“He had a wife,” his thought resumed. “Yes, and she killed him. Why? Revenge ... an obsession for revenge. The Floria letter was mad.... And the note Florence tried to burn ... mad, too. That time I found Florence looking as if she had seen the devil.... That had something to do with it. With her mother. Hm, bad news. Intimidating news. And Ballau called her up that night at the theater to tell her again this kind of bad news. What? Let me see. ‘Yes ... yes ... Oh, God!’ Her words on the phone. Then it was information that didn’t surprise her. Or she would have asked a question, she would have said, ‘when,’ ‘how,’ ‘what,’ ‘why.’ Any question. So it was something she expected and dreaded. She wept the morning I left her after the cab ride. A secret saddened her, too. A thing she shared with him.
“I see now. He called her up to tell her the woman had appeared; to hurry home. It was the evening of our party. Disgrace.... And she answered, ‘Yes ... yes....’ She would come immediately. Therefore it was a terrible thing for her mother to appear. Why was it terrible? Obvious. Something wrong with her mother. Mania ... the dagger signature was mania, too. So she flew home. But too late. The camouflage.... Florence, of course. Hiding a trail. The costume on the fire escape.... A foolish move. Her mother’s, however. But why a costume? Hm, thirty minutes, perhaps forty.... Long enough to get the woman away. And when she had done this she rushed out and screamed.... The dagger on the letter—yes, a maniacal creature who fancied herself persecuted, wronged by poor Ballau, her husband.”
He felt tired. The room had grown chill. Rising, he blew out three of the candles and walked with the fourth to his bedroom. Here he turned on lights. He stood before the massive, curtained bed.
“I’ll sleep,” he mused. “And tomorrow I’ll go see her. I’ll talk to her of her mother.”
It was a late April night. De Medici walked to an opened window. The panorama of city night spread below him.
“Steel beast with too many eyes,” he muttered.
“It was better once.... Hm, in the days of my charming forebears. Cloaks, and rapiers ... sinister-lipped smiles, wine-drenched feasts ... brocades and marbles ... incense and velvets ... witches, poisons, intrigues and a laugh of youth over the world. Ah, the Renaissance ... it lives in me still. A Bacchanal and a hymn of lust, pride, power ... their shadows whimper inside me....”
Undressed, he drew the curtains of his bed half together.
“They shut me out,” he murmured drowsily, staring at the dark hangings. “And I can dream more easily....”
... He had been asleep. Now his eyes opened. Terror stiffened his muscles. There was a noise. A foot was gliding over the rugs. Slowly, softly.... His thought dwindled.... “I’m awake ... awake....” He lay trembling. Someone was moving toward his bed ... a figure outside the curtains that hid him. Murmurings, creaks, far-away noises came to his frantic ears. But above them the gentle pat of a foot growing louder.
His throat suddenly dried and the skin on his body moved. A hand was drawing aside the curtains.
“Francesca mia,” whispered itself feebly through his brain. But the hand was real. Either that, or he was mad. No shadows, but a figure.... Or was he mad? An apparition. But this time it did not pantomime out of the darkness. It drew closer, its head billowing out the hangings. A woman!... He lay stiff and silent. A woman with hair hanging. Her eyes gleamed out of the dark....
“Hey!” he cried. But his motion had come too late. The dark figure’s hand lunged at him. He felt the steel of a knife burn in his flesh. Blood gushed across his eyes. A laugh, high-pitched and exultant, rang in his ears. He fell back and lay motionless....
In which Julien De Medici finds himself grewsomely decorated—In which he passes triumphantly on his own innocence—The exonerating wound—Candlestick and cross again and the laugh of a new Francesca—A new doubt—A telegram both absurd and bewildering—Cinematographic clews.
In which Julien De Medici finds himself grewsomely decorated—In which he passes triumphantly on his own innocence—The exonerating wound—Candlestick and cross again and the laugh of a new Francesca—A new doubt—A telegram both absurd and bewildering—Cinematographic clews.
Dawn entered the room. The spring sun lay brightly across the floor. From the street below drifted in the noise of early traffic. And De Medici opened his eyes. For a moment he stared weakly at the canopy of his bed. Then a smile turned his lips.
It was not a dream. His arm that he had thrust across his face to protect him from the knife that flashed in the moonlight lay limp and throbbing. The pillow was covered with blood. Not a dream ... no shadows launched from the evil depths of De Medici. His smile deepened. He lay staring at the top of his bed, musing happily....
“A woman with a dagger tried to kill me....”
His eyes, lowering to his wounded arm, startled before a thing that lay on his chest. A black crucifix.
“Hm,” he muttered. “Then there should be a candle ... a lighted candle.”
His head turned to the small table beside the bed. It was standing there. The candlestick he had brought in with him. And from its wick flickered a sun-obscured little flame. He stared intently. A paper-thin, whitened little flame....
“The Ballau murder,” he murmured; “candlestick and crucifix.”
A feeling of panic swept him. The smile vanished. He reached and snuffed out the wick with his fingers.
“The Ballau murder,” he repeated to himself, “but a bit less thorough.”
The smile returned again to his white face. He raised his arm despite the pain in it.... A flesh wound. Terror as much as pain or physical shock had deprived him of his senses during the attack. Now he pushed himself cautiously to a sitting position and, with a strip of linen torn from the sheet, bound his arm. Behind the smile which lighted his worn-looking face he was thinking:
“Ah, what a relief! I breathe again. This wound exonerates me.”
The secret dread he had carried locked in his brain since the finding of Ballau’s body vanished in a laugh. He sat, his head buzzing, his eyes gleaming with happiness. He was free. The thing he had carried in him, that had gnawed sickeningly at the back of his thought, was removed. He had not killed Ballau. No murderer lurked within him. He laughed again at the naïveté of his logic.
“For if it was I who murdered poor Ballau, it was not I who came into this room last night and tried to murder Julien De Medici. And since those two figures are one and the same, selah! I am innocent. What a sick, mad suspicion it was!”
He shuddered at the memory of the secret that had lived like a specter in his soul since the night of the tragedy. An illusionary secret! For here he lay the victim of an attack identical to the one that had ended Ballau. The candlestick, the crucifix, the dagger thrust.
Harding, the bland-faced valet, appeared in answer to his ring. He stood regarding his master in astonishment.
“Your arm, sir....”
His mouth remained open and speechless as he noted the disheveled hair and pallor of De Medici.
“Yes, my arm,” De Medici smiled. “Fix it up. A cut. Get some hot water and bathe it.... And, by the way, Harding, did you hear anybody come in last night?”
“No, sir.”
“Well, somebody got into the room last night and tried to knife me.”
“I heard nobody,” Harding answered.
The valet busied himself excitedly dressing the wound in his arm. De Medici sat smiling dreamily, uttering occasional instructions and issuing orders for breakfast.
“I must get up and out at once,” he explained.
“But you can’t sir, with your arm in this condition.”
“Nonsense. A little food and I’ll be whole again.”
He was impatient to reach Norton. The doddering imbecile! With his insane theories.... Holding her locked up, accusing her of motives and a crime despite her transparent innocence! Now that the perfect certainty of her innocence as well as his own had taken root in his thought, the knowledge of her arrest inflamed him. A simple fact pounded almost gayly through his musings....
“Florence is in jail. And during her incarceration, Floria tried to murder me. The same Floria who killed Ballau. A lunatic with a mysterious murder ritual who signs her deed with a crucifix and candle. With Florence in jail and Julien De Medici in bed, there follow two delightful and inevitable conclusions. Floria is neither Florence nor De Medici. She is as innocent as I.”
Yes, Floria and Florence Ballau were two separate and distinct people. The theory Dr. Lytton had adopted stood proved. De Medici ate his breakfast with a rising appetite. He smiled almost childishly as he thought of his friend the pathologist stumbling excitedly around the wastes of Maine in quest of this Floria.
“It’s his own fault,” he grinned. “He suggested going there.”
Dressed, with his arm bandaged, De Medici returned to his bedroom. It was nine o’clock. He would wait an hour, recuperating his strength, and then storm the Bastille and confound Norton.
“It’ll be easy now,” he thought. “Her desire to save her mother will be futile. And what harm would it do if her mother were sent to an asylum? None. Yet she stands ready to sacrifice herself for this crazed woman. Hm, altruism ... the logic of situation dictates her sacrifice now. People become the victims of habits—even self-destructive habits. And this thing that animates Florence is one of these....”
He broke off his musings and turned them on Norton. A buoyancy played under his thought.
“A clever man,” he smiled to himself, “but blinded by preconceptions and prejudices. He’ll hem and haw, stammer and grow desperate, as I reason his quarry out of his hands....”
The valet entered. De Medici looked up from his food.
“A telegram for you, sir,” said Harding.
“Sign for it,” De Medici nodded.
A few minutes later the valet returned with a yellow envelope. De Medici opened it. His lips parted in astonishment and his eyes stared confusedly as he read:
Julien De Medici,Have found Floria. Am bringing her back on train. Arrives eleven tonight. She has confessed in full and I have cleared up entire mystery. Our first theory correct. Meet me at station. Imperative.Hugo Lytton,Rollo, Maine.
Julien De Medici,
Have found Floria. Am bringing her back on train. Arrives eleven tonight. She has confessed in full and I have cleared up entire mystery. Our first theory correct. Meet me at station. Imperative.
Hugo Lytton,Rollo, Maine.
De Medici studied the astounding document while his watch ticked away a full ten minutes.
“Hugo has gone mad,” he finally murmured to himself. There was no other explanation. Floria captured in Rollo, Maine! A full confession! When only a few hours ago she had been in his bedroom, had struck at him with her dagger.
“Damn that imbecile,” De Medici muttered. He was thinking of his friend, his bald-headed, glittering-eyed, smug-spoken friend who had gone to Rollo and left his reason in New York.
“There’s only that explanation,” his thought repeated, “a sudden mental collapse. Scientists have a way of collapsing. He has undoubtedly gone out of his wits.”
He sat staring at his unfinished breakfast. The thing to do was to go to Norton, present his evidence in full, appeal to the detective to coöperate and put an end to the elusive turnings of the mystery. With Lytton out of the hunt, with Lytton bombinating crazily about Florias in Rollo, Maine, the detective was a last ally.
De Medici left his rooms and walked slowly toward the police station. He felt weak and uncertain once more. A thought harassed him ... what if Lytton wasn’t mad? Yes, if the man were sane he was a formidable person to fool. But there could be no question about it. A fog settled in De Medici’s head, a fog which again obscured the certainties that had elated him a few hours ago.
Cautiously he rehearsed his memories of the attack. A woman in a trailing gown had entered his bedroom around four o’clock in the morning and tried to murder him. She had left him for dead, first placing a crucifix on his chest and a lighted candle at his head. Yes, there was utterly no way in which one could avoid the conclusion ... the inevitable conclusion that this woman was the Floria who had murdered Victor Ballau. Unless ... he shuddered ... unless it was not Floria who had killed Ballau but someone else.... Unless Floria was one who knew the slayer of Ballau and for this reason.... Again he shuddered. The theory gave him a new headache.... Florence was secreting the mysterious Floria, not to save her, but to prevent her from falling into the hands of the police and telling what she knew.... Then it was Florence again....
De Medici entered Lieutenant Norton’s office, his face once more the expressionless mask which had irritated and confused the detective at the beginning. He waited several minutes before Norton appeared.
“Good morning,” De Medici greeted him. The lieutenant nodded and, his brows puckered, sat down. Turning to his visitor his eyes widened with surprise.
“Well, what’s the matter with you?” he exclaimed. “You look as if you’d seen the devil....”
“Perhaps,” De Medici smiled faintly. His new fears had emptied him of the scene he had planned with the man—a casual and triumphant scene with Norton cringing and miserable. “I’ve had a rather bad night,” he added vaguely.
“Well,” the lieutenant shrugged, “it’s been no worse a night than I’ve had.”
Norton sighed and, leaning forward, placed his hand on De Medici’s knee.
“Young man,” he continued, “I feel I owe you an apology.”
“Yes,” De Medici agreed, “I was coming to that. How is Miss Ballau?”
The lieutenant smiled tiredly.
“Oh, don’t rub it in,” he answered. “Miss Ballau is quite well, I fancy. Have you seen her?”
“No, I just got here,” De Medici said.
“I mean did you see her last night?”
De Medici stared at the detective.
“Of course I saw her last night ... here. You were here....”
“I mean after our little party here,” Norton went on.
“After I left?” De Medici began and paused.
“Yes.”
Norton’s wearied eyes confused him. After he had left? Then....
“Where is Miss Ballau?” he cried.
“Well, as I said before,” Norton answered, “I owe you an apology. We let her go almost immediately after you and the doctor left. The case against her has collapsed. That is, so far as her actual guilt is concerned. That’s why I called you over last night. I thought you might fill in the missing links.”
De Medici’s face remained without expression but his thoughts were circling wildly once more. Norton was still talking.
“It was a mistake to arrest her at all. I felt from the beginning that we were acting too hastily. But the burned note sort of decided things for me ... for a little while. But—there were too many unexplained things ... too many ends. So we let her go. It’s the only way. She knows something and it’s impossible to get it out of her here. We’ve got a better chance waiting for her to lead us to the man or woman who murdered Ballau. She’s shielding someone. I could see it last night....”
“Where is she now?” De Medici interrupted tensely.
Lieutenant Norton shrugged his shoulders.
“I think my men will locate her before the day is over,” he answered with bitterness. “But she eluded us after we let her go. That idiot Michaelson....”
“You lost track of her?” De Medici murmured.
“Yes,” Norton swore, “she went out of here and ... that’s all.”
“I see,” said De Medici.
He stood up and forgetting to say good-by to the man, walked slowly out of the office. Norton stared after him. In the street De Medici paused.
“He’ll send somebody to follow me,” he mused. “He thinks I know where she is ... and know more than I’ve told.... He let her go.... Then he must suspect someone else. Me, perhaps.”
He smiled wryly. His thought took another turn. He had withheld the thing from his mind. It came now swiftly and in detail....
“It was Florence,” he muttered. A chill came over him. He walked slowly, speculations and conjectures dancing in his brain.
“If he’d only held her till this morning,” he mused desperately, “her innocence would have been established. But now ... good God! a few hours after her release from the cell I am attacked by Floria ... as Ballau was attacked. Yes, it was she. I remember something. What? What? Hm, it’s too inhuman. Florence creeping into my room to murder me! Two weeks ago she kissed me. It’s insane ... a bewildering circle ... Ballau’s body with a dagger in its heart, a dance of lunatic clews and macabre evasions which seem to be ending as insanely as they began. Now we come to another arc in this circle. She tried to murder me last night. Why?... Ah!”
He drew the telegram from his pocket. Lytton was a man with a powerful mind, a man not to be fooled. What if he had captured the real Floria? She was someone whom Florence was trying to shield.... Again the chill dropped into De Medici’s heart.
“Her mother,” he went on to himself, “Lytton’s captured her mother. And Florence expected something of the sort. Another effort to throw suspicion from the woman.... Yes, she came into my room last night. Why? Ah, it grows simple. To repeat the Ballau crime and distract suspicion from the creature in Rollo. There’s a terrible logic to the thing. Florence under a mania worse than her mother’s ... the mania of sacrifice.... A habit that undermines. The martyr obsession. She feared Dr. Lytton and, released from jail, she hurried to commit a crime so similar in its details to the one committed by the real Floria that the conclusion would be inevitable; Floria was in New York and not in Maine....”
De Medici walked on, his head lowered, his eyes gleaming with despair.
“We’re on the wrong track,” he announced suddenly to himself; “farcical sleuths trailing chimeras. We’ve bungled everything. There’s something else ... someone else. It’s I she suspects. Her silence, her strangeness, everything.... A ruse to protect me. The burned letter ... all part of her plan. There is no Floria.... She’s saving me from a crime she thinks I committed....”
Again his thought stopped and a sigh escaped him. He had been trying to build himself against the despair that lacerated his heart.
“No,” he repeated, “no. It was she last night in my room. A false attack. She didn’t mean murder. It was made merely as a gesture to establish her mother’s innocence. Hm, but I know better than that. The dagger plunged for my heart.... Too clear a memory to evade. My arm saved me.... A crazed woman. And what else? Oh, yes, the laugh. I remember.... She laughed. After the dagger had struck, she laughed.... And it was her voice. I remember now. Florence’s voice, wild and crazed, laughing over me ... after the dagger had struck....”
The knowledge which overcame him sickened his thought. His face had become drawn. Fears ached in his heart.
“Worthy of other days,” he whispered. “Yes, a plot out of De Medici annals. But I must find her. Unless I find her I’ll go mad myself....”
He looked up and saw ahead of him the Hudson Apartments. He had, without thinking of destination, walked toward the Ballau home.
“She’ll be there,” he murmured with sudden conviction. And his eyes growing excited, he walked toward the familiar entrance.
Treasures for sale—Bidders and buyers and candlesticks—In which an old woman makes an exciting purchase—In which Julien De Medici pursues an aged Alice in Wonderland—The beginning of a story.
Treasures for sale—Bidders and buyers and candlesticks—In which an old woman makes an exciting purchase—In which Julien De Medici pursues an aged Alice in Wonderland—The beginning of a story.
Donovan, the doorman, greeted him.
“Good morning,” he said. “There’s quite a crowd, sir.”
De Medici nodded. He recalled there was to be an auction of the Ballau treasures. Money was needed to pay the dead man’s debts and provide his daughter with expenses.
“Started yet?” he asked.
“Yes.”
Donovan’s eyes took in the vestibule. He came a step closer and added:
“You know, Mr. De Medici, there’s been a lot of clews around here.”
De Medici assumed an air of polite conspiratorial interest.
“Yes,” went on Donovan, “and I didn’t tell all I knew to none of them, seeing it wasn’t anything that would help. But I’ll tell you, sir. Things weren’t all right in the Ballau apartment for some time. Many the time I’ve passed their door and heard screaming. A woman screaming and Mr. Ballau arguing with her....”
The doorman straightened and resumed his doorman manner. A group of visitors to the auction had entered.
“We’ll talk more about it later,” De Medici murmured and stepped toward the elevator.
Voices came from behind the closed door of the Ballau apartment. De Medici pressed the bell and waited. The door opened slowly. A sound of chattering and laughter struck him.
“Hello,” he bowed to the woman who had admitted him. Jane. He looked curiously at her. For a moment he had failed to recognize her.
“In there, sir,” she said, indicating the crowded library.
“Have they started yet, Jane?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And how have you been? I haven’t seen you since the inquest.”
She shook her head. Tears lighted her haggard eyes.
“They’re selling all his things,” she whispered; “all his nice things.”
“Has Miss Ballau been here yet?”
She stared at him.
“Miss Ballau!” she repeated. “She ... she was arrested.”
The old woman’s shoulders fell and tears rolled over her thin cheeks.
“Miss Ballau was released last night,” De Medici said softly. “She’s quite all right now....”
“Thank God!” Jane nodded.
He walked toward the crowded room. He would talk to her later. Florence had induced her to perjure herself. He recalled Donovan ... a woman screaming and Ballau arguing with her. Yes, maybe Jane could help out....
In the library he took his place unobtrusively on the edge of the scene. His preoccupation filmed the excitement for him.... The visitor with the dagger. And, worse, her laugh as he lay presumably dying, stabbed to death.... Mania—no question of that. And Hugo had didactically pronounced her normal. He was thinking of Florence. His mind played deliberately with his emotions.
“Florence, mad,” he stood thinking. “It’s interesting to think of someone I know and love being mad. It produces fear—delightful fear. Hm, love is the ornamental curtain behind which all the pathologies disport themselves clownishly.”
He studied the scene. A throng of varied hats, chattering faces. The light was dim.
“Half drawn curtains,” De Medici mused. “Meyerson stages it well. The drama of mystery lends a tantalizing value to the objects under his hammer. The talk is low-pitched. Eyes glance furtively around. Yes, this is the sort of thing that appeals to the normal imagination. Melodrama—the melodrama of externals. They look and see a conventional room, conventional walls, drapes and ceiling. Commonplace things in an uncommonplace light ... the familiar decks in a lurid symbolism. And they thrill at the thought that murder and mystery lurk behind the uninteresting masks of convention.
“Fear,” he continued to himself, “is the most seductive of the emotions. It prostrates itself deliciously before all unknown things. In its grip one rises to mysticism. And these people shiver and revel in the thought that they are part of something more enigmatic than the transparent routine of commerce and society ... part of a melodrama which tiptoes gaudily in the corners of this dimly lighted room.”
De Medici’s eyes were fixed on the large table at the end of the room, behind which Meyerson and two assistants had taken their places. His thoughts assumed a practical air.
“They would come here,” he began in a new vein. “Curiosity would bring them.”
He was thinking of the strange life Ballau had led, of the curious folk whom he had known in his wanderings as actor, dilettante and collector.
“There should be something to seize on here,” he stood musing. “Not that I have any faith in so-called criminal psychology ... the criminal returning to the scene of his crime. Poppycock! And yet there is something in the notion. A desire to boast. A desire to test one’s immunity to detection by mingling with people under the noses of the very police looking for one. Also a feeling of insecurity. Yes, a criminal would feel the suspense of insecurity, and in order to make certain that he was as yet not suspected he might seek out the presence of his pursuers. As for the scene of the crime idea itself, a crime which created a sense of satisfaction in its perpetrator might lure him to enjoy its memory more vividly by a return to the scene. If he still felt the original exultation which the murder aroused in him, the sense of freedom and sudden quiet which such an act would undoubtedly bring to his inner self, he would return just as a drug addict is unable to keep away from the cabinet containing his favorite drug.
“But,” continued De Medici, inwardly amused by his seeming knowledge of the subject, “if the criminal was frightened, if his sense of relief was secondary to his feeling of remorse, would he come back then? Not if he were half normal. An abnormal, psychopathic person would be lured by the thing toward which he felt fear. The hypnosis of terror. Hm, an unlikely theory. The bird and the snake idea and as fallacious as that. Snakes do not hypnotize birds, nor do corpses hypnotize murderers. A man seeking to overcome his fear would return just as an old maid looks under the bed to show herself that there is nothing there to be worried about....
“So where are we? No place. He or she may be here at the auction. And, again, he or she may not. That’s the trouble with psychology. At its best, psychology is an elastic process one uses in vindicating one’s preconceived ideas.... I came here with a feeling that something would most likely occur. And here I am trying to bolster up this intuition with involved and spurious logic.”
He looked up, aware of a silence. Meyerson had taken his place behind the long table and was rapping for order.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” the man began, “we are about to dispose of the collections which were lately the property of Victor Ballau. These things comprise art treasures, literary treasures, ornaments, hangings, all of exceptional value and unquestionable taste. I wish to announce that I have taken charge of this auction, that my house has put a value upon each of the objects which will be offered to you. It is understood that if the bidding falls under this value the firm of Meyerson & Company will purchase it at the price already fixed. We will now begin. Mr. Jones will take charge of the selling.”
Meyerson nodded toward a narrow-faced young man standing near him. The young man, Mr. Jones, stepped forward and, clearing his throat portentously, launched into the rigmarole of the auctioneer.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” his voice rang out, an excitement in its tone, “the first object for your consideration this afternoon is a set of Chinese chess men carved two thousand years ago by the skillful fingers of an Oriental craftsman in Hwang Ho.”
Mr. Jones turned toward a second young man, who lifted a large ebony box into view and removed its cover. Selecting one of the chess pieces from it, the orator continued:
“Each and every one of these is an exquisitely carved little statue worthy the hand of a master. The craftsmanship and genius that went into the construction of these charming intellectual toys are part of a lost art. There are only three sets of this description in the world. What am I bid, ladies and gentlemen?”
The bidding began at once.
“Fifty dollars,” said a voice.
“Seventy-five.”
“Eighty-five.”
“One hundred dollars.”
Mr. Jones resumed his excited recommendation. De Medici, half listening, heard the phrases, “marvelous taste,” “carved under a microscope,” “purest ivory....” He smiled as, after fifteen minutes of jockeying, the set went to Meyerson, who had valued it at $1,500. A pair of Ming vases came next. Two Shakespeare folios followed. An antique rosewood chair was offered.
De Medici listened and watched with increasing interest. The sale of Ballau’s treasures had stirred no covetousness in him. Yet the scene acquired an exciting significance in his thought. As each of the objects passed under the hammer De Medici found himself coming closer to the memory of his dead friend.
“Yes,” he said to himself, “it would seem that these things that are being sold were Victor Ballau. At least the Ballau I knew. Curious, how friendship may be like that—an admiration for the things surrounding a man and for the varied images of him which these things reflect. I’m glad Meyerson has been decent about it. Otherwise the thing would have degenerated into a grab bag bargain rush ... everybody snatching at the remains of poor Ballau.”
The place was growing stuffy. De Medici experienced a reaction. The adventure of the night, and the subsequent enigmas which he had pursued, began to take toll. He would wait a few more minutes and leave. The auction, despite his intuitions, was turning out a cut and dried business.
He turned to look at the crowd from a new angle, and his eyes lighted on a remarkable figure. An old woman with the face of a witch, her head covered by a black bonnet, her chin resting on the knob of a heavy cane that she clasped in her hands, sat within a few feet of him. Her face was a blur of wrinkles, the nose and chin coming almost together over a toothless mouth. Her little black eyes, however, appeared to be blazing with excitement.
“Hm,” De Medici murmured to himself, “a creature of sinister ugliness.”
He paused to study her. She was following each of the objects offered the crowd with a fanatical intensity.
“Cupidity,” he thought, losing track of the auctioneer’s chatter. “She’ll buy nothing. But the joy of possessing animates her. It’s a way people have of clinging to life—by developing hobbies, by achieving grotesque and concentrated enthusiasms for certain objects. Existence is less complicated for a stamp collector than a social philosopher.”
His vague musings were suddenly broken. The witch-like creature had risen from her chair and was brandishing her heavy cane in the air. She stood cackling in a strident voice.
“Forty dollars, Mr. Auctioneer, forty dollars....”
De Medici watched her push her way forward violently, her large body dislodging an amused and indignant line of men and women.
“Forty dollars,” she cried furiously as she moved to the auctioneer’s table, her cane still describing eccentric circles in the air.
De Medici turned to see what had aroused the creature. The narrow-faced Mr. Jones had paused deferentially in his harangue, holding an object in his hand ... an ornamental bronze candlestick. For a moment the scene remained a meaningless bit of excitement involving the grotesque old woman and the polite auctioneer. Then a warmth animated De Medici. His eyes shone. The thing had happened! The candlestick in the man’s hand was one of the pair. Yes, it or its mate had stood beside the head of Ballau on the night he was found murdered. And there had been a lighted candle beside his own head a few hours ago.
Candlesticks ... candlesticks! There lay the mainspring of the mystery. Murder was a simple thing. People killed each other. And there was nothing to be deduced from actions as broad and general as murder. It was by the odd detail that a crime might be uncovered ... the thing that was a signature to the deed.
Confused and elate, De Medici watched the auctioneer address the old woman in a whisper. The candlestick was wrapped up and handed to its new owner. He heard Mr. Jones explaining: “Yes, there’s another. A mate to this, but it’s not on sale.”
So she had asked for the other one, too. The one which formed part of the mysterious evidence in the hands of the police. His meditations ended as the creature pushed past him. She had apparently lost all further interest in the auction. She had bought the mate to the candlestick that had stood at Victor Ballau’s head the night he was murdered ... and was leaving.
“This is what I was expecting,” De Medici murmured inwardly, “something like this.”
He was following her carefully into the hall and out of the apartment. She paid no attention to him as they entered the elevator together. With her package clutched under her arm, she walked off limpingly down the street, a heavily dressed, bent old woman leaning on a cane, her witch face peering obliviously ahead of her. De Medici, smiling, sauntered in her wake.
“We must forget everything,” he mused, “Florence, Rollo, Maine, midnight visitors and everything, and pay attention. Here’s a clew. It may be a coincidence. A candlestick fanatic. But the Ballau auction would be out of her way. Park Avenue is a foreign settlement to her. She came there for a purpose. She showed interest in nothing until the candlestick was offered. Yes, she came to buy one thing—the pair of candlesticks.”
The slow chase turned out of the main thoroughfares. The old woman seemed in no hurry. She zigzagged from one street into another. Despite her age her bent body seemed tireless. For an hour she continued moving, ignoring street cars and vehicles. A labyrinth of decrepit little streets confronted De Medici. Pawn-shops, dirty-looking stores, restaurants and movie theaters.... “As I thought,” De Medici mused, “Park Avenue is a foreign settlement to her.”
He paused a short distance from the old woman. She had come to a halt in front of a decrepit house. The blousy street was alive with noisy, dirty-faced children, fat women and foreign-looking men.
The old woman peered about her for a moment and then moved toward the evil-looking shack. De Medici watched her body disappear slowly down a flight of basement steps and hurried forward. As he arrived, she entered the lower part of the house through an ugly-looking door. He could hear her lame step thumping in the distance from the foul-smelling hallway.
It was dark. De Medici hesitated as a door opened. The woman had vanished behind it. He walked carefully down the stretch of dark hall and, locating the door, knocked. There was no answer. Turning the knob cautiously, he opened the door and entered. A startling scene greeted him. He found himself in a disordered room dimly lighted by a single window that rose to an alley. The place was heaped with clothes and strange pieces of furniture that crowded each other against the wall. Over a half hidden table the old woman stood bent, eagerly unwrapping her package.
“Hello,” De Medici remarked. “Sorry to disturb you.”
The old woman wheeled around. Her little black eyes blazed at the intruder.
“Get out ... get out!” she cried stridently, raising the heavy cane menacingly. She advanced toward him in a fury. De Medici retreated.
“I just wanted to talk to you for a moment,” he added calmly.
“Get out! Get out of my home,” screamed the old woman.
His hand caught the cane as it descended toward his head.
“Come now,” he smiled at her, “I’m not here for anything except to ask you a question. I saw you at the Ballau auction and followed you here. I was a friend of Mr. Ballau. I wanted to talk to you.”
The creature’s attitude changed. She looked at him in silence and lowered herself into one of the many chairs that crowded the dimly lighted place.
De Medici nodded gratefully.
“I followed you because you bought that candlestick,” he continued. “I wanted to ask you why you bought it.”
The old woman nodded and repeated his words with an elated cackle.
“Ha, why I bought the candlestick!” She paused and beamed at him. “Nobody else got the candlestick....”
“An eccentric,” De Medici murmured. Her ugliness and sinisterness had given way in the moment to a childishness. Aloud he said:
“I’m very much interested in that candlestick ... and the other one, its mate.”
“Yes, the other one!” the woman exclaimed. “They didn’t have it. My, my! I couldn’t get it. I wanted them both, but they had only one.”
She looked at her visitor, and then cocking her head to a side, inquired:
“Well, well ... so you were a friend of Victor Ballau. Ha, sit down, young man. Sit down.”
De Medici obeyed, his mind busy with ways in which he might surprise whatever secrets from the old woman that lay behind the wrinkled witch’s mask of her face. She sat rubbing her hands together nervously and regarding him with brightened eyes.
“How did you happen to buy the candlestick?” De Medici asked again, his voice mild. His eyes, accustoming themselves to the poor light, were taking in some of the features of the room. He had the sense for a moment of having blundered into a theatrical warehouse. Spangled gowns, tawdrily upholstered chairs, sofas, dilapidated theater trunks, ancient “flats” containing parts of drawing-room walls, and various other knick-knacks which he recognized as scenic fittings, littered the place.
“From the way you went after that candlestick,” he was saying with a careful smile, “I thought maybe you knew something about it ... and its mate.”
She nodded her head.
“Ha, I wanted them both,” she answered, “but there was only one. But I’ll get the other one sometime. You wait and see. I’ll get it.”
“Harmless,” thought De Medici swiftly, “and not on her guard. It’ll be best to talk directly.” He continued aloud:
“Why did you want them?”
“Ha, ha,” the old woman cackled in answer. “I wanted them, all right. I know something about them. Ha, they belong to me. This one does, anyway.”
“And what do you know about them?” De Medici persisted. His body was quivering with excitement. Here lay a clear and open track. Here was a creature who knew something about the candlestick signature. But her next words irritated him. Her childishness would be as hard to circumvent as shrewdness might have been.
She leaned forward and spoke in a hysterical whisper:
“They were Victor Ballau’s candlesticks,” she said.
“I know that,” De Medici nodded impatiently. “But why did you want them?”
She laughed.
“Why did I want them? Ha! Look at this.”
Her gnarled hand proudly indicated the cluttered room.
“I got most of it all here, young man. Nearly all of it. Years and years it’s took to get it all. And when I read in the papers that Victor Ballau’s ownings were going to be auctioned off, I knew I’d find something I wanted because Victor Ballau was always fond of the old Goldsmith and I knew he’d have some of the things. And, sure enough, there was the candlestick. But there ought to have been two of them and there was only one. I recognized it at once ... although it’s more than twenty years since I’ve seen it. But it’s genuine.”