"The Poe Shadow" - читать интересную книгу автора (Pearl Matthew)

14

THE NEXT DAY, I pressed Duponte on why he had so easily agreed to the Baron Dupin's demand that he refrain from talking to witnesses. It would now be a race to gather information, and we could afford no encumbrance. I was anxious to know Duponte's plans to combat the Baron.

"You intend to deceive him, I suppose? You will, of course, speak to persons who know something of Poe's last visit?"

"I shall remain quite faithful to my pledge. No, I will not interview his witnesses."

"Why? Baron Dupin has done nothing to merit your pledge. He has certainly done nothing to claim any witnesses as his alone. How shall we possibly understand what happened to Poe if we cannot speak to those who saw him personally?"

"They will be useless."

"But would their memories not be fresh from the time of Poe's death, which was but two years ago?"

"Their memories, monsieur, hardly exist at present, but are subsumed by the Baron's tales. The Baron has infected the newspapers and the whispers of Baltimore with his sophistry and craft. All actual witnesses will have become tainted, if they are not already, by the time we would be able to locate them."

"Do you believe they would lie?"

"Not purposefully. Their genuine memories of those events, and the stories they can tell from them, will irrevocably reshape themselves in the image of the Baron's. They are as much his witnesses now as though he has recruited them into a trial and paid them for testimony. No, we cannot gain very much beyond the most basic facts provided by those witnesses, and I suspect we will gather that information through the natural course of events."

You'd probably guess that Duponte was a formal sort of person. You are right and wrong. He did not subscribe to rules of manners and meaningless pleasantries. He smoked cigars inside the house, regardless of who was in the room. He was inclined to ignore you if he had nothing to say, and answer with a single word when he felt it was sufficient. He was in a way a fast friend, for he was your companion without any of the usual rituals or demands of friendship. However, he always bowed and sat with absolutely correct posture (though upon standing there was a noticeable slant of the shoulders). And in his labors he was most strict and serious. In fact, it made you quite uneasy to interrupt him when he was at all occupied. It could be the least important task imaginable, it could be stirring oatmeal, but it would seem leagues more critical than anything you might have to say to break his concentration were the house burning down around his ears.

Yet he grew attached to some of the strangest frivolities. When he was out on the city streets, a distinguished gentleman with a fancy cravat fastened in voluminous folds exclaimed aloud that Duponte was the queerest specimen of man he had ever seen. Duponte, taking no offense, invited the man, who was a painter of some renown here in Baltimore, to share a table with us at a nearby restaurant.

"And tell me your story, dear sir," said the man.

"I would gladly, monsieur," replied Duponte apologetically, "but then there is the likely danger that I would have to hear yours."

"Fascinating!" said the man, unruffled.

The man expressed his eagerness to paint Duponte. It was soon arranged that he would call at Glen Eliza to begin a Duponte portrait. This seemed to me quite absurd considering our other occupations, but I did not object since Duponte was fervent about it.

Rather than coming to find me in the house when he had something to say, Duponte would often send one of the servants to me with a note. Glen Eliza was large and rambling but not so terribly mammoth as to require a messenger through its corridors! I did not know what to think when a servant first handed me the note, whether it was done out of the height of sloth or an excess of concentration.

The times when we ventured out of the house and into public establishments, Duponte refused to be waited on by slaves without paying them some small amount. I had seen instances of this over the years when visitors from Europe came to Baltimore, though during extended stays custom would soon wear down their finer sensibilities and the habit would gradually cease. Duponte's action, however, was not out of any sentimentality, I believe, nor a point of principle, for he had said that more people are slaves than realized it and some far more enslaved than the blacks of our South; rather than sentimental reasons, Duponte did this, he said, because service without payment would never be as valuable to either party. Many of the slaves would be extremely grateful, others timid, and some strangely hostile to Duponte's subsidies.

At Glen Eliza, we had difficulties with the domestics I had hired upon my return from Paris. No doubt, our peculiar practice of sending letters from the parlor to the library made extra work for them, though this was not the only source for discontent. Many of my servants immediately rebelled against Duponte. One colored girl, in particular, a free Negress named Daphne, occasionally refused to wait on him. When I asked Daphne for the reason, she said that she thought the houseguest most cruel. Had he ever abused her? Scolded her for a mistake, perhaps? No. He had hardly addressed her at all, and when he did he was very polite. Something was not right, she said, nonetheless. "He is cruel. I can see it."

In between household duties, I called on Hattie's house more than once without success. Peter's pessimistic remarks about rectifying that situation had rendered me quite anxious. Her mother, who had always been of delicate health and in her bed when not away recuperating in the country or at a spring, had been further debilitated over the summer. After a stay by the seaside, she was now largely confined, which meant more duties for Hattie. It also gave Auntie Blum fuller swing over the household. Each time I called, a servant would inform me that neither Miss Hattie nor Auntie Blum was present. Finally, I was able to speak with Hattie one day as she was ascending a carriage outside her house.

"Dear Hattie, have you not received my notes?"

Hattie glanced around and spoke stealthily, leading me away from the gates. "You must not be here, Quentin. Things are quite different here, now that Mother has been worse. I am needed by my sisters, my aunt."

"I understand," I said, fearing that my endeavors had only added to the strain that had fallen on poor Hattie's shoulders. "Of our plans…I need only a bit more time…"

She shook her head, silencing me. "Things are different," she repeated. "We cannot speak about it now, but we will. I will find you when I can, dear Quentin-I promise. Do not speak to my aunt. Wait for me to find you."

Noises came from the house. Hattie directed me to return to the street and make a hasty exit. I did so. I could hear Auntie Blum (and could almost hear the wide bird feathers I pictured in her hat ruffling, too) ask in her big tones, "Who was that, dear girl?" I kept my back to them and quickened my stride, having the distinct feeling that if I turned to look back, the older woman inside the carriage might direct her driver to flatten me.

At Glen Eliza, the portraitist, Von Dantker, sat across from Duponte with his array of canvas and brushes spread on a table. Duponte remained giddy about the prospect of this artistic creation. The hotly temperamental Von Dantker sternly admonished Duponte to remain still, and so only the analyst's mouth moved when we conversed. When I commented that this was not a very polite manner of holding a conversation, Duponte claimed he was all attention and that he wished to see if he could divide his mind into compartments of concentration. At times it was like speaking to a living portrait.

"What would you say truth is for the Baron, Monsieur Clark?" Duponte asked pointedly one evening.

"How do you mean?" I asked.

"You asked him whether he seeks the truth. Surely truth is not the same for everyone, as most people think they have it, or desire to have it, and yet there are still wars, and there are professors who daily overthrow each other's hypotheses. So what is it for him, for our friend the Baron?"

I considered this. "He is a lawyer. I suppose in law, truth is a practical matter, thus one finds the practice of indiscriminate advocacy on either side in which one is retained."

"Agreed. If Jesus Christ had kept a lawyer by his side, Pontius Pilate might have been swayed that his judgment could be reversed for defect of form and so settled on a lighter sentence, and the restoration of the human race would have been interrupted. Very well. Then if it is in the language of the law that Baron Dupin speaks, truth is not that which is likely to have happened, but that for which he can present proof as likely having happened. These are not the same. In fact they are hardly related and should never be introduced to one another."

"How should we know if the Baron is inventing his proof in relation to Poe's death?"

"He might try to manufacture it, indeed, but likely with some small basis in reality. If he intends to publish a popular account of his dealings on the matter of Poe's death, as suggested, and intends to gain by lecturing on the subject, he cannot afford to be so easily discredited by using lies out of whole cloth, Monsieur Clark. After all, we saw from the Parisian newspapers that he wished his creditors to know his plans to return with enough financial resources to free himself from their attention. He is relying on this to protect him from their plots against him. He shall require facts-even if he compels some portion of them into existence."

Duponte continued to remain on the grounds of Glen Eliza most of the time, often engaged in disagreements with Von Dantker over whether he remained sufficiently still. Duponte displayed for the artist the strangest sort of half smile, with points sharp as knives carved out at the corners of the mouth.

Sometimes I excused myself from the house on an errand; these excursions were most of all sacrificial offerings to my nerves. Earlier that year, the post office had begun delivering the mail, for an extra fee of two cents, and so I had no need to call at its offices. I described the operation of our postal services to Duponte and for a few moments he seemed acutely interested in the topic, before quickly settling back into his air of distraction. I always looked first at the mail for something unexpected: perhaps, even, a last letter written to me by Poe, if it had been misplaced or lost, and now recovered. Duponte did not receive any letters.

But one morning of note, as I started out, a messenger delivered a trunk. It had the same shape and color as one of the trunks Duponte had brought from Paris. This surprised me, for I had believed Duponte's baggage all at my house. But he seemed to expect the object's arrival and waved his acceptance to me.

I explored the newspapers myself each morning before adding them to Duponte's collection. Despite all the sudden attention to Poe's death, there was nothing like any real scrutiny in the newspapers, only rumors and anecdotes. In one, there was a new explanation about the loose-fitting and ragged clothes in which Poe had been discovered.

"This newspaper says that it has been suggested to the editor-by Baron Dupin, I have no doubt-that Poe's clothing, which were not his own, had constituted some sort of a disguise!"

"Of course, monsieur," said Duponte, using his eyeglass but hardly reading the article.

I was startled. "You have already thought that?"

"No."

"Then how is it you respond to me by saying, ‘Of course'?"

"I mean to say, ‘Of course the paper is quite mistaken.'"

"But how do you know that?" I asked.

"Newspapers are almost always quite mistaken about everything," he said. "If you should find one of the tenets of your religion in type on the sheet, it is likely time to reconsider your form of God-worship."

"But, monsieur! You have spent the better part of every day reading the newspapers at my library table! Why waste all that time?"

"You must notice their errors, Monsieur Clark, in order to advance to the truth."

I stared at him until he continued.

He arched his eyebrows in a particularly French fashion. "A demonstration. Take this matter of Monsieur Poe's garments that your paper mentions. The Richmond Observer has lately written that Poe had, some days before his arrival in Baltimore, inadvertently switched his own walking stick with the Malacca cane of a friend in Richmond, one Dr. John Carter. In the same paper we read-in a burlesque error somewhat different from the equally erroneous disguise camp-that Poe's clothes were stolen and had been replaced in a robbery during his time in Baltimore. To place the garments in the central position of importance, because they are easily visible to those who found Poe, is to subdue reason to fancy."

"How do you know, without further information, that the clothes were not stolen in this way?"

"Have you ever heard of a thief stealing one's clothes-rare enough-and then replacing the clothes of a victim with other dress? An idea only someone who is not a thief could devise. The editors have merely taken the most common scenario against a visitor, a robbery, and altered it to match the end results without regard to likelihood. At all events, the special quality of the borrowed cane alone tells us it is most unlikely."

In the newspaper article to which Duponte had referred, the Observer reported that Poe had visited Dr. Carter and, after playing with the latter's new Malacca cane, took it with him by accident. Carter also speaks of the fact that Poe left an 1819 volume of Thomas Moore's Melodies in his office. "But this says nothing more in detail about the cane than that it is ‘Malacca.' How, from that, do you determine that it has any special quality?"

Duponte had already moved on to a new topic. "Would you," Duponte said, "bring me the trunk that arrived just this morning?"

I was perplexed, and a bit irritated, that this request would interrupt our discourse, particularly since I had already stored the trunk in Duponte's chambers. I went upstairs and then wheeled the trunk from there down into the library where we sat. Duponte instructed me to open the lid. I did. My eyes widened at what I saw.

I bent down and reached in with reverence. It contained one object lying at the bottom of the trunk. "Is this…?"

"Poe's cane. Yes."

I picked it up cautiously in both hands and said, with wholly renewed wonder at my guest, "Duponte, how in the world-? How has Poe's cane come to appear in your trunk?!"

Duponte explained. "Not the actual one carried by Poe at the time of his death, but the very same kind, we can be sure. That the cane Poe borrowed was identified as ‘Malacca,' as you have just read, revealed quite more than its wood. I guessed that a finite number of canes were sold in America from that specific palm, which grows on the coasts of the Malay Peninsula, out of the beaten track. On my walk the other day, you will remember I said I stopped at some stores. I found from speaking with sellers of walking sticks that my guess was correct: there were but four or five chief selections of canes available made from Malacca in Baltimore, and likely in Richmond, as well. I purchased one of each. Then I emptied one of my trunks and sent the canes with a messenger to the Washington College Hospital, where Poe died, along with a note to Dr. Moran, the physician who attended to Poe. It explained that a shipment to Richmond had been mixed up with other canes, and kindly requested him to identify the one cane that had been held by Poe and return it here."

"But how did you know Dr. Moran would have sent such a shipment to Carter?"

"Oh, I did not suppose he had, which is why he would not have found my request odd. More likely, Dr. Moran sent all the effects to one of Poe's family members-possibly your acquaintance Neilson. He, in turn, would have attempted to return articles to their respective owners. As gratitude for the favor, my note to Dr. Moran made a gift of the other three Malacca canes I sent him. As I hoped, Moran has sent me one back. Do you find anything special about the cane, Monsieur Clark?"

"If Poe were assaulted in a robbery," I said, realizing its significance, "the thieves would surely have taken a stick this fine!"

"You have come closer to the truth by finding what is false." Duponte nodded approvingly. "And now this cane is yours."

My next errand in the city-to where, I cannot now remember-was also a good excuse to make use of my new walking stick. It was a very handsome ornament. It even inspired me to lend more attention to my dress, and I employed the deliberation of a statesman in selecting a hat and a vest that complimented the new accessory. Several representatives of the kinder sex, both younger ladies and those who watch after them, looked upon me with visible approval as I went through Old Town.

Oh yes, the errand-it was to two dronish men who had left word for me to call on them about various investments I held through my father's will. With a delay in the planned expansion of the Baltimore amp; Ohio Railroad to the Ohio River, various interests were affected, and they passed on to me a thick portfolio of papers that required my review. Naturally, I'd had little time during all else that was happening to peruse these papers very meticulously.

I found myself that afternoon again in the neighborhood where Poe was discovered on the third of October 1849. I decided to walk to the establishment, Ryan's hotel, where Poe had turned up in poor condition. I thought about what might have been done or said at that time-to save Poe, or at least to reassure him-in those crucial moments now two years ago.

My melancholy reverie was interrupted with shouting from around the corner. There was nothing of much consequence about stray noise in the streets of a city like Baltimore, where rattling fire engines and hollering continued through the nights and sometimes erupted into riots between rival fire companies or against groups of foreigners. But this lone scream, crackling like the death aria in an opera, sent chills straight through me.

"Reynolds…!"

"Reynolds!"

It was the word Poe had cried out in the hospital as he died.

Now, remember where this cry found me. Standing before the spot where Poe was removed to his hospital deathbed. Think of my disorientation, as though I had suddenly been lifted into someone else's life-someone else's death.

I crept forward. It rang out once more!

I turned onto the next street and stepped into the shadows of a narrow passage between two buildings, closing in on the sounds. A short man wearing spectacles and a morning coat walked right by, sending me jumping back, and now I recognized the voice of the man chasing him.

"Why, Mr. Reynolds!" the pursuer boomed out.

"Leave me be, won't you," replied the man-well, now we are free to say replied Reynolds.

"Good sir," protested the Baron Dupin, "I must remind you that I am a special constable."

"Special constable?" Reynolds repeated doubtfully.

"For the British crown itself," the Baron said patriotically.

"British crown!" Reynolds exclaimed. "Why would it harass me? To hell with their crown then!"

"Is deep concern a sort of harassment? One is the very opposite of the other. I wish only to know the full story, for your protection." The Baron Dupin grinned. He spoke in his usual dashing fashion; he was not in his shaggy disguise this time.

"But I haven't a story to tell anyone!"

"You don't realize you have one yet. My dear Reynolds, there are parties who are quite interested in how events came off that day, as you have seen lately in the newspapers. Your public reputation, your livelihood as a carpenter, your family's good name could be in jeopardy if the truth is not sufficiently extracted first. You were there that day at Ryan's. You saw-"

"I saw nothing," said Reynolds. "Nothing out of the ordinary. It was an election day. There was debauchery, of course! The year before, there was a large fuss over the election of sheriff-both sides with their supporters. Election days are rather wild in Baltimore, Mr. Baron."

"Just ‘Baron,' dear fellow. Poe called urgently for ‘Reynolds' as he lay dying in his hospital room." So the Baron had discovered that, too. "Do you not think that is out of the ordinary? Shall we say extraordinary? Was there some reason he would remember your part in his last hours?"

"I do not remember meeting any Poe there. You may ask the other judges. I insist you pardon me."

I leaned out far enough from behind the wall that hid me to see the Baron's face after Reynolds walked away. The Baron remained standing in place. His smile was contorted, as though he had tasted something sour or had just stolen Reynolds's wallet. (Would it have been surprising if he had?) In all his activities, the Baron looked smugly victorious. Though he was a disgraced attorney fleeing from creditors-and though now Reynolds wanted nothing to do with him-the Baron was generally confident in his prospects.

Standing alone in the street, the Baron ran his tongue over his lower lip several times, as if to slick up for future eloquence. His face and bearing looked dead when he was not barking, or cooing, at someone. His gears and pumps had to move constantly. The glimmer of his intellect shined out as he muttered one word to himself. This word:

"Dupin!"

He grinded out the word "Dupin" as though it were a curse. It no doubt seems strange for a man to jeer his own name in this way, much like punching oneself in one's own chin. It is less strange, perhaps, if you think about it not as his name, but his heritage and legacy that he admonished. The Baron, however, was the type to see himself as culminating rather than offshooting all that had come before him. When asked who were his ancestors, he might, like Emperor Napoleon to the royal potentates, reply: "I am an ancestor."

No. His imprecation of "Dupin" was directed at neither himself nor his family. The Baron meant to conjure up none other than the figure of C. Auguste Dupin. The persona over which he sought to prove paternity, authority. Why did he murmur in this way about the literary Dupin? This deception to which he had clung since my first meeting with him in Paris, that he could be the real Dupin, was now a specter too powerful for him-and this he could only admit, if at all, when completely alone, as he thought he was now on the street. He could not argue or intimidate or mask himself as the real Dupin, as he was used to doing in life and law. He either was, or was not. There was a desperation to the scene, a vulgarity to it. I thought perhaps he was conceding something there, preparing to cave in. I was wrong.

I leaned against a post supporting the awning of a daguerreotyping establishment. Soon, a carriage that I recognized drove up the street. It was the same hackney cab that had been waiting for the Baron and Bonjour the other night. I could only imagine how the Baron had cajoled or threatened the original coachman to gain private use of the carriage. Bonjour stepped down. The same lean, light-skinned black man sat in the driver's seat. I learned later that the Baron had secured the service of this slender slave still in his teen years, whose name was Newman, to drive and deliver messages for them. He had told Newman that if he performed well, he would purchase the slave's freedom from his master.

Bonjour quietly reported to the Baron, in French, that at nightfall "we meet him at the Baltimore Cemetery." That was all I could hear.

I returned to Glen Eliza and pulled the city directory from the shelf. The Baron Dupin had revealed that the "Reynolds" in the street with him was a carpenter. In the directory, the entry for the beguiling surname with that occupation and an address close to where I saw the two men read thus:

REYNOLDS, HENRY, CARPENTER, CORNER FRONT AND LOW

What could this inconspicuous carpenter I had seen in the street have had to do with Poe? The one sort of person who never employs a carpenter, after all, was someone traveling, as Poe had been in Baltimore. That I could know without the aid of ratiocination. And this particular Mr. Reynolds himself had denied seeing the poet.

I thought more about the Baron Dupin's comments on the street. He had implied that Henry Reynolds had been with Poe in Ryan's, had witnessed something. I sat thinking gravely about why this Reynolds might have been with Poe in his hour of misery, and how the Baron would know…

There was mention of the election. "Election days are rather wild in Baltimore, Mr. Baron." And the "other judges." Reynolds had been at Ryan's, perhaps, in some connection to the elections, since Ryan's was used that day as the Fourth Ward polling station. I burrowed through our collection of newspapers. I stopped when I found the Sun from October 3, 1849. That was the day when Poe was discovered in Baltimore in "shocking condition," as one of the papers had said, at Ryan's.

There, in the political department of the newspaper, was the name "Henry Reynolds," on a page with a long list of Baltimore 's election judges, men who administered the oaths to voters and oversaw the polls. Reynolds was one of the election judges for the Fourth Ward's polling place, Ryan's hotel. This was Reynolds's local poll. That explained why the Baron had been hounding him so close to Ryan's-it was right near where the carpenter lived.

I was burning to speak aloud about my discovery. But if I told Duponte, I would certainly be reproved. He would repeat, philosophically, his previous pronouncement that we not speak to witnesses. "We can ascertain everything we need obliquely," he would say. Besides, the Baron Dupin had already spoken with Reynolds, he would reason; the Baron had contaminated him, not to mention most other persons in Baltimore.

I repeated silently to myself that Duponte was the world's most eminent analyst, that my contribution should be nothing more ambitious than providing for his needs. Yet, now I could not stop myself from thinking who him might be-the man the Baron and Bonjour were to meet on the dangerous grounds of the Baltimore Cemetery tonight according to what I had overheard. I could not help but wonder this, and wonder whether their rendezvous touched the subject of Reynolds. When darkness fell, I excused myself for some air.

I secured a coach and rode through the streets into a northeastern quarter of the city where one would prefer to have daylight. Closing in on the Baltimore Cemetery, my carriage came to a choppy halt. The horses pulled and quivered.

"Driver, do you not have control over the horses?" I asked.

"No, sir, I suppose I do not."

"Stop here! I will walk the rest of the way."

"Here, sir? You'll walk here?"

I would have asked myself the same question if I were not so guided by a need to know more about the Baron. I stepped hesitatingly through the gates of the graveyard and stayed at the perimeter, as close as possible to the nearest light at Fayette and Broadway.

I spotted the Baron's carriage ahead and kept enough of a distance to be safely concealed by the night. I could see that a heavy package was being transferred into the vehicle, and then another figure disappeared into the dark of the cemetery. Though I was careful not to be noticed by them, I was taken with a rush of panic when their carriage started to drive away from the cemetery. I had no wish to be alone in this kingdom of the dead after dark (no Baltimorean would), and I scurried along with the grace of a rodent.

Now hurrying to the right of the graveyard, I followed the sounds of the carriage toward the Washington College Hospital -the hospital where Edgar Poe had been brought from Ryan's hotel, and where he had died. This large brick building, with its two severe towers hovering above, was hardly less dismal than the neighboring burial yard. In fact, not long after Poe's death, the faculty of the college had decided the location was too inconvenient to the center of Baltimore, and there was now only sporadic use of the building as a hospital. The college, overstraining its financial resources with new locations, was now attempting to sell the barren edifice and its property.

The Baron's carriage was parked nearby. I found the gates to the hospital yard locked.

"No more bodies!" a voice shouted at me, from a front window of the building.

I ignored this strange pronouncement and was testing the gate again when the caretaker appeared once more in a state of agitation.

"We don't need no more bodies! We got a fresh one in!"

Newly deceased corpses were used by the doctors to instruct their students in the practice of surgery. The resurrection men would furtively sneak into cemeteries and use an iron rod with a hook on the end to pierce a hole in a coffin. These fishermen of bodies would catch the corpse under the chin and pull it up from the ground, sometimes only hours after it had received a respectful burial. The proximity of this cemetery to the college hospital made it an especial target for the theft of bodies. Few persons even of the bravest constitution would venture near the Baltimore Cemetery and Washington College Hospital at night, for it was said that sometimes, when no fresh corpse was to be found, passersby would be kidnapped and made to suit the purpose-earning the kidnappers the usual ten-dollar award from the doctors.

"You heard me now? No more bodies." The face squinted from its place in the window.

"My apologies, sir," I said.

He retreated inside. I paced along the fence until I found a section lying flat in the mud and stepped over this. The street door to the hospital building was still unlocked from the recent entry of the Baron Dupin and Bonjour.

This division of the hospital seemed empty. It was much colder in here than outside, as though the old building congealed and chilled the air. I jumped every time there was a noise, thinking the caretaker had heard me come in and would nab me, but soon I realized that the windows and doors up and down the giant structure were slamming from the wind.

I climbed the stairs cautiously and upon reaching the third floor heard garbled voices from above. It sounded like the Baron and Bonjour were speaking with someone in a fourth-floor lecture room. However, the stairs curved right past that room, and as the door to that lecture room was open, I could not ascend the stairs without them seeing me. Meanwhile, I could hear their conversation only faintly.

I have told you, said an unfamiliar voice.

I surveyed my surroundings. If I could not raise my position quickly by some means other than the stairs, my aim would be lost. There did not seem to be a rear staircase. There was, however, a closet filled with barrels. Removing two of the lids in search of some helpful tools, I gasped to find them filled to the top with human bones.

Growing despondent at having come so far to no avail, I soon found a hollow shaft in the wall that seemed like a sort of oversized dumbwaiter. Though it was pitch-black in the shaft except for the light that dripped in from each floor, I reached inside and, fortunately enough, could feel there was a hoist and pulley. It rose up from below and continued above-right up to the lecture room. A stroke of great luck, it seemed.

Finding that my body fit with surprising ease into the passage, I placed my hat on the ground and then wrapped my legs as tightly as I could around the rope and inched upward by pulling on the opposite end of the rope. The air was noxious and stale. I tried my best not to look down at the three stories below as I approached the fourth floor. The conversation became clearer with each small advance upward toward the lecture room.

The man who was with them had a loud voice, almost as theatrical as the Baron's.

"And now the newspapermen have been dunning me about it. Why we must speak more of this, I cannot see."

"The particulars," Bonjour said calmly. "We need all your particulars."

"You see," Baron Dupin continued Bonjour's thought, "we are close to understanding exactly what happened to Poe on that singular day he was brought to you. You, Brother Moran, shall be the hero in a tale of injustice."

An intrigued pause in the exchange. Meanwhile, I looked around at the narrow and dark tunnel enclosing me. When I groped the wall for balance, it was slimy and cold. Then a pair of red eyes appeared in a crevice along the wall and a rat, alarmed by my hand on its hiding place, extended itself toward me. "Choo, choo," I pleaded with the rodent. Its horrific blood-red stare nearly caused me to slide back down, but my determination to hear more allowed me to climb closer to the voices.

The bit about being a hero seemed to enlarge Moran's voice as he continued. "Edgar Poe was brought in the afternoon of a Wednesday, around five, sent by hack. The driver assisted me in lifting him out. I paid him myself."

"Was there nobody else in the coach other than Poe and the driver?" asked the Baron.

"No. There was only a card from Dr. Snodgrass, the magazine editor, informing me that the man inside was Edgar Poe and required assistance. We gave him a very comfortable room on the second-floor tower with a window facing the courtyard. He was unconscious of his condition-who brought him or with whom he had been associating."

"What did Mr. Poe say? Did he mention the name Grey or E. S. T. Grey?"

"Grey? No. He talked, but it was vacant conversation with imaginary objects on the walls. He was pale, I remember, and drenched in perspiration. We tried to induce tranquillity. Naturally, I tried to get more information from him. He was able to mention that he had a wife in Richmond. I have since come to understand they were not yet married; no doubt he was confused mentally. He did not know when he had come to Baltimore or how he came to be here. That is when I said we would make him comfortable enough to soon enjoy the society of his friends."

As Moran was speaking, I climbed nearly even with the lecture room. My outstretched hand groped the dark and landed on some solid material. Canvas, it seemed. I squinted for a better view. This must have been the bag that was placed in the Baron's carriage at the cemetery. Its lower portion was now even with my head. Patting it with my hand, I struck upon the realization that I was grasping a lifeless human foot. Suddenly, I realized what the Baron had brought from the cemetery and knew that this was no dumbwaiter. The shaft I had climbed was used to hoist corpses to the various floors' dissection rooms.

The body had been moved from the rope on which I was clinging to a hook in the shaft, and by peering into the lecture room, I could see why it had not yet been transferred inside. There was already the body of a dead man, or part of a body, salted and covered with a white cloth on the examination table in the middle of the room. Aprons, both clean and bloody, were hanging nearby. They could not move in this new subject until the old one was disposed of.

I shuddered at this sight and my closeness to this fresher corpse. I breathed quicker to try to calm myself, but that let in a horrific stench I hadn't noticed before. My grip loosened.

I slipped down fast-and down more-nearly an entire floor down. Scrambling my legs into the side of the shaft, I attempted to regain my balance so I would not drop four stories to a certain demise in the eternal blackness below.

"What was that?" I heard Bonjour say. "That noise? It's from inside the wall. The hoisting shaft."

I steadied my grip and made myself as still as the corpse now several feet above me.

"Perhaps our little gift to you has woken up, Dr. Moran." The Baron laughed in a way perhaps no man had ever done in the immediate vicinity of two dead bodies. The Baron leaned through the opening and peered down into the shaft. I was now in the dark center of the passage and, miraculously, was blocked from the Baron's view by the bag with the corpse. He returned his head to the room.

"Never mind," said Moran, "we secure the windows and doors with ropes in this building, and the place still seems to make more noise than any of the patients ever did."

I then saw Bonjour trade places with the Baron at the shaft opening, and I became more anxious. She leaned fearlessly inside the horrible compartment.

"Take care, miss!" Moran said.

Bonjour now launched herself fully into the shaft, and for a moment I was certain she would land on top of me. Instead she caught the rope with one hand and then between her knees to steady herself. Moran must have been protesting above, since I could hear the Baron trying to placate him. I clung to my position for my life and prayed for a miracle. I could almost feel Bonjour's eyes pierce the darkness directly onto my uncovered head.

She lowered herself inch by inch toward me, raising my side of the rope so that I was involuntarily moving nearer to her.

Eyes closed tight, ignoring the drops of cold perspiration, I waited for my discovery. A terrible inhuman shriek broke my concentration-at a breath, an army of voracious black rats rushed up the walls of the shaft. They ran en masse toward Bonjour, as though involuntarily attracted by her. Several propelled themselves onto my shoulders and back, their wiry claws attaching to my coat and daring me not to scream.

"Only rats," Bonjour murmured after a moment, then kicked some of the creatures off the walls, sending them dropping down. The Baron extended a hand and helped her back into the lecture room.

"For goodness' sake," I gasped in gratitude to the beasts. I brushed off two that had remained perched on my back.

Since I could still hear most of the conversation, I decided to pull myself back up only a few inches and stay at that safer position.

"If you will go on with the details, Doctor," said the Baron. "You told Poe you would bring his friends to him."

Moran paused in hesitation. "Perhaps I should consult with Mr. Poe's family and friends before speaking with you further. There were some cousins of his, when we were treating him-if I remember right, a Mr. Neilson Poe and a friend, a lawyer, Mr. Z. Collins Lee…"

The Baron sighed loudly.

"Let us see what is on the doctor's table," Bonjour said playfully. I could hear her rustling the white blanket on the naked cadaver.

"See here!" Moran gasped with obvious embarrassment. "What are you doing?"

"I have seen men before," Bonjour replied happily.

"Do not shock the young doctor, my dear!" the Baron cried.

"Perhaps we should take this deceased gentleman home for our study," Bonjour said, rolling the table away. Dr. Moran protested vigorously. Bonjour continued: "Come now, Doctor. No halves-finder keeper. Besides, I wonder, Baron, if the family of that young woman we have hoisted up in that shaft would be interested to know her body's missing from the grave and could be found here, waiting to be diced to pieces by the dandyish doctor."

"Most interested, I'd think, sweetheart!" said the Baron.

"What? But we do this to learn to save lives! You brought that other body here yourselves!"

"On your request, Doctor," said Bonjour, "and you have accepted it in exchange for the information my master asks for."

The Baron, sotto voce, leaned in to Moran: "You can see you had the wrong sow by the ear, Doctor."

The heroism of the doctor's voice deflated. "I see the gist now. Very well. Back to Poe then. I told him, in trying to comfort him, that he would soon enjoy the society of his friends. He broke out with much energy and said, I remember, The best thing my best friend could do would be to blow out my brains with a pistol. When he beheld what had become of him, he was ready to sink into the earth, and so on, as one talks when depressed in spirits. He then slipped into a violent delirium until Saturday evening, when he began calling for ‘Reynolds' again and again, for six or seven hours until the morning, as I have told you the other day. Having enfeebled himself from exertion he said, ‘Lord help my poor soul' and expired. That is all."

"What we wonder now," said the Baron, "is whether Poe had been induced to have taken some sort of artificial stimulus, a drug-opium, perhaps-that put him in this condition?"

"I do not know. The truth, sir, is that Poe's condition was quite sad and strange, but there was no particular odor of alcohol on his person, that I can remember."

During this exchange, I alternated between careful attentiveness to their words and desperate attempts to calm my pounding heart and breathing from my near discovery by Bonjour. When they closed the interview to the Baron's satisfaction, and I felt convinced by listening for footsteps they had left the fourth floor, I climbed past the body and heaved myself through the opening in the wall. I checked that the coast was clear and dropped into the lecture room. Flattening myself on the floor, I coughed out the air of the dead and gulped in rapid, grateful bursts.

You will perhaps judge me harshly for not immediately relating my adventures to Duponte, and yet you have seen yourself the frequent inflexibility of his philosophies. I am not of a particularly philosophical cast. Duponte was born an analyst, a reasoner; I, an observer. Though it may occupy only a lower rung of the ladder of wisdom, observation requires practicality. Perhaps Duponte, and our investigations generally, needed a light shove toward the pragmatic.

I should have explained above, when I was searching for the mention of Henry Reynolds, how it was I had free access to the newspapers we kept in the library without Duponte taking notice. Since the first day we had disembarked in Baltimore, Duponte had inhabited the library and oversaw all the contents of his sanctum. However, when he was reading other things he would remove himself from the increasingly cramped library to different chambers and bedrooms of Glen Eliza I had forgotten existed. He would choose the odd book that I had on my shelf; or one of my father's atlases of an obscure province of the world; or a pamphlet in French that my mother had brought from abroad. Duponte also read Poe, a practice that did not escape my interest.

At times the concentration with which he read Poe reminded me of the sheer nourishment the tales had provided me for so many years. But usually it was far more scholarly than that. Duponte read mechanically, like a literary critic. The critic never lets his reading overtake him; he never pulls the pages promiscuously close to his face and never wishes to be brought into the crevices of the author's mind, for such a journey would relinquish control. Thus, often a reader will read a magazine critic's notice of a book, after having already read the book himself, eager to compare perspectives, and think, "This cannot be the book I read! There must be another version, in which everything has changed, and I shall have to find it, too!"

I thought a dispassionate survey of Poe's works by Duponte quite fitting. I believe it allowed Duponte crucial insights into Poe's character and into the mysterious circumstances that we had begun to examine.

"If only it was known which ship Poe arrived to Baltimore on," I said one afternoon.

Duponte became instantly animated. "The local papers speak of it as the unknown details of his arrival. That they do not know, monsieur, certainly does not confine it to the bounds of the unknown. The answer is plainly presented in the articles from the Richmond newspapers published in the last months of Poe's life."

"When Poe was lecturing on various subjects of poetry and literature."

"Precisely. He was doing so in order to raise money for his proposed magazine The Stylus, as he mentioned also in his letters to you, Monsieur Clark. We may not know on which ship Poe sailed from Richmond to Baltimore, but this is hardly what is important, and hardly qualifies as making the purpose of his trip unknown. His reason for coming to Baltimore is quite knowable to any person employing thought. From the rumors in the newspapers over the last two years before his death, Poe had been involved in various romantic unions since his wife's death. In this last period, he had just engaged himself to a wealthy woman in Richmond, and so his trip to Baltimore would likely not have been for the purposes of any romantic interlude. Now, in view of the fact that his intended, one Mrs. Shelton, was known as wealthy by all periodical editors, and thus naturally by everyone else (for editors rarely know something the mob does not know first); in view of this fact that her wealth was widely known, Poe might properly feel the need to deflect any perception by the public that he was set to marry her because she was ‘bankable.'"

"He would certainly never marry someone for money!"

"Whether or not he would, and your indignation on the question is quite beside the point, the result is exactly the same. This makes it easier for our review. If Poe were marrying her for money, it would be all the more reason to deflect the perception of it in order to avoid ruining the engagement if she suspected it. If his motives were pure ones, as you believe, his goal would remain identical-to raise money, this time in order to provide for his own expenses rather than rely unjustly on hers. Either way, finding he had not earned as much as he hoped in Richmond, he would come to Baltimore to gain professional support and subscribers for The Stylus, and thus bolster his financial prospects independently of Mrs. Shelton's."

"Which explains why he went first to see Nathan Brooks, for Dr. Brooks is a well-known magazine editor. Except," I said grimly, "that, as I saw for myself, Dr. Brooks's house had caught on fire."

"Poe came here with plans, Monsieur Clark, to remake his life. I think we shall find that he died in a state of hope, not in despair."

But I remembered Dr. Moran's statement about Poe: he did not know when he had come to Baltimore or how he came to be here. How did this conform to the other particulars now before us?

The above conversation with Duponte occurred a few days after my secret call to the hospital. Meanwhile, in my visits to the reading rooms and my various errands around the city, I felt an increasing number of eyes on me. I thought that perhaps it was an unconscious product of my guilt at hiding my previous discoveries from Duponte, or my distraction whenever I remembered Hattie's distressed behavior in my last encounter with her at the gates to her house.

There was one man in particular, a free black of about forty years old, whom I observed near me on more than one occasion in crowds on the street or from the window of a carriage I was riding in. He had sharply angled features and was of solid physical dimensions. It was usually easy to differentiate between the free and enslaved blacks by the superior and often quite fashionable dress of the former, although certain city slaves-slave dandies, as they were known-were provided exquisite clothing to fashionably match that of their owners.

I thought of the Phantom who had followed me once, long before I had dreamed of finding a man like Duponte or hiding from a man like the Baron Dupin; I thought, too, of the dead stare of the Baron's man Hartwick as he trailed me through the halls of Versailles, preparing to grab me. Once, I saw this new stranger standing across from where I was walking on Baltimore Street. I was not surprised to see this presumed freeman speaking quietly with the Baron Dupin. The Baron took his arm enthusiastically.

That same evening, Duponte was reading Poe's tale "Ligeia" on a sofa in the drawing room. Von Dantker had left with his brushes some hours before in a state of high irritation. Duponte had announced that he no longer wanted to see Von Dantker's staring face whenever he looked up, and had informed the artist that he would have to sit behind him. Von Dantker had naturally protested on the basis that he could not paint Duponte's back, but Duponte had refused to argue, and a system had soon been devised whereby a mirror was placed in front of Duponte and Von Dantker sat behind the analyst. He had positioned another large mirror by his easel, facing the first mirror, to transfer the original reflection back to the correct orientation. I thought both men quite mad. But Von Dantker, taking bites from the "olycoke"-a strange cake fried in lard-he always brought with him, had continued on with his project.

I busied myself reading a copy of Thomas Moore's Irish Melodies, which I had procured from a book-stand. Dr. Carter, Poe's friend in Richmond, had told the newspaper there that Poe had been reading Moore 's poems when he visited his office. It was also said that during his stay in Richmond Poe quoted this verse of Moore 's to a young lady he befriended: "I feel like one / Who treads alone / Some banquet hall deserted."

My thoughts floated to the distracting subject of Hattie. "I wonder," I said, interrupting Duponte's reading.

"Yes?"

"Well, I am wondering whether a woman who says that things are ‘different' means to say that her emotions, that is, affections, have changed, or rather refers to other, less profound matters."

"Are you," Duponte asked, putting aside the book, "soliciting my opinion on the subject, monsieur?"

I hesitated, hoping he would not believe that I was attempting to misdirect his skills of ratiocination at a purely personal concern, although that was precisely what I was doing.

He continued without an answer from me. "Do you, Monsieur Clark, believe it is the larger or smaller concern that her words refer to?"

I considered this. "Well, which is the larger and which the smaller of the concerns?" I asked.

"Exactly the quarrel, monsieur. To persons who are not the direct recipients of her affections, the question of her emotional state would be the smaller one; the state of the roof of her house, or a loan she may have secured from the bank, and whether these are different from some previous state of affairs would be the larger and most crucial question. To the person who seeks or has sought her affections, those emotions would be by far the more significant question to unravel, whereas if her roof were sinking entirely it would make little difference to that suitor. Therefore, your answer is that the meaning of her words would vary depending very much on whom she is addressing."

I was quite flabbergasted by the coolness of Duponte's advice on love, if that is what this was, and I did not pursue the subject any further.

At length the doorbell rang. The servants had left for the day, and I had gone downstairs. After several moments, Duponte clapped his book closed, rose from his place with a sigh, and descended to the street door. There on the other side stood a short, bespectacled man peering inside expectantly.

"What is it you wish for me, sir?" the man asked politely.

"Is it not you who has come to the door?" replied Duponte. "I should think I would have asked you that very question, had I any interest in the answer."

"Why-?" said the visitor, flustered. "Well, I'm Reynolds. Henry Reynolds, may I come inside?"

I watched this from the kitchen corridor. Mr. Reynolds found a place for his hat. He showed Duponte the card he had received from me earlier that day.

I had planned that Duponte might have a greater degree of interest if he were to unexpectedly greet Reynolds at the door, and thus be the proprietor of the discovery and, finding the opportunity irresistible, pursue all information that could be extracted from the visitor.

This was not to be. Duponte, his hand cupping his book of Poe tales, bid a polite good evening to the guest and walked past me to the stairs. I rushed after him.

"But where are you going?"

"Monsieur. You have a caller, a Monsieur Reynolds, I believe," Duponte answered me. "I suppose you gentlemen wish to talk together."

"But-!" I fell quiet.

"Someone did call for me?" asked Reynolds loudly and impatiently from the bottom of the stairs. "I have other appointments too. One of you fellows is Clark?"

I caught up to Duponte with a sheepish shrug. "I know I should have told you about leaving word for Reynolds to call. I saw the Baron Dupin speaking with this fellow, and found out that he was an election judge at the voting place where Poe was found. But this man wouldn't give the Baron any information. Just hold for a moment! Come to the drawing room. I thought you might refuse at first, and this is why I have done this secretly. I believe it is a matter of utter importance that we interview him."

Duponte remained impassive. "What do you wish me to do?"

"Sit in the room. You needn't say a single word."

Of course, I hoped that Duponte, incited by whatever knowledge was held by the carpenter, would not only say a single word; I hoped he would intervene with extensive interrogatories once I began the dialogue. The analyst assented to come with me to the drawing room.

"Well, how are we today?" The carpenter forced a friendly smile as he looked around the gigantic room and up at the impressive dome that rose to the height of the third floor. "Planning on bettering the structure of your home, Mr. Clark? Its beauty is a bit in decay, if I may take the liberty to say. I've appreciated not a few mansions this year with betterments."

"What?" I demanded, perturbed, forgetting for a moment his profession.

Duponte sat in the corner armchair by the hearth. He propped his head in his hand, and his fingers spread in a web over the side of his face. He sucked his tongue, as was his habit.

Instead of feeling compelled by the situation to speak, Duponte directed his glare beyond Reynolds and me to some indefinite point of the room's horizon, and yet betrayed a look of distant enjoyment at how the conversation progressed.

"I am in no need of carpentry," I said.

"Not carpentry? Why have I been requested to make this visit, gentlemen?" Reynolds frowned and then fed himself some chewing tobacco, as though to say that if there was no carpentry, there might as well be tobacco.

"Well, Mr. Reynolds, if I may…" My mouth felt dry, and my words dribbled out uncertainly.

"If I made this visit for you gentlemen's amusement-" he said indignantly.

"We require some information," I said. This seemed like a good start to me. Duponte's mouth twitched, and I waited for him to speak, but it was a yawn. He crossed his legs at a different place.

Reynolds was speaking over me. "-well, because I shouldn't like to think I have wasted my time. I am a key figure to the future dignity of Baltimore. I have helped erect the athenaeum, have lent my hand to raising the Maryland Institute, and directed the first iron building in the city for the Baltimore Sun."

I tried to pull him to the primary subject. "You served as a ward judge for the Fourth Ward polling station at Ryan's hotel in 1849, is that true?"

Duponte was now most fixedly looking at absolutely nothing. Sometimes a cat coils into such a careless, comfortable position as to fall soundly asleep but forgets to close her eyes. This was Duponte's current appearance.

"As I say," I babbled on, "the information I seek, about that night at the polls, I mean, at the Fourth Ward, there was a man named Poe-"

"Now, see here," Reynolds interrupted. "You're something to do with that fellow, Baron Whatnot, who's been bothering me, leaving me letters and notes, aren't you?"

"Please, Mr. Reynolds-"

"Talking of Poe, Poe, Poe! What is all this about Poe anyway?"

"It is true," said Duponte philosophically to me, "as Mr. Reynolds implies, that the decease of a person of some interest to the public will be looked at for the person rather than the death, and thus will obtain larger holes of error and misperception. Very good, Reynolds."

This helped nothing except to confound our guest's line of thought. Reynolds wagged his finger at me, and then at Duponte, as though the analyst was an equal culprit in this attempted interview. "Just see here." Black tobacco juice was sent flying around the room by the venom of his speech. "This bangs all things! I do not care that the other fellow's a baron, or that you are lords and kings. I don't have nothing to say to 'im, and I have much to do! I don't have a word to say to you two! Is that it? Well, my good princes, please never call for me again or I shall send for the police."

When I came down for breakfast, there was a note from Duponte that I should find him in the library at noon. He had not said a word to me before parting for the night. To my surprise, he was more interested in the fact that I had seen the Baron Dupin than that I had surreptitiously sent for Reynolds.

"So," he said when I met him in the library, "you found yourself following the Baron Dupin."

I recounted all that had passed between the Baron and Reynolds and what I had seen at the cemetery and hospital. I pleaded my side for leaving my card for Reynolds. "Understand, monsieur. Poe called out for ‘Reynolds' again and again when he was dying. That Henry Reynolds was one of the election judges that day in charge of overseeing the Fourth Ward polls, which were held in Ryan's-where Poe was found! Do you not think this was too remarkable a connection?" I answered for him: "It is too remarkable to ignore!"

"It is, at most, incidental, and to a lesser and more forceful degree coincidental."

Incidental! Coincidental! Poe calling for Reynolds at his hour of judgment, and here one Henry Reynolds had been in the very same place as Poe days before. But you see, Duponte was a persuasive personality, even when he said little. If he had said Baltimore 's cathedrals were incidental to its Catholics, one would be inclined to find reason to agree.

He agreed to my suggestion of a walk. I hoped it would render him more willing to consider my latest suppositions. I had fallen into a rather concerned state about our inquiry, and not only because of Duponte's refusal to consider Mr. Reynolds as the Baron had. It seemed to me there was much else we could be missing, insulated as we were-for instance, the probability that Poe had traveled from Baltimore to Philadelphia and was in that city before his death. I made reference to this point as we walked.

"He was not."

"Do you mean he was not in Philadelphia that week he was discovered?" I asked, surprised at his certainty as to the point. "The newspapers have been throwing their hands up wondering about it."

"It is easily in front of their eyes, too accessible to such frantic minds as the public press, who never lose confidence that they are able to find some true detail, as long as it is at all times far from them. They are surprised at everything, when they should be surprised at nothing. If a fact is said once, we may pay attention, but if a fact is fixed in four places, ignore it, for along the way its replication has stopped all thought."

"But how could we know positively? After his attempt to visit Dr. Brooks, we hardly possess a solitary fact about Poe's days in Baltimore until he was nearly five days later seen at Ryan's. How do we know Poe did not, sometime between these times, board the train to Philadelphia, and, further, if he did, can we dismiss the possibility that there, in that other city, lie all the chief keys to the right understanding of the events that followed?"

"Let us settle your worries on this point. You do recall the reasons Monsieur Poe had planned to visit Philadelphia, I suppose," said Duponte.

I did, and repeated them to Duponte. Poe had been asked to edit the poems of Mrs. Marguerite St. Leon Loud for publication, for which her wealthy husband, Mr. Loud, would pay a sum of one hundred dollars. It had been reported by the newspapers that Poe had agreed to this lucrative arrangement in his last weeks when Mr. Loud, a piano manufacturer, visited Richmond. Poe had even instructed Muddy Clemm to write him there, in Philadelphia, under the strange pseudonym of E. S. T. Grey, Esquire, adding, "I hope that our troubles are nearly over."

"One hundred dollars would be an enormous difference to Poe, for he was quite pushed for money for himself and his magazine," I said. "One hundred dollars, to edit a small book of poems-for Poe, who had been the editor of some five periodicals, for which he was hardly rewarded enough to supply bread to his family, this was a task that could be done while sleeping. But how, with no evidence to the contrary, should we know when Poe made his visit to Philadelphia?"

"Through Mrs. Loud, of course."

I frowned. "I'm afraid that has not been helpful. I penned a few letters to this woman, but have received no reply."

"You misunderstand my meaning. I would not think to write to Mrs. Loud. By the nature of her circumstance, aspiring poetess and wife of an affluent husband, she would likely in this season be in the country or on the shore, so correspondence would be rendered inefficient. We need not bother the poor woman herself in order to listen to her."

Duponte removed a thin, handsomely printed volume from inside his coat. Wayside Flowers: A Collection of Poems, by Mrs. M. St. Leon Loud, published by Ticknor, Reed, and Fields.

"What is this?" I asked.

"Here is the very book of poems, we may presume, that Poe had agreed to edit, and that has been recently published with little attention-thankfully."

I opened up to the page listing its contents. I hesitate to print a sample. "I Wooed Thee," "To a Friend on the Birth of a Son," "The Dying Buffalo," "Invitation to a Prayer Meeting," "It Is I: Be Not Afraid," "On Parting with a Friend," "On Seeing a Monument," "The First Day of Summer," and, of course, "The Last Day of Summer." The contents list alone went on for pages. Duponte explained that he had ordered this book from one of the local booksellers.

"We know Monsieur Poe never arrived at Philadelphia to edit Madame Loud's poems," said Duponte.

"How, monsieur?"

"Because it is quite clear nobody has edited these poems, judging from the terrific numbers of them here included. If somebody had edited them, heaven forgive them, it was not a poet of experience and strong principles regarding the brevity and unity of verse, as we know Monsieur Poe to have been."

This did seem a fact. I saw now the practical gains that Duponte had made by spending hours in the parlor with Poe's poetry.

I had a doubt about his conclusions, however. "What if, Monsieur Duponte, Poe did go to Philadelphia and begin to edit the poems, and simply had a disagreement with the poetess, or balked at the quality of her work, and returned to Baltimore?"

"An intelligent question, if also an unobservant one. It would be possible that Poe arrived at the Louds' estate in order to fulfill his obligation, and once there could not agree on some final term of compensation or other fine point of the arrangement. However, we need only consider this possibility briefly before discarding it."

"I do not see why, monsieur."

"Search again through the book's contents. I am confident this time you will know where to stop."

By this point we had taken a table at a restaurant. Duponte leaned over and looked at the title where my finger was pointing. "Very good, monsieur. Now, read the verses from those pages, if you would."

The poem was entitled "The Stranger's Doom." It began:

"It sounds rather like the scene, as we know it, at the college hospital when Poe was dying!"

"As our romancer imagines it, yes. Continue, please. I rather like your recitation. Spirited."

"Thank you, monsieur." The next verses spoke of the man's lonely demise with "no clasping hand, no farewell kiss." It continued with the scene of death:

"His nameless tomb… the wild-grass turf of the grave that should be sacred… the quick burial, in which none lingered… surely this is Poe's funeral at the Westminster burial yard! Described very much as I saw it!"

"We have already surmised that Madame Loud is a traveler of some frequency, a probability supported by the subjects of several of her poems, and so we now assume from the details here that she has visited Baltimore sometime in the last two years since Poe's death. Taking a natural interest in the death of a man she had been set to meet right around his demise, she has gathered this description of the funeral-so close to your own remembrance-by visiting the burial yard and questioning its sexton or grave digger, and perhaps individuals at the hospital, as well."

"Outstanding," I said.

"We may read closely and come to several conclusions. We may say she shares your own perspective, Monsieur Clark, faulting those who failed to honor him. The poem speaks with no special knowledge of Poe's whereabouts or demeanor prior to his death. We know, then, that Madame Loud followed the tidings of Poe's death from afar, not as one who had only just been separated from Poe with the privilege of hearing any of his plans. Moreover, his doom is that of a stranger, as declared in the poem's title, not of one whom she has known. So we obtain even greater certainty that he did not meet Madame Loud, as he hoped to do, in Philadelphia. This shall only be our first document of proof of Poe's failure to reach that city."

"Our first, Monsieur Duponte?"

"Yes."

"But why would Poe direct his mother-in-law to write him with a false name, E. S. T. Grey?"

"Perhaps this shall be our second proof," Duponte said, though he seemed content, for the moment, to close the topic there.

Duponte had been taking more walks outside. He was liberated from Glen Eliza when, after many arguments and much ranting by Von Dantker over Duponte's queer demands, the artist decided he could finish the painting without further sittings. Not wishing for any more distractions from the man, I sent word that I would make payment for his labors, but he replied that he was to be paid by another party that afternoon. Because this made no sense whatsoever, I went to Von Dantker's chambers, only to witness the Baron Dupin exiting. The Baron touched his hat and smiled.

I frantically related this information to Duponte, who only laughed at the notion of Von Dantker as spy.

"Monsieur Duponte, he could have been listening to every word we would have said, even as he sat there pretending to be concerned with the painting!"

"That simpleton, Von Dantker? Listening to anything! Ha!" That was all I could induce Duponte to say on the matter.

In making himself an observer of the "spirit of the city," Duponte proceeded with strides as slow as they had been around Paris. I usually accompanied him on these walks, not wanting to lose him, as had happened before. Often these excursions were in the evening. I could almost say, as the narrator of "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" said of C. Auguste Dupin, that we sought our quiet observation "amid the wild lights and shadows of the populous city." Except for the wild lights. You have seen already that Baltimore, unlike Paris, is quite hard on the eyes after dark.

Indeed once, I remember, in the poor lighting, I collided headlong with a smartly dressed stranger. "Many apologies," I said, looking up at him. The man was muffled in an old-fashioned black coat. His response stayed in my mind the rest of that night: he looked down and walked away without a word.

Duponte did not mind the bad lighting in Baltimore. "I see in the daylight," he would say, "but I see through in the night." He was a human owl; his mental outings were nocturnal hunts.

On two occasions during these meanderings, including the one in which I collided with that stranger, we happened upon the Baron Claude Dupin out with Bonjour. Baltimore was a large and growing city of more than one hundred and fifty thousand; therefore, the odds of any two parties intersecting paths at the right time must have been mathematically modest. There was a magnetism of purpose that brought our groups together, I suppose. Or the Baron went out of his way to taunt us. The Baron had begun to look different, around the face and a bit in the eyes-I wondered whether he had gained weight? Or perhaps lost some?

The Baron liked to demonstrate the "enormous" amount of knowledge he had accumulated about Poe's death.

"A very fine walking stick," the Baron said to me once. "Is that all the go these days?"

"It is Malacca," I replied proudly.

"Malacca? Like Poe's when he was found. Oh yes, anything you have discovered we already know, my dear friends. Like why he used the name E. S. T. Grey. And of his clothes that did not fit? You have read in the papers they were his disguise? True, but not by Poe's own choice-" And then the Baron would end enigmatically in mid-sentence, or share a laugh with Bonjour. She stared toward Duponte and me, not subscribing to the policy of false politeness shown by her husband. Then the Baron would say, "What enormous discoveries are at hand, my friends! We shall find our passport to glory in this!" He liked to do everything on a big figure.

"My good Brother Duponte," the Baron greeted my companion on an after-breakfast stroll, grasping his hand vigorously, "it is awfully good to see you in fine health. You shall have a quiet voyage returning to Paris, I can assure you. We have made enormous strides, and are about to complete all the work needed here."

Duponte was polite. "I shall have had a very fine visit to Baltimore, then."

"Indeed! I do believe," the Baron said in a loud whisper, swiveling his head in a showy fashion, "that nowhere else have I seen so many beautiful women at one glance as in Baltimore."

I winced at the tone of his comment. Bonjour was not with him on this occasion, but I wished she were.

After we parted from the Baron, Duponte turned to me. He put a heavy hand on my shoulder and stood for a while without saying a word. A chill went through me.

"What are you prepared for, Monsieur Clark?" he said quietly.

"How do you mean?"

"You are treading closer to the center of the examination, extraordinarily closer each day."

"Monsieur, I wish to assist any way I might." The truth is, I did not feel I was treading anywhere near the center of Duponte's labors or plans, in fact hardly at its circumference, and I certainly had not yet felt us anywhere but at the outskirts of detecting the truth of Poe's death.

Duponte shook his head fatally, as though giving up on the possibility that I could understand. "I want you to look further in on his affairs, if you are agreeable."

Taken by complete surprise, I asked for elaboration.

"It would aid us to know the tactics being employed by the Baron," said Duponte. "Just as you discovered Monsieur Reynolds."

"But you disapproved forcefully of my contact with Reynolds!"

"You're right, monsieur. Your discovery of Reynolds was utterly meaningless. But as I have said before, one needs to know all that is meaningless, to know just what meaning we have found."

I did not know exactly what Duponte imagined when he asked what I was prepared for. I did not know and I knew. There was the obvious fact that by following the Baron, I would be exposed more directly to the possibility of harm.

But I do not think that was all of it. He meant to ask whether I would want to reclaim the life I had before when this was finished. Would I have sent him back on the next steamer to Paris, would I have turned around and chosen the quiet sanctuary of Glen Eliza, had I known what was about to come?