“I expected one of two things out of my visit,” he announced. “I knew what sort of creature had killed Ballau.... It had left its marks in every detail. An amazing murder.... A slow, painful, and yet fiercely executed crime. Like the handwriting on this letter paper. The eerie footprints of hysteria. They were all over the deed. A soul writhing in the depths of a crazed sleep.” “He is quoting from his paper on somnambulism,” mused De Medici. His eyes remained on the doctor’s face. Lytton had settled back in his chair. His wrathful and nervous manner had given way to a pedagogic air. Yet as he talked his eyes peered through the lowered lashes at the immobile figure of De Medici. “The dual personality was obvious, Julien. But, ah, whose? And the obvious answer was—yours. The dagger—a relic of De Medici evil. The blood-stained hands. I learned this from Norton. Florence’s confusion. Her concealed evidence. To protect you, of course. I talked to her after you had taken her to the theater. You remember, the inquest morning?” “What did she say?” De Medici whispered. “Mad. You were mad. But I needed no diagnosis from her. Mad you seemed. And very clever, too clever at the inquest. A curious balance of sincerity and evasion. And the two hours between eight o’clock and ten o’clock that night he was killed. Where had you spent them? Yes, a walk in Broadway. But you never walk, my dear Julien. Do I remember correctly? The purse gave me my first definite conviction, however.” “And now your theory is?” De Medici prompted him quietly. “The letter has ended it,” Dr. Lytton replied. “Florence Ballau and not Julien De Medici.” “But I may have written it myself,” De Medici murmured; “written it, sent it from Rollo, Maine ... to myself ... evidence to exonerate me.” “I thought of that,” smiled Dr. Lytton. “Except that you couldn’t have known I would be here tonight. The letter is authentic. And the rest unravels itself.” He beamed at the masked eyes of his host. “Dual personality, as we know it,” he continued, “is a dramatic disease. Yes, the phenomenon of disassociation.... People are seldom born with dual personalities except in the most neurotic of cases. Ordinarily they acquire them. In pathology, dual personality cases belong to the ill-defined border-land between sanity and insanity. It is for that reason that I have been inclined to ridicule your own obsessions, Julien. Dual personalities are not inherited. Bad blood may breed disorders. But the charming Jekyll and Hyde pose you have been trying to wish on yourself is, scientifically, absurd. Are you interested, Julien?” “Yes.” The two men sat facing each other out of the shadows of the velvet-hung room. The candles burned motionlessly.