Chapter XI: Elusive Climaxes

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.

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.