The Poe Shadow

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 Fouche 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 venge!' 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 Cafe 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.

9

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