by Louis Bayard
The rest of us had our own part in the drill. We were to remain in our places until the officer appeared, and we were to present him with fat dumb faces when he asked if any cadets had been there. The officer, if he was new to this, would mumble darkly at us and leave the premises on his own time. (One or two might have a drink before going.)
We waited, then, for tonight’s officer . . . but the door never budged. It was Benny himself who finally pushed it open—from the inside. Took a step into the night, craning his head.
“No one there,” he said, frowning.
“You don’t suppose they cut him off at the river, do you?” cried Jack de Windt.
“Oh, we would have heard something. Come, now, Asher, tell us, what made you think you saw an officer?”
Asher’s mouse eyes sharpened. “What made me think? Christ, what do you take me for, Benny? You don’t think I can recognize a bar as well as anyone?”
“A bar, you say.”
“Why, certainly. He was holding his lantern up—like this—and the bar, why, it was plain as a pimple. Right there on his shoulder.”
“And did you see anything else?” I asked. “Anything but his shoulder?”
The sureness began to leak from Asher’s face. His eyes flicked from side to side. “No, Gus. It was the lantern. The way he was holding it, I mean. You could only see the bar. . . .”
* * *
A fine-bladed, icy rain had begun to fall—the same rain that had been falling the night Ballinger was killed. It had already sheathed the knob on Benny’s door and beaded the hemlock branches . . . and formed a glistening skin on the steps leading up to the main road.
I set my foot on that first step. I waited. Or maybe just listened, for the night was silvery with sound. The sifting sound of the wind and a batlike rustle in a sugar tree, and, just above me, in a half-bald birch, a crow—black against black—knitting and creaking.
Dark! The only light came from the torch outside Benny’s door and the torch’s reflection in a puddle of frozen water, captured by a clump of juniper. A near-perfect mirror, that puddle: I found Landor soon enough. I was still staring at him when the sound came clattering down the steps like a rolling marble.
Not a noise Nature would make. Too human. Too much like someone running away.
And maybe if I’d been trained for some other trade, if I hadn’t worked half my life as a constable, I wouldn’t have given chase. But when you’ve done what I did for a living, and a fellow’s running from you, why, there’s nothing for it but to follow.
I crawled up those ice-bound steps on all fours and stood once more on the road to West Point. To the north, I could see—no, it was nothing like seeing—I could feel a stirring, a commotion within the darkness. Legs and arms and head. No more than a hunch, really, but as I crept up the road, I was soon given all the proof I needed: a squelch of boots.
With no lantern at my call, I had only this sound to lead me, but it was as sure a guide as any. I stole along, trying to keep that dark figure in my scope, trying to match my tread to his. I must have been drawing closer, for the sound was growing louder . . . and then, above the tramping, came the snort of a horse, not twenty feet off.
Hearing that changed everything. I knew once he’d climbed on that horse, there’d be no bringing him to ground.
And I knew this, too: I’d be a fool to jump him now. Best to wait until the exact moment of mounting—the point when any rider is most vulnerable—before taking my chances.
This time, at least, I wasn’t as blind as I’d been in Artemus’ closet. My eyes had won a few minutes to adjust to the dark, and I could see now the purple flanks of a horse, shaking ice from its withers, and the outlines of another figure, more human, bracing itself against the pommel.
And something more: a white stripe, splitting the dark.
And because it was the most definite part of the picture, it was this stripe I threw myself at and I wrapped my hands round. And when I felt the stranger’s body give way beneath mine, this stripe became my anchor.
For now we were rolling—down a steep hill. The road had chosen that exact spot to fall away, and we were in its grip. The mud sucked me down, ice crystals flew into my face, stones scored my back. I heard a quick groan—not mine—and felt the heel of a hand pressing into my eyes. Stars of pain burst from my sockets, and from behind me came a light patter like straggling rocks. And when the rolling had stopped—when at last we had reached the bottom of the hill—I groped once more for the white stripe and found only more darkness.
But a darkness so different from the night’s that I could do nothing but sink into it. When I came out again, I was lying across the road, with a head angry as a trapped fly. In the distance I could hear hooves, galloping northward.
Welcome, I thought. To your latest failure.
It was my own fault, I knew, for thinking I had only one fellow to contend with. Somebody else had been there the whole time. Somebody with a talent for clobbering brains.
Not until half an hour later, after I’d staggered back to Benny’s and had my head seen to by Mrs. Havens—and been treated to a free round of drinks by my sympathetic friends—did I notice the thing that had wrapped itself, without my knowing, round my coat sleeve. The sole prize I’d taken away from my struggle: a band of starched cloth, now smeared with dirt and twigs. The white collar of a priest.
Report of Edgar A. Poe to Augustus Landor
December 8th
My dear Landor, I thought you should like to know how I effected my retreat from Mr. Havens’ establishment last night. My escape, as you might have supposed, lay entirely along the river shore. The prevailing icy conditions, however, had made this narrow margin treacherous in the extreme. On more than one occasion, I stumbled and barely escaped plunging into the frigid Hudson’s embrace. It required the full concatenation of my strength, agility, and wits to keep myself erect and in continual motion.
I confess I should have taken greater care with my passage had I not, in my fevered fancy, believed myself to have been “found out” by the authorities. I had, of course, taken the usual precaution of stuffing my bedclothes, but I knew it would need but a single turning down of my coverlet to expose my crude counterfeit. From that moment, I would be in arrest—dragged in short order before Colonel Thayer’s tribunal, my divers misdemeanors arraigned in monotonal litanies, my everlasting sentence pronounced in sonorous and thundering cadences.
Dismissal!
Oh, I cared not, Landor, for the status of Cadet. My career? I would fain have abandoned it with a snap of my finger. But to be eternally banished from the lodestone of my heart! Never again to bathe in the coruscations of her eye—no! no! This could never be!
I therefore lengthened my stride and redoubled my speed. It was, by my estimation, one-thirty or two o’clock in the morning when I was at last rewarded with the sight of Gee’s Point. As my exertions had drawn me to the very precipice of exhaustion, I rested awhile before betaking myself up the steep ascent to the main grounds. With no further incident, I arrived at the door of South Barracks, congratulating myself on my good fortune.
Pausing one last time to reconnoiter the grounds, I stepped into the stairwell. The door closed behind me with a great rush. The ebon air surged round, benighting the very Night, and it seemed to me that I could hear— yes! once more!—the low, dull, quick sound, the throbbing pulsation so akin to, and yet so at variance with, the palpitations of a human heart. Was it my own heart? I wondered. Or had my still-audible panting touched off a corresponding rhythm in the tensile air, much as the drummer’s stick finds answering reverberations in the tautened hide of his tympan?
Nothing stirred, and yet I felt, on every side—witness, Landor. Eyes, searing me with their unholy flame.
With what silent fury did I remonstrate with myself! How sternly did I prod my unwilling body into motion! A single step—succeeded by another—still another. And then, like the summons from another world, came the sound of my own name:
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“Poe.”
I cannot say how long he had been lying in wait. Only this can I report, that as he approached, I became sensible of the soft and metrical sound of his own panting, giving me reason to believe that he had been traveling at nearly as great a speed as I.
Besieged as I was by a thousand conflicting sensations, I yet retained sufficient presence of mind to ask him what he purposed in coming here at such an advanced hour, and to a barracks that was not his own. No answer made he—no closer did he come—though I could yet feel him, yes, agitating the veriest molecules of this black chamber with his restless peregrination. In this way alone was I able to infer—with what frisson of dread you may well imagine—that he was orbiting me, like a cold and maleficent moon.
Once again I inquired, with as much civility as I could assume, what business he had with me and whether it might not wait until morning. At last, in a cool, dry, insinuating voice, he said:
“You will be good to her, won’t you, Poe?”
Oh, how my heart leapt at the sound of that simple personal pronoun. Her. He could be adverting only to that light of my bosom! Emboldened by the sentiments that swelled through me, I announced in no uncertain terms that I should sooner—I nearly said “tear my heart from my chest,” Landor!—sooner saw off my limbs than comport myself in such a manner as might occasion pain in his sister’s breast.
“No,” he said, patiently. “No, what I mean is, you’re not the sort to take undue advantage of a lady? There’s none of the cad about you, is there? Behind those sad eyes of yours?”
I informed him then that to a sensibility such as mine, whatever physical charms might adhere to any single woman must always pale alongside those ineffably enticing spiritual charms which compose the true locus of the Feminine Allure, and which tend more effectually toward lasting concord between the sexes.
This heartfelt declaration prompted nothing more than a dry laugh from Artemus. “I thought as much,” he said. “I daresay . . . of course, I don’t mean to embarrass you, Poe, but it’s my suspicion you’ve not yet, oh, given yourself, shall we say? To a woman.”
How grateful was I then for the cover of darkness! For were not my blushes of such a vehemence and fire as to outshine Ra’s golden chariot?
“Please,” said Artemus, “don’t misunderstand me, Poe. It is one of the qualities I find most endearing in your character. There is about you a kind of . . . an implacable innocence which commends itself to all who hold you dear. And naturally, in that latter company,” he added, “I number myself.”
For the first time I could perceive his features well enough to see that his lips trembled, that his eyes were bent fixedly before him, and that his head, from time to time, tipped to one side. What, indeed, had I been fearing at his hands? Throughout his countenance there reigned only mildness and benignity.
“Poe,” he said once more.
It was then that he touched me, but not in the way I should have expected, not in the manly fashion of comrades—no, he took me by the hand and spread my several fingers before him. Then, speaking in accents of mournful wonder, he murmured:
“Such beautiful hands you have, Poe. Why, they ’re as pretty as any lady ’s.” He drew them closer to his face. “Priest’s hands,” said he. And then—I shudder, yes, shudder! as I write this—he pressed his lips to them.
* * *
Oh, Landor, I scarcely know to pose the inquiry without wreathing Artemus in fresh clouds of suspicion, and yet proceed I must. Can it be conceivable that on the night of his death, Leroy Fry was venturing out of his familiar haunts for the purpose of—once again, my pen quavers at the very suggestion—for the purpose, I mean, of rendezvousing—not with a young woman, as we supposed—but with a young man?
Narrative of Gus Landor
29
December 8th
Leave aside Poe’s question for the moment, Reader. I’ve another one for you. Why did I expect any sympathy from Captain Hitchcock?
Why, after telling him of my close calls in Artemus’ closet and outside Benny Havens’ tavern, did I expect him to inquire after my health? Express fears for my safety? I should have known he’d be too busy grappling with the message to worry overmuch about the messenger.
“What I fail to understand,” he began, pulsing his fist against the desktop, “is why our man—if it is our man—should have followed you off the reservation. For what purpose?”
“Why, to track me, I suppose. As I’ve been tracking him.”
Although even as I said it, another possibility was forming in my head. What if our mystery man hadn’t been tracking me at all? What if he’d been tracking Poe?
And if he had, he would have seen Poe go into the tavern. He would have learned I was in the tavern at the same time. And from there, he might have drawn some interesting conclusions about just what Cadet Poe was up to after tattoo.
But of course, I couldn’t share any of this with Hitchcock, because it would have meant confessing I’d taken one of his cadets off the reservation and, what was worse, drunk spirits with him. Which would have set me even lower in Hitchcock’s esteem than I already was.
“It still makes no sense,” the captain was saying. “If it really was the same man you encountered in the Marquis home, why should he have tried to kill you in the one instance and simply left you unconscious in the next?”
“Well,” I said, “that might be where our second man comes into the picture. Maybe he has a calming influence on his comrade. Or maybe they’re just trying to scare me senseless.”
“But if you truly believe Artemus is involved with all this,” Hitchcock said, “how can we possibly delay in arresting him?”
“Captain, I don’t pretend to know how your military justice works, but back in New York, we can’t arrest someone unless we have cold evidence against him, and begging your pardon, we just don’t have that yet.” I ticked off the items on my fingers. “We have a priest’s collar, which means nothing without a priest. We have some blood on Joshua Marquis’ uniform, but that could be anyone’s—Christ, it could have come from the Battle of Maguaga, for all we know. And Private Cochrane won’t be able to identify that uniform, I promise you, any more than Asher Lippard will. All they saw was a bar.”
Hitchcock did something that I’d yet to see him do: he poured himself a sherry. Actually let it slosh around his teeth.
“Perhaps,” he said, “the time has come to call in Artemus for direct questioning.”
“Captain. . . .”
“Surely if we applied enough pressure . . .”
I knew enough by then to know you don’t dismiss any idea proposed by an Army officer, not out of hand. No, you sift through as if it were high-grade ore, only to find to your deep regret that it isn’t quite the ore you were looking for. So I made a show of sifting.
“Well, of course, it’s your decision, Captain. From my side, I’m thinking Artemus is too cool a customer for such a stratagem. He knows full well we don’t have any tar to feather him with. All he has to do is deny it over and over again—and sound like a gentleman doing it—we won’t be able to touch him. At least that’s how it looks to me. And I wonder if we might not just strengthen his hand by calling him out in public.”
Do you see how tactful I can be, Reader, when I try? It made not a lick of difference. Hitchcock’s eyes narrowed and his chin rose as he set the empty glass back on the desk.
“So these are your only reasons for holding off, Mr. Landor?”
“What other reasons could there be?”
“Perhaps you’re concerned that someone else might be incriminated.”
A long silence then, crackling with old tensions. I heard the low growl spilling from my throat as I dropped my head back.
“Poe,” I said.
“By your own account, there were two men present that night.”
“But Poe was—”
Poe was running back to the Point.
Yes, once again, I’d backed myself into a corne
r. I couldn’t provide Poe with an alibi because I couldn’t admit he’d been there in the first place. And also because another vagrant thought had sidled forward to snag me.
How could I be sure where Poe had been?