My Clockwork Muse (6 page)

I rushed to the house with as much haste as I
could muster, growing more fearful with every step. Fearful of
what, I did not know. Then it dawned on me.
Tap
. Alone with
me, the wretched bird was a mere nuisance. Alone in my house with a
stranger ... Well, that might be harder to explain.

And who knew what the garrulous creature
might find to talk about in my absence?

I raced around the house to the front door
and flung it open. My eyes immediately fell upon my rocking chair
where Tap normally perched. To my relief, I saw no bird there. I
scanned other likely spots and didn't see him in any of them
either. Then I saw a figure emerge from my kitchen. It was
Inspector Gessler.

"Mr. Poe!" he cried happily when he saw me,
his mustache puffing out on his breath.

"You are in the habit of breaking into
peoples' homes now?" I asked, feeling less annoyed than I tried to
impart in my tone. In truth, his intrusion did not surprise me.
That was probably why my first thought upon waking was of
policemen. Perhaps I had been expecting him.

"My profuse apologies, sir," he gushed at me.
"I knocked but when no one came, I grew frightened that something
might be amiss."

"Why would something be amiss?" I looked past
his face and into the corners of the room. The man made me
unaccountably nervous. I felt as if I might have left some
incriminating material laying about where it could be found and
used against me. But, of course, I was guilty of nothing, except
perhaps a little slovenliness. Still, I had nothing to hide and no
reason for anxiety.

At least not once I realized Tap was nowhere
about. I went to his window and clamped it shut tight, in case he
decided to return.

"I looked in your window there," Gessler
nodded at the one next to my desk, "and saw that your candle had
toppled over, and your papers... Well, when I found your door
slightly ajar, I was afraid something had happened. After our
business yesterday..."

I must have knocked over my candle in my
sleep. I could see how the state of my desk might have caused some
concern. My unfinished manuscript littered my desktop and several
sheets had fallen to the floor. From the outside, it must have
looked like a struggle had taken place. I supposed the mess was
from me groping about in the dark in my delirium. Perhaps Pluto had
been chasing mice while I slept. Who knew?

I stooped and gathered errant pages from the
floor. Thankfully, I had developed the habit of numbering my
manuscript sheets as I wrote so I could re-order them easily in
case of accident. I spent the next few moments organizing and
stacking them on my desk.

"I took the liberty, Mr. Poe," Gessler began
in the tone of a confessional, but stopped. His voice trailed off,
almost bashfully.

I looked up, slightly alarmed. "Of what?" I
asked. The man who had whisked me from my sleep one day and then
broke into my house the next was too ashamed to admit to taking
some additional liberty ... One could not help but be alarmed.

He nodded sheepishly toward the thin sheaf of
papers in my hands. "I took the liberty of glancing at your
tale-in-progress. I certainly hope you don't mind..."
"Mind? Of course not," I assured him when, in fact, I did mind. And
very much. My first impulse was anger that the man should have
presumed to pry into what was clearly not yet intended for the
public. On the other hand, I was relieved that his transgression
had not been something more.

He breathed a sigh, smiling. "It is shaping
up to be another triumph, Mr. Poe!"

"Oh?" I remembered Gessler as he had come to
me after my lecture at the New York Society Library. He was
obviously well-read with an enthusiasm for literature that I found
charming in a man of his profession. It occurred to me that I
valued his opinion.

"Yes, maybe your best work since the
Amontillado story. It is easily as chilling as that tale. I can't
imagine how you will conclude it, but I fear it will cost me sleep
when you do."

It was amazing to me that he had hit upon my
exact thoughts while writing the story. 'Berenice' I was going to
call it.

Gessler went on. "My only criticism..."

I looked up with a start. "Criticism?" I felt
my anger rising again. "You must know, Inspector, that it is an
incomplete work. It is not intended for any eyes at this point but
my own, certainly not for criticism."

"Of course not, Mr. Poe. I apologize. I
should not have presumed to look. It is beyond presumptuous of me
to question your work on any point at all—whatever the state of its
completion. I beg your forgiveness."

I looked at him for a moment and realized
that he meant every word of what he said. The man's sincerity was
disarming.

"Oh, out with it, then," I relented. "If I am
ever to finish it in peace, I cannot have your unvoiced criticism
hanging over my head! What is it?"

"Probably not what you think, my dear fellow.
Oh, no, I daresay not at all! My only point of criticism is that it
is not a Dupin story. Unless the great detective comes in at the
end...?" he added hopefully.

I laid the papers down, shaking my head.
"Dupin again..." I felt a twisting snake squirm in my gut. It could
not have been worse had he said "Burton" instead. It was all mixed
up in my mind, now—Burton, Fortunato, Dupin, murder, Rue Morgue,
brick walls, Gessler himself... "They cannot all be Dupin stories,"
I said.

"Oh, would that they were, Mr. Poe," Gessler
laughed. "Would that they were... Although it would not have
required Dupin to find that fellow under the floorboards, would it,
Mr. Poe? Not with the murderer himself confessing to the very deed
he had sought to conceal!"

I chuckled, amused to hear my tales spoken of
as if they were real events. "Indeed!" I agreed. "But you must
remember that it is not only the mind of the genius I seek to
illuminate, Inspector, but that of the lunatic as well."

"Excellent, Mr. Poe!"

"Please. Call me Edgar."

Eddy.

Tap?

I heard the word distinctly and my heart
leapt into my throat. Had Tap returned? I looked around and behind
me, but there was no sign of him. I suspected the sound must have
been my own thought, coming to me overloud in the raven's maddening
voice. I had, after all, spent a night of delirium in a graveyard.
I needed rest
—
es New
Roman" \s 12or at least a change of clothes.

Gessler was sputtering something I didn't
catch. Probably agreeing to call me by my given name. Or not.
Whatever, I missed it.

"Tea?" I asked.

"Ah, thank you, Mr. Poe," Gessler exclaimed.
He gave me a broad wink. "Although I wouldn't decline something a
little stronger, if you were to offer."

"Sorry to disappoint, but I never touch the
stuff," I said, wondering on what grounds he had decided against
Edgar.

"Very good. Tea it is, then."

I was already moving towards the kitchen with
the intention of making a fresh pot. I opened a cupboard and out
sprang Pluto. He lunged at me with a deafening scream. I ducked
under his claws, determined not to sustain any further wounds.

"Damn that cat!" I cried, forgetting I had
company. "I should have gouged out
both
his eyes!"

Gessler danced out of Pluto's path. The cat
dashed straight for the door, which I had left open a crack, and
darted away through it. I was beginning to think the creature
mad.

How he had secreted himself in my kitchen
when I had just seen him in the graveyard was another matter. But I
was too furious to give it much thought. At that moment, I would
indeed have made good my threat
—
New Roman" \s 12and I wouldn't have needed an episode of
delirium to carry it out, either.

Gessler had rushed to the door and looked out
after him. When he saw that the cat was gone, he closed it and came
back. I lifted myself from the floor, and found that I was
clutching a teaspoon as if it were the penknife I had used to pluck
his former eye from its socket. The way I felt now, I would have
instead plunged it into his heart given the chance.

Gessler grasped my elbow and helped me to my
feet.

"My dear fellow! Are you all right?" He
frowned at the marks on my cheek. "Oh, it looks like his claws may
have found you!"

"That is from yesterday," I said, brushing
his fingers away. "That cat has it in for me."

"I see... Ah, what have we here?" He tugged
at my collar, finding my other fresh wound. "A puncture..."

"Again, as I said... Inspector, please!" I
swatted his hand away. Was I his patient and he my doctor that he
should handle me so freely?

Now that he had found it, though, my
curiosity piqued. I passed my fingers over the puncture, feeling
the slight swelling of flesh around it. I determined to have a look
at it in a mirror when I had the chance. In the meantime, perhaps
Gessler had an opinion. "What do you make of it?" I asked after I
had set about fixing our tea.

"Your puncture wound?"

"Yes, I haven't had the opportunity of
examining it yet. I first noticed it some months ago. I would have
thought that it might have healed by now. Perhaps Pluto has
aggravated it. "

"Of course. May I?" He tilted a finger
towards my collar. I relented. "Ah, yes! A puncture, as I say. A
little red, a little swollen. You might want to have a doctor take
a look. For fear of infection." He let my collar fall back into
place. "Was that your cat?"

"Yes ... er, no. I mean to say, it is
Virginia's cat.
Was
Virginia's cat."

"Your wife?"

I nodded.

"A tragedy," Gessler said. "My deepest
sympathies."

"I don't have the heart to get rid of the
damned thing, though I detest the creature."

"A feisty feline, this cat of yours."

"Hers," I said. "And feisty is not the half
of it, sir. You saw what he did!"

"I saw," said Gessler. "What's this about his
eyes?"

"He is a one-eyed cat."

"Ah, thank you, Mr. Poe," Gessler said when I
handed him a steaming cup. He took a dainty sip, not wanting to
burn his lip. Most of his tea got sucked up into his mustache. When
he brought the cup down again, he said in an amiable tone, "I had a
three-legged dog once. A horse kicked him. Snapped his leg right in
two. I performed the operation myself." He raised the cup and
sipped. "How does your cat come to have but one eye?"

I sighed. "I'd like to say a horse kicked
him, Inspector. Come to think of it, I might yet." I suddenly found
myself toying with the idea of telling this lie. Repeated over and
over again, perhaps I could someday make myself believe it.
Gessler, I supposed by the look in his eye, would be harder to
convince.

"Your cat is, of course, your own affair,"
the inspector laughed. "Though he seems not to love you
overmuch."

"Oh, if you must know,
it was me
," I
blurted out all at once. I had never admitted my atrocity. It felt
good to have it out. In any case, once it started, I could not stop
it. "I was in some kind of somnambulistic trance, so I recall the
fearful deed only in brief flashes of memory. I remember calling to
him.
Here, kitty-kitty...
I can see him rubbing up against
my leg, arching his back."

"Cats are wonderful pets," Gessler muttered
happily.

"The next thing I knew, I had my penknife in
one hand and his bloody, damnable eye in the other." Gessler stared
at me and I stared back. "I am not proud of it, sir!" I snapped. "I
shudder, I blush, I burn to recount it." I stared at him fiercely
for a moment and then sighed. "Needless to say, the cat won't come
near me now—except to lunge at me from ambush, as you have
witnessed."

"An eye for an eye, it would seem. What you
have there is a cat bent on revenge."

"And also excepting last night," I added,
suddenly remembering the strangeness of it.

"Last night?"

"I fell asleep with the thing curled up in my
lap, purring like a kitten."

"Well, there you go, then, Mr. Poe!" Gessler
exclaimed brightly. "Perhaps all is forgiven. Time heals all
wounds, as they say."

I rubbed my cheek skeptically.
"Perhaps..."

Gessler set his half-empty cup down on a
table and walked over to my desk. He laid his palm on my neatly
stacked manuscript. He gave it a pat and smiled before looking up
at me. "These somnambulistic trances of yours, as you call them...
It puts me in mind of a tract I believe you had once written on the
nature of Mesmerism. What the human mind is capable of is endlessly
fascinating, don't you think?"

"Oh, but Inspector, with all due respect,
they are hardly the same thing. The one is simple sleep-walking,
the other induced by one trained in the art of
—
New Roman" \s 12"

"Simple sleep-walking, yes. I understand that
during times of trial people sometimes succumb to such episodes.
What starts as simple sleep-walking...Well, who knows where it can
end? Such as in the case of you and your cat."

"My wife had just died."

"A time of trial, to be sure."

I began to regret telling him about Pluto's
eye.

"He was kicked by a horse," I said suddenly,
thinking perhaps a jest might be the best way to conceal my growing
discomfort.

Gessler blinked. "I beg your pardon..."

"Pluto. My cat. He was kicked by a horse. I
think I would rather go with that story instead."

Gessler threw his head back and bellowed a
laugh. "Ah, my dear Mr. Poe. Do not read too much into my
ramblings. So you gouged out your cat's eye. Who isn't filled with
remorse for the commission of some little misdeed or other?"

"Yes," I laughed. "And only semi-consciously
too."

"Of course. You were not in complete control
of your faculties, that much is obvious. But this!" Gessler patted
my manuscript again. "You are in top form here, without question.
No doubt, this new story of yours will be enthusiastically
received."