ltimore, where the writer's family
lived; the grandfather had served as quarter-master-general during
the War of Independence. You admit, I suppose, the existence of the
Poe family, although you deny that of the Pym family?"

I said nothing, and the captain continued, with a dark glance at
me,--

"I inquired into certain matters relating to Edgar Poe. His abode
was pointed out to me and I called at the house. A first
disappointment! He had left America, and I could not see him.
Unfortunately, being unable to see Edgar Poe, I was unable to refer
to Arthur Gordon Pym in the case. That bold pioneer of the Antarctic
regions was dead! As the American poet had stated, at the close of
the narrative of his adventures, Gordon's death had already been
made known to the public by the daily press."

What Captain Len Guy said was true; but, in common with all the
readers of the romance, I had taken this declaration for an artifice
of the novelist. My notion was that, as he either could not or dared
not wind up so extraordinary a work of imagination, Poe had given it
to be understood that he had not received the last three chapters
from Arthur Pym, whose life had ended under sudden and deplorable
circumstances which Poe did not make known.

"Then," continued the captain, "Edgar Poe being absent, Arthur
Pym being dead, I had only one thing to do; to find the man who had
been the fellow-traveller of Arthur Pym, that Dirk Peters who had
followed him to the very verge of the high latitudes, and whence
they had both returned--how? This is not known. Did they come back
in company? The narrative does not say, and there are obscure points
in that part of it, as in many other places. However, Edgar Poe
stated explicitly that Dirk Peters would be able to furnish
information relating to the non-communicated chapters, and that he
lived at Illinois. I set out at once for Illinois; I arrived at
Springfield; I inquired for this man, a half-breed Indian. He lived
in the hamlet of Vandalia; I went there, and met with a second
disappointment. He was not there, or rather, Mr. Jeorling, he was no
longer there. Some years before this Dirk Peters had left Illinois,
and even the United States, to go--nobody knows where. But I have
talked, at Vandalia with people who had known him, with whom he
lived, to whom he related his adventures, but did not explain the
final issue. Of that he alone holds the secret."

What! This Dirk Peters had really existed?