some small basis in reality. If he intends to publish a popular account of his dealings on the matter of Poe's death, as suggested, and intends to gain by lecturing on the subject, he cannot afford to be so easily discredited by using lies out of whole cloth, Monsieur Clark. After all, we saw from the Parisian newspapers that he wished his creditors to know his plans to return with enough financial resources to free himself from their attention. He is relying on this to protect him from their plots against him. He shall require facts-even if he compels some portion of them into existence."
Duponte continued to remain on the grounds of Glen Eliza most of the time, often engaged in disagreements with Von Dantker over whether he remained sufficiently still. Duponte displayed for the artist the strangest sort of half smile, with points sharp as knives carved out at the corners of the mouth.
Sometimes I excused myself from the house on an errand; these excursions were most of all sacrificial offerings to my nerves. Earlier that year, the post office had begun delivering the mail, for an extra fee of two cents, and so I had no need to call at its offices. I described the operation of our postal services to Duponte and for a few moments he seemed acutely interested in the topic, before quickly settling back into his air of distraction. I always looked first at the mail for something unexpected: perhaps, even, a last letter written to me by Poe, if it had been misplaced or lost, and now recovered. Duponte did not receive any letters.
But one morning of note, as I started out, a messenger delivered a trunk. It had the same shape and color as one of the trunks Duponte had brought from Paris. This surprised me, for I had believed Duponte's baggage all at my house. But he seemed to expect the object's arrival and waved his acceptance to me.
I explored the newspapers myself each morning before adding them to Duponte's collection. Despite all the sudden attention to Poe's death, there was nothing like any real scrutiny in the newspapers, only rumors and anecdotes. In one, there was a new explanation about the loose-fitting and ragged clothes in which Poe had been discovered.
"This newspaper says that it has been suggested to the editor-by Baron Dupin, I have no doubt-that Poe's clothing, which were not his own, had constituted some sort of a disguise!"
"Of course, monsieur," said Duponte, using his eyeglass but hardly reading the article.
I was startled. "You have already thought that?"
"No."
"Then how is it you respond to me by saying, 'Of course'?"
"I mean to say, 'Of course the paper is quite mistaken.'"
"But how do you know that?" I asked.
"Newspapers are almost always quite mistaken about everything," he said. "If you should find one of the tenets of your religion in type on the sheet, it is likely time to reconsider your form of God-worship."
"But, monsieur! You have spent the better part of every day reading the newspapers at my library table! Why waste all that time?"
"You must notice their errors, Monsieur Clark, in order to advance to the truth."
I stared at him until he continued.
He arched his eyebrows in a particularly French fashion. "A demonstration. Take this matter of Monsieur Poe's garments that your paper mentions. The Richmond Observer has lately written that Poe had, some days before his arrival in Baltimore, inadvertently switched his own walking stick with the Malacca cane of a friend in Richmond, one Dr. John Carter. In the same paper we read-in a burlesque error somewhat different from the equally erroneous disguise camp-that Poe's clothes were stolen and had been replaced in a robbery during his time in Baltimore. To place the garments in the central position of importance, because they are easily visible to those who found Poe, is to subdue reason to fancy."
"How do you know, without further information, that the clothes were not stolen in this way?"
"Have you ever heard of a thief stealing one's clothes-rare enough-and then replacing the clothes of a victim with other dress? An idea only someone who is not a thief could devise. The editors have merely taken the most common scenario against a visitor, a robbery, and altered it to match the end results without regard to likelihood. At all events, the special quality of the borrowed cane alone tells us it is most unlikely."
In the newspaper article to which Duponte had referred, the Observer reported that