"Were it my purpose," continued Dupin, "merely to _make out a
case_ against this passage of L'Etoile's argument, I might safely
leave it where it is. It is not, however, with L'Etoile that we
have to do, but with the truth. The sentence in question has but
one meaning, as it stands; and this meaning I have fairly stated;
but it is material that we go behind the mere words, for an idea
which these words have obviously intended, and failed to convey.
It was the design of the journalist to say that, at whatever
period of the day or night of Sunday this murder was committed,
it was improbable that the assassins would have ventured to bear
the corpse to the river before midnight. And herein lies, really,
the assumption of which I complain. It is assumed that the murder
was committed at such a position, and under such circumstances,
that the bearing it to the river became necessary. Now, the
assassination might have taken place upon the river's brink, or
