Poe shadow (42 page)

The same Officer White whom I had spoken with at the time of Poe’s death was waiting at his desk. His hands were folded tightly together in front of him.

“Have you found him now? Have you found Duponte?”

“Or Dupin?” he asked. “These portraits you gave us help, Mr. Clark. But the hotel clerks we interviewed all recognize Duponte not as Duponte,
but as Dupin.
You do notice their similarities even in the sketch you made with the painting?”

I could barely suppress my agitation. “The reason they appear similar is because Baron Dupin has been flagrantly attempting to ape Monsieur Duponte, and the artist, Von Dantker—he was part of it!”

White repositioned his hands and cleared his throat.

“Duponte was pretending to be Dupin?”

“What? No, no. Entirely the reverse, Officer White. Dupin wishes to prove he was the real source for Poe’s character—”

“Poe again! Now, what has this to do with him?”

“A great deal! You see, Auguste Duponte is the model for the character of C. Auguste Dupin. That is why he has come. To resolve the mystery of the death of Poe. He has been living in my house and has busied himself at his labor; that is why he has not been seen very much at all. Not to mention he walks mostly in the evening—well, Poe’s Frenchman does the same. In the meantime, the Baron Claude Dupin has pretended he is also the model of Dupin, as well as imitating Duponte.”

Officer White put his hand up to stop me. “You are implying Duponte is Dupin.”

“Yes! Well, it is much more complicated than that, isn’t it? The Baron Dupin is trying to be C. Auguste Dupin. The important point is simply to find the man before he comes to harm.”

“Perhaps, if I may suggest, you have simply seen this one fellow, Dupin, and mistaken him for someone else.”

“Mistaken him…” I said, reading his meaning. “I have not
imagined
the entire existence of Auguste Duponte, sir. I have not imagined someone living and supping and shaving in my house!”

White shook his head and looked to the floor.

I went on in a deep and serious tone. “Dupin is the wire-puller of this. He must be stopped at all costs! He is dangerous, Officer White! He has kidnapped a rare genius and may have already brought him to injury. He will spread his false version of events behind Poe’s death. Does none of that concern you?”

It clearly did not; and there was nothing to do for the moment but keep on doggedly with my search.

I wondered what might have been had I been more aware of human malice in those days. Had I been able to posit the dismal, secret plans—had I known to stay near Duponte at all times, to carry him bodily to the lecture hall if necessary. For all of Duponte’s strengths, he could do nothing faced with the Baron and Bonjour threatening his life, and I pictured him, as described by my domestic, accompanying them without even a struggle. What it would have meant to Poe’s legacy for Duponte to have spoken on this night. But such a question is pure speculation.

The time for the lecture was growing near. Walking with a rueful air along that street, for I wished to brood at the appropriate site, I was startled to see a throng of people pushing into the entrance of the lyceum hall. I touched the arm of one of the men on line and asked him the occasion.

“Haven’t the lyceum organizers canceled the lecture tonight?”

“No such thing!”

“This is the lecture that has been planned, you mean to say? On the true death of Poe?”

“Of course!” he said. “Perhaps you thought Emerson had come to town.”

“Duponte,” I breathed. “Has he escaped after all? He has come?”

“Only,” the man interjected, “there has been a change of circumstances. They now must charge for each ticket of admission.”

“Impossible!”

He nodded with resignation. “No matter. It is the original ‘Dupin,’ you know. It is worth one dollar and a half.”

I stared at him. He proudly held up a copy of Poe’s tales. “It is bound to be something,” he said.

Running to the front of the mob, I shoved my way inside, past the objecting doorkeeper asking for my ticket.

There, behind the stage, sat the erect figure of Auguste Duponte, quietly waiting alone in contemplation. I looked on with renewed faith and triumph, and reverence.

“How—?” I stepped closer.

“Welcome,” he said, glancing up at me deviously, and then looking around as though waiting for something more important. “I am glad, Brother Quentin, you will be a witness to history.”

It was not Duponte.

As remarkable as his imitation of Duponte had been at earlier times, the metamorphosis was now terrifyingly complete. Even the eyes contained something of Duponte’s spirit.

“Baron! I will not let this come off, be sure of that.” I gripped my Malacca in front of me.

“And what will you do?” His gaze fell leisurely over me. “You and Duponte have done me a favor, you know. I already have collected the subscription fees from my lecture to be held in a few days, and will receive those from today as well.”

I was surprised, once my mind adjusted to the circumstance, to find no trace of Bonjour around him. Would the Baron leave himself so unprotected? I suppose someone had to guard Duponte, unless they had…no, not even the Baron. Not an unarmed man.

“I will tell you the truth, the real truth, Brother Quentin. There were times before this day when I thought the jig was up. That Duponte was too clever for me. I see by your face you can hardly believe it. Yes, I thought, by the bye, he would by some measure prevail. He has lost his last chance, and now he may lie down and die.”

“Where is he?” I demanded. “What have you done to him?”

The Baron wore a devilish grin. “What do you mean?”

“I shall have the police on you! You shall not escape this!” I decided to try for any ace of information from him, and to loosen his confidence besides. “You know, wherever you have him, however you are holding him, Duponte will find a way out. He will come for you like all wrath. He will stop you at the last moment; he will prevail.”

The Baron offered an intimate laugh. He revealed nothing, but his insecurity showed in a twitch of his lip. “Monsieur Clark, do you know the obstacles I have overcome to reach this day? The Baltimore police pose no problem to me. Today, I turn a corner. Today it is do or die to put a finale on all this. Unless you shall stop me, for you are the only one who can now—no, but clearly you will not. I shall no longer live in the shadows, not in the shadows of my enemies or of Auguste Duponte. There are times when genius, like Duponte’s, must doff its hat to cunning. This day shall be my passport back to glory.”

The Baron followed the lyceum director onto the platform and to the podium. I looked around desperately, trying to think of what to do, but found myself on a mental treadmill. Finally, I pushed forward onto the platform and attempted to at least divide the Baron from the podium. Then I saw the crowd—no, call it the mob, the endless, formless, hollering expanse of people’s stares—and I understood why the Baron did not need Bonjour at his side to be protected. He was safe in a crowd. He was about to become legitimate again in the eyes of the world.

In the background, a lyceum clerk was fixing a light, causing it to sway disruptively, further confusing my senses in the dark hall. I could only shout for the lecture to be stopped and heard moans of displeasure in response.

I had lost all ability to articulate, all flow of logic. I shouted something about justice. I pulled and prodded, and was pushed in return. At some point in the fog of my memory, I can see there was the face of Tindley, the Whig doorkeeper, standing out in the crowd. A red parasol twirled in the horizon of my sight. I saw faces: Henry Herring, Peter Stuart, who pushed past the anxious crowd to come closer to the front. The old clerk from the athenaeum was there, too, squeezed into his seat, and newspaper editors from all the chief offices of the press. Sometime in all this, in the wavering light I saw it—the grin, the razor-sharp peculiar grin of mischief that Duponte had held for Von Dantker, now precisely plagiarized upon the face of the Baron. Then there was the noise, the only noise that could have risen above the excited clamor that my disturbance had now provoked. It was like a cannon burst. The first sent the stage lights crashing to the ground, drowning the whole place in darkness. And then there was another.

I jumped back amid the sea of screams and feminine shrieks at the sounds of gunfire. I trembled with a sudden chill, and from some macabre instinct put my hand to my chest. I remember only fragments after that:

The Baron Dupin above me and both of us falling together in a bloody tangle, upending the podium in the process…his shirt stained with a wide oval, the rim of which was a thick darkness the color of death…he groaning, gripping madly, passionately at my collar…a horrid weight over my body.

Then, both of us sinking, sinking into oblivion.

I WAS NOT
suspicious when Officer White took me in his coach from the lyceum to Glen Eliza. Think of it. I had more knowledge of the complex situation that had just occurred than anyone. Though I did not have unreserved confidence in the abilities of the police officers, I believed that with my assistance, Duponte could be found…and then he would find the truth the Baltimore police could not.

Officer White entered the drawing room of Glen Eliza with his clerk and several other police officers I had not seen before. I proceeded to transfer to White all the knowledge I possessed—from the arrival of Baron Dupin in Baltimore to the violent moment as I had just witnessed it. But from his interjections, I began to wonder how closely he was listening.

“Dupin is
dying,
” White kept repeating with different emphasis. “Dupin
is
dying.”

“Yes, at the hands of these two rascals,” I explained once more, “who pursued me through the city earlier, thinking I was trying to prevent their petty vengeance against the Baron.”

“Then you saw one of them shoot the Baron at the lyceum?” asked Officer White, who sat at the edge of an armchair. The police clerk was all the while standing dumbly behind me. I never liked feeling watched, and I looked back repeatedly with an unsubtle desire that he would at least be seated.

“No,” I answered the officer, “I couldn’t see anything from the stage, with the glare of the lights shining and then going off, and that mob of people. A few faces…But it is most obvious, it had to be their deed.”

“These two rascals you mention—names?”

“I do not know. One of them nearly did me in the day before. I was shot through the hat! He would be injured, no doubt, from our struggle, as I managed to cut him. I do not know their names.”

“Tell me what you do know, Mr. Clark.” The police officer had a distant tone.

“That they were French, that is most certain. Baron Dupin was in great debt. A Parisian creditor will never quit his harassment and dunning—even as far as Baltimore.” I did not know if this was true of all Parisian creditors, but thought it best under the circumstances to make an axiom of it.