Read Ebook: The Florentine Dagger: A Novel for Amateur Detectives by Hecht Ben Smith Wallace Illustrator

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Ebook has 1739 lines and 52822 words, and 35 pages

"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 re?ntered 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.

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.

New York on a spring morning.... A leap of windows toward a gay sky, a carnival of windows, windows fluttering like silver pennants, unwinding in checkerboards and domino lines. A deluge of signs, a sweep of acrobatic advertisements, a circus of roof tops and a fanfare of stone, the city flings itself into a glittering panorama. It stands in bewildered pantomime. Gigantic and amazing, it hovers like an inverted abyss over a wavering pavement of hats.

De Medici turned his eyes from the trumpeting geometries of the skyscrapers and looked at the young woman beside him.

"We're an intrusion," he said close to her. The crowds drifted tenaciously around them. "Paolo and Francesca," he smiled, "murmuring in Bedlam. Can't we go somewhere?"

His lean face regarded her dreamily as she answered:

"The morning is wonderful."

"The morning is a nuisance," he demurred. "But you! Beautiful--yes, your eyes are like gardens, night gardens. Come, we'll go somewhere. We'll take a cab. I want to talk to you in a gentle and persuasive voice."

The young woman, Florence Ballau, nodded. De Medici stared excitedly at her. Her presence delighted and warmed him. An amazing woman. She wore her youth like a banner. Her gypsy face under a blue toque stamped itself like an exotic flower on the gray and yellow background of the crowd. Her lips were parted, her deep eyes were laughing darkly.

De Medici restrained the ecstasy that threatened to start him stammering. She was tonic. Her body, luxurious and vibrant under the silver cloth of her dress, bewildered him. He was in love. But more than that, the flamboyant life of the girl, the gay and dominant poise of her manner, her voice, her head, exhilarated him in a curious way. A sense of awe came to him as he studied for an instant the exotically masked vigor of his companion. His own subtle and convoluted nature prostrated itself blissfully before her vivid dominance.

"Let's go to father's office," she said. He found it difficult to object. Nevertheless he blurted an objection.

"Impossible."

"Well, why not just walk to the park and sit down?" she persisted.

De Medici shook his head.

"Damn it all!" he exclaimed. "I'm going to make love and I don't want a lot of fat policemen walking up and down in front of me or a parade of squirrel-feeding old maids staring rebukefully. I've set my mind on a cab. It's distinctly modern."

"But a fearful waste of money," the girl smiled.

"Ah," De Medici murmured, "then you do love me."

"Of course," she answered.

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