Matthew Pearl - The Poe Shadow

I promised to return another day and hastily began backing away, terrified that one of the rogues would have occasion to return and see me at the door. But even more I feared that third one, the man calling himself Rollin. He lifted his hat, slowly, to bid me good evening, and before he returned it to its place I knew exactly where I had first seen him. It had been so brief, and long before, halfway across the world.

Remembering that first vision of him, I comprehended, gradually, as I walked through the street, how it had all happened, how it had all been connected from Paris until now. How the Bonapartes had come to be involved. How in one attempted assassination in Baltimore indeed lay the future of France…

As these thoughts gathered themselves together, I walked rapidly, but somewhat carelessly, toward another boardinghouse Edwin had arranged for me upon my return from Washington. Suddenly, I felt a stinging pain travel across my back. I fell forward, then rolled onto my back. Above me, I saw flashes of a white horse, rearing upward to the sky, and a tall and powerful man on top. He unrolled his whip and this time caught my arm.

"Mr. Clark, attorney, isn't it? What a thing to see such a finely bred man wanted for murder." It was Slatter, the slave-trader, riding a perfect specimen of the largest Pennsylvania horse. I attempted to stand, but he kicked the side of my head with his boot. I writhed in pain on the ground and coughed up blood.

Slatter jumped down from the horse and, while holding me down with his dark mahogany cane, placed my wrists and ankles in shackles.

"Your sands are nearly run down, my friend! I've cleared two thousand dollars in the last month but will enjoy this even more."

"I did not shoot anyone! And I have no business with you!" I cried.

"But you had business with me the other week, didn't you? With that woolly-head young friend of yours? No, your business is not with me. It is with the city. It is always a pleasure for me to serve the police of Baltimore." The leading slave-traders often received the rolls of men and women wanted for arrest, since many of those were escaped slaves. "Perhaps you'd like to spend a night in my pen with the stock that are about to be shipped off, before you go to the police. I'm sure they will be anxious to see you again-we know you're such an avowed lover of their kind. Perhaps you even speak their nigger-tongue."

The shackles were immovable, and I had no choice but to walk along toward his slave pen as he pulled me by a long chain from his horse. Slatter seemed to relish the slow pace we took, as though he were parading me to thousands of onlookers, though, in fact, the flooded and dark streets were empty, and he bent his neck around often in order to take delight at the sight of me.

I was looking down in despair when I heard a sound of footsteps. I glanced up, and I suppose he must have seen my eyes widen with surprise. Turning around swiftly, he saw what I'd seen-a man springing from the ground with a yell to knock him over. Slatter's head hit the ground hard. He lifted his neck briefly, and then his eyes closed with a moan. Edwin Hawkins stood over him and searched Slatter's coat for the keys to my shackles.

"For goodness' sake!" I cried out. "I am desperate glad to see you, Edwin!"

Retrieving the keys, he freed me from my restraints. "Mr. Clark," he said, interrupting my exclamations of gratitude, "I must make tracks." He looked back at Slatter.

"Do not worry. He is unconscious," I said. "He won't be awake for a while yet."

"I have to leave Baltimore. Now, Mr. Clark. He knew me in my youth."

Then I realized. If Slatter had seen Edwin, and recognized the attacker as a man whom he had sold years before, or had just looked long enough to remember his face…Edwin would not only be convicted, he would be entered back into slavery. "Did he see you?"

"I don't know, Mr. Clark. But I can't risk finding out. I am sorry I won't be able to help you any longer. I know you will find the evidence you need."

"Edwin." I took his arm. "If only I had not shown surprise! He would not have turned at all, and you would never have been at risk of him seeing you. You have done this for Poe!"

"No. This I have done for you." He took my hand with a warm smile. "You will prove your name, and that will be reward for this. For me, you must go ahead. With heaven speed."

I nodded. "Leave here quickly, my friend," I whispered, "and be silent on your way." He disappeared into the streets.

I shackled Slatter's hands but left his feet and legs free so he could find help when he awoke. He did not look as tall as he had on the horse; in fact, he was a decrepit old man lying there, with a blank and sloppy expression. I could hardly move from this spot. With Edwin gone, I felt inconsolably alone, and I remembered longingly the comforts of Hattie's visits in prison, and Bonjour's appearance there, and the burst of strength I'd received from them.

A sudden thought forced me to my feet. "Bonjour," I gasped to myself. I heard Slatter coming to life in a series of groans, but I did not stop to look back at him. I raised myself onto the side of his horse and rode back in the direction I had come from.

"My horse!" Slatter cried. "You! Bring back my horse!"

My fears were realized when I saw that the door to the Bonaparte house I had just left was wide open. I tied the slave-trader's horse to a post outside and walked circumspectly through the front hall. It was quiet except for the sounds of audible, pained breathing. If there had been any other noises it's unlikely I would have heard them. They would have folded into the background of my mind, along with the furnishings. I was transfixed.

In the parlor, there had clearly been a struggle only minutes, maybe seconds, before I arrived. Chairs, lamps, curtains, and papers were scattered over the floor. The chandelier still shook with the violence. The victor was clear. Bonjour stood over the large figure of Rollin, who was perspiring pitifully. From the disarray at a nearby window, it was clear he had tried to jump out of it. Bonjour, though perhaps half his size, was holding him down and had a blade touching his throat.

His eyes met mine and I wondered: did he know me now too?

I had been leaving Paris with Auguste Duponte to begin our investigation of Poe's death. Climbing aboard the ship, Duponte announced there was a stowaway. You remember.

"Do request," he said to me, "Monsieur Clark, that the steward inform our ship's captain there is a stowaway on board."

"You shall want to know what I know!" cried this stowaway, Rollin, when he was revealed and accused of trying to steal the steamer's mail shipment. There was something in his tone that may have rekindled the memory in me when the same man asked, in a voice far too aggressive, "You would like to leave word?" at the door of the Bonaparte mansion. But more than that, it was the lift of his hat-revealing the square baldness that had been unwillingly shown that day at sea when he was flung from the rails. It was that sight that made me remember where I had seen him that time.

By the time I had discovered Bonjour there, the implications of this man's presence on the Humboldt had settled into my imagination. But to answer my previous question for myself: no, I do not think he knew me now. He had been watching for someone else that earlier day at sea.

Now he was staring right at me. Rollin's eyes burned with ghastly interest, his legs wet with water and spotted with flower petals that had spilled on the rug from a shattered vase.

Bonjour peered around. She smiled slightly, almost apologetically, at me. I could almost feel all the passion and regret of her kiss again while I looked upon her face.

"I am sorry, Monsieur Clark." She said this as though I were the one prostrate and pleading for my life.