“Where did you find her, Hugo?”
Dr. Lytton shook his head. A triumphant gleam was in his eyes.
“All in due time,” he replied. “Wait till we get home.”
De Medici was relieved for the silence. He sat with his head sunk, inwardly conscious of the inanimate Florence beside him. She had spoken no word of greeting or explanation. His thought traced itself sardonically over a single sentence.
“So this is Floria!”
A desire to laugh came to him. The shock which her unexpected appearance beside Dr. Lytton had given him had been short-lived. At once, on top of his astonishment, had bloomed a new fear. At the sight of her and the triumphant-eyed scientist De Medici became aware in an instant that his carefully pieced-together theory of the thing lay in shreds. Unable to keep his thought calm and invent something plausible to explain the insane shiftings of the past few weeks, the terror from which he had suffered during the early days of the Ballau mystery reinstated itself.
He sat now with his carefully molded smile, the smile that had aggravated the suspicions of Norton.
“The thing comes back,” he mused. “The creature in my bedroom, the creature that tried to murder me and that left a candle burning at my head and a crucifix on my chest, was not Florence. No, this creature was Julien De Medici. A crafty and insatiable maniac engaged in fooling himself. God, what a notion! Yet if there is another self to me, how easy and natural. This becomes almost too ludicrous to be mania. But why not? A heroic effort to establish an alibi in my own eyes. Rather clever, in a way. I see visions. I see the lady of the dagger. And I attack myself somewhat carefully but convincingly. And as a result I stand exonerated. It was not I who killed Ballau but this creature who tried the thing on me. Clever, yes. But twisted and absurd. But not if I am mad. That is, completely and intricately mad. Not if my sanity is a pose which I cunningly loan myself. But the letter from Rollo. Then I sent that to myself, too. Yet there was a postmark. Who saw the postmark? I or the doctor? I forget this point.”
The smile on De Medici’s long face weakened. His thin fingers moved dreamily over his cheek. In the silence of the cab his musings resumed:
“Then she knows it was I. And what she has done has been for my sake ... to protect me. There must be more to this than I have been able to remember. The night I called for her at the theater, the night it happened.... There must be innumerable things to remember. But I remember nothing. I can’t begin to understand, and I want to laugh. Yes, my reasoning arouses laughter in me. If I laugh it would mean, of course, that I am mad. Or, perhaps it would mean that I am sane. God knows! There is only one thing definite. Florence did not visit my room last night. Yes, and another thing. The phantoms still crawl around in me. My first emotion when I saw her at the train was again the sentence, ‘I am guilty.’ It sprang to life once more as it had the moment I leaned over the body....”