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....”