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

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 are 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