Duponte was now most fixedly looking at absolutely nothing. Sometimes a cat coils into such a careless, comfortable position as to fall soundly asleep but forgets to close her eyes. This was Duponte's current appearance.

"As I say," I babbled on, "the information I seek, about that night at the polls, I mean, at the Fourth Ward, there was a man named Poe-"

"Now, see here," Reynolds interrupted. "You're something to do with that fellow, Baron Whatnot, who's been bothering me, leaving me letters and notes, aren't you?"

"Please, Mr. Reynolds-"

"Talking of Poe, Poe, Poe! What is all this about Poe anyway?"

"It is true," said Duponte philosophically to me, "as Mr. Reynolds implies, that the decease of a person of some interest to the public will be looked at for the person rather than the death, and thus will obtain larger holes of error and misperception. Very good, Reynolds."

This helped nothing except to confound our guest's line of thought. Reynolds wagged his finger at me, and then at Duponte, as though the analyst was an equal culprit in this attempted interview. "Just see here." Black tobacco juice was sent flying around the room by the venom of his speech. "This bangs all things! I do not care that the other fellow's a baron, or that you are lords and kings. I don't have nothing to say to 'im, and I have much to do! I don't have a word to say to you two! Is that it? Well, my good princes, please never call for me again or I shall send for the police."

When I came down for breakfast, there was a note from Duponte that I should find him in the library at noon. He had not said a word to me before parting for the night. To my surprise, he was more interested in the fact that I had seen the Baron Dupin than that I had surreptitiously sent for Reynolds.

"So," he said when I met him in the library, "you found yourself following the Baron Dupin."

I recounted all that had passed between the Baron and Reynolds and what I had seen at the cemetery and hospital. I pleaded my side for leaving my card for Reynolds. "Understand, monsieur. Poe called out for ‘Reynolds' again and again when he was dying. That Henry Reynolds was one of the election judges that day in charge of overseeing the Fourth Ward polls, which were held in Ryan's-where Poe was found! Do you not think this was too remarkable a connection?" I answered for him: "It is too remarkable to ignore!"

"It is, at most, incidental, and to a lesser and more forceful degree coincidental."

Incidental! Coincidental! Poe calling for Reynolds at his hour of judgment, and here one Henry Reynolds had been in the very same place as Poe days before. But you see, Duponte was a persuasive personality, even when he said little. If he had said Baltimore 's cathedrals were incidental to its Catholics, one would be inclined to find reason to agree.

He agreed to my suggestion of a walk. I hoped it would render him more willing to consider my latest suppositions. I had fallen into a rather concerned state about our inquiry, and not only because of Duponte's refusal to consider Mr. Reynolds as the Baron had. It seemed to me there was much else we could be missing, insulated as we were-for instance, the probability that Poe had traveled from Baltimore to Philadelphia and was in that city before his death. I made reference to this point as we walked.

"He was not."

"Do you mean he was not in Philadelphia that week he was discovered?" I asked, surprised at his certainty as to the point. "The newspapers have been throwing their hands up wondering about it."

"It is easily in front of their eyes, too accessible to such frantic minds as the public press, who never lose confidence that they are able to find some true detail, as long as it is at all times far from them. They are surprised at everything, when they should be surprised at nothing. If a fact is said once, we may pay attention, but if a fact is fixed in four places, ignore it, for along the way its replication has stopped all thought."

"But how could we know positively? After his attempt to visit Dr. Brooks, we hardly possess a solitary fact about Poe's days in Baltimore until he was nearly five days later seen at Ryan's. How do we know Poe did not, sometime between these times, board the train to Philadelphia, and, further, if he did, can we dismiss the possibility that there, in that other city, lie all the chief keys to the right understanding of the events that followed?"

"Let us settle your worries on this point. You do recall the reasons Monsieur Poe had planned to visit Philadelphia, I suppose," said Duponte.

I did, and repeated them to Duponte. Poe had been asked to edit the poems of Mrs. Marguerite St. Leon Loud for publication, for which her wealthy husband, Mr. Loud, would pay a sum of one hundred dollars. It had been reported by the newspapers that Poe had agreed to this lucrative arrangement in his last weeks when Mr. Loud, a piano manufacturer, visited Richmond. Poe had even instructed Muddy Clemm to write him there, in Philadelphia, under the strange pseudonym of E. S. T. Grey, Esquire, adding, "I hope that our troubles are nearly over."

"One hundred dollars would be an enormous difference to Poe, for he was quite pushed for money for himself and his magazine," I said. "One hundred dollars, to edit a small book of poems-for Poe, who had been the editor of some five periodicals, for which he was hardly rewarded enough to supply bread to his family, this was a task that could be done while sleeping. But how, with no evidence to the contrary, should we know when Poe made his visit to Philadelphia?"

"Through Mrs. Loud, of course."

I frowned. "I'm afraid that has not been helpful. I penned a few letters to this woman, but have received no reply."

"You misunderstand my meaning. I would not think to write to Mrs. Loud. By the nature of her circumstance, aspiring poetess and wife of an affluent husband, she would likely in this season be in the country or on the shore, so correspondence would be rendered inefficient. We need not bother the poor woman herself in order to listen to her."

Duponte removed a thin, handsomely printed volume from inside his coat. Wayside Flowers: A Collection of Poems, by Mrs. M. St. Leon Loud, published by Ticknor, Reed, and Fields.

"What is this?" I asked.

"Here is the very book of poems, we may presume, that Poe had agreed to edit, and that has been recently published with little attention-thankfully."

I opened up to the page listing its contents. I hesitate to print a sample. "I Wooed Thee," "To a Friend on the Birth of a Son," "The Dying Buffalo," "Invitation to a Prayer Meeting," "It Is I: Be Not Afraid," "On Parting with a Friend," "On Seeing a Monument," "The First Day of Summer," and, of course, "The Last Day of Summer." The contents list alone went on for pages. Duponte explained that he had ordered this book from one of the local booksellers.

"We know Monsieur Poe never arrived at Philadelphia to edit Madame Loud's poems," said Duponte.

"How, monsieur?"

"Because it is quite clear nobody has edited these poems, judging from the terrific numbers of them here included. If somebody had edited them, heaven forgive them, it was not a poet of experience and strong principles regarding the brevity and unity of verse, as we know Monsieur Poe to have been."

This did seem a fact. I saw now the practical gains that Duponte had made by spending hours in the parlor with Poe's poetry.

I had a doubt about his conclusions, however. "What if, Monsieur Duponte, Poe did go to Philadelphia and begin to edit the poems, and simply had a disagreement with the poetess, or balked at the quality of her work, and returned to Baltimore?"

"An intelligent question, if also an unobservant one. It would be possible that Poe arrived at the Louds' estate in order to fulfill his obligation, and once there could not agree on some final term of compensation or other fine point of the arrangement. However, we need only consider this possibility briefly before discarding it."