The Black Tower Read Free Page A

fingers form a bud round his mouth, and the name flowers forth, like a shower of pollen.
    “Vidocq.”
    He waits, with great confidence, for the dawning in my eyes.
    “You mean—oh, he’s that policeman sort of fellow, isn’t he?”
    His smile dips down, his eyes shrink. “ Policeman sort of fellow. And Napoleon is just a soldier sort of fellow. Voltaire told a good joke. Honestly, Doctor, if you can’t get things in their right scale, I despair of you.”
    “No, I don’t—I mean he locks up thieves, doesn’t he? He gets written up in the papers.”
    A grandiloquent shrug. “The papers write what they like. If you want to know about Vidocq, ask the scoundrels who tremble at his name. They’ll write you whole tomes, Doctor.”
    “But what has Vidocq to do with anything?”
    “Vidocq is me.”
    It has the air of afterthought the way he says it. As though, having breathed the name into the air, he need lay only the gentlest claim on it. And this is more declarative than if he’d shouted the news to the chandeliers.
    “Well, that’s all very well,” I say, folding my arms across my chest. “But do you have any papers?”
    “Listen to him now! Papers! Please, Doctor-eating-off-your-convict-made-china, tell me why I need papers.”
    “Why, you come in here….” I’m amazed to find my anger rising in direct proportion to his. “You barge in here, Monsieur Whoever You Are, with your little tricks and your faux stump, and you say, ‘ Voilà! Vidocq!’ and expect me to believe it. Why should I? How can I be sure you’re who you say you are?”
    He mulls it over. And then, with some regret, informs me:
    “You can’t.”
    It is a good lesson to get out of the way. Eugène François Vidocq, if so he is, will not be held to the same empirical standards as the rest of the world. Take him at face value or go to hell.
    “Very well,” I say. “If you’re this Vidocq fellow, tell me where Bardou is.”
    “Having a lovely week, I assure you, with the Bernadine sisters. Tending to their melons. I think you won’t find him eager to return to his street corner, Doctor.”
    “But why would you go to such lengths in the first place? Taking his place on the corner, dressing like him, looking —”
    “Well, now.” The stranger leans into the table. “If a hunter is tracking prey, Doctor, he must take care not to be seen.”
    “But who is the prey?”
    “Why, you.”
    And in that moment, I twitch my head to the side, and there, in front of the settee, lie my empty boots and my half-read newspaper.
    “And why should you have any call to hunt me?” I ask.
    Except I already know.
    Eulalie .
    With distressing speed, the writ scrolls out in my head. Eulalie and her law clerk…fencing stolen plate…captured by the gendarmes… we’ll let you off this time if you give up your mastermind …and who better to give up than poor little Hector? Won’t he do anything for Eulalie— still ? Won’t he go to La Force for her?
    And back from my shriveled clod of heart comes the answer: yes .
    “It’s absurd,” I say. “I’ve done—what could I have—”
    “Now now,” he says, working the crick out of his neck. “If there’s interrogating to do, you really should leave it to me. That’s what they pay me for, you know. Let me see….” He gulps down another draft of wine, swipes his arm across his lips. “You could start by telling me what a certain Monsieur Chrétien Leblanc wanted with you.”
    “I don’t know anyone named Leblanc.”
    He smiles softly. “You’re quite sure about that, Doctor?”
    “As sure as I can be, yes.”
    “Well then, it’s a very funny business. Because I’m here to tell you that Monsieur Leblanc knows you .”
    Fumbling once more in his shirtfront cache, he draws out—not another arm, no—a piece of butcher’s paper. Flecked with wax, stiff with grease. And from this corrupted surface, the words leap up: hot, black.
     
    DR. HECTOR CARPENTIER
     
    No. 18, Rue