First Adventure, The Case of the Missing Merchant, Session 012
Buyer Beware
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
A prudent citizen will tell you that there are two questions worth asking before making a purchase: what does the thing cost, and what is it good for? This sounds like an excellent system, and in certain modest transactions—buying a pound of coffee, for example—it answers most of the problems a man is likely to encounter. The trouble begins when he sets his eye upon an antique, a secret, or an opportunity to improve himself. Such things do not commonly arrive with their prices written out in a legible hand. The seller is quite happy to take your money, but he seldom offers to explain what the article may take from you afterward. That part of the bargain is considered an agreeable surprise.
New Orleans has always maintained a thriving commerce in agreeable surprises. A gentleman may obtain French perfumes, Spanish cigars, American machinery, a first-class funeral, and an opinion upon the state of his immortal soul without traveling a remarkable distance. The first four can be purchased with money, provided the money is good. The last is often furnished free of charge by a neighbor who has been watching him through the shutters since breakfast. And with all the fortunes broken or rebuilt in the wake of the war, the town is full of people trying to discover whether some neglected old possession has been transformed, by the simple passage of time, from useless rubbish into a valuable curiosity.
Now, I am not inclined to quarrel with an antiquarian. A nation that burns its papers and throws away its keepsakes generally ends up obliged to pay another nation to tell it where it came from. The antiquarian performs a useful service by gathering up what the rest of us have been too careless to remember. He is, however, occasionally afflicted with the belief that age and importance are the same thing. A cracked jug may be old without being remarkable, while a handsome old ring may be both remarkable and troublesome. Gold is a dependable metal in ordinary business. It bears a clear weight, submits to a scale, and rarely objects to being melted. History is less cooperative. And as for a curse, there is not yet a respectable assay office in Louisiana prepared to stamp one with its official weight and purity.
The people most eager to buy knowledge are apt to be those least willing to consider its expenses. A scholar will spend three hours in a convent archive among the old ledgers and then complain that the answers have produced three new questions. An investigator, having been told that a certain man has disappeared, will disturb every gambler and prostitute in the parish, and feel exceedingly cheated when he is rewarded with an entirely different dead gentleman. A merchant hears that an object may be dangerous and, being a merchant, immediately wonders whether the danger can be included in the price. This is not wickedness, necessarily. It is simply a talent some men possess for converting every new fact into a sum of money before considering whether they ought to have learned it at all.
There is a further difficulty, and here I must confess the philosophers have been singularly unhelpful. Suppose you wish to know the truth about something. You ask a question and are supplied with a good, convincing answer. Naturally, you will ask another. It is a splendid habit until the answers begin to arrive faster than a man’s understanding can receive them. The great blessing of ignorance is not that it makes one happy, for I have known plenty of miserable fools; it is that ignorance rarely demands an immediate explanation of itself. Knowledge, on the other hand, can be an inconsiderate creditor. It arrives at the door uninvited, presents its bill without a signature, and becomes downright unpleasant when informed that you never agreed to the terms.
The booksellers of the old French Quarter know the value of a first edition. The pawnbrokers know the value of a gold band. The insurance gentlemen know what a ship ought to be worth when its captain has finished telling them how it was damaged. But there are discoveries a person cannot weigh upon any of their instruments. A question may be put with the lightest touch of two fingers, and yet the answer—if one can properly call it an answer—may prove heavier than an iron strongbox. I recommend a little caution in these matters, though my advice is offered after the customary fashion of the human race: a comfortable interval after the moment when it would have done anyone any good.
It was Monday, the fifth of February, eighteen hundred and sixty-six. By noon, the great St. Charles Hotel had finished dispensing its morning courtesies, and a small company of investigators emerged into the cold daylight with more business than the remaining hours could comfortably contain. There were insurance men to be reassured, an old diary to be read, a bookmaker to be satisfied, a railway passenger to be met, and a ring whose price had lately become a matter of lively interest. The city was ready to do business. Whether it was ready to account for the cost was another question entirely.
Approximately Noon, Monday, February 5, 1866 – The Afternoon Divided (Lars, Caleb, Madeleine, Leopold, Dr. Alphonse Mercier)
The heavy doors of the St. Charles Hotel swung open upon the midday traffic. Out came Dr. Alphonse Mercier, his daughter Madeleine, Leopold Schuyler, Lars Prittwitz, and Caleb Grayson, leaving behind them the Comtesse’s distressed and increasingly uncompromising determination to force an answer out of the French Consul. Her husband remained missing, and the morning’s conversation had left the investigators with no useful prospect of restoring her composure by mere reassurance.
The afternoon could not be spent in a single company. Madeleine and Leopold intended to return to the Ursuline Academy Archives, where the locked doors of the previous Sunday had defeated their attempts at research. Caleb volunteered to accompany them, not because the study of colonial manuscripts held any particular attraction for him, but because the investigators had reason to be careful about their movements through the city. He would watch for anyone following them and see that their work proceeded undisturbed. Afterward he had a separate obligation to a man whose interests in Adrien-Luc’s disappearance had begun well before the Comtesse engaged the others.
Leopold also had a rather more cheerful appointment to keep. Étienne ‘Tinny’ Boudreaux was expected by train at five o’clock, and his return promised a serious discussion of the strange ring, its provenance, and a prospective buyer prepared to consider ten thousand dollars. Madeleine would accompany the antiquarian to the station.
Lars proposed a different route. He meant to speak again with Harrison Osgood at Atlantic Mutual, then look into obtaining a few hardware-store implements that might serve for the kind of delicate work in which the investigators had discovered themselves lamentably deficient. Afterward he would meet Caleb at No. 18 Carondelet Street. The two former comrades talked of taking dinner and then searching the streets for the women who had last accompanied Adrien-Luc, and the missing pimp who might know where they had gone. Those errands belonged to the hours ahead. For the present, they parted to attend to what could actually be accomplished by daylight.
Dr. Mercier separated from the investigators’ active business. The others made their way into the traffic of a city that had not the slightest intention of standing still while they arranged their plans.
Monday Afternoon – The Old Papers (Madeleine, Leopold, Caleb)
There was something distinctly reassuring about approaching the Ursuline Archives in the proper way on a weekday. On Sunday, the institution had presented an impenetrable face of religious propriety; the nuns had other duties, the archives were closed, and the notion of forcing an entrance had very nearly supplied Leopold with a more intimate acquaintance with the municipal police. Monday offered the investigators the simpler advantage of open doors.
Madeleine and Leopold entered to undertake the research they had planned, with Caleb remaining close enough to keep watch. The dry, papery air of the archive was a different world from the muddy streets outside. Shelved volumes, bound correspondence, plantation ledgers, and the heavy furniture of a long-established religious institution gave the place a quality of patient resistance. Records of men long dead occupied their shelves with considerably more dignity than many of those men had enjoyed in life.
The two researchers worked through material concerning colonial New Orleans and the Spanish period, looking for evidence that might explain the unfamiliar elements in the ring Tinny had shown Leopold. What could such an object, combining European goldwork with disturbing Mesoamerican designs, have meant to its original owners? Had the ring been merely a fashionable eccentricity, or had its workmanship preserved evidence of a history that the city’s better-known accounts had overlooked?
Caleb remained with them throughout. He had not been engaged to interpret a Bourbon seal or date an eighteenth-century binding. His task was to make certain that the people trying to read those things were not interrupted by a stranger whose curiosity took a more dangerous form. He watched, remained available, and kept their surroundings secure. No unwelcome follower intruded upon the work.
The hours passed among the books. Then a volume emerged from the accumulated paper that gave their inquiry an entirely different weight: the Journal Privé de Sieur Antoine-Marie de Léris, an old, water-stained plantation ledger whose pages preserved an account dated December 14, 1769. The writer, a French Creole indigo planter, described a private audience with a Spanish official at the Cabildo in the troubled months following the disturbances of the previous year. His host had been Don Francisco de la Campa y Cossío, Count of Maralto.
During the Afternoon – A Surveyor Who Dislikes Lies (Lars, Harrison Osgood)
While the others occupied themselves with the dead, Lars went to speak to a living man who was quite capable of making his discomfort known. The offices of Atlantic Mutual had not improved since his previous visit. Shipping papers crowded the furniture, a faded officer’s sword leaned in the corner, and Harrison Osgood sat behind his desk with the settled look of a man whose back and patience were engaged in a long contest, neither showing much inclination to surrender.
Osgood received Lars as a professional colleague. They had exchanged information before, and Lars had now inspected the SS Wilmington Lady in person. The question was what the insurance man had actually found—and what he intended to do about it.
“You were right to doubt that cargo story,” Lars said. “We went aboard. The damage does not sit comfortably with the account of ordinary textiles and dry goods. And we found compartments that had no business being concealed in an honest manifest.”
Osgood’s expression scarcely changed. The information was serious, but not wholly surprising. He had been withholding the payout because the damage and the supposed cargo had failed to make sense to him from the beginning. Lars explained that he wanted to pursue certain additional inquiries before anyone took decisive action regarding the vessel.
“Additional inquiries,” Osgood repeated. His tired eyes settled upon the younger man. “Prittwitz, if you and I are going to carry on together, you had best begin by telling me something you actually believe. Starting a working arrangement with a lie is a poor way to conduct business.”
It was not a theatrical accusation. That made it rather harder to evade. Lars had tried to keep his immediate purpose from a man whose cooperation depended upon professional trust, and Osgood had recognized the evasion for what it was.
Lars reconsidered. Before continuing, he required a promise of strict confidentiality. Osgood gave it. The explanation that followed was no longer the account of an insurance adjuster seeking the truth behind a suspicious claim. Lars told him that he worked for the Pinkerton Agency.
“We have reason to believe this steamer is carrying illicit cargo from the United States to Mexico,” Lars explained, “on behalf of the French government. If we move against it at once, the men behind the business may disappear. The intention is to keep matters quiet until the whole operation can be exposed—and the ship seized with the evidence upon her.”
Osgood regarded him for a moment and then settled back. The new information placed Lars’s delay in a more intelligible light. He did not demand a full account of every person involved or a seat in the federal councils; his interest was sufficiently engaged by the prospect that an insured vessel was being used for unlawful purposes.
“If Atwood is engaged in illegal business,” Osgood said, “that may be all Atlantic Mutual needs to cancel the policy. I know how these things are handled. You keep your affair quiet. I will keep my mouth shut and my ear to the ground.”
He promised to pass along anything he heard that might assist the inquiry. Lars agreed to do the same. The former Marine and the Pinkerton had not settled the claim or cancelled the policy. They had done something more immediate: established that they could speak to one another plainly. With the understanding secured, Lars took his leave and made his way back toward Carondelet Street.
Toward the End of the Research – The Count’s Right Hand (Madeleine, Leopold, Caleb)
At the Ursuline Archives, the page dated December 14, 1769 held the three investigators’ attention. De Léris wrote of being summoned to the Cabildo in the shadow of General O’Reilly’s harsh restoration of Spanish authority. He had expected an examination from which a man of his position might not easily emerge. Instead he found himself admitted to a private audience with the Count of Maralto, a royal emissary empowered to deal with the frightened colonial elite.
The writer had been informed that the Count was a statesman in his sixties, yet he described a man possessing the vigor and appearance of someone scarcely half that age. The discrepancy troubled him. So did the manner in which the Spaniard offered clemency and security, asking in return for a loyalty that seemed to extend considerably beyond ordinary political gratitude. The account was not a detached inventory; it was the testimony of a man who remembered the meeting with palpable unease.
Then the journal turned to the detail for which Leopold had spent days searching. De Léris had noticed the Count’s right hand as the latter offered him a glass of Madeira. Three heavy rings, fashioned from Bourbon gold and dark iron, occupied three adjacent fingers. One sat upon the index finger, another on the middle finger, and the last upon the ring finger. Their placement was sufficiently striking that the observer recorded it with care.
Beneath apparently familiar European workmanship, de Léris had detected markings that were neither conventional armorial devices nor ordinary decoration. He described serpents, stars, and snarling jaguars, worked in a manner that seemed to unsettle him more profoundly the longer he looked. The objects reminded Leopold of the peculiar band Tinny had shown him, with its Spanish setting and Mesoamerican signs. What had appeared a singular eccentricity now had a possible place among three related pieces observed nearly a century earlier.
Madeleine and Leopold continued through the account. Caleb, having remained at their side, was present for the discovery and its explanation. All three took the substance of the testimony into their understanding, and the researchers made notes preserving the names, date, placement of the rings, and other pertinent details. Their work was not confined to one exciting passage; they studied the account sufficiently to appreciate the potential importance of the whole.
By the time their three hours were complete, they had established a strong historical connection to pursue, though the journal could not explain why an object of this description had surfaced in modern New Orleans—or what, if anything, its disturbing associations meant. The old ledger remained among the archives. The investigators departed with their notes.
Outside, Caleb excused himself to attend to his own employer. Madeleine and Leopold had a train to meet later in the afternoon. The three separated, carrying the same discovery toward very different obligations.
After the Archives – A Matter for Blackjack (Caleb, Jules ‘Blackjack’ Vinet)
No. 215 Decatur Street was an entirely different sort of archive. Here, the record of a man’s conduct was stored less often in ledgers than in the recollections of gamblers, bruisers, and gentlemen who had very good reasons to deny having met one another. Jules ‘Blackjack’ Vinet kept his coffee house in the commercial bustle near the river, where conversation and smoke were the principal occupations of the private rooms.
Caleb Grayson was shown in to see the fight backer who had hired him to look for the missing Frenchman. Vinet received him amid the smell of thick cigars, dressed in his usual conspicuous finery and apparently in no hurry to let the business interfere with his enjoyment of tobacco. He smiled, invited the report, and listened as Caleb laid out what he and his associates had learned.
Caleb explained that he was now working alongside other investigators retained by Adrien-Luc’s wife, the Comtesse Élodie de Valois-Bormes. Their inquiry had taken them through the missing man’s business affairs and his less respectable associations. Caleb’s judgment was that the Frenchman had probably died. If so, there was little prospect that Vinet would recover the fifteen-hundred-dollar marker he believed Adrien-Luc owed him.
“Dead, you think?” Vinet said, turning the cigar between his fingers. The smile remained in place. “Well, Ivan, that would be a poor return on an honest debt.”
He let the smoke rise toward the ceiling before changing the subject.
“There’s another name making its way about the streets,” Vinet observed. “Gator Vigne. I hear you and he had some hard words a few nights back. You know anything about what happened to him?”
Caleb acknowledged the encounter at the Black Cypress. He had questioned the Faro dealer about Adrien-Luc and the business had ended badly. Gator had taken offense to the questions, Caleb told him, but he and Lars had simply left. No blows had settled the argument, and Caleb had not seen the dealer afterward.
“Then perhaps you ought to hear the rest of the story,” Vinet said. “Gator’s dead.”
The information had begun circulating openly in New Orleans. Gator had been found in the St. Philip Street area, his throat cut. The body had been suspended upside down, Vinet said, like a hog in a slaughterhouse. The police knew there had been a killing, and the dead man had been taken to the morgue. Vinet offered none of this as a privileged official report. It was the kind of story which could travel through the river wards at remarkable speed.
He drew slowly on the cigar and exhaled. The pause did more work than a raised voice would have accomplished.
“You can see how that looks,” Vinet said. “A man has words with Gator, and then Gator turns up dead. I don’t say what happened. But people do like to make up their own minds.”
Caleb had described what actually occurred between himself and the dealer. Vinet neither made a direct charge nor suggested that the police had summoned him. He did, however, leave the circumstances standing between them as an uncomfortable piece of new business.
Then the proprietor’s tone became openly commercial. If Caleb could discover what had happened to Adrien-Luc, find where his body lay, identify the people with whom he had associated, and learn where those people were now, Vinet would double the money he had promised for the job. He wanted the Frenchman’s whole story, not merely a location or an uncollectible debt.
“There’s one thing more,” he said. “Three o’clock, every day. I want you here to tell me what you know. Not just where you’ve been. Your friends, too. What they’ve learned, what they’re doing, what the Comtesse has said, anything that comes your way. You understand?”
Caleb agreed. There was not much practical alternative to continuing an arrangement already undertaken, and the new terms made plain what Vinet expected from him. The doubled reward was still only a promise; the daily reports were the obligation he carried out of the room.
Vinet remained with his cigar and his coffee house. Caleb returned to the street and set off for Lars’s office, now carrying both a report of murder and a standing appointment that would reach into the affairs of all his investigative companions.
Later in the Afternoon – An Understanding at No. 18 (Lars, Caleb)
Lars was back at his Carondelet Street office when Caleb joined him. The place had been the center of a decidedly irregular operation the previous night, and the two men could be forgiven for treating an ordinary conversation across a desk as a welcome change from hauling sixty pounds of locked iron through the darkness. Yet Caleb’s news proved that the investigation had not become any more comfortable merely because the sun was up.
He told Lars what Vinet had said. Gaspard Vigne had been murdered, found with his throat slit and his body hung upside down in a St. Philip Street alley. Blackjack knew of Caleb’s earlier confrontation with the dealer and had taken pains to remark upon how damaging the circumstances might appear. More troubling in a practical sense was the new condition attached to Vinet’s doubled offer: a full report at three o’clock every day, including the activities of the other investigators and the affairs of the Comtesse.
The two former comrades considered the change. Vinet had seemed interested in a missing gambling debtor before. Now he wanted to know everything about the wider inquiry, down to the whereabouts and occupations of people who had not owed him a penny. Lars and Caleb wondered whether the fight backer might be connected with the larger matter they were attempting to unravel. Neither had proof of it, and the fact of Gator’s murder explained none of the circumstances surrounding Adrien-Luc.
“He wants the whole account, then,” Lars observed. “Every day.”
“Three o’clock,” Caleb confirmed. “And he wants to hear what the others are doing.”
They agreed Caleb would continue the reports. For the evening they intended to dine and then resume the search for Adrien-Luc’s last companions: the two women who had disappeared from their accustomed haunts and the pimp Balthazar ‘Silks’ Tremblay, whose whereabouts had also become elusive. Those leads might yet give them a clearer account of the missing merchant’s final night.
It was a plan, not an excursion yet completed. Their conference at the office was their last undertaking of the session; the night streets and their unanswered questions could wait. Across the city, Madeleine and Leopold were about to meet a man whose concerns were directed not toward gambling debts or insurance claims, but toward a heavy ring that had suddenly acquired a very handsome price.
Approximately 5:00 PM – The Man Off the Train (Madeleine, Leopold, Tinny Boudreaux)
The train came in amid the familiar business of porters, baggage, and passengers collecting themselves after travel. Madeleine and Leopold stood waiting for Étienne ‘Tinny’ Boudreaux, who had promised to return to New Orleans in response to the prospect of a wealthy purchaser for the ring. When he arrived, Leopold welcomed him and presented Madeleine as a companion with information that might prove useful to their negotiations.
“Mademoiselle Mercier,” Leopold said, completing the introduction. “She has taken an interest in the artifact and may be able to shed further light upon its history.”
Tinny had heard enough of Madeleine’s reputation to recognize the name, though his acquaintance with her was vague. He regarded the young woman with curiosity before turning to the more pressing matter of the business that had brought him down from the country.
A restaurant was proposed as a quieter place for the conversation. Tinny found the suggestion immediately agreeable. He was hungry, he announced, and plainly expected that the man who had called him back to New Orleans with news of ten thousand dollars would not begrudge him a proper dinner.
The three repaired to the Magnolia Dining Rooms, a comfortable establishment near the railway station, where they could speak without conducting their affairs upon the platform. Leopold and Madeleine ordered coffee. Tinny ordered a full meal and gave it his immediate attention.
Early Evening – Ten Thousand Dollars (Leopold, Madeleine, Tinny)
With Tinny occupied by the serious business of eating, Leopold described his consultation with Augustin Labat. The wealthy collector had examined the rubbings of the ring and, through his own historical materials, supplied a basis for identifying its remarkable origins. His interest had been unmistakable. If the actual artifact could be brought to his estate and authenticated by an independent appraiser of his choosing, Labat was prepared to authorize a purchase at ten thousand dollars.
Tinny set down his utensils. He had pressed Leopold for a buyer and a firm value, and the antiquarian had returned with a sum large enough to command his complete attention.
“Ten thousand,” Tinny repeated, savoring the figure. “That’s an elegant piece of business, Leo.”
“Conditional business,” Leopold corrected. “Monsieur Labat requires the ring in person. He will have it examined here in New Orleans, at his estate, by an independent authority. We must arrange a proper appointment for you, for him, and for the appraiser.”
Tinny was entirely willing to entertain the condition. Leopold would approach the Labat family at the earliest opportunity and send word when the appointment had been arranged. No money had yet changed hands; neither had Labat accepted the ring without examination. The old agreement between Tinny and Leopold, under which the antiquarian would receive ten percent of an eventual sale for securing a value and purchaser, still provided the basis for their dealings.
But there was more to establishing the value of an antique than identifying its age and persuading a collector to covet it. Leopold had a concern about title. Before anyone laid out ten thousand dollars for such a piece, the seller ought to be able to explain how it had come into his hands. A fine historical provenance was of little use if the law subsequently decided the owner had never been entitled to part with the object.
“There is another matter,” Leopold said. “Precisely where did you get this ring? We shall have to account for its ownership, not merely its workmanship.”
Tinny regarded him over the remains of his meal. On their first meeting he had declined to answer that very question, but the figure now under discussion encouraged a more accommodating view of disclosure.
Early Evening – Five Gold Dollars (Leopold, Madeleine, Tinny)
The story began at Solomon Kretchmer’s pawn shop on North Rampart Street. Kretchmer, Tinny explained, was an associate who occasionally brought an unusual article to his attention. When a bedraggled waterfront scavenger offered a remarkable ring, the pawnbroker recognized that it might appeal to Tinny and sent for him.
“The fellow called himself Catfish,” Tinny said. “Clovis LeBlanc, if you want the proper name. Filthy, drunk more often than sober, and carrying this thing as though it were no more than an ordinary trinket.”
Tinny had gone to the shop and bought the ring from Catfish himself, paying five gold dollars directly to the man who offered it. Once Catfish had departed, Tinny paid Kretchmer a separate five-dollar finder’s fee for alerting him to the opportunity. There had been no intervening buyer or later purchase from the shopkeeper; Tinny had made the bargain directly.
Leopold and Madeleine pressed him for the scavenger’s whereabouts. Tinny could provide only the general waterfront district in which the man was sometimes encountered. He had no reliable address and no idea where Catfish might be found on a given evening.
“A drunk street rat,” Tinny said with a dismissive gesture. “You might find him on the bank one day and hear nothing of him the next. If you want to hunt him down, you’ll have to do your own walking.”
It was enough to give the researchers a name and a stretch of the city in which to begin searching, but not enough to prove the ring’s history beyond Tinny’s purchase. Nothing in his account established where Catfish had obtained it. Leopold could not settle that question simply because the price had become attractive.
The dinner continued, with Tinny well pleased by the sum on offer and increasingly interested in the historical findings that had brought Leopold so far. Madeleine, who had listened closely, was anxious to examine the ring for reasons that had little to do with the arithmetic of the bargain.
Early Evening – A Curse for Sale (Madeleine, Leopold, Tinny)
Madeleine addressed the subject carefully. She had learned enough about the ring’s extraordinary associations to believe there might be genuine danger in handling it. She did not accuse Tinny of knowingly trafficking in evil, nor did she insist that a sensible gentleman must accept the language of curses as proven fact. She tried instead to convey the warning without allowing it to sound like the extravagant claims of a theatrical medium.
“There are accounts connected with objects of this kind that ought not to be dismissed,” she told them. “I believe it may be dangerous. Some would call such a thing cursed. I would ask you to be cautious with it.”
Tinny’s satisfaction faltered. A curse was not the sort of qualification a seller usually appreciated in the middle of discussing ten thousand dollars. He regarded Madeleine with an expression less hospitable than the one he had worn when Leopold introduced her at the station.
Leopold interposed a more commercial interpretation. The antiquarian observed that a convincing tradition of curses, however unsettling, might actually increase the desirability of so rare an object. Collectors were not strangers to paying extra for an interesting history, particularly when that history came attended by a useful degree of notoriety. If the circumstances warranted it, perhaps even Labat’s price could be reconsidered.
“A curse may do no harm to the valuation,” Leopold suggested. “Quite the contrary. We may need to renegotiate.”
He added that Madeleine would accompany him when they presented the ring for appraisal. Her reputation was known in fashionable circles, he explained, and her ‘act’ might provide an unusual advantage when the history of the object was discussed.
Madeleine rolled her eyes at the description, though she held her tongue. The remark reduced something she took seriously to a performance, but Leopold had succeeded in turning Tinny’s attention away from the prospect of a dangerous object and back toward its saleable qualities.
Tinny warmed to the arrangement. He was increasingly disposed to regard Madeleine’s participation as an asset rather than an inconvenience. Nothing more had yet been negotiated; the proposed purchase still depended upon Labat’s independent examination, and Madeleine’s warning remained a warning, not a demonstrated property of the ring.
After the Meal – Dessert and a Derringer (Madeleine, Leopold, Tinny)
When the waiter returned, Tinny announced that he would be pleased to have dessert and cognac in a private dining room, if the establishment could oblige him. He also made the financial arrangements clear.
“My friend here will see to the account,” he informed the waiter, indicating Leopold.
A room was available. The waiter conducted them away from the general dining area, and presently the three sat in greater privacy with their drinks poured. Tinny’s dessert had been set before him. Only then did he reach into his waistcoat and produce the ring.
It was not displayed upon an open palm. A stout piece of twine had been fastened to it, with a noose at the other end. Tinny slipped the noose about the middle finger of one hand, leaving the ring itself dangling some six inches below. He had no intention of allowing a valuable object to pass beyond his immediate control merely because his companions wished to admire it.
“You may have a look, Leo,” Tinny said. “But understand that my other hand is on my Derringer.”
Leopold did not mistake the warning for social pleasantry. He leaned forward to inspect the artifact without asking the fence to surrender it. The heavy band, its improbable union of Spanish Baroque goldwork and strange Mesoamerican imagery, was now familiar through rubbings, scholarly interpretation, and the colonial testimonies examined earlier that day. Here it was at last before him again, suspended upon a piece of string above the table.
He scrutinized the object and was completely satisfied with his assessment of its value and historical provenance. That confidence did not, of course, establish lawful ownership; Catfish remained a man to be found. But the physical ring was everything Leopold had reason to believe it was.
Madeleine had been waiting for an opportunity to examine it herself. She asked for the chance to make a closer reading. Tinny continued to hold the twine, and she prepared carefully, clearing her mind for approximately a minute while the others waited.
Then she reached toward the hanging ring and touched it lightly between the tips of her two index fingers.
The Instant of Contact – The Stillness (Madeleine, Leopold, Tinny)
Madeleine stopped moving.
There was no startled cry, no convulsion, and no visible struggle. One moment she had been concentrating upon the ring; the next she remained fixed in the posture of that light touch, her two index fingers against the metal. Her eyes did not shift. She did not answer.
From the other side of the table, Leopold and Tinny saw a young woman who had become unnaturally still. The ring continued to hang from its cord; Tinny still held the noose about his finger. Seconds passed in which neither man could distinguish deliberate performance from some condition he did not understand.
Within Madeleine’s experience, the stillness was absolute. The private dining room, the men, the last motion of the world itself seemed to halt. Sound ceased entirely. She could not turn her head, move a limb, or divert her eyes. Even the smallest effort to alter her position accomplished nothing. She could only look at what lay before her.
The tips of her fingers began to blacken.
The change was slow enough to be watched and too steady to be mistaken for a passing shadow. The blackness crept along both fingers until they were wholly dark. Then it moved through her hands. With it came cold—not the ordinary discomfort of an unheated room, but a chill that advanced through her body as the color advanced before her sight. It reached her wrists, rose along her arms, and entered her shoulders. From there it spread into her chest and climbed through her neck.
She remained unable to move. The darkness traveled into her face. When it reached her eyes, the last visible part of the world disappeared.
The Same Three Minutes – The Arms of the Jaguar (Madeleine)
She could see nothing. Cold and darkness had closed about her so completely that she felt wrapped within them. She remained immobilized, held in a confinement she could neither loosen nor escape. The silence was as complete as before; there was no voice to explain what had occurred and no familiar object by which to judge her surroundings.
Then, somewhere above her, there was light.
In that light she became aware of another sensation. She was no longer merely confined. She was being held. Some immense presence supported her within its arms, and she was swaddled in a wrapping like an infant. She looked upward from that impossible embrace.
Above her was a great black jaguar.
The creature was enormous. From its fangs blood dripped, the dark points of its jaws made unmistakable by the light overhead. Yet it did not regard her as prey. Its gaze upon her, and the manner in which it held her, possessed the terrible tenderness of something comforting a small child. The blood upon the teeth and the shelter of the arms belonged to the same vision, and neither explained the other.
There was nothing more that she could afterwards remember. No words, no further image, no answer to the question of what she had seen. Her next remembered experience would be waking in her own bed at the Mercier Villa.
The Same Three Minutes – Enough of the Act (Leopold, Tinny, Madeleine)
In the private dining room no such creature was visible. Madeleine’s fingers remained against the ring. Approximately thirty seconds had gone by when Tinny, increasingly inclined to treat the silence as a flourish of stagecraft, spoke up.
“You can stop the act now, Mademoiselle,” he said.
She did not stir. The minutes lengthened. Leopold tried a firmer appeal.
“All right, Madeleine. That’s enough.”
The words produced no change. Tinny reached toward her hands and attempted to separate her fingers from the metal. He could not. The young woman’s posture was rigid, and her fingertips remained fixed in place as though the simple act of touching the ring had become a physical restraint.
At last the two men worked together. Between them, they managed to disengage Madeleine’s index fingers from the suspended band. The ring remained under Tinny’s control; Madeleine was freed from contact with it. About three minutes had passed since she first reached out.
Her awareness of the room appeared to return, but there was no corresponding return of her ordinary manner. Leopold and Tinny found themselves looking at someone who had come back from the briefest of touches in an altered condition.
Early Evening – A Child’s Drawing (Madeleine, Leopold, Tinny)
Madeleine reached for her drawing pad and pencils. She set to work with an urgent simplicity entirely unlike the practiced renderings she had produced during earlier readings. The lines were enormous and awkward. She made a two-dimensional thing with fangs, a great shape composed with the unsteady confidence of a very young child whose pencil had never been troubled by the rules of perspective.
The drawing had the extravagant innocence of something a doting relation might proudly hang beside the family kitchen cupboard. It was scarcely an intelligible picture of the terror whose outline it attempted to preserve.
More troubling than the drawing was Madeleine’s behavior. She spoke and responded like a small child. Her accustomed social poise and the careful control with which she normally approached her gift were absent. Tinny watched the spectacle with increasing delight. He had taken her earlier warning about the ring for an eccentricity, and the strange performance now seemed, to his commercial imagination, a marvel that might impress even the most difficult collector.
“Well, that’s fantastic,” he said at last. “A wonderful act. I do hope she can do it again.”
Tinny eventually announced that he must be on his way. He retained the ring, and there was no further agreement beyond Leopold’s undertaking to arrange the appointment with Labat. He departed believing he had witnessed an extraordinary feat of entertainment.
Leopold continued trying to interact with Madeleine after the fence had gone. The more he observed her altered speech and conduct, the clearer it became that the young woman was not deliberately playing a part. Something was wrong, and he had no explanation for it. He settled the restaurant bill, found a cab, and took her home.
Later That Evening – The Mercier Villa (Madeleine, Leopold)
The carriage carried them away from the restaurant and back through the darkening streets toward the Mercier Villa. Madeleine remained strangely childlike, and the effort of what had happened seemed to have left her thoroughly exhausted. Leopold could guide her home, but could not account for the condition into which the ring had thrown her.
At the house she went to her room, threw herself upon the bed, and surrendered to sleep. Leopold had seen enough to recognize the difficulty, but not enough to understand it. He hoped that rest and time might restore her. Rather than bring her father’s attention down upon them or invite explanations before he possessed one, he did what he could to avoid Dr. Alphonse Mercier and the rest of the household.
He turned to the work he could manage. The notes from the Ursuline Archives lay beside the information he had obtained from Tinny; the name of Catfish, the description of the purchase, and the eyewitness testimony of a long-dead planter presented problems of provenance and ownership that could not be solved at a dinner table. Leopold organized the day’s findings and prepared a request to the Labat family. He wished to call on them the following day to discuss the artifact and, if possible, arrange the independent appraisal upon which their prospective purchase depended.
In her room, Madeleine eventually awoke. The first thing she could remember after the image of the black jaguar was the bed about her. She had no recollection of her childlike words at the restaurant, of the coarse drawing she had made there, or of the journey home. But the vision itself remained. She took up her drawing materials and made another picture, this time attempting to render with her ordinary ability what she had actually seen in that immense, terrible embrace.
The second drawing was distinct from the childish image made at the restaurant. It showed the black jaguar as Madeleine remembered it. Even when she had finished, the sight of her own rendering unsettled her. She rolled the sheet tightly and placed it in her drawing tube rather than leave it exposed before her.
Approximately 8:30 PM – The Dinner Bell (Leopold, Madeleine)
Leopold finished the written request for the Labats and stepped into the hallway to entrust it to a servant. The note asked permission to call the following day to discuss the ring and establish the particulars of an appraisal. It was a request, not an appointment; no answer had yet been obtained.
The servant took the message. Somewhere in the house, the dinner bell sounded. It was approximately half past eight.
Leopold looked along the corridor. Madeleine was standing there.
She still wore her dress, now disheveled, and had drawn a comforter from her bed around her shoulders. She looked like someone who had emerged from an unusually troubled sleep and brought half the bedclothes with her. Yet when she spoke, the strange childish manner had gone. Her voice sounded like Madeleine’s own again.
“Why is everything so cold?”