“Your deductions are invulnerable,” De Medici smiled.
“We’ll discuss them more fully later,” Norton countered, his good humor remaining under the derision of his visitor. “You don’t seem convinced that Miss Ballau is guilty?” He smiled in turn.
De Medici shook his head.
“Despite his good humor,” he thought, “he’s uncertain of something. The theory has a hole in it.... Or he wouldn’t be telling me. Or perhaps it’s another one of his brilliant ruses....”
“We’ll discuss them more fully later,” Norton continued. “I’m going to the trouble of outlining the case to you because I think you can help me on several points. For instance, this.”
The detective opened a cupboard at the side of his desk and removed a bundle. Unwrapping it, a woman’s gown was revealed.
“Have you ever seen this before?” Norton asked.
De Medici regarded the gown without moving.... A costume, nineteenth century ... Italian, flashed through his mind. Her costume in “The Dead Flower”! No....
“I see you recognize it,” Norton said. “Miss Ballau’s dress in your show, eh?”
De Medici picked up the thing and spread it out. No, not hers. He smiled inwardly. The certainty had come to him that the detective had bungled.
“Never mind,” Norton continued. “I don’t want to trap any evidence from you. We found this dress on the fire escape outside the window of the Ballau library. This dress and”—he stopped, opened a drawer in his desk—“and this crucifix. Do you recognize it?”
“Yes,” murmured De Medici involuntarily. It was the gift he had made Florence to wear with the “Dead Flower” costume—an oddly designed cross of ebony backed with silver.
“Thanks,” Norton smiled. “The dress and the cross were together. But to go on. There are a number of vital points. For instance, Miss Ballau testified that Jane, the housekeeper, let her in that night. We’ve questioned the housekeeper secretly. She’s a simple-minded woman. After some grilling we discovered that she did not let Miss Ballau into the apartment and that the first she knew of that young lady’s presence in the house was the sound of her screaming. And this screaming, you will bear in mind, came fully thirty to thirty-five minutes after Miss Ballau arrived home. On pressing Jane further, we discovered that Miss Ballau had pleaded with her as a vital personal favor on which her life depended, to say that she had let her in at the time and in the manner they both swore to at the coroner’s inquest.”
Dr. Lytton cleared his throat.
“You have police witnesses to the housekeeper’s confession?” he asked.
“Oh, yes, and several witnesses not of the police,” Norton answered. “Meyerson was present, and a man named Carvello. But let me go on. We found the key to the apartment in Miss Ballau’s purse the night of the murder. I looked for it myself and, on finding it, left it there. Miss Ballau, you will remember, testified she had lost the key some weeks before. Which explained why she had to ring the bell to get in.”
“These things are hardly sufficient for the arrest of Miss Ballau,” De Medici said quietly as the detective paused.
“I quite agree,” said Norton. “All this was evidence we had within two days of the murder. We didn’t act on it but continued our hunt for more. More was necessary and we waited till we got it.”
De Medici nodded.
“The motive, for instance,” smiled Norton. “Well, three days after the inquest, or two days, I think, Miss Ballau disappeared. We had been watching her closely but she managed to elude us. I put two of my best men in pursuit of her and I devoted my own time to finding out her history. I was able to discover through documents and inquiry that Florence Ballau was not Victor Ballau’s daughter but his stepdaughter. She was a year old when Ballau married her mother in London. As you see, this supplies the beginnings of a motive.”
Through De Medici’s mind passed a suddenly illuminated memory of Victor Ballau—the Ballau whose fingers had trembled as he poured the liqueur that night, whose eyes had turned away as he toasted the happiness of his prospective son-in-law. His heart grew heavy as the innuendo of the lieutenant unfolded its logical terminations before him.
“We would like to have your theory of the motive,” Dr. Lytton prompted the smiling detective. “Motives, of course, are always more interesting and more important than clews.”
“You were to be married,” Norton resumed, turning to De Medici. “And Ballau was jealous.”
“I see,” murmured De Medici. He sat staring at the man. Words suddenly danced excitedly in his head. “The thing is mad,” he cried. “You’ve let a preposterous notion run away with you....”
Dr. Lytton’s arm reached toward his friend.
“We’ve come here to listen, not to argue,” he cautioned.
“Pardon me,” De Medici sighed. His face resumed its mask of calm and interest.
“Certainly,” Norton answered. “I’m sorry to go into this. But there’s nothing to be gained now by not facing the facts.”
“Quite right,” Dr. Lytton smiled. “The facts are what we want.”
“The facts are that Mr. Ballau more than anyone else desired the match,” De Medici spoke.
“Or seemed to,” Norton interrupted. “But on the night that the engagement was to have been announced he quite changed his mind about the desirability of the match. And he played his trump card with the girl. It was Ballau who telephoned her at the theater at half-past nine. This was a very easy fact to establish. The telephone girl of the Hudson Apartments remembered distinctly, and we have no reason to doubt her word, that Mr. Ballau asked her to get his daughter on the phone at the Galt Theater. Her memorandum pad of outgoing calls contains the notation, ‘Ballau—Columbus 2600. 9:28.’”
“Are you certain,” Dr. Lytton interrupted, “that the notation refers to an outgoing call? It may have been Miss Ballau who telephoned her father.”
“No,” Norton shook his head. “There are three items of evidence bearing on the point. One is the testimony of the telephone girl. Another is the fact that Cort, the stage manager, summoned Miss Ballau to the phone, and the third is the memorandum pad itself. The call appears listed in the column marked ‘Outgoing.’”
Norton leaned back in his chair, his face grown serious and aloof.
“We come now to the hour of the murder,” he resumed. “Ballau telephoned his stepdaughter. It was his last known act before his death. And the answer to our mystery lies in the answer to the question, ‘What did Victor Ballau say to his stepdaughter at half-past nine on the night of April 10th?’”
The detective’s dramatic utterance irritated De Medici. He sat frowning and following in silence the man’s theory.
“Well,” Norton was saying, “you’ll remember that a week or so before his death Ballau had made a new will leaving all his money to the girl. Why? Because he loved her. He had loved her for a long time. The will was made in her presence. It was a plea for her. But it failed. There’s no question but that he fought with her continually on this subject—his love for her. Yes, and her past love for him. He pleaded and threatened in turn. He was an old man and old men are sometimes given to strange passions.
“Finally, when there was nothing else left, when the time had come to surrender her publicly to you, he lost his head. He called her up. Get this man Ballau, now, gentlemen, upset by his infatuation for the girl, preparing for the hour when he must surrender all hope of her, mixed up, crazy. And he telephones her. He can’t stand it any longer. He tells her over the phone that he must see her. She answers evasively, ‘Yes ... yes.’ And he goes on pleading. And finally he plays his trump card. He tells her unless she renounces De Medici he’ll expose the relations that have existed between them—between Ballau and his supposed daughter. Relations, let us say, before you entered her life, Mr. De Medici.
“Well, he was going to do this thing publicly. It was a cowardly act. But, mind you, the sort of threat a man of his age driven to despair by his infatuation would make. And she rushed home. There were yet two hours to ward off the thing he threatened. She rushed home, beside herself, to appeal to his better side, to plead with him and weep and entreat him. The disgrace he had threatened her with on the eve of her engagement party was enough to make any young woman go wild. You can imagine what followed as easily as I can,” he concluded, “her pleading, his excitement, her tears, his offers, and, disgrace staring her in the face, her hysteria and the murder.”
Dr. Lytton regarded De Medici.
“What do you think of it?” he asked.
De Medici’s head was lowered. His narrow eyes, half closed, were contemplating the floor.
“Nothing,” he answered softly. “A persuasive cock and bull story.”
Norton grew irritable.
“I called you here to see if you would assist me,” he said. “I want to know how she acted the morning you proposed to her. Did she say anything about Ballau?”
“Nothing,” answered De Medici, “except that she knew he would be overjoyed.”
Norton nodded and looked grim. De Medici, studying the floor, was thinking. “She was nervous. Yes, I remember something ... about Ballau. Her manner changed. She asked what he had said ... two or three times. And she wept when I left her.... White-faced and weeping in front of the theater.... Preposterous! Not Florence. There’s something else. This creature paws clumsily with surfaces....”
The voice of Dr. Lytton interrupted his musings.
“You haven’t finished, I hope,” the doctor smiled.
“No. A few more things,” Norton answered testily. “They may interest you. The scene of the crime, eh? The disorder and the mysterious props? Well, the murder suddenly committed—committed during a moment of despair and passion—the young woman stood beside the body of the man she had killed and some sort of a notion of planting evidence to throw the police off the track came into her head. A notion typical of the woman who has spent her life in the theater. You’ll remember she was beside herself at this moment, that whatever she did in the half hour following the slaying of Ballau would naturally be the things an innocent and imaginative woman, and not a hardened criminal, would do in an effort to cover up the crime. She began to tear things and overthrow things. She went about it bewilderedly. Her idea was to make it seem as if a terrific struggle had taken place so that suspicion would not fall on a woman but on some powerful assailant. But you saw yourself how she bungled it in her distraction. The books, curtains, pictures: the crucifix and the candle—all unconvincing. The table idiotically set as for a supper for two. All things that a distracted, imaginative and hysterical young woman with a theatrical training would do.”
“Excellent,” breathed Dr. Lytton. “Your psychology stands on firm ground. We might even go a step further. We might even say that a very clever murderer or murderess would have arranged that scene not to give the police false clews for a crime, but to make it seem as if Ballau had killed himself—and arranged the entire scene to convince the police a crime had not been committed. She might have figured out something of that nature, don’t you think?”
“Yes, I thought of that,” Norton said slowly, “but I doubt it. She hadn’t time.”
“Unless,” Dr. Lytton objected, “unless the murder was committed as soon as she entered the room. Or, let us say, before....”
Norton looked indignantly at the scientist.
“The theory doesn’t impress you despite the evidence?” he asked.
“I would be more impressed and certainly more interested,” Dr. Lytton answered, “if your theories included the presence of the false beard that was found in Ballau’s hand.”
Lieutenant Norton nodded and opened the drawer of his desk again. He removed a large manila envelope. The humorous-looking false Vandyke, reminiscent of the slapstick methods of stage comedians, lay exposed on his desk. Dr. Lytton stepped forward.
“May I look at this?” he asked. The lieutenant nodded.
“Hm, I thought so,” the doctor murmured. Taking a note-book from his pocket, he wrote down a few words. Norton raised his brows.
“With your permission, lieutenant,” Dr. Lytton looked at him. “I’m merely recording the fact, which I don’t think has been recorded, for it doesn’t quite fit in with your ingenious theorizings, that this beard is the product of a man named Lenvier—a well-known London wig-maker. You can read his name on the label here.”
The detective scowled. His amiability seemed to have finally abandoned him.
“And now,” went on Dr. Lytton, “I am, for reasons entirely apart from the crime or its possible perpetrator, interested to know how you explain the presence of this beard in the dead man’s hand. Also the gum mucilage which you yourself so ably discovered on his face.”
“Nothing difficult about that,” Norton answered. “It’s a minor point. Ballau put the thing on himself before his stepdaughter arrived. He was seen wearing it by the housekeeper. But he didn’t show himself for purposes of disguise. He was evidently caught with it on by her unawares. She testified, you remember, that she got only a glimpse of him. You’ll recall that Ballau summoned the girl to tell her that unless of her own accord she renounced her intention of marrying De Medici, he’d expose her that night ... to disgrace. You can easily imagine that his purpose in calling her to come to him was not merely a desire to tell her what he was going to do. He also had the hope of being able to induce her to return to him ... of winning her back, in other words. This man’s brain is not at its clearest and his sense of the fitness of things isn’t at its best at that moment. And he does something which may appeal to you gentleman as ridiculous.”
“As long as it explains the beard,” murmured the doctor.
“Yes,” snapped Norton, “as long as it explains the beard.”
He stared with indignation at the offensive-looking bit of false hair on his desk.
“Ballau put it on that night,” he announced savagely, “because he imagined it made him look handsomer and younger. He’d been an actor in his youth.”
De Medici stared with incredulous eyes at the man.
“What the devil!” he exclaimed. “Are you mad, lieutenant?”
As Norton’s reddish face glittered wrathfully at him, De Medici suddenly laughed.... So this was the police theory! Quite a respectable theory of its sort, but bristling incongruously with false Vandykes. Yes, a Vandyke, a humorously homeless Vandyke knocked in vain for admittance.
“As I said,” Norton added sourly, “the point is of minor importance. If you don’t like that theory there’s another. The false beard was placed in the dead man’s hand by Miss Ballau and the mucilage added. A part of her camouflage to put us on a wrong scent.”
“Very nice,” Dr. Lytton smiled, “except that, if I recall, the dead man was clutching the thing. His fingers had to be unfastened. However, we may pass over this point, as you say.” The doctor chuckled.
“Just one moment, if you please,” Norton cried, “before you laugh too heartily. I expect Miss Ballau’s confession by morning. In the meantime you may be interested in the circumstances of her arrest.”
He had grown heavily sarcastic.
“I told you that Miss Ballau eluded us,” he said, “a few days after the inquest. But my men picked up her trail again two days ago. She had hidden herself in a cheap rooming-house district. We watched her closely. She remained secluded for a day without emerging once. But yesterday morning she left her rooming house. She went straight to the Ballau apartment. She was heavily veiled and escaped the doorman’s attention. She went up in the elevator and let herself in with the key. Michaelson of my staff was on guard in the apartment. He’d been there since the night of the murder—waiting. He heard Miss Ballau enter and, unseen by her, watched her. He followed her down the hall and saw her enter her bedroom. But she was almost too quick for him. Before he was able to get to her, she had lighted a candle and set fire to a letter taken from her bureau drawer.”
The detective paused and, with a return of his former composure, extracted a small envelope from the manila wrapper on his desk. From the envelope he carefully removed the fragments of a piece of charred letter paper.
“Michaelson managed to save this,” he added.
De Medici and the doctor arose and stared at the burned fragment. All that was visible was the last line of what evidently had been a short letter. The line read:
“So I warn you I am desperate....”
Beneath the line was part of the signature. The flame had burned away all but the letters F-l-o-r....
“Floria,” murmured De Medici.
“Florence,” announced the detective, “Florence Ballau.”
Raising his voice, he added to an aide in the doorway:
“Bring Miss Ballau in here....”
In which a scientist half opens a reluctant door—The strange sleep of Florence Ballau—The broken murmur—“It was ... it was ...”—In which a detective scratches his ear and sighs—In which Julien De Medici puts on his armor.
In which a scientist half opens a reluctant door—The strange sleep of Florence Ballau—The broken murmur—“It was ... it was ...”—In which a detective scratches his ear and sighs—In which Julien De Medici puts on his armor.
“May I examine this?” Dr. Lytton asked as the aide walked out of the lieutenant’s office.
“Yes, of course.”
Dr. Lytton and De Medici studied the bit of charred paper.
“The lady of the dagger,” the doctor spoke softly. De Medici nodded, and the lieutenant concealed a growing curiosity behind an official indifference.
“Yes,” continued Dr. Lytton, “the same hand that wrote ‘Floria.’ The script is identical.” He raised his voice. “I presume,” he inquired, “that you’ve established the fact this is Miss Ballau’s handwriting, lieutenant?”
Norton nodded comfortably.
“Yes,” he answered, “we’ve gone into that at some length. We’ve compared it with specimens of Miss Ballau’s normal handwriting. The similarity is obvious. Miss Ballau has two different handwritings. One of them a normal hand. The other—this. Our experts tell me that the writing here is indicative of a high emotional tension, almost fury, and that its resemblance to Miss Ballau’s normal hand is unmistakable. Dr. Greer is of the opinion that it’s the handwriting either of a drug addict or a person suffering from periodic insanity.”
“Exactly,” murmured Dr. Lytton. De Medici raised his eyes suddenly.
Framed in the doorway stood the pale, silent figure of Florence Ballau. De Medici sprang to his feet.
“Florence!” he cried.
She regarded him with an intent smile. He seized her hand and his eyes searched her face. An inscrutable pallor, a defiant and guarded gleam, these he observed instantly. But behind the unyielding pride of the young woman he perceived a confusion.
“Not fear, not fear,” repeated itself swiftly in his thought. “Then she is innocent. It’s something else. Grief, apprehension....”
He murmured her name again.
“Florence, do you forgive me for the thing I said in the theater?”
Her head moved imperceptibly.
“Yes.”
The dulled voice echoed miserably in his ears. Pity and love overcame his tongue. He continued to look at her in silence.
“Suffering ... suffering,” whispered itself in his thought. He noted that she had turned her eyes to the detective. A bustling little matron in white stood behind her.
“Good evening, Miss Ballau,” Norton addressed her. “Will you sit down, please?”
She lowered herself into a chair, her gestures preoccupied as if her wits were sleeping. Dr. Lytton had neither moved nor spoken. He sat now facing her, his eyes gleaming with a curious avidity.
“I have told Mr. De Medici,” began Norton. “He knows our whole story.”
“Yes,” De Medici smiled at her, “a charming and impossible tale.”
“Then you have changed your mind, Julien?” she murmured.
“Yes,” he answered, “I have, as they say in the melodramas, unshaken faith in your innocence.”
Again he took her hand and his voice grew deep with assurance.
“For a reason, Florence,” he said softly, “for a perfect and impregnable reason. Because——”
He paused, aware of Dr. Lytton’s restraining frown. He had been about to speak of the letter from Rollo.
“Tell me as much or as little as you wish,” he added. “Lieutenant Norton’s theories....” He shrugged his shoulders and smiled politely toward the detective. “Preposterous,” he finished.
Florence looked at him, her eyes dulled. She seemed to hear vaguely what he said. Fatigue and anguish appeared to have reduced her to a condition of semiconsciousness. Yet, behind the ivory mask of her face, her emotions were tearing at her senses. Her fingers moved spasmodically in her lap, her lips twitched, and the taut posture of her shoulders seemed to hold a hidden scream. Dr. Lytton leaned slowly forward and took her hand.
“I would like to talk to you,” he said in a low voice.
She moved her hand tiredly over her eyes.
“What do you want?”
“Look at me,” the pathologist demanded quietly. “And sleep.”
De Medici frowned. Hypnosis! The doctor was placing her under a sleep. His gleaming eyes were fastened unwaveringly on the face of the weary, anguish-ridden girl.
Norton raised his hand to object.
“A confession will be easy ... if there is one to be gotten,” Dr. Lytton anticipated him. Lowering his voice, he repeated the word, “sleep ... sleep....”
The figure of Florence Ballau underwent a curious change. The tension of her body slowly relaxed. Her eyes that had veiled the wildness of her thought grew large, calm and centered.
“Asleep,” murmured Dr. Lytton. The three men sat looking at her with amazement.
“She’s in a hypnotic state,” continued the doctor. “It was easy to put her to sleep. Her consciousness was already almost spent and exhausted with the struggle in her. And now,” he continued, facing the detective, “we can put the dual personality theory to a test. Not an infallible one. But a convincing one. It is almost impossible to obtain admissions from a hypnotized subject concerning crimes or sins openly committed. Because the mind which conceived and enjoyed these crimes and sins is usually the conscious mind. And it is this conscious mind which now sleeps in Miss Ballau.
“But,” he went on, still staring at her, “if the crime is committed by a usurper, if murder is done by the masked stranger, the subconscious mind, then it is sometimes simple. I’ll talk to her now. Not to Florence Ballau but to the other thing—the other personality, if there is one, that lives in the underworld of her soul. Miss Ballau is asleep. A door opens inside her and a furtive stranger steps out.”
His hand rested on her shoulder. He had risen and was leaning over her.
“Do you know who you are?” he asked softly.
The rigid lips of the subject parted and moved as if operated by marionette strings.
“Yes.”
“Who? Tell us your name....”
There was a pause.
“Your name?” repeated Dr. Lytton tensely. “She hesitates,” he whispered. “You see. There’s another name to come.... She hesitates.... A wary creature, this thing....”
The girl’s face swayed against the back of the chair. A moaning sound came from her.
“Acting,” mused De Medici slowly as his eyes watched her. “She pretends. She is awake, alive. She hesitates, uncertain what to do, what course to follow. Why? Ah, something to confess.”
His thought grew confused. She was acting, pretending a hypnoidal state and talking shrewdly, falling into the monotone familiar to the stage as denoting “trance condition.” De Medici felt convinced of this. Her monotone had betrayed her. At least, as her first words came he recalled instantly that this was the voice she had used in the part she had played a year ago.
“But I may be wrong,” he thought swiftly. “If it was real, if she were actually under hypnosis, her subconscious would utilize an easy voice—a voice without inflections or nuances and easy for its unaccustomed energies to operate....”
“Can’t you think of your name?” pressed Dr. Lytton. Her lips began again to move.
“Flor ... Flor ...” they pronounced.... “Florence Ballau.”
“A censorship operates,” murmured the pathologist. “The conscious mind lies on the threshold of this door and prevents it from opening. But she hesitated. A significant fact.”
His eyes held the wide, centered eyes of his subject.
“Do you remember the night your stepfather was killed?” he asked.
The lips parted and answered slowly, “Yes.”
“Will you tell the truth?” Dr. Lytton whispered.
“The truth,” repeated itself from her lips.
“Do you remember the murder of your stepfather?”
She shuddered. Her eyes moved as if they were struggling. Her hands quivered in her lap. But her lips remained firm.
“The truth,” Dr. Lytton whispered close to her. “Tell me the truth. There is nothing to fear. I’m your friend. I demand that you tell me what happened. Did you kill Victor Ballau?”
“No,” the lips moaned. “I came ... I came in....”
The girl swayed in the chair and the sentence remained unfinished.
“Go on,” Dr. Lytton spoke gently. He paused. She continued silent. “Listen, then,” he said, “tell me, then, who is Floria? Come, I insist on it. Who is Floria?”
The girl’s body shuddered. Her lips moved but made no sound.
“Acting,” De Medici whispered miserably to himself. “She wants to tell us something but can’t think clearly what.... No, not that. She does just what she wishes. She confuses us, leaves us up in the air more than before....” He caught a glimpse of Norton’s intent and reddish face.
“Who is Floria?” repeated Dr. Lytton.
Florence stared at him with her pupil-centered eyes.
“Floria,” she murmured. There was a pause. Suddenly a scream rose from her lips. She tumbled forward in her chair. De Medici sprang to her side and saved her from falling to the floor.
“She wakened,” Dr. Lytton explained, mopping his heavy face. “And she’s unconscious now.”
He summoned the startled-looking matron and ordered her to bring water and ammonia. Norton assisted them in reviving her.
“Please let me go back to the cell,” she murmured as her eyes opened. “I feel so tired....”
Norton shrugged his shoulders.
“We can gain nothing by talking to her,” Dr. Lytton agreed. “She’s on the verge of a collapse.”
The matron helped her to rise. De Medici stood beside her. He looked calmly at her eyes until they turned from him. Her confusion and anguish brought a deep pain to his own heart. But a conviction masked his emotions.
“She knows,” he murmured silently, “she knows and keeps silent. For a reason....”
He smiled almost happily at her as the matron led her away.
“Who is this Floria?” Lieutenant Norton was demanding.
De Medici turned to him.
“Ah, my dear lieutenant,” he answered, his voice strangely light, “a marvelous person. A suave Messalina.... You will find her some day. With our assistance.”
He bowed and his hand gracefully indicated the doctor.
“I’ve found just who I want,” Norton grunted. His keen eyes gleamed with irritation. “Miss Ballau has been booked for the murder of her stepfather.”
De Medici’s eyes showed no emotion.
“Good night,” he answered.
Dr. Lytton followed him out of the building. The pathologist’s face wore an air of violently suppressed excitement.
In which a pathologist reasons himself into a railroad trip—Francesca of the spiral eyes—The ancient science of demonology—The visiting shadow—The dagger that glistened against the moon.
In which a pathologist reasons himself into a railroad trip—Francesca of the spiral eyes—The ancient science of demonology—The visiting shadow—The dagger that glistened against the moon.
Night covered the streets. De Medici’s expressionless face nodded an attentive punctuation to the talk of the pathologist as they left the police station behind.
“Two and two,” Dr. Lytton was saying exuberantly. “The thing evolves into an ABC of logic. Poor child, poor child. You guessed it, too, eh, Julien? Well, it was easy. Anybody but a policeman would have seen it. But what acting! What consummate acting! The voice, the centered eyes, the collapse! A wonderful woman, Julien.”
“Why did she do it?” De Medici asked.
“Why? Hm—to beat us at our own game,” Dr. Lytton laughed. “To confuse us, bewilder us, give us no trail at all where there had been the beginning of a trail. Her hesitation over the name Floria. Her inward struggle. Ha, what a complicated fool she must take me for! But, thank God, it happened. For the thing now suddenly comes into the domain of logic. Yes, we’ve done everything but think. Simplicity is always the soul of mystery. For instance, it was obvious to me five minutes after Miss Ballau entered the room that she was as normal and straightforward a nature as any I have ever seen. There is not a hint of the neurotic about her. Healthy, keen, vivacious and an actress. Good Lord, what an actress! The mock trance she went into was superb.”
“You’re convinced it was pretense?” De Medici asked.
“Absolutely,” Dr. Lytton answered. “And now we’ll begin with the first letters of the alphabet. Simplicity, dear Julien. Elementals that we’ve overlooked. First and finally, Florence Ballau and Floria are not one and the same. The handwriting ... bosh! The similarity is too strained. The Floria notes were not written by Florence Ballau. Yes, I stake my life on it, Floria and Florence are two different persons.”
“Ah,” murmured De Medici.
“You may sneer,” Dr. Lytton cried, “but wait. We’ll drop in at your rooms for a while. I’ve almost made up my mind to something.”
They walked in silence to De Medici’s home. Once more the two men seated themselves in the room of the wine-colored velvets. De Medici had inserted fresh candles in the holders.
“Now we can discuss our little lesson,” Dr. Lytton smiled. “You may interrupt anywhere and any time you wish, Julien. First we have this fact. Let’s look at it. The arrest of Miss Ballau in New York City yesterday morning established the probability that Miss Ballau was not in Rollo, Maine, yesterday morning. This makes it evident that Florence Ballau didn’t mail you the theatrical little note you received a few hours ago from Rollo, Maine. There’s the stupid theory she might have left it for someone else to mail after she’d come on to New York. Bosh! Involving a confederate, which is one thing against it. But ... let us remain simple and look at things easily. Florence Ballau goes to Rollo, Maine. And after twenty-four hours she returns to New York. And after another twenty-four hours she returns to her apartment and is arrested trying to destroy a letter. A letter signed ‘Floria’ and written by the same hand that sent you your warning, Julien. Do you follow me?”
“Yes.”
“It becomes obvious at once,” continued Dr. Lytton, “that Floria is not a myth. Miss Ballau risks detection to destroy notes this Floria has written. Why does she do this? Ah, how easily the answer comes. To protect this Floria. Yes, it’s been obvious from the first that Miss Ballau knows a great deal either about the murder itself or the incidents surrounding it.
“To be brief, Julien, the girl knows who killed her stepfather and, knowing it, she is going to all lengths to hide the facts from the police. She will even allow herself to be suspected of the crime and the motives, which must nauseate her, in order to have the murder fastened on her ... for the time.”
“Yes,” whispered De Medici softly. His hands moved restlessly in his lap.
“So what do we discover?” exclaimed the doctor. “Merely a very simple thing. Miss Ballau is sacrificing her liberty and reputation to protect someone. And, mind you, this someone murdered a man of whom she was very fond and to whom she owed her success in life.”
“You have ... a conclusion?” De Medici asked softly.
“Not a conclusion,” Dr. Lytton laughed. “An inevitability. Whom does she protect? Her mother. The thing answers itself. Her mother, of course. Miss Ballau is trying to save her mother from being arrested for the murder of Victor Ballau. And Miss Ballau’s mother is the Floria who baffles us. And I think if we caught a train tonight we would find this Floria hidden away somewhere in Rollo, Maine.”
“Will you go?” De Medici asked gently.
“And you?”
Dr. Lytton fixed his excited eyes on his friend.
“I would rather stay near Florence,” he answered.
“Very well.” Dr. Lytton stood up. “Of course the unexpected may upset us. One must always keep one’s mind open to the unexpected and study it and resolve it automatically into the expected. But at this moment I am convinced that Rollo, Maine, is the end of our search.”
De Medici appeared to galvanize into sudden activity.
“Excellent, Hugo,” he cried. “I’ll telephone. There must be a train leaving before morning. It’s only eleven.”
He busied himself raising the railroad information clerk on the wire.
“She leaves at eleven thirty,” De Medici cried, hanging up. “Just enough time for you to take it. Gets in to Rollo or somewhere near Rollo at daybreak.”
“Thanks.” Dr. Lytton looked at him. “I’ll take it. And you’ll probably hear by telegraph from me before noon.”
The two men shook hands.
“Calm, now,” Dr. Lytton smiled.
De Medici was bustling him out of the room. “Good-by,” he called, “and good luck.”
“Thanks,” said the doctor. For a moment he hesitated, his eyes questioningly on the elongated face of his host. Then with a shrug of his shoulders the pathologist walked away in the direction of the Grand Central station.
De Medici returned to his room—the room of shadows and pointed candle flames where a few hours before the intolerable vision had sent him sprawling in horror at the curtain edge. Sighing, he seated himself in the chair. Thank God, the prying, restless eyes of his friend were gone. He was alone. He could breathe, think, allow telltale expressions to play over his face. All without fear ... of what? De Medici shook his head. His finger nails scratched at the side of his chair. In response to this curious summons, the curtains over the door stirred. A new shadow swayed across the floor.
The lithe, black body of a cat approached the scratching with stiff-legged caution. De Medici watched the animal pause in the center of the room, its back languidly arched under the yellow candle rays. Its eyes burned in the half dark—two tiny crosses green and phosphorescent.
“Ah,” murmured De Medici, staring at his pet, “I must be wary.” He laughed. “Fool! And what do you think, Francesca?”
His hand stretched toward the waiting cat. It approached and stood nearer his feet. Its burning eyes seemed fastened on his. He sat silent, watching the animal.
“Yes, it begins again,” he whispered. “Her back arches. Her hair bristles. Fright, wavering terrors, move through her subtle veins. Look at her. She sees something. What? God ... me. Her eyes become a burning mirror for the unknown....”
He paused as the cat, obeying mysterious impulses, grew tense, its back bristling with inexplicable fears, its little, pointed teeth gleaming behind drawn lips. Standing thus for a moment, it recoiled suddenly from the figure of De Medici and spat.
“Ah, Francesca,” he murmured aloud, “my little mirror in which unseen ones spit back at me. He said there was nothing ... nothing. Minor hallucinations. Yes, a reassuring diagnosis. Yet, who knows me? When I know nothing myself, who can see?”
He hesitated again and then smiled tiredly at the retreating animal.
“Not I, Francesca. No, it was another. I’ve committed no murder. The ghosts that wander inside ... did they escape that night? No, I remember nothing ... nothing like that. It is all dream ... dark dream that embroiders my soul with grewsome and ghostly patterns. Guilty! Yes, I felt guilty. The detective’s eyes. And then Hugo.... The dark dream cringes under memories. But there was no duality. No, it was not I. Yet to others and to myself I act the part of a murderer. I grow furtive. My words became cautious. As if ... yes, as if I were feeling my way through guilty memories. The logic of illusion, nothing else. No demon haunts me. No masked stranger rises evilly and exultantly in my body. No, Francesca, they sleep too deep. They stir too feebly. They throw only shadows ... shadows that mock and frighten my eyes. Hm, shadows whose dim fingers wrestle with my throat. But these shadows are not I.... He was right ... ideas with which I hypnotize myself. An obsession that the past lurks unburied in me.... A curious curse of imagination that sent my father bellowing to his grave. But I have a brain! Do you hear, Francesca? I have a brain. It flashes out like a rapier and decapitates these demons at which you, in your enigmatic ignorance, spit, little cat. Do you see something moving behind the eyes of your master? Illusion, Francesca, it exists not.
“Foolish little cat, last of the terrified scientists for whom chimera was reality. You cling to this science of demonology. Your dark and theatrical little soul, Francesca, delights in the quackery of terror. What an immemorial fraud you are! Come closer ... let me look into your Basque eyes. See, nothing. My reason disarms you.”
The animal turned and walked slowly from him. At the door, its head twisted back and its eyes glittered for a moment like green and enigmatic questions. Then, with a leap that startled the shadows into motion, it vanished through the doorway.
“If not I,” mused De Medici, holding his gaze to the candle flames, “then, as he says, the mystery grows simple. Neither I nor Florence. But someone whom she protects. Again a finger points at me. But would she protect me? No, not as she does. Her mother. Yes, he was right. But what sort of a woman must this be for whom she sacrifices so much? Something odd about the Ballaus. He was a strange man. Secrets lived in him. His mask was more charming than mine, more simple. Because the secret was not his own, not a part of the fiber of his ego. But a knowledge of something. I remember. It grimaced wearily behind the debonair smile. It spoke at times out of his eyes. He was tired, sad, and ridden by a fear of something. The bon vivant, the connoisseur, was a tenacious masquerade. There was suffering in him. I remember. Yes, his austere silences. His fingers escaping his will, trembling ... and his smile that grew gentle and dull. And his virtue. His phenomenal virtue. No women in his life. Hugo wondered about that. I, too.”
De Medici’s thought grew dreamy and impersonal. His keen and deciphering brain played with the mystery of Ballau and his death.