What choice did I have? “Of course.”

“I’m delighted to hear it. I fully intend to return the Baudelaire Society to its rightful place as the most prestigious literary society in France. But currently, I am its only voting member. Without another member to second my motions, nothing can be done. The Society is in a state of complete paralysis.”

So am I, I thought to myself. Despite my misgivings, he was so relentlessly compelling that he left me no opportunity to leave him without causing offense. As the afternoon progressed, I decided that perhaps this wasn’t such a bad thing. I’d left the island to find him, after all, and now, apparently, here he was. And with the others gone, now that I’d found him, I had nowhere else to go.

After we had eaten, he persuaded me to return to the Society on the Île Saint-Louis. He wanted to show me something, he said. He led me to the library. I studied my surrounds discreetly as we went, once again astonished at how little things had changed in the three decades of my absence. Once at our destination, Artopoulos pulled out a slim volume bound in carmine leather and embossed in gold. He opened a page at random. I immediately recognized the long, sloping handwriting. “A short story by Charles Baudelaire, completely unknown to the world. ‘The Education of a Monster.’” Artopoulos was testing my composure to its limits. I had to suppress the mnemonic torrent that came with the sight of it. Once again I felt myself under an especially perceptive scrutiny, and once again I felt compelled to dissemble my emotions and simulate a perfect ignorance. No easy task.

“Is it any good?”

“It is, perhaps, the truest thing he ever wrote.”

I hesitated, unsure how to proceed. “I should very much like to read it.”

“And you shall have your wish, old chap, once you are a member. We shall attend to that this very day.”

From the Society, we proceeded to his apartment on Boulevard Haussmann. He kept me enthralled so long into the night that, at his invitation, I slept in his guest room. We had, somehow, become instantly inseparable. But below the surface, something far more sinister was afoot, and I had confirmation of it the following day, in the Labrouste Reading Room at the national library, when I found a newspaper article reporting on the recent deaths of Édmonde de Bressy and Lucien Roeg. The account Artopoulos had given me was entirely accurate, other than the omission of a single, crucial detail: the two bodies had been found with their eyes gouged out. I wept hot, silent tears right there in the reading room. I thought of Koroli, the old man at the mission who, after speaking with me, had been murdered in the same way. The evidence wasn’t conclusive, but all the clues pointed in the same direction: it seemed I had found my target. Mehevi, or rather Joubert, had positioned himself at the exact center of the web. And yet, having caught me, why hadn’t he finished me off? It would become the enduring mystery of our friendship.