"The Baron. Your husband?"

"We have full swing over this, and beginning now there will be no letup. If I were you, Monsieur Clark, I would try not to get in our way."

Wherever you travel in the world, you are sure to find the same limited number of species of lawyers, as surely as a naturalist finds his grass and weeds in every land. The first sort of lawyer views the intricacies of the rules of the law as profound and unshakable idols of worship. There is a different species of attorney, a carnivorous one to whom the first is prey, who instead treats rules as the principal barriers to success.

The Baron Claude Dupin was such a good specimen of the latter category that his skeleton might be hung in the Tuileries Cabinet of Comparative Anatomy. The legal codes were the weaponry he utilized to wage battle; they were his pistols and knives, nothing more hallowed. When he required a delay to his advantage, the Baron was known to have ended an appointment or even a trial by sneaking out an anteroom window. When such sinister methods were not sufficient, the Baron Dupin employed actual pistols and knives through his networks of rogues to secure the information or confession needed. The Baron was a lawyer, yes, but only secondarily; he was a heartfelt impresario, first, who worked as a lawyer. A showman on his box, a huckster of the law.

Duponte had told me one day, during our transatlantic journey, the story of Bonjour, though he had neglected to mention her marriage. In France, Duponte explained, there is a type of criminal known as the bonjourier, whose method entails the following: in fashionable clothing, the lady or gentleman thief will enter a house, moving past the servants as though present for an important appointment, take whatever objects they can quickly seize, and then walk right out the street door. But if a servant or other member of the household notices them between entrance and exit, they bow, say "Bonjour!" and ask for the resident of the house next door, having researched that name. They are, of course, assumed to merely have come in at the wrong door, and are directed away without suspicion and with as many stolen valuables as they'd managed to collect. The young woman who had stood before me in the fortifications was the best bonjourier in Paris and so had eventually become known to all simply as Bonjour.

Bonjour was said to have been raised in a rural village of France. Her mother, a Swiss woman, died a few months before the child had reached one year. Her French father, a hardworking baker, cared for his daughter. He spent most nights wailing, however, and the young girl soon had little patience for her father's endless grief. This, in combination with the lack of a maternal instructor, forged a young girl who was as fiercely independent as any Frenchman. Soon, the father was arrested and taken away before her eyes in the chaos of one of the country's smaller revolutions. She made her way to Paris to live on her own and survived through cleverness and physical strength. There were many assaults against her as a young thief, and one of these resulted in the prominent scar on her face.

"But how is it such a beautiful woman persists as a common thief?" I had asked Duponte one evening as we sat at the long dining table of the steamer.

Duponte raised an eyebrow at my question and seemed to consider leaving it unanswered. "She has not remained a thief, in fact, and has not been common. She has for many years been an assassin of the most efficient character. It is said that, because of her former practice, in her role as assassin it is her habit to call out ‘bonjour' before sending a knife through a man's throat. However, this is mere speculation, for nobody living can confirm it."

"Yet she was womanly and courageous enough at the fortifications on my behalf," I said. "I believe poor health and environments create such lapses in character in women."

"She has been most poor then," replied Duponte.

It happened one winter that Bonjour, brought in by the Parisian police after a botched theft that left one gentleman dead in his parlor, was threatened with execution to be made an example to the growing race of female thieves. The Baron Dupin, at the height of his eminence, represented her with overpowering zeal. He demonstrated with skill that the police of Paris had quite mistakenly victimized Bonjour, a delicate and angelic creature whose physical appearance, petite girlish form, and comeliness added not a little to the general effect for observers.

You shall not now wonder, considering this example, how the Baron accumulated faithful rogues. When he secured their release from prison, as he did Bonjour's, their loyalty accrued to him as a matter of honor. You shall think this a contradiction, but all people need rules to live, and criminals can only have a few-loyalty is one they favor. The Baron had been married before, but the women were said to have motives ranging from simple love to, at one time in his life, his great wealth. It remains anyone's guess whether with the loyalty of Bonjour also came love, or one superseded the other, or they mingled together in some heartless combination.

12

BACK AT GLEN ELIZA, Duponte, when he heard all that Bonjour had told me, mused only that the Baron Dupin's tactics would complicate matters. I had of course arrived at the same conclusion, and this made me more eager to continue tracing the fruits of the Baron's campaign I had begun to witness around the city. I was now out all through the city on errands a good deal and Duponte was almost always sitting in my library. He was usually silent. I sometimes found myself unconsciously imitating his posture or an expression on his face, whether out of monotony or in an attempt to assure myself he was really there.

One day, Duponte, reviewing some newspapers, exclaimed, "Ah, yes!"

"Found something, monsieur?" I asked.

"I have only this moment remembered the thought I was having when your caller arrived yesterday, while you were out."

"Caller?"

"Oh yes, her visit was monstrously disruptive, and I have recovered my line of reasoning only now, if you believe it."

When Duponte would say little more on the subject, I surveyed my chambermaids. They had not thought to inform me of the caller since Duponte had been here to receive her. It was clear from their varied descriptions that the visitor was in fact Auntie Blum, who came with a male slave holding an umbrella over her head. Though my domestics differed on some of the particulars, this was the fullest narrative I could re-create of the conversation that occurred in my library.

Auntie Blum: Is not Mr. Clark here?

Auguste Duponte: Right.

AB: Right? What do you mean, "right"?

AD: You are correct. Mr. Clark is not here.

AB: But I did not-Who are you, then?

AD: I am Auguste Duponte.

AB: Oh? But-

AD: Mademoiselle-

AB (alarmed by the French): Madem-mois…?

AD (now looking up for the first time): Madame.

AB: Madame?

AD (Duponte said something in French that, after much reflection, neither servant could recollect, and that unfortunately must be imagined.)

AB (newly alarmed): You do know you are in America, sir!

AD: I have noticed that people put heels on chairs and carpets, pour eggs into glasses, and spit tobacco-juice upon windows. I know I am in America, madame.

AB: Now just-Who are you?

AD: The answer of my name has not seemed helpful to you before. Though I am quite occupied and have little desire to render myself at your service, madame, I shall attempt this in Monsieur Clark's stead. Perhaps, rather than asking who I am, it would be more enlightening for you to ask who is Mr. Clark.