"I do not see why, monsieur."

"Search again through the book's contents. I am confident this time you will know where to stop."

By this point we had taken a table at a restaurant. Duponte leaned over and looked at the title where my finger was pointing. "Very good, monsieur. Now, read the verses from those pages, if you would."

The poem was entitled "The Stranger's Doom." It began:

"It sounds rather like the scene, as we know it, at the college hospital when Poe was dying!"

"As our romancer imagines it, yes. Continue, please. I rather like your recitation. Spirited."

"Thank you, monsieur." The next verses spoke of the man's lonely demise with "no clasping hand, no farewell kiss." It continued with the scene of death:

"His nameless tomb… the wild-grass turf of the grave that should be sacred… the quick burial, in which none lingered… surely this is Poe's funeral at the Westminster burial yard! Described very much as I saw it!"

"We have already surmised that Madame Loud is a traveler of some frequency, a probability supported by the subjects of several of her poems, and so we now assume from the details here that she has visited Baltimore sometime in the last two years since Poe's death. Taking a natural interest in the death of a man she had been set to meet right around his demise, she has gathered this description of the funeral-so close to your own remembrance-by visiting the burial yard and questioning its sexton or grave digger, and perhaps individuals at the hospital, as well."

"Outstanding," I said.

"We may read closely and come to several conclusions. We may say she shares your own perspective, Monsieur Clark, faulting those who failed to honor him. The poem speaks with no special knowledge of Poe's whereabouts or demeanor prior to his death. We know, then, that Madame Loud followed the tidings of Poe's death from afar, not as one who had only just been separated from Poe with the privilege of hearing any of his plans. Moreover, his doom is that of a stranger, as declared in the poem's title, not of one whom she has known. So we obtain even greater certainty that he did not meet Madame Loud, as he hoped to do, in Philadelphia. This shall only be our first document of proof of Poe's failure to reach that city."

"Our first, Monsieur Duponte?"

"Yes."

"But why would Poe direct his mother-in-law to write him with a false name, E. S. T. Grey?"

"Perhaps this shall be our second proof," Duponte said, though he seemed content, for the moment, to close the topic there.

Duponte had been taking more walks outside. He was liberated from Glen Eliza when, after many arguments and much ranting by Von Dantker over Duponte's queer demands, the artist decided he could finish the painting without further sittings. Not wishing for any more distractions from the man, I sent word that I would make payment for his labors, but he replied that he was to be paid by another party that afternoon. Because this made no sense whatsoever, I went to Von Dantker's chambers, only to witness the Baron Dupin exiting. The Baron touched his hat and smiled.

I frantically related this information to Duponte, who only laughed at the notion of Von Dantker as spy.

"Monsieur Duponte, he could have been listening to every word we would have said, even as he sat there pretending to be concerned with the painting!"

"That simpleton, Von Dantker? Listening to anything! Ha!" That was all I could induce Duponte to say on the matter.

In making himself an observer of the "spirit of the city," Duponte proceeded with strides as slow as they had been around Paris. I usually accompanied him on these walks, not wanting to lose him, as had happened before. Often these excursions were in the evening. I could almost say, as the narrator of "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" said of C. Auguste Dupin, that we sought our quiet observation "amid the wild lights and shadows of the populous city." Except for the wild lights. You have seen already that Baltimore, unlike Paris, is quite hard on the eyes after dark.

Indeed once, I remember, in the poor lighting, I collided headlong with a smartly dressed stranger. "Many apologies," I said, looking up at him. The man was muffled in an old-fashioned black coat. His response stayed in my mind the rest of that night: he looked down and walked away without a word.

Duponte did not mind the bad lighting in Baltimore. "I see in the daylight," he would say, "but I see through in the night." He was a human owl; his mental outings were nocturnal hunts.

On two occasions during these meanderings, including the one in which I collided with that stranger, we happened upon the Baron Claude Dupin out with Bonjour. Baltimore was a large and growing city of more than one hundred and fifty thousand; therefore, the odds of any two parties intersecting paths at the right time must have been mathematically modest. There was a magnetism of purpose that brought our groups together, I suppose. Or the Baron went out of his way to taunt us. The Baron had begun to look different, around the face and a bit in the eyes-I wondered whether he had gained weight? Or perhaps lost some?

The Baron liked to demonstrate the "enormous" amount of knowledge he had accumulated about Poe's death.

"A very fine walking stick," the Baron said to me once. "Is that all the go these days?"

"It is Malacca," I replied proudly.

"Malacca? Like Poe's when he was found. Oh yes, anything you have discovered we already know, my dear friends. Like why he used the name E. S. T. Grey. And of his clothes that did not fit? You have read in the papers they were his disguise? True, but not by Poe's own choice-" And then the Baron would end enigmatically in mid-sentence, or share a laugh with Bonjour. She stared toward Duponte and me, not subscribing to the policy of false politeness shown by her husband. Then the Baron would say, "What enormous discoveries are at hand, my friends! We shall find our passport to glory in this!" He liked to do everything on a big figure.

"My good Brother Duponte," the Baron greeted my companion on an after-breakfast stroll, grasping his hand vigorously, "it is awfully good to see you in fine health. You shall have a quiet voyage returning to Paris, I can assure you. We have made enormous strides, and are about to complete all the work needed here."