 The Perloined Letter by Edgar Allen Poe This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Cast of Characters See Auguste Dupont Recording by Seamus Dobbin Monsieur G Read by Javaman Narrator Read by Chuck Williamson The Perloined Letter by Edgar Allen Poe Neal Sapiente, Odeosis Acumenat Nemo Seneca At Paris, just after dark one gusty evening in the autumn of 18 redacted, I was enjoying the twofold luxury of meditation and Mircham. In the company with my friend, C. Auguste Dupont in his little back library or book closet, I'll trust a May. Number 33, Rue de Noe, Faurberg, St. Germain. For one hour, at least, we had maintained a profound silence, while each, to any casual observer, might have seemed intently and exclusively occupied with the curling eddies of smoke that oppressed the atmosphere of the chamber. For myself, however, I was mentally discussing certain topics which had formed matter for conversation between us at an earlier period of the evening. I mean the affair of the Rue Morgue and the mystery attending the murder of Marie Rojet. I looked upon it, therefore, as something of a coincidence when the door of our apartment was thrown open and admitted our old acquaintance, Monsieur G., the prefect of the Parisian police. We gave him a hearty welcome, for there was nearly as much of the entertaining as of the contemptible about the man, and we had not seen him for several years. We had been sitting in the dark, and Dupont now arose for the purpose of lighting a lamp, but sat down again without doing so, upon G. saying that he had called to consult us, or rather to ask the opinion of my friend about some official business which had occasioned a great deal of trouble. If it is any point requiring reflection, observe Dupont as he forebore to incendle the wick. We shall examine it to better purpose in the dark. That is another of your odd notions, said the prefect, who had the fashion of calling everything odd that was beyond his comprehension, and thus lived amid an absolute legion of oddities. Very true, said Dupont, as he supplied his visitor with a pipe, and rolled toward him a comfortable chair. And what is the difficulty now, I asked. Nothing more in the assassination way, I hope. Oh, no, nothing of that nature. The fact is, the business is very simple indeed, and I make no doubt that we can manage it sufficiently well ourselves. But then I thought Dupont would like to hear the details of it, because it is so excessively odd. Simple and odd, said Dupont. Why, yes. And not exactly that, either. The fact is, we have all been a good deal puzzled because the affair is so simple, and yet baffles us all together. Perhaps it is the very simplicity of the thing, which puts you at fault, said my friend. What nonsense you do talk! replied the prefect, laughing heartily. Perhaps the mystery is a little too plain, said Dupont. Oh, good heavens! Who ever heard of such an idea? A little too self-evident. Ha, ha, ha! Our visitor profoundly amused. Oh, Dupont, you will be the death of me yet. And what, after all, is the matter on hand, I asked. Why, I will tell you, replied the prefect, as he gave a long, steady and contemplative puff and settled himself in his chair. I will tell you in a few words. But before I begin, let me caution you that this is an affair demanding the greatest secrecy, and that I should most probably lose the position I now hold, were it known that I confided it to any one. Proceed, said I. Or not, said Dupont. Well, then, I have received personal information from a very high quarter that a certain document of the last importance has been perloined from the royal apartments. The individual who perloined it is known this beyond a doubt. He was seen to take it. It is known also that it still remains in his possession. How is this known? Asked Dupont. It is clearly inferred. Replied the prefect. From the nature of the document and from the non-appearance of certain results which would at once arise from its passing out of the robber's possession. That is to say, from his employing it as he must design in the end to employ it. Be a little more explicit, I said. Well, I may venture so far as to say that the paper gives its holder a certain power in a certain quarter where such power is immensely valuable. The prefect was fond of the cant of diplomacy. Still I do not quite understand. Said Dupont. No. Well, the disclosure of the document to a third person who shall be nameless would bring in question the honour of a personage of most exalted station and this fact gives the holder of the document an ascendancy over the illustrious personage whose honour and peace are so jeopardised. But this ascendancy, I interposed, would depend upon the robber's knowledge of the loser's knowledge of the robber. Who would dare? The thief. Said G. Is the minister D. Who dares all things those unbecoming as well as those becoming a man? The method of the theft was not less ingenious than bold. The document in question, a letter to be frank, had been received by the personage robbed while alone in the Royal Boudoir. During its perusal she was suddenly interrupted by the entrance of the other exalted personage from whom especially it was her wish to conceal it. After a hurried and vain endeavour to thrust it in a drawer she was forced to place it, open as it was, upon a table. The address, however, was uppermost and the contents thus unexposed. The letter escaped notice. At this juncture enters the minister D. His links I immediately perceives the paper, recognizes the handwriting of the address, observes the confusion of the personage addressed, and fathoms her secret. After some business transactions hurried through in his ordinary manner he produces a letter somewhat similar to the one in question, opens it, pretends to read it, and then places it in close juxtaposition to the other. Again he converses for some fifteen minutes upon the public affairs. At length, in taking leave, he takes also from the table the letter to which he had no claim. Its rightful owner saw, but, of course, dared not call attention to the act in the presence of the third personage who stood at her elbow. The minister decamped, leaving his own letter, one of no importance upon the table. Here, then, said Dupont to me, you have precisely what you demand to make the ascendancy complete, the robber's knowledge of the loser's knowledge of the robber. Yes, replied the prefect, and the power thus attained has, for some months past, been wielded for political purposes to a very dangerous extent. The personage robbed is more thoroughly convinced every day of the necessity of reclaiming her letter, but this, of course, cannot be done openly. In fine, driven to despair, she has committed the matter to me. Then whom, said Dupont, amid a perfect whirlwind of smoke, no more sagacious agent could, I suppose, be desired or even imagined. You flatter me," replied the prefect, but it is possible that some such opinion may have been entertained. 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 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 oofet 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 by no means numerous. They sleep at a distance from their master's apartment and, being chiefly neapolitan, 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 Dupont. 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 a point of nearly equal importance with its possession. Its susceptibility of being produced, said I. That is to say, of being destroyed. Said Dupont. 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 way-laid, as if by foot-pads, and his person rigidly searched under my own inspection. You might have spared yourself this trouble. Said Dupont. D, I presume, is not altogether a fool. And, if not, must have anticipated these way-layings 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. True. Said Dupont, after a long and thoughtful whiff from his mursham. 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 adult 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 long 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 bed posts 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 of 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 gaping in the joints would have suffice to ensure detection. I presume you look to the mirrors, between the boards and the plates, and you probe the beds and the bed clothes 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 might be missed. Then we scrutinized each individual square inch throughout the premises, including the two houses immediately adjoining with the microscope as before. The two houses adjoining, I exclaimed. You must have had a great deal of trouble. I had, but the reward offered is prodigious. You include the grounds about the houses? All the grounds are paved with brick. They gave us comparatively little trouble. We examined the moss between the bricks and found it undisturbed. You looked among these papers, of course, and into the books of the library. Certainly. We opened every package and parcel. We not only opened every book, but we turned over every leaf in each volume, not contending ourselves with a mere shake according to the fashion of some of our police officers. We also measured the thickness of every book cover with the most accurate measurement and applied to each the most jealous scrutiny of the microscope. Had any of the bindings been recently meddled with, it would have been utterly impossible that the fact should have escaped observation. Some five or six volumes, just from the hands of the binder, we carefully probed longitudinally with the needles. You explored the floors beneath the carpets? Beyond doubt. We removed every carpet and examined the boards with the microscope. And the paper on the walls? Yes. You looked into the cellars? We did. Then, I said, you have been making a miscalculation and the letter is not upon the premises as you suppose. I fear you are right there, said the prefect. And now, Dupin, what would you advise me to do? To make a thorough research of the premises. That is absolutely needless, replied G. I am not more sure that I breathe than I am that the letter is not at the hotel. I have no better advice to give you, said Dupin. You have, of course, an accurate description of the letter? Oh, yes. And here the prefect, producing a memorandum book, proceeded to read aloud a minute account of the internal especially of the external appearance of the missing document. Soon after finishing the perusal of this description he took his departure, more entirely depressed in spirit than I had ever known the gentleman before. In about a month afterward he paid us another visit and found us occupied very nearly as before. He took a pipe and a chair and entered into some ordinary conversation. At length I said, Well, but gee, what of the perloined letter? I presume you have at last made up your mind that there is no such thing as overreaching the minister. Confound him, say I. Yes, I made the re-examination, however, as Dupin suggested, but it was all labour lost as I knew it would be. How much was the reward offered, did you say? Asked Dupin. Why, a very great deal, a very liberal reward. I don't like to say how much precisely, but one thing I will say, that I wouldn't mind giving my individual check for fifty thousand francs to anyone who could obtain me that letter. The fact is it is becoming of more and more importance every day and the reward has been lately doubled. If it were trebled, however, I could do no more than I have done. Why, yes, said Dupin, drollingly, between the whiffs of his mirsham. I really think, gee, you have not exerted yourself to the utmost in this manner. You might do a little more, I think, eh? How? In what way? Why, you might employ counsel in the matter, eh? Do you remember the story they tell of Abernathy? No, hang Abernathy. To be sure, hang him and welcome. But once upon a time a certain rich miser conceived the design of sponging upon this Abernathy for a medical opinion. Getting up for this purpose and ordinary conversation in a private company, he insinuated his case to the physician as that of an imaginary individual. We will suppose, said the miser, that his symptoms are such and such. Now, doctor, what would you have directed him to take? Take, said Abernathy, why, take advice to be sure. But, said the prefect, a little discomposed, I am perfectly willing to take advice and to pay for it. I would really give fifty thousand francs to anyone who would aid me in the matter. In that case? Replied Dupin, opening a drawer and producing a checkbook. You may as well fill me up a check for the amount mentioned. When you have signed it, I will hand you the letter. I was astonished. The prefect appeared absolutely thunder-stricken. For some minutes he remained speechless and motionless, looking incredulously at my friend with open mouth and eyes that seemed starting from their sockets. Then, apparently recovering himself in some measure, he seized a pen, and after several pauses and vacant stairs, finally filled up and signed a check for fifty thousand francs and handed it across the table to Dupin. The latter examined it carefully and deposited it into his pocket-book. Then, unlocking an escri-tois, took thence a letter and gave it to the prefect. This, functionary, grasped it in a perfect agony of joy. Opened it with a trembling hand, cast a rapid glance at its contents. Then, scrambling and struggling to the door, rushed at length unceremoniously from the room and from the house having uttered a syllable since Dupin had requested him to fill out the check. When he had gone, my friend entered into some explanations. The Parisian police, he said, are exceedingly able in their way. They are persevering, ingenious, cunning, and thoroughly versed in the knowledge which their duties seem chiefly to demand. Thus, when G. detailed to us his mode of searching the premises of the Hotel D., I felt entire confidence in his having made a satisfactory investigation, so far as his labours extended. So far as his labours extended, said I. Yes, said Dupin. The measures adopted were not only the best of their kind but carried out to absolute perfection. Had the letter been deposited within the range of their search, these fellows would, beyond a question, have found it. I merely laughed, but he seemed quite serious in all that he said. The measures, then, he continued, were good in their kind and well executed. Their defect lay in their being inapplicable to the case and to the man. A certain set of highly ingenious resources are, with a prefect, a sort of procrastin bed to which he forcibly adapts his designs. But he perpetually errs by being too deep or too shallow for the matter in hand, and many schoolboys a better reasoner than he. I knew one about eight years of age whose success at guessing in the game of even and odd attracted universal admiration. This game is simple and is played with marbles. One player holds in his hand a number of these toys and demands the other whether that number is even or odd. If the guess is right, the guesser wins one. If wrong, he loses one. The boy to whom I allude won all the marbles of the school. Of course, he had some principle of guessing, and this lay in mere observation and ad-measurement of the astuteness of his opponents. For example, an errant simpleton is his opponent and holding up in his closed hand asks, are they even or odd? Our schoolboy replies odd and loses, but upon the second trial he wins, for he then says to himself, the simpleton has them even upon the first trial, and his amount of cunning is just sufficient enough to make him have them odd upon the second. I will therefore guess odd. He guesses odd and wins. Now with the simpleton a degree above the first he would have reasoned thus. This fellow finds that in the first instance I guessed odd, and in the second he will propose to himself upon the first impulse a simple variation from even to odd, as did the first simpleton. But then a second thought would suggest that this is too simple a variation, and finally he will decide upon putting it even as before, I will therefore guess even. He guesses even and wins. Now this mode of reasoning in the schoolboy, whom his fellows termed lucky, what in its last analysis is it? It is merely, said I, an identification of the reasoner's intellect with that of his opponent. It is, said Dupont, and upon inquiring of the boy by what means he affected the thorough identification in which his success consisted, I received answer as follows. When I wish to find out how wise or how stupid or how good or how wicked is anyone, or what are his thoughts at the moment, I fashion the expression of my face as accurately as possible in accordance with the expression of his, and then wait to see what thoughts or sentiments arise in my mind or heart, as if to match or correspond with the expression. This response of the schoolboy lies at the bottom of all the spurious profundity which has been attributed to Rochefoucault, to La Breuillère, to Machiavelli, and to Campanella. And the identification, I said, of the reasoner's intellect with that of his opponents, depends, if I understand you are right, upon the accuracy with which the opponent's intellect is at-measured. For its practical value it depends upon this, replied Dupont, and the prefect in his cohort fails so frequently, first by default of this identification, and secondly by ill at-measurement, or rather through non-ad-measurement, of the intellect with which they are engaged. They consider only their own ideas of ingenuity, and in searching for anything hidden, advert only to the modes in which they would have hidden it. They are right in this much, that their own ingenuity is a faithful representative of that of the masses, but when the cunning of the individual felon is diverse in character from their own, the felon foils them, of course. This always happens when it is above their own, and very usually when it is below. They have no variation of principle in their investigations, at best when urged by some unusual emergency, by some extraordinary reward, they extend or exaggerate their old modes of practice without touching their principles. What, for example, in this case of D, has been done to vary the principle of action? What is all this boring and probing and sounding and scrutinizing with the microscope and dividing the surface of the building into registered square inches? What is it all but an exaggeration of the application of the one principle or set of principles of search which are based upon the one set of notions regarding human ingenuity to which the prefect, in the long routine of his duty, has been accustomed? Do you not see he has taken it for granted that all men proceed to conceal a letter, not exactly in a gimlet hole bored in a chair leg, but at least in some out-of-the-way hole or corner suggested by the same tenor of thought, which would urge a man to secret a letter in a gimlet hole bored in a chair leg? And do you not see also that such recheche nukes for concealment are adapted only for ordinary occasions and would be adopted only by ordinary intellects? For in all cases of concealment a disposal of the article concealed, a disposal of it in this recheche manner is, in the very first instance, presumable and presumed. And thus its discovery depends not at all upon the acumen, but altogether upon the mere care, patience and determination of the seekers. And where the cases of importance, or what amounts to the same thing and the police see lies when the reward is of magnitude, the qualities in question have never been known to fail. You will now understand what I meant in suggesting that had the purloined letter been hidden anywhere within the limits of the prefect's examination, in other words, had the principle of its concealment been comprehended within the principles of the prefect, its discovery would have been a matter altogether beyond question. This functionary, however, has been thoroughly mystified, and the remote source of his defeat lies in the supposition that the minister is a fool, because he has acquired renown as a poet. All fools are poets, this the prefect feels, and he is merely guilty of a non-distributeo medi, and thus inferring that all poets are fools. But is this really the poet, I asked? There are two brothers, I know, and both attained reputation and letters. The minister, I believe, has written learnedly on the differential calculus. He is a mathematician and no poet. You're mistaken. I know him well. He is both. As poet and mathematician he would reason well. As mere mathematician he could not have reasoned at all, and thus would have been at the mercy of the prefect. You surprise me, I said, by these opinions, which have been contradicted by the voice of the world. You do not mean to say it not the well-digested idea of centuries. The mathematical reason has long been regarded as the reason par excellence. Il y a parier, replied Dupin, quoting from Chamfert, que toute idée publique, toute convention reçue est une sortie car elle a convenu au plus grand nombre. The mathematicians, I grant you, have done their best to promulgate the popular error to which you allude, and which is nonetheless an error for its promagation as truth. With an art worthy of better cause, for example, they have insinuated the term analysis into application to algebra. The French are the originators of this particular deception. But if a term is of any importance, if words derive any value from applicability, then analysis conveys algebra about as much as, in Latin, ambitus implies ambition, religion or omniso nesti, a set of honourable men. You have a quarrel on hand, I see, said I, with some of the algebraeus of Paris. But proceed. I dispute the availability and thus the value of that reason which has cultivated in Eddie a special form other than the abstractly logical. I dispute in particular the reason induced by mathematical study. The mathematics are the science of form and quantity. Mathematical reasoning is merely logic applied to observation upon form and quantity. The great error lies in supposing that even the truths of what is called pure algebra are abstract or general truths. And this error is so egregious that I am confounded of the universality with which it has been received. Mathematical axioms are not axioms of general truth. What is true of relation of form and quantity is often grossly false in regard to morals, for example. In this latter science it is very usually untrue that the aggregated parts are equal to the whole. In chemistry also the axiom fails. In the consideration of motive it fails, for two motives each of a given value have not necessarily a value when united equal to the sum of their values apart. There are numerous other mathematical truths which are only truths within the limits of relation. But the mathematician argues from his finite truths through habit as if they were of an absolutely general applicability as the world indeed imagines them to be. Bryant, in his very learned mythology, mentions an analogous source of error when he says that although the pagan fables are not believed yet we forget ourselves continually and make inferences from them as existing realities. With the algebraists, however, who are pagans themselves, the pagan fables are believed and the inferences are made not so much through lapse of memory as through an unaccountable addling of the brains. In short, I never yet encountered the mere mathematician who could be trusted out of equal roots or one who did not clandestinely hold it to the point of his faith that x2 plus px was absolutely and unconditionally equal to q. Say to one of these gentlemen by way of experiment, if you please, that you believe occasions may occur where x squared plus px is not altogether equal to q and having made him understand what you mean get out of his reach as speedily as convenient for beyond doubt he will endeavour to knock you down. I mean to say. Well, I merely laughed at his last observations that if the minister had been no more than a mathematician the prefect would have been under no necessity of giving me this check. I knew him, however, as both mathematician and poet and my measures were adapted to his capacity with reference to the circumstances by which he was surrounded. I knew him as a courtier, too, and as a bold, intrigant. Such a man, I considered, could not fail to be aware of the ordinary policial modes of action. He could not have failed to anticipate and events approved that he did not fail to anticipate the waylayings to which he was subjected. He must have foreseen, I reflected, the secret investigations of his premises. His frequent absences from home at night which were hailed by the prefect as certain aids to his success regarded only as ruses to afford opportunity for thorough search to the police. And thus the sooner to impress them with the conviction to which G. in fact did finally arrive the conviction that the letter was not upon the premises. I felt also that the whole train of thought which I was at some pains in detailing to you just now concerning the invariable principle of policial action and schemes for articles concealed I felt that this whole train of thought necessarily passed through the mind of the minister. It would imperatively lead him to despise all the ordinary nooks of concealment. He could not, I reflected, be so weak as not to see that the most intricate and remote recesses of his hotel would be as open as his commonest closets to the eyes, to the probes, to the gimlets and to the microscopes of the prefect. I saw in fine that he would be driven as a matter of course to simplicity if not deliberately induced to it as a matter of choice. You will remember perhaps how desperately the prefect laughed when I suggested upon our first interview that it was just possible this mystery troubled him so much on account of its being so very self-evident. Yes, said I. I remember his merriment well. I really thought he would have fallen into convulsions. The material world continued d'opin. Abounds with very strict analogues to the immaterial. And thus some colour of truth has been given to the rhetorical dogma that metaphor or simile may be made to strengthen an argument as well as to embellish a description. The principle of the vice-inertie, for example, seems to be identical in physics and metaphysics. It is not more true in the former that a large body is with more difficulty set in motion than a smaller one, and that its subsequent momentum is commensurate with this difficulty than it is in the latter that intellects of the vaster capacity while more forcible, more constant and more eventful in their movements than those of inferior grade are yet the less readily moved and more embarrassed and full of hesitation in the first few steps of their progress. Again, have you ever noticed which of the street signs over the shop doors are the most attractive of attention? I have never given the matter a thought, I said. There is a game of puzzles, he resumed, which is played upon a map. One party playing requires another defined a given word, the name of a town, a river, state or empire, any word in short upon the motley and perplexed surface of the chart. A novice in the game generally seeks to embarrass his opponents by giving them the most minutely lettered names. But the adept selects such words as stretch in large characters from one end of the chart to the other. These, like the over-largely lettered signs and placards of the street, escape observation by dint of being excessively obvious. And here the physical oversight is precisely analogous with the moral in apprehension by which the intellect suffers to pass unnoticed, those considerations which are too obtrusively too palpably self-evident. But this is a point that appears somewhat above or beneath the understanding of the prefect. He never once thought it probable or possible that the minister had deposited the letter immediately beneath the nose of the whole world by way of best preventing any portion of that world from perceiving it. But the more I reflected upon the daring, dashing and discriminating ingenuity of D, the fact that the document must always have been at hand if he intended to use it to good purpose, and upon the decisive evidence obtained by the prefect that it was not hidden within the limits of that dignitary's ordinary search, the more satisfied it became that to conceal this letter the minister had resorted to the comprehensive and sagacious expedient of not attempting to conceal it at all. Full of these ideas I prepared myself with a pair of green spectacles and called one fine morning quite by accident at the ministerial hotel. I found D at home, yawning, lounging and doddling as usual and pretending to be an elastic extremity of ennui. He is perhaps the most really energetic human being now alive, but that is only when nobody sees him. To be even with him I complained of my weak eyes and lamented the necessity of the spectacles under cover of which I cautiously and thoroughly surveyed the whole apartment, while seemingly intent only on the conversation of my host. I paid a special attention to a large writing table near where he sat and upon which lay confusedly some miscellaneous letters and other papers with one or two musical instruments and a few books. Here, however, after a long and very deliberate scrutiny I saw nothing to excite particular suspicion. At length my eyes, in going the circuit of the room, fell upon a trumpery filigree card rack of pasteboard that hung dangling by a dirty blue ribbon from a little brass knob just beneath the middle of the mantelpiece. In this rack, which had three or four compartments, were five or six visiting cards and a solitary letter. This last was much soiled and crumpled. It was torn nearly in two across the middle, as if a design in the first instance to tear it entirely up as worthless had been altered or stayed in the second. It had a large black seal bearing the D. cipher very conspicuously and was addressed in a diminutive female hand to D. the minister himself. It was thrust carelessly and even as it seemed contemptuously into one of the uppermost divisions of the rack. No sooner had I glanced at this letter than I concluded it to be that of which I was in search. To be sure it was, to all appearance, radically different from the one of which the Prefect had read us so minute a description. Here the seal was large and black with a D. cipher. There it was small and red with the ducal arms of the S. family. Here the address to the minister was diminutive and feminine. There the superscription to a certain royal personage markedly bold and decided. The size alone formed a point of correspondence. But then the radicalness of these differences which was excessive, the dirt, the soiled and torn conditions of the paper so inconsistent with the true methodical habits of D, and so suggestive of a design to delude the beholder into an idea of the worthlessness of the document, these things together with the hyper-obtrusive situation of this document fall in the view of every visitor and thus exactly in accordance with the conclusions to which I had previously arrived, these things I say were strongly corroborative of suspicion in one who came with the intention to suspect. 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 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, redirected and resealed. I bathed 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 in the shouting 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 facsimile 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 behaviour of a man with a musket. He had fired it among a crowd of women and children. It proved, however, to have been without a 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, whether I had followed him immediately upon securing the object in view. Soon afterward I bade him farewell. The pretended lunatic was a man in my own pay. What purpose had you, I asked, in replacing the letter by a facsimile would it not have been better at the first visit to have seized it openly and departed? D. replied au pan is a desperate man and a man of nerve. His hotel, too, is not without attendance 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 manner 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 he will 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 facile's descent to Severny. 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 than being defied by her whom the prefix terms a certain personage. He is reduced to opening the letter which I left for him in the card-rack. How? Did you put anything particular in it? Why, it did not seem altogether right to leave the interior blank. That would have been insulting. Dee at Vienna once did me an evil turn, and 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 would outwitted him, I thought it a pity not to give him a clue. He is well acquainted with my M.S., and I just copied into the middle of the blank sheet the words sin n'estin de tres estin de tres. They are to be found in Crebelon's Atre. End of the Perloined Letter by Edgar Allan Poe The Stolen Basilis by H.G. Wells of Dramatic Reading, Scene and Story Collection Vol. 2. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org. The Stolen Basilis by H.G. Wells Bacteriologist, read by Andrew Nixon Anarchist, read by Todd Mini, read by Beth Thomas Old Tootles, read by Rob Marland Ulster Boy, read by Eitel Tommy Biles, read by Adrian Stevens Cab Man, read by Scott Colkins Another Cab Man, read by Sonja Narrated by Abayi This again, said the bacteriologist, slipping a glass slide under the microscope The pale-faced man peered down the microscope. He was evidently not accustomed to that kind of thing and held a limp white hand over his disengaged eye. I see very little, he said. Touch this screw, said the bacteriologist. Perhaps the microscope is out of focus for you. Eyes vary so much. Just a fraction of a turn this way or that. Ah, now I see. Said the visitor. Oh, not so very much to see after all. Little streaks and shreds of pink. And yet those tiny particles, those mere atomies might multiply and devastate a city. Wonderful. Wonderful. He stood up and releasing the glass slip from the microscope held it in his hand towards the window. Scarcely visible. He said, scrutinizing the preparation. He hesitated. Are these alive? Are they dangerous now? Those have been stained and killed. Said the bacteriologist. I wish for my own cart we could kill and stain every one of them in the universe. I suppose, the pale man said with a slight smile, that you scarcely care to have such things about you in the living, in the active state. On the contrary, we are obliged to, said the bacteriologist. Here, for instance, he walked across the room and took up one of several sealed tubes. Here is the living thing. This is a cultivation of the actual living disease bacteria. He hesitated. Bottled cholera, so to speak. A slight gleam of satisfaction appeared momentarily in the face of the pale man. It is a deadly thing to have in your possession. He said, devouring the little tube with his eyes. The bacteriologist watched a morbid pleasure in his visitor's expression. This man, who had visited him that afternoon with a note of introduction from an old friend, interested him from the very contrast of their dispositions. The blank black hair and deep grey eyes, the haggard expression and nervous manner, the fitful yet keen interest of his visitor, were a novel change from the phlegmatic deliberations of the ordinary scientific worker with whom the bacteriologist chiefly associated. It was perhaps natural, with a hero evidently so impressionable to the lethal nature of his topic, to take the most effective aspect of the matter. He held the tube in his hand thoughtfully. Yes, here is the pestilence imprisoned. Only break such a little tube as this into a supply of drinking water. Say to these my new particles of life that one must need stain and examine with the highest powers of the microscope even to see, and that one can neither smell nor taste. Say to them, go forth, increase and multiply and replenish the systems. And death, mysterious untraceable death, death swift and terrible, death full of pain and indignity would be released upon this city and go hither and thither seeking his victims. Here he would take the husband from the wife, hear the child from his mother, hear the statesman from his duty, and hear the toiler from his trouble. He would follow the water mains, creeping along streets, picking out and punishing a house here and a house there where they did not boil their drinking water, creeping into the wells of the mineral water makers, getting washed into salad and lying dormant in ices. He would wait ready to be drunk in the horse-crofts and by unwary children in the public fountains. He would soak into the soil to reappear in springs and wells at a thousand unexpected places. One starts him up the water supply and before we could ring him in and catch him again, he would have decimated the metropolis. He stopped abruptly. He had been told rhetoric was his weakness. But he is quite safe here, you know, quite safe. The pale-faced man nodded. His eyes shone. He cleared his throat. These anarchist rascals said he are fools, blind fools, to use bombs when this kind of thing is attainable. I think... A gentle rap, and a light touch of the fingernails was heard at the door. The bacteriologist opened it. Just a minute, dear... whispered his wife. When he re-entered the laboratory, his visitor was looking at his watch. I had no idea I had wasted an hour of your time. He said... Twelve minutes to four. I ought to have left here by half past three. But your things were really too interesting. No, positively. I cannot stop a moment longer. I have an engagement at four. He passed out of the room reiterating his thanks, and the bacteriologist accompanied him to the door and then returned thoughtfully along the passage to his laboratory. He was musing on the ethnology of his visitor. Certainly the man was not a teutonic type, nor a common Latin one. A morbid product anyhow, I am afraid, said the bacteriologist to himself. How he gloated on those cultivations of disease germs. A disturbing thought struck him. He turned to the bench by the vapor bath and then very quickly to his writing table. Then he felt hastily in his pockets and then rushed to the door. I may have put it down on the hall table. He said... Mini! He shouted hoarsely in the hall. Yes, dear? came a remote voice. Had I anything in my hand when I spoke to you, dear? Just now? Pause. Mini said... Nothing dear, because I remember... Blue ruin! cried the bacteriologist, and incontinently ran to the front door and down the steps of his house to the street. Mini, hearing the door slam violently, ran in alarm to the window. Down the street a slender man was getting into a cab. The bacteriologist, hatless and in his carpet slippers, was running and gesticulating wildly towards this group. One slipper came off, but he did not wait for it. He has gone mad! said Mini. It's that horrid science of his. And opening the window would have called after him. The slender man, suddenly glancing around, seemed struck with the same idea of mental disorder. He pointed hastily to the bacteriologist, said something to the cabman. The apron of the cab slammed, the whip swished, the horse's feet clattered, and in a moment cab and bacteriologist hotly in pursuit, had receded up the vista of the roadway and disappeared round the corner. Mini remained straining out of the window for a minute. Then she drew her head back into the room again. She was dumbfounded. Of course he is eccentric. She meditated. But running about London in the height of the season two, in his socks. A happy thought struck her. She hastily put her bonnet on, seized his shoes, went into the hall, took down his hat and light overcoat from the pigs, emerged upon the doorstep and held the cab that, opportunely, crawled by. Drive me up the road and round Havelock Crescent and see if we can find a gentleman running about in a velveteen coat and no hat. Velveteen coat, ma'am, and no hat. Very good, ma'am. And the cabman whipped up at once in the most matter-of-fact way as if he drove to this address every day in his life. Some few minutes later the little group of cabmen and loafers that collect round the cabman's shelter at Haverstock Hill were startled by the passing of a cab with a ginger-coloured screw of a horse driven furiously. They were silent as it went by and then, as it receded, That's Ari Yix. What's he got? Said the stout gentleman known as Old Tootles. Is he using his whip? He is, too, right? Said the ostler boy. Hello? Said poor Old Tommy Biles. Here's another blurmin' lunatic. Blow'd if there ain't. That's Old George. Said Old Tootles. And he's driving a lunatic, as you say. Ain't he a claw and had a cab? Wonder if he's after Ari Yix. The group around the cabman's shelter became animated. Go it, George. It's a race. You'll catch him. Whip up. She's a goa, she is. Said the ostler boy. Strike me giddy. Cried Old Tootles. Yeah, I'm a gonna begin in a minute. Here's another coming. If all the cabs in Amsterdam ain't gone mad this morning. It's a filled mail this time. Said the ostler boy. She's a following him. Said Old Tootles. Usually they have a way of that. What's she got in her hand? Looks like a eye-at. What a blurmin' luck it is. Three to one an old George. Said the ostler boy. Next. Minnie went by in a perfect roar of applause. She did not like it, but she felt that she was doing her duty, and while down have a stock hill and Camden Town High Street her eyes ever intent on the animated back view of old George, who was driving her vagrant husband so incomprehensibly away from her. The man in the foremost cab said crouched in the corner, his arms tightly folded, and the little tube that contained such vast possibilities of destruction gripped in his hand. His mood was a singular mixture of fear and exaltation. Chiefly he was afraid of being caught before he could accomplish his purpose, but behind this was a vaguer but larger fear of the awfulness of his crime. But his exaltation far exceeded his fear. No anarchist before him had ever approached this conception of his. Ravachol, valiant, all those distinguished persons whose fame he had envied dwindled into insignificance beside him. He had only to make sure of the water supply and break the little tube into a reservoir. How brilliantly he had planted forged a letter of introduction and got into the laboratory and how brilliantly he had seized his opportunity. The world should hear of him at last. All those people who had sneered at him, neglected him, preferred other people to him, found his company undesirable, and considered him at last. Death, death, death. They had always treated him as a man of no importance. All the world had been in a conspiracy to keep him under. He would teach them yet what it is to isolate a man. What was this familiar street? Great St. Andrews Street, of course. How fair the chase? He craned out of the cab. The bacteriologist was scarcely fifty yards behind. That was bad. He would be caught and stopped yet. He felt in his pocket for money and found half as sovereign. This he thrust up through the trap in the top of the cab into the man's face. More! he shouted. If only we get away! The money was snatched out of his hand. Right you are! said the cab man, the cab slammed and the lash lay along the glistening side of the horse. The cab swayed and the anarchist, half standing under the trap, put the hand containing the little glass tube upon the apron to preserve his balance. He felt the brittle thing crack and the broken half of it rang upon the floor of the cab. He fell back into the seat with a curse and stared dismally at the two or three drops of moisture on the apron. He shattered. Well, I suppose I shall be the first. Anyhow, I shall be a martyr. That's something. But it is a filthy death, nevertheless. I wonder if it hurts as much as they say. Presently a thought occurred to him. He groped between his feet. A little drop was still in the broken end of the tube and he drank that to make sure. It was better to make sure. At any rate, he would not fail. Then it dawned upon him that there was no further need to escape the bacteriologist. In Wellington Street he told the cab man to stop and got out. He slipped on the step and his hand felt queer. It was rapid stuff, this cholera poison. He waved his cab man out of existence, so to speak, and stood on the pavement with his arms folded upon his breast, awaiting the arrival of the bacteriologist. There was something tragic in his pose. The sense of imminent death gave him a certain dignity. He greeted his pursuer with a defiant laugh. Ah! Viva la Inaki! You are too late, my friend. I have drunk it. The cholera is abroad. The bacteriologist from his cab beamed curiously at him through his spectacles. You have drunk it? An anarchist. I see now. He was about to say something more and then checked himself. A smile hung in the corner of his mouth. He opened the apron of his cab as if to descend, at which the anarchist waved him a dramatic farewell and strode off towards Waterloo Bridge, carefully jostling his infected body against as many people as possible. The bacteriologist was so preoccupied with the vision of him that he scarcely manifested the slightest surprise at the appearance of Mini upon the pavement with his hat and shoes and overcoat. Very good of you to bring my things. He said and remained lost in contemplation of the receding figure of the anarchist. You had better get in. He said, still staring. Mini felt absolutely convinced now that he was mad and directed the cabman home on her own responsibility. Put on my shoes, certainly dear. Mini said he as the cab began to turn and hid the strutting black figure, now small in the distance, from his eyes. Then suddenly something grotesque struck him and he laughed. Then he remarked, It is really very serious, though. You see, that man came to my house to see me and he is an anarchist. No, don't faint or I cannot possibly tell you the rest. And I wanted to astonish him, not knowing he was an anarchist. And took up a cultivation of that new species of bacterium I was telling you of that infest and I think cause the blue patches upon various monkeys and like a fool, I said it was Asiatic cholera and he ran away with its poison the water of London and he certainly much made things look blue for this civilised city. And now he has swallowed it. Of course, I cannot say what will happen but you know it turned that kitten blue and the three puppies in patches and the sparrow, bright blue. But the bother is I shall have all the trouble and expense of preparing some more. Put on my coat on this hot day. Why? Because we might meet Mrs. Jabba. My dear, Mrs. Jabba is not a draught. But why should I wear a coat on a hot day because of Mrs? Oh, very well.