Selected Tales (Oxford World's Classics)

by Edgar Allan Poe

  ‘In this I am not sure that you are wrong,’ observed Dr Templeton, ‘but proceed. You arose and descended into the city.’

  ‘I arose,’ continued Bedloe, regarding the Doctor with an air of profound astonishment, ‘I arose, as you say, and descended into the city. On my way, I fell in with an immense populace, crowding, through every avenue, all in the same direction, and exhibiting in every action the wildest excitement. Very suddenly, and by some inconceivable impulse, I became intensely imbued with personal interest in what was going on. I seemed to feel that I had an important part to play, without exactly understanding what it was. Against the crowd which environed me, however, I experienced a deep sentiment of animosity. I shrank from amid them, and, swiftly, by a circuitous path, reached and entered the city. Here all was the wildest tumult and contention. A small party of men, clad in garments half Indian, half European, and officered by gentlemen in a uniform partly British, were engaged, at great odds, with the swarming rabble of the alleys. I joined the weaker party, arming myself with the weapons of a fallen officer, and fighting I knew not whom with the nervous ferocity of despair. We were soon overpowered by numbers, and driven to seek refuge in a species of kiosk. Here we barricaded ourselves, and, for the present, were secure. From a loop-hole near the summit of the kiosk, I perceived a vast crowd, in furious agitation, surrounding and assaulting a gay palace that overhung the river. Presently, from an upper window of this palace, there descended an effeminate-looking person, by means of a string made of the turbans of his attendants. A boat was at hand, in which he escaped to the opposite bank of the river.

  ‘And now a new object took possession of my soul. I spoke a few hurried but energetic words to my companions, and, having succeeded in gaining over a few of them to my purpose, made a frantic sally from the kiosk. We rushed amid the crowd that surrounded it. They retreated, at first, before us. They rallied, fought madly, and retreated again. In the meantime we were borne far from the kiosk, and became bewildered and entangled among the narrow streets of tall overhanging houses, into the recesses of which the sun had never been able to shine. The rabble pressed impetuously upon us, harassing us with their spears, and overwhelming us with flights of arrows. These latter were very remarkable, and resembled in some respects the writhing creese of the Malay. They were made to imitate the body of a creeping serpent, and were long and black, with a poisoned barb. One of them struck me upon the right temple. I reeled and fell. An instantaneous and dreadful sickness seized me. I struggled—I gasped—I died.’

  ‘You will hardly persist now,’ said I, smiling, ‘that the whole of your adventure was not a dream. You are not prepared to maintain that you are dead?’

  When I said these words, I of course expected some lively sally from Bedloe in reply; but, to my astonishment, he hesitated, trembled, became fearfully pallid, and remained silent. I looked towards Templeton. He sat erect and rigid in his chair—his teeth chattered, and his eyes were starting from their sockets. ‘Proceed!’ he at length said hoarsely to Bedloe.

  ‘For many minutes,’ continued the latter, ‘my sole sentiment—my sole feeling—was that of darkness and nonentity, with the consciousness of death. At length, there seemed to pass a violent and sudden shock through my soul, as if of electricity. With it came the sense of elasticity and of light. This latter I felt—not saw. In an instant I seemed to rise from the ground. But I had no bodily, no visible, audible, or palpable presence. The crowd had departed. The tumult had ceased. The city was in comparative repose. Beneath me lay my corpse, with the arrow in my temple, the whole head greatly swollen and disfigured. But all these things I felt—not saw. I took interest in nothing. Even the corpse seemed a matter in which I had no concern. Volition I had none, but appeared to be impelled into motion, and flitted buoyantly out of the city, retracing the circuitous path by which I had entered it. When I had attained that point of the ravine in the mountains, at which I had encountered the hyena, I again experienced a shock as of a galvanic battery; the sense of weight, of volition, of substance, returned. I became my original self, and bent my steps eagerly homewards—but the past had not lost the vividness of the real—and not now, even for an instant, can I compel my understanding to regard it as a dream.’

  ‘Nor was it,’ said Templeton, with an air of deep solemnity, ‘yet it would be difficult to say how otherwise it should be termed. Let us suppose only, that the soul of the man of to-day is upon the verge of some stupendous psychal discoveries. Let us content ourselves with this supposition. For the rest I have some explanation to make. Here is a water-colour drawing, which I should have shown you before, but which an unaccountable sentiment of horror has hitherto prevented me from showing.’

  We looked at the picture which he presented. I saw nothing in it of an extraordinary character; but its effect upon Bedloe was prodigious. He nearly fainted as he gazed. And yet it was but a miniature portrait—a miraculously accurate one, to be sure—of his own very remarkable features. At least this was my thought as I regarded it.

  ‘You will perceive,’ said Templeton, ‘the date of this picture—it is here, scarcely visible, in this corner—1780. In this year was the portrait taken. It is the likeness of a dead friend—a Mr Oldeb—to whom I became much attached at Calcutta, during the administration of Warren Hastings.* I was then only twenty years old. When I first saw you, Mr Bcdloe, at Saratoga, it was the miraculous similarity which existed between yourself and the painting, which induced me to accost you, to seek your friendship, and to bring about those arrangements which resulted in my becoming your constant companion. In accomplishing this point, I was urged partly, and perhaps principally, by a regretful memory of the deceased, but also, in part, by an uneasy, and not altogether horrorless curiosity respecting yourself.

  ‘In your detail of the vision which presented itself to you amid the hills, yon have described, with the minutest accuracy, the Indian city of Benares, upon the Holy River. The riots, the combats, the massacre, were the actual events of the insurrection of Cheyte Sing, which took place in 1780, when Hastings was put in imminent peril of his life.* The man escaping by the string of turbans, was Cheyte Sing himself. The party in the kiosk were sepoys and British officers, headed by Hastings. Of this party I was one, and did all I could to prevent the rash and fatal sally of the officer who fell, in the crowded alleys, by the poisoned arrow of a Bengalee. That officer was my dearest friend. It was Oldeb. You will perceive by these manuscripts,’ (here the speaker produced a note-book in which several pages appeared to have been freshly written) ‘that at the very period in which you fancied these things amid the hills, I was engaged in detailing them upon paper here at home.’

  In about a week after this conversation, the following paragraphs appeared in a Charlottesville paper.

  ‘We have the painful duty of announcing the death of Mr AUGUSTUS BKDLO, a gentleman whose amiable manners and many virtues have long endeared him to the citizens of Charlottesville.

  ‘Mr B., for some years past, has been subject to neuralgia, which has often threatened to terminate fatally; but this can be regarded only as the mediate cause of his decease. The proximate cause was one of especial singularity. In an excursion to the Ragged Mountains, a few days since, a slight cold and fever were contracted, attended with great determination of blood to the head. To relieve this, Dr Templeton resorted to topical bleeding. Leeches were applied to the temples. In a fearfully brief period the patient died, when it appeared that, in the jar containing the leeches, had been introduced, by accident, one of the venomous vermicular sangsues* which are now and then found in the neighboring ponds. This creature fastened itself upon a small artery in the right temple. Its close resemblance to the medicinal leech caused the mistake to be overlooked until too late.

  ‘N.B. The poisonous sangsue of Charlottesville may always be distinguished from the medicinal leech by its blackness, and especially by its writhing or vermicular motions, which very nearly resemble those of a snake.’

  I was sp
eaking with the editor of the paper in question, upon the topic of this remarkable accident, when it occurred to me to ask how it happened that the name of the deceased had been given as Bedlo.

  ‘I presume,’ said I, ‘you have authority for this spelling, but I have always supposed the name to be written with an e at the end.’

  ‘Authority?—no,’ he replied. ‘It is a mere typographical error. The name is Bedlo with an e, all the world over, and I never knew it to be spelt otherwise in my life.’

  ‘Then,’ said I mutteringly, as I turned upon my heel, ‘then indeed has it come to pass that one truth is stranger than any fiction—for Bedlo, without the e, what is it hut Oldeb conversed? And this man tells me it is a typographical error.’

  THE PURLOINED LETTER

  Nil sapientiae odiosius acumine nimio.

  Seneca*

  AT Paris, just after dark one gusty evening in the autumn of 18—, I was enjoying the twofold luxury of meditation amd a meerschaum, in company with my friend C. Auguste Dupin, in his little back library, or book-closet, au troisième* No. 33, Rue Dunôt, Faubourg 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 Rogêt. 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 half 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 Dupin now arose for the purpose of lighting a lamp, but sat down again, without doing so, upon G.’s 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,’ observed Dupin, as he fore-bore to enkindle the wick, ‘we shall examine it to better purpose in the dark.’

  ‘That is another of your odd notions,’ said the Prefect, who had a fashion of calling every thing ‘odd’ that was beyond his comprehension, and thus lived amid an absolute legion of ‘oddities.’

  ‘Very true,’ said Dupin, as he supplied his visitor with a pipe, and rolled towards 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 Dupin would like to hear the details of it, because it is so excessively odd.’

  ‘Simple and odd,’ said Dupin.

  ‘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 altogether.’

  ‘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 Dupin.

  ‘Oh, good heavens! who ever heard of such an idea?’

  ‘A little too self-evident.’

  ‘Ha! ha! ha!—ha! ha! ha!—ho! ho! ho!’ roared our visiter, profoundly amused. ‘Oh, Dupin, 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 Dupin.

  ‘Well, then; I have received personal information, from a very high quarter, that a certain document of the last importance, has been purloined from the royal apartments. The individual who purloined 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 Dupin.

  ‘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 Dupin.

  ‘No? Well: the disclosure of the document to a third person, who shall be nameless, would bring in question the honor of a personage of most exalted station; and this fact gives the holder of the document an ascendancy over the illustrious personage whose honor and peace was so jeopardized.’

  ‘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 endeavor 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 lynx eye immediately perceives the paper, recognises 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 Dupin 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.’

  ‘Than whom,’ said Dupin, 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 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 t
he 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 au fait in these investigations. The Parisian police have done this thing often before.’

  ‘O 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 Neapolitans, 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, ‘thai 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 Dupin. ‘The present peculiar condition of affairs at court, and especially of those intrigues in which I—is known to be involved, would render the instant availability of the document—its susceptibility of being produced at a moment’s notice—a point of nearly equal importance with its possession.’

  ‘Its susceptibility of being produced?’ said I.

  ‘That is to say, of being destroyed,’ said Dupin.

  ‘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.’