George, the president of that group. This massive doorkeeper began to harass the Baron while the Baron was in disguise-the disguise that I had first seen in the athenaeum reading room. Not even the Baron would openly challenge this Whig agent, Tindley-far too pretty a designation for a monster. Everyone seemed a dwarf next to him.
'What is it you want, good man?' the Baron asked his tormenter.
'For you dandies to stop talking about our club!' Tindley answered.
'Dear fellow, what makes you think I am concerned with your club?' the Baron asked magnanimously.
Tindley's mouth remained open, as he placed his finger into the folds of the Baron's flowing black cravat. 'We've been warned about you, after you tried to palm me to enter the club! Now I'm watching.'
'Ah, you have been warned, have you,' said the Baron lightly. 'Then I am afraid you have been terribly misled by this warning. Now,' he inquired with desperately concealed worry, 'who in the wide world would have warned you?'
Tindley didn't have to say Duponte's name-he didn't know it, regardless; the Baron could guess. 'Tall, unelegant Frenchman with an oval head? Was it him? He is a fraud, dear sir,' the Baron said of Duponte. 'He's more dangerous than you can imagine!'
What a futile flash of anger in the Baron's eyes, as he stood there, all the while silently damning the triumph of Duponte! Obstructed by Tindley wherever he went, the Baron soon had to retire that disguise of the sneezer and the informants he had established through it…A small victory for us, I thought to myself vengefully, after the Baron's successful infiltration into Glen Eliza by the Dutch portraitist.
Speaking of how our Baron Dupin looked these days, what changes he was affecting before our eyes! I have mentioned in a past chapter his facility for altering his physical appearance with singular effectiveness. On recent occasions seeing the Baron on the streets, I had noticed a new transformation about his face and general person, without being able to identify what exactly had changed. This was no matter of a falsely bulbed nose and wig-that former costume belonged with the third-rate summer performers in the Rue Madame in Paris. His entire countenance now seemed to have become altogether different, and at the same time eerily, breathtakingly familiar.
One night I was adding some kindlers to the fire in the living room hearth. Duponte commented that he was comfortable enough. On this topic, I ignored him. In Paris, it's said there is hardly a smoking chimney even on the worst nights of winter. We Americans are rather too sensitive to heat and cold, while in the Old World they seem hardly aware of it at all-but I would not sit wrapped in blankets like a Frenchman would insist on doing. This same evening, I received a note.
It was from Auntie Blum. I opened it with some hesitation. She said she hoped that my unmannered French pastry cook (meaning Duponte) had been discharged. Chiefly, she wished to inform me, out of courtesy to her longtime friendship with the household of Glen Eliza, that Hattie was now engaged to marry another man, who was industrious and trustworthy.
At first, I fell under a spell of shock at the news. Could Hattie really have found someone else? Could I have managed to forfeit a woman as wonderful as Hattie, while at the same time doing what seemed right and necessary?
Then I realized. I thought back to Peter's sage warning that it would not be easy to appease Auntie Blum, and recognized this letter as a ploy by that cunning woman to torment me into apologies and excessive confessions of my wrong toward her niece.
I was not above this tactic, or beneath it, as the case might be.
I sat upon the sofa, thinking whether I had by nature of my present endeavor given up all proper intercourse with society. I was, after all, now in the company of men of great intensity like Duponte and the Baron, who defied any social customs and sought action that could not be obtained by ordinary politeness.
When the flames began running terrifically along the log, and I was contemplating these matters, I had a sudden thought about the Baron Dupin as though his face had been reflected back to me from the fire. It came to me while I was trying to picture the man without having the original present.
No portrait-maker or Daguerrean artist could do the Baron any justice because of the changes that constantly befell his features. In fact, if it were attempted, the Baron would likely grow more like the portrait canvas rather than the other way around. One would have to catch him asleep to see his true form.
'Monsieur Duponte,' I said, with a leap to my feet, as the fire cracked and popped to life. 'It is you!'
He looked up at my dramatic pronouncement.
'He is you!' I waved my hands in one direction, then the other. 'That is why he schemed to have Von Dantker here!'
It took me three or four tries to express the meaning of my realization: the Baron Dupin had appropriated the form of Auguste Duponte! The Baron had tautened the muscles in his face, had weighed down the ends of his mouth, had-for all I could say-used some spell of magic to sharpen the very contours of his head and adjust his height. He also selected his dress like Duponte's, in the loose cut of the cloth and dull colors. He left behind the jewelry and rings with which he was formerly adorned, and smoothed the wilderness of ringlets in his hair. The Baron had subtly, using observation and the study of Von Dantker's sketches and portraiture, remade himself into a version of Duponte.
The reason, I presumed, was simple. To irritate his opponent; to avenge the provocation of Tindley; to sneer at the nobler being who dared to compete with him in this endeavor. Whenever he saw Duponte around the streets, the Baron could hardly speak without breaking into laughter at the brilliance of his newly instituted taunt.
An abomination, a conjurer, a swindler: masquerading as a great man!
He had also-somehow-I vow to you-he had also transmogrified the very timbre and pitch of his voice. To parrot with precision that of Duponte's! Even the accent was adjusted to perfection. If I had been in a dark chamber, and had been listening to a monologue by this falsifier, I would have happily addressed the fiend as though he were my accustomed and true companion.
The Baron's petty masquerade dogged me. It haunted me. It ground down my teeth. I do not think it bothered Duponte half as much. When I complained about the Baron's ploy, Duponte's mouth lengthened into an enigmatic arch, as though he thought the taunt amusing, child's play. And when he met his competitor, he bowed at the Baron all the same as before. The sight was astounding, particularly at nighttime, seeing them there together. Eventually, the only certain way to distinguish them was by the identity of the devoted associates, me on one side and Mademoiselle Bonjour on the other.
Finally, one day, I confronted Duponte. 'When this fiend scoffs at you, mocks you, you allow it to continue unchallenged.'
'What would you counsel me to do, Monsieur Clark? Propose a duel?' asked Duponte, more mildly than I probably deserved.
'Box his ears, certainly!' I said, though I do not suppose I would have personally done so. 'Become quite warm with him, at least.'
'I see. Should that help our cause?'
I conceded that it might not. 'Just so. It would remind him, I should think, that he is not alone playing this game. He believes, in the infinite deception of his brain, that he has already won, Monsieur Duponte!'
'He has subscribed to a mistaken belief, then. The situation is quite the opposite. The Baron, I am afraid for him, has already lost. He has reached the end, as have I.'
I leaned forward in disbelief. 'Do you mean…?'
Duponte was speaking of our very purpose, the unraveling of the entire mystery of Poe…
But I see I have jumped too far ahead of myself, as I tend to do. I will have to retrace my steps before I return to the above dialogue. I had begun to describe my life as a spy, stimulated by Duponte's desire to know the Baron's secrets and plans.
As I noted before, the Baron changed hotels frequently to elude pursuers. I maintained my knowledge of their lodgings by following as one tired hotel porter moved their baggage from his hotel to the custody of a brother porter. I do not know how the Baron answered questions about the peculiar practice of moving hotels when he
