The First Case

I could not help admiring the “Doctor.” He was one of the handsomest men I ever saw—tall, compact, clear-cut, with a mild and amiable face, and a perfect dresser; always looking as though he had—to use a very original phrase—just stepped out of a bandbox. He sat with his legs under my mahogany, or black oak, and sipped Amontillado, and ate broiled woodcock, precisely as though they were his daily fare. The doctor would not, perhaps, have been considered exactly the associate for a man in my position, the head of a first-class commercial house—barring all egotism—but I would have defied anyone, by his looks, to have named his profession.

In two words, the doctor was a professional detective, and, in the line of his business, had just done me a service which the amount of money I had given him did not pay for, and I had extended the civility of an invitation to dinner, at my own house, for several reasons, one being that I thought him a quiet and entertaining gentleman, and another, that he had, by his penetration and good management, unveiled a matter that had troubled me very seriously for some weeks—not so much by the loss of money involved, as from the fear lest the discovery should inculpate some of my confidential employees in the counting-house, not one of whom, when the affair first occurred, could I look on with suspicion, or think of as guilty, without a feeling of intense pain, all of them having been many years with me, and endeared by faithful service. Before I go on with my main narrative, perhaps it would be well to tell how I came to employ the doctor on my own behalf. Although having no connection with the tale, it will show how wise heads—as they think themselves—can be bothered with a simple thing when unused to the business.

From the day that I first came into our house, as a partner, I have always attended to the… Read More