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

16

TRACING THE ACTIVITY of the Baron Dupin, through covert observation and interviews, I learned that nearly a week earlier, Bonjour had insinuated herself as the chambermaid at the home of Dr. Joseph Snodgrass, the man whom Dr. Moran remembered had ordered the carriage that brought Edgar Poe to the hospital from Ryan's on that gloomy October day. The Baron Dupin had paid a visit to Snodgrass earlier to find out the details of that stormy October afternoon. Snodgrass adamantly declined an interview. He insisted he would not contribute to the industry of gossiping about the worthy poet's death.

Soon after, Bonjour had secured the position among the help in Snodgrass's house. Remarkably, she did this with no position open. She had appeared in neat, unostentatious dress, on the doorstep of the fashionable brick house at 103 North High Street. An Irish servant girl opened the street door for her.

Bonjour said that she had been told the house was looking for a new upstairs girl (assuming, rightly, that this was the downstairs girl-and imagining it likely she had a rivalry with the current upstairs girl).

Was that so? replied the servant. She had not heard about this. Bonjour apologized, explaining that the upstairs girl had told a friend about her plans to leave without proper notice to her employers, and Bonjour was eager to present her desire for the post.

Soon after this, the downstairs girl, who had a straggly figure and a jealous tendency toward comelier females, reported the dialogue to the Snodgrasses, who felt obliged to dismiss the protesting upstairs girl. Bonjour was the heroine of the household drama for uncovering the imminent loss to their domestic operations and, appearing again at the opportune time, was the natural choice as replacement. Though Bonjour was far more handsome than the jealous downstairs girl, the fact that she was too thin for the popular taste and had an unseemly scar down her lip made her more acceptable.

All this was easily discovered later from the former upstairs girl, who after her departure was eager to speak of her unfair treatment. But once Bonjour was installed behind the walls of the house, there was little chance at gaining any further intelligence about her enterprise.

"Leave her to the Snodgrass family then, and confine your observations on the Baron," Duponte suggested.

"She would not remain this long unless there was information to gain. It has been better than two weeks, monsieur!" I said. "In all events, the Baron is mostly occupied selling subscriptions to his lecture on Poe's death."

"Perhaps the information mademoiselle gains is not so large," Duponte mused, "but simply slow."

"I could inform Dr. Snodgrass that Bonjour is no chambermaid."

"Why do so, Monsieur Clark?"

"Why?" I replied incredulously. It seemed obvious. "To stop her from gaining intelligence for the Baron!"

"What they find, we shall inevitably learn," he replied, though I did not see the track of this reasoning.

Duponte, during my reports, regularly asked me to describe Bonjour's demeanor and mood toward the job and the other servants.

Bonjour would leave the Snodgrass home every day to meet with the Baron. On one of these evenings, as she made her way to one of these rendezvous, I followed her into the harbor area. Not infrequently, a man would be expelled out the door of a public house, and one would have to take a high step over his body or trip into a pile with him. The streets there were filled with bar-rooms and billiards-rooms and stale, human smells. Bonjour was dressed accordingly: hair disheveled, bonnet crooked, and dress in comfortable disorder. She changed costume often-depending on whether an errand for the Baron Dupin required the appearance of one class or another-but there was no demonic transformation as with the Baron's disguises.

I watched as she neared a group of low men, who were laughing and yelping riotously. One pointed at the passing figure of Bonjour.

"Look there," he said gruffly, "a star-gazer! What a pretty bat!" "Star-gazer" and "bat" were equally vulgar terms; heard among the lowest classes, they connoted a prostitute who came out only at night.

She ignored them. He stretched out his arm as a barrier. He was almost twice Bonjour's size. She stopped and looked down at his bloated forearm, on which the sleeve was rolled up indecently.

"What's this, gal?" He yanked a piece of paper out of her hand. "A love letter, I'd guess. What's this now? ‘There is a gentleman, rather the worse for wear…'"

"Hands off," said Bonjour, taking a step forward.

The man held the paper up high and away from her reach, to the exaggerated amusement of his compatriots. A chunky little fellow among his companions guffawed and sympathetically said to let it go, at which point the ringleader punched his arm and declared him a positive gump.

Bonjour eased closer with a light sigh, the plane of her eyes hardly coming up to the large man's neck. She placed one finger along the muscle of his upstretched arm and followed the line. "The strongest arm I've seen in Baltimore, mister," she said in a whisper, though projected distinctly enough for the others to hear her.

"Now, I ain't going to lower this arm, my dear, on a little soft-soaping."

"I don't want you to lower it, mister, I want you to raise it higher-there, like that."

He did as instructed-perhaps despite himself. Bonjour leaned almost into the crook of his neck.

"Oh, oh, look," he said jovially to his companions, "the bat is going to fly at me for a kiss!"

They laughed. The man himself was giggling as nervously as a girl.

"Bats," Bonjour said, "are awful blind." In one gesture, swifter than lightning, she drew her hand behind her head and across the side of the gentleman's neck. His arm, raised high on that side, could make no attempt to block her.

The man's shirt and sack-coat collars, cleanly sliced at the buttons, both dropped to the ground. His clique fell into a grave silence. She returned a blade thin as a pin into the crown of her disordered hair. The man patted around his neck-making sure all his flesh was still there-and then, finding not a scratch, stumbled backward. Bonjour picked up the piece of paper where it had dropped and went on her way. Perhaps I imagined it, but before her departure, it seemed she glanced at me, across the way, and her face seemed to wear a look of bemusement at my stance of readiness to come to her aid.

I continued to frequent the area of the Snodgrass house. One morning after I arrived I saw Duponte approaching, dressed in his usual black suit and cloak and cape.

"Monsieur?" I greeted him inquisitively. It was something of an extraordinary event of late to see him in the daylight. "Has something happened?"

"We have an excursion today, in the interests of our investigation," he commented.

"Where shall we go?"

"We are here already."

Duponte walked through the gates and up the front pathway to the Snodgrass house. "Go ahead," Duponte said when I came to a halt.

"Monsieur, the Snodgrasses are not home this hour. And, you must know, Bonjour may see us here!"

"I fully rely on it," he replied.

He took the silver-plated knocker in hand, which promptly brought to us the downstairs girl. Duponte glanced around and saw with satisfaction that Bonjour was peering from the staircase high above, as likely she did with any guest calling for Dr. Snodgrass.

"Our business, miss," said Duponte, "lies with Dr. Snodgrass. I am"-here he paused, with a slight nod up to the landing of the stairs-"the Duke Duponte."

"Duke! Well, the doctor is not at home, sir." She passed a slow gaze over my outer garments, which prompted me to remove my hat and coat.

"I should think not, for he is a man of extensive business. But he has left word, I believe, with your upstairs girl that we are to wait for him in his study at this hour," said Duponte.

"Likely! How queer!" exclaimed the girl, whose jealousy for Bonjour seemed to rise like a visible object before our eyes.

"If the young woman is present, miss, perhaps she shall be able to confirm the particulars of our invitation."

"Likely!" the downstairs girl repeated. "Does this have truth, in fact?" she called up to Bonjour. "The doctor said nothing to me."

Bonjour smiled, and then said, "The doctor tells you nothing of what occurs upstairs, of course, miss. And his study is upstairs."

Bonjour approached us and curtsied a greeting. I was quite startled to find her compliant in Duponte's scheme, but as that first moment of surprise passed I came to understand. If Bonjour exposed Duponte's scheme as a false one, we could quite as easily demonstrate Bonjour's own falsehoods in securing her position. It was an automatic and unspoken bargain.

"Dr. Snodgrass asked that you follow me," she said.

"Into the study, I believe he suggested," Duponte replied, accompanying her up the stairs and gesturing for me to come.

Bonjour seated us in the study with a smile and offered to close the door behind us for our comfort. "You gentlemen will be most happy to know that the respected doctor will not be long before his return," she said. "He returns early today. I shall be certain to bring him straightaway when he comes home."

"We would expect nothing less, dear miss," said Duponte.

When we were alone, I turned to Duponte. "What shall we be able to learn from Snodgrass? Shall he not object strenuously to our pretending to have an appointment? And, monsieur, have you not said a hundred times we haven't any call to speak with witnesses?"

"Do you think that is why we've come? To see Snodgrass?"

I chafed a bit and made a point of not answering.

Duponte sighed. "We are not here to see Dr. Snodgrass; we shall be able to read what we wish to know among the doctor's papers. This is no doubt why the Baron has sent Bonjour here, and why she cleverly ensured she would become the upstairs servant, to have a free hand in his study without observation. She seemed rather amused with our presence, and quite loose with the more established servant, which suggests she is nearly finished with her purpose here. Nor does she believe we have enough time to discover anything of importance among all these papers."

"She's correct then!" I said, noticing that Snodgrass's study was awash in papers, in piles and stacks upon and around and inside the drawers of his office desk.

"Rethink your conclusions. Mademoiselle Bonjour has spent several weeks here now, and though she is a practiced thief, she would have no desire to risk that Dr. Snodgrass would notice the removal of any papers, which would foreclose any further search she might have wished to make. Thus she would have secretly copied in her own hand any items of interest and returned the originals to their place here for us to discover."

"But how shall we be able to discover in a matter of minutes what has taken her weeks to compile?"

"Precisely because she has discovered them first. Any document or paper that has attracted a high degree of interest will have commanded her to remove it from its place, perhaps more than once. Certainly one would not casually notice this difference, but once knowing to look for it, we should have no trouble selecting and copying these particular documents."

We went to work immediately. I took one side of the desk. Guided by Duponte, I searched for bent and misaligned corners, smudged ink, slight tears and folds, creases, and other indicators of recent handling among the various assortments and collections of documents and newspaper articles on all subjects, some with dates as much as twenty-five years old. Together we located many mentions of Poe that apparently had been examined by Bonjour in her time in this house, including a wealth of articles on the death of Poe that, if not quite as comprehensive as my own collection, was not unimpressive. Exhilarated and appalled, I found some rather more unique documents, three letters-the handwriting on which I recognized right away-from Edgar Poe to Dr. Snodgrass, dating from several years earlier.

In the first, Poe offered Snodgrass, then editing a magazine called The Notion, the rights to publish the second of the Dupin tales. "Of course I could not afford to make you an absolute present of it," wrote Poe firmly, "but if you are willing to take it, I will say $40." Yet Snodgrass turned him down, and Poe was declined by Graham's, too, before publishing "The Mystery of Marie Rogêt" elsewhere.

In the second letter from Poe, the writer asked Dr. Snodgrass to place a favorable notice of Poe's work in a magazine then being edited by Neilson Poe, hoping that the latter would oblige him as his cousin. The attempt seems to have failed, and Poe wrote back in disgust. "I felt that N. Poe would not insert the article," he said. "In your private ear, I believe him to be the bitterest enemy I have in the world."

I rushed to share this. "Neilson Poe, monsieur! Edgar Poe calls him his bitterest enemy… Didn't I guess at his position in all this!"

Our time being too short to discuss each item, Duponte directed me to quickly copy into my memorandum book all items about Poe that seemed important to me and, for that matter, he said after thinking it over, items that seemed unimportant to me as well. I duly noted the date of Poe's letter about Neilson: October 7, 1839-exactly ten years to the day before Poe's death!

"He is the more despicable in this," wrote Poe of Neilson, "since he makes loud professions of friendship." And did Neilson not profess the same fables, when I met him? We were not only cousins, but friends, Mr. Clark. Neilson Poe, with his heart beating for his own literary fame, his hand holding a wife who was sister and near copy to Edgar's-had he wanted the life of the very man he so outwardly denigrated?

This was not all I found in letters from Poe to Snodgrass about his Baltimore relatives. Poe had declared Henry Herring (the first Poe relation to arrive at Ryan's) "a man of unprincipled character."

Duponte paused in the midst of opening every possible drawer in the room.

"Survey the streets from the other side of the house, Monsieur Clark. Watch out for Dr. Snodgrass's carriage. When he arrives, we must leave immediately, and ensure the Irish chambermaid says nothing of our visit."

I studied Duponte's face for any hint at how we would accomplish the second objective. I walked to a chamber at the front of the house. Looking from the window, I found that a carriage was passing nearby, but after it seemed to check its speed briefly, the horses continued down High Street. Turning back toward the study, I found myself facing Bonjour, leaning upon the hearth so that her black dress and apron radiated with the flame of the fire.

"All right, mister? Anything that I can help you with while you wait for Master Snodgrass?" she asked, in imitation of the downstairs chambermaid's voice, and loud enough that she might hear. In a quieter tone, she commented, "You see now that your friend is only a vulture on my master's investigation."

"I am quite well here, miss, thank you, only looking out at these dreadful rain clouds," I said in my loud voice, and then quietly: "Auguste Duponte imitates no man. He shall resolve this in a manner deserving of Monsieur Poe. He can help you, too, if you wish, more than that thief, mademoiselle, your so-called husband and master."

Bonjour, forgetting the necessities of her charade, slammed the door closed. "I think not! Duponte is a thief of true measure, Monsieur Clark-he steals people's thoughts, their faults. The Baron is a great man because he is himself in all things. The most freedom I can have is by being with him."

"You believe that by ensuring the Baron's victory here you will have repaid the debt you owe him for releasing you from prison, and will be free from this marriage he has compelled."

Bonjour threw her head back in amusement. "Well! You are firing into the wrong flock. I'd suggest you not judge me by mathematical analysis. You are becoming too much like your companion."

"Monsieur Clark!" Duponte called hoarsely from the study.

I shifted my weight anxiously from one foot to the other.

Bonjour moved closer and studied me. "You do not have a wife, Monsieur Clark?"

My thoughts darkened. "I will," I replied without confidence. "And I will treat her well and ensure our mutual happiness."

"Monsieur, the French girl possesses no freedom. In America a girl is free and honored for her independence until she is married. In France, the tables are turned. She is only free once she marries-and then with a freedom never to be imagined. A wife can even have as many lovers as her husband."

"Mademoiselle!"

"Sometimes, a man in Paris is far more jealous of his mistress than his wife, and a woman more true to her lover than her husband."

"But why remain a thief for him, mademoiselle?"

"In Paris you must get what you want from others by hook or crook, or others will get what they want from you first." She paused. "Your master is calling, monsieur."

I started for the door. Bonjour lingered a moment before stepping aside with a mocking curtsy. As I re-entered the study, Duponte said, "Monsieur, here is the note that perhaps tells us more than anything else, the one you heard read in part at the harbor. Write every word and every comma in your memorandum book. And quickly: I believe I hear the wheels of another carriage coming up the path. Write then: ‘Dear Sir, There is a gentleman, rather the worse for wear, at Ryan's…'"

Upon the completion of our transcriptions, Bonjour led us downstairs rapidly.

"There is a back entrance?" I whispered.

"Dr. Snodgrass is just in the carriage house." We all turned around. It was the downstairs girl, who had appeared among us suddenly. "The Duke shan't leave now?"

"I'm afraid my schedule has become conflicted," said Duponte. "I shall have to see Dr. Snodgrass another time."

"I shall be certain to tell him you were here, then," she replied dryly, "and sitting in his study alone among his private things for nearly half of an hour."

Duponte and I froze at this warning, and I glanced over questioningly at Bonjour, who would no doubt be implicated as well.

Bonjour stared at her fellow domestic almost dreamily. When I turned back to Duponte, I saw he had entered into a private conversation with the Irish girl, whispering somberly to her. At the end of his comments, she nodded slightly, a faint crimson blush splashed on her cheeks.

"The other door, then?" I asked, noticing that she and Duponte seemed to have reached some accord.

"This way," said the maid, motioning to us. We crossed through the rear hall even as we could hear the boots of Dr. Snodgrass on the steps to the street door. As we climbed down to the pathway, Duponte turned back and touched his hat to the two ladies in farewell. "Bonjour," he said.

"Monsieur, how did you persuade the doctor's chambermaid to cooperate so Bonjour would not be caught?" I asked as we walked up the street.

"First, you are on the wrong scent. It was not for Bonjour's sake, as you assume. Second, I explained to the chambermaid that, in all honesty, we were not in fact leaving for another appointment."

"Indeed? You told her the truth then," I said with surprise.

"I explained that her interest, or infatuation, with you was highly inappropriate, and I wished to leave discreetly and quietly before her employer returned and might notice it first-hand."

"Infatuation with me?" I repeated. "Wherever did such an idea come from, monsieur? Had she said something I did not hear?"

"No, but she certainly contemplated it upon my mention and, thinking something must have shown to that effect in her expression, she thought it must indeed be true. She will remain quiet about our visit, I assure you."

"Monsieur Duponte! I cannot begin to understand this tactic!"

"You are the model of the handsome young man," he replied, then added, "at least by Baltimore standards. That you are hardly aware of it only allows it to enter more decidedly in the eyes of a young female. Certainly the chambermaid noted this upon our entrance; indeed, her eyes flitted, as it were, immediately. Even if she did not consider it directly-until I mentioned it."

"Monsieur, still-"

"No more talk of this, Monsieur Clark. We must continue our work in relation to Dr. Snodgrass."

"But what do you mean by ‘it was not for Bonjour's sake'?"

"Bonjour hardly needs our assistance, nor would she hesitate to cross us for her purposes when given the opportunity. You would be especially wise to remember this. It was for the sake of the other girl I did that."

"How do you mean?"

"If the chambermaid had attempted to allege misconduct against Bonjour, I do not suppose the poor girl would have fared well against mademoiselle. Certainly, it is wise to save lives whenever you can."

I reflected a moment on my naïve understanding of the situation.

"Where shall we go next, monsieur?"

He gestured to my memorandum book. "To read, of course."

Meanwhile, a new obstacle awaited us. While we had been occupied, my great-aunt had arrived at Glen Eliza. Her purpose here was no mystery: word had reached her of my return to Baltimore and she came to see why I had not yet been married after my notorious lapse. She had a long fellowship with Hattie Blum's aunt (a conspiracy of these creatures!) and would have heard the odd bits of half-truth that the other woman had collected about my goings-on.

Nearly two hours passed after we returned home before I learned of her presence. After our endeavors at the Snodgrass home, we had adjourned to the athenaeum to match some of the records we had discovered with articles from the press. We continued on at Glen Eliza in fastidious conversation regarding our various discoveries made there. Because Duponte and I were organizing the intelligence we had gathered at the Snodgrass house, I gave firm orders that we were not to be interrupted. The table in the library had grown thick with newspapers, lists, and notes, and therefore we remained in the massive drawing room, which stretched out over half of the second floor of the house. At length, around twilight, I went to the other side of the house to consult something, but was stopped by Daphne, my best chambermaid.

"You must not go inside, sir," she said.

"Not go in my library? But why?"

"Ma'am insists she must not be disturbed, sir."

I obediently released the handle of the door. "Ma'am? What ‘ma'am'?"

"Your aunt. She arrived with her bags at Glen Eliza while you were out, sir. She has been exhausted by her trip, as it was frightfully cold and her baggage nearly lost by the railroad men."

I was confounded. "I have been sitting in the drawing room without knowing this. Why have you not told me?"

"You declared in great hurryment you must not be disturbed even before stepping through the street door, didn't you, sir!"

"I must greet her properly," I said, straightening my neck-cloth and smoothing my vest.

"Well, go about it quietly-she needs strict quiet to cure her sick-headache to which she is subject, sir. I'm sure she was quite displeased at the other disturbance."

"Daphne, the other disturbance?" I then remembered that, not more than an hour earlier, Duponte had retrieved a book he had remembered was in the library. Surely my faithful maid had instituted my great-aunt's domineering orders against Duponte as well?

"The gentleman would not heed my words! He went right in…" Daphne explained with heated disapproval and a fresh revival of her Duponte misgivings.

I thought about Duponte and Auntie Blum's encounter some weeks earlier, and imagining my great-aunt's reaction to any similar conversation made my own head throb. I now thought better of my desire to greet her-especially given the humor any woman of her advanced age was likely in, between the delayed train and Monsieur Duponte. I returned to the drawing room. Great-Aunt's presence would be no small disruption. Indeed, I could not guess the influence that elder relation would ultimately have over all this.

The next vivid memory I possess of that evening was when I stirred awake. I had fallen into an uncomfortable sleep on one of the drawing room's long sofas. The papers I had been reviewing had scattered on the carpet below. It was an hour or so past nightfall and Glen Eliza was eerie with silence. Duponte, it seemed, had retired to the third floor to his chambers. A loud bump jolted me to a greater state of consciousness. The wind was blowing through the long curtains, and a feeling of great anxiety flitted inside my stomach.

The corridors on this side of the house were deserted. Remembering my great-aunt, I ascended the winding stairs and crept past the chambers where she would have been placed by the servants, but found the door open and the bedclothes undisturbed. Walking back down directly to the library, I quietly pushed open the doors to the dimly lighted room.

"Great-Auntie Clark," I said softly, "I hope you are not still awake after such a difficult day."

The room was unoccupied-but not undisturbed. It was all but ransacked, papers overturned and books scattered around the room. No trace of the old woman was to be seen. In the corridor, I saw a darkly cloaked figure race past at a strong pace. I gave chase to the figure's shadow through the long halls of Glen Eliza. The figure dove through an open window near the kitchen on the first floor and ran toward a trail in the wooded area behind the house.

"Burglary!" I cried. "Auntie," I gasped to myself in sudden dread.

Following the little glen that ran along the house toward the gravel street, the burglar slowed to decide which way to run, leaving himself entirely vulnerable. I pounced, and wrestled him down with a giant leap and a groan.

"You shall not get away!" I yelled.

We fell together into a heap and I turned his body to face me, locking his wrist in my hand and struggling to throw off the hood of his velvet cloak. But this was no man.

"You? How? What have you done with Great-Auntie Clark?" I demanded. Then I realized my own stupidity. "It was you the whole time, mademoiselle? My aunt hasn't come?"

"If you wrote more frequently, perhaps she would," Bonjour scolded me. "I daresay there is reading in your library far more interesting dredged up by your master Duponte than in all your Monsieur Poe's tales."

"We saw you still at the Snodgrass house upon our departure!" Then I recalled our stop at the athenaeum.

"I was faster. That is your flaw-you hesitate always. Do not be angry, Monsieur Quentin. We are now even. You and your master wished to be in my territory in the Snodgrasses, and now I have entered yours. This is familiar, too." She writhed a bit under my grip, as I had done at the Paris fortifications in opposite positions. The velvet of her cloak and the silk of her dress rustled against my shirt.

I quickly released my grip. "You knew I could not send for the police. Why did you run then?"

"I like to see you run. You are not half slow, you know, monsieur, without a proper hat to hinder you." She passed her hand playfully through my hair.

My heart wild with bewilderment, I jumped up from our entangled position on the ground.

"Heavens!" I cried, looking ahead at the street.

"Is that all?" Bonjour laughed.

There was a small conveyance lurking on the hilly side of the street. Hattie stood calmly in front of it. I did not know when she had arrived, and could not imagine what she thought she saw before her.

"Quentin," she said, taking a cautious step forward. Her voice was unsteady. "I asked one of the stablemen to drive me. I have managed to get away from my house a few times but, until now, have not found you at home."

"I have been away much," I replied dumbly.

"I thought nightfall would provide us privacy to meet." She glanced at Bonjour, who lingered on the cold grass before hopping up. "Quentin? Who is this?"

"This is Bon-" I stopped myself, realizing her name would sound like a queer invention on my part. "A visitor from Paris."

"You met this young lady in Paris, and now she has come to call on you?"

"Not to see me in particular, Miss Hattie," I protested.

"You are in love after all, Monsieur Quentin. She's beautiful!" Bonjour tossed her head. She leaned forward as though peeping at a new litter of kittens. Hattie flinched at the attention of the stranger, wrapping her shawl tighter.

"Tell me, how did he pop the important question?" Bonjour asked Hattie.

"Please, Bonjour!" When I turned my back to Hattie to admonish Bonjour, Hattie climbed into her coach and ordered it away. "Hattie, wait!" I cried.

"I must go home, Quentin." I chased the carriage and called out to Hattie before losing too much ground as they passed into the forest. When I turned back to Glen Eliza, Bonjour had vanished as well, and I was alone.

The next morning, I firmly rebuked the chambermaid who had acted as guard to Bonjour's fraud.

"Say, Daphne, that you truly thought that young woman, hardly old enough to be my wife, was my great-aunt!"

"I did not say great-aunt, sir, but aunt only, as she said. She was in her shawl and the finest hat, sir, so I did not judge her age. Nor did the other gentleman question her on the matter when he entered there. And more so, sir, in large families one can have many aunts of all ages. I knew a girl of twenty-two whose aunt was not yet three years old."

I turned my attention to her most salient point, Duponte. It was possible, perhaps, that in the midst of his usual unbreakable concentration and with the library's stained glass keeping it dim even in the day, he had noticed no more than a feminine silhouette at the library table when he had gone inside for his book. Still, this seemed unlikely. I confronted Duponte on the issue. I could not restrain my anger.

"The Baron shall now possess nearly half, if not more, of the information we have gathered! Monsieur, did you not notice Bonjour right in front of you when you walked into the library yesterday?"

"I am not blind," he replied. "And to a very beautiful girl! It is a dim room, but not so dim as that. I saw her plainly."

"Why didn't you call for me, for God's sake? The situation has been much damaged!"

"The situation?" Duponte repeated, perhaps sensing that my frenzy went beyond her infiltration of our investigation on the case. Indeed, I wondered if I could ever look the same again in Hattie's eyes.

"All the intelligence we had possessed that they had not," I said more calmly and with decision.

"Ah. Not so, Monsieur Clark. Our hold on the events surrounding the time of Monsieur Poe's death is dependent only in very small part in possessing the details and facts, which are the blood of the newspapers. That's not the heart of our knowledge. Do not mishear me: details are elemental, and at times trying to acquire, but not in themselves enlightenment. One must know how to read them properly to find their properties of truth-and the Baron Dupin's reading of them has nothing to do with ours. If your concern is that we shall give the Baron some advantage over us, worry not, for it is the opposite of what you think. If his reading is incorrect, than the more particulars he must read, the farther we move ahead of him."