Duponte was polite. "I shall have had a very fine visit to Baltimore, then."

"Indeed! I do believe," the Baron said in a loud whisper, swiveling his head in a showy fashion, "that nowhere else have I seen so many beautiful women at one glance as in Baltimore."

I winced at the tone of his comment. Bonjour was not with him on this occasion, but I wished she were.

After we parted from the Baron, Duponte turned to me. He put a heavy hand on my shoulder and stood for a while without saying a word. A chill went through me.

"What are you prepared for, Monsieur Clark?" he said quietly.

"How do you mean?"

"You are treading closer to the center of the examination, extraordinarily closer each day."

"Monsieur, I wish to assist any way I might." The truth is, I did not feel I was treading anywhere near the center of Duponte's labors or plans, in fact hardly at its circumference, and I certainly had not yet felt us anywhere but at the outskirts of detecting the truth of Poe's death.

Duponte shook his head fatally, as though giving up on the possibility that I could understand. "I want you to look further in on his affairs, if you are agreeable."

Taken by complete surprise, I asked for elaboration.

"It would aid us to know the tactics being employed by the Baron," said Duponte. "Just as you discovered Monsieur Reynolds."

"But you disapproved forcefully of my contact with Reynolds!"

"You're right, monsieur. Your discovery of Reynolds was utterly meaningless. But as I have said before, one needs to know all that is meaningless, to know just what meaning we have found."

I did not know exactly what Duponte imagined when he asked what I was prepared for. I did not know and I knew. There was the obvious fact that by following the Baron, I would be exposed more directly to the possibility of harm.

But I do not think that was all of it. He meant to ask whether I would want to reclaim the life I had before when this was finished. Would I have sent him back on the next steamer to Paris, would I have turned around and chosen the quiet sanctuary of Glen Eliza, had I known what was about to come?

Book IV. Phantoms Chased For Evermore

15

THAT IS HOW I became our secret agent.

The Baron Dupin changed his hotel every few days. I presumed his movements were spurred by constant fears that his enemies from Paris would trace him here, though this seemed far-fetched to me. But then I began noticing two men who seemed to be regularly observing the Baron. I was observing the Baron too, of course, and so it was difficult for me to watch them closely at the same time. They dressed as though in uniform: old-fashioned black dress coats, blue trousers, cocked derby hats hiding their faces. Though they did not resemble each other physically, both had the same unconscious stares, like the disdainful eyes of the Roman statues of the Louvre. These orbs were always trained on the same object: the Baron. At first I thought they might be working for the Baron, but I noticed that he strenuously avoided being in their proximity. After several times crossing their paths, I remembered where I had seen one of them. It had been on one of my walks with Duponte. I had tripped into him around the site of one of our encounters with the Baron. Perhaps that had been near the time they had first located their object.

They were not the only people in Baltimore now interested in the affairs of the Baron Dupin. There was also the doorkeeper from the "Rosy God" club-the den of the Whigs of the Fourth Ward where we had met with Mr. George, the president of that group. This massive doorkeeper began to harass the Baron while the Baron was in disguise-the disguise that I had first seen in the athenaeum reading room. Not even the Baron would openly challenge this Whig agent, Tindley-far too pretty a designation for a monster. Everyone seemed a dwarf next to him.

"What is it you want, good man?" the Baron asked his tormenter.

"For you dandies to stop talking about our club!" Tindley answered.

"Dear fellow, what makes you think I am concerned with your club?" the Baron asked magnanimously.

Tindley's mouth remained open, as he placed his finger into the folds of the Baron's flowing black cravat. "We've been warned about you, after you tried to palm me to enter the club! Now I'm watching."

"Ah, you have been warned, have you," said the Baron lightly. "Then I am afraid you have been terribly misled by this warning. Now," he inquired with desperately concealed worry, "who in the wide world would have warned you?"

Tindley didn't have to say Duponte's name-he didn't know it, regardless; the Baron could guess. "Tall, unelegant Frenchman with an oval head? Was it him? He is a fraud, dear sir," the Baron said of Duponte. "He's more dangerous than you can imagine!"

What a futile flash of anger in the Baron's eyes, as he stood there, all the while silently damning the triumph of Duponte! Obstructed by Tindley wherever he went, the Baron soon had to retire that disguise of the sneezer and the informants he had established through it…A small victory for us, I thought to myself vengefully, after the Baron's successful infiltration into Glen Eliza by the Dutch portraitist.

Speaking of how our Baron Dupin looked these days, what changes he was affecting before our eyes! I have mentioned in a past chapter his facility for altering his physical appearance with singular effectiveness. On recent occasions seeing the Baron on the streets, I had noticed a new transformation about his face and general person, without being able to identify what exactly had changed. This was no matter of a falsely bulbed nose and wig-that former costume belonged with the third-rate summer performers in the Rue Madame in Paris. His entire countenance now seemed to have become altogether different, and at the same time eerily, breathtakingly familiar.

One night I was adding some kindlers to the fire in the living room hearth. Duponte commented that he was comfortable enough. On this topic, I ignored him. In Paris, it's said there is hardly a smoking chimney even on the worst nights of winter. We Americans are rather too sensitive to heat and cold, while in the Old World they seem hardly aware of it at all-but I would not sit wrapped in blankets like a Frenchman would insist on doing. This same evening, I received a note.

It was from Auntie Blum. I opened it with some hesitation. She said she hoped that my unmannered French pastry cook (meaning Duponte) had been discharged. Chiefly, she wished to inform me, out of courtesy to her longtime friendship with the household of Glen Eliza, that Hattie was now engaged to marry another man, who was industrious and trustworthy.

At first, I fell under a spell of shock at the news. Could Hattie really have found someone else? Could I have managed to forfeit a woman as wonderful as Hattie, while at the same time doing what seemed right and necessary?

Then I realized. I thought back to Peter's sage warning that it would not be easy to appease Auntie Blum, and recognized this letter as a ploy by that cunning woman to torment me into apologies and excessive confessions of my wrong toward her niece.

I was not above this tactic, or beneath it, as the case might be.

I sat upon the sofa, thinking whether I had by nature of my present endeavor given up all proper intercourse with society. I was, after all, now in the company of men of great intensity like Duponte and the Baron, who defied any social customs and sought action that could not be obtained by ordinary politeness.

When the flames began running terrifically along the log, and I was contemplating these matters, I had a sudden thought about the Baron Dupin as though his face had been reflected back to me from the fire. It came to me while I was trying to picture the man without having the original present.