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the facts that no one was discovered up stairs but the assassinated
Mademoiselle L'Espanaye, and that there were no means of egress without
the notice of the party ascending. The wild disorder of the room; the
corpse thrust, with the head downward, up the chimney; the frightful
mutilation of the body of the old lady; these considerations, with those
just mentioned, and others which I need not mention, have sufficed
to paralyze the powers, by putting completely at fault the boasted
acumen, of the government agents. They have fallen into the gross but
common error of confounding the unusual with the abstruse. But it is by
these deviations from the plane of the ordinary, that reason feels its
way, if at all, in its search for the true. In investigations such as we
are now pursuing, it should not be so much asked 'what has occurred,'
as 'what has occurred that has never occurred before.' In fact, the
facility with which I shall arrive, or have arrived, at the solution of
this mystery, is in the direct ratio of its apparent insolubility in the
eyes of the police."
I stared at the speaker in mute astonishment.
"I am now awaiting," continued he, looking toward the door of our
apartment--"I am now awaiting a person who, although perhaps not
the perpetrator of these butcheries, must have been in some measure
implicated in their perpetration. Of the worst portion of the crimes
committed, it is probable that he is innocent. I hope that I am right
in this supposition; for upon it I build my expectation of reading the
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