Poe shadow (16 page)

“But, monsieur, I fear there is nothing so interesting enough about me.”

“They would hear all from the masters of your hotel, from the
commissionnaires
who watch you leave and return, from fiacre drivers, sellers of vegetables, wine-shop masters. Yes, monsieur, I suppose there is nothing you can do that they cannot discover.”

In my current state of nervousness, this commentary did not endear me. I paid him what I owed and dismissed him from his service. Without my guide I could now move faster, weaving through the slow gatherings of mobs in each chamber. I noticed behind me some commotion, men huffing and women exclaiming over some disturbance. It seemed some of the tourists were complaining about someone who was rudely pushing through the crowd. I turned into the next chamber, not waiting to see who had been the culprit of the strife. Meanwhile, I dodged every figure and expensive furnishing in my path until I reached the palace’s immense gardens.

“Here he is! He’s the one plowing through the place!”

As I heard this voice, a hand caught my arm. It was a guard.

“I?” I protested. “Why, I was not pushing anyone!”

After it was reported to the guard that the man rudely pushing through was spotted behind us, I was released into the gardens and quickly created distance between the guard and myself in the event he changed his mind. I would soon wish I had not left the safety of being at his side.

I thought back to Madame Fouché warning me about the dangerous areas of Paris. “There are men and women who will rob you and then throw you over the bridge into the Seine,” she had said. It was from this population that the revolutionaries in March 1848 drew most of their “soldiers” to force out King Louis-Philippe and establish the Republic in the name of the people. A hackney cab driver told me that during that uprising he saw one of these villains, surrounded by police and about to be shot, yell,
“Je suis bien vengé!”
and remove fifteen or sixteen human tongues from his pockets. He tossed them into the air before dying, and they landed on the shoulders and hats of the police, and even in one policeman’s mouth, which had dropped open in disbelief at the disgusting sight.

I was in the plush sanctuary of Versailles’s immaculate gardens, not in one of these neighborhoods of tongue-cutters. Still, I had the sensation that each step I made was being marked. The sharp hedges and trees of the gardens revealed fragments of faces. Passing rows of statues, vases, and fountains, I came to a standstill at the God of Day, a hideous deity rising up from a splashing fountain of dolphins and sea-monsters. How much more secure I might have been inside the suites of the palace, surrounded by hordes of visitors and my busybody guide! It was then that a man appeared in front and snatched my arm.

Here is what I remember after that. I was inside a rickety carriage riding over loose stones. Next to me was the face I last saw before losing consciousness in the gardens of Versailles—a thick, rigid face carved below an emotionless frown. A face I had also noticed in several of the suites of the palace at Versailles. This had been my shadow! I licked my teeth and gums and found it was still present; my tongue, I mean.

Did I think before I reached for the door of the carriage? I cannot recall. I threw myself onto it and tumbled to the road. When I pushed myself to my feet, another coach was barreling at me. It swerved and narrowly squeezed between me and the vehicle that had been carrying me.
“Gare!”
growled its driver, who seemed to me only a large set of yellow teeth, a slouched hat, and a floppy collar. A lean dog howled from that carriage’s window.

I ran for the fields that sloped down from the road. Beyond that was open country.

Then my captor was out of the coach and starting toward me, terribly fast for so bulky a man. I felt a quick, decisive blow to my head.

My hands were stiff behind my back. I was looking around—or should I say
up.
Upon waking, I found myself in a wide trench indented some twenty feet into the earth. Above that were towering walls; they were nothing like the petite rows of buildings and homes on every Paris street. It was as though I had been brought to another world, and a monstrous silence stretched around us as in the widest desert.

“Where am I? I demand to know!” I shouted, though I could see no one to shout to.

I heard a voice mutter something in French. I craned my head but could not move enough to see behind me. Only a shadow fell over me, and I believed it was that of my captor.

“Where are we, you blackguard?” I demanded. He made no indication of hearing. He just stood, waiting. Only when the villain in question came from the other side did I realize that this shadow belonged to someone else.

Finally, the shadow moved and he came around to face me. But it was no man.

Here she was, wearing a fresh white bonnet and a plain dress, she who could have been in one of the Parisian gardens. She stopped in front of my chair and leaned over me with what seemed to be caring protectiveness, looking at me with deep-set eyes—in fact, eyes so deep they seemed to reach to the back of her head. She seemed no older than a girl.

“Stop squeaking.”

“Who are you?” I whispered, hoarse from hollering.

“Bonjour,” said the girl, who then turned her back and walked away.

I returned the greeting, though thinking any attempt at cordialness odd under the circumstances.

“You fool,” admonished my first captor, seeming to wish she not hear, as though he would be blamed for my error. “That is her name. Bonjour!”

“Bonjour?” I repeated. Then I realized I had seen her before, another time I was in jeopardy. “At Café Belge! I saw you there, holding a basket! Why were you there?”

“Here we are!” a new voice boomed in English, tinged with a French accent but otherwise perfectly fluent. “Is it very necessary to have our welcomed guest from the great United States so restrained?”

The answer was demure enough to identify the latest arrival as the leader. My captor moved closer to him and spoke confidentially, as though I had suddenly lost the power to hear. “He swooned at Versailles, and then he ran from the coach, leaping out the door like a madman. He nearly killed himself—”

“No matter. Here we are all safe. Bonjour, please?” The girl agilely untied the ropes and released my wrists.

I had not up to this point been able to see this new arrival, only glimpses of a long white cloak and light pantaloons. With my hands free, I stood and faced him.

“My apologies for going to such lengths, Monsieur Clark,” he said, waving his bejeweled hand at our surroundings as though the whole thing was an accident. “But I am afraid these unfortunate fortresses are among the few places within the environs of Paris where I can still travel with some tranquillity. Most importantly—”

I interrupted. “Now see here! Your rogue has ill-treated me and now—But in the first place, I would like to know where exactly you have had me taken and why…!” I choked on my words, staring at him through a spark of sudden recognition.

“Most importantly, as I say,” he continued warmly, a grin pressing out the olive skin of his face, “we finally meet in person.”

He took my hand, which fell limp when the truth struck me.

“Dupin!” I cried out in disbelief.

YOU WILL RECALL
that there were five or six other men that I seriously examined as potential inspirations for the Dupin character before eliminating them in favor of Duponte.

A Baron Claude Dupin was one of these—a French attorney who, it was said, had never lost a single case, and who boasted distant royal lineage, wherein derived the dubious title of “Baron.” He had been among the most prominent jurists of Paris for many years, thought of as a hero for successfully advocating in favor of many accused but sympathetic wrongdoers. He was even a candidate for advocate-general at one time, and almost sent to the chamber of representatives by his district during one of the upheavals in French government. He was alleged by some to employ unsavory tactics and, soon, relinquished his work altogether in favor of biding his time with other enterprises in London. While there, he was sworn in as a special constable during a period of fear of an uprising, and acted bravely enough in that capacity to continue with that title in an honorary capacity.

All of this information had been collected piecemeal during my careful searches of French periodicals. There was a time before I went to Paris when I was quite certain that Claude Dupin was the basis for C. Auguste Dupin, and I had sent several letters to Baron Dupin inquiring into further details of his history and describing the pressing situation at hand in Baltimore. Soon enough, however, I had stumbled upon the articles concerning Auguste Duponte and altered my theory. When Claude Dupin had replied to me, I had mailed him an apologetic letter explaining my mistake.

One of the French periodicals I had seen included an illustrated portrait of Baron Dupin, which I had studied closely. Thus, I knew the man who was pressing my hand as though we were old friends. That’s when I yelled in alarm and astonishment: “Dupin!…You’re Claude Dupin!”

“Please,” said he magnanimously, “call me Baron!”

I yanked my hand away. I looked for my best chance at immediate escape. The carriage that had brought me there was now waiting in a temporary passage in the masonry, but I had no thought of being able to commandeer it, as my first captor had returned to the vehicle and was waiting there.

The trench around Paris was part of the impenetrable fortification built to provide against future assaults on the city. A continuous enclosure surrounded the outskirts of Paris, with embankments for artillery, surrounded by ditches and trenches.

In these daunting surroundings, Dupin now assured me of my complete safety and began explaining that his colleague Hartwick—that was the name of my captor, who’d nabbed me at Versailles and put me in his carriage—had merely wished to ensure my safe presence for this interview.

“Hartwick can outswear Satan, and he has almost bitten a man’s arm clean off once, but taken together he’s not badly made up. Do forgive him.”

“Forgive? Forgive this assault? I’m afraid, Dupin, I shall not do that!” I cried.

“You see, it is already a great relief to know you,” said Claude Dupin. “After so much time living in London, I’m afraid it’s been a while since a soul has pronounced my name correctly, like a Frenchman!”

“Listen, monsieur,” I reprimanded, though I liked the rare compliment to my French. “Do not butter me up. If you wished to speak with me, why not choose some civilized place in the city?”

“It would have been my pleasure to share a
demi-tasse
of coffee, Monsieur Clark, I assure you. But shall I call you Quentin?” He had a dashing way of talking that conveyed a high degree of ardor.

“No!”

“Be easy, be easy. Let me explain myself more, good Quentin. You see, there are two types of friends in this world: friends and enemies. In Paris, I possess both. I am afraid one of those groups would like to see me a head shorter. I may have been involved with the wrong sort some years ago, and promised certain amounts of money that, at the end of a thorough and unforgiving mathematical evaluation, I failed to possess. I was as poor as Job’s turkey. Fortunately, though I was in a bad box, I have enough protection in London to prevent too much worry when I am there. You see where I am reduced to meeting when I wish to visit Paris,” he added, waving his hand around at the fortifications. “You have luck enough to have some fortune of your own, I believe, Brother Quentin. Business? Or born with a silver spoon? No matter, I guess.”

It was surprising, and a bit troubling, to see Dupin remove my letters from his coat. Should I describe the physical appearance of the Baron here, you would see how difficult it was to deny him conversation despite the inexcusable treatment for which he had been responsible. He was expensively dressed, in a gaudy, almost dandyish white suit and gloves of the flash order, with a flower out of his button-hole, and very well groomed, wearing an orderly mustache. There were brilliant studs in his shirt-bosom and some glittering jewels on his watch-guard and on two or three rings on his fingers, but to his credit he seemed to take no pains to show them. His boots were polished so voluptuously they seemed to absorb all the warmth of the sun. He was dramatic and inviting; he was, in short, magazinish.