“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.