So too, I more and more suspect, is Jerome Bray of Lily Dale — more exactly, of “Comalot,” as he has without irony renamed his strange habitation — on whom I paid a call before crossing to Canada. Even to me that man is an enigma: certainly mad, but as certainly not simply mad. His extraordinary machine, or simulacrum of a machine — you really must see it. And his “honey dust,” of whose peculiar narcotic virtue there can be no question…! He is doing us the service, unwittingly, of removing Jane’s daughter from the number of competitors for Harrison Mack’s fortune, while however adding himself to the number of our problems. For him too I have certain plans, and have urged him down to Bloodsworth Island for the “Burning of Washington” four days hence — but how surer I would feel of that strategy if I could review it with you, and you ratify it!
I have, moreover, two further problems of the most intimate and urgent sort, Henry, on which your consultation is of such importance to me that I must, insofar as I can, compel it.
Mrs. Harrison Mack now proposes to become Mrs. André Castine on September 30. (She specified “the end of the month,” leaving the precise date to me. Still amused by the Anniversary View of History, I considered the equinox, when at 9 A.M. in 4004 B.C. the world is said to have begun; but I chose at last the 30th, anniversary of our ancestor Ebenezer Cooke’s inadvertent loss of his Maryland estate in 1694 and, rather earlier, of the legendary loss of another prime piece of real estate: Adam and Eve’s expulsion from Eden.) For convenience’ sake, I have in mind to kill off “Andrew Cook VI” by some accident before that date. I am, you know, under that name, also in some second-cousinly relation to my fiancée: I propose therefore—unless as prime beneficiary you appear within 30 days of the date of your father’s death—to bequeath to Jane Mack my properties on Bloodsworth Island and Chautaugua Road. I shall cause obituary notices to be published promptly in the leading Quebec and Ontario newspapers as well as those of Maryland and the District of Columbia: the next move will be yours. “André Castine” looks forward to welcoming you (either here or at “Barataria”) as his own son!
On the other hand — for reasons that I shan’t set forth in writing but will be relieved to share with you at last in person, as they pertain to you intimately indeed — my coming forth publicly as André Castine to marry Jane raises problems of its own concerning that historian I’ve mentioned before: Professor Germaine Pitt, Lady Amherst, who was to have edited, annotated, and published this series of letters. It will scarcely be enough to see to her reappointment to the post about to be vacated by Andrew Cook’s death; something further is called for. We must discuss it!
And Baratarian, that fleet and sturdy fellow, who when I fetch him from the Annapolis yard this weekend will have tankage enough to run from Bloodsworth Island to Yucatan with but one pit stop, and enough secret stowage in his teak and holly joinery to fetch back a high-profit cargo along with the marlin and wahoo we are officially after. One trip, at current prices, will come near to financing us for half a year, and not even the crew need know (indeed ought not, for it is paid informants, not adroit law officers, who precipitate arrests in this line of work). But I cannot navigate both Baratarian and Barataria, or manage to our cause both Jane and Mary Jane. Come, son, and let us to Isla Mujeres, the Isle of Women!
There Jean Lafitte — alias “Jean Lafflin” or “Laffin”—is reported to have come in November 1821 to la fin du chemin, ambushed by Mexican soldiers not impossibly informed of his coming by Andrew Cook IV. So at least speculated my grandfather, Andrew V, on what grounds he did not say. It is by no means established beyond doubt that Lafitte died then and there; other legends extend his pseudonymous life to 1854. What is known is that in latter 1821, pressed by the U.S. Revenue Marine, he boarded his schooner Pride (possibly the Jean Blanque under alias of its own), abandoned “Galvez-Town,” and disappeared. Moreover, that his connection with Andrew IV, once so brotherly, had long since deteriorated into mutual suspicion and distrust.
What a falling off, between that P.S. to the first of these letters (where his fondest wish is to unite his “darling wife” with his “true brother”) and the opening of this last!
3*64;:(8¶8);*‡76‡;:905:5(;82
GNIHTYREVESTNIOPOTYMLAYARTEB
Everything points to my betrayal
