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"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 the power
departs."
"True," said G.; "and upon this conviction I proceeded. My first care was to make a thorough search of the
minister's hotel; and here 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 au fait 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 no means numerous. They sleep at a distance from
their master's apartment, and, being chiefly Neapolitans, are readily made drunk. I have keys, as you know,
with which I can open any chamber or cabinet in Paris. For three months a night has not passed, during the
greater part of which I have not been engaged, personally, in ransacking the D---- 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 thief is 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 suggested, "that although the letter may be in possession of the minister, as it
unquestionably is, he may have concealed it elsewhere than upon his own premises?"
"This is barely possible," said Dupin. "The present peculiar condition of affairs at court, and especially of
those intrigues in which D---- is known to be involved, would render the instant availability of the
document--its susceptibility of being produced at a moments 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 Dupin.
"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 waylaid, as if by footpads, and his person rigidly searched for
my own inspection."
"You might have spared yourself this trouble," said Dupin. "D----, I presume, is not altogether a fool, and,
if not, must have anticipated these waylayings, as a matter of course."
"Not altogether a fool," said G., "but then he is a poet, which I take to be only one removed from a fool."
The Murders In The Rue Morgue And Other Stories 47
The Black Cat and Other Stories
"True," said Dupin, after a long and thoughtful whiff from his meerschaum, "although I have been guilty of
certain doggerel 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, room by room; devoting 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 dolt 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 probed with the fine ling needles you have
seen me employ. From the tables we removed the tops."
"Why so?"
"Sometimes the top of a table, or other similarly arranged piece of furniture, is removed by the person
wishing to conceal an article; then the leg is excavated, the article deposited within the cavity, and the top
replaced. The bottoms and tops of bedposts 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, a sufficient wadding of cotton be placed around it. Besides, in
our case, we were obliged to proceed without noise."
"But you could not have removed--you could not have taken to pieces all articles of furniture in which it
would have been possible to make a deposit in the manner you mention. A letter may 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 into the rung of a chair, for example. You did not take to pieces all the chairs?"
"Certainly not; but we did better--we examined the rungs of every chair in the hotel, and, indeed, the
jointings of every description of furniture, by the aid of a most 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. Any disorder in the gluing--any unusual gap in the
joints--would have sufficed to insure 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
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