“I take it, then,” said I to the frontiersman, “that you have decided to postpone your departure.”

“I reckon so.”

“But what of your commitments elsewhere?”

“Why, Poe,” answered Crockett, planting his fists on his hips, “I guess you ain’t heard. There are some things that Davy Crockett ain’t never been known to walk away from: a fight, a friend in need—and unfinished business!”

My intention was to return directly to my dwelling, where—shut off from the distractions of the world—I could focus the full power of my ratiocinative faculties on the mysteries at hand. But to defer my cerebrations until I reached my abode proved an impossibility. No sooner had I emerged into the darkening streets than my overstimulated brain began to revolve the numerous facets of the baffling case.

If it established nothing else, the bizarre disappearance of Alexander Montague—accompanied as it was by the inscrutable message “Nevermore”—proved conclusively that Roger Asher had been innocent of the murder of Elmira Macready. The hand that had left the bloody writing on the latter’s bedroom wall was unmistakably the same one responsible for the inscription on Montague’s parlor. And that hand could not possibly have belonged to Roger Asher, who had perished so horribly prior to the old man’s disappearance.

To be sure, the fact that Asher was not the slayer of Mrs. Macready did not necessarily signify that no connection existed between his death, the murder of the landlady, and the subsequent disappearance of Alexander Montague. But what this link might be remained utterly obscure—particularly in the absence of any substantive information about the life or background of the vanished man.

My own perusal of the publications scattered throughout the latter’s bedroom had convinced me only that Montague had been a singularly literate individual—at least in the epoch preceding the deterioration of his eyesight. It had evidently been many years since he had indulged in the habit of reading. The handwritten marginalia I had discovered in his books were faded with age; and the issue of the Baltimore Daily Advertiser I had been examining was no less than a quarter-century old. The exceedingly brittle condition of the other newspapers in the room suggested that they were of equally antique vintage. Why Montague had bothered to preserve these worthless gazettes was yet another enigma in a case already replete with them. Perhaps the answer was no more mysterious than the extreme and unaccountable reluctance—characteristic of a certain class of individuals—to discard possessions of even the most trivial and transitory value.