Poe shadow (34 page)

Newman’s lips trembled terribly; he tried to speak but failed. I hoped the man would simply continue on with his other horrid task, but that was not to be.

He pointed his cane at Newman’s mouth, and then across his body as though he were lecturing at the medical college. “A likely Negro, aren’t you. Fine mouth, generally good teeth, no broken bones to be seen. Good coachman, I’d bet, or a waiter, if he can be careful and honest.” Addressing me, he said, “I could sell him for at least six hundred dollars, with a commission to me, my friend.”

“I am not his owner,” I replied. “Nor is he for sale.”

“Then perhaps he is your bastard child?” he said sarcastically.

“I am Quentin Clark, an attorney of this city. This young man you see is manumitted.”

“I’m a free man, boss,” Newman finally said in a tiny whisper.

“Oh?” Slatter asked musingly, reversing his horse and peering down again at Newman. “Let us see your certificates then.”

At this Newman, who had received all the necessary papers that morning, merely trembled and stammered.

“Come on now.” Slatter prodded Newman in the shoulder with his cane.

“Leave him,” I cried out. “He is freed by my own hand. A man with more freedom than you, Mr. Slatter, for he knows what it is not to have it.”

Slatter was about to hit Newman in the shoulder harder when I raised my cane and blocked his instrument with it. “Tell me, Mr. Slatter,” I said. “I wonder, if you are so interested in papers, if you should like to have the authorities inspect your slaves on the bus and ensure that all are being sold in accordance with their particular deeds.”

Slatter grinned darkly at me. He withdrew his cane with an air of courtesy and, without saying another word to us, dug his heels into his horse’s sides to catch up with the train of vehicles heading down into the harbor. Newman was breathing rapidly.

“Why not show him your papers?” I asked insistently. “You do have them on you?”

He pointed to his head, where he wore a ragged hat—he had sewn the papers into the brim. Newman then told of the many traders like Slatter who asked to inspect their certificates of freedom and, once they had them in hand, destroyed the documents. They’d then conceal the rightfully free men and women in their pens until they were sold as legal slaves to another state, far away from any evidence to the contrary.

“MONSIEUR DUPONTE, I
must ask something at once.”

I said this after one of our many recent silent suppers in the large rectangular dining room of Glen Eliza.

Duponte nodded.

I continued. “When the Baron holds his lecture on Poe’s death, it may irrevocably pollute the truth. Perhaps, when he delivers his speech, I should cause some distraction to him outside the hall, and you could claim the stage and reveal the truth to the people!”

“No, monsieur,” said Duponte, shaking his head. “We shall do nothing of the kind. There is more here than you realize.”

I nodded sadly, and did not touch another morsel of food. That had been my experiment. Duponte had failed. He went on with his undisturbed silence.

I was entirely absorbed in distraction. To my visible displeasure, the dronish fellows who were overseeing some of my father’s investments came to the door and I sent them away at once. I could not think about numbers and annual accounts.

“The Purloined Letter”: the second sequel to “The Murders in the

Rue Morgue.” That’s what I was thinking about with such a wistful air. C. Auguste Dupin has discovered the secret location of the letter stolen by Minister D———, hidden most ingeniously by being placed
right in front of everyone’s eyes.
It was the ordinary aspect of the spot that eluded all but one man. The analyst uses an unnamed collaborator to fire a gun in the street and raise a commotion. The collaborator’s distraction allows C. Auguste Dupin to retrieve the letter, and put a false one in its place.

I relate this to bring out a point. C. Auguste Dupin trusts his collaborator there; and, besides, puts increasingly great trust in the work of his faithful assistant in all of Poe’s Dupin trilogy.

Yet
Auguste Duponte, my own companion, hardly gave credence to my role as collaborator and quietly dismissed my numerous ideas and suggestions, whether it was questioning Henry Reynolds, for which he made a mockery of me, or my latest design regarding the disruption of the Baron’s lecture. On the other hand, Baron Dupin in all he endeavored constantly favored employing accomplices!

Then there was the interesting fact to consider of Baron Dupin’s gift for disguises and alterations. A similarity might be noted, that the literary Dupin uses his green spectacles as another way to dupe his brilliant opponent, Minister D———, in “The Purloined Letter.”

And how about Baron Dupin’s profession as a lawyer? I had begun in the last few days to underline certain lines in the trilogy. “The Mystery of Marie Rogêt” implies to the careful reader, in certain key passages, that C. Auguste Dupin was deeply acquainted with the law, perhaps hinting for us at
his past practice as a lawyer.
Like Baron Dupin.

Then there is that initial, so uninteresting to the uninformed eye: C. Auguste Dupin.
C.
Dupin. Could it not remind the reader of one
Claude
Dupin? And is not Poe’s character of the genius analyst known by the time of the second tale by the dignified title of “Chevalier”? Chevalier C. Auguste Dupin. Baron C. Dupin.

“But what of the Baron Dupin’s cold penchant for money?” I asked myself. Alas, recall that C. Auguste Dupin profits monetarily, and most
deliberately,
from the employment of his skills in each of the three tales!

Above all, here was the Baron Claude Dupin confronting Snodgrass, boldly denying the notion of Poe expiring through a disgraceful debauch. While on that same day in Glen Eliza
Auguste Duponte was allowing for the merits of that shameful position.
His nonchalant comment about Poe’s drinking resounded in my mind again and again until bitterness and regret reigned over me. “I had never said he had not.”

I acknowledged the seeds of my idea and allowed it to germinate: what if the Baron Dupin, all this time, were the
real Dupin.
And would not Poe have enjoyed this jolly, philosophical, hoaxing rogue, who had so thrilled and plagued me? Poe had written in a letter to me that the Dupin tales were ingenious not just for their method but their “
air
of method.” Didn’t the Baron understand the importance of appearance in gaining the awe of those around him, whereas Duponte ignored and alienated to no end? What a great, strange relief these thoughts suddenly provided me. I had miscalculated all along.

Though it was late at night when these ideas culminated in me, I descended the stairs soundlessly and stole out of Glen Eliza. I reached the Baron Dupin’s hotel room a half hour late and stood at the door. I was breathing deeply, too deeply, my breathing an echo of my frantic thoughts. I knocked, too exhilarated and fearful to be articulate. There was a rustle from the other side of the door.

“I’ve possibly been mistaken,” I said softly. “Some words, please, just a few moments.” I looked behind me to make sure I had not been followed.

The room door nudged opened, and I put my foot in front of it.

I knew I would have only a brief hearing to state my position. “Baron Dupin, please! I believe we must speak at once. I believe—I know you are the one.”

“BARON! IS THERE
a real baron staying in this hotel?”

A thickly bearded man in nightclothes and slippers stood at the door, holding up his candle.

“This is not the room of Baron Dupin?”

“We have not seen him!” replied the man with disappointment, looking over his shoulder as though perhaps there was a baron in his bed-quilt he had neglected to notice. “But we’ve only arrived this afternoon from Philadelphia.”

I mumbled my apologies and returned hurriedly through the hall and to the street. The Baron had changed hotels again and, in my distraction,

I had missed it. My thoughts ran quick and conflicting as I emerged from the hotel. Immediately I felt eyes upon the back of my neck and slowed my walk. It was not merely the intensity of my mood. There was the handsome black whom I had seen before, hands deep in his coat pockets, standing under the streetlamp. Or was it? He remained within the scope of the light only momentarily; then I could find him no more.

Turning to the other side, I thought I saw one of the two men in the old-fashioned dress I had seen following the Baron. My heart thumped violently at the vague feeling of being surrounded. I marched away as quickly as possible, jumping nearly headlong into a hackney coach, which I directed back to Glen Eliza.

After a night of sleeplessness, images of Duponte and the Baron

Dupin alternating and mixing in my mind with the sweeter sounds of

Hattie’s sonorous laugh, a messenger arrived in the morning with a note from the athenaeum clerk. It concerned the man who had handed him those Poe-related articles—that first hint of the existence of the real

Dupin. The clerk had indeed remembered or, rather, had seen the very man himself, and when doing so had requested his calling card to send to me.

The man who had passed along the articles was Mr. John Benson, a name meaningless to me. The enameled calling card was from Richmond but had a Baltimore address written in a man’s hand. Had someone wanted me to find the real Dupin? Had someone possessed a motive in seeing him brought to Baltimore to resolve Poe’s death? Had I been chosen for this?

To say sooth, though, my hopes for elucidation were dim. It seemed to me likely that the ancient clerk, however well-meaning, may have simply mistaken this fellow as the man he had met so briefly two years ago.

I thought of the figures who’d seemed to creep from the shadows around me the night before. Prior to venturing outside on this day, I had secured a revolver that my father had kept in a box to bring on his business visits to the less cultivated countries that traded with Baltimore. I placed the weapon in the pocket of my coat and started for the address printed on Benson’s card.

Walking through Baltimore Street, I saw, from a distance, Hattie standing in front of the sign for a fashionable store. I signaled her halfheartedly, not knowing if she would simply walk away without addressing me.

With great abruptness, she ran ahead and embraced me warmly. Though I thrilled at her affection, and the comfort of being close to her again, I imagined with true torment and anxiety that she would brush against the revolver in my coat and develop again the doubts about my behavior that had plagued her. She pulled back as quickly as she had reached for me, as though afraid of spying eyes.

“Dear Hattie,” I said, “you do not abhor the very sight of me?”

“Oh, Quentin. I know that you have found new worlds for yourself, new experiences outside the ones we could have together.”

“You do not understand who that was. She is a thief, a burglar! Please, I must make you understand. Let us talk together somewhere quiet.”

I took her arm to lead her. She gently pulled away.

“It is far too late. I had only come to Glen Eliza that night to explain. I have told you things are quite different.”

This could not be! “Hattie, I needed to follow what seemed right. But soon all will be returned to normal.”

“Auntie wishes that I never say your name again, and has instructed all of our friends that they are never to mention our engagement with a single living breath.”

“But surely Auntie Blum can be readily convinced.…What she wrote in her note to me about you finding someone else…it is not true?”

Hattie gave a small nod. “I am to be married to another man, Quentin.”

“It is not because of what you saw at Glen Eliza.”

She shook her head no, her face motionless and ambivalent.

“Who?”

Here was my answer.

Peter stepped from inside the store where Hattie stood, counting out some coins given to him by the shop-girl. Seeing me, he turned away guiltily.