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THE FLORENTINE
DAGGER
_A Novel for Amateur Detectives_
BY
BEN HECHT
[Illustration: Publisher logo]
BONI AND LIVERIGHT
Publishers New York
_Copyright, 1923, by_
Boni and Liveright, Inc.
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
TO JOSEPHINE DITRICHSTEIN,
who graciously promised to read my next book, providing, of course, it
was a mystery story
WALLACE SMITH’S ILLUSTRATIONS
The five illustrations contained in the following pages, and the jacket
design, are the work of the new phenomenal black and white artist,
Wallace Smith. In making the drawings Mr. Smith chose to illustrate the
spirit of the text rather than its letter. The result is this series of
Renaissance pictures whose dark opulence curiously interprets the moods
of the story’s hero, Prince Julien de Medici—of Broadway.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. Velvet Souls 17
Containing a nervous cavalier with frightened eyes. Introducing a
mysterious and puritanical satyr. And discussing the tired ghosts
that haunted the heart of Julien De Medici.
II. The Veiled Aphrodite 30
In which a lady of barbaric eyes smiles, sighs, and weeps. In
which Eros obliges with a saxophone solo. A morning of golden
shadows and an off-stage pizzicato.
III. Murder 38
In which Julien De Medici collides with a tantalizing corpse. In
which a dagger, a candlestick, a crucifix, and a false beard
mumble incoherently.
IV. The Empty Web 51
In which a detective weaves a theory. In which Julien De Medici
stares at a clew. In which Pandora raises a warning finger to her
lips. A table set for two, an initialed purse, an ancient theater
program—but the story waits.
V. Questions and Answers 72
In which the world wags its callous tongue. In which dénouements
thumb their noses at each other. In which Julien De Medici
succumbs to a delicious madness. A Jesuitical policeman and an
ambitious coroner flirt coyly with an Enigma.
VI. Labyrinths of Blood 93
In which a detective attaches a pair of asses’ ears to his head.
In which Julien De Medici removes for a moment a mask. In which a
glimpse, incredible and disturbing, is caught of the soul of
Florence Ballau. Who blew out the candle of the salamanders?
VII. The Haunted Room 110
In which an apoplectic scientist explodes. In which invisible
footsteps sound in a dark corridor. In which Julien De Medici
opens a letter. The woman of the hidden eyes. Floria, the lady of
the dagger, appears. In which underworlds collide. The staircase
to Hell and a strange passion. A voice that spoke over the
telephone.
VIII. Denouement No. 1 132
In which Nemesis babbles cheerfully. In which the Dead Flower
adopts new petals. Postmarks and time-tables and a false beard
that sneers mischievously. Also a scrawl of vengeance, enigmatic
ashes and a half signature.
IX. The Hidden Voice 151
In which a scientist half opens a reluctant door. The strange
sleep of Florence Ballau. The broken murmur. “It was ... it
was....” In which a detective scratches his ear and sighs. In
which Julien De Medici puts on his armor.
X. The Dagger of Mist 161
In which a pathologist reasons himself into a railroad trip.
Francesca of the spiral eyes. The ancient science of demonology.
The visiting shadow. The dagger that glistened against the moon.
XI. Elusive Climaxes 173
In which Julien De Medici finds himself grewsomely decorated. In
which he passes triumphantly on his own innocence. The exonerating
wound. Candlestick and cross again and the laugh of a new
Francesca. A new doubt. A telegram both absurd and bewildering.
Cinematographic clews.
XII. The Woman with the Cackling Laugh 186
Treasures for sale. Bidders and buyers and candlesticks. In which
an old woman makes an exciting purchase. In which Julien De Medici
pursues an aged Alice in Wonderland. The beginning of a story.
XIII. The Two Florias 209
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.”
XIV. Act II 230
The burning-eyed visitor. An old favorite. Amateur theatricals.
“Light the candles!” In which Julien De Medici reveals himself as
an effective playwright.
XV. Hearts and Flowers 238
In which Florence takes up the drama. A taxicab, as in the
beginning. In which what is left of the reader’s suspense and
curiosity is carefully removed.
THE FLORENTINE DAGGER
CHAPTER I
VELVET SOULS
Containing a nervous cavalier with frightened eyes—Introducing a
mysterious and puritanical satyr—And discussing the tired ghosts that
haunted the heart of Julien De Medici.
In the firelight the face of Julien De Medici appeared like a gray and
scarlet mask of ennui. Oblivious of the ornamental room with its pattern
of books, statues and tapestries, he sat stiffly in the carved wooden
chair and stared at the burning logs. He was waiting for his host,
Victor Ballau.
Except for the crackling of the burning wood, the room was still. Cowled
shadows reared witch-like shapes across the walls and ceiling.
It was night outside. Wind quarreled with the stone buildings. Removing
his eyes reluctantly from the burning logs, De Medici glanced at the
darkness of the empty room. He studied the shadows with frightened eyes.
He was a curious man of thirty. An aristocratic ugliness marked his
face. The long, thin nose, the high cheek-bones, the wide, inanimate
mouth and the green-tinted skin gave him a lithographic rather than
human air. His black hair was cut in a straight line across his
forehead. He wore it unparted in such a manner that it made an almost
square frame for the elongated rigidity of his face.
A striking and bizarre figure, poised, precise and seemingly of another
world, he lived chiefly in his eyes. They were narrow and black,
symmetrical to a point of artificiality. But under the parenthesis of
the brows lived a startling man.
From the carved chair before the burning logs, De Medici studied the
shadows. He disliked darkness and empty rooms. Shadows frightened him.
Opened doors chilled him. Yet his immobile face smiled derisively.
“Fear,” he thought. “It’s like a disease.”
He smiled again as if amused at the emotion disturbing him.
“Ghosts,” he continued to himself. His eyes were on the opened door in
the shadows at the end of the room. “Ghosts walk around inside me.”
And he fell to thinking of an old subject—of the ghosts that prowled the
mysterious corridors of his soul.... De Medici—ah, what a name! A
sarcophagus of evil....
He recalled with a shudder the excitement of the critics who had written
about the opening of his play at Victor Ballau’s theater two weeks ago.
One of them in particular had given him a bad hour. A discerning
fellow.... He remembered the critic’s phrases:
“... and now a De Medici turned dramatist. What a name to conjure with!
One needs no genealogical chart to assure one that here in Julien De
Medici writing plays for Broadway is a descendant of those monstrous and
evil adventurers whose villainies once illumined the courts of
Europe....”
De Medici smiled at the memory of the words.... A bit redundant and in
the grand style affected by romantically hungry puritans writing for the
press.... He continued recalling the review:
“For here again is the De Medici touch. Prince Julien, who witnessed the
premier of his first drama—‘The Dead Flower’—is a gentleman of exemplary
habits and enviable charm. But in this play to which he has signed his
name lives again the sardonic evil which once made empire builders of
his family. A dreadful humor pervades this amazing work. Its characters
are etched with a Satanic deftness refreshingly new—for the stage....
Prince Julien of Broadway has borrowed the soul of his
great-great-great-grandmother, with which to write his first drama....”
The burning logs exploded sharply. De Medici sprang to his feet.
“Damn!” he muttered. “It’s the door.”
Walking swiftly across the shadowed room he shut the thing he fancied
had frightened him. Yes, opened doors in a dark room, even a lighted
room, always chilled him. They reminded him vaguely of something—of
winding corridors, of hidden things waiting beyond them. He would sit,
slowly terrified, watching an opened doorway, as if awaiting something,
as if straining to catch a sound of clanking and wailing....
His earliest memories were those of fears. Windows, silences, doorways,
darknesses, lights far away, candle-light in a mirror, winds howling,
hidden noises—these were things of which he had been in terror as a boy.
It had been that way with his father, the Prince Julien of the Paris
ateliers—an indifferent artist, a violent-tempered, black-haired man who
had died at forty, his name a byword even to the decadent aristocracy
that postured futilely among the memories of France.
Years after his death De Medici understood the tragedy of the man who
had been his father. Rake and scoundrel, he had died raving in drink. A
memory of debauches and black deeds had survived him. But as he grew
older the De Medici son understood. These nightmares that bloomed in the
recesses of his own thought, these terrors that animated the depths of
his nature, had been his father’s legacy as well as his own. And,
despairing of the ghosts whose whisperings darkened his life, the elder
Prince Julien had fled. Drink, women, excesses—scenes of glaring lights
and crazed laughter—these had been hiding-places. The notorious De
Medici of the Paris ’90’s had been no more than a frightened refugee
fleeing an inheritance.
Left alone in the care of a senile uncle, the boy Julien had stumbled
upon a different direction for flight—literature. He had come into his
estate at fifteen. At eighteen he had chosen America. France was too
familiar. Its ancient roads, the dark corners of Paris, the very air he
breathed haunted and frightened him.
Now, after twelve years, he had matured into a nervously brilliant man,
engagingly cynical, egoistic as a child and subtle-minded as a Jesuit.
Among his friends he was regarded with deference. His name, his manner,
his genius combined with his wealth attired him in an unassailable
superiority. They found him, however, neither arrogant nor perverse,
despite the startling and often horrible plots and ideas which came from
his pen. None, not even his few intimates, had ever intruded upon his
secret, had ever glimpsed behind the charming and stenciled smile of
Prince Julien, the “Borgian” ghosts that pantomimed in his soul.
The offending door closed, De Medici returned to his chair. He yearned
to turn on the lights of the room. With the cheerful glare of the
electric bulbs the dim terrors assailing him would vanish. But, as
always, he treated himself to this discipline—a refusal to humor the
senseless fears of his nerves. He folded his hands and smiled,
regretting his action in closing the door.
A step in the corridor leading to the room lifted the tension under
which he sat. Victor Ballau at last. Yet he waited, apprehensive, as the
step approached, as the door slowly opened. With the familiar figure of
his friend standing in the far glow of the fire, however, De Medici’s
nervousness vanished.
He stood up to greet his host. There was no longer hint of fears about
him. His narrow eyes smiled. His teeth glittered in the wide mouth as he
laughed.
“Toasting myself like a martyr at your fireplace, Victor,” he said.
The two men shook hands. Ballau was a man of fifty-five, gentle-spoken,
restrained of manner and, in his very bearing, a connoisseur of life.
His hair was gray. He was tall and stood erect.
“You made quite a picture by the fireplace, Julien,” he said. “Gad, you
get to look more and more medieval. Florence come in yet?”
“No, thank Heaven.”
“Hm.” Ballau looked at his friend. “Shall I turn on some lights?”
“Nicer this way,” De Medici answered. “I’m in a soft and romantic mood.”
Ballau sat down. The two lighted cigarettes. De Medici puffed calmly.
“You see,” he said, smiling at his host, “it’s the first chance I’ve had
of getting you alone in a week. You’re an elusive parent.”
Ballau nodded. “What’s happened?”
“Love,” murmured De Medici. “A corroding and devouring passion.”
Ballau studied his cigarette.
“It’s hard to believe you’re serious, Julien,” he said. “Florence?”
“An observant father. I congratulate you, Victor.”
“Well, what do you want of me?”
“And modest. The parent ideal! Your consent, of course.”
“This, my dear Julien, is so sudden. And then your old-fashioned tactic
of appealing to the usually negligible parent is somewhat alarming.”
“The fact that you’re her father,” De Medici answered, “is a matter of
secondary importance, come to think of it. What I’ve chiefly come for is
advice.”
“My advice,” Ballau answered softly, “is, of course, marry the gal and
live happily ever afterward.”
“Thanks. But there’s another thing. Her going on with her acting.”
“Tut, tut,” the older man smiled. “Give her her own way. I should think
it an excellent arrangement. With ‘The Dead Flower’ going over as it is
you should be able to turn out at least one play a year and keep Madame
De Medici employed under your auspices.”
“Thanks again.”
“That being settled,” Ballau sighed, “we might as well have some
light—and a glass of cognac. I walked over from the theater and I’m
rather cold.”
De Medici turned as the door opened. Jane, the gaunt and hollow-eyed
housekeeper, was standing on the threshold.
“Glasses,” murmured Ballau.
The woman nodded and, with a glance at the guest, disappeared. De Medici
frowned to himself. This was another of his obsessions—an aversion to
silent people. Servants invariably irritated him. Their closed mouths,
their waiting eyes, their inscrutable inferiorities disturbed him.
“I’ll be back in a minute,” Ballau announced as the footsteps of the
woman died away.
Alone, De Medici smiled. Phantoms no longer disturbed him. He sat
thinking of Victor Ballau. A curious man. Almost as curious as himself,
perhaps. Debonair, prosperous, cultured. Yet something odd about him. He
had made an actress of his daughter—not a difficult task. The luxurious
figure of the young woman intruded on his thoughts. Vivid as a macaw,
with a feline slowness in her gesture.... “Ah,” he sighed, “she is a
color I need. I grow brittle and antique. She will enable me to live.”
For a lingering moment he contemplated the emotions that the image of
her had stirred. Tenderness, self-amusement, and an overwhelming
loneliness. “As if I were lost away from her,” he mused, “as if I were
sick and bewildered for some place to go....”
Then his musings returned to her father. Yes, a curious man. A
background of tapestries, rare books, antique collections and a
chattering circle of poets, dancers, painters, connoisseurs. A quixotic
fancy for the theater, he had achieved distinction out of his failures,
producing deftly written comedies of manners and dramas of mood that
never ran. Yet the theater with its rigmarole of intrigue, gamble, women
and craftsmanship was another part of Ballau’s background.
But an exterior Ballau, he mused. There was something else about the
man, and this thing whispered itself always to De Medici’s sensitive
imagination. This man of the theater whose apartment was the haunt of a
Sybarite, whose cavalierly manner was the envy of a hundred bon vivants,
was, paradoxically, a puritan. A charming and unmalicious puritan.
“A man of taste,” thought De Medici, “wealthy and with an infatuation
for beautiful things.... I’ve seen him rave before a Titian ... yet no
women. Intrigues shadow him. Beauties pursue him. And still he remains a
baffling and graceful Galahad where one looks with certainty for a Don
Juan. It would be hard for him to dissemble—surrounded by so avid a pack
of scandalmongers.”
De Medici nodded to himself. There was something else about Ballau—the
quality toward which his own peculiar nature responded always with
readiness. Secrecy—veiled things that lurked behind the smiles of men
and women, furtive lights that came to their eyes when they grew silent
... he had felt this quality in Ballau. It had, in fact, precipitated
their comradeship.
His thought could place no words on it, but his intuitions led him
toward a mystery—an unknown Ballau, a jealously guarded stranger who
lived a secret life behind the debonair and gentle exterior of the man
he knew.
“I’ve been thinking it over,” Ballau began talking as he reëntered the
room carrying bottle and glasses on a tray, “and I’ll supplement my
advice, Julien. Let the minor details adjust themselves. If you’re in
love with Florence, the thing to do, I fancy, is to tell her so.”
He seemed flushed as he placed the tray on a table. He was smiling, but
De Medici noticed that his fingers trembled.
“Love,” the older man continued, “is a rare and everlasting flower....”
He paused and closed his eyes. De Medici noted the darkening pain that
passed over his features. Ballau, however, continued once more in a
light voice:
“I should avoid making your proposal of marriage to her a discussion on
economics or a debate on whether a woman’s place is in the home ... or
on the stage. You can settle all that after you’re married with just as
much indignation and dissatisfaction to you both as you can before the
ceremony.”
De Medici, fascinated by the nervous hands of the man, laughed.
“Yes, I think you’re right,” he answered. “With your permission, I’ll
deceive the young lady and save up my debates for some future breakfast
table.”
“To a gay and worthy happiness for you and her,” said Ballau, raising
one of the glasses.
His voice had grown soft, but his eyes, as De Medici smiled back to him,
turned away. The young man replaced his glass and, despite himself, felt
again the curious presences that had haunted him a half hour before ...
presences that awoke always under the influence of symbols—opened doors,
darkened windows, lights gleaming in mirrors ... and enigmatic faces.
“There’s something else,” whispered itself in his thought, and for a
moment he stared fearfully at the averted eyes of his friend. Then,
recovering himself, he said:
“Shall we go down to the theater for the performance?”
Ballau shook his head.
“I’d rather read,” he answered. “And, besides, from now on I feel I’d
only be in the way.”
“Nonsense!” De Medici smiled. “I’ve a clever idea for making love ...
and I’m not at all averse to an enlarged audience....”
Ballau smiled refusal and De Medici bowed slightly.
“I’ll see you to-morrow then,” he said, and walked from the room.
Victor Ballau stood for moments alone in his library. His eyes traveled
caressingly over the luxuries that surrounded him. Beautiful things ...
beautiful things ... his eyes and fingers invariably grew alive in their
presence. Carved chairs that had once beckoned the vivacious and
swashbuckling bodies of Florentines, Englishmen and Castilians. Books
within whose covers the strange dreams of men had yellowed. Prints and
cabinets, hangings and trinkets all breathing an air of romantic
beginnings, survivors all of vanished splendors and obsolete dramas. He
stood gazing around him.... The great centuries whispered out of the
ornamental litter of the room.
Lowering himself into the chair in which De Medici had sat, Ballau
opened a book. His eyes, however, were unable to keep to the print. They
closed as if in revery and again the weariness and pain that De Medici
had noted, darkened his face.
An hour later, Jane, gaunt and hollow-eyed, appeared in the doorway.
“Mr. Ballau,” she said in a dull voice.
He opened his eyes and stared at her in confusion. He had been dreaming.
“Will there be supper after the theater tonight?” she asked.
“No, Jane,” he murmured. “You can turn in.”
His eyes, haunted and preoccupied—as furtive and veiled as the eyes of
the man who had sat in the chair before him—followed the slow-moving
figure of the housekeeper as she walked out of the doorway.