"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 natchelly 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."