self."

"Suppose you detail," said I, "the particulars of your search."

"Why, the fact is, we took our time, and we searched everywhere. I have
had long experience in these affairs. I took the entire building, room
by room; devoting the nights of a whole week to each. We examined,
first, the furniture of each apartment. We opened every possible drawer;
and I presume you know that, to a properly trained police-agent, such a
thing as a 'secret' drawer is impossible. Any man is a dolt who permits
a 'secret' drawer to escape him in a search of this kind. The thing is
so plain. There is a certain amount of bulk, of space, to be accounted
for in every cabinet. Then we have accurate rules. The fiftieth part of
a line could not escape us. After the cabinets we took the chairs. The
cushions we probed with the fine long needles you have seen me employ.
From the tables we removed the tops."

"Why so?"

"Sometimes the top of a table or other similarly arranged piece of
furniture is removed by the person wishing to conceal an article; then
the leg is excavated, the article deposited within the cavity, and the
top replaced. The bottoms and tops of bedposts are employed in the same
way."

"But could not the cavity be detected by sounding?" I asked.

"By no means, if, when the article is deposited, a sufficient wadding of
cotton be placed around it. Besides, in our case, we were obliged to
proceed without noise."

"But you could not have removed, you could not have taken to pieces all
articles of furniture in which it would have been possible to make a
deposit in the manner you mention. A letter may be compressed into a
thin spiral roll, not differing much in shape or bulk from a large
knitting-needle, and in this form it might be inserted into the rung of
a chair, for example. You did not take to pieces all the chairs?"

"Certainly not, but we did better: we examined the rungs of every chair
in the hotel, and, indeed, the jointings of every description of
furniture, by the aid of a most powerful microscope. Had there been any
traces of recent disturbance we should not have failed to detect it
instantly. A single grain of gimlet-dust, for example, would have been
as obvious as an apple. Any disorder in the gluing, any unusual gaping
in the joints, would have sufficed to insure detection."

"I presume you looked to the mirrors, between the boards and the plates,
and you probed the beds and the bedclothes, as well as the curta