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The Purloined Letter copy

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18 Jul 2024
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For an hour at least, we had maintained a profound silence while each, to an casual observer, might have seemed intently and exclusively occupied with the curling edeeds of smoke that oppressed the atmosphere of the chamber. For myself, however, I was mentally discussing certain topics which had formed a matter of conversation between us at an earlier period of the evening. I mean the affair of the Rue Morg and the mystery attending the murder of Marie Rogette. I looked upon it, therefore, as something of a coincidence. One door of our apartment was thrown open and omitted our old acquaintance, Monsieur G, the prefect of the Parisian police. We gave him a hearty welcome, for there was nearly half as much of the entertaining as of the contemptible of the man, and we had not seen him for several years. We had been sitting in the dark and Dupin now arose for the purpose of lighting the lamp, but sat down again without doing so, upon G saying that he had called to consult us or rather to ask the opinion of my friend about some official business which had occasioned a great deal of trouble. If it is any point of requiring reflection, observe Dupin as he forebought to entend her the wick. We shall examine it to better purpose in the dark. 'That is another of your odd notions,' said the prefect, through the fashion of calling everything odd that was beyond its comprehension, unless lived amid an absolute legion of oddities. 'Very true,' said Dupin, as he supplied his visitor with a pipe and rolled toward him a comfortable chair. 'And what is the difficulty now?' I asked. 'Nothing more in the assassination way, I hope.' 'Oh, no, nothing of that nature.' 'The fact is, the business is very simple indeed, and I make no doubt that we can manage it sufficiently well ourselves.' 'But then I thought Dupin would like to hear the details of it because it is so excessively odd.' 'Simple and odd,' said Dupin. 'Why, yes, and not exactly that either. 'The fact is, we have opened a good deal puzzle because the affair is so simple and yet baffles us all together.' 'Perhaps it is the very simplicity of the thing which puts you at fault,' said my friend. 'What nonsense you do talk,' replied the prefect, laughing quietly. 'Perhaps the mystery is just a little too plain,' said Dupin. 'Oh, good heavens, whoever heard of such an idea.' 'A little too self-evident.' 'Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!' roared our visitor, profoundly amused. 'Oh, Ho, Dupin, you will be the death of me yet.' 'And what, after all, he is the matter on hand,' I asked. 'Why, I will tell you,' replied the prefect, as he gave a long and steady and contemplative puff and settled himself in his chair. 'It will tell you in a few words, but before I begin, let me caution you that this is an affair that may need the greatest secrecy and that I should most probably lose the position I now hold. Would it known that I can fight it to anyone?' 'Proceed,' said I. 'For not,' said Dupin. 'Well then, I have received personal information from a very high quarter that the certain document of the last importance has been 'perloin' from the royal apartments. The individual who 'perloin' it is known, this beyond a doubt, he was seen to take it. It is known also that it still remains in his possession.' 'How is this known?' asked Dupin. 'It is clearly inferred,' replied the prefect, 'from the nature of the document, and from the non-appearance of certain results, which would at once arise for its passing out of the robber's possession. That is to say, from his employing it, as he must design in the end to employ it.' 'Be a little more explicit,' I said. 'Well, I am a venture so far as to say that the paper gives a total 'a certain power, in a certain quarter, where such power is immensely valuable. The prefect was fond of the cant of diplomacy. Still I do not quite understand,' said Dupin. 'No? Well, the disclosure of the document to a third person, who shall be nameless, would bring in question the honour of a personage of what exalted station, and this fact gives the honour holder of the document an ascendancy over the illustrious personage whose honour and peace are so jeopardised. But this ascendancy, I interposed, would depend upon the robber's knowledge of the loser's knowledge of the robber. 'Who would dare the thief,' said G, 'is the minister deep, who dares all things, those unbecoming, as well as those becoming a man? The method of the theft was not less ingenious than bold. The document in question, a letter, to be frank, had been received by the personage robbed while alone in the royal boudoir. The units were used while she was suddenly interrupted by the entrance of the other exalted personage from whom, especially, it was a wish to conceal it. After a hurried and vain endeavour to thrust it in the drawer, she was forced to place it, open as it was, upon a table. The address, however, was uppermost, and the contents thus unexposed, the letter escaped notice. At this juncture enters the minister deep. His link-side immediately perceives the paper, recognises the handwriting of the address, observes the confusion of the personage addressed, and fathoms a secret. After some business transactions hurried through in his ordinary manner, he produces a letter somewhat similar to the one in question, opens it, pretends to read it, and then places it in close juxtaposition to the other. Again, he converses for some fifteen minutes upon the public affairs. At length in taking leave, he takes also from the table the letter to which he had no claim. It's right for owners saw, but, of course, did not call attention to the act, in the presence of the third personage who stood at her elbow. The minister succumbed, leaving his own letter, one of no importance, upon the table. Here, then, said Dupendy me, you have precisely achieved the man to make the ascendancy complete. The robber's knowledge of the loser's knowledge of the robber. Yes, replied the preacher, and the power thus attained has, for some months past, been welded for political purposes to a very dangerous extent. The persona drabs more thoroughly convinced every day of the necessity of reclaiming her letter. But this, of course, cannot be done openly. In fine, driven to despair, she has committed the matter to me. Then whom, said Dupendy, am in a perfect whirlwind of smoke? No more, sir, geysus, agent could, I suppose, be desired, or even imagined. "Your flatter me," replied the preacher. "But it is possible that some such opinion may have been entertained." "It is clear," said I, as you observe, that the letter is still in the possession of the minister. Since it is this possession, and not any employment of the letter, which bestows the power, with the employment of the power departs. "True," said G, "an upon this conviction I proceeded. My first care was to make thorough search of the minister's hotel, and hear my chief embarrassment lay in the necessity of searching without his knowledge. Beyond all things, I have been warned of the danger which would result from giving him reason to suspect our design. "But," said I, "you are quite off the day in these investigations. The Parisian police have done this thing often before." "Oh, yes, and for this reason I did not despair. The habits of the minister gave me, too, a great advantage. He is frequently absent from home all night. His servants are by no means numerous. They sleep at a distance from their master's apartment, and, being chiefly near palletons, are readily made drunk. I have keys, as you know, with which I can open any chamber or cabinet in Paris. For three months, an night has not passed, during the greater part of which I have not been engaged personally, and ransacking the deep hotel. My honor is interested, and to mention a great secret, the reward is enormous. So I did not abandon the search until I had become fully satisfied that the tea was a more astute man than myself. I fancy that I have investigated every nook and corner of the premises in which it is possible that the paper can be concealed. "But is it not possible," I suggest him, "that although the letter may be in possession of the minister," I said in question of the "is," he may have conceived it elsewhere, and upon his own premises, "this is barely possible," said Dupont. "The present peculiar condition of affairs at court, and especially of those entreegs in which D is known to be involved, would render the instant availability of the document. Its susceptibility of being produced at a moment's notice, a point of nearly equal importance with its possession. Its susceptibility of being produced," said I, "that is to say, of being destroyed," said Dupont. "True," I observed. "The paper is clearly, then, upon the premises. As for its being upon the person of the minister, we may consider that as out of the question." "Entirely," said the prefect. "He has been twice where it has applied foot-pads, and his person rigidly serves under my own inspection." "You might have spared yourself this trouble," said Dupont. "The, I presume, is not altogether a fool, and, if not, must have anticipated these way lanes as a matter of course." "Not altogether a fool," said Dupont, "and he is a poet, try to take to be only one removed from a fool." "True," said Dupont, after a long and thoughtful whiff from his miasheme, "although I have been guilty of certain doggar on myself." "Suppose you detail," said I, "the particulars of your search." "Why, the fact is, we took our time, and we searched everywhere. I have had long experience in these affairs. I took the entire building, a room I wrote in the nights of a whole week to each. We examined, first, the furniture of each apartment. We opened every possible drawer, and I presume you know that, to a properly trained police agent, such a thing as a secret drawer is impossible. Any man is a don't who permits a secret drawer to escape him in a search of this kind. The thing is so plain. There is a certain amount of bulk of space to be accounted for in every cabinet. Then we have accurate rules. The fiftieth part of a line could not escape us. After the cabinets we took the chairs. The cushions we put over the fine long needles you have seen me employ. From the tables we removed the tops." "Why so?" "Sometimes the top of the table or other similar arranged piece of furniture is removed by the person wishing to conceal the article. Then, the leg is excavated, the article deposited within the cavity, and the top replaced. The bottoms and tops of bed-post are employed in the same way. "But could not the cavity be detected by sounding?" I asked. "By no means, if, when the article is deposited, sufficient to what in of cotton be placed around it. Besides, in our case, we are obliged to proceed with our noise. But you could not have removed, you could not have taken pieces all articles of furniture in which it would have been possible to make it a positive manner you mentioned. I let her maybe be compressed into a thin spiral roll, not differing much in shape or bulk from a large knitting needle. And in this form it might be inserted in the wrong of a chair, for example. You did not take the pieces of all the chairs. Certainly not, but we did better. We examined the runs of every chair in the hotel, and indeed, the joininges of every description of furniture by the AWS' powerful microscope. Had there been any traces of recent disturbance, we should not have failed to detect it instantly. A single grain of gimlet dust, for example, would have been as obvious as an apple, and the disorder in the gluing, and the unusual gaping in the joints, would have surprised to ensure detection. I presume you looked to the mirrors between the boards and the plates, and you probed the beds and the bedclothes, as well as the curtains and carpets. That, of course, and when we had absolutely completed every particle of the furniture in this way, then we examined the house itself. We divided its entire surface into compartments, which we numbered, so that none might be missed. Then we scrutinized each individual square and throughout the premises, including the two houses immediately adjoining, with the microscope, as before. "The two houses are joining," I exclaimed. "You must have had a great deal of trouble." We had, but the award offered is prodigious. You include the grounds above the houses. While the grounds are paved with brick, they gave us comparatively little trouble. We examined the moss between the bricks, and found it undisturbed. You looked among these papers, of course, and into the books of the library? Certainly. We opened every package and parcel. We not only opened every book, but we turned over every leaf and every value, not contending ourselves with mere shake, according to the fashion of some of our police officers. We also measured the thickness of every book cover with the most accurate measurement, and supplied to each the most jealous scrutiny of the microscope. At any other bindings we recently metered with, it would have been utterly impossible that the fracture would have escaped observation. Some five or six volumes, just from the hands of the binder, we carefully probed, longitudinally, with the needles. You explored the floors beneath the carpets, beyond doubt. We removed every carpet and examined the boards with the microscope. And the paper on the walls? Yes. You looked until the cellars. We did. Then, I said, you've been making a miscalculation, and the letter is not upon the premises as you suppose. I feel you are right there, so the prefect. And now, Japan, what would you advise me to do? To make the research of the premises. That is absolutely needless, replied G. I am not more sure than I breathe than I am that the letter is not at a hotel. I have no better advice to give you, said Japan. You have, of course, an accurate description of the letter. Oh, yes. And here, the prefect, producing a memorandum book, proceeded to read aloud a minute account of the internal, and especially of the external, appearance of the missing document. Soon after finishing the poosle of this description, he took his departure, more entirely depressed in spirit than I had ever known the good gentleman before. And about a month afterward, he paid us another visit, and found us occupied very nearly as before. Took a pipe and a chair, and entered into some ordinary conversation. At length, I said, well, but Gee, what the prolonged letter? I presume you have at last made up your mind that there is no such thing as overreaching the minister? Confound him, say I. Yes. I mean the reexamination, however, as Dupin suggested, but it was all labor lost as I knew it would be. How much was the reward offered, did you say? As Dupin? Why, very great deal, a very liberal reward. I don't like to say how much, precisely, but one thing I will say, that I wouldn't mind giving my individual check for 50,000 francs to anyone who could obtain me that letter. The fact is, it is becoming more and more important every day, and the reward has been lately doubled. If it were troubled, however, I could do no more than I have done. Why, yes, said Dupin, drawing me between the wiffs of his Miersham. I really think, Gee, you have not exerted yourself to the utmost in this manner. You might do a little more, I think, eh? How? In what way? Why, you might employ counsel in the matter, eh? Do you remember the story they tell of Abernathy? No, hang Abernathy! To be sure, hang him and welcome, but, once upon a time, a certain rich miser conceived the design of sponging upon this Abernathy for a medical opinion. Getting up, for this purpose, an ordinary conversation in a private company, he insinuated his case to the physician, as that of an imaginary individual. "We will suppose," said the miser, "that these symptoms are such and such. Now, doctor, what would you have directed him to take?" "Take," said Abernathy. "Why, take advice, to be sure." "But," said the prefect, a little discomposed, "I am perfectly willing to take advice and to pay for it. I would really give 50,000 francs to anyone who would aid me in a matter." "In that case," replied Dupin, opening a drawer and producing a checkbook, "you may as well fill me up a check for the amount mentioned. When you have signed it, I will hand you the letter." I was astounded, the prefect appeared absolutely thunderstorm. For some minutes he remained speechless and motionless, looking incredulously in my friend with open mouth, and eyes that seemed starting from their sockets. Then, apparently recovering himself in some measure, he seized a pen, and after several pauses in vacant stairs, finally filled up and signed a check for 50,000 francs and handed it across the table to Dupin. The letter examined it carefully and deposited it in his pocketbook. Then, unlocking an escretoir, took then a letter and gave it to the prefect. This function erink grasped it in a perfect agony of joy, opened it with a trembling hand, cast a rapid glance at its contents, and then, scrambling and struggling to the door, trusted length unceremoniously from the room and from the house without having uttered a syllable since Dupin had requested him to fill up the check. When he had gone, my friend entered into some explanations. "The Parisian police," he said, "are exceedingly able in their way. They are persevering, ingenious, cunning, and thoroughly versed in knowledge which inner duties seem chiefly to demand. Thus, when G detailed to us his mode of searching the premises of the Hotel D, I felt entire confidence in his having made a satisfactory investigation. So far as his labor is extended. So far as his labor is extended," said I. "We all have somewhere we're trying to get to. As the largest energy producer in Colorado, Chevron is helping meet rising demand, and we're working to do it responsibly. Our next-gen, tankless facilities reduce the greenhouse gas emissions of our operations by more than 90 percent compared to our older designs, working to provide Colorado with energy that's affordable, reliable, and ever cleaner. So everyone can get to where they want to be. You've arrived. That's Energy in Progress. Visit chevron.com/tankless. Yes, said Dupin. The measures adopted were not only the best of their kind, but carried out to absolute perfection. Had the letter been deposited within the range of their search, these fellows would, beyond a question, have found it. I merely laughed, but he seemed quite serious and already said. The measures, then, he continued, were good in their kind and well executed. Their defect lay in their being in applicable to the case and to the man. A certain set of highly ingenious resources are, with the prefect, a sort of pro-Christian bed, to which he forcibly adapts his designs. But he perpetually airs by being too deep or too shallow for the matter in hand, and many a schoolboy is a better reasoner than he. I knew one about eight years of age, who successive guessing in the game of even an odd, attracted universal admiration. This game is simple and is played with marbles. One player holds in his hand a number of these toys in the man's of another, whether that number is eaten or odd. The guess is right. The guesser wins one, if wrong. He loses one. The boy to whom I elude won all the marbles of the school. Of course he had some principle of guessing, and this lay in mere observation and a measurement of the astuteness of his opponents. For example, an errand simpleton is his opponent and, holding up his closed hand, asks, are they even or odd? While a schoolboy replies, odd, and loses. But upon the second trial, he wins, or he then says to himself. The simpleton had them even upon the first trial, and his amount of cunning is just sufficient to make him have them odd upon the second. I will therefore guess odd. He guesses odd and wins. Now, with a simpleton degree above the first, he would have reasoned thus. This fellow finds that in the first instance I guessed odd, and the second he will propose to himself upon the first impulse, a simple variation from even to odd, as did the first simpleton. But then a second thought was that this is too simple a variation, and finally he would decide upon putting it even as before. I will therefore guess even, when he guesses even, and wins. Now, this mode of reasoning in the schoolboy, whom his fellows termed "lucky." What, in its last analysis, is it? "It is merely," I said, an identification of the reasoners intellect for that of his opponent. "It is," said Dupen. An upon inquiring of the boy, by what means he affected the third or identification in which his success consisted, I received answers as follows. When I wished to find out how wise, or how stupid, or how good, or how wicked is anyone, or what are his thoughts of the moment, I'd fashion the expression of my face as accurately as possible, in accordance with the expression of his, and then we'd to see what thoughts or sentiments arise to my mind, or heart, as if to match or correspond with the expression. This response of the schoolboy lies at the bottom of all the spurious profundity which has been attributed to Rockefeller called "pul abreir," to Machiavelli, and to Campanella. "And the identification," I said, "for the reasoners intellect with that of his opponent depends, if I understand you are right, upon the accuracy with which the opponent's intellect is enmeshed. For its practical value, it depends upon this," replied Dupen, "and the prefect and his cohort fail so frequently, first by default of this identification, and secondly, by a lead measurement, or rather through nonad measurement, of the intellect with which they are engaged, that consider only the own ideas of ingenuity, and in searching for anything hidden, advert only to the modes in which they would have hidden it. They are right in this much, that their own ingenuity is a faithful representative of that of the mass, but when the cunning of the individual felon is diverse in character from their own, the felon foils them, of course. This always happens when it is above their own, and very usually when it is below. They have no variation of principle in their investigations, at best, when urged by some unusual emergency, by some extraordinary reward. They extend or exaggerate their own modes of practice without touching their principles. What, for example, in this case of D, has been done to vary the principle of action. What is all this boring, and probing, and sounding, and scrutinizing with the microscope, and dividing the surface of the building into registered square inches? What is at all but an exaggeration of the application of a one principle or a set of principles of search, which are based upon the one set of notions regarding human ingenuity, to which the prefect, the one routine of his duty, has been accustomed. Do not see, has taken it for granted that all men proceed to conceal a letter, not exactly in a gimlet hole board and a chair leg, but at least in some out-of-the-way hole or corner suggested by the same tenor thought which would urge a man to secrete a letter and gimlet hole board and a chair leg. And do you not see, also, that such nooks for concealment are adapted only for ordinary occasions, and would be adopted only by ordinary intellects. For, in all cases of concealment, a disposal of the article concealed, disposal of it in this manner, is, in the very first instance, presumably unpresumed. And thus its discovery depends, not at all upon the acumen, but altogether upon the mere care, patience, and determination of the seekers, where the cases of importance or what amounts to the same thing in the political eyes, when the reward is of magnitude, the qualities in question have never been known to fail. You will now understand what I meant in suggesting that, at the purloin letter, been hidden anywhere within the limits of the prefect's examination. In other words, had the principle of its concealment been comprehended within the principles of the prefect, its discovery would have been a matter altogether beyond question. This functionery, however, has been thoroughly mystified, and the remote source of his defeat lies in the supposition that the minister is a fool because he is quiet and renowned as a poet. All fools are poets. This, the prefect, feels, and is merely guilty of a non-disturbator or mid-eye, and is inferring that all poets are fools. "But is this really the poet?" I asked. "Have a two brothers, I know, and both have attained reputation in letters. The minister, I believe, has written nothing on the differential calculus. He is a mathematician, and no poet. You are mistaken. I know him well. He is both. As poet and mathematician he would reason well. As mere mathematician he could not have reasoned it all, and that sort of meant the mercy of the prefect." "You surprise me," I said, by these opinions, which have been contradicted by the voice of the world. "You do not mean to set it not the well-digested idea of centuries. The mathematical reason has long been regarded as the reason par exonauts." "They are, uh, perrier," replied Dupin, quoting from Champaud. "Here, tutor, idea, public, to take convention, recue, as then so to say, 'Challa, or convince you of Blue Scram Numbre. The mathematicians, I grant you, have done their best to promulgate the popular error to which you elude, and which is nonetheless an error for its promulgation as truth. With an art worthy of better cause, for example, they've insinuated the term analysis into application to algebra. The French are the originators of this particular deception, but if a term is of any importance, its words derive any value from applicability that analysis conveys algebra about as much as enlightened impetus, implies ambition, religio-religion, or hominous, honest eye, a set of honorable men. "You have a quarrel on hand, I see," said I, "for some of the algebraist of Paris, but proceed." "I dispute the availability, and thus the value of that reason which is cultivated in any special form other than the abstractly logical. I dispute, in particular, the reason edited by mathematical study. The mathematics are the science of form and quantity. Mathematical reasoning is merely logic applied to observation upon form and quantity. The great error lies in supposing that even the truths of what is called pure algebra are abstract or general truths, and this error is so egregious that I am confounded at the universality with which it has been received. Mathematical axioms are not axioms of general truth. What is true of relation of form and quantity is often grossly false in regard to morals, for example. In this latter science, it is very usually untrue that the aggregated parts are equal to the whole. In chemistry also, the axiom fails. In the consideration of motive, it fails. For two motives, each of a given value have not necessarily a value when united equals to the sum other values apart. There are numerous other mathematical truths which are only truths within the limits of relation. But the mathematician argues from his funny truths through habit as if they were of an absolutely general applicability, as the world indeed imagines them to be. Bryant and his very learned mythology mentions an analogous source of error when he says that although the pagan fables are not believed, yet we forget ourselves continually and make inferences from them as existing realities. With the algebraist, however, who are pagans themselves, the pagan fables are believed, and the inferences are made. Not so much through lapse of memory as through an unaccountable addling of the brains. In short, I never yet encountered the mere mathematician who could be trusted at the equal roots. A one who did not clandestinely hold it as a point of his faith that x squared plus px was absolutely an unconditionally equal to q. Say to one of these gentlemen who, by way of experiment, if you please, do you believe occasions may occur where x squared plus px is not altogether equal to q, and having made him understand what you mean, get out of his reach a speed of his convenient, for beyond out he will endeavor to knock you down. I mean to say, continued to pin, while I merely laughed at his last observations, that if the minister had been no more than a mathematician, the prefect would have been under known necessity of giving me this check. I knew him, however, as both mathematician and poet, and my measures were adapted to his capacity with reference to the circumstances by which he was surrounded. I knew him as a coach here, too, and as a bold, entanguent. Such a man, considered, could not fail to be aware of the ordinary political modes of action. Could not have failed to anticipate, and events approved that he did not fail to anticipate, the way lanes to which he was subjected. He must have foreseen, when I reflected, the secret investigations of his premises, his frequent absences from home at night, which were heard by the prefect, as certain aids to his success. I regarded only his ruses to afford opportunity for thorough search to the police, and thus the sooner to impress them with the conviction that which, gee, interacted finally awry, the conviction that the letter was not upon the premises. I felt, also, that the whole train of thought, which I was at some pains in detail indeed, just now, concerning the invariable principle of political action and searches for articles concealed, I felt that this whole train of thought would necessarily pass through the mind of the minister, it would imperatively lead him to despise all the ordinary nooks of concealment. It could not, I reflected, be so weak as not to see that the most intricate and remote or recess of his hotel, would be as open as his commonest closets to the eyes, to the probes, to the gimlets, and to the microscopes of the prefect. I saw, in fine, that he would be driven, as a matter of course, to simplicity, if not deliberately induced to it as a matter of choice. You will remember, perhaps, how desperately the prefect laughed when he suggested, upon our first interview, that it was just possible this mystery troubled him so much, and account for its being so very self-evident. "Yes," said I, "I remember his marement well. I really thought he would have fallen under convulsions. The material world continued to pin; a balance would very strict analogies to the immaterial, and thus some colour of truth has been given to the rhetorical dog my metaphor or symphony, maybe made to strengthen an argument as well as to embellish a description. The principle of the v inertia, for example, seems to be identical in physics and metaphysics. It is not more true in the former that a large body is with more difficulty set in motion than a smaller one, and that its subsequent momentum is commensurate with this difficulty that it is, and the latter, that intellects of the vaster capacity were more forcible, more constant, and more eventful in their movements than those of inferior grade, are yet the less readily moved, and more embarrassed, and full of hesitation in the first few steps of their progress. Again, have you ever noticed which of the street signs over the shop-doors, of the most attractive of attention? "I have never given a matter of thought," I said. "There is a game of puzzles," he resumed, which is played upon a map. One party plane requires another to find a given word, the name of town, river, state, or empire, any word ensured upon a motley and perplexed surface of the chart. Another is in the game generally seeks to embarrass his opponents by giving them the most minutely better names, but the adept selects such words as stretch and large characters from one end of the chart to the other. These, like the overlarkly that it signs and platters of the street, escape observation by de to being excessively obvious. And here, the physical oversight is precisely inarguous with the moral and apprehension by which the intellect suffers to pass unnoticed those considerations which are too obtrusively and too palpably self-evident. But this is a point, it appears, somewhat above or beneath the understanding of the prefect. He never once thought it probable, or possible, that the minister deposited the letter immediately beneath the nose of a whole world, by way of best preventing any portion of that world from perceiving it. But from what I reflected upon the daring, dashing, and discriminating ingenuity of thee upon the fact that the document must always have been at hand intended to use at a good purpose, and upon the decisive evidence obtained by the prefect that it was not hidden within the limits of the dignitary's ordinary search. The more satisfied I became to conceal this letter, the minister had resorted to the comprehensive and sagacious expedient of not attempting to conceive that at all. For these ideas I prepared myself with a pair of green spectacles and called one fine morning quite by accident at the ministerial hotel. I found thee at home, yawning, lounging, and dawdling as usual, pretending to be in the last extremity of NUI. He is, perhaps, most really energetic human being now alive, but that is only when nobody sees him. To be even with him, I complained of my weak eyes, and lamented the necessity of the spectacles and the cover which I cautiously and thoroughly surveying the whole apartment, while seeming intent only upon the conversation of my host. I paid a special attention to a large writing table near which he sat, and upon which they confused me some miscellaneous letters on other papers, so with one or two musical instruments and a few books. Here, however, after a long and very deliberate scrutiny, I saw nothing to excite particular suspicion. I blinked my eyes and go in the circle of the room, fell upon a trumpet, to the grave, called rack of paste-board, that hung dangling by a dirty blue ribbon from a little brass knob just beneath the middle of the mantelpiece. In this rack, which had three or four compartments, were five or six visiting cards on a solitary letter. This last was much soiled and crumpled, it was torn nearly into a crossing-middle, as if a design, in the first instance, to tear it entirely up as worthless, had one altered or stayed in the second. At a large black seal, there in the D cipher very conspicuously, I was addressed in a diminutive female hand to D the minister himself. It was thrust carelessly, and even, as it seemed, contemptuously, to one of the uppermost divisions of the rack. No sooner had I glanced at this letter than I concluded it to be that of which I was in search, to be sure it was to all appearance radically different from the one of which the prefect had read us on my new to description. Here the seal was large and black, with the D cipher. There it was small and red, with the ducal aunts of the ass family. Here the address to the minister was diminutive and feminine. There the superscription to a certain royal percentage was markedly bold and decided, the size alone from the point of correspondence, but then the radicalness of these differences, which was excessive, the dirt, the soiled and torn condition of the paper, so inconsistent with the trues with article habits of D, and so suggest of a design to delude the beholder into an idea of the worthlessness of the document. These things, together with the hyper-proulsive situation of this document, will in review of every visitor, and thus exactly in accordance with the conclusions to which I had previously arrived. These things, I say, were strongly corroborative of suspicion in one who came with the intention to suspect. I protracted my visit as long as possible, and while I maintained the most animated discussion with the minister upon a topic which I knew well, had never failed to interest and excite him, I kept my attention really riveted upon the letter. In this examination, I committed to memory its external appearance and arrangement in the rack, and also fell at length upon a discovery, which set at rest whatever trivial doubt I might have entertained. In scrutinizing the edges of the paper, I observed them to be more chapped than seemed necessary. They presented the broken appearance which is manifested when a stiff paper, having been once folded and pressed with a folder, is refolded in a reversed direction, in the same creases or edges which had formed the original fold. This discovery was sufficient. It was clear to me that the letter had been turned as a glove, inside out, redirected and resealed. I begged the minister a good morning, and took my departure at once, leaving a gold snuffbox upon the table. The next morning I called for the snuffbox, when we resumed quite eagerly the conversation of the preceding day, while thus engaged, however, a loud report, as if of a pistol, was heard immediately beneath the windows of the hotel, and was succeeded by a series of fearful screams, and the shouting of a terrified mob. The rush to a caseman threw it open and looked out. In the meantime, I stepped to the card rack, took the letter, put it in my pocket, and replaced it by a facsimile, so far as regards, externals, which I had carefully prepared at my lodgings, mutating that the cipher very readily by means of a seal formed of bread. The disturbance in the street had been occasioned by the frantic behavior of a man with a musket. He had fired it among a crowd of women and children. It proved, however, to have been without a ball, and a fellow was suffered to go his way as a lunatic or a drunkard. When he had gone, Dee came from the window, whether I had followed him immediately upon securing the object in view. Soon afterward, I begged him farewell. The pretended lunatic was a man in my own pay. "But what purpose had you?" I asked, replacing the letter by a facsimile. "Would it not have been better at the first visit to have seized it openly and departed?" "D," replied Dupin, "is a desperate man and a man of nerve. His hotel, too, is not without attendance devoted to his interest. And I made the wild attempt to suggest I might never have left the ministerial presence alive. The good people of Paris might have heard of me no more, but I have an object apart from these considerations. You know my political pre-possessions. In this manner I act as a partisan of the deity concerned. For eighteen months the minister has had over in his power. She has now human hers since being unaware that the letter is not in his possession. He will proceed with his exactions of which it was. Thus will he inevitably commit himself at once to his political destruction. It is downfall, too, will not be more precipitate than awkward. It is all very well to talk about the facetious dissensus of an eye. But in all kinds of climbing, let's cut the lanny set of singing. This far more easy to get up and to come down. In the present instance I have no sympathy, at least no pity, for him who descends. He is that months from Hornham, an unprincipled man of genius, I confess, however, that I should like very well to know the precise character of his thoughts, when being defied by her whom the prefect terms a certain percentage, he is reduced to opening the letter which I left for him in the card rack. How did you put anything particular in it? Why did not seem altogether right to leave the interior blank? That would have been insulting. Dee at the Vienna once did me an evil turn, which I told him quite good humor'd be, that I should remember. So, as I knew he would feel some curiosity in regard to the identity of the person who had outwitted him, I thought that it pity not to give him a clue. He is well acquainted with my MS, and I just copied into the middle of the blank sheet the words on the sean seifoneste seonest dignity atre, as dignity ties there. The ought to be found in Crabillion's atre. End of The Purloyed Letter by Edgar Allen Poe. High five Casino High five Casino is a social casino with real prizes and big Vegas hits at high five casino.com. The hottest games right from Vegas and all winnings go straight to your bank account. Hundreds of exclusive games, free daily rewards, and come back to get free coins every four hours, only at high five casino.com High five Casino is a social casino, no purchase necessary for prohibited play. When it comes to renting out your property, the uncertainty of finding reliable tenants can feel like a real guessing game, responsible renter or perpetual party animal. 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