Marc Olden - Poe must die

At the entrance, Barnum, surrounded by patrons, again clasped Figg’s hand with his. “Do return, Mr. Figg, and my regards to Mr. Poe. Remember, sir, I am your friend.”

Figg smiled. “Thankin’ you, Mr. Barnum. Pleased to have seen the egress.”

Barnum grinned.

A bearded man with an eyepatch tugged at Barnum’s sleeve. “Look here, commodore. What is an egress?”

“Egress?” Barnum’s squeaky voice carried over the din. “My friend, do I detect the sad misfortune on your part indicating that you have never viewed the egress?”

The man’s jaw dropped.

“Follow me,” said Barnum. “To the egress it is, sir!”

“Egress, egress.” The cry was taken up and the crowd followed Barnum.

For the first time since arriving in New York several days ago, Figg laughed out loud.

* * * *

Hugh Larney would lay with her in the coffin. He would carry Dearborn in his arms to this small room on the top floor of his white marble Fifth Avenue mansion, a room far in the back and away from everyone. Not even the servants were allowed inside, and Dearborn had once seen Hugh Larney curse and kick a teen-age Irish maid for having entered here. The girl had been driven limping and weeping from the house on the spot, to survive in New York as best she could.

Dearborn, naked and alone in the room, lay in a silver-handled coffin; its white satin was cool against her bare flesh. She shivered and tried to listen to the conversation going on out in the hall. Miles Standish had pounded on the door, demanding that Hugh Larney come out. It was important that they talk immediately. The servants had been unable to prevent Miles Standish from coming upstairs. He’d simply lashed out with his cane until they had stepped aside for him.

Dearborn sat up. Miles was shouting. It failed, it failed, he said. Poe lives. Hugh Larney tried to get him to lower his voice but Miles refused. Poe lives, his friend lives. The gas did not -

Silence.

Dearborn sat up in the coffin, looking around at the human skulls on shelves filled with books, at the circle on the floor, a circle of white paint that surrounded the coffin. Mr. Larney had a strong interest in the devil, for she’d heard him talk of it to Mr. Standish and a few others. Once or twice he’d even spoken of the devil to Dearborn, but there was little she could tell him. She only knew that the devil was bad and would come for her if she did anything wrong. What she did with men was not wrong, for she only did as they ordered her.

She left the coffin and tiptoed to the door, a thin child with golden hair and a face of heartbreaking beauty. The talk was all whispers.

The gas did not work, whispered Standish. I should not have let you talk me into it.

Calm yourself, Miles.

Poe must die!

Agreed, agreed.

We must be direct this time. Nothing subtle. And nothing to link the matter with us.

Yes, yes, Miles.

You look the fool standing there naked as Adam.

You sound the fool. Come away from the door. Is Volney -

He is still with us.

A frightened Dearborn scampered back to the coffin, climbed in and closed her eyes.

She heard the door to the room open.

Larney whispered, “I gave her wine. She seems to be sound asleep. Exquisite thing, is she not?”

“Yes, yes. Now about Poe-”

“Oh how your loins do ache for Rachel.”

Larney chuckled softly, closed the door and Dearborn heard the two men move away and down the hall. Poor Mr. Poe. He was such a nice man, talking sweetly to her of his mother and of her being an actress. A gentle voice he had and a most pleasing manner. Why did Hugh Larney and the others want to kill him? Well, it was not for Dearborn to worry or question such things, for women and girls were on earth to obey and not to raise their heads or eyes unless a man so beckoned. That is how the world is made.

She yawned. The wine had made her sleepy and without Hugh Larney beside her and touching her, she could rest. She drew her knees up to her chin, shivered and closed her eyes. Seconds later, she was asleep.

Glass shattered. A woman screamed. Rachel looked up from the book she was trying to read. Outside in the hallway footsteps hurried past the closed study door. It had just gone noon and Rachel, without an appetite, was alone trying to read without success. Too much on her mind. Dr. Paracelsus and his miracles. Justin. She wore his ring again, the one modelled on that given Lord Essex by Queen Elizabeth.

And she thought of Eddy. Always Eddy.

“Not up here, she ain’t!” A man’s gruff voice came from the top of the stairs.

“Then find the bloody bitch, you stupid bugger! Find her!” The voice of a man not too far from the study door. Neither man was one of her servants. None of them would talk in such disgusting fashion.

She put the book down on the arm of her chair, crossed the study and opened the door.

Hamlet Sproul looked at her. Spitting tobacco juice on the rug, he brought his right arm up, gigantic bowie knife in his fist, then placed the arm around Rachel’s neck, yanking her close to him. She cringed, too paralyzed with fear to scream. “You-you are hurting me!”

“I mean to.” She felt his beard scrape her face and she smelled tobacco and the stink of him and from the corner of her eye she saw the wildness in his bloodshot green eyes.

Sproul whispered. “You cannot give me back what I have lost, so I take what you have and that is your life.”

Rachel heard them looting the house, terrorizing the servants.

Sproul leaned back his head and shouted, “I have her! I have her! Let us be gone from here!”

To Rachel, he said, “Resist and you die here. At best I promise you a little more life but that is all you shall get from Hamlet Sproul, miss.”

Rachel tried to pull away from him. He slapped her hard, driving her into the wall. Then he shoved her ahead of him and she tripped over a body in her way, falling to the floor. When she pushed herself into a sitting position, her hands were wet and sticky with blood. She screamed and Hamlet Sproul laughed.

“And so it begins, dear lady. But you do not die that easily, not until I have had me time with you. Then death will come as a mercy and you will be grateful for it, I assure you.”

He yanked her to her feet. Throughout the house, his men looted swiftly, taking the spoils they had been promised. Sproul had his, now let them get theirs and then it was back to Five Points where no man dare enter, not the police, not the goddam army. Poe’s lady friend would be taken there and never leave, which was her problem. Sproul’s men had only the problem of taking as much loot as they could carry.

Poe rubbed his unshaven chin. “The practice of magic, Mr. Figg, of sorcery, witchcraft, devil worship and related occult sciences begins with the caveman. It is as old as time. When dinosaurs roamed the earth and men ate their meat raw, blood red and steaming from the carcasses of beasts no longer present in nature’s order, humanity believed in magic, in what has been described as hidden knowledge. You say to me that Jonathan is missing the little fingers on both hands.”

“That ‘e is.”

“On the walls of caves in France and Africa have been found imprints of mutilated hands, imprints dating back to the Pleistocene period, a pause between two ice ages.”

“Older than me gran lived to be.”

Poe’s smile was weak. “I dare say. The hands had first been dipped in some colored substance, then pressed against the cave wall. Joints from fingers, even entire fingers were missing. These mutilations, performed with a stone knife, were offerings to prevent death and keep away evil. We know the truth of this for the custom is still with us in these modern times. Such imprints are to be found in the mosques of Mohammedans in India. The removal of fingers as a method of keeping away both death and disease is also a custom among the Bushman tribes of South Africa, Australia and certain tribes of North American Indians.”