purpose, the Baron grew very warm very quickly."
I think I must have shown apprehension, because she smiled.
"Nothing to fear, Monsieur Quentin," she said. But her smiling, somehow, made me feel less safe. Perhaps it was the scar that divided her mouth into two. "I do not think you are in the shadow of any harm-at the moment. You have no doubt seen what has happened, since that time, to the awareness of Poe in your city."
"You mean, in the newspapers?" I began to put it together. "You have something to do with all that?"
She explained. First the Baron had placed notices in all the newspapers in the city, offering substantial rewards for "vital information" in the "mysterious and untoward death" of the poet Poe. He did not expect to actually hear from witnesses at once. Rather, the notices served their real purpose-to stir questions. The editors of the papers sensed excitement, and they followed its path. Now the people were clamoring for more and more Poe.
"We are helping to enliven the public's imagination," Bonjour said. "I believe Poe's books are met with a ready sale now."
I thought back to the woman in the park...the Poe enthusiast in the reading room...and now Bonjour planting books for more people to find.
She turned to leave, and I grabbed her. If anyone was watching us, my hand wrapped around the gloved wrist of a young woman, it would occasion a small scandal and would travel with the speed of a telegraph to Hattie Blum's aunt. In Baltimore, the cold breezes of the North met the hard etiquette of the South, and the gossip that came along with it.
It was a twofold compulsion that made me reach for her hand. First, being seized once again by her careless beauty, so strikingly relocated in Baltimore, so distinct from the normal lady's-magazine appearance of local girls. Second, she might know something of Poe's death already. Third-for I suppose the compulsion should be called threefold-I knew that where she came from in Paris, touching the hand of a lady was hardly a noticeable act, and this emboldened me. But her eyes burned at me, and at a breath I pulled my hand away.
I find it difficult to describe the sensation that passed through me upon touching, even for a moment, this lady. It was the sensation that at any moment I could be transported anywhere in the world, into anyone's life, almost that I was not restricted to my own body-it was a spiritual feeling, in a sense, feeling as light as a star in the sky.
Much to my surprise amid the bookstalls, as soon as I released her, both her hands sprung toward me and gripped me far more firmly than I had seized her. I could not pry her fingers off my hands, and we stood facing each other for a long moment.
"Sir! Remove your hand, if you please!" she burst out in an outraged, virginal voice.
Her cry prompted the Argus-eyed inquisitiveness of everyone in the store, at every table and bench. After she released me, I attempted to appear occupied by commonplace interest in the nearest books. By the time the stares dissipated, she was gone. I raced into the street and spotted her, the back of her head now covered by a striped parasol.
"Stay!" I called out, hurrying to her side. "I know you are well intentioned. You kept me safe from the shooting at the fortifications. You saved my life!"
"It seemed you wished to assist me when thinking the Baron forced my service to him. This was"-she tucked her lip under her small front teeth to consider this-"unusual."
"You must know that this is far too important a matter to cheaply excite the periodical press. No good shall come of that. Poe's genius deserves more. You must stop this now."
"Do you think you can shuffle us off from our task so easily? I have read some of your friend Poe. It seems it consists chiefly of him saying plain things in a fashion that makes them hard to understand, and commonplace things in a mysterious form which makes them seem oracular." Bonjour checked her speed momentarily to look at me. I also came to a stop. "Are you in love, Monsieur Clark?"
I had lost my concentration on Bonjour. My gaze had landed nearby, where a woman was striding along the sidewalk. She was woman of around forty, attractive enough. My eyes followed her path down the street.
"Are you in love, monsieur?" Bonjour repeated gently,