Chapter XIII: The Two Florias

In which Julien De Medici meets a train and grapples with a
skyrocket—The triumphant phantoms again—In which Dr. Lytton relates an
incredible story concerning dawn in Rollo, Maine—“Come at once—she is
dying.”

The train was pulling in. Its headlight swinging down the track filled De Medici with violent emotion. In a few minutes Dr. Lytton would alight, leading at his side the long sought and mysterious Floria.

With a roar and hiss of steam, the train loomed at his side and came to a stop. The bustle of alighting passengers ensued. Sleepy-eyed travelers entering New York at midnight, loaded down with bags and packages, began to emerge from the cars. De Medici’s eyes raced from exit to exit. Impatience had deprived him of thought. He stood shivering in the smoke-filled shed. Figures hurried by. Then someone called his name. Turning excitedly, De Medici found himself face to face with his friend Dr. Lytton. And at Dr. Lytton’s side stood Florence Ballau.

De Medici’s thought remained in suspension. He noticed that the doctor was holding her arm, that she was pale and almost tottering, and that her eyes were half closed.

“A cab,” Dr. Lytton ordered tersely. “Hurry! She’s in a bad state.”

Still De Medici stood motionless. The shock that the sight of Florence had given him had vanished almost immediately. There was another confusion now, a familiar and vaporous twisting in his head, as if thoughts were endeavoring to turn themselves inside out.

“Hurry, Julien. A cab.”

Dazedly, De Medici turned and walked out of the station toward the cab stand. He waited until the two arrivals caught up. His eyes stared miserably at the ground. Inside the machine he forced a question from his lips.

“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....”

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.”

De Medici nodded. His eyes avoided Florence now. The scientist spoke softly to the girl and, nodding her head listlessly, she arose. Dr. Lytton led her toward the bedroom. Left alone, De Medici stood contemplating the long folds of the curtains. He felt tired, and an inclination toward self-pity brought tears close to his eyes.

“It would be easy to drop the whole thing and announce myself as mad,” he murmured, “easy and almost desirable. As it is—well, I’ll hear all about it in a few minutes. Florence, though ... she acts. Her manner is too perfect.... The Bandoux woman ... yes, what about her?...”

He grinned vacuously.

“I’ve given her some powders,” Dr. Lytton announced, reappearing. “I think she’ll be asleep soon. And, good Lord, she needs it!”

“Yes,” De Medici answered, “she looks all done.”

His attitude toward the scientist had become wary and amused. He had intended blurting out to the man the mystery of the night. Instead, he treasured the fact in silence.

“If I announce that,” he thought, “he’ll at once suspect me. The phantom theory will occur to him. A ruse, an alibi.... Yes, he’s been suspicious of me from the first.”

De Medici shuddered. Another idea had opened in his mind. He recalled his theorizings during the auction, his wrestling with the psychology of a criminal. Would a criminal return to the scene of his crime? Would the sense of insecurity lead him there, or the sense of morbidity? He remembered with a chill how cleverly he had debated the thing with himself, arguing the points pro and con.

“Curious phenomenon,” he mused coolly, “it was I returning to the scene of my crime. And yet I seemed to be arguing aloofly....”

Again the impulse to laugh seized him. The absurdity of his self-suspicion almost overcame him. He controlled his features and nodded calmly at his friend.

“Go on,” he said. “What has happened?”

Dr. Lytton had seated himself and lighted a cigar.

“Well,” he smiled, “I can tell you the story now. We have to deal, as I surmised from the first, with a most fascinating case of dissociation, commonly called dual personality.”

De Medici smiled. Then it was Florence, and the doctor had proved her guilt. Obtained a confession, his telegram had announced. The man, for all his cleverness, was an ass. He had managed to bungle everything as idiotically as had Norton. But as he stood, aware that he was sneering at his friend, a new twist entered his thought.

As the doctor started talking, the idea had flashed through De Medici’s mind.... “Quite right. Florence. It might have been she. And the creature with the dagger last night might have been I. Innocent of Ballau’s murder, constant fear of my possible guilt may have resulted in the creation of the dagger phantom as an alibi—an unnecessary alibi.”

Dr. Lytton, supremely satisfied with himself and oblivious to the changes of expression in his friend’s manner, was proceeding in the professorial manner he assumed when expounding indisputable truths and unalterable facts.

“I want to point out to you first,” he announced, “the fact that the obvious, although frequently open to doubt, is nevertheless not to be dismissed. It is a common fallacy of people engaged in the solution of mysteries or more scientific problems to flout the obvious and to search for the secret in things hidden from the cursory eye. It was this fact which led us somewhat astray for a while.”

“I am in no mood for a Freshman lecture on psychology,” De Medici interrupted calmly.

“I’ll tell the thing in my own way,” Dr. Lytton smiled.

“Very well.” De Medici shrugged his shoulders. “I’ll listen to what is pertinent and ignore the rest.”

“You can listen or not as you please, my dear Julien. But I advise you first to relax. You look as white as a ghost, and have been standing there for almost fifteen minutes talking to yourself like a lunatic. There’s nothing to be gained by experimenting with your nerves. I’ve told you that before.”

“You went to Rollo,” De Medici murmured.

“Excellent,” the doctor laughed. “I went to Rollo, Maine. And I’ll pass over the various details that led me to the conclusion that Floria was to be found in Rollo.”

“Thanks.”

“I arrived there around three in the morning,” the doctor continued unperturbed. “An abominable place. One rustic hotel. And it was closed. While you were sleeping peacefully in your bed, my dear Julien, I was parading the dark, chill streets of Rollo, Maine, in quest of comfort, clews and companionship.”

“While I slept comfortably in my bed,” smiled De Medici.

“What’s wrong?” Dr. Lytton asked abruptly.

“Nothing. Go on. You are in Rollo. The streets are dark and chill. And you search for clews.”

“I see. You are prepared to flout my story.”

“I’m listening, Hugo.”

“Before I go on, Julien, I must impress one thing on you. Prejudice is a poor guide for deduction. If you are in love with poor Florence you will be helping her more by facing the facts squarely....”

“My emotions are in abeyance, Hugo. I listen only as a Dr. Watson.”

“Very well. I will first indulge in a modest preamble.”

“A short one would be better.”

“Facetiousness,” smiled Dr. Lytton, “is a good outlet for nerves. I make no claim to any sort of intelligence on my part for what happened during the dawn in Rollo. Accident is very often the determining factor in philosophical as well as scientific discoveries.

“I had come to Rollo to find Floria, and as I was walking the streets with no place to go or sit down I found her. I saw her at the end of the block hurrying toward me. Her face was pale, her hair was in disorder, and her eyes were wide and staring. It was Florence Ballau. She passed me without any sign of recognition, and I realized at once from the obvious physical symptoms she presented that she was in a pathologic state. I followed her. She walked through the streets without purpose or destination, moving swiftly and blindly.

“After an hour, or what seemed an hour, I caught up with her and took her arm. She looked at me and said nothing. Now there is one principle in pathology which is elemental. In talking to a dual personality it is a waste of energy to address the ‘wrong’ person. Thus, it is futile to waste one’s breath trying to convince a man who fancies himself the king of Siam that he is not the king of Siam. Because when addressing the victim of such an hallucination, one is addressing not the victim, but the hallucination. Do you follow me?”

De Medici nodded. His mind had grown violently active. The scientist’s words died in his ears, as more and more he gave himself desperately to the unraveling of a new and astounding theory that had entered his thought.

“Well,” continued Dr. Lytton, “knowing this, I took her arm. She looked at me. I said to her, ‘Good morning, Floria.’ The ruse worked instantly. Her eyes lighted and a look of complete recognition came to them. She stood regarding me excitedly for a moment and then collapsed in my arms. The village drugstore was just opening and I carried her inside. After the druggist and I had revived her I led her to the hotel and got a room. We sat down and began to talk. I had the advantage. I knew exactly the pathologic state with which I was dealing. I said to her: ‘It is useless to conceal anything, Miss Ballau. I don’t know how you managed to escape from the police. It may be that they liberated you on their own account.’

“This was very possible, considering their tendencies to commit blunders. Then I asked her if she were able to follow what I was saying. I saw at once that she was not a distinct dissociation case, that her dual personalities were not ignorant of each other, as is frequently found in some of the more pronounced cases that have come under my observation. It was obvious also that Floria and Florence Ballau were gradually merging into a single personality with the result that the young woman, instead of suffering from periodic and isolated attacks of what we may call insanity, attacks which after their conclusion left her the normal Florence Ballau we knew, was now become a single disordered brain.

“The air-tight compartments in which each of her personalities had their separate being had broken. The result was this distracted semi-maniacal young woman who had fled from the police station to Rollo to hide. I explained all this to her and she was able to follow me in part. It was necessary to explain the thing, first, in order to give her a momentary consciousness, that is, a perspective, and, secondly, in order to assure her that craft and concealment were futile.

“Well, when I had finished she took up the story and cleared away several of the details which had bothered me. Her confession was extremely interesting from a scientific point of view.”

“She confessed the murder?” De Medici murmured. “Saying she remembered it?”

“In due time, Julien. Before reaching the murder, and in order to understand it, we must establish the scientific motive. As the morning progressed Florence, or Floria, grew calm and extremely docile. I placed the entire conversation on a scientific basis, a ruse which invariably disarms criminals of her type. For instance, I asked her if she knew when she had experienced the shock which had caused the dissociation or duality of ego. She told me the thing had happened or must have happened when she was quite a child. This, as you know, is frequently the case. Victor Ballau had once tried to kill her father, a man named Bandoux. Poor Ballau was in love with Bandoux’s wife. And Bandoux’s wife was her mother. Ballau had conceived a desperate passion for the woman. Failing somehow to kill the man, he concentrated his jealousy on the wife. In the child’s mind there came the realization that this Ballau was at the time causing her mother, whom she idolized, trouble and anguish. She told me that she remembers one night seeing her mother lying on the floor of a room and sobbing. Ballau had reviled and struck her in a jealous rage. Florence remembered also that her mother had cried out on the night she died that she would be avenged. The child was perhaps only three or four years old at the time, but the scene was sufficient to produce the shock which later brought the duality on.

“Now consider this. As a child she had always called her mother Floria. Her mother died when she was four. Ballau carried the child off and brought her to America. As she grew older the shock experienced in her childhood began to show results. The hallucination that she was her mother began to grow in her and this hallucination finally became so strong that it was able to overpower her normal self and she became Floria. Yes, Floria, the avenging mother whose life Ballau had ruined.

“As for the murder,” Dr. Lytton smiled with an air of discussing trifles, “you recall, Julien, that poor Ballau seemed nervous about the engagement. You mentioned things—suspicions—to me. Well, nervous he was. Ballau called her up that night with a very simple message. He wanted to tell her something in relation to the party he was giving. And he was also worried about her. He had noticed symptoms—telltale symptoms of her recurrent mania that day. The sound of his voice over the phone stirred her subconscious mind and brought uppermost the Floria complex. Recall, she said: ‘Yes—yes—immediately. Oh, God!’ She was merely talking as Floria. She left the theater and hurried to the apartment, determined on the vengeance that the Floria who lived in her was continually demanding.

“Jane, the housekeeper, let her in. I’ll return to this in a moment. She faced her stepfather in the library. He looked at her and knew what had happened. This was no longer Florence Ballau, but the maniac who thought herself Floria, the lady of the dagger shrieking for vengeance. Poor Ballau knew this creature. He had struggled with her before. It was the secret that he held from the world. We must picture what followed ourselves. Miss Ballau doesn’t remember. Up to this point I have quoted her confession. From here on we reconstruct the scene of the murder.

“You see how simple it all grows, Julien? Floria, the lady of the dagger, killed Ballau. She remembers dimly, she says, of striking him with a dagger. She remembers nothing after that for several minutes. Her normality gradually returned. But not entirely. She was able to realize the crime that had been committed, but she was not able to return to Florence Ballau. I neglected, by the way, to say that the purse you found was the property of her mother. And the dress as well. Both items which her maniac self treasured as souvenirs. And when she entered the apartment that night her first impulse was to dress as her mother—in these things that had belonged to the woman. Do you follow me so far, Julien?”

De Medici sighed again. The doctor’s words had continued to buzz harmlessly in his ears. His narrow eyes were glancing furtively at the horizontal pattern of the wine-colored drapes. The confusion which had come to him an hour before appeared to have lifted. Through his thought drifted the words:

“One chance. One chance it wasn’t I. All this convinces me. Yes, everything he says points to me, inasmuch as it completely exonerates her. But there’s still one chance....”

The doctor’s question wakened him to the man.

“Yes,” he answered, “I follow you ... entirely, Hugo. Go on. There are a few more details.”

“A case of stubborn prejudice that surprises me—in you, Julien,” the scientist remonstrated quietly. “For the sake of an emotional conviction you choose to ignore utterly the logic of the thing. The confession. The dovetailing of every bit of evidence. It doesn’t require much imagination to see Florence Ballau, alias Floria, preparing the camouflaged room after the killing. The cunning instincts of a half-maniac—to divert suspicion from herself. In fact, she remembers finding the beard in an old trunk—in the trunk which contained her mother’s effects. A beautifully conceived impulse, her first one, that of glueing the Vandyke to his chin. But ruined by her indecision. For after she had placed it there, the strange look of the man bewildered her and she tore it off and forced it into his fingers. She reasoned, as she did so, that if he held the false beard in his hand it would appear as if he had torn it from someone else’s face—and therefore seem as if he had been attacked by a disguised man. But her first impulse was infinitely better. I mention it merely as one of those little things which always rise to prove the superiority of intuition over reason. The beard pasted on his face would have been a successful mist over the crime. Consistent, impenetrable and so on. But the beard torn from his face was too obvious a clew. It confused Norton and us, but even without Miss Ballau’s confession it would have eventually given us the correct lead.”

“You sound a bit unconvinced on that point,” De Medici murmured in an abstracted voice, “but I’ll let it go.”

“Yes,” growled Dr. Lytton, “thanks. But the final proof comes now. I return to Jane, the housekeeper. In her youth Jane was a close friend of the mother. Jane is a simple-minded woman and her sympathies were entirely with Florence. She, too, remembered the abuse that Victor Ballau heaped on her mother, and in her own simple way understood the mania that operated the thoughts of the daughter. After the murder Jane helped Florence prepare the scene, dispose of the evidence—you remember the clumsy attempt at concealing the dress on the fire escape. Also the incident of Florence directing the attention of the police to the fire escape. You told me this yourself. This little point itself shows that there were two minds that camouflaged the scene—that Florence was unaware Jane had hidden the dress outside the window.

“There,” concluded Dr. Lytton, “you have the crime in full as Miss Ballau confessed it, as I unraveled it and as I wrote it down, and as she signed it before we got on the train at Rollo this afternoon.”

“And the note from Rollo, Maine, signed by the lady of the dagger while Florence was in New York in jail?” inquired De Medici.

“We will find out that she gave it to someone to mail,” smiled the doctor. “A part of the crude cunning which characterizes her Floria nature.”

“And my visitor last night?” murmured De Medici.

Dr. Lytton looked at him.

“What visitor?” he asked.

“A curious one,” smiled De Medici. “A visitor that has stood beside you laughing in silence at your words, dear Hugo.”

The scientist stared at his friend. De Medici had risen. His face was flushed and his eyes were gleaming.

“The thing unravels itself in my head,” he continued, his voice grown tense. “Yes, dear Hugo, a melodrama. Crude, preposterous, but easily proved. And simple.”

“You mean that you doubt her guilt?” Dr. Lytton snapped.

“That I know who killed Ballau,” De Medici answered. “Yes, not Florence. And not your good friend Julien. And not the phantoms either. But someone else.”

“And you know?”

De Medici nodded. His brows were contracted. When he spoke again it was in a meditative tone.

“The commonplace, Hugo,” he said softly, “how easily one overlooks it. Little questions that a child might ask. For instance, what an awful lot of work it must have been for a single woman to take care of ten rooms alone. One can’t help but feel a curious admiration for the diligence and energy of Jane, the housekeeper. Wait a minute!”

He pointed his finger commandingly at the scientist.

“Sit still. I want to show you a little drama I have written while you talked.”

De Medici moved swiftly to the telephone.

“Park View 0146,” he spoke into the mouthpiece.

Dr. Lytton glared at him.

“Mad,” whispered the scientist. De Medici smiled.

“Hello!” he exclaimed suddenly into the telephone. “Who is this?”

A pause and he continued: “Jane, this is Mr. De Medici calling. Miss Ballau is very ill at my apartment. We have the doctor here. She is dying. She told me to telephone you at once. She says she must see you, that you must come over at once.”

De Medici listened. No sound came from the other end of the wire. And then a scream drifted out of the receiver.

“Do you understand?” he shouted. “Come over at once.”

He waited a few moments for a sound. But the receiver remained silent against his ear.

“She’s gone,” he murmured. He hung up and turned to the doctor.

“I am at the present moment unable to decide, Hugo, which of you is entitled to the credit of being the world’s greatest blundering idiot, you or Lieutenant Norton. But possibly it may turn out to be I. So we’ll wait.”

He seated himself calmly and, his face grown imperturbable, lighted a cigarette and stared at the indignant scientist.