The cab was stopping. De Medici sighed and opened the door. Furtively his eyes watched the half animate girl as Dr. Lytton helped her from the cab. She appeared indifferent to the situation. De Medici, overcome with anguish at the sight of her pallor and listlessness, took her hand and pressed its cold fingers.
“Florence,” he whispered, “is there anything I can do?”
Her dark eyes opened full on his face and an incredible intuition passed through him. She was acting! Her collapse, her manner, was entirely a pretense. Dr. Lytton returned from the chauffeur.
“Come, hurry. We’ll have to take care of her first.”
In the apartment the doctor became somewhat officious. He appeared to be treasuring dénouements, his manner toward De Medici growing condescending. De Medici, inwardly confused and victim again of the elaborate fears which had darkened his days since the murder of his friend, stood quietly against the wine-colored curtains and waited.
“Whatever he has found out,” he thought, “is valueless or at least of no value as a finale. For there is still the dagger lady who visited me last night to explain away.”
He smiled cautiously, convinced anew that this creature was no more than a phantom evolved as an alibi by his own cunning madness.
“Yet, I never felt more normal in my life,” he murmured to himself, “unless my madness or hallucinations are able to create a sense of normality in me. If I was mad last night, when the thing happened, then it is obvious that I am mad at this moment. For I am conscious of no different sense or state of mind. And it becomes obvious that I have been thoroughly mad ever since I can remember, and that what I consider my normality has been no more than a cunning pose with which I deceived myself.”
Dr. Lytton turned to him. He had removed the girl’s wraps.
“We will have to put her in bed,” he remarked. “She’s had a hard day.”