"Yes," he said, his eyes burning as they glared into mine. "An' Mr. Schuyler he wouldn't never let his wife go to the light operas or vodyville, an' she hadn't any records, so how—how, I ask you, comes it that she's so familiar with the song about 'My Pearlie Girlie' that she joined in the singin' of it with me at the dinner table to-night? That's what clinched it. Mrs. Schuyler, she knew that song's well as I did, and she picked it up where I left off and hummed it straight to the end—words and music! How'd she know it, I say?"
"Why, she might have picked that up anywhere. She goes to see friends, I've no doubt, who are not so straight-laced as the Schuylers, and they play light tunes for her."
"Not likely. I've run down her friends, and they're all old fogies like the sister dames or like old man Schuyler himself. The old ladies are nearly sixty and Mr. Schuyler was fifty odd, and all their friends are along about those ages, and Mrs. Schuyler, she ain't got any friends of her own age at all. But, as Vicky Van, she has friends of her own age, yes, an' her own tastes, an' her own ways of life an' livin.' An' she's got the record of 'My Pearlie Girlie.'"
"It's true, Calhoun," said Fleming Stone. "I know it's all incredible, but it's true. I couldn't believe it, myself, when Fibsy hinted it to me—for it's his find—to him belongs all the credit—"
"Credit!" I groaned. "Credit for fastening this lie, this base lie—oh, you are well named Fibsy!—on the best and loveliest woman that ever lived! For it is a lie! Not a word of truth in it. A distorted notion of a crazy brain! A—"
"Hold on, Calhoun," remonstrated Stone, and I dare say I was acting like a madman. "Listen to the rest of this more quietly or take your hat and go home."
Stone spoke firmly, but not angrily, and I sat still.
"Then, here's some more things," Fibsy continued. "I've gone over this house with a eye that sees more'n Mr. Stone's lens, an' it don't magnerfy, neither. I spotted a lot of stuff in the pantry and storeroom. It's all stuff that keeps, you know; little jugs an' pots of fine eatin'—imported table delicacies—that's what they call 'em. Well, an' among 'em was lickures an' things like that. And boxes of candied rose leaves an' salted nuts—oh, all them things. An' that's why I wanted to go to dinner at Mrs. Schuyler's an' see if she liked to eat those things. An' she did! She had the rose leaves an' she had the kind o' lickure that's down in the pantry cupboard in this house. An' she said it was her fav'rite, an' the old girls said she never used to have those things when her husband was runnin' the house—an' oh, dear, can't you see it all?"
"Yes, I see it," said Stone, but I still shook my head doggedly and angrily.
"I don't see it!" I declared. "There's nothing to all this but a pipe dream! Why shouldn't two women like Eau de vie de Dantzic as a liqueur? It's very fashionable—a sort of fad, just now."