“She walked to me and collapsed in my arms. I dragged her to the bedroom and removed the costume. She lay in a heavy sleep for a few minutes. I washed the rouge from my face. My mind, as you can imagine, was not entirely clear. I didn’t know what to do with things. I was obsessed only by the desire to protect her, to save her. And I must have thrust the ball gown out of the window on the fire escape. But I didn’t remember doing it when you came. She lay sleeping and I knew she would sleep for at least ten minutes. I went into the library and then I must have lost my head. I had an idea fixed in my mind of misleading the police with false evidence. All I could think of was to make it look as if a terrible fight had taken place. I pulled a lot of books down, cut a few pictures, and turned over some chairs. I remember blowing out the candle and seeing the beard in father’s hand. I was going to remove it but thought it would be better to leave it there because it would increase the mystery and baffle the police. I thought, too, that the police would figure out he’d been attacked by a man and had torn the false beard from his assailant’s face. I didn’t think of the gum mucilage that might show on his own chin. “You see now, Julien, why I couldn’t tell you anything, why I had to keep still and lie and muddle things up. It was for his sake. I kept feeling how he would feel if anything happened to her—if exposure overtook her. I was desperate and the thought that it was you who seemed intent upon unmasking the thing that we had kept so hidden for so long drove me wild.” “I understand,” De Medici nodded. “After I’d fixed up the library,” Florence continued, “mother awoke. I told her that she’d fainted and she said yes, she knew she was subject to dizzy spells. She got dressed and went out to the kitchen to go on with her work and I went into the library and screamed. She came running to me and I told her father had been murdered. She remembered nothing, of course, of what had happened. I impressed upon her that I had just come in and found her fainting, but that she should not tell that to the police because it would look bad for her; that she should just tell them I had come in and screamed. You recall the first story she told. And the time Lieutenant Norton asked her whether she had seen anybody else in the apartment and she said yes, she had seen a man with a black beard, I was standing just outside the door. For a moment I thought it was all over and that the lieutenant had hypnotized poor mother or something and was going to learn the secret from her. But she evidently recovered herself and the Floria that almost spoke in the library that time remained hidden.