This man had come as noiselessly as a ghost; and everything he did was
accomplished with the rapidity and decision that indicated a
well-defined and pre-arranged plan. His designs were evidently sinister.
I thought he was going to rob and, perhaps, murder me. I lay,
nevertheless, like a corpse under his hands. He inserted his hand in my
breast pocket, from which he took my precious white rose and all the
letters it contained, among which was a paper of some consequence to me.
My letters he glanced at. They were plainly not what he wanted. My
precious rose, too, he laid aside with them. It was evidently about the
paper I have mentioned that he was concerned; for the moment he opened
it he began with a pencil, in a small pocket-book, to make rapid notes
of its contents.
This man seemed to glide through his work with a noiseless and cool
celerity which argued, I thought, the training of the police department.
He re-arranged the papers, possibly in the very order in which he had
found them, replaced them in my breast-pocket, and was gone. His visit,
I think, did not quite last three minutes. Very soon after his
disappearance I heard the voice of the Marquis once more. He got in, and
I saw him look at me and smile, half-envying me, I fancied, my sound
repose.
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