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.