Matthew Pearl - The Poe Shadow

He laughed knowingly. "Good. You should have much to occupy yourself without needing to think of this unhappy affair, then. Or your sweetheart might give you the mitten."

Faithful use of the blank page before me would describe the ensuing despondency as I sat at my misted window overlooking the exodus of people from the offices surrounding ours. I stayed until even Peter had gone. I should have felt at ease. I had done all I could. Even speaking with the police. There was nothing remaining for me to attempt to do. A pall of routine seemed to stretch out before me.

Days passed like this. I entered into an advanced state of ennui that no comforts of society could diminish. It was then I received a knock at the door, and a letter. It was a messenger sent from the athenaeum; the reading room clerk, not having seen me for some time, had decided to send me some newspaper cuttings he had come upon. Newspaper cuttings from several years before; noticing some that had occasion to allude to Edgar Poe, and no doubt remembering my inquiries, he had thought to enclose them in a letter to me.

One seized me entirely.

Think of it.

He had been out there all along.

September 16, 1844

Our newspaper has been informed by a "Lady Friend" of the brilliant and erratic writer Edgar A. Poe, Esq., that Mr. Poe's ingenious hero, C. Auguste Dupin, is closely modeled from an individual in actual life, similar in name and exploit, known for his great analytical powers. This respected gentleman is recognized widely in the regions of Paris, where that city's police frequently request his involvement in cases even more baffling than those Mr. Poe has chronicled in his truly strange accounts of Mr. Dupin, of which "The Purloined Letter" marks the third installment (though the editors hope more will be produced). We wonder how many thousands of burning questions occurring these last years in our own country, and how many yet to come, this real genius of Paris could have effortlessly unriddled.

I HELD THEnewspaper clipping in my hands. I felt an unnameable difference in myself and in my surroundings as I read it. I felt transported.

A few minutes after the messenger from the athenaeum had exited my chambers, Peter burst in with an armful of documents.

"What are you looking at with such intolerable excitement, Quentin?" he asked. I think it was only a rhetorical question. But I was so enthused that I answered him.

"Peter, see for yourself! It was sent over with some other articles by the clerk at the athenaeum."

I do not know why I did not restrain myself. Perhaps consequences no longer mattered to me.

Peter read the newspaper clipping slowly, his face dropping. "What is this?" he asked with clenched teeth. I cannot pretend not to understand his ensuing reaction. After all, we had an appointment at court the next morning. Peter had been running about the office, frantically preparing, until he'd come in just now. Imagine how he found his partner. Studying documents for our client's hearing? Checking them one last time for errors? No.

"There is a real Dupin in Paris-I mean Poe's character of a genius investigator," I explained. "‘Recognized widely in the regions of Paris.' You see? It is a miracle."

He slapped the extract onto my desk. "Poe? Is this what you have been doing here all day?"

"Peter, I must find out who this person spoken of in the article is and bring him here. You were right that I could not do this myself. He can do this."

There was an edition of Poe's Tales I kept on my shelf. Peter grabbed the book and waved it in front of my face. "I thought you were finished with this Poe madness, Quentin!"

"Peter, if this man exists, if a man with a mind so extraordinary as C. Auguste Dupin's is really out there, then I can complete my promise to Poe. Poe has been telling me all along how to do it, through the pages of his own tales! Poe's name can be restored. Snatched away from an eternity of injustice."

Peter reached for the newspaper extract again, but I grabbed it out of his hand and folded it into my pocket.

He seemed angered by this. Peter's massive hand now shot forward, clutching, as though needing to choke something, even the air. With his other hand, he flung the book of Poe tales straight into our hearth, the flames of which had been stoked up into a cheerful fire by one of the clerks just a half hour before.

"There!" he said.

The hearth fizzled with its sacrifice. I think Peter was instantly sorry for his action, since the fierceness in his face transformed into sourness as soon as the flames reached for the pages of the book. Understand, this was not one of the volumes I prized for its binding or from any particular sentimental attachment. It was not the copy I had found myself reading in the quiet days after receiving the telegram of my parents' deaths.

And yet, unthinkingly, with the swiftest motion I had ever shown, I reached in and pulled out the book. I stood there in the middle of my chambers, the book ablaze in my hand. My sleeve became a burning ring at the cuff. But I stood resolutely in place as Peter blinked, his helpless eyes large and glinting red with the fire as he took in this sight: the sight of his partner gripping a flaming book while the sizzling fire was beginning to engulf his arm. Strangely, the more delirious his expression became, the more tranquil I felt myself become. I could not remember ever having felt so strong, so decided in my purpose as in this single moment. I knew what was necessary for me now.

Hattie had come into the room looking for me. She stared at me, stared at the burning object I held in front of me, not shocked, exactly, but with a rare flash of anger.

She threw a rug from the hall over my arm and patted the flames until the fire was out. Peter recovered himself enough to gasp at the incident and then check the rug's damage before conferring with Hattie. The two clerks hurried over to me to stare, as if at a wild beast.

"Get out! Out of these offices now, Quentin!" Peter shouted, pointing with a trembling hand.

"Peter, no, please!" Hattie cried.

"Very well," I said.

I stepped out of my chamber door. Hattie was calling for me to return. But I did not turn back. I could see only faraway things in my mind as though they were stretched out before me in the wings of these halls: the long promenades, the din of the busy cafés, the unabashed, dreamy musical chords of dancing and fêtes, the redemption waiting to be uncovered in a distant metropolis.

I ARRIVED ATmy first appointment in Paris by way of kidnapping.

In our American cities the stranger is left modestly to himself, with great cruelty and politeness; but in Paris a stranger has a constant sense of being shoved and directed by the citizens and officials; if you are lost, the Frenchman will run half a mile at great speed to point at your destination, and will accept no thanks. Perhaps kidnapping is the inevitable culmination of their aggressive kindness.

I made my voyage to Paris approximately a year and a half after I pulled that book out of the fire. My first shock upon arrival came at the railroad terminus, where screams of commissionnaires lure visitors to one or another hotel. I tried to avoid their outstretched hands.

I stopped where I met a man barking for the Hôtel Corneille, named after the great French playwright. I had read of the hotel in a novel of Balzac's (for I had brought some books of his and the novelist George Sand's for entertainment and study on my voyage) and it was reputed to be an establishment welcoming to those who indulge in the various branches of the humanities. I considered my own purposes as having a degree of literary character.