to seize the conversation and wrest it into my power. My thoughts were still buzzing with questions, though.
"When did you know? When did you know they were coming after you? That those men, supported by the Bonapartes, wanted to murder you."
Duponte shook his head as if he did not know the answer.
"But on the Humboldt you knew there was the stowaway aboard, that villain Rollin. It started then. Monsieur, I am witness to it all!"
"No, I did not know there was a stowaway. Rather, I knew that if there was a stowaway there, they were hunting me."
"I suppose you guessed!" I exclaimed.
Duponte grinned just for a flash. He nodded.
I believe that day I felt the inner pain of Duponte that had made him the way he was when I'd first discovered his stationary life in Paris -alone, unintentional in all things. Everyone had believed that he possessed extraordinary powers after he had deciphered the Lafarge poisoning case. The young Duponte was an unnaturally confident man, and he himself began to believe that his abilities were of the almost supernatural nature that others wrote about in the newspapers. The stories about him enhanced his genius, perhaps even allowed for it in the first place. Yet I still could not answer whether genius had been created through the faith of the outside world. Readers often feel that the Dupin of Poe's tales finds the truth because he is a genius. Read again. This is only part of it. He finds the truth because someone has faith in him throughout-without his friend, there would be no C. Auguste Dupin.
"Each time I saw Louis-Napoleon review his troops," said Duponte, "I could see not the future, as the superstitious fool would believe about me, but the present-he was not content with being elected president. I suppose Prefect Delacourt warned him of me after I was seen out in Paris, with you, by his spies."
"The Baron told me of what happened to Catherine Gautier. Did Prefect Delacourt warn Louis-Napoleon because you were against him in that case? Did you wish vengeance on him by escaping him?"
"The prefect's actions were motivated by him having done me wrong, not my having wronged him. Our own past perversity, not that of others, sets us against someone for life. Prefect Delacourt was removed in favor of the new prefect for many reasons, I am certain-one of those may have been the failure to successfully find me before you and I left Paris together. De Maupas is not as astute a man as Delacourt, but he is far more competent, the two traits having no bridge between them-and, as a hobby, de Maupas is quite ruthless."
"Do you believe they learned they had murdered the Baron instead of you?"
Duponte now trimmed away a piece of Maryland ham, the second course brought by our waiter. "Perhaps. You certainly proclaimed the Baron's identity to the police loud enough, Monsieur Clark! It was never clear to the public, and is likely still unclear to those concerned in Paris. Chances are, the rogues who killed the Baron here heard of the truth. For their own sakes, they probably kept the fact secret from their superiors in Paris. Instead, their leader-that stowaway sent here to have charge over the mission-has quietly hunted me. However, I knew this would be the one place in Baltimore they would not look for me: the Baron's last rooms in the city. I came here during the Baron's lecture and have shown myself in the streets only now and then at night. The hotel believes I have come to mourn for my 'brother,' the noble Baron, in peace, and has left me alone. Now that Louis-Napoleon has successfully surprised Paris into becoming an empire, and has presently held a successful vote to that effect, the stowaway surely is beginning to believe that their mistake concerning me and the Baron has passed its time of relevancy. If the American Bonaparte son succeeds in his mission, the stowaway may quietly stay in France for the rewards due to him before there are any further political changes. He and the American Bonapartes shall say nothing of their own errors, you can be sure. To Paris, I will be terribly dead."
I thought about the plain apartments of his hotel room upstairs and rehearsed in my mind what Duponte's life would have been like in the months since the Baron's murder, hiding here in plain view. He had books-in fact, the place was littered with books, as