Hattie? Perhaps the sour but stalwart expression on the face of Peter Stuart? The Baron Dupin himself, escorted by the doctors, able to bear witness to the real culprit who shot him and to free me? I longed even for the clamor of my great-aunt's voice. Anything to remind me that there was another person concerned by my fate.
There was no word about Duponte, meanwhile. I feared for him an outcome worse than my own. I had failed him. Failed in my role to protect him in the operation of his genius.
Officer White circulated a selection of passable newspapers and journals as part of the jail liberties for the prisoners who were literate. I accepted them, but only pretended to read them while, in fact, I went about far more important reading, which I had smuggled in with me. When I had wrestled at the lyceum with the Baron Dupin, I had semi-consciously removed from his hands the notes he had brought for his speech. Hardly thinking of their significance, I had thrust these papers into my coat before accompanying Officer White to the station house.
As long as I had candlelight in my cell, I studied them, propped in a magazine. Edgar Poe has not left, but has been taken away, said the Baron's treatise. It was not on the whole inelegant, though at no time aspiring to literary merit. As I read, I committed it to memory. I thought of Duponte reading over my shoulder. Only through observing that which is mistaken can we come to the truth.
One time while studying these pages, I was interrupted by the approach of a visitor. The slouching figure of a man came into the hall, escorted by the clerk. It was a man unknown to me, wearing an expressionless face. He leaned his umbrella on the wall and shook off the excess water from his gigantic boots, which seemed to take up half his height.
"The stink in here..." he said to himself, sniffing.
A woman sang drunkenly from the ladies' cells corridor. The visitor merely stood silently. Not finding any particular look of sympathy about him, I did the same.
I was surprised when the stranger was joined by a frightened young lady, wrapped tightly in her cloak.
"Oh, dear Quentin, look at where they've put you!" Hattie stared pityingly at me. She was near tears.
"Hattie!" I reached out and grabbed her by the hand. It hardly seemed possible that she was real, even with the warm leather of her gloves. Taking renewed notice of the stranger, I released her hands. "Is Peter not with you?"
"No, he would not hear of me coming. He will not speak of the situation at all. When he went to the lecture, he was quite angered, Quentin. He felt he had to do something to try to stop you. I do believe he is still your friend."
"He must know I am innocent! How could I have something to do with the shooting of the Baron? The Baron had kidnapped my friend to prevent him from speaking-"
"Your friend? Would that be the friend who has placed you into this debacle, Mr. Clark?" said the man standing at Hattie's side, turning toward me with a frown not unlike Peter's.
Hattie motioned him for patience. She turned back to me. "This is my cousin's husband, Quentin. One of the finest attorneys in Washington in this sort of matter. He can help us, I'm certain."
Despite the despair of what was now my lot, I felt comfort at the word "us."
"And the Baron himself?" I asked.
"He lies without hope of recovery," my new lawyer blurted out.
"I have written to your great-aunt for her to come at once; she shall help rectify all this," Hattie continued, as though not having heard the terrible words. If what her cousin said was true, if the Baron was shortly to die, in the eyes of the world I would be condemned as a murderer.
A few days later I was moved from the district station house to the Jail of Baltimore City and County, on the banks of Jones Falls. The atmosphere duplicated my hopelessness; the surrounding cells were filled to capacity with some who'd been convicted of grave crimes along with those waiting, with small hopes, for their trial dates, or with perverse eagerness for their own hangings.
The morning before, I had been officially arraigned for the attempt to murder Baron Dupin. My declarations that the Baron must be stopped, combined with my appearance on the lyceum stage, were