NOT REQUIRED: THE PURLOINED LETTER (edited and adapted)

THE PURLOINED LETTER
Edgar Allan Poe

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In view of an episode in Bunuel's Phantom of Liberty, I thought this Edgar Allan Poe tale might be of interest. Poe is credited with inventing the modern detective story with his three tales of detection featuring Auguste Dupin, one of which is this story (1845). Dupin outwits a thief who stole a letter and insures  the police can never find it. The police search every inch of the thief's home. But Dupin concludes the thief made the letter safe by not hiding it at all! Dupin's narrated conclusion (greatly edited and adapted) follows:

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"THERE IS A GAME of puzzles," Dupin said. "One player asks another to find a word on a map. An amateur tries to shame opponents by giving them the smallest lettered names to look for. But the better player selects the big words instead. These escape notice by being obvious.
    "The chief of police never thought the thief had placed the letter for anyone to see, so they never found it. The more I thought about the thief's cleverness, the more I was convinced that to conceal this letter he had used the trick of not hiding it at all.
    "Certain of this, I paid a visit to the thief's home wearing a pair of dark glasses, pretending my eyes were weak. This allowed me to study his apartment without notice, while pretending to listen to him speak.
    "Soon I noticed a rack that held five or six business cards and a letter. The letter was soiled and wrinkled. It was placed carelessly in one of the upper parts of the rack.
    "I decided it was the stolen letter. It looked different from the description of the stolen letter but the difference was too obvious, suggesting a design to fool someone that the letter was worthless. This and the fact that the letter was where anyone could see it convinced me it was the stolen letter.
    "I delayed leaving as long as possible to memorize the letter's appearance. Then I left but kept an object of mine behind on purpose so I could return without suspicion. On that excuse, the next I arrived with an imitation of the stolen letter. I had also arranged to have someone make noise on the street below. This distracted the thief, who went to the window to find out what was the matter. When he did so, I replaced my fake letter with the thief's stolen letter."

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