The Poe Shadow

'Because, my dear,' he said to Bonjour, 'I should be smarter than that. Of course he has been freed.'

'You mean that Duponte has done this? But how?'

'You do not know Duponte. You shall yet know him better.'

I smiled at the Baron's reported frustration.

On Duponte's instructions, I had a day earlier found the name of Newman's owner. He was a debtor who required quick funds, and thus had made the arrangement with the Baron to hire out Newman for an indefinite period of time. He had not known of the Baron's promise to Newman to purchase his freedom. He was also appalled to hear that Newman had not gone to work for 'a small family,' as had been advertised. Newman's owner became angry when I told him of the deception. Not angry enough, though, to refuse my own check to him to secure the slave's freedom. In my law practice I'd had extensive experience dealing with persons in great debt in a manner that neither offended their self-esteem nor overlooked their pressing needs.

I even escorted the young man to the train depot myself to send him on his way to Boston. When manumitting a slave, it was dictated that the former slave be quickly removed from the state so he would not negatively influence blacks who remained slaves. Newman was overjoyed as we walked, but seemed filled with worry, as though the ground might collapse beneath our feet before he was safely outside the state. He was not far off. We had only a few yards before reaching the depot when an enormous rumble came from behind and cleared the street of all who were on foot, including us.

Approaching were three omnibuses filled with black men, women, and children. Behind these conveyances were several men on horseback. I recognized one man, tall and silver-haired, as Hope Slatter, the most powerful of the city's slave-dealers, or nigger-traders. The practice of the larger slave-traders in Baltimore was to house the slaves they purchased from sellers in their private prisons, usually a wing of their homes, until a ship could be sufficiently filled to merit the expenses of delivering a shipment to New Orleans, the hub of the southern trade. Slatter and his assistants were now driving to the harbor with approximately a dozen slaves in each bus.

Along the sides of the omnibuses waited other blacks, perpetually stopping to put their arms up to the windows of the omnibuses, and then running to keep up with them, to touch or speak with the occupants one final time. It could not be determined whether a greater amount of weeping occurred inside or out. From within, a voice shouted hysterically, loud enough for anyone who would listen. She tried to make clear that she had been sold to Slatter by her owner with the express provision that she not be separated from her family, as he was now doing.

I steered Newman away from this whole scene, but he was dangerously transfixed by the sight, perhaps the last of its kind he would see before leaving for the North.

The slave-trader and his assistants held up their whips and warned those surrounding the vehicles not to delay their pace. One man had climbed up to a window of the omnibus and was clinging to it, calling for his wife, whom he could not see. She pushed her way through other slaves in the bus to the window.

Slatter, spying this, pressed his horse around from the other side. 'Do not continue!' he warned the man.

The climber ignored this, reaching inside to embrace his wife.

Out came Slatter's cane, its strap wrapped closely around his wrist. He knocked the man in the back and then the stomach and left him writhing on the ground. 'Away, little dog, before I call for your arrest! You do not wish what would follow that!'

As Slatter steered his horse to step around from the fallen man, his eyes drifted to my position-or, rather, to the young black standing with me.

'Who is this?' he asked gravely from his high saddle as he approached us. He pointed his cane down at Newman.

Newman's lips trembled terribly; he tried to speak but failed. I hoped the man would simply continue on with his other horrid task, but that was not to be.

He pointed his cane at Newman's mouth, and then across his body as though he were lecturing at the medical college. 'A likely Negro, aren't you. Fine mouth, generally good teeth, no broken bones to be seen. Good coachman, I'd bet, or a waiter, if he can be careful and honest.' Addressing me, he said, 'I could sell him for at least six hundred dollars, with a commission to me, my friend.'

'I am not his owner,' I replied. 'Nor is he for sale.'

'Then perhaps he is your bastard child?' he said sarcastically.

'I am Quentin Clark, an attorney of this city. This young man you see is manumitted.'

'I'm a free man, boss,' Newman finally said in a tiny whisper.

'Oh?' Slatter asked musingly, reversing his horse and peering down again at Newman. 'Let us see your certificates then.'

At this Newman, who had received all the necessary papers that morning, merely trembled and stammered.

'Come on now.' Slatter prodded Newman in the shoulder with his cane.

'Leave him,' I cried out. 'He is freed by my own hand. A man with more freedom than you, Mr. Slatter, for he knows what it is not to have it.'

Slatter was about to hit Newman in the shoulder harder when I raised my cane and blocked his instrument with it. 'Tell me, Mr. Slatter,' I said. 'I wonder, if you are so interested in papers, if you should like to have the authorities inspect your slaves on the bus and ensure that all are being sold in accordance with their particular deeds.'

Slatter grinned darkly at me. He withdrew his cane with an air of courtesy and, without saying another word to us, dug his heels into his horse's sides to catch up with the train of vehicles heading down into the harbor. Newman was breathing rapidly.

'Why not show him your papers?' I asked insistently. 'You do have them on you?'

He pointed to his head, where he wore a ragged hat-he had sewn the papers into the brim. Newman then told of the many traders like Slatter who asked to inspect their certificates of freedom and, once they had them in hand, destroyed the documents. They'd then conceal the rightfully free men and women in their pens until they were sold as legal slaves to another state, far away from any evidence to the contrary.

19

'MONSIEUR DUPONTE, I must ask something at once.'

I said this after one of our many recent silent suppers in the large rectangular dining room of Glen Eliza.

Duponte nodded.

I continued. 'When the Baron holds his lecture on Poe's death, it may irrevocably pollute the truth. Perhaps, when he delivers his speech, I should cause some distraction to him outside the hall, and you could claim the stage and reveal the truth to the people!'

'No, monsieur,' said Duponte, shaking his head. 'We shall do nothing of the kind. There is more here than you realize.'

I nodded sadly, and did not touch another morsel of food. That had been my experiment. Duponte had failed. He went on with his undisturbed silence.

I was entirely absorbed in distraction. To my visible displeasure, the dronish fellows who were overseeing some of my father's investments came to the door and I sent them away at once. I could not think about numbers and annual accounts.

'The Purloined Letter': the second sequel to 'The Murders in the

Rue Morgue.' That's what I was thinking about with such a wistful air. C. Auguste Dupin has discovered the secret location of the letter stolen by Minister D--, hidden most ingeniously by being placed right in front of everyone's eyes. It was the ordinary aspect of the spot that eluded all but one man. The analyst uses an unnamed collaborator to fire a gun in the street and raise a commotion. The collaborator's distraction allows C. Auguste Dupin to retrieve the letter, and put a false one in its place.

I relate this to bring out a point. C. Auguste Dupin trusts his collaborator there; and, besides, puts increasingly great trust in the work of his faithful assistant in all of Poe's Dupin trilogy.