“Spolletta, pay attention.” He was addressing imaginary actors. “I have changed my mind. The lovely Floria and I have made a bargain. Let Cavaradossi be shot. Here is the order.”
Turning to the table he scribbled with a pencil on a piece of paper.
“Here, Floria,” he said, “the passport. I have fulfilled my promise.”
“Not entirely,” came the voice behind him. “I must have a safe conduct enabling me, too, to quit the country. For I go with him.”
“After tonight?” De Medici murmured, “you will leave me?”
The voice behind him answered:
“Yes, forever.”
Dr. Lytton was watching narrowly. He saw the metamorphosed housekeeper stealthily approaching the apparently unconscious De Medici. With infinite caution her fingers reached for the knife on the table edge. She held it behind her as De Medici raised a wineglass in his hand.
“Ah, my lovely one, my beautiful Tosca, at last thou art mine.”
As he spoke the woman appeared to become transfigured. The terror of her eyes gave way to an exultant light. She stood poised for a moment, gazing at the man straightening with the wineglass in his hand. Then with a cry she raised the knife and plunged it toward De Medici.
He had been waiting, his body tensed for the moment. His hand caught the descending arm and frustrated the attack. But immediately he sank to the floor, crying hoarsely:
“Help me, help me, I am dying.”
Dr. Lytton, who had followed the grewsome pantomime, stood motionless against the curtains. The woman approached the figure spread on the floor and remained looking down into the face of the man she had slain. Then, without removing her eyes from him, she went through the motions of washing her fingers in one of the water glasses. She stopped, and her gaze centered on the two lighted candles. A shudder passed through her.
De Medici, warily alert, watched her lift the two candlesticks from the table and lean over him. For a moment the face of the madwoman breathed against him as the candlesticks were placed one at each side of his head. She had kneeled. Tearing the crucifix that hung from her neck, she laid it upon his chest and then arose.
Actress and murderess had become merged in her eyes. She glanced wildly about the darkened and shadow-dancing room and then, with a last look at the figure on the floor, moved toward the door. She walked like one in a dreadful dream, her body moving as if impelled by a force.
De Medici, still motionless, waited till she had retreated several steps. Raising himself, he whispered quickly:
“Don’t let her get away, Hugo.”
But the woman had paused before Dr. Lytton could move. Her figure grew larger in the shadows. Her gaze had torn itself from the one on the floor. She was staring straight ahead of her. Standing in the doorway blocking her path was Florence Ballau.
The girl’s hair was down and a drowsy look was over her eyes. She stood regarding the woman in the trailing gown and then, raising her arms, stumbled forward with the cry:
“Mother ... mother.... Oh, my God!”
In which Florence takes up the drama—A taxicab, as in the beginning—In which what is left of the reader’s suspense and curiosity is carefully removed.
In which Florence takes up the drama—A taxicab, as in the beginning—In which what is left of the reader’s suspense and curiosity is carefully removed.
The cab bowled slowly along through the circuitous park roads.
“I’ll tell him to take his time,” De Medici whispered. “The air will do you good.”
He looked at the girl beside him. Tenderness lighted his face.
“There’s really nothing to worry about any more, Florence. Your mother will have excellent care where she is. Dr. Lytton wrote me that he’s taken personal charge of the case and that she’s as happy as anyone could expect.”
Florence nodded. Her hand took his.
“You’ve been wonderful,” she said. “And more than anything else, I admire your reticence. It’s a week—and you haven’t asked me any questions yet.”
“I’ve been waiting,” he said. “And rejoicing in my own way. There’s no hurry for the epilogue. And anyway ... I prefer this.”
He raised her hand and kissed it.
“I’d like to go somewhere and talk,” she said at length. “The cab’s a bit inconvenient. And I’m tired.”
De Medici yielded the point with a minor protest.
“I have an obsession in favor of cabs,” he smiled. “I’ve always done most of my thinking in cabs, and most of my business has been transacted in them. I fancy it’s because rooms always used to depress and frighten me.”
He gave directions to the chauffeur.
“We’ll go to my place,” he resumed. “And on the way I’ll tell you about my end of the mystery.”
As the cab turned back De Medici began his story, confessing for the first time aloud the strange suspicions that had seized him as he bent over the body of his friend Ballau.
“I was convinced at the moment,” he explained, “that, in a fit of mental aberration during which I took on some of the characteristics of my ancestors, I killed poor Victor. And the more I thought of that, the more guilty I seemed to feel.”
He continued relating the fears that had haunted him, the hallucinations that had accused him during the ensuing weeks. Florence listened quietly, her large eyes regarding him with emotion.
“I love you so,” she murmured, “and I knew there was something like this. And I tried to utilize it to save her. It was never clear in my mind just what I was doing ... or just how it {could work. I must have been acting on} impulse, determined that whatever happened, she would be spared. But it’s better this way, I’m sure.”
They left the cab and entered De Medici’s apartment.
“I’ll like living here,” she smiled as they sat down in the room of the curtains. “Providing, of course, the ghost of Francesca is forever laid.”
“Forever,” he answered.
She studied him in silence.
“Yes”—at length—“there is a change. Something seems absent from your face. A nervousness. As if....”
“As if,” he supplied, “the phantoms of De Medici had said good-bye.”
“As if you loved me in a simpler way,” she corrected. “But I’ll tell you what’s left now. If you wish to hear.”
“Some tea?” he asked.
He gave instructions to his man. Ten minutes later they were sitting happily over their emptied cups.
“Well,” Florence began, “it goes back to long ago. I remember none of it. But the story is familiar. Poor father—I still must call him father—told it to me at least a dozen times. It was in London before I was born. There was a man named Bandoux, a Frenchman. He and Victor Ballau were rivals for my mother’s love. Does it sound stilted?”
She smiled sadly.
“A rather old-fashioned melodrama,” she continued. “Bandoux was a dashing, unscrupulous sort. And she eloped with him. They were gone about a year and they came back to London with me. Bandoux had refused to marry her, even after I came. In fact, he mistreated, abused and reviled her every hour of the day. And poor Victor still loved her. Mother was young and temperamental and proud, of course. But finally Victor’s love reached her heart. They were married and lived together happily for a year.”
“Old Fanny was a little mixed in her dates,” De Medici smiled as she paused, “but otherwise the story is the same—to that point.”
He told her briefly of his adventure with the wardrobe mistress and the candlestick.
“I don’t remember her,” Florence went on. “Well, father, that is, Victor Ballau, was in charge of the Goldsmith Theater at that time and mother was playing the leads in the repertoire bills they put on. Things were going nicely, and apparently poor mother had forgotten the hell she’d been through with Bandoux.
“Then one day father had to leave London on business, and in his absence the leading man fell ill. I forget his name. The manager in charge dashed around frantically in search of some experienced repertoire man to take his place, and found—Bandoux. He’d had a hard time of it and was willing to join the company for anything he could get. Mother objected violently at first. But it was either Bandoux or shutting down for the week, there being no actor available at the price they could pay for a mid-season employment. And so mother finally agreed. Bandoux played in the cast that night. Oh, he was a scoundrel! Everything that has happened, all the tragedy that haunted poor Victor Ballau’s life, came from him and his rottenness. The play that night was Sardou’s ‘Tosca.’
“Father has told me all these details. I was about three years old at the time. But I seem to remember the creature, a flamboyant type of cheap actor. With a grand manner and a nasty temper. Terribly vain of his looks. An unscrupulous rogue who devoted himself to boasting and to women.
“Anyway, Bandoux took the part of Baron Scarpia. Mother played Floria La Tosca. It had always been one of her favorite rôles. The play went through the first act with nothing unusual happening. Mother was nervous and excited but managed to restrain herself. Her loathing of this man Bandoux was almost too much for her. And in the second act the thing happened. The grief he had caused her, the hatred his perfidy had left in her heart, flamed out. And when the murder scene arrived, poor mother went out of her head. She raised the dagger to kill Baron Scarpia as she had so often done in other performances. But this time she screamed and hurled herself at Bandoux. He was almost taken by surprise but managed to defend himself and escaped with a slight wound. Mother fainted. There was pandemonium and the curtain was rung down.
“Father came back the next morning and found her still raving. She had been taken to a hospital and was completely out of her mind. She was Floria La Tosca, screaming the idiotic lines of the play and going through the pantomime of the stage murder. For a month she lay completely insane. Her mildest moments were spent in weeping. The rest of the time she lay crying out that she wanted to kill Scarpia, who had betrayed her. Poor father was beside himself with grief. Nothing, of course, could be done with Bandoux. They got rid of him and hushed up the scandal. The theater was closed and father devoted himself to her. He was a wonderful man, the finest man that ever lived.”
She paused in her story, her eyes glistening with tears.
“An impression I always had,” whispered De Medici, “a man smiling courteously at grief.”
“He did his best,” Florence continued. “And gradually the active mania left her. She became what we grew to regard as normal. But she was no longer Florence Ballau. When she got over her violence she had forgotten who she was, she’d forgotten even that she was father’s wife. All memory of the past had been wiped out. She left the bed in the hospital one day, quiet once more and unaware of her name, unaware even that she was my mother.
“Father took us both away to a place in the north of England and we lived there for some time. He did everything that could be done to restore her. But it was futile. Apparently she had recovered from her mania. But she was unable to return to herself. She developed during the year in England into a docile, simple-minded woman—the woman you knew as Jane. Father’s friends insisted that he put her into an insane asylum. But he refused indignantly. He tried for a time to convince her she was his wife. This fact, however, struck her as preposterous. She refused to believe it or to have anything to do with father. And he was afraid of talking too much to her about it, afraid of bringing on her insanity again—I mean the active part of it. The result was that he finally hit on the plan of convincing her that she was his housekeeper. This was successful. She seemed willing to accept the part as his housekeeper, and he brought us both to America, giving her another name. And our strange life with Jane started.
“Nobody ever suspected. During the twenty years we lived in New York father was constantly devoted to her. She was in his mind his wife, and despite everything she remained so to the end. He never ceased to suffer because of the position she insisted upon occupying, and he frequently made love to her, trying to persuade her to marry him instead of her remaining his housekeeper. But it was odd about poor mother. She would grow puzzled when he became tender, and then her excitement would begin. He was frightened of bringing on the violence—we called them spells—and he would drop the subject. She would go around for several days murmuring to herself and looking reproachfully at father, whom she had grown to regard as a friend and protector. And if he pressed the matter she would break out with the words: ‘I can’t marry you. Don’t you understand?’ And she would stand and look at him with terror in her eyes.
“As I grew up I became aware of all this and of what was going on. Father made no secret of it. She was my mother. Somehow his quixotic devotion inspired a similar affection in me. She was more than a mother—an unfortunate to be protected and watched over. Through all the years of his success and his rise to fame he remained absolutely faithful to this self-imposed trust of his. There was never another woman in his life than the memory of the beautiful actress that was buried in the simple-minded housekeeper.”
She paused and looked sadly at De Medici.
“So much for the past,” she sighed. “Perhaps you can’t understand how a man could be faithful and as kind as poor father.”
“I can,” De Medici answered. “It is sometimes easier to love a memory than a woman ... and easier to be faithful to one.”
“Well,” Florence continued, “what I’ve told you is only part of it. There were other things that happened. I’ll have to speak of them too because ... well, because they form the story. I can hardly talk of them even now. Oh, it was terrible! There were times when Floria returned, the same Floria who had screamed for months in the London hospital. I remember the first time I saw her. It was about twelve years ago. I came home from school and found mother, that is Jane, dressed in a ball gown and talking to father in a voice I had never heard before. She was playing the part of La Tosca. When I arrived father was in tears. We both managed somehow to quiet her and after an hour she fell asleep. When she woke up she was Jane again. And there was no memory in her mind of the scene she’d been through. She worked around for days, looking dully at us and only half alive. But after this Floria returned a number of times and each time more and more violently. We never knew when one of the spells would come to her and we spent all our time watching her, trying to anticipate her and soothe her. But despite all our efforts we could do nothing. Floria would come and father would at once begin to act. It was the only way to humor her. Several times I sat by crying my eyes out and watching him play Baron Scarpia for her.
“We tried everything—remedies, travel, and even several specialists. But the only thing we found able to bring her out of her spells, to end quickly the delusion which would sweep her, was to let her have her own way for a while. Father discovered that if he indulged her for a few minutes and played the part of the Baron, if he let her dress herself as Tosca, the Floria obsession would collapse of itself. And particularly if I were present and watching. Otherwise the delusion would last for hours—even days. And all this kept on through years. Oh, it was awful! But he would never consider for a moment sending her away. She was his wife to the last. I’ll tell you about the night ... about the night he was killed,” she concluded for a space with a sigh.
De Medici sat waiting, his hand on hers and his eyes staring miserably at her saddened face.
“On the night he was killed,” she resumed, “the same thing happened that had happened frequently before. Floria returned. Father, worried and frightened by the fact that my engagement party was to take place in a few hours, telephoned me. He told me briefly over the phone that she was in one of her spells. I understood. There was a chance, if he humored her and if I were present, that we might rid her of the mania in a short while. I rushed out of the theater beside myself. To have this thing happen on this night seemed to me almost too much to bear. I was beside myself with fear and grief. You know, when one has guarded a secret so carefully all one’s life, one becomes almost like the secret itself. I was not ashamed of having it known that Jane was my mother. But under poor father’s influence, I had all my life worked with him to keep the secret of her insanity hidden from our world. And it was as if something beautiful would be soiled for him more than for me if it were discovered.
“I got home in a few minutes. I had a key and let myself in. Father had set the little scene as he frequently had done before. He had even put on the black beard that he wore when he played Scarpia for her. He had found that these details served to convince mother of the reality of the scene and to shorten the awful thing. I ... I opened the door. He was sitting in a chair with his back to me as I entered. I saw mother raise the dagger and strike him, screaming at the same time. I stood still. I thought for the moment it was another one of the awful make-believes I’d witnessed so often. And I waited for father to stand up. He did. He stood up slowly and turned and saw me and nodded with a smile. The dagger was in his heart and he stood smiling at me. The act was over for him, the terrible scene that he had so often played. It was over forever this time. And as he fell he snatched at the thing on his chin and tore it off.
“I still failed to realize what had happened. He had smiled so kindly, I could hardly believe it was anything but a minor accident. But gradually it came to me. I stood horrified and watched mother approach the body on the floor and place the candle at his head and the crucifix on his body. Then she turned and saw me. I thought of one thing only. That I must save her. I knew he would wish it that way. I remembered how he had looked when he stood before me with the dagger killing him.
“She walked to me and collapsed in my arms. I dragged her to the bedroom and removed the costume. She lay in a heavy sleep for a few minutes. I washed the rouge from my face. My mind, as you can imagine, was not entirely clear. I didn’t know what to do with things. I was obsessed only by the desire to protect her, to save her. And I must have thrust the ball gown out of the window on the fire escape. But I didn’t remember doing it when you came. She lay sleeping and I knew she would sleep for at least ten minutes. I went into the library and then I must have lost my head. I had an idea fixed in my mind of misleading the police with false evidence. All I could think of was to make it look as if a terrible fight had taken place. I pulled a lot of books down, cut a few pictures, and turned over some chairs. I remember blowing out the candle and seeing the beard in father’s hand. I was going to remove it but thought it would be better to leave it there because it would increase the mystery and baffle the police. I thought, too, that the police would figure out he’d been attacked by a man and had torn the false beard from his assailant’s face. I didn’t think of the gum mucilage that might show on his own chin.
“You see now, Julien, why I couldn’t tell you anything, why I had to keep still and lie and muddle things up. It was for his sake. I kept feeling how he would feel if anything happened to her—if exposure overtook her. I was desperate and the thought that it was you who seemed intent upon unmasking the thing that we had kept so hidden for so long drove me wild.”
“I understand,” De Medici nodded.
“After I’d fixed up the library,” Florence continued, “mother awoke. I told her that she’d fainted and she said yes, she knew she was subject to dizzy spells. She got dressed and went out to the kitchen to go on with her work and I went into the library and screamed. She came running to me and I told her father had been murdered. She remembered nothing, of course, of what had happened. I impressed upon her that I had just come in and found her fainting, but that she should not tell that to the police because it would look bad for her; that she should just tell them I had come in and screamed. You recall the first story she told. And the time Lieutenant Norton asked her whether she had seen anybody else in the apartment and she said yes, she had seen a man with a black beard, I was standing just outside the door. For a moment I thought it was all over and that the lieutenant had hypnotized poor mother or something and was going to learn the secret from her. But she evidently recovered herself and the Floria that almost spoke in the library that time remained hidden.
“After the inquest I began to see what was worrying you, poor Julien. I couldn’t understand at first, but from the way you spoke and acted I saw that you didn’t believe it was I who had done it and that somehow you accused yourself. Oh, it was terrible! I didn’t know what you might do, and yet I figured blindly that if I kept still, your self-suspicions would lead you off the track. Then I took mother to Rollo. We had been there once before during a summer. There’s a sanitarium on the outskirts of the village. They knew her there and the thing she was suffering from. And I entrusted her to their keeping and hurried back to New York. I remembered that during several of her seizures she had written letters to father and signed them ‘Floria.’ They were letters threatening to kill him and addressing him sometimes by name and sometimes as Baron Scarpia. Some of them had the picture of a dagger underneath the name Floria. I meant to destroy them and I recalled that it was one thing I had forgotten to do. So I came back and they caught me.
“I had tried right along to make out I was convinced father had committed suicide, and I was hoping the police would believe it. And from the way they acted at the inquest I felt almost desperately certain that they did. I knew you had learned about the telephone call, but I was positive you would say nothing. Oh, you were so good, Julien! But when they arrested me and began their questioning I saw that they hadn’t been fooled. I didn’t know what course to take, so I decided to say nothing. I didn’t care what happened to me. I think I must have gone a little mad myself. And that night they brought you and that terrible doctor to the station I was completely insane. Crazed ideas kept coming into my head. I couldn’t figure out how much you knew, and when Dr. Lytton started hypnotizing me I pretended to be in a hypnotic sleep. I was going to confess to being a double personality. I saw at once that was what you and he suspected. But somehow I couldn’t. I played with the idea until I became frantic and then fainted. That wasn’t acting—the faint,” she smiled; “that was real. But it came in handy.
“And then this awful farce started. Lieutenant Norton decided to release me and did. And I made for the train at once. I had a feeling that things were wrong with her. I must have taken the same train as Dr. Lytton did. It was quite dark when I got off at Rollo and we didn’t see each other. I made directly for the sanitarium. They admitted me and the doctor was glad I had come. He told me that mother had left two days ago and he didn’t know what had become of her. She had eluded the attendants and vanished.
“I was beside myself and didn’t know what to do. It seemed that all I’d been through was now for nothing. Poor mother was alone, crazed and wandering. God knew where. And I started walking distractedly in the street not knowing what to do first or where to go, when Dr. Lytton stopped me. When I saw him I felt that it was all over, that he knew everything. But when he began to talk to me I noticed at once it was I he suspected. He thought I was the insane one, the double ego and all that. And I listened to what he said. It was easy to take him in.”
Here she smiled and De Medici found it suddenly difficult to suppress a laugh. The vision of the didactic scientist and his arbitrary conclusions, his subsequent discomfiture and good sportsmanship in admitting his innumerable errors, lightened the mood between them.
“That night she came here,” smiled De Medici, “and I knew, when I saw you beside Dr. Lytton on his return from Rollo, that he’d blundered. That is, I suspected it. There was another suspicion, but we’ll not discuss that any more.”
“I know.” Florence looked tenderly at him. “Dr. Lytton told me. Anyway, after he’d talked to me in the village hotel I improvised a story that fitted in with his theories. My chief idea was to get him out of Rollo. I was all to pieces. All I could think of was that I had to keep him from finding out about mother at the sanitarium. And when he wanted me to confess, I confessed. It seemed to cheer him up a great deal.”
“Yes,” said De Medici, “he’s a terrible man to argue with. But the truth dawned on me—about her—as we were coming up here from the train. It struck me as if it had been something I had known from the first. Merely that there had been only one other person in your home at the time he was killed and that this person had been Jane. And when I thought this, it all straightened out. I knew your mother had been an actress. I knew you were protecting your mother. And I knew she had killed poor Victor. And knowing all this, it cleared up suddenly when I thought of Jane. There was only one thing. The murder ritual ... out of a play. I surmised that in the next few minutes while Dr. Lytton was holding forth on your guilt. I couldn’t place the play until I saw her come in the room. And then La Tosca showed itself in my head. I had read and witnessed the thing a score of times and was familiar with most of the scenes.”
Florence rose and moved to a window. De Medici, beside her, placed his arm about her shoulders.
“There is only one mystery left,” he murmured.
She turned shining eyes to him.
“You,” he said, “and this thing in my heart that makes life incomplete without you.”
{uncaptioned}
THE END