id D—steal the letter? : e . woman of social importance was in her boudoir when I her lover arrives. However as she was reading it, the entry of her husband compelled her to put the letter down on the table. ‘A minister, identified only as D--, then enters the room as a guest. p-,aman of nefarious designs, spots the letter and recognizing the lady’s handwriting, guesses her scandalous secret. Producing his ‘own letter from his pocket, he placed it down on the table next to the indiscriminating letter while talking to the lady and her husband. Then he went ahead and picked up the other letter in the full view of the couple. Despite seeing this, the lady was unable to draw attention to the act in front of her husband as that would have led to the divulging -of the contents of the letter before him. The crafty D—knows this and takes full advantage of the situation. Here D—appears to be a master plotter with a distinguished ability to understand and exploit human weakness. 2. Why was the Prefect of the police unable to recover the letter? In the opinion of Dupin, the Prefect of the police was unable to Tecover the letter owing to his conventional way of thinking, coupled with his staunch belief in stereotypes. In the story, when the Prefect ~ tries to recover the purloined letter, he searches the accused, D—’s, hotel room thoroughly. In the opinion of the Prefect, D—would have Kept the letter in an especially secure place in order to prevent it from being discovered. He also felt that D—would have to keep the letter Close at hand in order to produce it ata moment’s notice. He was correct nthe second point but wrong on the first. D—had apprehended the “onventional way of thinking of the police force. He knew that in their Uest to find the ‘special hiding place’ for the letter, they would miss Sut on the obvious. So he kept the letter in plain view in a different “2Velope to beguile the police and their conventional way of thinking ~ énd methods of searching. Since D—was a poet, the Prefect considered himtobea man of low intellectual capacity. This is in accordance to the F-ig