Thoreau at Devil's Perch (25 page)

Sunday, August 23rd

 

T
hat I am alive and fit enough to record the events of the last two days fills me with the deepest gratitude. Here is what happened to the best of my recollection.

Last Friday morn, hoping to acquire concrete evidence that LaFarge and Vail were involved in a counterfeiting scheme, I set out for the jeweler's shop again. My goal was to get into the room where he kept his printing press. When I arrived at nine a sign stating that the shop was closed hung in the window. I tried the door anyway, but it was locked. I spent the rest of the morning loitering at a bookseller's close by, making forays back to LaFarge's shop every hour or so. When I went to LaFarge's shop for the third time I was most happy to see a broom lying across the stoop. Surely that was a sign that LaFarge was about. The sign proclaiming the place closed for business was still in place, but I tried the door again anyway. This time it opened, but when I stepped inside LaFarge was nowhere to be seen.

Did not call out for him. Instead, I quietly made my way to the adjoining room. The tail-less mouse was perched on the worktable as before, this time nibbling bread crusts left on a plate beside an empty wine bottle. The creature regarded me complacently, then went back to its repast. Observed an open trapdoor in the floor and could hear LaFarge's voice below. He was singing a French ditty. Hastily crossed the room to the door LaFarge had gestured to when he mentioned his printing press. It was locked. As I was about to kneel down to peer through the keyhole, LaFarge popped up through the floor opening like a Jack-in-the-box, a wine bottle tucked under each armpit and one in each fist.

“
Sacrebleu!”
he shouted. “How did you get in here?”

“The shop door was open,” I said.

He thought for a moment. “Ah, yes. So it was. I am getting
négligent
.” He placed the wine bottles on the worktable and addressed the little rodent, who had not bothered to budge. “Why did you not alert me we had a customer, Mademoiselle Souris?” Miss Mouse squeaked, and LaFarge laughed. “
Voilà
! I have trained her to speak. And I speak back to her.” He made a clicking sound with his tongue, and the mouse responded by climbing up his arm and perching on his shoulder. He gently brushed her off, and she took the same arm pathway down to the table to resume eating. LaFarge turned his attention on me. “I knew you would return,
mon jeune ami
. Few men who have gazed upon
mes représentations de l'amour
can resist coming back to see more.”

“Did you not say you say kept depictions of a wilder nature in another room?” I drawled, doing my best to sound like a jaded rake.

He wagged his finger at me. “You are not as
naïf
as you look.
Très bien
. I will show you images that will please your
nature sauvage
.”

Just as I had hoped, he took a key from the deep pocket of his work smock and unlocked the door I had just tried. Unfortunately, he did not invite me to enter the room with him. All I got was a brief glimpse of a printing press when he swung open the door, then promptly closed it behind him. He reemerged a moment later with a leather case and took care to lock the door after him. After returning the key to his pocket, he shooed Mademoiselle Souris off the worktable and placed the portfolio upon it. He rubbed his palms together and smiled at me.

“Are you prepared to be scandalized,
mon ami
?”

Gritted my teeth and nodded. Just then the bell above the shop door tinkled, and we both looked toward the front room. Two very proper ladies entered. Heaving a sigh, LaFarge shrugged out of his smock, hung it on a wall hook, and got into his frock coat.

“I will attend to them,” he told me softly, “and leave you to attend to your
goût dépravé
alone. Perhaps you prefer it that way, eh?” He winked, patted the supple leather portfolio, and departed, drawing a curtain across the doorway to insure my privacy.

It was the locked door, not the portfolio, I wanted to open, and I dug into the pocket of LaFarge's work smock for the key. A moment later I was inside a small room with long windows. A printing press took up most of the space. Beside it stood a table draped with a piece of sailcloth. Lifted up the cloth and uncovered stacks of Provident Bank notes tied in neat bundles. They were in ten, twenty, and fifty-dollar denominations. Stowed a packet of each amount into my pockets, intending to make my excuses to LaFarge and hurry off to the bank to alert officials there. Considered my investigation a grand success.

But I had reached that conclusion too hastily, for in the next moment I was hit over the head so hard I crumpled to the floor. Looked up to see LaFarge hovering over me, a wine bottle in his hand. Attempted to get to my feet, and he clubbed me with the bottle once again, stunning me to near oblivion. Remained conscious enough to realize he was dragging me toward the open trapdoor. As I struggled most feebly in protest, he easily managed to pull me down a steep, narrow flight of stairs, and my poor, battered pate hit each and every one of them during my long descent. By the time I reached the bottom I was insensible.

Awoke bound to a chair in a deep-dug, cluttered cellar that looked to have been excavated at the time of the initial settlement of the city. The foundation stones were enormous, rough-hewn boulders, and the ceiling beams were huge, half trunks of trees. It was silent as a tomb down there, not a sound from the streets penetrating the stones and ancient timbers. LaFarge had lit a hanging lamp and was sitting on a three-legged stool beside me, patting the blood dripping from my head with a rag. Saw that he had emptied my pockets. Displayed upon the large, rough table under the lamp were my wallet, the pendant I had acquired for Julia, and the counterfeit money I had taken.

“You are nothing but a common thief,” LaFarge said. “And I thought you were a gentleman.” He seemed genuinely offended and disappointed.

“I have fallen on hard times,” I told him in the saddest tone I could manage. “When I saw the notes I could not help myself. Please forgive me.”

LaFarge looked inclined to do just that. “I know how it is,
mon jeune ami
. I too have gone through hard times in this heartless country of yours. I never would have stooped to counterfeiting if I had not. I am an artist, not a criminal.”

“I will never say a word if you let me go.”

“I would like to. But I cannot. It is not up to me to decide what to do with you.”

“Who is it up to?”

Before he could reply a man's voice rang out from the room above. “LaFarge! Where the dickens are you?”

LaFarge rose from the stool and went to the stairway. “Down here,” he called up. “Come quickly.”

Two short legs in striped trousers appeared as the man descended, followed by a small, round torso clothed in a black frock coat, white shirt, and carefully tied gray cravat. Next appeared a jowly face beneath a very high black silk hat. The banker Vail.

“Why did you summon me here?” he demanded of LaFarge. “What is the emergency?” When he saw me his eyes stuck out like a lobster's, and his face got as red. “Dr. Walker!” he screeched.

“You are acquainted with this young man?” LaFarge sounded most surprised.

“I know him well enough to wish I didn't,” Vail said. “Dr. Walker has been investigating Peck's murder.”

LaFarge shrugged. “We had nothing to do with that sorry business.”

“Even so,” Peck said, “he is still a danger to us if he knows
our
business. Does he, LaFarge?”

“I caught him in the press room stuffing banknotes in his pockets.”

“How the hell did he get in there?”

LaFarge hung his large head. “He somehow got hold of my key.”

“You careless cheese-eater,” Vail muttered.

“Buy my silence, gentlemen,” I said, hoping yet to talk my way free. “It will come cheap, I assure you. I am not a greedy man, just a needy one.”

“I am for it,” LaFarge told Vail. “What is the cost to us but paper and ink?”

“No, he cannot be bought off. He is hoaxing us.”

“
Tout le monde
can be bought off,” the jeweler insisted.

“Not everyone,” Vail said. “Some men are too damn honorable. But even if Dr. Walker were the dishonorable sort, it would be just as ruinous to us. A man whose silence can be bought cannot be trusted to keep it for long without another payment. And another and another. There would never be an end to it until he was silenced for good.”

As LaFarge considered this, I saw his thoughts move across his expressive face like cloud shadows. The glint in his eyes dimmed, and his mobile mouth stiffened when he reached the unavoidable conclusion. “There is only one way to silence a man for good.”

“You do it,” Vail told him.

LaFarge looked aghast. “
Moi?
”

“Who else?”

“Why not you?”

Vail put up his clean, plump hands in protest. “Don't be ridiculous, LaFarge. I have never killed anyone.”

“
Moi non plus!
I don't even own a weapon.”

“Use whatever you thwacked him with.”

“I cannot very well cudgel him to death with a bottle of
vin Bourgogne!
That would be
atroce!”

Vail thought a moment and came up with a better suggestion. “Choke him to death,” he said, pointing to a length of rope on the floor.

“You would have to remove my corpse up the stairs,” I hurriedly pointed out. “And then dispose of it. Murder is a nasty, complicated business, gentlemen. And since neither of you have experience in it, you will never get away with it.”

“He is right!
Mon Dieu
, we will hang for it!” LaFarge said.

“Yes. Dr. Walker is indeed right,” Vail conceded. Relief coursed through me, for I assumed that now that they had seen reason, they would just leave me tied up and abscond. But that frail hope shriveled as Vail continued speaking. “We do not have experience in murder and need the services of someone who does.” He then he uttered a name that filled me with dread. “Rufus Badger.”

“Badger?” LaFarge's tone expressed dread too.

“Of course. He will be most happy to accommodate us, I am sure.”

“Peck told us never to trust him again after he left those bank plates at a
bordel
.”

“Well, Peck is dead, and I am the one making decisions now,” Vail said. “Badger may be an idiot, but he excels at one thing. Killing.”

LaFarge clutched his hands in dismay. “But he is so
brutal
. So
dérangé
. This young man does not deserve such a
destin horrible
as that.”

“Dr. Walker has sealed his own fate,” Vail declared, glaring at me with pure hate in his bulging eyes. I sensed that he wanted me dead for two reasons. Not only had I discovered his counterfeiting operation. I had also discovered that his wife had been unfaithful to him, and for that I was to be punished most cruelly. “I will summon Badger straightaway.”

“Tant pis, mon jeune ami
,
”
LaFarge said, his expression resigned as he regarded me. “If I had more courage I would kill you myself, but I do not want to live with such a deed on my conscience.”

His fine moral sense left me desolate.

My fate decided, the two men went on to discuss matters relating to it. LaFarge said he would close up shop and clear out until Badger had accomplished his task and disposed of the evidence. Vail declared that it would be most improvident to leave stacks of counterfeit banknotes in the press room. Badger would have little trouble breaking down the locked door to get at them. He directed LaFarge to pack up the notes in a crate whilst he brought around a conveyance to transfer them to his place for safekeeping. He also directed LaFarge to gag me before they left the cellar.

“
Pourquoi
? No one can hear him shout for help from down here.”

“How can you be so sure, LaFarge? Gag him, I say!”

Demonstrating his regret with a deep sigh, the Frenchman shoved the rag he had used to mop blood off my brow against my mouth and bound it in place with my neck cloth. That done, he plucked Julia's pendant from the table and slipped it into his pocket, along with my wallet and the counterfeit notes I had taken, then followed Vail up the stairs without so much as a glance back at me.

But a short time later, LaFarge returned to the cellar alone, and my heart rose with the hope that he had come to save me. Alas, he had just come to save precious whale oil. After lighting a candle to illumine his way out, he reached up to extinguish the overhead lantern. “You can just as well wait for Badger in the dark, eh?”

I yowled in protest.

And he relented. “
D'accord, mon jeune ami
. If the light gives you comfort, I will not snuff it out.”

As if such munificence absolved him of any guilt whatsoever regarding my fate, he gave me a fond farewell pat on the back and once more departed without looking back. When he reached the top of the stairs, he dropped the trapdoor with a bang of finality, and I heard something heavy being pulled over it to further ensure my imprisonment.

Looked up at the lantern and estimated I had little more than a few hours of light before the oil burned out. Strained and worked my wrists bloody against the ropes, but it did me no good. As dark thoughts of my impending doom began to creep into my mind, who should creep into my sight but Mademoiselle Souris as she made her way across the tabletop. When she spotted me she stopped in her tracks, right under the lamp, and regarded me with her bright black eyes. Grateful for the distraction, I looked back at her with an unexpected degree of affection. Despite the deformity of a missing tail, she was a pretty little thing as mice go, with a healthy brown pelt tinged pink around her delicate feet and inside her petal-shaped ears. No more than three inches long, she emanated such a great degree of energy that her long, silvery whiskers seemed to vibrate with it. What life there was in her! Indeed, upon closer examination I observed that her belly was beginning to bulge with pups. So it was Madame Souris, not Mademoiselle.