First Adventure, The Case of the Missing Merchant, Session 003
A Dirty Business
This is an emergent narrative; this story is the retrospective recounting of a TTRPG Session that involved emergent play in an open world.
Opening Narration
They tell you that New Orleans is a civilized place, provided you judge civilization entirely by the cut of a man’s waistcoat under the gaslight of the St. Charles Hotel. But there is a well-understood, though rarely published, demarcation line in the Crescent City, and it is drawn precisely at nine o’clock in the evening. That is the hour the mule-drawn streetcars grind to their final, squealing halt. The respectable citizens lock their heavy shutters, and the city, having played at being a lady all day, slips off her silk corset and gets down to the serious business of sin.
After nine, a man walking the banquettes is no longer a pedestrian; he is an opportunity. The gambling parlors throw open their heavy doors, dealing faro and monte to men whose luck is as thin as their morals. Routine drunkenness, naturally, is hardly considered a vice at all; it is merely the accepted posture of the evening, leaving the wooden sidewalks littered with staggering gentlemen who have embraced the bottle with a patriotic, if wobbly, fervor. You’ve got your opium dens breathing sweet, thick poison into the damp air, and drug parlors where a man can purchase a tincture to forget whatever it was he did the night before. Back-alley dice games sprout like toxic mushrooms after a rainstorm, accompanied inevitably by the fine local art of “clouting”—which is the polite, waterfront term for introducing a gentleman’s skull to a brick and relieving him of his pocketbook.
Now, a stranger might reasonably ask, “Where are the police?” Well, the civil authorities in this town operate on a philosophy of pure, unfettered free enterprise. In 1866, the law in New Orleans after dark isn’t a shield; it is a tollbooth. Chief Adams’s boys share a symbiotic relationship with the vice merchants, much like the tickbird and the rhinoceros. The law does not arrest the devil; it simply makes sure he pays his municipal taxes, and reminds him that heinous, public villainy might hurt the waterfront profits or bother men who can afford a decent lawyer, putting bad news in everyone’s ledgers, including his.
Which brings us, inevitably, to the Irish Channel. The city administrators, in a fit of bureaucratic optimism, politely record this stretch of the riverfront as the Fourth District, but a tidy ledger entry never stopped a knife in the dark. If the French Quarter is the city’s powdered face, the Channel is its muddy, unwashed underbelly. It is a purgatory of sagging weatherboard taverns, where tin pianos bang out off-key dirges to drown out the sounds of breaking glass and loud disembodied voices arguing over nothing. This is where the cheap cribs sit heavy over the saloons, where a man can buy a moment’s ecstasy from a painted girl, get a knife in the ribs, or get two for the price of one. And it is into this ankle-deep mud that a man must walk if he wants to find the kind of truths that don’t dare show their faces in the daylight.
February 1, 1866, 6:00 PM – The Comrades Confer (Lars and Caleb)
The restaurant was a red-and-black cavern, thick with the sound of many men feeding and the heavy smell of roasting meat. Oil lamps sputtered along the worn wood walls, casting a weak, desperate light that revealed a multitude of weary faces, each one attempting to drown their day in heavy food and drink. The shadows in the profound, waiting corners were deep and expectant, like patient beasts watching a scene. Waiters moved through the churning smoke with a kind of frantic, desperate grace, dodging elbows and carrying plates piled with hot food towards tables filled with men who barely paused in their chewing to acknowledge them.
At sundown, Lars Prittwitz and Caleb Grayson sat across from one another at a heavy oak table, their boots resting on sawdust-covered floorboards as they conferred over the day’s strange developments.
Lars leaned forward, keeping his voice pitched below the din of the dining room. He confided that he had been retained by a French Countess to locate her missing husband, Adrien-Luc de Saint-Cyran, the proprietor and senior manager of L’Agence Commerciale du Croissant, who had vanished without a trace in early December of 1865. A wry, cynical smile crossed his face as he joked about his current investigative company, describing them as a disjointed collection consisting of a gentleman artist, a strange doctor, and a mind magician.
Caleb listened quietly. He asked if this missing Frenchman was known to be a gambler. When Lars affirmed the possibility, Caleb offered that they might very well be hunting the exact same man, albeit for entirely different employers.
When Lars pressed for a name, Caleb remained circumspect. Protecting his agreement with the underground fight backer Jules “Blackjack” Vinet, he merely offered, “Let’s say it’s a friend named Jack, and this fellow I am tracking owes him fifteen-hundred dollars for a wager by a pimp he vouched for.” Caleb added that he had a solid lead on a waterfront prostitute who might have seen this Adrien-Luc, and he intended to pursue her through the mud of the river wards later that evening.
Seeing the obvious tactical advantage, Lars made a pragmatic offer: ten dollars a day for Caleb to officially join his investigation and share their notes. Lars informed him that the Countess’s eclectic retinue would be converging on the business offices of L’Agence Commerciale du Croissant the following morning at nine o’clock to conduct a thorough search. Caleb accepted the terms. The two men agreed to meet and compare their respective findings at Lars’s Carondelet Street office at eight in the morning before proceeding to the French firm. With their alliance cemented and their meals finished, the two comrades parted ways into the humid New Orleans night.
9:20 PM February 1, 1866 – The Rousseau Street Roundel (Caleb)
Caleb let the mud of Rousseau Street claim his boots. It was night then, the kind of heavy, wet dark that settled over the river wards and smelled like spilled rye and low tide. The gas lamps were spaced too far apart and most of the mantles were busted anyway, leaving long stretches of black between the sagging weatherboard taverns. Tin pianos were banging out off-key tunes behind clouded windows, as the overall quiet was disturbed by bursts of laughter, breaking glass or disembodied arguing voices.
Equipped with the fragmented intelligence extracted from Hollis at O’Bannon’s Cotton Press, Caleb Grayson headed back toward the riverfront. His only lead was that Coralie rented a cheap crib somewhere over a noisy tavern on Rousseau Street. Because she had been physically present for Adrien-Luc’s manic gambling binge on December 3rd, she was Caleb’s most direct, living link to reconstruct the Frenchman’s final movements.
Caleb did not have an exact address, a building name, or a room number. He had to hit the muddy planks of Rousseau Street blind, relying entirely on his ability to read the neighborhood and navigate a hostile web of protective bartenders, nervous pimps, and tight-lipped dockworkers to pinpoint her actual location.
After taking the last streetcar to the area, Caleb spent his time canvassing the district, buying cheap beers, and deciphering the local underworld gossip to pin down her exact movements. It took an hour and fifteen minutes of greasing palms and navigating the muddy Rousseau Street taverns, but Caleb finally extracted some solid information from the wife of a local tavern owner. He learned that Coralie wasn’t currently in her room; she was actively plying her trade a few blocks away in the smoky, crowded taproom of Jacob Alexander’s Coffee House, located at 139 Water Street. He now knew exactly where she was and could approach her directly for the negotiation.
10:35 PM February 1, 1866 – Jacob Alexander’s Coffee House
Jacob Alexander’s Coffee House at No. 139 Water Street isn’t a place you go for the roast; you go because it’s a crowded, smoky taproom where stevedores and hustlers bump elbows trying to empty their pockets before the river mud even dries on their boots. The air is thick with cheap tobacco and the kind of loud, steady roar that covers up a bottle breaking over a guy’s skull in the corner. It’s a hunting ground where working girls circle the floor looking for heavy purses, and if you need to settle a score or handle a belligerent drunk who short-changed you, you take it out back into the pitch-black, ankle-deep mud of the alley.
Caleb intercepted Coralie inside the smoky, crowded taproom of Jacob Alexander’s Coffee House. She was not a woman easily intimidated. A cynical, sharp-eyed survivor of the waterfront, she stood in a slightly torn emerald-green silk dress, taking a long drag from a thin cigarillo while immediately calculating the net worth of the massive man approaching her. Pretending to be a prospective client, Caleb bought her a whiskey and smoothly broached the subject of the missing Frenchman, Adrien-Luc, and the chaotic happenings during the bare-knuckle bouts at O’Bannon’s Cotton Press back in early December.
Coralie’s loyalty and fear were strictly secondary to silver. She knew exactly who Adrien-Luc was and remembered his manic, drug-fueled binge perfectly. She was perfectly willing to sell that information, provided the price covered risks she might have to assume. Caleb initially asked for the information with a promise to pay her later, but she made it unequivocally clear that if he wanted answers, it would cost him cash right then and there. Conceding, Caleb produced a five-dollar bribe.
Coralie snatched the bill, pocketing it smoothly before providing the baseline facts. She confirmed the Frenchman had been rolling with Tremblay that night. She described Adrien-Luc as sweating profusely, deeply paranoid, and heavily under the influence of narcotics, throwing money around like a madman. She added that the Frenchman had also been accompanied by two other working girls she knew, Marguerite and Sadie, who typically worked the borders of the French Quarter near the Carondelet Canal.
When Caleb pressed her on where a man in Adrien-Luc’s deteriorating condition went to feed such a severe habit, Coralie offered a hard geographic lead. “He didn’t buy that garbage on the waterfront,” she told him. “He gets his powders and absinthe from a dealer over in the Trémé. A hollow-looking veteran who runs a Faro table at The Black Cypress Social Club. Try asking around there.”
Protecting her own interests and recognizing the limit of a five-dollar payout, she had delivered exactly what was paid for, Coralie crushed out her cigarillo on the street and turned her back, disappearing once more into the noisy, crowded tavern. The grueling waterfront interrogation had taken Caleb until nearly midnight to conclude. He returned home to his empty room at the boarding house and turned in for the night.
0900 AM February 2, 1866 – Investigating L’Agence Commerciale du Croissant (Lars, Dr. Fischer, Madeleine, Leopold, Caleb, Maître Julian Beaufort)
Situated at Number 42 Carondelet Street, L’Agence Commerciale du Croissant occupies a newly erected, three-story edifice of deep red brick that projects an air of absolute, well-funded commercial stability. The impeccably clean facade is neatly appointed with tall, broad-paned windows framed by crisp white masonry, designed practically to allow ample daylight into the mercantile spaces within. At the street level, a set of heavy, polished oak doors fitted with gleaming brass hardware stands open to the bustling, sunlit thoroughfare of the American Sector. It presents, altogether, a flawless and highly efficient architectural face to the public, signifying a prosperous import-export firm operating entirely free from the damp antiquities of the older districts.
The morning sun had barely begun to bake the damp winter chill out of the American Sector when the disparate assembly converged. Dr. Matthias Fischer was the first to arrive. Stepping from a hired carriage at precisely a quarter to nine, he surveyed the street with typical Teutonic punctuality, his clinical gaze assessing the heavy, polished oak doors of the French firm.
A few moments later, a second carriage rattled to a halt against the wooden banquette, delivering Madeleine Mercier and Leopold Schuyler. The two stepped down into the street, Madeleine maintaining her poise while Leopold provided the polite presence of a dedicated chaperone. They joined the Austrian doctor on the sidewalk, exchanging quiet, formal greetings over the clatter of passing drayage carts.
Lars Prittwitz and Caleb Grayson arrived shortly thereafter, making the brief walk down Carondelet Street from Lars’s office at Number 18. The Pinkerton and the hulking former cavalryman had spent the early morning hours comparing notes on Caleb’s dark excursion into the Irish Channel, hashing out the grim details of the Rousseau Street shakedown while Lars drafted and dispatched a necessary morning wire.
As they approached the waiting trio, Lars smoothly introduced the massive, barrel-chested Caleb as his newly hired assistant. The group conversed in the climbing humidity until Maître Julian Beaufort finally appeared. The French lawyer arrived five minutes past the hour, looking profoundly aggrieved by the Louisiana morning, dabbing his pale forehead with a silk handkerchief as he joined the party. They all then turned their collective attention to the gleaming brass hardware of the heavy oak doors, pulling them open to step out of the sunlit street.
Upon crossing the threshold, visitors are received in a pristine public vestibule, sensibly appointed with sturdy wooden benches where shipmasters and local draymen may comfortably await their appointments. A low railing of polished mahogany formally divides this reception area from the bustling main workspace, ensuring that the relentless machinery of maritime commerce remains entirely undisturbed by the casual traffic of the street. Beyond this wooden boundary stretches an open and immaculately organized clerical bullpen, dominated by two exacting rows of high, sloped standing desks where a dedicated staff of junior clerks transcribes daily logistics under the steady, even glare of the gas fixtures. At the extreme rear of the chamber lies a functional dispatch alcove, serving as a highly efficient staging ground for the nimble office boys tasked with running physical manifests down to the Custom House and the riverfront wharves.
As the party moved past the wooden railing, the open and immaculately organized clerical bullpen stretched out before them. The room was dominated by two exacting rows of high, sloped mahogany standing desks. There, a dedicated staff of junior clerks transcribed daily logistics under the steady, even glare of the hissing gas fixtures.
From his position overseeing the floor, the senior clerk paused his work. His hands rested on his ledger as he fixed the intruding party with a gruff, highly alert glare, clearly resentful of the disruption to his flawless transcription process.
Maître Julian Beaufort, leading the group with his usual stiff formality, leaned in slightly and addressed the investigators in a low, clipped voice. He assured them that their arrival was expected but quickly advised them to excuse any perceived hostility from the staff. The office, the lawyer explained, was naturally suffocating under a deep anxiety regarding its future, given the unsettling disappearance of Adrien-Luc and the attrition of several key senior management figures.
With that context hanging in the humid air, the group continued their march toward the back of the building. They skirted past a functional dispatch alcove at the extreme rear of the chamber before finally reaching the sturdy wooden staircase that would carry them up to the executive offices above.
Ascending a sturdy, uncarpeted staircase of pale, scrubbed pine brings one to the second floor, which consists of a quiet, well-lit central corridor dedicated entirely to the firm’s senior administrative functions. The architecture alongside this passage speaks to a sober, well-funded authority, characterized by three distinct private offices fitted with heavy doors of tightly grained, dark oak. Each of these doors is inset with a broad pane of frosted white glass, a highly practical provision that ensures strict visual privacy for the Chief Commercial Agent, the Line Agent, and the Chef de Bureau during their daily commercial negotiations. Situated at the extreme rear of this hallway, commanding a sensible view over a narrow, paved back alleyway, is the entryway to the principal executive office, mirroring the others in its substantial oak construction and gleaming brass hardware.
The party ascended the staircase. Leading the group, Maître Beaufort gestured toward the extreme rear of the hallway. He relayed to the investigators that Adrien-Luc’s private executive office was situated at the very end of the corridor, facing the street. Mirroring the other rooms in its substantial oak construction and gleaming brass hardware , the principal executive office was secured from the central passage by a heavy, locked oak door.
A somewhat narrower staircase of sturdy, unpainted timber leads upwards to the third floor, a thoroughly pragmatic space situated directly beneath the building’s substantial slate roof and illuminated by a series of clean, clear dormer windows. The rear section of this attic level is dedicated to a brightly lit sample room, where prospective buyers might carefully inspect raw white cotton bolls, mounds of crystallized sugar, and vibrant bolts of French silk laid neatly upon simple pine trestle tables. The remainder of the expansive floor serves as a highly organized repository for the firm’s past commerce, holding orderly stacks of clean wooden shipping crates, spare mahogany furnishings, and rows of thick, brown leather-bound ledgers dating back to the agency’s founding. Tucked sensibly near the landing is a modest but entirely adequate caretaker’s chamber, ensuring that the valuable mercantile inventory and the extensive commercial archives remain under diligent watch throughout the night.
Maître Beaufort led the party away from the second-floor corridor, guiding them thewooden staircase. As they reached the top landing, the oppressive Louisiana heat immediately intensified. Situated directly beneath the building’s heavy slate roof, the third floor was sweltering and poorly ventilated, its stifling air illuminated primarily by the dusty light filtering through small dormer windows.
The lawyer escorted the group into the sample room. With a matter-of-fact wave of his hand, Beaufort pointed out the layout of the remaining attic space. He indicated the sprawling deep archives, noting that the majority of the floor space was dedicated to “dead” storage. The dim expanse held stacked wooden shipping crates, discarded office furniture, and heavy, dust-covered ledgers documenting the firm’s earliest operations from 1862 and 1863. Finally, he gestured toward a small, spartan room near the top of the stairs, identifying it as the caretaker’s quarters, a space utilized by a night watchman or for storing janitorial supplies.
Dabbing his pale, powdered forehead with his silk handkerchief, Beaufort turned back to the sturdy tables of the sample room. He pragmatically suggested that the investigators use this organized space as the central location for their efforts before stepping back to let them work.
Lars Prittwitz took stock of the sprawling mercantile operation and broke down the vast brick building into a series of manageable, tactical objectives.
Gathering the group close, Lars quietly outlined his strategy. He proposed that they begin by focusing their collective efforts on Adrien-Luc’s private executive office, a localized search he estimated would require roughly half an hour to execute properly.
Once the proprietor’s sanctuary was searched, Lars suggested dividing their labor to maximize their efficiency. He intended to personally conduct preliminary interviews with every single member of the agency’s staff—a slog he figured would consume at least three and a half hours. He requested that Dr. Fischer and Madeleine remain at his side during these inquiries, utilizing the doctor’s clinical observation and the young woman’s gifts and sharp intuition to read the staff while he handled the questioning.
While the interrogations were underway, Lars instructed Leopold and Caleb to quietly detach from the group and execute a comprehensive physical sweep of the entire structure. From the sweltering third-floor sample rooms down to the ground-floor dispatch alcoves, the antiquarian and the massive former cavalryman were to turn the building upside down, a sweep Lars estimated would take them a solid two hours.
Once the interviews and the physical search were concluded, the separated teams would reconvene to share their findings and determine if a deep audit of the company’s financial ledgers or a canvass of the neighboring businesses was warranted. The quick, hushed tactical huddle consumed a mere fifteen minutes, formally setting the investigators’ course for the rest of the morning.
9:15 AM February 2, 1866 – Searching Adrien-Luc’s Office (Lars, Dr. Fischer, Madeleine, Leopold, Caleb)
The interior receives its illumination from a tall, solitary window that offers a clear prospect of the bustling traffic along Carondelet Street. The room is maintained in a state of exacting order, its perimeter lined with towering wooden bookcases and substantial filing cabinets that are fully stocked with strictly aligned folios and commercial paper. Two rigid leather armchairs are positioned opposite a broad mahogany executive desk that dominates the center of the floor space. The desk’s polished surface holds a neat, precise array of commercial ledgers, and features a single physical irregularity: a highly localized, concave groove worn into the forward edge of the dark wood, positioned exactly where a seated individual’s right hand would naturally rest. Finally, the sole decorative element in the office is a substantial Barbizon oil painting—a marshland landscape by Théodore Rousseau—which is hung against the masonry.
As the party stepped into the isolated quiet of the executive office, Maître Beaufort immediately excused himself. The lawyer announced his intention to locate the acting director to inform him that the staff would soon be called up for interviews, leaving the investigators to their work.
Hardly had they begun to spread out when the faint, distinct sound of a heavy door opening and softly closing drifted down the second-floor corridor. Caleb moved to the office threshold, stationing his massive frame by the door to silently watch the hallway for any creeping clerks or snoopers.
Inside the room, the division of labor was swift. Dr. Fischer moved directly to the towering wooden bookcases and document cupboards, his clinical gaze scanning the meticulously aligned spines. Leopold stepped in beside him, lending his practiced antiquarian eye to help the Austrian doctor sift through the commercial folios.
Lars, meanwhile, approached the broad mahogany executive desk that dominated the center of the floor. Just as he reached out to pull back the heavy leather chair and take a seat, Madeleine’s voice cut through the quiet. She sharply requested that he step back and refrain from disturbing the desk or the space immediately around it, stating that she needed the area perfectly untouched to read any lingering impressions left behind by the missing Frenchman.
Yielding the space, Lars and the others looked closer at the polished wood. It was then they spotted the peculiar, concave groove worn deeply into the forward edge of the mahogany.
Following the unnaturally clean lines of the room, their attention shifted to the large Barbizon oil painting hung flush against the masonry. It was resting slightly askew. Shifting the heavy canvas aside, they discovered a concealed wall safe. The iron door hung open and slightly ajar, its dark interior completely stripped and empty.
Despite Fischer and Leopold’s exhaustive review of the remaining files and ledgers, the physical search yielded absolutely nothing of immediate use. Their cursory audit confirmed that the paperwork left behind appeared entirely standard, normal, and ordinary. They determined that the office had been selectively cleaned with precision and professional efficiency, leaving the physical trail in the room completely dead. There was a noticeable lack of any current business left when Adrien-Luc suddenly disappeared, and there were subtle gaps in records and files in the office. Nothing glaring, but it was there for the correct eye to perceive it.
The heavy oak door opened, and Maître Beaufort stepped back into the room, his eyes immediately falling upon the displaced Barbizon painting and the exposed, yawning cavity of the wall safe.
Anticipating their suspicions, the lawyer raised a gloved hand and offered a preemptive clarification. He informed the investigators that the safe had not been opened by himself or the Comtesse. According to the testimonies he had already extracted from the senior clerks, the iron door had been found hanging ajar and completely stripped of its contents when the staff finally took it upon themselves to breach the proprietor’s office on the seventh of December. Whoever had emptied it had done so long before the Valois-Bormes estate even knew Adrien-Luc was missing. He informed Lars that the interviews would be ready at his convenience and that he would happily serve as a messenger, summoning each member for their questioning. He then departed.
Approaching the broad mahogany desk, Madeleine focused her attention on the peculiar, concave groove worn deeply into its forward edge. Reaching out, she pressed her fingers against the polished wood to read whatever lingering impressions the missing Frenchman had left behind.
Instantly, the immaculate office warped around her, pulling her into a terrifying, fisheye-lens hallucination. The vision was suffocatingly strong—an alternate reality far stranger than her “Eye” usually permitted. Sitting behind the desk was a hollowed, emaciated mockery of Adrien-Luc. He pushed his chair back slightly, still facing forward, leering maniacally as it became apparent he was grossly priapic. His translucent, sallow skin seemed to sag off his skull while he manically drummed his fingers against the wood.
Abruptly, the ghastly figure snapped his head toward her with a wild, leering gaze. A raspy, drug-choked cackle emerged from his throat. “Quelle chance j’ai ! Quelle chance j’ai de t’avoir ! Je vais t’avoir, espèce de garce !” he spat—“How lucky I am! How lucky I am to have you! I’m going to have you, you bitch!”. As the phantom reached for her, the sheer horror of the encounter severed the connection, snapping Madeleine violently back to reality.
She stood frozen, completely stunned by the psychological assault. Violent chills wracked her delicate frame, her hands trembling uncontrollably. It was immediately evident to the outside observers—who had seen nothing but the quiet office—that she was severely disturbed. Dr. Fischer rushed to her side without hesitation, employing his soothing clinical expertise to ground her and pull her back from the shock.
After taking a few agonizing minutes to calm her breathing and steady her hands, Madeleine retrieved her charcoal and sketchpad. With dark, heavy strokes, she began to draw the horrific, leering image she had witnessed. As she worked, she murmured to the group that this vision had come to her differently. Instead of the fragmented snapshots, disjointed smells, and static tableaus her “Eye” normally provided , this had played out like a fluid, distorted, real-life nightmare.
Dr. Fischer noted this anomaly with intense clinical intrigue, his academic curiosity piqued by the sudden evolution of her parapsychic instrument. The rest of the party agreed that the resulting charcoal sketch was profoundly sensitive and deeply disturbing. Recognizing the danger of such an image falling into the wrong hands, Lars stepped forward and took the drawing for safekeeping. It was just before 10:00 AM according to the clock on the mantle.
1000 AM February 2, 1866 – Interviewing the Senior Staff (Lars, Dr. Fischer, Madeleine)
Subject 1: Honoré Lemaire – Chef de Bureau and Acting Director (Directeur par intérim)
The investigators’ first interview brought them before Honoré Lemaire, the firm’s Chef de Bureau and Acting Director. Lemaire was a meticulously groomed, aging Creole who treated bookkeeping as a religious vocation. Desperate to keep the daily maritime operations running, he viewed Adrien-Luc’s sudden disappearance as a catastrophic breach of commercial etiquette, an event that left him deeply frustrated and highly resistant to outside interruptions.
When Lars and Dr. Fischer began their questioning, Lemaire spoke with a sharp, nasal precision. His posture remained rigid and unyielding, reflecting a man who found his only true comfort in the absolute certainty of perfectly balanced ledgers. He adjusted his spectacles frequently, as if attempting to bring the chaotic world the investigators represented back into strict focus.
The conversation quickly soured. Taking profound offense at the line of inquiry, Lemaire bristled, convinced that the party was actively questioning the legitimate conduct and integrity of the business. Retreating behind a wall of stuffy, defensive pride, the Acting Director refused to offer any substantial help. Instead, he stubbornly lectured the group on the agency’s success, fiercely defending how the firm had grown “from nothing” into a major commercial concern in the city over a mere four years.
Subject 2: Josiah Pendleton – Chief Commercial Agent (Négociant en Chef)
The investigators next directed their attention to Josiah Pendleton, the firm’s Chief Commercial Agent. A shrewd Pennsylvania businessman, Pendleton had been hired specifically to navigate the Anglo-dominated American Sector and negotiate bulk contracts for cotton and sugar. Because he operated strictly on percentages, the chaotic vacuum left by Adrien-Luc’s disappearance had left him severely struggling to maintain his local vendor agreements.
Initially viewing the Comtesse’s representatives as a frustrating distraction from his failing contracts, Pendleton was nonetheless pragmatic enough not to openly antagonize the firm’s legal ownership. Dressed in a practical, well-made, but entirely unflashy broadcloth suit, he exuded the impatient, transactional energy of a man who valued immediate profit far above polite Southern pleasantries. He spoke with a brisk, flat Northern cadence, his eyes constantly darting toward the clock or the office door as if he were actively, mentally calculating the exact cost of the lost time.
The conversation, however, took a highly productive turn. Pendleton recognized Lars Prittwitz’s surname and immediately inquired if the investigator hailed from Pittsburgh, noting that he himself was a Philadelphia man. The businessman quickly made the connection, recognizing that Lars’s father was a prominent Pennsylvania Congressman, which established a sudden and invaluable Northern rapport.
Warmed by this regional and political connection, Pendleton openly shared his records. He held actual, tangible information proving that the firm’s outgoing purchases and cargo manifests mathematically did not add up. Pendleton confidently used these exact accounting discrepancies to posit his own firm theory; Adrien-Luc had simply over-leveraged his credit and fled in disgrace to avoid the crushing reality of debtor’s prison.
Subject 3: Fabien Paradis – Line Agent (Agent de Ligne), CGT
The investigators moved on to Fabien Paradis, the Line Agent coordinating transatlantic shipping schedules for the Compagnie Générale Transatlantique. Paradis was a perpetually anxious man, obsessively fixated on weather reports, delayed telegrams, and the grueling routine of maritime logistics.
He spoke in rapid, clipped bursts, frequently dabbing his sweating brow with a rumpled handkerchief, exuding a frantic, baseline panic. Dressed in a slightly disheveled business suit, his eyes darted constantly toward the towering stacks of shipping manifests that cluttered his workspace.
Overwhelmed by his legitimate duties, Paradis clearly viewed the investigators as just another stressful interruption to his chaotic daily schedule. Though he lacked the authority or the desire to actively stonewall them, his frantic demeanor acted as a complete red herring, stemming entirely from his high-strung personality and the mundane stress of managing shipping lines. Unable to be calmed or coaxed into a more productive exchange, Paradis nervously dismissed the party, practically begging the investigators to leave him alone so he could return to his overdue weather reports and telegraphs.
Subject 4: Auguste Landry – Senior Clerk (Premier Commis)
The investigators turned their attention to Auguste Landry, the stern, ink-stained taskmaster who managed the ground-floor clerical bullpen. Sitting with the rigid posture of a man who lived entirely by the clock and despised inefficiency, Landry wore a severely starched, no-nonsense suit. His fingers were perpetually stained with black ink from years of meticulous ledger work, and when he first addressed the party, he spoke with a gruff, impatient bark. He was fiercely protective of the bullpen’s workflow and clearly viewed the outside interruption as a direct threat to his flawless transcription process.
However, beneath his rigid exterior, Landry was a man of strict professional integrity. Through careful, respectful questioning, Lars and Dr. Fischer managed to thaw the senior clerk’s icy demeanor, slowly cultivating a grudging rapport with the formidable overseer. Madeleine, observing the exchange with her quiet, piercing focus, silently signaled to her companions that the man was fundamentally honest and speaking the unvarnished truth.
Opening up slightly, Landry described Adrien-Luc with genuine professional admiration. The proprietor, he related, had always been a man “as regular as a clock.” Adrien-Luc was a solid man of business, dependably the first to arrive in the morning and often the last to leave at night. Through sheer diligence, he had transformed the firm from a wasting, neglected distraction of the Valois-Bormes estate into a thriving, highly respected commercial concern within the city.
Yet, a shadow crossed Landry’s face as he noted a distinct, unsettling shift in his employer’s behavior. Following Adrien-Luc’s return from a business trip to Galveston in mid-November, the proprietor’s meticulous habits had suddenly unraveled. He began keeping highly irregular hours, abandoning the disciplined routine that had built the agency.
Ever the professional, Landry staunchly refused to indulge in unseemly office gossip regarding what Adrien-Luc was actually doing during those erratic hours. Instead, the senior clerk tersely suggested that if the investigators were looking for rumors, some of the junior clerks in the bullpen might know more.
It was almost 11:15 AM as Dr. Fischer examined his watch.
11:30 AM February 2, 1866 – Searching the Offices (Caleb and Leopold)
While Lars, Dr. Fischer, and Madeleine conducted their polite, tense interrogations inside the third-floor sample room, Caleb and Leopold detached from the group to execute their physical sweep of the adjacent deep archives. Rather than blindly rummaging through every stacked crate and dusty ledger in the sweltering attic, Caleb applied an unexpected, highly technical expertise to the task. Caleb relied on his intimate, working knowledge of timber, load-bearing architecture, and carpentry. He systematically analyzed the structural stress points of the space and the wear patterns on the floorboards, looking for fresh scuff marks on the scrubbed pine and subtle shifts in heavy furniture that indicated recent, hurried movement. This analytical approach, highly unusual for a man of his bruising stature, drastically narrowed their search grid and slashed the time required to clear the sprawling, poorly ventilated storage space. He continued this technique throughout the search, easily eliminating the existence of any hissed rooms, spaces, or storage areas.
Caleb’s builder’s intuition quickly bore fruit in the dim, stifling heat. Moving past rows of completely undisturbed “dead” storage, his eyes locked onto a slight, unnatural alignment between two heavy pine trestle tables that had been shoved hastily into a dark, rear corner. Crouching down to inspect the tight, shadowed gap between the heavy wooden legs, the big man spotted a flash of white paper caught in the rough splinters. He motioned to Leopold, who carefully reached his hand into the narrow crevice, extracting a crumpled, torn half-sheet of high-quality French stationery that had clearly fluttered away and been lost during a frantic purge of the room.
Stepping into the dusty light of a dormer window, Leopold carefully smoothed the torn paper out upon the table. It was a set of explicit, written instructions directing a team to clear all documents within a specific date range—from April 1862 to the present day. The order commanded the targeted removal of any files referencing “Special Transfer Cargos,” “Locally Manifested Materials,” and any logistical information regarding “that Steamer.” As Leopold studied the urgent French script, his practiced antiquarian eye instantly caught a distinct physical tell in the penmanship; not only did it appear left-handed, but the elegant, sweeping letters betrayed a severe, rhythmic, neurological hand tremor, a physical signature left unwittingly on the page by the man who had orchestrated the massive cover-up.
11:30 AM February 2, 1866 – Interviewing the Clerks (Lars, Dr. Fischer, Madeleine)
Subject 5: Jean-Baptiste Charbonneau – Junior Clerk (Commis)
The first junior clerk summoned to the sweltering third-floor sample room was Jean-Baptiste Charbonneau. A young, aristocratic Creole, Charbonneau had been relegated to the grueling daily transcription of shipping manifests in the bullpen, an arduous effort to rebuild his family’s lost fortune. He spoke with a refined, carefully modulated Creole lilt, striving desperately to maintain an air of high-society dignity.
Through Lars’s use of elicitation techniques, the investigators managed to establish a highly respectful, positive rapport with the young man. Charbonneau, who the party had learned spent the last few weeks quietly snickering with his colleague Samuel Higgins at their standing desks, initially seemed polite and willing to assist the Comtesse’s representatives. However, beneath his cooperative veneer, he seemed to be hiding something.
When the questioning inevitably shifted to Adrien-Luc’s behavior in late November, the clerk’s demeanor fractured. A sudden, deep blush rushed to his cheeks, and he became visibly flustered, nervously averting his eyes to hide a profound, deep-seated embarrassment. Dr. Fischer’s sharp clinical gaze instantly caught the physical tell. It was glaringly obvious to the Austrian doctor that the young clerk harbored some truth about the proprietor.
Recognizing that pressing the aristocratic clerk in his current state would only cause him to shut down completely, Lars tactfully eased off the line of questioning. He gently concluded the brief exchange, allowing the flushing young man to return to the bullpen while deliberately earmarking Charbonneau as a prime target for a much more private, delicate follow-up interview.
Subject 6: Samuel Higgins – Junior Clerk (Commis)
The next clerk to ascend the sweltering stairs into the sample room was Samuel Higgins. A stark contrast to the mortified Creole aristocrat who had preceded him, Higgins was a loud, boastful young man who spent his evenings drinking in the taverns of the American Sector. He entered the room with an overly familiar brashness, his slightly rumpled suit carrying the faint, lingering odors of stale beer and cheap tobacco. Leaning casually against one of the display tables, he projected the unearned, easy confidence of a young man who firmly believed he knew all of the city’s best-kept secrets.
Recognizing the type instantly, Lars leaned into an easy, man-to-man bonhomie. Employing practiced conversational elicitation techniques, Lars quickly made the clerk feel as though they were simply sharing a pint and swapping tales at a local pub rather than conducting an official inquiry.
Properly lubricated by this artificial camaraderie, Higgins was absolutely delighted to gossip. Eagerly shedding any protective loyalty to his missing employer, the clerk happily reported that in the weeks leading up to his disappearance, Adrien-Luc had become a shadow of his former self. The proprietor was coming in late and leaving early. He constantly smelled of stale booze, his skin was slick with sweat, and he walked around with “tiny eyes”—a detail Dr. Fischer quietly noted as a classic physiological symptom of heavy narcotic abuse.
Warming to his audience, Higgins leaned in closer, dropping his voice to share the most scandalous rumors he had collected from his roistering tavern pals. He enthusiastically relayed that the supposedly respectable businessman had been spotted out late in the river wards, gambling heavily, and that he had developed a sudden, ruinous appetite for “the ladies.”
Before he was dismissed, Higgins flashed a mischievous, conspiratorial grin at Lars. He noted that his desk-mate, Charbonneau, had definitely stumbled onto something incredibly juicy in the executive office shortly before the proprietor vanished. While the stiff aristocrat refused to say a word about it, Higgins chuckled and promised the investigators that he would pry the secret out of him eventually. Without a trace of true malice—but cementing his reputation as a nasty, eager little office gossip—Higgins tipped his hat and cheerfully descended the stairs.
Subject 13: William Cobb – Office Boy (Garçon de Bureau)
Shortly after returning from a waterfront errand, William Cobb was sent up to the sweltering sample room. A scrappy, tough kid from the Irish Channel, the office boy spoke with a thick, combative accent and projected the hyper-alert energy of a street survivor.
While Lars quickly determined that the boy held no high-level secrets regarding Adrien-Luc’s fate, the Pinkerton recognized a different kind of value in him. Cobb possessed an intimate, street-level knowledge of the dangerous American Sector wharves and warehouses. Seeing through the boy’s defensive waterfront slang, Lars noted his transactional nature and marked the tough, resourceful kid down not as a suspect, but as a highly valuable potential guide should their investigation push them out onto the rougher docks.
Subject 7: Arthur Penhaligon – Junior Clerk (Commis)
The investigators’ next interview in the sample room was with Arthur Penhaligon. A quiet, methodical junior clerk, Penhaligon was responsible for handling the raw warehouse inventory tallies for the agency.
He spoke in a soft, monotone. Dressed in a plain, meticulously brushed suit with ink-stained cuffs, he projected the aura of a man entirely absorbed by mathematics and completely immune to the social politics of the bullpen. Watching him closely, Madeleine quietly identified the clerk as fundamentally honest and intensely focused. Given his nature, Lars adopted a straightforward, highly diplomatic approach. He spoke to the clerk not as an adversary, but as a fellow professional seeking clarity in a confusing situation. This respectful tactic easily won the introverted numbers man over. He told them that he had discovered a pattern of weights being underreported to the Customs authorities. He noted they were present from mid-1863 until late 1865.
While Penhaligon had no personal stake in protecting the agency’s secrets, he was still fearful of putting his own reputation and employment in jeopardy. Rather than openly handing the investigators the evidence and risking the wrath of the Acting Director, the clerk offered a quiet compromise. He promised that when he returned to the bullpen, he would simply leave his personal file of mismatched manifest weights sitting out on his standing desk, where they could easily be “picked up” by the party as they departed. . Penhaligon’s quiet cooperation had just saved the party hours of grueling forensic auditing, handing evidence of irregularities in the business.
Subject 8: Gaspard Reynaud – Junior Clerk (Commis)
The investigators next summoned Gaspard Reynaud, a deeply timid junior clerk whose natural anxiety often caused him to fall behind on his transcription quotas. Wearing an ill-fitting, slightly rumpled suit, Reynaud entered the sample room wringing his hands and jumping at every sudden noise, perpetually looking over his shoulder as if expecting a sudden reprimand.
Attempting to put the terrified clerk at ease, Lars recycled the easy, conversational bonhomie that had worked so well on Samuel Higgins. However, the casual approach failed spectacularly. Driven entirely by a paralyzing, unspoken fear rather than malice, Reynaud completely shut down. He trembled violently, stammering out panicked denials and claiming he knew absolutely nothing about anything. They determined he knew nothing and moved on.
Subject 9: Martin O’Connell – Junior Clerk (Commis)
The next interview brought Lars face-to-face with Martin O’Connell, an Irish-American clerk who managed the agency’s rougher maritime insurance claims. With his sturdy, practical suit and a sharp, assessing gaze, O’Connell looked far more like a waterfront prizefighter squeezed behind a desk than a traditional clerk. He spoke with a slight Irish lilt layered beneath a hard, street-smart cynicism, initially viewing the investigators with profound professional skepticism.
Approaching the pragmatic working man, Lars leaned heavily into his corporate cover. To his utter surprise, he discovered an unexpected ally; O’Connell turned out to be somewhat of an insurance buff and an enthusiastic fan of Lars’s supposed firm. This shared professional ground instantly melted the clerk’s defensive posture.
Eager to talk shop, O’Connell openly discussed the agency’s ongoing maritime liabilities and handed Lars a highly irregular, actionable lead. He revealed that one of the firm’s chartered vessels, the SS Wilmington Lady, had recently submitted a massive, sudden damage claim flagged by Atlantic Mutual.
As the highly productive interview concluded, O’Connell flashed a knowing, street-smart smirk. With a subtle nod and a perfectly placed comment, the clerk dropped a heavy hint that he wasn’t entirely fooled by the corporate suit, letting Lars know the waterfront native suspected the “adjuster” was actually a detective working a much deeper angle.
Subject 10: Célestin Dupré – Junior Clerk (Commis)
The investigators briefly interviewed Célestin Dupré, the firm’s primary translator for Spanish-language contracts arriving from Havana and Veracruz and departing to Spanish-language ports of call in the Caribbean. . Dupré spoke with a precise, measured cadence, projecting the quiet intellect of a scholar rather than a merchant. He viewed the investigators as a minor distraction from his complex linguistic tasks and had no real stake in the agency’s broader mysteries.
The party easily determined that Dupré knew nothing of interest. He’s just a clerk doing work that requires unique translation skills for the firm.
Subject 11: Leonidas Faucheux – Junior Clerk (Commis)
The next subject, Leonidas Faucheux, proved to be an absolute dead end. Faucheux arrived in a drab, severely ink-smudged suit with deep, dark bags under his eyes. Speaking in a tired, raspy sigh while constantly rubbing his face. Tuning into his emotional state, Madeleine quietly confirmed to the group that the man was exactly what he appeared to be: profoundly tired, but fundamentally honest. Realizing he was completely ignorant of the firm’s illicit activities and their missing employer , the investigators mercifully cut the interview short, asking only a few cursory questions before dismissing the overworked clerk back to his triplicate forms
Subject 14: Henri Broussard – Office Boy (Garçon de Bureau)
Just returning from a swift errand across the city, Henri Broussard, the agency’s second office boy, was sent up to the sweltering sample room. A sharp-eyed, barefoot Creole youth, Henri wore tattered trousers rolled up to his knees and a loose, oversized linen shirt. His bare feet were deeply calloused and stained from running the muddy, paved streets of the older districts. Speaking in a rapid, heavily accented Creole French, the street-smart kid constantly shifted his weight, his eyes darting around the room as if instinctively mapping the quickest exit.
Rather than dismissing the youth as a mere child, Lars took a different, highly effective approach and addressed Henri as an equal, speaking to him with the gravity of one working man acknowledging another. This respectful tactic immediately earned the boy’s attention and grudging respect.
As the boy feigned a polite ignorance regarding any unusual activities at the firm, Madeleine focused her senses. She quietly caught Lars’s eye, signaling that the fast-moving courier definitively “knew something”. Dr. Fischer, closely observing the boy’s calculated micro-expressions, firmly corroborated her intuition. Realizing that the youth held valuable secrets but would require a different kind of transactional leverage to open up, the investigators dismissed Henri back to the dispatch alcove for the time being, deliberately marking the barefoot courier for a much more targeted re-interview.
Subject 12: Thomas Laveer – Junior Clerk (Commis)
When Thomas Laveer, the agency’s dedicated copyist, was brought up and seated in a chair in the sweltering sample room, the investigators found themselves interviewing a blank slate. Separated from his inkwell and writing slope, the clerk answered Lars’s questions with a dull, literal simplicity, communicating mostly in brief grunts and slight nods. Functioning as little more than a human printing press, Laveer transcribed whatever was placed in front of him without ever analyzing the contents, leaving him completely oblivious to office politics or his employer’s fate. Madeleine and Dr. Fischer quickly confirmed what was already glaringly obvious: the man was entirely ignorant of the plot, possessed zero relevant information, and harbored no hidden secrets. Recognizing an immovable dead end, the party swiftly concluded the exchange and sent the copyist back downstairs to his work. The Doctor checked his watch. It was 1:15PM.
12:40 PM February 2, 1866 – Under the Stairs (Caleb and Leopold)
While the clerks were being interviewed, Caleb and Leopold concluded their sweep of the sweltering upper archives and began their quiet descent toward the second-floor corridor. Caleb took the lead down the narrower, steeper wooden staircase, his heavy boots treading carefully on the unpainted timber. Once again applying his intimate knowledge of carpentry and load-bearing structures he ignored the obvious surfaces. Instead, he examined the architecture itself, specifically checking the wooden risers and treads for signs of physical damage where panicked men, carrying heavy loads blindly in the dark, might have struck the stairs in their haste to evacuate the building’s secrets.
Near the bottom landing, Caleb paused, his keen eyes catching a slight, fresh splintering on the lip of the final wooden tread. Someone hauling a heavy crate had clearly stumbled here, catching the edge of the step. Crouching down, the massive investigator peered into the narrow, shadowed gap beneath the damaged board. Reaching his thick fingers into the accumulated dust and gloom of the crevice, he felt the sharp, stiff edge of a document. He carefully pulled free a single, folded sheet of heavy ledger paper that had evidently slipped through the crack, handing it up to his refined companion for inspection.
Unfolding the heavy paper in the dim light of the corridor, Leopold brought his practiced antiquarian focus to bear on the faded ink. He identified it immediately as an original, un-doctored cargo manifest dating back to 1864. The document explicitly authorized a bulk shipment of “locally manifested mining tools” bound directly for the port of Veracruz. At the bottom of the page, bypassing standard executive approval, the manifest bore a highly unusual authorizing signature. It was signed simply by “La Lavandière”, “The Washerwoman.”
Nothing else of interest was found and the pair completed their search of the premises at 12:55 PM.
1:20 PM February 2, 1866 – A Repast (Lars, Dr. Fischer, Madeleine, Caleb and Leopold)
The exhaustive morning of tense interrogations and dusty physical sweeps finally drew to a close. The disparate investigative teams—Lars, Dr. Fischer, Madeleine, Caleb, and Leopold—reconvened in the sweltering heat of the third-floor sample room to compare their initial, hard-won findings. Realizing they needed a secure place to consolidate their intelligence and plan their next tactical moves, the party agreed to pause their efforts and take a much-needed repast. Leaving the stifling confines of L’Agence Commerciale du Croissant behind, the group stepped out into the bustling thoroughfare of the American Sector and crossed Carondelet Street, seeking the shaded courtyard and rich chicory coffee of the Café des Négociants
End Session 003