“I protracted my visit as long as possible, and, while I maintained a 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 chafed 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, re-directed, and re-sealed. I bade the Minister good morning, and took my departure at once, leaving a gold snuff-box upon the table.
“The next morning I called for the snuff-box, 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 shoutings of a terrified mob. D— rushed to a casement, 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 fac-simile, (so far as regards externals,) which I had carefully prepared at my lodgings—imitating the D— 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 ball, and the fellow was suffered to go his way as a lunatic or a drunkard. When he had gone, D— came from the window, whither I had followed him immediately upon securing the object in view. Soon afterwards I bade him farewell. The pretended lunatic was a man in my own pay.”
“But what purpose had you,” I asked, “in replacing the letter by a fac-simile? 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 attendants devoted to his interests. Had I made the wild attempt you suggest, I might never have left the Ministerial presence alive. The good people of Paris might have heard of me no more. But I had an object apart from these considerations. You know my political prepossessions. In this matter, I act as a partisan of the lady concerned. For eighteen months the Minister has had her in his power. She has now him in hers—since, being unaware that the letter is not in his possession, he will proceed with his exactions as if it was. Thus will he inevitably commit himself, at once, to his political destruction. His downfall, too, will not be more precipitate than awkward. It is all very well to talk about the facilis descensus Averni;2 but in all kinds of climbing, as Catalani said of singing, it is far more easy to get up than to come down. In the present instance I have no sympathy—at least no pity—for him who descends. He is that monstrum horrendum, 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 personage’ he is reduced to opening the letter which I left for him in the card-rack.”
“How? did you put any thing particular in it?”
“Why—it did not seem altogether right to leave the interior blank—that would have been insulting. D—, at Vienna once, did me an evil turn, which I told him, quite good-humoredly, 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 it a 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—
“‘——Un dessein si funeste, S’il n’est digne d’Atrée, est digne de Thyeste. They are to be found in Crebillon’s ‘Atrée.’”3
1 “It is a fair wager, that any widely held belief, any common convention, is nonsense, since it appeals to the majority.”
2 “the descent to Hades is easy” Virgil, Aeneid, vi.
3 “Such a ghastly scheme, if not worthy of Atreus, is merited by Thyestes” Prosper Jolyot de Crébillon, Atrée et Thyeste, Act v, Scene v.
Jonathan Ames
You Were Never Really Here
Augusto De Angelis
The Murdered Banker
The Mystery of the Three Orchids
The Hotel of the Three Roses
Olivier Barde-Cabuçon
Casanova and the Faceless Woman
María Angélica Bosco
Death Going Down
The Disappearance of Signora Giulia
Frédéric Dard
Bird in a Cage
The Wicked Go to Hell
Crush
The Executioner Weeps
The King of Fools
The Gravediggers’ Bread
Friedrich Dürrenmatt
The Pledge
The Execution of Justice
Suspicion
The Judge and His Hangman
Martin Holmén
Clinch
Down for the Count
Slugger
Alexander Lernet-Holenia
I Was Jack Mortimer
Margaret Millar
A Stranger in My Grave
The Listening Walls
Boileau-Narcejac
Vertigo
She Who Was No More
Baroness Orczy
The Old Man in the Corner
The Case of Miss Elliott
Leo Perutz
Master of the Day of Judgment
Little Apple
St Peter’s Snow
Soji Shimada
The Tokyo Zodiac Murders
Murder in the Crooked House
Masako Togawa
The Master Key
The Lady Killer
Emma Viskic
Resurrection Bay
Darkness for Light
Seishi Yokomizo
The Inugami Clan
Murder in the Honjin
Copyright
Pushkin Press
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London WC2H 9JQ
“The Murders in the Rue Morgue” was first published in Graham’s Magazine, 1841
“The Mystery of Marie Rogêt” was first published in Snowden’s Ladies’ Companion, 1842
“The Purloined Letter” was first published in The Gift for 1845, 1844
This collection first published by Pushkin Press in 2019
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ISBN 13: 978–1–78227–566–4
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