How are we to know that the
      articles found in the drawers were not all these drawers had
      originally contained? Madame L’Espanaye and her daughter lived an
      exceedingly retired life—saw no company—seldom went out—had
      little use for numerous changes of habiliment. Those found were
      at least of as good quality as any likely to be possessed by
      these ladies. If a thief had taken any, why did he not take the
      best—why did he not take all? In a word, why did he abandon four
      thousand francs in gold to encumber himself with a bundle of
      linen? The gold _was_ abandoned. Nearly the whole sum mentioned
      by Monsieur Mignaud, the banker, was discovered, in bags, upon
      the floor. I wish you, therefore, to discard from your thoughts
      the blundering idea of _motive_, engendered in the brains of the
      police by that portion of the evidence which speaks of money
      delivered at the door of the house. Coincidences ten times as
      remarkable as this (the delivery of the money, and murder
      committed within three days upon the party receiving it), happen
      to all of us every hour of our lives, without attracting even
      momentary notice. Coincidences, in general, are great
      stumbling-blocks in the way of that class of thinkers who have
      been educated to know nothing of the theory of probabilities—that
      theory to which the most glorious objects of human research are
      indebted for the most glorious of illustration. In the present
      instance, had the gold been gone, the fact of its delivery three
      days before would have formed something more than a coincidence. It would have been corroborative of this idea of motive. But,
      under the real circumstances of the case, if we are to suppose
      gold the motive of this outrage, we must also imagine the
      perpetrator so vacillating an idiot as to have abandoned his gold
      and his motive together. “Keeping now steadily in mind the points to which I have drawn
      your attention—that peculiar voice, that unusual agility, and
      that startling absence of motive in a murder so singularly
      atrocious as this—let us glance at the butchery itself. Here is a
      woman strangled to death by manual strength, and thrust up a
      chimney, head downward. Ordinary assassins employ no such modes
      of murder as this. Least of all, do they thus dispose of the
      murdered. In the manner of thrusting the corpse up the chimney,
      you will admit that there was something _excessively
      outré_—something altogether irreconcilable with our common
      notions of human action, even when we suppose the actors the most
      depraved of men. Think, too, how great must have been that
      strength which could have thrust the body _up_ such an aperture
      so forcibly that the united vigor of several persons was found
      barely sufficient to drag it _down!_

      “Turn, now, to other indications of the employment of a vigor
      most marvellous. On the hearth were thick tresses—very thick
      tresses—of grey human hair. These had been torn out by the roots. You are aware of the great force necessary in tearing thus from
      the head even twenty or thirty hairs together. You saw the locks
      in question as well as myself. Their roots (a hideous sight!) were clotted with fragments of the flesh of the scalp—sure token
      of the prodigious power which had been exerted in uprooting
      perhaps half a million of hairs at a time. The throat of the old
      lady was not merely cut, but the head absolutely severed from the
      body: the instrument was a mere razor. I wish you also to look at
      the _brutal_ ferocity of these deeds. Of the bruises upon the
      body of Madame L’Espanaye I do not speak. Monsieur Dumas, and his
      worthy coadjutor Monsieur Etienne, have pronounced that they were
      inflicted by some obtuse instrument; and so far these gentlemen
      are very correct. The obtuse instrument was clearly the stone
      pavement in the yard, upon which the victim had fallen from the
      window which looked in upon the bed. This idea, however simple it
      may now seem, escaped the police for the same reason that the
      breadth of the shutters escaped them—because, by the 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.”

      “Dupin!” I said, completely unnerved; “this hair is most
      unusual—this is no _human_ hair.”

      “I have not asserted that it is,” said he; “but, before we decide
      this point, I wish you to glance at the little sketch I have here
      traced upon this paper. It is a _fac-simile_ drawing of what has
      been described in one portion of the testimony as ‘dark bruises,
      and deep indentations of finger nails,’ upon the throat of
      Mademoiselle L’Espanaye, and in another (by Messrs. Dumas and
      Etienne,) as a ‘series of livid spots, evidently the impression
      of fingers.’

      “You will perceive,” continued my friend, spreading out the paper
      upon the table before us, “that this drawing gives the idea of a
      firm and fixed hold. There is no _slipping_ apparent. Each finger
      has retained—possibly until the death of the victim—the fearful
      grasp by which it originally imbedded itself. Attempt, now, to
      place all your fingers, at the same time, in the respective
      impressions as you see them.”

      I made the attempt in vain. “We are possibly not giving this matter a fair trial,” he said.