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.