The fireplace was full of charred and feathered paper. As the bright beam played inside, they saw that the edging of some of the paper not wholly burned was of a dull mauve colour, blackened by smoke.
`The "Mary” letters,' Hadley said, as Dr Fell tried lightly to lift the mass. `All that's left of them.'
Dr Fell grunted wheezily. `Yes. And here underneath them…'
He tried to draw it out gently, but it was only a delicate black shell, and it crumpled to ash. All that remained were a few smoke-fouled inches at the top. It had been a very thin sheaf of damp-stained sheets, folded three times lengthwise, and now open. Holding it gently, in his open palms, Dr Fell put it close to, Hadley's light. There had been a title, but the smoke had, yellowed and obliterated it; likewise it had obliterated all the letters in the corner except; an ornate 'E.' But, in brown and curly script, they, could faintly see a number of lines which the fire had not destroyed:
'Of the singular gifts of my friend the Chevalier Auguste Dupin, I may, one day speak. Upon my lips; he has placed a seal of silence which, for fear of displeasing the eccentricities of his somewhat outre humour, I dare not at present violate. I can, therefore, only record that it was after dark one gusty evening in the year 18- that a knock sounded at the door of my chambers in a dim, decaying pile of buildings of the Faubourg Saint-Germain, and…'
'There it is,' the doctor growled in a low voice, after a pause. `All of him, in the start of one paragraph. The finger on the lip. The suavity, the hint of deadly secrets. The night, the night wind, the distant city, the date mysteriously left blank, the old and crumbling house in a remote quarter… H'm. Gentlemen, you are looking at all that is left of the first detective story ever written by Edgar Allan Poe.'
Hadley arose and switched off his light. 'Well,' he said, gloomily, `there goes ten thousand pounds. It's a good job Arbor doesn't have to pay the rest of his agreement to that fellow in Philadelphia.'
'I hate having to tell this to Sir William,' muttered Dalrye. 'Good God he'll be a maniac. It's a pity Phil couldn't at least have kept the thing….'
`No!' said Dr Fell, violently. `You don't see the point. You don't grasp, it at all, and I'm ashamed of you…. What happened?'
`He burnt it,' Hadley returned. 'He was so terrified at nearly being caught when he tried to return, it, that lie came home and, chucked it in the fire.'