“A brain,” he thought. “It plays with a delightful puzzle. He knows something.” There flitted through his mind the memory of Dr. Lytton’s accomplishments.... An exuberant modernist among the pathologists of the country.... “He came here to corroborate something,” he continued musing: “He suspects that I and not Florence did the murder. Yes, an obvious and romantic theory. Even Norton played with it at the inquest. I turned De Medici for a moment and killed a man.... Inherited homicidal mania ... hm.” “An odd thing about Ballau,” Dr. Lytton was saying. He had seated himself and was copying something from the program. He talked cheerfully as he wrote. “A man like Ballau without a breath of scandal about his name. Rather strange, don’t you think? A lover of beautiful things. Unmarried, with no restrictions. And yet not the sign of a woman or of an affair in his life. I’ve talked to a dozen people who knew him as well as I did. All collaborate on a halo for the man. And thereby hangs an idea. Virtue, no less than vice, has its pathologic mainsprings, eh?” His eyes beamed excitedly over the program. “Twelve names in the cast,” he continued. “I’m taking them down. Names are always something. A name is a beginning. Did you tell Florence of this?” “Yes.” “And she grew excited,” pursued Dr. Lytton as he finished his writing. “Did you mention the Goldsmith Theater to her?” “No.” “She wanted the thing back, eh? Come, what did she say? How did she look?” “As you said,” De Medici answered. “Excited. Disturbed.” “This was before she left town?” pursued Dr. Lytton. “Of course.... You saw her after the inquest. She left that night.” “I didn’t know,” De Medici murmured. “Yes,” Dr. Lytton continued, “she went to a place called Rollo, in Maine. A curious out-of-the-way little village. I found this out the next day. She had had her trunks shipped there. The grief and excitement, I suppose. And a desire to get away.” “I didn’t know,” repeated De Medici uncomfortably. So she had gone away! A bewilderment came into his thought. He recalled her rage that had ended their talk in the theater. The blow she had struck and her anguish. Remorse and tenderness overwhelmed him, and a feeling of self-revulsion. What a scoundrel! Playing with evil dreams while her heart was breaking. “No one ... no one,” she had wailed. Yes, he had abandoned her. Become a useless and fantastic actor in the hour she needed him. And she had fled....