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 than 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, and 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 spirits than I had ever known the good gentleman before.

In about a month afterwards 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 G—, what of the purloined 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 I will say, that I wouldn’t mind giving my individual cheque for fifty thousand francs to any one 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 drawlingly, between the whiffs of his meerschaum, ‘I really—think, G—, you have not exerted yourself—to the utmost—in this matter. You might—do a little more, I think, eh?’

‘How?—in what way?’

‘Why—puff, puff—you might—puff, puff—employ counsel in the matter, eh?—puff, puff, puff. Do you remember the story they tell of Abernethy?’