For a strange moment his heart seemed to fling itself blissfully toward the image of a woman smiling grimly, dagger in hand, in the opened doorway of his room. His eyes stared at blankness while an inner vision beheld her—Florence in a trailing robe ... Florence with her black hair smoothed and bound with a gold band, with a dagger lifted and a dark smile wavering over the cruel face.... He sprang to his feet, a cry in his throat. The doorway was empty. He stood shuddering before it, afraid to look beyond into the darkened hall, cowering before the shadow of a chair that stretched against the wall. Something had passed—a shadow had passed. With hands grown moist, he walked stiffly forward and closed out the empty space. He was alone in the room. He stood still listening, as if there were noises to overhear. His eyes shifted about the vacancy of the room. They turned furtively from the unoccupied chairs to the empty bed. “Fear,” he murmured. “It traps me ... a disease....” In the fully lighted room De Medici flung himself with a sob on the bed. CHAPTER V QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS In which the world wags its callous tongue—In which dénouements thumb their noses at each other—In which Julien De Medici succumbs to a delicious madness—A Jesuitical policeman and an ambitious coroner flirt coyly with an Enigma. There was an inquest. Newspaper headlines bombarded the mystery. The grateful press panted ecstatically on the trail of clews, conjectures, romances, and revelations. A crowd filled the street in front of the fashionable Park Avenue apartment building. They stood watching officials and the spotlighted figures of mystery enter. The Ballau apartment itself was thronged with witnesses and friends of the dead man. Coroner Holbein had taken charge of the investigation and official gathering of evidence. The famous Ballau library had been converted into a courtroom. The melodrama of the “Crucifix Mystery”—an identity provided by some of the papers—had a setting worthy of itself. Six men summoned at random to serve as a coroner’s jury sat nervously in the Renaissance chairs that had been lined up in front of the fireplace. Coroner Holbein had taken his position behind a work-table introduced from another portion of the house. At his right side sat Lieutenant Norton and Dr. Greer. In front of the coroner stretched an assortment of chairs occupied by friends of the dead man. The newspaper men, expectant of revelations, bristled nervously about the officials. Coroner Holbein opened the inquest with a brief address to the jury. He was an oracular man. It was his habit, when speaking in the presence of the press, to indulge in rotund medico-legal sentences. The six blinking jurymen listened with an air of ponderous sagacity. Neither they nor the coroner seemed definitely aware of what was being said.