"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, rubbish!" 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 glass 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."

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

"She did," asserted 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 assure 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 butterfly girl? How could she get from one house to the other unobserved? 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?"

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