Chapter IV: The Empty Web

In which a detective weaves a theory—In which Julien De Medici stares
at a clew—In which Pandora raises a warning finger to her lips—A table
set for two, an initialed purse, an ancient theater program—but the
story waits.

De Medici could hear the murmur and exclamations of the arriving guests. They were gathering in the large reception hall—painters, men and women of the stage, poets, dilettantes—the charming crew of professionals who had formed a background for Victor Ballau’s fastidious existence.

There was a sound of women beginning to weep, of men uttering cries of disbelief, of police ordering guests into the adjoining room to wait. De Medici sighed. This was to have been the gala night—raised wineglasses, toasts and laughter. He looked at the figure on the floor with the dagger protruding from its heart. Suicide!

Yes, the detective whose keen blue eyes had covered the situation said that Victor Ballau, charming, easy-mannered connoisseur of wines, pictures and people, had suddenly ended his life. Preposterous! De Medici glanced at the lieutenant. A clumsy ruse, perhaps, to throw someone off guard. Yet the man seemed simple. His voice contained an unmistakable ring of sincerity. Lieutenant Norton was talking again.

“Has that table usually been in this room?” he asked. He pointed to a walnut-topped card table standing beside the fireplace. De Medici shook his head.

“I never saw that before,” he answered.

“It looks as if two people might have been sitting at that table preparing to eat,” the detective smiled.

De Medici noted the contents of the table top with surprise. It was a detail that had escaped him. There were two glasses and an opened wine bottle between them, several empty plates and a napkin. But he noticed neither cutlery nor sign of food. Norton rose as he studied this strange fact.

“Hello, doctor.”

A middle-aged, medical-looking man with a bald head had entered the room. Norton introduced him.

“Dr. Greer,” he said.

The doctor greeted De Medici with a nod and leaned over the body on the floor. His fingers felt around the imbedded dagger for a moment, and then slowly withdrew the weapon. He straightened, holding the dripping blade to the light.

“Through the heart,” he commented briefly. “Death was almost instantaneous. An odd sort of knife.”

“We’ll call Miss Ballau,” declared Norton. He gave a direction to his assistant who had remained silent and motionless near the wall.

Florence arrived. De Medici, waiting nervously, his fists clenched on his knees, breathed deeply as she entered. Her vivid face was white. Her eyes were lowered. But behind the collapse of her manner De Medici sensed a tautness, a defiance.

“She’ll talk quietly,” he thought, “and tell nothing. Beautiful, how beautiful she is!”

The detective had started his questioning.

“What time did you come home, Miss Ballau?”

“About half-past ten,” she replied.

“You’re playing in ‘The Dead Flower,’ aren’t you?”

She nodded.

“Then you must have left before the show was over.”

“Yes,” she said, “I had a frightful headache. The day’s excitement, I suppose.”

Her eyes turned to De Medici.

“I proposed to Miss Ballau today,” he explained, “and our engagement was to have been announced tonight at the supper.”

“Yes,” the girl went on, and De Medici caught a grateful glint in her eyes, “I couldn’t go on with the play. I felt I’d forget my lines and I asked the stage manager to let my understudy take my place. I came home.”

“About ten-thirty,” repeated the detective.

Florence nodded.

“How did you get in?” he asked.

“I rang the bell several times and Jane finally answered it.”

“What did she say to you?”

“Nothing. She’d been busy in the kitchen. She went right back to her work.”

“Did she know that anything had happened?”

“No. She seemed entirely calm and went back to the kitchen without saying anything.”

“Was the door to the library closed?”

“Yes.”

“There’s another door at the end of the hallway that shuts off the kitchen, isn’t there?”

“There are two doors. The dining room’s between.”

“So if the library door and the two other doors were closed things could happen in this room without anybody hearing?”

Florence nodded.

“Then what did you do when you came into the house?”

“I came into the library and saw this,” she answered.

“Thank you, Miss Ballau,” Norton smiled at her. “That will be all for the present. I suggest you lie down.” To the man at the door he added, “Call the housekeeper.”

Florence stood up and De Medici came to her side. His eyes had avoided her during the questioning. But he pressed her arm eagerly with his fingers now. The lieutenant was watching. He felt certain of this. So he could say nothing now. He felt her draw back as they came to the door, beyond which rose a babble of excited voices.

“If you please, Mr. De Medici,” Norton’s voice called, “will you remain while we examine the housekeeper?”

“I’ll be all right,” she murmured close to him. He opened the door and watched her as she walked slowly and silently down the corridor. Jane, the housekeeper, entered and was motioned to the chair in which Florence had sat.

“What’s your name?” Lieutenant Norton asked.

The woman’s eyes were reddened with crying. Her voice was indistinct.

“Jane Mayfield,” she answered.

“How long have you worked for Mr. Ballau?”

“Ever since he’s been in New York—about fifteen years, I think.”

“How old are you?”

“Fifty-four.”

The detective paused as the woman began again to weep. At length he resumed kindly.

“When did you first find out Mr. Ballau was dead?”

“I let Miss Ballau in and went back to the kitchen to finish the sandwiches for the supper and then I heard her scream. I came running out. She was standing in the door screaming that her father had been murdered.”

“Just what did she say?”

“I don’t remember. It was something about her father being murdered.”

“How long after you let her in did you hear Miss Ballau scream?”

“It was only a minute or two, because I hadn’t started with the sandwiches. I was just beginning to cut them again when I heard her scream.”

“Thank you,” said the detective, “that will be all.”

Jane walked from the room, her eyes avoiding the figure of Ballau stretched at her feet as she passed.

“And now, doctor, and you, Mr. De Medici,” Norton resumed in his natural voice, “we’ll see, I think, that any further investigation will bear out my impression that Mr. Ballau killed himself.”

“Impossible,” murmured De Medici.

“Just a moment,” the detective smiled. “We can go over the obvious details of the case right here. Of course, there will be a further and thorough inquiry. But as it stands the case is rather simple. In the first place, we have here the signs of what seems to have been a terrific struggle between the dead man and some assailant. The struggle took place without attracting the attention of Jane. Pictures were ripped from the walls, pottery smashed, chairs overturned, books torn and thrown around in a fight between Mr. Ballau and, as I say, a possible assailant.

“You will notice, however”—and Norton’s impassive face warmed under the stimulus of his reasoning—“you will notice that Mr. Ballau’s attire is absolutely undisturbed. He had evidently dressed himself for the party tonight. It’s a fresh dress shirt he has on. I’ve looked at it through a glass. There isn’t a soil or a finger mark on it. The tie hasn’t been disarranged nor has the collar been touched. All fresh and clean as a daisy. The murderer might have straightened the dead man’s clothes, but he couldn’t remove the evidence his hands would have left—soils, wrinkles and the like on the linen—during a struggle.

“You’ll notice again that this table here seems to have been set for two. One peculiar thing about it is that there are no knives or forks and no evidences of food. Another peculiar thing is that the wine bottle is empty and has been empty for at least a year. You’ll find, if you look closely, that there is dust inside the neck of the bottle and that all odor of wine has long gone from it.”

De Medici was listening in amazement, thinking behind the words of the detective, “He’s clever. A man clever enough to piece together these observations would not be telling me all he knew or thought. He’s holding something back.... Yes ... it’s a ruse to disarm someone. Me, perhaps. He keeps looking at my fingers. I should have washed them.”

When Norton paused De Medici said aloud:

“But the thing in his hand. The false beard. He tore that off somebody.”

“Yes,” Norton answered, “off himself before he died. If you’ll look closely you’ll see there are evidences of gum mucilage on his chin.”

De Medici stood up slowly.

“The whole thing is insane, lieutenant,” he muttered. “Why should a man about to commit suicide disguise himself in a false beard?”

“You’ll see in a moment.” Norton waved him back to his chair. “I’ll give you my theory now and we’ll see if it will stand up under investigation. I purposely avoided asking the housekeeper a question. Now listen. Mr. Ballau desired to establish the fact that there was a stranger in the house. He put the beard on and showed himself thus disguised to his housekeeper. I’m sure we’ll find on asking her that there was a visitor here—a man with a black Vandyke. That she caught a brief glimpse of him. Call the Mayfield woman again, sergeant.”

De Medici waited in silence as the man at the door stepped out.

“He keeps looking at my fingers,” he whispered to himself. “And I touched the dagger. My finger-prints are on the hilt.”

He raised his voice.

“Have you searched for finger-prints on the dagger, lieutenant?”

“Yes, I examined it carefully. Iron is a bad receiver. The hilt is of iron and the traces left are insufficient for any practical evidence.”

The housekeeper appeared.

“Just one question,” Norton addressed the white-faced woman soothingly. “Did Mr. Ballau have any callers in the afternoon or evening after Mr. De Medici had left?”

“There are so many people coming and going in this house,” Jane began, her eyes centered on the detective.

“Come, think now, Jane,” Norton persisted. “Did you see anybody in the apartment besides Mr. Ballau ... anybody at all?”

“I saw Mr. Ballau,” she answered softly. “I saw him.”

“When?”

“After dinner.”

“What did he say and how did he look?”

“He was coming out from shaving,” Jane answered. “I don’t remember he said anything.”

“And after that, who did you see after you saw Mr. Ballau come out from shaving? Now come, think. I know you’re upset, but try to remember.”

The detective’s keen eyes had fastened steadily on the woman. She stood looking at him in silence, her face growing white, her own eyes widening. Then, abruptly, she whispered in a low voice as if talking to herself:

“He ... he ... I didn’t exactly see him. I can’t remember. I only saw somebody for a moment. Somebody else. Yes, somebody else.”

Her voice went up into a wail.

“Where were you when you saw this somebody else?” Norton persisted softly.

“I forget,” Jane moaned. “Oh, it’s awful! Somebody else.... I saw somebody.... I remember. In the hall. I was standing in the hall. It was dark. He was a tall man. He had a black beard.”

“That will be all, Jane.”

The woman, overcome by her emotions, had fallen forward in her chair. The sergeant came to her side. Norton turned with a look of triumph to De Medici and Dr. Greer.

“A simple-minded woman,” he said. “And Ballau knew it would be easy to take her in. And now for the motive. Suicide usually has a motive as well as murder. I think we’ll find two facts: Fact number one, that Ballau was heavily insured. Fact number two, that Ballau was heavily in debt. Then there is also the fact that his daughter, to whom he was devoted, was to be married. With her marriage in sight the father naturally thought that keeping up this pretense”—Norton indicated the apartment by a wave of his hand—“was no longer necessary. We’ll probably find that he knew ruin was inevitable and, desiring to leave his daughter something out of the wreck, he thought of his insurance. Insurance often isn’t collectable in a case of suicide, so he camouflaged the thing to look like murder.”

Again De Medici’s mind played with the words of the detective. The man was either feigning or an imbecile. Ah, he should have washed his hands! De Medici shuddered. The whole thing was for his benefit. Fear gleamed suddenly in his eyes. It was a trap for him. An inexplicable sense of guilt overpowered him. His eyes fell from the detective. He continued, however, to reason as the man talked.

“My family cowers inside me,” he shivered. “Guilty ... yes, phantoms that cringe before familiar accusations. Murder.... But this policeman is absurd. If Ballau wanted to do something for Florence—the insurance—why should he crush her with his death? And the false beard ... good God, he would have taken it off before killing himself and hidden it.... But Norton will say he wanted to make it look as if he’d snatched it from someone else’s face. Yet the mucilage on his chin. He would have thought of that.”

“Do you begin to feel the logic of the thing?” Norton inquired suddenly.

“No,” De Medici answered. “It remains impossible in my mind despite everything you say. Mr. Ballau was a man of taste. He would not have gone to such preposterous and unconvincing details as this—the disordered room, the ridiculous idea of a table with an empty wine bottle....”

“I see,” Norton nodded. “But you are figuring from a wrong point of view. Suicide isn’t as sane and simple a thing as buying a piece of furniture. A man about to take his life is never normal. I mentioned two facts which we will probably find to be the motive. There were unquestionably other facts operating. But of one thing we may be sure. The Ballau who killed himself was not the elegant Mr. Ballau New York knows so well. He was a man in a hysterical condition. He wasn’t the cultured and calm gentleman you knew, Mr. De Medici.

“And remember another thing. He was a man of the theater. When the time came for him to do the thing—his nerves on edge, his mind at a hysterical tension—he reverted to type. He was a man of the theater. He wanted to camouflage it to look like a murder. And the only murders he knew were murders he had witnessed on the stage, murders after which the police arrive to find the table set for two, furniture overturned, clews everywhere—candlesticks, crucifixes, signs of a great struggle—in the usual second-act climax fashion. It was his intention to set the stage for such a murder. But he wasn’t himself. He went about his work with the insane deliberation of a man who functions automatically.”

Lieutenant Norton stood up.

“I think we’ll find some among the guests tonight who’ll be able to throw a light on the dead man’s finances and troubles,” he said. “In the meantime, we’ll have the body moved and hold it in the undertaking rooms until the inquest. Of course, what I’ve outlined here is only the result of first impressions. But, as I’ve said, first impressions are usually one’s best conclusions.”

The detective walked out of the room. De Medici rose to follow. As he did an object fell out of the heavy upholstered chair in which he had been sitting. He stooped and picked it up. A woman’s purse. Norton had turned at the door and De Medici slipped it quickly into his pocket.

“An old purse,” he murmured to himself, “and there were some faded silver initials in the corner.”

The guests were waiting for him. They crowded around him, babbling questions, exclamations, condolences.

“They’ve taken all our names,” one woman sobbed suddenly. “Oh, poor, dear Victor....”

De Medici, his eyes narrowed, his lean face void of expression, moved from group to group assuring them that all was being done that could be done. He tried vainly to obtain a moment’s private talk with Florence. He had learned that she had retired to her bedroom and was locked in with a nurse summoned by Norton.

“She’s in a rather bad condition,” the detective explained as he saw De Medici prowling in the hallway. “I think you’d better leave her alone for the time being.”

“He’s watching me,” De Medici thought. “Every move I make. He’s been standing behind me as I talked. He was in the doorway of the bathroom as I washed my hands.” He paused in his thought and shivered as a word whimpered somewhere in the recesses of his brain ... “guilty ... guilty....”

“I think I’ll leave,” Lieutenant Norton remarked suddenly at his side. “My men will remain here. And I’ll be back early in the morning.”

De Medici watched the detective move through the crowded room to the door. He smiled tiredly after the man. A few of Ballau’s cronies were remaining. The others were departing in couples and groups. De Medici led the way into a small room Ballau had used as an office. Meyerson the antique dealer, Carvello the painter, and Foreman the retired Shakespearean actor followed him. They lighted cigars and began in measured tones to discuss the qualities of the man who lay dead in the adjoining room. They had learned of Lieutenant Norton’s theory and derided the detective’s conclusions.

Carvello, a lean, nervous-mannered young man, shrugged his shoulders as De Medici finished relating Norton’s conclusions.

“Suicide,” he repeated. “Hm. If Ballau put that beard on to disguise himself as a stranger and deceive Jane, why should he leave it on until he had stabbed himself?”

“Because,” De Medici sighed, “in his confused and hysterical condition he forgot he was wearing the thing and remembered only after the dagger had entered. That’s Norton’s theory. His last act was to try to make the camouflage stand up by tearing the thing from his face.”

“Absurd,” snorted Carvello. “The doctor said, I heard him myself, that death was almost instantaneous. How could he, after striking such a blow, have lived long enough to tear the thing from his face?”

“Or to have placed a crucifix on his chest?” Meyerson took up the argument. “Or to have blown out the candle?”

The voice of Foreman the old actor rose sonorously:

“Yet Ballau wore the false beard. There was mucilage on his chin.”

“Put there by the murderer after the crime,” Carvello exclaimed. “There’s a camouflage there right enough. But a cleverer one than Norton figured out. Yes, an unconvincing murder scene—carefully prepared by a murderer to enable the police to penetrate its pretense and arrive at the theory of suicide. No soils on his linen, no marks or rumples. Of course not. Ballau was killed by a man suddenly and without struggle. The camouflage followed.”

De Medici shook his head. The discussion seemed curiously pointless to him. There was the telephone call at the theater—and there....

“He may have worn the beard,” De Medici spoke suddenly, “but there is more than one reason to explain that, and there are other ways that a man can get mucilage on his face than from a false beard.”

He paused and stared tiredly around him.

“I’m rather done up ... if you don’t mind, I’ll turn in.”

Ballau’s friends looked at him with sympathy and nodded. As he passed from the room down the hallway he heard their voices continuing the monotonous discussion of the dead man’s virtues—and the clews.

He had been waiting for this moment ever since Norton and his keen eyes had arrived at the apartment. The lieutenant was gone. Two dull-faced men in uniform were guarding the library. De Medici’s manner underwent a change. The listlessness dropped from his face. He moved quickly toward the door behind which he knew Florence was locked. Glancing furtively up and down the hallway, he knocked softly. A stranger’s voice asked:

“Who is it?”

“Mr. De Medici. Will you tell Miss Ballau I want to see her for a moment?”

“Miss Ballau is asleep.”

“Wake her up, please. Tell her it’s imperative. I must see her.”

A pause during which De Medici heard muffled whisperings. Then Florence’s voice came faintly:

“Please excuse me, Julien. I can’t see you.”

He tried the door-knob desperately as he answered:

“It’s important, Florence. Please ... I must tell you something.”

The door was locked. De Medici rattled the knob again.

“I can’t.... Julien. I can’t see you now.”

The nurse’s voice added:

“She’s too upset, sir. You’ll have to wait till morning.”

Norton again.... He had foreseen an attempt to talk to her. He hesitated before the door. Yes, the man’s theory of suicide had been feigned. An elaborate web of sophistry to entrap him....

De Medici frowned. He stood staring at the locked door. Circumstances were repeating themselves in his head. His subtle brain trained in the adventure of finely spun ideas found the situation banal. Yet there was a background, an incomprehensible background as yet unrevealed.

He repeated slowly to himself:

“Somebody called her on the telephone. She fled in answer to the call. She left the theater at nine-forty. Less than ten minutes to the apartment. Yes, I made it in ten and she was in a greater hurry than I. So it was nine-fifty when she reached the apartment. And it was ten-thirty when I entered the vestibule downstairs and saw her come out of the elevator.”

He stood with his hand on the knob. His strange face became haunted with fears.

“She was in the apartment for more than a half hour,” he stood thinking. “She lied about that to Norton. She lied, too, about the telephone call.”

The locked door stared back at him.

“I must hold on to myself,” he whispered aloud.

Something had spoken in him. There was a voice, subtle and exultant, that reared itself phantom-like amid his thoughts. It was urging him to enter the locked door, to fall at the feet of the woman inside the room.

“Ah,” he mused, “she lures me. I believe her guilty ... a murderess, a Messalina. And the fact lures me. De Medicis hail her. De Medici ghosts inside me prostrate themselves devoutly before a kinswoman—a woman whose hands are red with murder.... An impulse toward obeisance stirs in me.”

He shuddered at his thoughts. His head was beginning to ache. He walked to a guest-room and turned on the light. Then he remembered something.

“I found a purse in the room ... in the chair.”

He grinned tiredly at himself in a dressing mirror.

“I must watch this duality in me,” he murmured. “She is guilty—yes, things whisper it inside me.... I know this because I feel drawn to her ... to her guilt. A kinswoman for the prowling ones in me....”

He studied his face in the mirror with a shiver. De Medici looked back at him.... Narrow, inscrutable eyes regarded him.

“Not my eyes,” he whispered.

His hands had withdrawn the purse. An ornate thing of an obsolete style. He opened it. The lining was torn inside. Folded in the bottom was a theater program. He studied it.... A program of “Iris,” played at the Goldsmith Theater in London in 1899 ... a repertoire company.

He replaced the dried paper carefully and closed the purse. In the lower right-hand corner of the leather were two initials in silver—F. B.

He raised the thing to his cheek.

“Florence,” he whispered, his dark eyes flashing with a sudden excitement. “Yes, she left the theater with her make-up on and in the costume of the ‘Dead Flower.’ And in the lobby screaming ... when I saw her first she had changed. There was no make-up on her face—and her clothes were changed. Thirty-five minutes in which to ... change. She lied ... she lied.”

He sat smiling enigmatically at the purse. The subtle and exultant voice that had risen in him before the locked door was again speaking among his thoughts:

“Francesca mia, I adore you. Beautiful, cruel and silent one ... murderess! Patricide!”

For a strange moment his heart seemed to fling itself blissfully toward the image of a woman smiling grimly, dagger in hand, in the opened doorway of his room. His eyes stared at blankness while an inner vision beheld her—Florence in a trailing robe ... Florence with her black hair smoothed and bound with a gold band, with a dagger lifted and a dark smile wavering over the cruel face....

He sprang to his feet, a cry in his throat. The doorway was empty. He stood shuddering before it, afraid to look beyond into the darkened hall, cowering before the shadow of a chair that stretched against the wall. Something had passed—a shadow had passed. With hands grown moist, he walked stiffly forward and closed out the empty space. He was alone in the room.

He stood still listening, as if there were noises to overhear. His eyes shifted about the vacancy of the room. They turned furtively from the unoccupied chairs to the empty bed.

“Fear,” he murmured. “It traps me ... a disease....”

In the fully lighted room De Medici flung himself with a sob on the bed.