THE DAGGER OF MIST
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.
Night covered the streets. De Medici’s expressionless face nodded an
attentive punctuation to the talk of the pathologist as they left the
police station behind.
“Two and two,” Dr. Lytton was saying exuberantly. “The thing evolves
into an ABC of logic. Poor child, poor child. You guessed it, too, eh,
Julien? Well, it was easy. Anybody but a policeman would have seen it.
But what acting! What consummate acting! The voice, the centered eyes,
the collapse! A wonderful woman, Julien.”
“Why did she do it?” De Medici asked.
“Why? Hm—to beat us at our own game,” Dr. Lytton laughed. “To confuse
us, bewilder us, give us no trail at all where there had been the
beginning of a trail. Her hesitation over the name Floria. Her inward
struggle. Ha, what a complicated fool she must take me for! But, thank
God, it happened. For the thing now suddenly comes into the domain of
logic. Yes, we’ve done everything but think. Simplicity is always the
soul of mystery. For instance, it was obvious to me five minutes after
Miss Ballau entered the room that she was as normal and straightforward
a nature as any I have ever seen. There is not a hint of the neurotic
about her. Healthy, keen, vivacious and an actress. Good Lord, what an
actress! The mock trance she went into was superb.”
“You’re convinced it was pretense?” De Medici asked.
“Absolutely,” Dr. Lytton answered. “And now we’ll begin with the first
letters of the alphabet. Simplicity, dear Julien. Elementals that we’ve
overlooked. First and finally, Florence Ballau and Floria are not one
and the same. The handwriting ... bosh! The similarity is too strained.
The Floria notes were not written by Florence Ballau. Yes, I stake my
life on it, Floria and Florence are two different persons.”
“Ah,” murmured De Medici.
“You may sneer,” Dr. Lytton cried, “but wait. We’ll drop in at your
rooms for a while. I’ve almost made up my mind to something.”
They walked in silence to De Medici’s home. Once more the two men seated
themselves in the room of the wine-colored velvets. De Medici had
inserted fresh candles in the holders.
“Now we can discuss our little lesson,” Dr. Lytton smiled. “You may
interrupt anywhere and any time you wish, Julien. First we have this
fact. Let’s look at it. The arrest of Miss Ballau in New York City
yesterday morning established the probability that Miss Ballau was not
in Rollo, Maine, yesterday morning. This makes it evident that Florence
Ballau didn’t mail you the theatrical little note you received a few
hours ago from Rollo, Maine. There’s the stupid theory she might have
left it for someone else to mail after she’d come on to New York. Bosh!
Involving a confederate, which is one thing against it. But ... let us
remain simple and look at things easily. Florence Ballau goes to Rollo,
Maine. And after twenty-four hours she returns to New York. And after
another twenty-four hours she returns to her apartment and is arrested
trying to destroy a letter. A letter signed ‘Floria’ and written by the
same hand that sent you your warning, Julien. Do you follow me?”
“Yes.”
“It becomes obvious at once,” continued Dr. Lytton, “that Floria is not
a myth. Miss Ballau risks detection to destroy notes this Floria has
written. Why does she do this? Ah, how easily the answer comes. To
protect this Floria. Yes, it’s been obvious from the first that Miss
Ballau knows a great deal either about the murder itself or the
incidents surrounding it.
“To be brief, Julien, the girl knows who killed her stepfather and,
knowing it, she is going to all lengths to hide the facts from the
police. She will even allow herself to be suspected of the crime and the
motives, which must nauseate her, in order to have the murder fastened
on her ... for the time.”
“Yes,” whispered De Medici softly. His hands moved restlessly in his
lap.
“So what do we discover?” exclaimed the doctor. “Merely a very simple
thing. Miss Ballau is sacrificing her liberty and reputation to protect
someone. And, mind you, this someone murdered a man of whom she was very
fond and to whom she owed her success in life.”
“You have ... a conclusion?” De Medici asked softly.
“Not a conclusion,” Dr. Lytton laughed. “An inevitability. Whom does she
protect? Her mother. The thing answers itself. Her mother, of course.
Miss Ballau is trying to save her mother from being arrested for the
murder of Victor Ballau. And Miss Ballau’s mother is the Floria who
baffles us. And I think if we caught a train tonight we would find this
Floria hidden away somewhere in Rollo, Maine.”
“Will you go?” De Medici asked gently.
“And you?”
Dr. Lytton fixed his excited eyes on his friend.
“I would rather stay near Florence,” he answered.
“Very well.” Dr. Lytton stood up. “Of course the unexpected may upset
us. One must always keep one’s mind open to the unexpected and study it
and resolve it automatically into the expected. But at this moment I am
convinced that Rollo, Maine, is the end of our search.”
De Medici appeared to galvanize into sudden activity.
“Excellent, Hugo,” he cried. “I’ll telephone. There must be a train
leaving before morning. It’s only eleven.”
He busied himself raising the railroad information clerk on the wire.
“She leaves at eleven thirty,” De Medici cried, hanging up. “Just enough
time for you to take it. Gets in to Rollo or somewhere near Rollo at
daybreak.”
“Thanks.” Dr. Lytton looked at him. “I’ll take it. And you’ll probably
hear by telegraph from me before noon.”
The two men shook hands.
“Calm, now,” Dr. Lytton smiled.
De Medici was bustling him out of the room. “Good-by,” he called, “and
good luck.”
“Thanks,” said the doctor. For a moment he hesitated, his eyes
questioningly on the elongated face of his host. Then with a shrug of
his shoulders the pathologist walked away in the direction of the Grand
Central station.
De Medici returned to his room—the room of shadows and pointed candle
flames where a few hours before the intolerable vision had sent him
sprawling in horror at the curtain edge. Sighing, he seated himself in
the chair. Thank God, the prying, restless eyes of his friend were gone.
He was alone. He could breathe, think, allow telltale expressions to
play over his face. All without fear ... of what? De Medici shook his
head. His finger nails scratched at the side of his chair. In response
to this curious summons, the curtains over the door stirred. A new
shadow swayed across the floor.
The lithe, black body of a cat approached the scratching with
stiff-legged caution. De Medici watched the animal pause in the center
of the room, its back languidly arched under the yellow candle rays. Its
eyes burned in the half dark—two tiny crosses green and phosphorescent.
“Ah,” murmured De Medici, staring at his pet, “I must be wary.” He
laughed. “Fool! And what do you think, Francesca?”
His hand stretched toward the waiting cat. It approached and stood
nearer his feet. Its burning eyes seemed fastened on his. He sat silent,
watching the animal.
“Yes, it begins again,” he whispered. “Her back arches. Her hair
bristles. Fright, wavering terrors, move through her subtle veins. Look
at her. She sees something. What? God ... me. Her eyes become a burning
mirror for the unknown....”
He paused as the cat, obeying mysterious impulses, grew tense, its back
bristling with inexplicable fears, its little, pointed teeth gleaming
behind drawn lips. Standing thus for a moment, it recoiled suddenly from
the figure of De Medici and spat.
“Ah, Francesca,” he murmured aloud, “my little mirror in which unseen
ones spit back at me. He said there was nothing ... nothing. Minor
hallucinations. Yes, a reassuring diagnosis. Yet, who knows me? When I
know nothing myself, who can see?”
He hesitated again and then smiled tiredly at the retreating animal.
“Not I, Francesca. No, it was another. I’ve committed no murder. The
ghosts that wander inside ... did they escape that night? No, I remember
nothing ... nothing like that. It is all dream ... dark dream that
embroiders my soul with grewsome and ghostly patterns. Guilty! Yes, I
felt guilty. The detective’s eyes. And then Hugo.... The dark dream
cringes under memories. But there was no duality. No, it was not I. Yet
to others and to myself I act the part of a murderer. I grow furtive. My
words became cautious. As if ... yes, as if I were feeling my way
through guilty memories. The logic of illusion, nothing else. No demon
haunts me. No masked stranger rises evilly and exultantly in my body.
No, Francesca, they sleep too deep. They stir too feebly. They throw
only shadows ... shadows that mock and frighten my eyes. Hm, shadows
whose dim fingers wrestle with my throat. But these shadows are not
I.... He was right ... ideas with which I hypnotize myself. An obsession
that the past lurks unburied in me.... A curious curse of imagination
that sent my father bellowing to his grave. But I have a brain! Do you
hear, Francesca? I have a brain. It flashes out like a rapier and
decapitates these demons at which you, in your enigmatic ignorance,
spit, little cat. Do you see something moving behind the eyes of your
master? Illusion, Francesca, it exists not.
“Foolish little cat, last of the terrified scientists for whom chimera
was reality. You cling to this science of demonology. Your dark and
theatrical little soul, Francesca, delights in the quackery of terror.
What an immemorial fraud you are! Come closer ... let me look into your
Basque eyes. See, nothing. My reason disarms you.”
The animal turned and walked slowly from him. At the door, its head
twisted back and its eyes glittered for a moment like green and
enigmatic questions. Then, with a leap that startled the shadows into
motion, it vanished through the doorway.
“If not I,” mused De Medici, holding his gaze to the candle flames,
“then, as he says, the mystery grows simple. Neither I nor Florence. But
someone whom she protects. Again a finger points at me. But would she
protect me? No, not as she does. Her mother. Yes, he was right. But what
sort of a woman must this be for whom she sacrifices so much? Something
odd about the Ballaus. He was a strange man. Secrets lived in him. His
mask was more charming than mine, more simple. Because the secret was
not his own, not a part of the fiber of his ego. But a knowledge of
something. I remember. It grimaced wearily behind the debonair smile. It
spoke at times out of his eyes. He was tired, sad, and ridden by a fear
of something. The bon vivant, the connoisseur, was a tenacious
masquerade. There was suffering in him. I remember. Yes, his austere
silences. His fingers escaping his will, trembling ... and his smile
that grew gentle and dull. And his virtue. His phenomenal virtue. No
women in his life. Hugo wondered about that. I, too.”
De Medici’s thought grew dreamy and impersonal. His keen and deciphering
brain played with the mystery of Ballau and his death.
“He had a wife,” his thought resumed. “Yes, and she killed him. Why?
Revenge ... an obsession for revenge. The Floria letter was mad.... And
the note Florence tried to burn ... mad, too. That time I found Florence
looking as if she had seen the devil.... That had something to do with
it. With her mother. Hm, bad news. Intimidating news. And Ballau called
her up that night at the theater to tell her again this kind of bad
news. What? Let me see. ‘Yes ... yes ... Oh, God!’ Her words on the
phone. Then it was information that didn’t surprise her. Or she would
have asked a question, she would have said, ‘when,’ ‘how,’ ‘what,’
‘why.’ Any question. So it was something she expected and dreaded. She
wept the morning I left her after the cab ride. A secret saddened her,
too. A thing she shared with him.
“I see now. He called her up to tell her the woman had appeared; to
hurry home. It was the evening of our party. Disgrace.... And she
answered, ‘Yes ... yes....’ She would come immediately. Therefore it was
a terrible thing for her mother to appear. Why was it terrible? Obvious.
Something wrong with her mother. Mania ... the dagger signature was
mania, too. So she flew home. But too late. The camouflage.... Florence,
of course. Hiding a trail. The costume on the fire escape.... A foolish
move. Her mother’s, however. But why a costume? Hm, thirty minutes,
perhaps forty.... Long enough to get the woman away. And when she had
done this she rushed out and screamed.... The dagger on the letter—yes,
a maniacal creature who fancied herself persecuted, wronged by poor
Ballau, her husband.”
He felt tired. The room had grown chill. Rising, he blew out three of
the candles and walked with the fourth to his bedroom. Here he turned on
lights. He stood before the massive, curtained bed.
“I’ll sleep,” he mused. “And tomorrow I’ll go see her. I’ll talk to her
of her mother.”
It was a late April night. De Medici walked to an opened window. The
panorama of city night spread below him.
“Steel beast with too many eyes,” he muttered.
“It was better once.... Hm, in the days of my charming forebears.
Cloaks, and rapiers ... sinister-lipped smiles, wine-drenched feasts ...
brocades and marbles ... incense and velvets ... witches, poisons,
intrigues and a laugh of youth over the world. Ah, the Renaissance ...
it lives in me still. A Bacchanal and a hymn of lust, pride, power ...
their shadows whimper inside me....”
Undressed, he drew the curtains of his bed half together.
“They shut me out,” he murmured drowsily, staring at the dark hangings.
“And I can dream more easily....”
... He had been asleep. Now his eyes opened. Terror stiffened his
muscles. There was a noise. A foot was gliding over the rugs. Slowly,
softly.... His thought dwindled.... “I’m awake ... awake....” He lay
trembling. Someone was moving toward his bed ... a figure outside the
curtains that hid him. Murmurings, creaks, far-away noises came to his
frantic ears. But above them the gentle pat of a foot growing louder.
His throat suddenly dried and the skin on his body moved. A hand was
drawing aside the curtains.
“Francesca mia,” whispered itself feebly through his brain. But the hand
was real. Either that, or he was mad. No shadows, but a figure.... Or
was he mad? An apparition. But this time it did not pantomime out of the
darkness. It drew closer, its head billowing out the hangings. A
woman!... He lay stiff and silent. A woman with hair hanging. Her eyes
gleamed out of the dark....
“Hey!” he cried. But his motion had come too late. The dark figure’s
hand lunged at him. He felt the steel of a knife burn in his flesh.
Blood gushed across his eyes. A laugh, high-pitched and exultant, rang
in his ears. He fell back and lay motionless....