"Do you mean you selected the articles at random?" I asked.

"I suppose," he said, unclear at the source of my utter disbelief.

"They were not intended to cause or provoke any particular action?"

"I hoped the praise included about Poe from less bloodthirsty times would cause more consideration of the value of Poe and his literary productions. Soon after that, I returned to Richmond. Having presently come back to stay here with my Baltimore relatives for a while, I had the occasion to come upon the clerk from the athenaeum, and the clerk excitedly requested my calling card so he could pass it along to you, Mr. Clark."

"When you spoke to me on the street, you said I must not meddle

‘with your lowly lies.'"

"Did I?" He blinked thoughtfully, then developed a trace of a smile.

"It comes from Poe's poem of a woman half in death and half in life, Lenore, ‘that now so lowly lies.'"

"I suppose it does" was Benson's maddening answer.

"Didn't you mean something by this? Some sort of message or cipher? Do not say, Mr. Benson, that this too was only randomly selected?"

"You are a man with a highly nervous character, I see, Mr. Clark." He did not seem inclined to answer my questions beyond this observation, yet he continued. "When you have taken to reading Poe, it is difficult, nay, impossible, to stop his words from affecting you. Indeed, the man or woman who reads Poe too much, I'd suggest, will believe themselves eventually to be in one of his astounding and perplexing creations. When I came to Baltimore, my mind and every thought was engraved with Poe; I could read only words that had passed through his pen. Every sentence I said might be at risk to be his voice, no longer belonging to my own speech or intelligence. I reveled in his dreams and in what I believed was his soul. It is enough to crush a man who is liable to the trap of discovery. The only answer is to cease reading him at all-as at length I have done. I have banished him from memory, though perhaps not entirely successfully."

"But what of your investigation into Poe's death? You were among the first, perhaps the very first, to make any sort of examination-you were in the best position to learn the truth!"

Benson shook his head.

"You must have learned more!" I cried.

He hesitated, then began as though I had asked something different. "I am an accountant, Mr. Clark. I had forgotten this for a moment. I had begun to damage my business interests by remaining here, away from my proper work in Richmond. Imagine, a man who has kept perfect account books since age twenty, losing all sense of his finances. Indeed, the decline was to such a degree that I must now depend on working for part of each year in my uncle's business here in Baltimore, as I am doing at present." It was this uncle of the Benson family who was pictured in the portrait above us showing the strong resemblance to Benson. "Your city is fine in many respects-though far more coachmen drink spirits while they are meant to be in control of their horses."

Seeing my lack of interest in the point, the temperance side of the man became more adamant. "It is an appalling danger to society, Mr. Clark!"

"There is still much more to be done, Benson," I reasoned with him. "In relation to Poe, I mean. You can help us-"

"Us? Are there others involved?"

Duponte? The Baron? I was not confident of an answer. "You can help. We can do this work together, Mr. Benson; we can find the truth you sought following Poe's death."

"I can do nothing more here. And you, a lawyer, Mr. Clark, do you not have quite enough to keep you occupied?"

"I have taken a leave from my situation," I said softly.

"I see," he replied knowingly and with a tone of some satisfaction. "Mr. Clark, the most dangerous temptation in life is to forget to tend to your own business-you must learn to respect yourself enough to preserve your own interests. If pursuing the causes of others-even in charity-prevents your own happiness, you will be left with nothing.

"The populace wishes to see Poe how they wish to see him, martyr or sinner; nothing you do prevents that," he went on. "Perhaps we do not care what happened to Poe. We have imagined Poe dead for our own purposes. In some sense, Poe is still very much living. He will be constantly changed. Even if you were somehow to find the truth, they would only deny it in favor of a newer speculation. We cannot sacrifice ourselves on an altar of Poe's mistakes."

"Surely you have not come to believe those temperance men who fought you? That Poe caused all this by some petty vice?"

"Not at all," said Benson with weak defiance. "But had he been more cautious, had he used his passions to address the claims of the world rather than only those of his high order of intellect, all this might not have had to happen-and the millstone around his neck would never have become ours."

I felt a type of relief after my interview with Benson-relief that someone else had attempted to find the truth behind Poe's death. Benson's undertaking had proven Peter Stuart and Auntie Blum wrong. I had not embarked on the quest of a madman. Here was another; an accountant.

Relief flooded me from another direction, too, regarding the Baron and Duponte. I had stopped just short of betraying my allegiance to Duponte in favor of a criminal, a false showman. For what, a series of narrow coincidences between the Baron and Poe's tales? I had lost Hattie forever and would never find a person in the world who knew me as she did. The law practice that my father's good name helped build was sinking into extinction. My friendship with Peter was no more. At least I'd not made a horrible mistake with Duponte, too. I felt, returning home from Benson's, as if I had just awoken from a deep sleep.

How much trust, how much confidence, how much time I had placed in Duponte and his own confluences with Poe's tales! If he were but more confrontational against the Baron Dupin's activities; if he but provided more reason to think he progressed as well as the Baron Dupin; if only he did not stand idly by while the Baron Dupin spouted his own claims; if he were to take these measures upon himself, I would naturally be able to eject these dangerous revolutions in my thoughts!

I watched Duponte as he sat in my living room. I looked directly at him and questioned him as to his ongoing submission to the Baron Dupin's aggressiveness. I asked him why he stood by as the Baron Dupin all but claimed victory in our contest. I had begun to recount this conversation prematurely at an earlier chapter. You remember. You'll recall I suggested boxing the Baron's ears, to which Duponte noted that it might not assist our cause.

"Just so," said I. "It would remind him, I should think, that he is not alone playing this game. He believes, in the infinite deception of his brain, that he has already won, Monsieur Duponte!"

"He has subscribed to a mistaken belief, then. The situation is quite reversed. The Baron, I'm afraid for him, has already lost. He has come to the end, as have I."

That is when my other fears suspended themselves. "What do you mean?"

"Poe drank," said Duponte. "But he was not a drinking man. In fact, he was quite the opposite. On average, we can be confident he took less stimulus than any common man on the street."

"Yes?"

"He was not intemperate, but he was intolerant, constitutionally, to spirits, to an extreme degree never witnessed by most ordinary persons."

I sat upright. "How do you know this, Monsieur Duponte?"

"If only people would see, rather than just look. You will no doubt remember one of the few obituaries written by an acquaintance, rather than by a reporter. Therein was a report that, with a single glass of wine, Monsieur Poe's ‘whole nature was reversed.' Many would understand this to mean that Poe was habitually intoxicated, a reckless and constant drunkard. In fact, it is just opposite. The detractors have proved too much in this arena, and therefore prove nothing. It is likely-nay, almost certain-that Poe possessed a rare sensitivity to drink that would almost at an instant change and paralyze him. In a state of mental disarray, and in the company of low fellows, no doubt Poe sometimes followed this with further drinking, especially when in the midst of your aggressive southern conviviality, which requires that one not refuse such offers. But this last fact is irrelevant to us. It was the first drink, almost the first sip, that would send him into an attack of insensibility. Not madness from excessive drinking, but temporary madness from not being able to drink as does the next fellow."