The Poe Shadow

explaining that the upstairs girl had told a friend about her plans to leave without proper notice to her employers, and Bonjour was eager to present her desire for the post.

Soon after this, the downstairs girl, who had a straggly figure and a jealous tendency toward comelier females, reported the dialogue to the Snodgrasses, who felt obliged to dismiss the protesting upstairs girl. Bonjour was the heroine of the household drama for uncovering the imminent loss to their domestic operations and, appearing again at the opportune time, was the natural choice as replacement. Though Bonjour was far more handsome than the jealous downstairs girl, the fact that she was too thin for the popular taste and had an unseemly scar down her lip made her more acceptable.

All this was easily discovered later from the former upstairs girl, who after her departure was eager to speak of her unfair treatment. But once Bonjour was installed behind the walls of the house, there was little chance at gaining any further intelligence about her enterprise.

'Leave her to the Snodgrass family then, and confine your observations on the Baron,' Duponte suggested.

'She would not remain this long unless there was information to gain. It has been better than two weeks, monsieur!' I said. 'In all events, the Baron is mostly occupied selling subscriptions to his lecture on Poe's death.'

'Perhaps the information mademoiselle gains is not so large,' Duponte mused, 'but simply slow.'

'I could inform Dr. Snodgrass that Bonjour is no chambermaid.'

'Why do so, Monsieur Clark?'

'Why?' I replied incredulously. It seemed obvious. 'To stop her from gaining intelligence for the Baron!'

'What they find, we shall inevitably learn,' he replied, though I did not see the track of this reasoning.

Duponte, during my reports, regularly asked me to describe Bonjour's demeanor and mood toward the job and the other servants.

Bonjour would leave the Snodgrass home every day to meet with the Baron. On one of these evenings, as she made her way to one of these rendezvous, I followed her into the harbor area. Not infrequently, a man would be expelled out the door of a public house, and one would have to take a high step over his body or trip into a pile with him. The streets there were filled with bar-rooms and billiards-rooms and stale, human smells. Bonjour was dressed accordingly: hair disheveled, bonnet crooked, and dress in comfortable disorder. She changed costume often-depending on whether an errand for the Baron Dupin required the appearance of one class or another-but there was no demonic transformation as with the Baron's disguises.

I watched as she neared a group of low men, who were laughing and yelping riotously. One pointed at the passing figure of Bonjour.

'Look there,' he said gruffly, 'a star-gazer! What a pretty bat!' 'Star-gazer' and 'bat' were equally vulgar terms; heard among the lowest classes, they connoted a prostitute who came out only at night.

She ignored them. He stretched out his arm as a barrier. He was almost twice Bonjour's size. She stopped and looked down at his bloated forearm, on which the sleeve was rolled up indecently.

'What's this, gal?' He yanked a piece of paper out of her hand. 'A love letter, I'd guess. What's this now? ‘There is a gentleman, rather the worse for wear…''

'Hands off,' said Bonjour, taking a step forward.

The man held the paper up high and away from her reach, to the exaggerated amusement of his compatriots. A chunky little fellow among his companions guffawed and sympathetically said to let it go, at which point the ringleader punched his arm and declared him a positive gump.

Bonjour eased closer with a light sigh, the plane of her eyes hardly coming up to the large man's neck. She placed one finger along the muscle of his upstretched arm and followed the line. 'The strongest arm I've seen in Baltimore, mister,' she said in a whisper, though projected distinctly enough for the others to hear her.

'Now, I ain't going to lower this arm, my dear, on a little soft-soaping.'

'I don't want you to lower it, mister, I want you to raise it higher-there, like that.'

He did as instructed-perhaps despite himself. Bonjour leaned almost into the crook of his neck.

'Oh, oh, look,' he said jovially to his companions, 'the bat is going to fly at me for a kiss!'

They laughed. The man himself was giggling as nervously as a girl.

'Bats,' Bonjour said, 'are awful blind.' In one gesture, swifter than lightning, she drew her hand behind her head and across the side of the gentleman's neck. His arm, raised high on that side, could make no attempt to block her.

The man's shirt and sack-coat collars, cleanly sliced at the buttons, both dropped to the ground. His clique fell into a grave silence. She returned a blade thin as a pin into the crown of her disordered hair. The man patted around his neck-making sure all his flesh was still there-and then, finding not a scratch, stumbled backward. Bonjour picked up the piece of paper where it had dropped and went on her way. Perhaps I imagined it, but before her departure, it seemed she glanced at me, across the way, and her face seemed to wear a look of bemusement at my stance of readiness to come to her aid.

I continued to frequent the area of the Snodgrass house. One morning after I arrived I saw Duponte approaching, dressed in his usual black suit and cloak and cape.

'Monsieur?' I greeted him inquisitively. It was something of an extraordinary event of late to see him in the daylight. 'Has something happened?'

'We have an excursion today, in the interests of our investigation,' he commented.

'Where shall we go?'

'We are here already.'

Duponte walked through the gates and up the front pathway to the Snodgrass house. 'Go ahead,' Duponte said when I came to a halt.

'Monsieur, the Snodgrasses are not home this hour. And, you must know, Bonjour may see us here!'

'I fully rely on it,' he replied.

He took the silver-plated knocker in hand, which promptly brought to us the downstairs girl. Duponte glanced around and saw with satisfaction that Bonjour was peering from the staircase high above, as likely she did with any guest calling for Dr. Snodgrass.

'Our business, miss,' said Duponte, 'lies with Dr. Snodgrass. I am'-here he paused, with a slight nod up to the landing of the stairs-'the Duke Duponte.'

'Duke! Well, the doctor is not at home, sir.' She passed a slow gaze over my outer garments, which prompted me to remove my hat and coat.

'I should think not, for he is a man of extensive business. But he has left word, I believe, with your upstairs girl that we are to wait for him in his study at this hour,' said Duponte.

'Likely! How queer!' exclaimed the girl, whose jealousy for Bonjour seemed to rise like a visible object before our eyes.

'If the young woman is present, miss, perhaps she shall be able to confirm the particulars of our invitation.'

'Likely!' the downstairs girl repeated. 'Does this have truth, in fact?' she called up to Bonjour. 'The doctor said nothing to me.'

Bonjour smiled, and then said, 'The doctor tells you nothing of what occurs upstairs, of course, miss. And his study is upstairs.'

Bonjour approached us and curtsied a greeting. I was quite startled to find her compliant in Duponte's scheme, but as that first moment of surprise passed I came to understand. If Bonjour exposed Duponte's scheme as a false one, we could quite as easily demonstrate Bonjour's own falsehoods in securing her position. It was an automatic and unspoken bargain.

'Dr. Snodgrass asked that you follow me,' she said.

'Into the study, I believe he suggested,' Duponte replied, accompanying her up the stairs and gesturing for me to come.

Bonjour seated us in the study with a smile and offered to close the door behind us for our comfort. 'You gentlemen will be most happy to know that the respected doctor will not be long before his return,' she said. 'He returns early today. I shall be certain to bring him straightaway when he comes