My Clockwork Muse (12 page)

The bit of paper was stiff, as if it had been
once wet and then dried, and curled slightly at one edge. It
crackled as I unfurled it. When I saw the letters on it, written in
a familiar rather plain script, my hand began to tremble. I could
scarcely read the printing, but I knew what it said. The letters
were: half an
n
... a
u
... an
m
...

"What are you doing there, Mr. Poe? Is
everything all right?"

"Just a moment," I called over my shoulder.
"I've ... spilled some ink, I'm afraid."

I bit my lips to keep from crying out. I held
the torn paper in one hand and took up the vial in the other.
Drawing them together carefully, I found that the torn edge of the
paper fit perfectly into the torn edge of the vial's label. The two
halves of the broken
n
became a perfectly formed whole. When
united, I saw the complete word:
Laudanum
.

In terror, I jammed the paper and vial into
the back of the drawer and slammed it shut. I stood and turned.

"I'm afraid I must ask you to leave now,
Inspector."

"To leave? That is quite impossible, Mr. Poe.
There is still the matter of last night's fire to discuss—"

Tap suddenly began
cawing
, drawing the
inspector's attention. At the same time, I heard a clatter from the
kitchen. Someone had come in the back, and I saw blue-coated
figures moving past the windows in the front. I felt trapped.
Surely, the police were going to arrest me for the murder of
Burton.

"I regret to inform you, Mr. Poe—" Gessler
began in a loud voice, trying to make himself heard over Tap's
screeching. Two policemen appeared from the kitchen, one of them
the burly Irishman from the boarding house. Amid this chaos there
came a knock at the door. I rushed to it, thinking it my salvation.
I would barge past whoever was there and escape to freedom, however
momentary it might prove to be.

With my heart pounding in my chest and my
muscles tensed for flight, I flung open the door and found not
policemen with billy clubs and restraints, but Olimpia.

Everything seemed to stop. I could see that
even Gessler was caught up short by her beauty. Some instinct
caused him to place his bowler over his heart when he saw her.

She grasped me by the sleeve of my coat. "You
must come at once, Eddy," she said, her voice edging to panic.
"Something has happened to Father."

"They have come to arrest you," Olimpia said,
pulling me by the sleeve. We hurried down the slope of the yard
toward the road. "We must move quickly."

I looked back and saw Gessler watching us
from the door. Citing the personal nature of her father's business,
Olimpia had declined his offer of help, saying she would deliver me
back into his hands forthwith. Now I perceived him watching us with
growing suspicion as we disappeared from his view under the crest
of the slope.

Coppelius was waiting for us at the curb. He
was sitting on the driver's seat of his carriage, a black,
four-wheeled brougham. When he saw us, he reached down behind him
and threw open the door. Olimpia pushed me in. I fell against the
far door and, looking out the window, saw two police carriages
waiting on the opposite side of the street.

The drivers were loafing together near one of
the vehicles, smoking their pipes. When they saw us enter
Coppelius' carriage, they straightened to attention. One of them
looked directly at me. He began shouting and as soon as I heard the
crack of Coppelius' whip, the sound of police whistles filled the
air.

The sudden acceleration thrust me against the
back of the seat. My feet came off the floor as I bounced on my
backside to the clattering of the wheels and the frantic clopping
of the horses' hooves on the pavement. Once I had righted myself, I
stuck my head out the window. In one direction, I saw Coppelius
furiously cracking his long whip, his gray hair spilling out from
under his top hat and his black cape fluttering in the wind. In the
other, I saw Gessler in the street shouting orders. He jumped into
one of the carriages. The driver snapped the reins. Soon both
police vehicles were hot on our tail.

"They're chasing us!" I cried, with a feeling
of unbelief. If someone had told me I was dreaming, I would not
have doubted it for a moment.

"They would have you arrested, Eddy," Olimpia
said.

"But how could you have known?"

I saw the depth of anxiety and pain in her
eyes. "We passed them in the street. Two carriages full of
policemen. I knew where they were going—and what they were going to
do."

"Arrest me." No matter how many times I heard
the words, whether from my own lips or another's, I could scarcely
believe it. Me! A harmless man of letters, now a fugitive from the
law.

Olimpia grasped my hand in two of hers and
pressed them to her lips. A thrill shot through me. Surely, I had
fallen into some bottomless vale of a dream-land! "And not just
arrest you, Eddy. But arrest you for murder," she said in her
whispery voice. "I urged Father to turn back. 'We cannot leave our
Eddy!' I said, and, his heart being tender towards you, that is
what he did."

I had never thought of Coppelius' heart as
tender. I could hear him madly cracking his whip and stridently
urging the horses on.

"Oh, but I fear you have rescued a guilty
man, Miss Coppelius. I cannot allow you to jeopardize your freedom
on my behalf! We must stop at once!"

I made to thrust my head out the window to
speak to Coppelius, when a sudden sharp turn flung me across the
seat. I slammed into Olimpia, nearly crushing her delicate frame
against the door. My stomach lurched as the carriage tilt
precariously onto two wheels. We seemed to hang suspended in
mid-air for an instant as we rounded the corner. When the two fell
back to the cobbles again, the momentum hurled me back across the
seat, my feet flying from the floor.

The sound of Coppelius' cracking whip filled
the air and his croaking voice rose amid the rumbling of our
carriage, this time in mad laughter.

Olimpia's furry hat had fallen over her eyes.
She pushed it back and said, "I would not have returned for a
guilty man, Eddy."

I looked into her soft, liquid eyes and knew
that she believed it. Her belief touched my heart deeply, but I
could not allow it. I found myself in the peculiar position of
having to convince her of my guilt. It was the only way to save
her. "But I have found evidence that condemns me without a doubt.
The torn label of the vial retrieved from the scene, when conjoined
with the paper from my own desk drawer—" I covered my face in my
hands. I could not go on. It was too terrible to contemplate.

She took hold of my shoulders. "Eddy," she
prodded, and her voice, uttering my name, stirred even more feeling
within me. When I looked up, she gazed deeply into my eyes. "You
have committed no crime. You are guilty of nothing. Nothing, but
confusion. Father will help you."

Coming from her, I believed it. Her words
filled me with confidence.

"You were attacked in that basement," she
went on. "But not by a man you murdered. I would not have come back
for a murderer, Mr. Poe—"

"Eddy," I reminded her.

"Eddy." She smiled.

A sudden bump in the road sent us both out of
our seats. Our heads struck the ceiling and we came down in a
sprawl, one atop the other.

From behind us, I heard a sharp crack and a
clatter. I disentangled myself from Olimpia and looked back. In
attempting to duplicate our sharp turn, one of the police vehicles
had toppled over onto its side. The driver was trying to drag
himself out of the road. Broken glass and splintered spokes
littered the cobbles around him. The horses charged on, straining
to pull the dead weight of the capsized carriage behind them.

The other police vehicle—the one bearing
Gessler—barreled around the corner after us.

I thrust my head out the window and yelled at
Coppelius. "Faster!"

He cocked his vulture's eye at me and lashed
the horses mercilessly to ever greater speed.

It was Sunday so the street was all but
deserted. Stately brick buildings lined either side of the road.
Coppelius' wild voice echoed hollowly off their edifices as we sped
past them in a blur. Gessler rumbled after us in hot pursuit. To my
dismay, I saw that the police horses were more powerful, their
carriage sleeker and faster than ours.

"They're gaining on us!" I cried to Olimpia,
realizing at once that I was wasting my breath. I stuck my head out
the window to inform Coppelius of what was certainly obvious to him
already. I had no sooner opened my mouth than we took another hard
turn. I fell back into the cab, again crashing into poor Olimpia
who must have been a mass of bruises by now. Another jolt launched
us from our seats. When I pulled myself upright, I saw a brick wall
rushing so close past my window that I could have reached out and
touched it. The iron fittings on the hubs of our wheels screeched
on the masonry and I could see sparks flying up from below. I
parted the little curtain in the back window and saw Gessler's
carriage speed past, oblivious to our sudden dash into the
alley.

I clenched my fists in triumph, thinking we
had seen the last of him. "Good show, Coppelius!"

But as soon as we emerged from the alley, I
saw that I had spoken too soon. Turning onto a wider boulevard, we
were at once confronted with Gessler's carriage again. He had sped
around the block and, turning onto the same boulevard, now barreled
directly at us.

The drivers of both seemed bent on collision.
The police driver whipped his reins. Coppelius cracked his whip in
reply, bellowing "Come and get us!" as he laughed maniacally. He
did not alter his coarse by even an inch.

Olimpia grasped my arm tightly, her eyes
screwed shut.

"They are coming right at us!" I shouted
wildly.

"Tell me only when it is over," Olimpia
gasped, her fingers digging into my arm.

"Coppelius!" I wanted to beseech him to
swerve, but he only laughed in reply, cracking his whip furiously.
The police driver must have thought he was facing down a madman,
and I didn't blame him for I thought the same. The man would kill
us all. I was certain of it. I grasped Olimpia's shoulders, bracing
us for collision. I heard horses' hooves drawing ever closer, the
rattle of the wheels. I closed my eyes.

Nothing.

When my ears should have been filled with the
sound of cracking wood and shattering glass, I heard only the
unhindered rumbling of our own wheels and Coppelius' croaking
laughter. Looking behind us, I saw the police carriage careening
out of control. It bounced up onto the sidewalk where two of its
wheels vaulted over the top of a waist-high railing and stuck fast.
The door of the carriage burst open and two men, one of them
Gessler himself, spilled out onto the pavement.

"We did it!" In my relief at still being
alive, I planted what Tap would have called 'a wet one' on
Olimpia's cheek. Embarrassed, I drew back immediately. But in all
the excitement, I don't think she even realized that I had kissed
her. I sat back in utter happiness, alive and in love, my lips
quivering with joy.

A couple of turns later, it became clear that
the pursuit was over and Coppelius slowed our pace. Rolling alone
through the streets, we crossed the Harlem River and traveled in
the direction of the Hudson.

~ * * * ~

"I trust you had a pleasant trip."

"'Twas a race with the Devil, Dansby."
Coppelius hopped down from the driver's seat and whisked his cape
from his twisted shoulders. Dansby took it from him and Coppelius
gave him a sharp clap on the back. "A race with the Devil, I say.
Along Hell's Highway, no less."

Dansby, immaculate and imperturbable, nodded
gravely as Coppelius strode past him and disappeared through the
door of his ivy-covered manse. Olimpia and I clambered out of the
brougham. I felt as if I had been on a long sea voyage. My knees
buckled. I had to grasp the rim of a carriage wheel to keep from
falling. I smiled sheepishly and waved her off when Olimpia jumped
to assist me.

"A wild ride, by any measure," I
chuckled.

I looked back along the circular carriageway
we had just traversed. The few tall trees lining the drive had
already gone bare for the year. Their dead leaves swirled crisply
over the cobbles. Other trees interspersed across the overgrown
landscape were bent and black, the bases of their trunks lost amid
wild growths of weeds.

The house itself seemed to rise from the
ground like a mossy stump. The brick and limestone façade was so
overgrown with ivy that I could discern few details of the house's
construction. The profusion of clinging vines gave its dark windows
a curiously vacant and malevolent air, like the eyes of a shaggy
beast. Far below, beyond the iron-spiked fence that enclosed the
grounds, I caught glimpses of the silvery Hudson as I followed
Olimpia to the door where Mr. Dansby awaited us.

I soon learned that I was to be a guest for
as long as I deemed it necessary to stay. After conversing with the
doctor for some time, his man Dansby showed me my room. There I
found a cheerful fire already blazing in the hearth and a fresh set
of clothes laid out for me on the bed. I was amazed by their
elegance. I had never worn such fine garments and in the privacy of
my room I spent some time examining myself in the mirror. Donning
the black frock coat, I adopted a variety of poses before deciding
to wear it fastened only at the top. This would ensure that my
scarlet waistcoat would be amply visible beneath, even though no
one but the Coppeliuses and Mr. Dansby would see it.