MURDER
In which Julien De Medici collides with a tantalizing corpse—In which
a dagger, a candlestick, a crucifix, and a false beard mumble
incoherently.
Promptly at ten o’clock that night De Medici walked distractedly into
the stage entrance of the Galt Theater. He had spent the day in a fever
of expectancy. A memory had followed him like an offensive companion.
“She was crying when I went away. She stood looking after me and wept.”
He had watched Florence unseen by her during the few minutes she
hesitated white-faced and weeping in front of the theater after his
farewell.
“I’m a fool,” he argued with himself. “She was excited, overwrought. She
loves me. And perhaps there’s something she’ll tell me later.”
He had offered his services to his friend Ballau after dinner.
“There’s nothing you can do except mess up things,” Ballau remonstrated.
“I suggest a long, fatiguing walk.”
He had smiled kindly and De Medici, unable to dissemble his cat-like
nervousness, had blurted out:
“I find it almost impossible to wait.”
“The guests will be here around eleven,” Ballau had answered. “Go walk
around till then and don’t get run over or fall down any manholes.”
Entering the theater, De Medici looked around the back stage quickly for
a glimpse of Florence. The wings were crowded with actors and actresses
waiting the rise of the third-act curtain.
“Where’s Miss Ballau?” he inquired of Cort, the stage manager.
Cort, a sour-looking man with the disillusions and sophistications of
his profession stamped on his face, turned angrily.
“Oh, hello!” he said, noticing De Medici. “We’ve had the devil of a
time.”
De Medici looked at him uncomfortably.
“Miss Ballau had to leave,” went on Cort.
“Leave! What do you mean?”
Cort swore softly.
“We’ve had a time of it for the last fifteen minutes. Miss Ballau got a
telephone call at the end of the second act. It knocked her out. Refused
to go on with the show. Said it was impossible. And we’ve gotten Fedya
Gratin, the understudy, to finish the last act.”
De Medici listened in amazement.
“A telephone call,” he repeated. “Where did she go?”
“I don’t know,” growled Cort. “All I know is she left us in the devil of
a mess ... and lit out of here like a streak, make-up on and everything.
Wouldn’t stop to change or listen to reason....”
“Did she say anything?” De Medici interrupted.
The news had left him unaccountably sick at heart. He made an effort to
remove the fears that were clouding his thought and to conjure up a
logical reason—a calm reason—for her departure. He turned desperately to
the manager, who had started to move off.
“Wait a minute. What did she say on the telephone?”
“Nothing,” answered Cort. “I couldn’t get what it was about. She said,
‘Yes. Yes. Oh, God!’ hung up and was out of here before anybody knew
what had happened.”
De Medici dropped the man’s arm and hurried from the theater. In the
dark alley he paused and stared nervously about him. The darkness
frightened him. Strange glints were in his eyes. He ran his long fingers
over his forehead and shuddered. Something had happened!
He sat thinking as the cab hurried him to the Ballau apartment.... “She
was crying this morning after our ride ... there was something curious
about Ballau ... he wanted to get rid of me....”
A sense of relief came to him when the cab drew up before the ornate
apartment building in Park Avenue. As he stepped out he noticed quickly
that the scene was calm, that inside the marble lobby the stiff figure
of the doorman stood—a symbol of quietude and elegance.
Entering the building, he nodded to the man at the door and walked
quickly to the elevator at the rear of the vestibule. As he approached,
the filigreed door of the self-operating elevator cage clicked and was
thrown open.
Florence Ballau, her eyes wide with horror, staggered out. She stood
looking wildly till her eyes encountered De Medici. She stumbled toward
him with a shriek.
“Father ... father,” her voice filled the marble interior. “Murdered!”
De Medici held the girl in his arms. An inexplicable calm had taken
possession of him. He regarded the scene aloofly—the hysterical girl,
the suddenly galvanized doorman, the ornamental brass work of the marble
vestibule.
“Something has happened,” he said quietly to the man as he came running
forward. “Call the police. Send them up to Mr. Ballau’s apartment.”
She moaned his name as his arms held her. But a curious caution had
entered his thought. Half carrying her, he entered the elevator and
turned the automatic starter to Floor 5.
The white enameled door of the Ballau apartment was open. De Medici
supported Florence across the threshold.
“Get a hold of yourself,” he whispered to her. She raised her eyes in
amazement. His voice, cool and soft, held a tone she had never heard.
Florence pointed toward the library and watched him walk to the door. He
turned the iron knob and stood looking into the room he had quitted a
few hours before. Before him was the famous Ballau library converted
into a curious wreck. Chairs had been overturned, books scattered and
ripped in half, vases smashed, pictures torn from the wall and
destroyed. An air of incomprehensible and sinister disorder hovered in
the dimly lighted chamber.
De Medici’s eyes traveled from detail to detail. He had sat in this room
a night ago, staring at the burning logs, his thought darkened with
fears—fears of an opened door, of the shadows that wavered behind his
chair. But now facing the grewsome scene, his eyes lost their
furtiveness. He moved with soft, quick steps to the body of Victor
Ballau. Stretched on the floor in his black trousers, patent leather
pumps and dress shirt lay his friend. The face was staring at the
ceiling. A red stain circled the shirt front and from the center of the
stain protruded the ornamental hilt of a dagger. A large, black crucifix
had been placed above the wound.
[Illustration: {uncaptioned}]
De Medici knelt beside the man. He was dead, his eyes were open and
filled with the same gentleness which had characterized them in life.
“Murdered,” he whispered.
He continued to kneel as if under the influence of a fascination. The
dagger hilt with its medieval pattern, the black crucifix, and the inert
white face with its familiar features held the glittering eyes of De
Medici. Strange impulses stirred in him. He shuddered.
“I am not afraid before death,” his thought was saying. “It arouses
something in me.... Murder ... murder....”
His mind repeated the word.
“I grow calm before murder,” he went on thinking swiftly. “Something
grows calm inside me.”
His fingers reached slowly toward the dagger hilt.
“De Medici ... De Medici,” he murmured half aloud, and sprang to his
feet. His face had become white. His eyes burned as if with fever.
Florence and Jane, the housekeeper, were standing dumbly in the doorway.
De Medici stared at them.
“Who did it?” he asked.
Florence shook her head and wept. Her hands were on her cheeks and the
look of horror he had noticed as she stumbled out of the elevator had
returned. He moved quickly to her side and placed an arm around her
shoulders.
“The police will be here in a minute,” he said. “What happened?”
She answered still in tears, her eyes centered.
“I don’t know. I came home early. I had a headache. Jane let me in.”
Her weeping overcame her.
“I opened the door,” she gasped, “and saw ... this. I screamed, and Jane
came running from the kitchen. I don’t remember anything else until I
saw you downstairs.”
De Medici caressed her shoulder and turned to the housekeeper.
“What happened?” he asked.
The woman regarded him with terrified eyes.
“I don’t know,” she wailed. “I was in the kitchen making sandwiches and
I didn’t hear anything until Miss Ballau screamed and I came in here and
saw him ... there....”
She pointed to the body and began to weep.
“Oh, he was such a good man.”
Three policemen in uniform entered. De Medici turned to them.
“Mr. Ballau has just been murdered,” he said quietly. “He’s in the
library.”
The three men nodded and walked to the open door of the disordered room.
“Is there any other door to this place except here?” one of them asked.
“No,” said De Medici. “The library faces on the street.”
“There’s a fire escape.” Florence came forward. She pointed to the
window. “It runs past there.”
The policeman nodded.
“We’ll take charge till the chief comes. Don’t allow anybody to leave
the house and don’t touch anything.”
Jane, the housekeeper, sat motionless in a chair, weeping softly, her
apron to her eyes. De Medici stood regarding the woman he loved. Her
tears had stopped. A question was in his mind. Who had telephoned? And
what had brought her home so precipitously from the theater? But the
question remained unspoken. He stood with his arm around her asking
nothing, thinking nothing, and watching the door.
It opened and a thick-set middle-aged man with reddish hair appeared.
“Lieutenant Norton,” he announced himself.
De Medici nodded and extended his hand.
“I am Julien De Medici,” he said. “Mr. Ballau has just been murdered.”
The lieutenant looked at him closely. Two detectives followed the
lieutenant into the room.
“Where is the body?” Norton asked. De Medici indicated the library. The
lieutenant addressed his assistants.
“Stay here, Jim,” he said. To the other he added, “And you come with me.
Wait here, Mr. De Medici—with the ladies, if you please.”
“Come, we’ll sit down,” De Medici whispered. Florence shook her head.
“I feel as if I could go mad,” she muttered.
De Medici recalled the flushed, laughing face of the girl who had ridden
with him through the park. Her eyes had filled him with a sense of
worship. Aloof, darkly laughing eyes. Yes, it had been an overwhelming
moment when the arrogant gypsy loveliness of the young woman had
yielded.
“But it was I who yielded.” He stood thinking and regarding her averted
face. “A desire to prostrate myself. I remember. Curious ... curious.
And now she’s stopped weeping. When the lieutenant came in she changed.
She’s thinking of something. She’s taking hold of herself. The telephone
call—the rush from the theater. It’ll have to be explained. Her father
is dead. But there’s something else more important even than her grief.
Her eyes avoid me....”
De Medici’s eyes caught a glimpse of his fingers. They were reddened.
His thought continued:
“Blood on my hands. Incriminating. I reached over and touched the dagger
and stained my fingers. Poor Ballau. And yet I felt no grief when I
kneeled there. I felt something else—as if all this had happened once
before. Yes, the body, the dagger, the crucifix seemed familiar. I was
calm. I knew what to do. Ah, De Medici blood. Centuries pass and it
still flows unchanged in me. Yes, why not admit it? Something exulted in
me at the sight of the room, the dim lights, the murdered man. There was
no fear, no nervousness. But a strange feeling of familiarity. And then
a revulsion. I routed the exulting De Medici phantoms. And now what?
Trouble. A telephone call. She’ll tell lies. Her face is already a lie.
Stern, poised, ready to fight for something.... What a woman! Yes, I’m
more in love than before. Her eyes are like a shrine for something in
me. They overpower me. My mind evaporates.”
De Medici reached suddenly for her hand.
“Florence,” he whispered, “remember ... regardless of anything—I adore
you.”
Fifteen minutes had passed and Lieutenant Norton appeared.
“I’d like to see you,” he said, nodding at De Medici. He followed the
detective into the room. For a second time the amazingly disordered room
confronted him.
“I’ve made a hasty examination,” Norton began. “I’ve also sent for Dr.
Greer, the physician for our squad. He’ll be here shortly. In the
meantime we can talk over a few things. When did this happen? I mean
exactly. Do you know?”
The eyes of the detective rested on De Medici’s stained fingers as he
spoke. De Medici held his hand to the light.
“Hardly evidence,” he answered the man’s unspoken question. “I got that
on my fingers when I kneeled over the body to look at the wound.”
Norton nodded. De Medici continued and repeated the scant information he
had at his command—starting with the appearance of Florence Ballau in
the vestibule of the apartment.
“Hm,” muttered the detective. Then after a pause, “I see. Nothing much.
Did you notice what he has in his hand?”
He pointed to the dead man and De Medici bent over the body. He stared
with surprise. The fingers of Victor Ballau were clutched around a
short, pointed false beard—a black Vandyke.
“It was a man, then,” De Medici murmured.
“You thought it might have been a woman?” Norton asked quietly.
De Medici shrugged his shoulders. The lieutenant appeared to forget his
question and continued, “There’s also this thing here.” He indicated a
heavy brass candlestick whose body was ornamented with carved salamander
figures twining toward its mouth. It contained an unlighted candle and
stood to the left of the dead man’s head.
“Was that lighted when you came in first?” Norton asked.
“No,” said De Medici. “I would have noticed it.”
“The top is still a little warm,” the detective explained, “and you’ll
notice two or three tallow drippings on the rug there. It was burning
less than a half hour ago.”
“Have you any idea how the murderer escaped?” De Medici asked, raising
his eyes to the detective.
“I’m not certain yet,” Norton answered. “But I don’t think he has
escaped.”
De Medici nodded slowly. The man’s words had started a strange panic in
his brain. He waited until his voice felt clear and then spoke.
“Hadn’t we better search the house, then? He may have gotten away down
the fire escape. It leads past the window.”
Lieutenant Norton stared thoughtfully at the lean-faced, cold-spoken
young man. “An odd fellow,” he repeated to himself, “nervous and
high-strung as a woman. Frightened out of his wits. And yet calm—yes,
calm as a dead fish.” Aloud he said:
“I don’t think a search is necessary. Of course it’s too early to say
anything definite, but my first impression—and they’re usually the
best—is that there’s been no murder. Mr. Ballau committed suicide.”