"Edgar Allen Poe - The Works of Edgar Allan Poe Volume 2" - читать интересную книгу автора (Poe Edgar Allan)

is a dolt 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 bedposts 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 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 glueing - any unusual gaping in the joints - would have sufficed
to insure detection."

"I presume you looked to the mirrors, between the boards and the
plates, and you probed 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."