restraint, in the company of a man who knows that a problem such
as this seems to me to be, is not solved at the first attempt. So
I permit my gropings to be seen without shame. You cannot always
reach the truth at a bound, but by a series of diverse calculations,
by deductions and inductions. Well, just now my logic is at fault."

"How so?"

"Oh, it's very simple. I thought I understood the rascals, and
knew them by heart; and yet I have only recognized imaginary
adversaries. Are they fools, or are they mighty sly? That's what
I ask myself. The tricks played with the bed and clock had, I
supposed, given me the measure and extent of their intelligence
and invention. Making deductions from the known to the unknown,
I arrived, by a series of very simple consequences, at the point
of foreseeing all that they could have imagined, to throw us off
the scent. My point of departure admitted, I had only, in order
to reach the truth, to take the contrary of that which appearances
indicated. I said to myself:

"A hatchet has been found in the second story; therefore the
assassins carried it there, and designedly forgot it.

"They left five glasses on the dining-room table; therefore they
were more or less than five, but they were not five.

"There were the remains of a supper on the table; therefore they
neither drank nor ate.

"The countess's body was on the river-bank; therefore it was placed