The room was both eloquent—and redolent—of the most extreme, the most dire, poverty, neglect, and degradation. Its furnishings consisted solely of a broken-down bureau of deal, whose drawers were missing all but one or two of their small, wooden knobs; a table and chair of equally shoddy construction; and an old bedstead upon whose execrable mattress lay a frayed, moth-eaten, and badly rumpled coverlet. The jaundice-yellow wallpaper was ancient, water-stained, and peeling. At the foot of the bed stood an unemptied chamber pot—the source of much of the rank, miasmic atmosphere that suffused the quarters. Contributing to this foetor was the smell emanating from the table, whose surface was littered with the vestiges of various meals—the decaying fragments of a catfish; the partially gnawed disjecta membra of a chicken; a beef bone to which waxy gobbets of congealed fat continued to cling. Of the hordes of vermin swarming brazenly over these loathsome remnants, I shall spare the reader a description.

And yet, for all of these extreme—nearly unbearable—signs of squalor and misery, the room also contained evidence that its inhabitant was a being not entirely devoid of intellectual substance or cultivation. In every corner of the little chamber stood a towering pile of yellowing newspapers and magazines; while scattered here and there—around the floor—upon the bureau top—beneath the bedstead—were dozens of dusty, leather-bound volumes.

By this point, both Crockett and his young interlocutor had become aware of our presence. Swivelling to face me, the frontiersman folded his arms across his chest and declared: “Well, it took you long enough to git here, Poe. I judge you warn’t exactly itchin’ to find out how wrong you was!”

So unanticipated—so bewildering—was this statement that my mouth literally dropped open in confusion. “I am at a complete loss to comprehend your meaning, Colonel Crockett,” I said after a moment. “Wrong in what regard?”

“Why, about that Asher feller bein’ the one that killed poor ol’ Mrs. Macready.”

This observation rendered me nearly as thunder-stricken as his previous one. “But it was you, not I, who leapt to that conclusion!”

“Why, only on account of you bein’ so blamed sure that them goldanged letters spelled out New Export.”

I was formulating an indignant retort to this outrageous accusation when Captain Russell interceded. “Gentlemen, gentlemen,” he said, raising both hands and patting the air in a conciliatory gesture. “There is little to be gained from such mutual recriminations. My intention in summoning you here was not to provoke a confrontation but—on the contrary—to secure your cooperation in helping to resolve this new and most distressing development.”