"We must not say 'impossible' just because the police have done nothing," said Dupin. "The Parisian police do find the answers sometimes, but that is usually because of hard work, not because they are clever. Very often, you see, they don't think clearly. They look very hard at one or two things, but they don't see everything. You remember the saying, 'They can't see the wood for the trees?' Well, sometimes it's important to stand back and look at the whole wood, and forget about the trees. Now, why don't we do a little detective work ourselves, and go round to the Rue Morgue? Adolphe Le Bon was once very helpful to me, and I would like to help him if I can. I know the police inspector, and I'm sure he will say that we can look round the house. So, shall we go?"

He read silently, and then said, "There is nothing new about the murders, but the police have arrested Adolphe Le Bon. Why, I don't know." He looked at me. "Well, my friend, what do you think about these murders?"

Dupin read all this with great interest, and was the first to open the evening newspaper when it arrived.

"It's a great mystery," I said. "It will be impossible, surely, ever to find this murderer."

That evening my friend would not answer any of my questions. But the next day he suddenly asked me, "Did you see anything peculiar in that house in the Rue Morgue?"

Then we went inside, and a policeman took us up to the fourth floor. The two dead bodies still lay there, with the broken chairs and tables all around them. Again, Dupin looked at everything -- the room and the bodies -- very carefully. Then we went down into the yard at the back. It was dark when we left the Rue Morgue, and on our way home Dupin went in for a moment to the office of one of the daily newspapers.

We went that same afternoon. We found the house easily because there were still people in the street looking up at the closed shutters. It was the usual kind of Parisian house, with nothing surprising about it. Before we went in, we walked up the street, turned down a narrow side street, and turned again to walk past the back of the building. Dupin looked at everything -- the ground, the walls, the windows, the shutters -- but I did not know what he was looking for.

"Neither the Gazette nor the police," said Dupin, "understand much about these murders. The police are puzzled by all the questions which they cannot answer. What was the motive for the murders? Why were the murders so brutal? Whose were the voices? How could these people get out of the house when the neighbours were running up the stairs? Why was everything broken in the room? Why was the girl's body up the chimney? Why did the old lady have so many broken bones?"

I don't know why, but his question made me afraid. "No, nothing peculiar," I said. "Well, nothing more peculiar than what we both knew from the Gazette."

"I'm afraid the police are making the mistake that many people make. They think that because the crime is so unusual, they can never explain it. But they are wrong. It is more helpful to have an unusual crime, because that will make us think harder, and ask the right questions, and in the end find the answer. We must not ask the question, 'What has happened?'; we must ask, "What has happened that has never happened before?" The answer to this mystery is not really difficult at all -- I think I know it already."

I looked at him, astonished, and could not say a word.

"I am now waiting," he went on, "for a person who is probably not the murderer himself, but who certainly knows something about the murders. He will arrive here -- in this room -- at any moment. I hope, and think, he will. And if he does come, it will be necessary to stop him leaving. Here are four guns, two for you and two for me. We both know how to use them if we have to."