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. Cassie 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 Cassie, 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 passed on to the dining-room. I contemplated the sideboard, in front of which Randolph Schuyler had met his death. Many pieces of silver and glass 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.