Chapter X: The Dagger of Mist

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.

“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....