Curiosity (20 page)

I
EXPECTED MAELZEL TO TURN ON ME,
too, with an accusing and menacing gaze, and I tried to appear as ignorant and innocent as I possibly could. But he treated me the same way he usually did—as though I were beneath his notice. Instead, he glanced contemptuously at the manuscript. As he scanned the pages, the smirk on his face faded, to be replaced by a scowl. When he finished, he rolled the article into a tight cylinder and smacked it irritably against his palm. “Just what is it you want, Mr. Poe?”

“As I said, I want to give you a chance to respond, to
demolish
my argument if you can.”

“You know I cannot.”

“Then I'll print the piece as it stands.” He stroked his mustache thoughtfully. “Unless . . .”

“Unless what?”

“Well, at the risk of sounding crass, sir, perhaps I could be persuaded not to.”

Maelzel stared at him incredulously. “Are you attempting to
blackmail
me, sir?”

“Not at all. My idea was that, if I withheld the piece from our April issue, you might fill the space with an advertisement for your exhibition.”

“Ah. And how much would such an advertisement cost me?”

“Shall we say . . . four hundred dollars?”

I groaned. That was a good year's wages, even for a skilled craftsman. Knowing how tight Maelzel was with his money, I could guess his response, and I was right. He took a step forward and seized Poe's shirtfront, as he so often did with me. “I have heard your idea. Now here is
my
idea. I recommend that you go home and begin working on another little piece for your magazine—your own obituary. Because if you print
this
piece, you are going to need it!” He jammed the pages into Poe's pocket and pushed him away so roughly that he stumbled and nearly fell.

Though Poe quickly disappeared, Maelzel's anger didn't. He turned it on me. “Obviously he knows that you are operating the Turk,” he growled. “How could he possibly know that?”

“I—I have no idea. Maybe he was the one spying on us?” I tried to put Fiona between myself and Maelzel, but he shoved her out of the way and advanced on me.

“He knows far more than he could have learned by simply spying. He describes almost exactly how the inside of the cabinet is set up, and how the arm mechanism works, and how the operator manages to stay unseen.”

“He—he said he
deduced
it, by watching the Turk play!”

“I do not believe him. He could not know all that unless someone told him. Someone who knows the Turk inside and out. Someone like
you
.” He jabbed a finger at my chest, but struck one of the bars of my brace, which made him even angrier. “How much did he pay you, boy?” he demanded.

“He
didn't
pay me, because I didn't say a word to him! I swear!” Perhaps you're thinking that I should have told him about Virginia; after all,
she
had betrayed
me
. But I couldn't bring myself to incriminate her; Maelzel might decide to get even with her, as he had with Mademoiselle Bouvier. Besides, Virginia couldn't have provided her cousin with all those details, either. She'd never seen the inside of the cabinet; she'd only seen me climbing out of it. Poe must have figured the rest of it out on his own.

“You are lying!” growled Maelzel. “I see it in your face!” As if to wipe the lying look off my face, he struck me with the back of his hand. I staggered backward and collided with the Turk; the impact must have knocked loose the pin that held his arm in place, for the limb swung outward. As I backed away from Maelzel, it encircled me.
Oh, Lud,
I thought,
Now even Otto is betraying me
. I struggled so desperately to free myself that the arm bent backward and something inside it snapped. Something seemed to snap inside Maelzel, too. He lunged forward and, grabbing hold of my torture device, lifted me off my feet and flung me to the floor.

“The truth, boy!” he shouted, and kicked me in the ribs. Though the back brace deflected the blow, it still made me gasp with pain. “Tell me the truth!” Another kick, like a punctuation mark made physical. “You sold him my secrets!” And another kick. He was so furious now that he was out of control, like an automaton whose mechanism has gone awry. I knew that, if he kept it up, he would surely do me in, and there was no one there to stop him.

Then, suddenly, the blows ceased. I could still hear Maelzel grunting and cursing, but he didn't seem to be cursing me. I struggled to sit up; when I wiped the sweat and tears from my eyes, I saw Maelzel curled up on the floor, groaning and clutching his left knee. Jacques stood over him, with his crutch raised like a club.
“Ne bougez pas!”
he warned Maelzel. “Or I will break your other leg!”

Maelzel glared at his attacker for a long moment, then drew several deep breaths and said, in a voice that sounded almost calm, in a brittle sort of way, “This is the second time you have defended him and gone against me. I let it go the first time. This time I will not. You no longer work for me, Monsieur Jouy, and never will again. Get out.”

Jacques lowered the crutch and nodded. “
Très bien
. As soon as I gather up my tools.”

“You may come back for them, when I am not here. Leave now, and take the
verdammte Junge
with you.”

Somehow I managed to stand and hobble to the door without help. Before Jacques closed the door behind us, I turned and took one last look at Otto. His dark eyes were fixed on me; his broken arm seemed to be reaching out to me, as if asking me to come back, or to forgive him. Or was he just trying to keep me in his clutches? That's the trouble with figures made of wood and wires and wax. They don't communicate very well.

I wouldn't see the Turk again for nearly seven years. I never saw Maelzel again at all. Eventually I did learn his fate, which was a sad one, and I'll reveal that in due time. I'm sure you're also curious to know who the mysterious Mrs. Fisher actually was, and what became of Virginia and Mademoiselle Bouvier and Monsieur Mulhouse. Be patient; I'll tell you all those things, too, before we're done. But first I have to tell you what became of me.

I had no desire to stay in Richmond, and neither did Jacques. That very afternoon, we boarded the mail coach for Philadelphia. If my situation had seemed bleak before, now it looked downright hopeless. I was out of a job and had no prospects of another. I had nowhere to live, no friends or family, and nothing to my name but a few dollars, the clothes (and the brace) on my back, and a sack containing my old, worn clothing and three books: Philidor's chess manual,
Elements of Phrenology
—which I had borrowed from Maelzel and never returned—and my father's journal, which I hadn't yet found the courage to open.

Jacques's possessions were nearly as scanty; his only baggage was an ironbound chest full of woodworking tools. The coachman wanted to put it on the roof, with the other luggage and parcels, but Jacques insisted on keeping it with him. Luckily there was plenty of room; though the coach could hold nine passengers, there was only one besides ourselves—a portly tobacco merchant who filled the air and my poor lungs with the acrid smoke of his own product.

“When you fetched your tools,” I said, between coughs, “was Maelzel gone?”

“
Non
. But he gave me no trouble. He only warned me to keep my mouth shut about—” He glanced furtively at our fellow passenger. “
Eh bien
, you know what I mean.”

“
Oui
. He was wrong about me, you know. I didn't tell Poe anything.”

“I doubt you will ever convince him of that.
Alors
—” He reached into the pocket of his coat and drew out an envelope sealed with wax. “He told me to give this to you.”

I examined it suspiciously. “What is it? A packet of arsenic?” I turned the envelope over. It was addressed to a Mr. Dunn at Nathan Dunn & Co., Philadelphia. When we lived at the Parsonage, I had heard my father speak rather distastefully of Nathan Dunn. As a Quaker, the man was expected to live modestly and simply, but he hadn't let that stop him from becoming one of the wealthiest merchants in Philadelphia. “Maelzel wants me to deliver this?”

Jacques nodded.

“He's too much of a miser to send it by post?”

“He says if you take it in person, this Mr. Dunn will find a place for you.”

“But why would Maelzel recommend me for a job? He thinks I sold him out.”

“Do not ask me. I know only what he told me.”

The body of our coach was suspended on leather straps, which made the ride marginally more comfortable than our trip in the wagonette had been; I was grateful, for my ribs were aching from Maelzel's beating. The farther north we went, the colder the weather got and, even though I shrouded myself in the blankets provided by the stage line, I was shivering much of the time.

At least we didn't have to push the coach out of any mud holes; the road was frozen solid, which also meant that we made good time. Around midnight we arrived at Fredericksburg, where we put up at the Farmers' Hotel. The room cost far more than I would have liked, but it was clean and warm, and we didn't come away infested with lice or bedbugs.

Jacques sedated himself with bourbon as usual, and I made my bed on the floor as usual, just in case his sedative didn't work. After he became mellow, but before he became comatose, I said, “I never thanked you for saving my life.”

“
Quoi
?”

“If you hadn't stopped Maelzel, he would have surely killed me.”

Jacques gave a skeptical snort. “He can be
méchant—
cruel—but he is not a murderer.”

“Really? What about Mademoiselle Bouvier?”

“What about her?”

“Well, she disappeared, didn't she? Mulhouse says that, if she sold the Turk's secret to someone, Maelzel might have done her in.”

“Mulhouse is a fool.”

“Then what did happen to her?”

“You are asking a lot of questions again,
Porcelet
.” He took a long swig of whiskey and sighed. “Mademoiselle Bouvier was a fool, too. She did tell
un journaliste
that she operated the Turk. And Maelzel did get rid of her. But not in the way you think.”

“How, then?”

“He sent her to Jamaica, as an indentured servant.”

“Against her will? How could he do that?”

“He did not say. I suppose he drugged her.”

I fished the blood-tarnished earring from my pocket. “Did this belong to her?”

Jacques rubbed his bleary eyes and squinted at it. “
Peut-être
. Where did you find it?”

“Behind the felt lining.”

“Ah. No doubt she lost it when she set the cabinet on the fire. It must have caught on the machinery.”

There was a long silence, during which I swallowed this information and Jacques swallowed more whiskey. Finally, I said, “And what about Mulhouse? He threatened to sell us out if Maelzel didn't give him more money.”

“How do you know that?”

“I heard them arguing. Maelzel said that, if he did, he'd meet the same fate as Mademoiselle Bouvier.”

Jacques shrugged. “All I know is, he was in Philadelphia when we left.”

Another lengthy silence followed. I was waiting for Jacques to reach just the right stage of drunkenness before I spoke again. “Actually,” I said, “Mulhouse never accused Maelzel of murdering Mademoiselle Bouvier.”

Jacques was sober enough to catch the implication in my words. “Ah. So, he thought it was
me
.”

“Well, he . . . he did mention the possibility. He said that—” I broke off, afraid of going too far.

Jacques filled in the blank I had left. “—that I killed someone back there,
en France
?”
He wore his usual scowl, but he didn't really seem angry, just sort of . . . resigned, as if he'd known all along that his secret, like the Turk's, couldn't be kept hidden forever. “
Eh bien
. He is right.”