“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.