straightened up things on the sideboard in the process of tidying up for the party, would she not have laid the fork a different way, unless there had been a matching knife to lay across it? I suppose the whole question came into my mind, because at home, we had a beefsteak carving set that always lay crossed on the sideboard. A man gets accustomed to the sight of such household details, and they photographed on his memory.

Well, anyway, I looked for that knife. I even went to the butler's pantry and looked, but I didn't see it. The pantry had been hastily evacuated by the caterer's men, and though tidied, it was not in spick and span condition. You see, having lived so long with two such homey bodies as Aunt Lucy and Win, I was not utterly unversed in domestic matters. The pantry was well equipped with modern utensils and implements, and all its appointments spoke of the taste and efficiency of its mistress.

"Poor Vicky," I sighed to myself, "poor, dear little Vicky Van!" and then I went softly out of the front door and down the steps.

I went slowly, and looked back several times, in a vague hope that Vicky might emerge from some nearby shadow and go into the house for her letters. But I saw no sign of such a happening, and went on home, my heart full of a gloomy foreboding that I would never see her again.

"Going to work on Sunday, Winnie?" I asked, as next morning, my sister appeared, garbed for the street.

"Not regularly to work, but Mrs. Schuyler wants me to look after some matters of confidence."

"Oho, how important we are!" I chaffed her. "When does the Crowell lady come into her own?"

"Not for another week. She isn't quite ready to come, and Mrs.

Schuyler is willing to keep me on a while longer."

"I don't blame her," and I looked at my pretty, bright-faced sister with approval. "I say, old girl, s'pose I stroll over with you."

"Come along. Though I'm not sure Mrs. Schuyler will see you. She usually sends me to receive callers."

"Well, Little Miss Manage-It, I could even live through that. And perhaps I'll get a look-in with the fair sisters-in-law."

"That, surely, if you wish. They're ready and eager to see visitors. I believe they love to go over the details of the whole affair with anyone who will listen."

"Oh, come now, Win, not as bad as that."

"They don't think it's bad. They're bound to track down the Van Allen girl, and they hold the opinion that everybody they get hold of may be an important witness. They go over the reports from the inquest all the time, and can hardly wait till tomorrow to see what will come out next."

"Me for them," I responded. "I'd like a good chat on the subject."

We went over to the Fifth Avenue house, and were admitted by the solemn and wise-eyed butler. I was shown to the library, while Winnie was directed to go to Mrs. Schuyler's room.

But it was not long before we were all together in the library--widow, sisters, and all, for Lowney had made a discovery and he proposed to tell the family of it.

Win and I were allowed to be present, and the detective showed his new find.

It seems he had been searching the papers and letters of the late Mr.

Schuyler. This had been not only permitted by the wife, but had been urged by the sisters, who hoped it might result in some further light on the mysterious Miss Van Allen. And it did. In the desk, in a secret compartment--which was not so secret but that the detective could open it--were a number of letters from feminine pens, and a number of receipted bills for jeweled trinkets, presumably sent to these or other ladies, for they were not of a sort affected by Ruth Schuyler or the two sisters. A blue enameled watch bracelet, and a rhinestone tiara were representative purchases entered on these bills.

But the pile of letters sank into insignificance, when we learned the fact that there was a letter from Vicky Van among them!

Regardless of Mrs. Schuyler's feelings, Lowney read the letter aloud.

This was it:

My Dear Mr. Schuyler:

I enjoyed your supper party, and it was good of you to give me inside information about the stocks. But I must beg of you to cease your further attentions to me, as I cannot number on my list of calling acquaintances the husband of another woman. I am, perhaps, rather prudish in my view of life, but this is one of my inviolable rules.

Very truly yours, Victoria Van Allen.

I knew that before. Vicky Van, living alone and unchaperoned, save for the ubiquitous Julie, flouted convention in many ways, but it was as she said, her inviolable rule to receive no married man without his wife at her parties. Nor was there often occasion for her to use this stipulation. The young people whom I had met at her house, had always been maids and bachelors, and now and then, a young married couple who playfully enacted a chaperon part. Mrs. Reeves, a widow, was probably the oldest of the crowd, but she was well under forty.

It was quite true, no married man, and indeed, no man of the type or age of Randolph Schuyler, had ever, to my knowledge, enjoyed the friends.h.i.+p of Vicky Van. But not for a minute, did I think that she would go so far as to kill him for daring to enter her house! That was unthinkable.

And yet, it seemed so to Lowney, and, apparently, to the sisters of the dead man.

She declared that the letter proved that Randolph had intruded on her acquaintance, and she had objected from coyness or coquetry; and that when he persisted, she was so enraged that she flew into a pa.s.sion and wilfully ended his life.

"I can't think that," said Ruth Schuyler, wearily. "It seems more to me as if that letter exculpates the girl. She was quite evidently not in love with my husband, and she honestly tried to make him understand her scruples. So I can't think she killed him. I did think so at first, of course, but on thinking things over, and in the light of this letter, I begin to believe her innocent. What date does the letter bear?"

"There's no date," said Lowney, looking at the paper. "It was not in an envelope--"

"Then how did it reach my husband?"

"Oh, of course, it came in an envelope, I suppose, but I found none with it. So we can't tell where it was sent, here or to one of his clubs or to his office address."

"Not here, I'm sure," said Mrs. Schuyler. "Probably to his club. You are quite welcome to the letter, Mr. Lowney. Make what use you think best of it. If it serves to establish Miss Van Allen's innocence, I shall be rather glad. But if it seems to throw further suspicion on her, then justice must be done."

"Of course, it throws suspicion on that woman!" declared Miss Rhoda Schuyler, with a vindictive glance at the letter in Lowney's hand.

"The hussy, to write to Randolph at all!"

"But," I interposed, unable to stand this unjust speech, "Mr. Schuyler must have made advances to her first."