Chapter XII: The Woman with the Cackling Laugh

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.”

“Where did you see them last?” De Medici asked, his thought groping with the word “Goldsmith.”... He was thinking, “the Goldsmith Theater ... oh, yes, the program in the handbag. It was the Goldsmith Theater program....”

She interrupted his gropings.

“Ha,” she cried, “they couldn’t fool my old eyes. They belonged to the Bandoux Repertoire Company of the old Goldsmith.” She became excited with memories. “Yes, yes, those were the days. You should have been there, young man, you should have known those days.”

“The Goldsmith Theater in London,” murmured De Medici.

“The finest repertoire company that ever lived!” the old woman exclaimed.

“How do you happen to be interested in the old Goldsmith?” he interrupted with a smile.

“Me! Me! Ask anybody if they remember old Fanny of the Goldsmith,” she cried. “I worked there for twenty-five years. I was dresser and mistress of the wardrobe, I was.”

“I see,” De Medici nodded, “and that’s how you knew Mr. Ballau.”

“Knew him,” she went on, “did I know Victor Ballau! He would tell you, if he was alive, how much I knew him.” She appeared to be challenging mysterious contradiction. De Medici sighed inwardly. The intuitions which had led him to the auction congratulated themselves. He realized a slight disappointment. Childishly, he had expected immediate revelations—complete unravelings of the thing that had clouded his thought. Nevertheless he smiled and settled back. There was something here. This was a woman to whom part of Victor Ballau’s life that even he had never been allowed to penetrate was a matter of intimate knowledge.

“A little deranged,” he thought quickly as she arose and puttered around, “and the victim of a monomania. Her senility has developed a miserly love for trinkets and dresses of the stage with which she was surrounded in her youth. She’s evidently devoted herself to accumulating these souvenirs of her past. Hm, and something else. Florence’s mother. Ballau wasn’t her father. Norton established that. Then this creature should know about the woman Ballau married—Florence’s mother....”

His musings ended. In a flash the theory concerning Florence’s mother returned in full to his thought ... the woman for whom Florence had been intent upon sacrificing herself and whose guilt she had tried to assume.... He leaned forward and spoke soothingly to the ancient wardrobe mistress:

“My name is De Medici,” he said, “and the reason I was interested in the candlestick you bought is that one of the pair was found at Mr. Ballau’s head when he was murdered. I am engaged to marry Florence Ballau and I’ve been working with the police trying to find out who it was killed her father. Now, if you can tell me anything that might throw a light on this thing, it would be doing a great service to the memory of Mr. Ballau ... and the Bandoux Repertoire Company.”

“I know about that,” the old woman answered in a whisper. She seated herself again. “I read about it in the papers. I ain’t seen Victor Ballau since he left London. And he ain’t wanted me to see him, either.”

“Quite right,” De Medici nodded. His manner had become calm and ingratiating. “After all you knew about him, I shouldn’t think he would.”

“Maybe it wasn’t his fault,” the woman went on. “But let bygones be bygones. I hold nothing against him now.”

“Did you know the woman he married in London?” De Medici interrupted.

“Yes, oh, yes. I knew her well enough. Madam Bandoux.” She nodded vigorously. The old eyes gleamed and the bony hands trembled with excitement. But words seemed slow and De Medici prompted her.

“She was Florence Ballau’s mother, wasn’t she?”

“Wait a minute!” the creature cried. “She was Florence Bandoux, whose first husband used to own the company at the Goldsmith. And she was Miss Florence’s mother. Yes, I know all about that. You’ve come to the right place, young man, to find out all about that. Nobody knows as much as me what happened at the old Goldsmith.”

Through De Medici’s mind flitted the memory of the leather purse he had picked up in the Ballau library on the night of the murder, with the initials F. B. in the corner.

“Do you know what became of Florence Bandoux?” he asked.

The old woman was staring at him. Her body had grown rigid.

“Yes,” she whispered finally, “I know. And I ain’t ever whispered a word of it to anybody. I know what became of Madam Bandoux. Victor Ballau killed her. Don’t you tell anybody I told you, but that’s it. That’s what happened. He killed her, I tell you. He was a murderer, was Victor Ballau. He fooled them all but he didn’t fool me. But he’s dead now and I never said a word of it when he was alive.”

De Medici placed his hand soothingly on her arm.

“Come now, Fanny, tell me about it. It all happened long ago and there’s nothing to be afraid of, now Mr. Ballau’s dead.”

“I’ll tell you, young man,” she answered. “We were to have finished the season, but Ballau took her away. He was stage manager then at the Goldsmith and there was a lot of talk. Madam Bandoux was a great actress but a bad woman. She broke poor Victor’s heart. And after that he took her away and nobody ever heard of her again. Everybody thought she came to America with him. But I know better. She died in England, and he killed her. She broke his heart, I tell you. And that’s why he killed her. When she was young she ran away and married Bandoux, the Frenchman. And a year later she came back to London with the baby Florence. Bandoux came back, too, but he refused to have anything more to do with her. And, what’s more, he said they weren’t married. All the time this went on poor Victor Ballau was in love with her and she threw him over to run off with the Frenchman. But when she came back poor Victor took up with her again. But she hated him. She hated him all the time, and nothing he could do was any use. The girl was Bandoux’s daughter, not Victor’s.”

“But how do you know he killed her?” De Medici persisted softly.

“How do I know I’m sitting here?” the old woman answered. “Because I know. I’ll tell you. I used to hear them quarreling. It was awful. And one night after the show I was passing Madam Bandoux’s dressing-room and I heard her screaming. And I stopped to listen, and there was poor Victor inside saying: ‘Do you detest me like that? Do you loathe me like that?’ And Madam was screaming, ‘I do ... I do.’ And then I heard Victor Ballau say in a low voice, ‘Then I’ll have to kill you.’ And that was a few days before she disappeared. They went away together after that. But nobody ever heard of Madam again. He came to America alone a little while after, taking the baby with him. But nobody ever heard about poor Madam Bandoux except there was a rumor he had married her, Victor Ballau had. And I kept my mouth shut because I was sorry for him and he was a fine man before it happened.”

“And what else do you know?” De Medici murmured.

The old woman laughed bitterly.

“He shouldn’t have killed her. He was such a nice man. But that’s the way life is. The nice people do all the bad things. And he got his reward, poor Victor did. Somebody killed him.”

De Medici arose.

“If I want to talk to you can I find you here, Fanny?” he asked.

“Yes, here. All day,” she answered.

He spent a few minutes thanking the old woman and finally closed the door of the littered basement room behind him. In the street he walked swiftly, intent on finding a cab. A few minutes later he was riding through the traffic. His eyes half shut, he was again tracing the circles of the mystery.

“From what she said,” he thought as the cab bounced slowly forward, “one thing becomes certain. Florence Bandoux is still alive. It was her purse I found in the library. Her initials. And the woman Hugo is bringing back from Rollo tonight is Florence Bandoux, alias Floria, the lady of the dagger. So far, so good. But this other thing, then. Hm, an offensive discrepancy. The attack on me. That wasn’t by Floria, then. Yes, I was right before. A sickening idea. But it was Florence trying to imitate her mother. Willing to kill me and thinking she had ... and laughing. But for whom did she laugh so insanely? Because madness was in her. Her desire to divert suspicion from her mother become a mania. Grief and terror unbalancing her mind. And in an hour of insanity this grewsome plan of imitating Floria and thus exonerating the woman she had hidden in Rollo, Maine. To be understood. Yes, easy to follow.”

An emotion shattered the sentences. He loved her. And she had tried to kill him. It didn’t matter. He still loved her, adored her. The sense of her torment and madness seemed to bring him prostrate before her.

“I must save her,” he mumbled to himself. “I’ll go home and write her a letter. I’ll get it to her somehow. I’ll tell her everything I know. Everything ... yes, about Floria and about the thing in my room....”