“Again I say, to what end? Why would someone take such elaborate pains to make so obscure a statement?”
Dupin sniffed the flower, smiled sadly, crossed the grass, and, with some effort and a flicker of arthritic pain, bent to place it on the green grass of the quiet, empty grave. Then he held out his hand for the dried one he had received via the post. I gave it to him and Dupin placed it next to the others. I took his arm and helped him straighten. For an old and infirm man, his arm was solid and muscular, suggestive of a great deal of wiry strength in his youth. He took his arm back as if uncomfortable with a younger person supporting him, and then stood for a long moment, rubbing the handle of his cane with the ball of his thumb, a thoughtful expression on his face.
“This world is cold and vicious so much of the time,” he said at length, “and it is easy to fall out of love with it. But . . . if an old and frequently rude man may be permitted to give advice to a friend who has many years left ahead of him . . . ?”
I nodded.
“Do not lose hope,” said Dupin.
“In what? Hope for winning the war? You paint it as an impossible fight.”
“Oh, no,” he said quickly, “the war cannot be won. It can only be fought. It needs to be fought, and with intelligence and energy. It needs to be fought with bright minds, strong arms, and good hearts. But that is not the hope to which I refer.”
I stood. “Then what, sir, for I confess that your meaning is still as obscure to me now as it was when first you spoke.”
“What I mean, dear doctor, is that you should not believe that you are alone in this fight. There are other players on the board, and unlike chess, there are no inflexible rules. Who knows? A piece once removed from the board may yet be played.”
“Riddles to the last,” I said.
He gave another Gallic shrug. “Perhaps. Time, like distance, often provides clarity to understanding.” He paused and cocked his head. “Tell me, Doctor, do you believe in ghosts?”
“Not as such, no.”
He smiled and there was an enigmatic twinkle in his eye. “Neither do I.”
With that he tipped his hat and, leaning heavily on his cane, walked away along the crooked path in the old cemetery.
I returned to the bench and sat for some time in the quiet of the cemetery. No one else accosted me. I will admit that my thoughts were scattered and dark, for much of what Dupin told me was deeply troubling. A war? A plague of master criminals, uniting to form a secret empire across the globe? It was appalling. And it made me feel the loss of my friend so very deeply. How could he leave us when his powers and wisdom were so badly required?
Grief warred with despair and anger in me, and I bent and placed my head in my hands as the sun moved behind the elm tree and covered me in shadows.
Then, later, when I had composed myself, I retrieved my case, stood, took a last lingering look at the small flowers, then turned and made my way out of that place.
One singular thing happened on my way to the street. Near the entrance of the cemetery was another bench and what I saw upon it made me stop and stare. There, folded neatly, was a greatcoat of smoke-colored cloth and a battered top hat. Against the edge of the bench, standing at an angle, was a walking stick with a slender silver head shaped like a leaping trout. I turned, alarmed, thinking that the old man had taken leave of his senses and left his belongings behind, but the cemetery was quite empty. When I accosted passersby on the street, no one admitted to having seen an old man fitting Dupin’s description. The newsboy on the corner looked at me as if I was mad.
I returned to the cemetery to check the coat pockets for some clues and found nothing. No cigarette case, no calling cards, no ticket stubs for a train. Nothing at all.
I lingered there at the edge of the cemetery until darkness began to fall and was not able to find a clue. So I gathered the items and flagged down a cab to take me to Scotland Yard, where I shared them and my strange story with Inspector Gregson.
“Someone has been playing a prank on you, I’m afraid,” he said.
“Impossible. I spoke with the man. Go and see if those flowers are not there.”
He doubted me, but he sent a constable. While we waited he sent a series of telegrams to his colleagues in Paris. After hours of my fretting and feeling like a fool, Gregson and I sat in his office with the coat, hat, and stick upon his desk. The constable had returned with the loose bunch of flowers. The responses from Paris had all been in agreement on one point. There was no one named Le Chevalier C. Auguste Dupin in the Faubourg Saint Germain in Paris, and no one of that name had ever lived among the townhouses of the h?tel particulier variety. The Paris police were not at all amused by Gregson’s inquiries and accused the detective of playing a poor joke.
We sat and stared at each other.
“What are we to make of it?” he asked me.