Baron who visited Baltimore earlier this year. This is his brother. The Duke." He leaned in to whisper this last word confidentially. "The noble lineage is most evident in both of them."
"The Duke." I smiled. "Yes. But when did our imperial Duke begin his stay?"
"Oh, as soon as his brother, I mean the noble Baron, left. His current presence is most covert-with all that is happening in France, you know."
I nodded, amused at the ease with which he'd yielded his secret. As though having the same thought, he now declaimed that he was not able to supply the location of the royal guest's room.
"You do not have to, sir," I said, and we shared a confidential nod. Of course I knew the room. I had spied on the Baron when he had stayed there.
I ascended the staircase with expectations racing through my blood.
I now remember Duponte as looking rather pale and haggard during our meeting, as though he had been all used up since we'd first met, or half used up at least. He was sitting serenely in the Baron Dupin's old hotel room when I came in. He didn't appear disappointed in having been discovered by me. I suppose I'd imagined that his remarkable composure would come unfurled by my surprise appearance, that he would speak in anger and threaten me if I seemed likely to expose him with the knowledge I now possessed of his whereabouts and his deeds. He had known the Baron would be killed in his place, and he had done nothing to prevent it.
He politely offered me a chair. The truth is, he was no less composed than ever. Then he pulled the bell for the hotel porter and told the man to take his trunk. I looked at him inquisitively.
"I had long given up on you," I said.
"It is time for me to leave," he replied.
"Now that I have come, you mean?" I asked.
He looked over at me. "You have seen the newspapers. All that has occurred in Paris."
I removed the pistol from my coat, studied it as though I had never seen it before, and placed it near him on a table.
"They might have followed me-if they are still looking for you, I mean. I have no desire to endanger you, Monsieur Duponte, despite the fact that I have been endangered by you. Keep this close to you."
"I do not know if they have still been looking for me, but if they have, they will not much longer."
I understood. The Baltimore Bonapartes had traveled to Paris in hopes of being rewarded for their loyalty to the new emperor. If they'd succeeded, they would have no motivation to continue supporting a search for Duponte, even though Madame Bonaparte and her rogues knew now they had failed to kill the real object of the assassination.
"The Baron is dead. You knew all along he would be killed in your place, and allowed it," I said. "You, monsieur, you have been the murderer."
A gong rang uproariously through the hotel. Duponte said, "Shall we dine? I have kept myself in my rooms too long. For the sake of fine food, I can afford the risk of being seen in public."
The vast dining room held approximately five hundred people sitting down to Chesapeake Bay shad. A colored "major-domo" signaled a gong to sound at each course, and all the covers on the next dishes were lifted simultaneously by waiters posted at each table.
At length I peered around to find a waiting assassin or perhaps a person who had known the Baron Dupin and would now think he's seeing his ghost. Yet, the tired countenance my companion now wore held as little resemblance to the Baron's vivid imitation of Duponte as to the old Duponte himself.
"No. I am not the murderer," Duponte now answered my earlier remark evenly. "I am not, but perhaps you are, you and the Baron, if you like. The Baron wished to disguise himself as me. Had I control over that? I tried to keep it away. I had remained in my rooms in Paris. But you needed 'Dupin,' for your own purposes, Monsieur Clark. The Baron needed 'Dupin' for his. Louis-Napoleon needed a 'Dupin' to fear. Your arrival in Paris and your persistence made me accept that however much I remained dormant, the idea of 'Dupin' would not. It was, as you said, something sort of immortal."
Ah, but you are not Dupin! Never were!
It was at the end of my tongue. I was ready