He paused a short distance from the old woman. She had come to a halt in front of a decrepit house. The blousy street was alive with noisy, dirty-faced children, fat women and foreign-looking men. The old woman peered about her for a moment and then moved toward the evil-looking shack. De Medici watched her body disappear slowly down a flight of basement steps and hurried forward. As he arrived, she entered the lower part of the house through an ugly-looking door. He could hear her lame step thumping in the distance from the foul-smelling hallway. It was dark. De Medici hesitated as a door opened. The woman had vanished behind it. He walked carefully down the stretch of dark hall and, locating the door, knocked. There was no answer. Turning the knob cautiously, he opened the door and entered. A startling scene greeted him. He found himself in a disordered room dimly lighted by a single window that rose to an alley. The place was heaped with clothes and strange pieces of furniture that crowded each other against the wall. Over a half hidden table the old woman stood bent, eagerly unwrapping her package. “Hello,” De Medici remarked. “Sorry to disturb you.” The old woman wheeled around. Her little black eyes blazed at the intruder. “Get out ... get out!” she cried stridently, raising the heavy cane menacingly. She advanced toward him in a fury. De Medici retreated. “I just wanted to talk to you for a moment,” he added calmly. “Get out! Get out of my home,” screamed the old woman. His hand caught the cane as it descended toward his head. “Come now,” he smiled at her, “I’m not here for anything except to ask you a question. I saw you at the Ballau auction and followed you here. I was a friend of Mr. Ballau. I wanted to talk to you.” The creature’s attitude changed. She looked at him in silence and lowered herself into one of the many chairs that crowded the dimly lighted place. De Medici nodded gratefully. “I followed you because you bought that candlestick,” he continued. “I wanted to ask you why you bought it.” The old woman nodded and repeated his words with an elated cackle. “Ha, why I bought the candlestick!” She paused and beamed at him. “Nobody else got the candlestick....” “An eccentric,” De Medici murmured. Her ugliness and sinisterness had given way in the moment to a childishness. Aloud he said: “I’m very much interested in that candlestick ... and the other one, its mate.” “Yes, the other one!” the woman exclaimed. “They didn’t have it. My, my! I couldn’t get it. I wanted them both, but they had only one.” She looked at her visitor, and then cocking her head to a side, inquired: “Well, well ... so you were a friend of Victor Ballau. Ha, sit down, young man. Sit down.” De Medici obeyed, his mind busy with ways in which he might surprise whatever secrets from the old woman that lay behind the wrinkled witch’s mask of her face. She sat rubbing her hands together nervously and regarding him with brightened eyes.