"Yes, sir. She won't get away. She's a regular citizen, an'

respectable at that. Well, then, the laundress. To her also Julie had likewise went. An' to her also Julie had pa.s.sed the spondulicks. Now, I don't understand that so well, for laundresses don't overhear the ladies talkin', but, anyway, Julie told her if she wouldn't answer a question to anybody, she'd give her half a century, too. And did."

"Doubtless the laundress knew something Miss Van Allen wants kept secret."

"Doubtless, sir," said Fibsy, gravely.

"But I don't believe," mused Stone, "that it would help us any to learn all those women know. If Miss Van Allen thought they could help us find her, she would give them more than that for silence or get them out of the city altogether."

"Where is Miss Van Allen, Mr. Stone?"

Fibsy asked the question casually, as one expectant of an answer.

"She's in the city, Fibs, living as somebody else."

"Yep, that's so. Over on the West side, say, among the artist lady's studio gang?"

"Maybe so. But she has full freedom of action and goes about as she likes. Julie also. They come here whenever they choose, though I don't think they'll come while we're here. It's a queer state of things, Calhoun. What do you make of it?"

"I don't believe Vicky is disguised. Her personality is too p.r.o.nounced and so is Julie's. I think some friend is caring for them. Not Ariadne Gale, of that I'm sure. But it may be Mrs. Reeves. She is very fond of Vicky and is clever enough to hide the girl all this time."

"The police have searched her house--"

"I know, but Mrs. Reeves and Vicky could connive a plan that would hoodwink the police, I'm pretty certain."

"I'll look into that," and Stone made a note of it. "About that carving knife, Fibsy. Did the caterers take it away by mistake?"

"No, sir; I 'vestergated that, an' they didn't."

"That knife is an important thing, to my mind," the detective went on.

"Yes, sir," eagerly agreed Fibsy. "It may yet cut the Gorgian knot!

Why, Mr. Stone, the sewing lady knew that knife. She was here to lunching a few days before the moider, an' she says she always sat at the table in the dining room to eat, after Miss Van Allen got through.

An' she says that knife was there, 'cos they had steak, an' she used it herself. I described the fork puff.e.c.kly, an' she reckernized it at onct."

"You're a bright boy!" I exclaimed in involuntary tribute to this clever bit of work.

"I'm 'ssociated with Mr. Stone," said Fibsy, with a quiet twinkle.

"It was clever," agreed Stone. "I'm sure, myself, that the absence of that small carving knife means something, but I can't fit it in yet."

We went up to the dining-room to look again at the carving fork, still in its place on the sideboard. I was always thrilled at a return to this room--always reminded of the awful tableau I had seen there.

The long, slender fork lay in its place. Though it had been repeatedly examined and puzzled over, it had been carefully replaced.

"But I can't see," I offered, "why a carving-knife should figure in the matter at all when the crime was committed with the little boning-knife."

"That's why the missing carving-knife ought to be a clue," said Stone, "because its connection with the case is inexplicable. Now, where is that knife? Fibsy, where is it?"

Fleming Stone's frequent appeals to the boy were often in a half-bantering tone, and yet, rather often, Terence returned an opinion or a bit of conjecture that turned Stone's cogitations in a fresh direction.

"You see, sir," he said, this time, "that knife is in this house. It's gotter be. That lady left the house in a mighty hurry but all the same she didn't go out a brandishin' of a carvin'-knife! Nor did she take it along an drop it in the street or an ash can for it'd been found.

So, she siccreted it summer, an' it's still in the house--unless--yes, unless she has taken it away since. You know, Mr. Stone, the Van Allen has been in this house more times than you'd think for. Yes, sir, she has."

"How do you know?"

"Lots o' ways. Frinst' on Sat'day, I noticed a clean squarish place in the dust on a table in the lady's bedroom, an' it's where a book was.

That book disappeared durin' Friday night. I don't remember seein' the book, I didn't notice it, to know what book it was, but the clean place in the dust couldn't get there no other way. Well, all is, it shows Miss Vick comes an' goes pretty much as she likes--or did till you'n me camped out here."

"Then you think she left the knife here that night, and has since returned and taken it away?"

"I donno," Fibsy scowled in his effort to deduce the truth. "Let's look!"

He darted from the room and up the stairs. Stone rose to follow.

"That boy is uncanny at times," he said, seriously. "I'm only too glad to follow his intuitions, and not seldom; he's all right."

We went upstairs, and then on up to the next floor. Fibsy was in Vicky Van's dressing room, staring about him. He stood in the middle of the floor, his hands in his pockets, wheeling round on one heel.

"They say she ran upstairs 'fore she flew the coop," he murmured, not looking at us. "That Miss Weldon said that. Well, if she did, she natch.e.l.ly came up here for a cloak an' bonnet. I'll never believe that level-headed young person went out into the cold woild in her glad rags, an' no coverin'. Well, then, say, she lef' that knife here, locked up good an' plenty. Where--_where_, I say, would she siccrete it?"

He glared round the room, as if trying to wrest the secret from its inanimate contents.

"Mr. Stone says that walls have tongues. I believe it, an' I know these walls are jest yellin' the truth at me, an' yet, I'm so soul-deef I can't make out their lingo! Well, let's make a stab at it.

Mr. Stone, I'll lay you that knife is in some drawer or cubbid in this here very room."

"Maybe, Fibsy," said Stone, cheerfully. "Where shall we look first?"

"All over." And Fibsy darted to a wardrobe and began feeling among the gowns and wraps hanging there. With a touch as light as a pickpocket's he slid his lightning-like fingers through the folds of silk and tulle, and turned back with a disappointed air.

"Frisked the whole pack; nothin' doin'," he grumbled. "But don't give up the ship."

We didn't. Having something definite to do, we did it thoroughly, and two men and a boy fingered every one of Vicky Van's available belongings in an amazingly short s.p.a.ce of time.

"Now for this chest," said Fibsy, indicating a large low box on rollers that he pulled out from under the couch.

It was locked, but Stone picked it open, and threw back the cover. At the bottom of it, beneath several other gowns, we found the costume Vicky had worn the night of the murder!

"My good land!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Fibsy, "the gold-fringed rig! Ain't it cla.s.sy!"

Stone lifted out the dress, heavy with its weight of gold beads, and held it up to view. On the flounces were stains of blood! And from the wrinkled folds fell, with a clatter to the floor, the missing carving-knife!

I stooped to pick up the knife.

"'Scuse me, Mr. Calhoun," cried Fibsy, grasping my hand, "don't touch it! Finger prints, you know!"

"Right, boy!" and Stone nodded, approvingly. "Pick it up, Fibsy."

"Yessir," and taking from his pocket a pair of peculiar shaped tongs, Terence carefully lifted the knife and laid it on the gla.s.s-topped dressing table.