The Murders in the Rue Morgue by Edgar Allan Poe (novels in english txt) 📖

bureau, it is said, had been

rifled, although many articles of apparel still remained within them.

The conclusion here is absurd. It is a mere guess - a very silly one

- and no more. How are we to know that the articles found in the

drawers were not all these drawers had originally contained? Madame

L’Espanaye and her daughter lived an exceedingly retired life - saw

no company - seldom went out - had little use for numerous changes of

habiliment. Those found were at least of as good quality as any

likely to be possessed by these ladies. If a thief had taken any, why

did he not take the best - why did he not take all? In a word, why

did he abandon four thousand francs in gold to encumber himself with

a bundle of linen? The gold was abandoned. Nearly the whole sum

mentioned by Monsieur Mignaud, the banker, was discovered, in bags,

upon the floor. I wish you, therefore, to discard from your thoughts

the blundering idea of motive, engendered in the brains of the

police by that portion of the evidence which speaks of money

delivered at the door of the house. Coincidences ten times as

remarkable as this (the delivery of the money, and murder committed

within three days upon the party receiving it), happen to all of us

every hour of our lives, without attracting even momentary notice.

Coincidences, in general, are great stumbling-blocks in the way of

that class of thinkers who have been educated to know nothing of the

theory of probabilities - that theory to which the most glorious

objects of human research are indebted for the most glorious of

illustration. In the present instance, had the gold been gone, the

fact of its delivery three days before would have formed something

more than a coincidence. It would have been corroborative of this

idea of motive. But, under the real circumstances of the case, if we

are to suppose gold the motive of this outrage, we must also imagine

the perpetrator so vacillating an idiot as to have abandoned his gold

and his motive together.

 

“Keeping now steadily in mind the points to which I have drawn your

attention - that peculiar voice, that unusual agility, and that

startling absence of motive in a murder so singularly atrocious as

this - let us glance at the butchery itself. Here is a woman

strangled to death by manual strength, and thrust up a chimney, head

downward. Ordinary assassins employ no such modes of murder as this.

Least of all, do they thus dispose of the murdered. In the manner of

thrusting the corpse up the chimney, you will admit that there was

something excessively outré - something altogether irreconcilable

with our common notions of human action, even when we suppose the

actors the most depraved of men. Think, too, how great must have been

that strength which could have thrust the body up such an aperture

so forcibly that the united vigor of several persons was found barely

sufficient to drag it down!

 

“Turn, now, to other indications of the employment of a vigor most

marvellous. On the hearth were thick tresses - very thick tresses -

of grey human hair. These had been torn out by the roots. You are

aware of the great force necessary in tearing thus from the head even

twenty or thirty hairs together. You saw the locks in question as

well as myself. Their roots (a hideous sight!) were clotted with

fragments of the flesh of the scalp - sure token of the prodigious

power which had been exerted in uprooting perhaps half a million of

hairs at a time. The throat of the old lady was not merely cut, but

the head absolutely severed from the body: the instrument was a mere

razor. I wish you also to look at the brutal ferocity of these

deeds. Of the bruises upon the body of Madame L’Espanaye I do not

speak. Monsieur Dumas, and his worthy coadjutor Monsieur Etienne,

have pronounced that they were inflicted by some obtuse instrument;

and so far these gentlemen are very correct. The obtuse instrument

was clearly the stone pavement in the yard, upon which the victim had

fallen from the window which looked in upon the bed. This idea,

however simple it may now seem, escaped the police for the same

reason that the breadth of the shutters escaped them - because, by

the affair of the nails, their perceptions had been hermetically

sealed against the possibility of the windows having ever been opened

at all.

 

“If now, in addition to all these things, you have properly reflected

upon the odd disorder of the chamber, we have gone so far as to

combine the ideas of an agility astounding, a strength superhuman, a

ferocity brutal, a butchery without motive, a grotesquerie in

horror absolutely alien from humanity, and a voice foreign in tone to

the ears of men of many nations, and devoid of all distinct or

intelligible syllabification. What result, then, has ensued? What

impression have I made upon your fancy?”

 

I felt a creeping of the flesh as Dupin asked me the question. “A

madman,” I said, “has done this deed - some raving maniac, escaped

from a neighboring Maison de Santé.”

 

“In some respects,” he replied, “your idea is not irrelevant. But the

voices of madmen, even in their wildest paroxysms, are never found to

tally with that peculiar voice heard upon the stairs. Madmen are of

some nation, and their language, however incoherent in its words, has

always the coherence of syllabification. Besides, the hair of a

madman is not such as I now hold in my hand. I disentangled this

little tuft from the rigidly clutched fingers of Madame L’Espanaye.

Tell me what you can make of it.”

 

“Dupin!” I said, completely unnerved; “this hair is most unusual -

this is no human hair.”

 

“I have not asserted that it is,” said he; “but, before we decide

this point, I wish you to glance at the little sketch I have here

traced upon this paper. It is a fac-simile drawing of what has been

described in one portion of the testimony as ‘dark bruises, and deep

indentations of finger nails,’ upon the throat of Mademoiselle

L’Espanaye, and in another, (by Messrs. Dumas and Etienne,) as a

‘series of livid spots, evidently the impression of fingers.’

 

“You will perceive,” continued my friend, spreading out the paper

upon the table before us, “that this drawing gives the idea of a firm

and fixed hold. There is no slipping apparent. Each finger has

retained - possibly until the death of the victim - the fearful grasp

by which it originally imbedded itself. Attempt, now, to place all

your fingers, at the same time, in the respective impressions as you

see them.”

 

I made the attempt in vain.

 

“We are possibly not giving this matter a fair trial,” he said. “The

paper is spread out upon a plane surface; but the human throat is

cylindrical. Here is a billet of wood, the circumference of which is

about that of the throat. Wrap the drawing around it, and try the

experiment again.”

 

I did so; but the difficulty was even more obvious than before.

“This,” I said, “is the mark of no human hand.”

 

“Read now,” replied Dupin, “this passage from Cuvier.”

 

It was a minute anatomical and generally descriptive account of the

large fulvous Ourang-Outang of the East Indian Islands. The gigantic

stature, the prodigious strength and activity, the wild ferocity, and

the imitative propensities of these mammalia are sufficiently well

known to all. I understood the full horrors of the murder at once.

 

“The description of the digits,” said I, as I made an end of reading,

“is in exact accordance with this drawing. I see that no animal but

an Ourang-Outang, of the species here mentioned, could have impressed

the indentations as you have traced them. This tuft of tawny hair,

too, is identical in character with that of the beast of Cuvier. But

I cannot possibly comprehend the particulars of this frightful

mystery. Besides, there were two voices heard in contention, and

one of them was unquestionably the voice of a Frenchman.”

 

“True; and you will remember an expression attributed almost

unanimously, by the evidence, to this voice, - the expression, ‘_mon

Dieu!_’ This, under the circumstances, has been justly characterized

by one of the witnesses (Montani, the confectioner,) as an expression

of remonstrance or expostulation. Upon these two words, therefore, I

have mainly built my hopes of a full solution of the riddle. A

Frenchman was cognizant of the murder. It is possible - indeed it is

far more than probable - that he was innocent of all participation in

the bloody transactions which took place. The Ourang-Outang may have

escaped from him. He may have traced it to the chamber; but, under

the agitating circumstances which ensued, he could never have

recaptured it. It is still at large. I will not pursue these guesses

- for I have no right to call them more - since the shades of

reflection upon which they are based are scarcely of sufficient depth

to be appreciable by my own intellect, and since I could not pretend

to make them intelligible to the understanding of another. We will

call them guesses then, and speak of them as such. If the Frenchman

in question is indeed, as I suppose, innocent of this atrocity, this

advertisement which I left last night, upon our return home, at the

office of ‘Le Monde,’ (a paper devoted to the shipping interest, and

much sought by sailors,) will bring him to our residence.”

 

He handed me a paper, and I read thus:

 

CAUGHT - _In the Bois de Boulogne, early in the morning of the -

inst.,_ (the morning of the murder,) _a very large, tawny

Ourang-Outang of the Bornese species. The owner, (who is ascertained

to be a sailor, belonging to a Maltese vessel,) may have the animal

again, upon identifying it satisfactorily, and paying a few charges

arising from its capture and keeping. Call at No. –- , Rue –-,

Faubourg St. Germain - au troisiême._

 

“How was it possible,” I asked, “that you should know the man to be a

sailor, and belonging to a Maltese vessel?”

 

“I do not know it,” said Dupin. “I am not sure of it. Here,

however, is a small piece of ribbon, which from its form, and from

its greasy appearance, has evidently been used in tying the hair in

one of those long queues of which sailors are so fond. Moreover,

this knot is one which few besides sailors can tie, and is peculiar

to the Maltese. I picked the ribbon up at the foot of the

lightning-rod. It could not have belonged to either of the deceased.

Now if, after all, I am wrong in my induction from this ribbon, that

the Frenchman was a sailor belonging to a Maltese vessel, still I can

have done no harm in saying what I did in the advertisement. If I am

in error, he will merely suppose that I have been misled by some

circumstance into which he will not take the trouble to inquire. But

if I am right, a great point is gained. Cognizant although innocent

of the murder, the Frenchman will naturally hesitate about replying

to the advertisement - about demanding the Ourang-Outang. He will

reason thus: - ‘I am innocent; I am poor; my Ourang-Outang is of

great value - to one in my circumstances a fortune of itself - why

should I lose it through idle apprehensions of danger? Here it is,

within my grasp. It was found in the Bois de Boulogne -