That was all we could discover. The Count de St.
Alyre, to whom this house belongs, was very active and very much
chagrined. But nothing was discovered."
"And nothing heard since of the epic poet?" I asked.
"Nothing--not the slightest clue--he never turned up again. I suppose he
is dead; if he is not, he must have got into some devilish bad scrape,
of which we have heard nothing, that compelled him to abscond with all
the secrecy and expedition in his power. All that we know for certain is
that, having occupied the room in which you sleep, he vanished, nobody
ever knew how, and never was heard of since."
"You have now mentioned three cases," I said, "and all from the same
room."
"Three. Yes, all equally unintelligible. When men are murdered, the
great and immediate difficulty the assassins encounter is how to conceal
the body. It is very hard to believe that three persons should have been
consecutively murdered in the same room, and their bodies so effectually
disposed of that no trace of them was ever discovered."
From this we passed to other topics, and the grave Monsieur Carmaignac
amused us with a perfectly prodigious collection of scandalous anecdote,
which his opportunities in the police department had enabled him to
accumulate.
My guests happily had engagements in Paris, and left me about ten.
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