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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."
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