I could not believe my eyes. Notwithstanding
that uproar, those noises of removal....I made a tour, I inspected
the walls, I made a mental inventory of all the familiar objects.
Nothing was missing. And, what was more disconcerting, there was
no clue to the intruders, not a sign, not a chair disturbed, not
the trace of a footstep.
"Well! Well!" I said to myself, pressing my hands on my bewildered
head, "surely I am not crazy! I hear something!"
Inch by inch, I made a careful examination of the room. It was in
vain. Unless I could consider this as a discovery: Under a small
Persian rug, I found a card--an ordinary playing card. It was the
seven of hearts; it was like any other seven of hearts in French
playing-cards, with this slight but curious exception: The extreme
point of each of the seven red spots or hearts was pierced by a
hole, round and regular as if made with the point of an awl.
Nothing more. A card and a letter found in a book. But was not
that sufficient to affirm that I had not been the plaything of a
dream?
* * * * *
Throughout the day, I continued my searches in the library. It was
a large room, much too large for the requirements of such a house,
and the decoration of which attested the bizarre taste of its
founder.
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