The Poe Shadow

'Did he?' asked another.

'No-the police would have had no business to attend to if he had.'

'But what happened to him?' I asked. 'What of the investigations he performs today?'

One of the officers who looked thoughtful and quieter than the others spoke up. 'They say Monsieur Duponte failed-that the woman he loved was hanged for murder, and his powers of analysis could not rescue her. That he could do no more investigations-'

'Investigations!' balked the Scratcher. 'Of course there can be no more. Unless he manages to carry them out as a ghost. He was killed by a prisoner who had vowed that he would avenge himself on Duponte for arresting him.'

I opened my mouth to correct him, but thought better of it-there was a deep venom in that man's voice that seemed better not to rouse.

'No, no,' one of the others disagreed. 'Duponte is not dead. Some say he lives in Vienna now. He grew tired of the ingratitude. What stories I could tell you! There is no living soul like that in Paris in this age, in all events.'

'Prefect Delacourt would not hear of it,' added the squat officer, and the others cackled raucously.

***

Here was one of the officers' anecdotes.

Years earlier, Duponte one evening had found himself in a cabinet, or private chamber, of a tavern in Paris, sitting across from a convict who had only three days earlier sliced the throat of a prison guard from one side to the other. Every agent of the Paris police had been on watch for him since he'd escaped, including several who sat with me at the cafe. Duponte, employing his varied skills, had deduced where in the city the rogue would most likely think it safest to conceal himself. So there they sat together in the cabinet.

'I will be safe from capture from the police,' the villain confided. 'I can outrun any one of them-and could beat any one of them in a pistol fight if I had to. I'm safe, as long as I do not meet with that wretch Duponte. He is the true criminal of Paris.'

'I should think you would know him when you see him,' Duponte commented.

The scoundrel laughed at Duponte. 'Know him…?God bless!' He now emptied his wine bottle at a breath. 'You have never dealt with this knave Duponte, have you? He's not to be seen twice in the same dress. In the morning, he appears to be just another person, like yourself. Then, an hour later, so changed that his own mother would never recognize him and, by evening, no man or demon would ever remember having seen him before! He knows where you are, and can auspicate where you go next!'

When this bad fellow had drunk more than he'd intended, Duponte went downstairs for another bottle of wine and then returned to the cabinet with perfect calmness. Duponte reported to the convict that the barmaid had said she'd seen Auguste Duponte there, looking in on the private rooms. The villain was thrown into a wild fury at the news, and Duponte suggested that the fellow hide in the closet so he might come out and kill the investigator when he entered. When the villain stepped into the closet, Duponte locked it and fetched the police.

That had once been Duponte. It was that Duponte I had to bring to America. Nor had my limited communion with him proved totally void of his talents. One afternoon, during one of Duponte's walks, the heat was strong and I convinced him to share a coach with me. After some time driving through Paris in silence, he pointed out the window of our coach to a cemetery. 'That,' he said, 'upon the other side of the wall, is the small burial place of your people, Monsieur Clark.'

I saw a sign in French for the Jewish cemetery. 'Yes, it is quite small…' I paused, leaving my statement in the air. Thinking of what had just been said to me, I turned in astonishment. 'Monsieur Duponte!'

'Yes?'

'What did you say a moment ago? Of that burial place?'

'That in it are the people of your faith, or perhaps partially of your faith.'

'But, monsieur, whatever leads you to believe I am Jewish? I have never said so to you.'

'You are not?' Duponte asked in surprise.

'Well,' I answered breathlessly, 'my mother was Jewish. My father, Protestant; he has died too. But however did you think of that?'

Duponte, seeing I would press the question, explained. 'When we neared a particular lodging house in Montmartre some days ago, you realized from the newspaper accounts that it was the place where a young girl was brutally murdered.' Articles about the gruesome case, indeed, had daily pervaded the Paris newspapers I had been reading to improve my French. Duponte continued: 'Feeling it was something of a sacred place, a place of recent death, you reached for your hat. However, rather than taking off your hat-as the Christian does automatically upon entering a church-you secured it tighter on your head-like the Jew in his synagogue. Then you fumbled with it for another moment, showing your uncertain instincts in the matter to remove or tighten it. This made me consider that you had worshipped, at times, in church and in synagogue.'

He was correct. My mother had not yielded her Jewish heritage upon entering wedlock, despite the collective urgings of my father's family, and once the Lloyd Street Synagogue was completed in Baltimore she had brought me with her.

Duponte returned to his usual silence. I kept my excitement to myself. I had begun to break down Duponte's walls.

***

I tried delicately to solicit Duponte for more facts about his past, but his face would stiffen each time. We developed a friendly routine. Each morning I would knock at his door. If he was stretched on his bed with the newspaper, he would invite me inside for coffee. Usually, Duponte would announce his departure for a walk and I would ask permission to accompany him, to which he would assent by ignoring my question.

He had an impenetrability, a moral invisibility that made me want to see how he would be in all the possible variations of life: to see him in love, in a duel, to see what meal he would select at a certain establishment. I burned to know his thoughts and wished him to desire to know more of me.

Sometimes I would bring him an item related to my original purpose that I hoped might strike his interest. For example, I found a guidebook of Baltimore in one of the Paris bookstalls and showed it to him.

'You see, inside there is a folded map-and this part of town is where Edgar Poe lived in Baltimore when he won his first newspaper prize for a tale called ‘Ms. Found in a Bottle.' Here is where he was discovered in an insensible state in Baltimore. Look here, monsieur; that is his burial place!'

'Monsieur Clark,' he said, 'I am afraid such things are of as little interest to me as you can imagine.'

You see how it was. I tried every approach to uplift him from his inactive trance. For example, one hot day when Duponte and I were walking across a bridge over the Seine, we decided to pay twelve sous each to one of the floating establishments on the river to take a bath under a canvas roofing. We plunged into the cooling water opposite each other. Duponte closed his eyes and leaned back, and I followed his example. Our bodies were rocked up and down by the happy splashing of children and young men.

Quentin: 'Monsieur, surely you know the importance of Poe's tales of C. Auguste Dupin. You have heard of them. They were published in the French journals.'

Duponte (inattentively, a question or statement?): 'They were.'

Q: 'Your own achievements in analysis provide the character of the main figure with his abilities. That must mean something to you! The exploits involve the most intricate, seemingly impossible, and miraculous triumphs of reason.'

D: 'I have not read them, I believe.'

Q: 'Not read the literature of your own life? That which will make you immortal? How could this be?'

D: 'It is of as little interest to me as I could imagine, monsieur.'

Should that last comment have an exclamation mark? Perhaps a grammarian could answer; it was quite