"
Lighting the cigarette, he turned the tall leaves of the beautiful
volume upon his knee.
"This edition is quite perfection," he remarked admiringly. "And I'm
sorry that I was not asked to subscribe. However," and Pendleton
glanced humorously at his friend, "I don't suppose its beauty is what
attracts you to-day. It is because certain pages are spread with the
records of crime. I notice that this volume holds both 'The Murders in
the Rue Morgue' and the 'Mystery of Marie Roget.'"
"Right," smiled Ashton-Kirk. "I admit I was browsing among the details
of those two masterpieces when you came in. A great fellow, Poe. His
peculiar imagination gave him a marvelous grasp of criminal
possibilities."
Ashton-Kirk took up the "Confessions of an English Opium-Eater" and
turned the leaves until he came to "Murder Considered as One of the
Fine Arts."
"In some things I have detected an odd similarity in the work of De
Quincey and Poe. Mind you, I say in some things. As to what entered
into the structure of an admirably conceived murder they were as far
apart as the poles. The ideals of the 'Society of Connoisseurs in
Murder' must have excited in Poe nothing but contempt. A coarse
butchery--a wholesale slaughter was received by this association with
raptures; a pale-eyed, orange-haired blunderer, with a ship
carpenter's mallet hidden under his coat, was hailed as an artist.
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