Dupin returns to the Minister. He knows that, because the minister has fooled the Prefect, he has the abilities of a poet as well as a mathematician, and understood everything that the police were likely to do in response to his crime. Dupin believes that his absences from
the apartment were deliberate, and that he knew the prefect’s train of thought and knew to avoid any kind of concealment of the letter.
Dupin’s understanding of the Minister’s techniques shows that heunderstands the mind of a criminal, which gives him a certainthreatening power which he wields throughout the story, just like inMurders in the Rue Morgue. We are made aware that Dupin couldprobably quite easily commit some crimes himself.Dupin reminds the narrator of "The Purloined Letter" what he said to the prefect when he visited, about the riddle being too self-evident. He believes that the material world and the metaphorical world are strongly connected. He uses two examples. The first is the principle of inertia being the equal in physics and metaphysics. The second is a game where one player asks another player to find a name on a map, and the clever player will choose an overarching county name or some other broad term that is stretched across the map or placed high upon a sign. Most people expect that the many-lettered,
or obscure names will be most difficult to find, but it is often the simplest
answer that can be overlooked, just like the case of the purloined letter.
Dupin displays his skill in this speech. He shows us how he is able toconsider deep concepts and human observations at the same time,and consider many dimensions and levels of meaning at once. Whilethinking of the academic realm of metaphysics, he also conjures asimple image of a map and the visual effect of the important namesof counties and soon being spread across the terrain.The more Dupin considered the intelligence of the Minister,
the more he believed that the best way he could invent of concealing the object beyond the scope of the prefect’s usual search, but also to keep it handy so he could destroy it at a moment’s notice, was to not conceal it at all. With this idea,
Dupin says that he went to the Minister’s apartment himself,
and performed his own search.
Even the most obvious deception fools the police. In fact, the bestShare with your friends: