The unnamed narrator describes his friendship with C. Auguste Dupin. Dupin is not a detective, he is simply possessed of a ‘special reasoning power’ that allows him to explain otherwise obscure mysteries. Poe was, for Conan Doyle, ‘the supreme original short story writer of all time.’ This passage directly inspired the opening of ‘The Cardboard Box’ (see Appendix 1) and was repurposed for ‘The Resident Patient’ for the first book edition of the ‘Memoirs’ (see ‘Introduction’).

At such times I could not help remarking and admiring (although from his rich ideality I had been prepared to expect) a peculiar analytic ability in Dupin. He seemed, too, to take an eager delight in its exercise, if not exactly in its display; and did not hesitate to confess the pleasure thus derived. He boasted to me, with a low chuckling laugh, that most men, in respect to himself, wore windows in their bosoms, and was wont to follow up such assertions by direct and very startling proofs of his intimate knowledge of my own. His manner at these moments was frigid and abstract; his eyes were vacant in expression; while his voice, usually a rich tenor, rose into a treble which would have sounded petulantly but for the deliberateness and entire distinctness of the enunciation. Observing him in these moods, I often dwelt meditatively upon the old philosophy of the Bi-Part Soul, and amused myself with the fancy of a double Dupin— the creative and the resolvent.

Let it not be supposed, from what I have just said, that I am detailing any mystery, or penning any romance. What I have described in the Frenchman was but the result of an excited, or perhaps of a diseased intelligence. But of the character of his remarks at the periods in question an example will best convey the idea.

We were strolling one night down a long dirty street in the vicinity of the Palais Royal. Being both, apparently, occupied with thought, neither of us had spoken a syllable for fifteen minutes at least. All at once Dupin broke forth with these words—

‘He is a very little fellow, that's true, and would do better for the Théâtre des Variétés.’