“No.”
“She wanted the thing back, eh? Come, what did she say? How did she look?”
“As you said,” De Medici answered. “Excited. Disturbed.”
“This was before she left town?” pursued Dr. Lytton. “Of course.... You saw her after the inquest. She left that night.”
“I didn’t know,” De Medici murmured.
“Yes,” Dr. Lytton continued, “she went to a place called Rollo, in Maine. A curious out-of-the-way little village. I found this out the next day. She had had her trunks shipped there. The grief and excitement, I suppose. And a desire to get away.”
“I didn’t know,” repeated De Medici uncomfortably. So she had gone away! A bewilderment came into his thought. He recalled her rage that had ended their talk in the theater. The blow she had struck and her anguish. Remorse and tenderness overwhelmed him, and a feeling of self-revulsion. What a scoundrel! Playing with evil dreams while her heart was breaking. “No one ... no one,” she had wailed. Yes, he had abandoned her. Become a useless and fantastic actor in the hour she needed him. And she had fled....
The tragedy suddenly changed in his inner mind. The image of the evil Francesca which had confused itself with his memories of Florence seemed to evaporate from the recesses of his thought. He saw, in retrospect suddenly, the laughing-eyed, vivid young woman whom he had loved. Guilty of the murder of her father! Incredible! He had been playing viciously with a dangerous make-believe. Yes, there was something else. A mystery beckoned behind the inexplicable conduct of the girl. He had succumbed to a few obvious leads. Now, with his mind cleared of the phantoms that had seduced him, he remembered the dead man. Victor Ballau ... there had been something about him. Trembling fingers and averted eyes.... A secret pantomiming behind the fastidious exterior.
Dr. Lytton was talking. De Medici’s ears again picked up the man’s excited ramblings.
“In part the mystery lies with Ballau. A London theater program. You know he lived in London before he came here. I found out something about him. He was married in London. Have you ever talked to Florence about her mother, Julien? Never mind, we’ll come to that later. This purse fits in. I wanted only a peg to hang the thing on. Here it is....”