The Murders in the Rue Morgue "most poetical topic in the world". Poe defines Dupin's method, "ratiocination", using the example of a card player: "the extent of information obtained; lies not so much in the validity of the inference as in the quality of the observation." Poe then provides a narrative example where Dupin explains how he knew the narrator was thinking about the actor Chantilly. Dupin then applies his method to the solving of this crime. Dupin's method emphasizes the importance of reading and the written word. The newspaper accounts pique his curiosity; he learns about orangutans from a written account by "Cuvier" — likely
The Murders in the Rue Morgue and a leap to a set of open window shutters. Showing an unusual tuft of hair he recovered from the scene, and demonstrating the impossibility of the daughter being strangled by a human hand, Dupin concludes that an "Ourang-Outang" (orangutan) killed the women. He has placed an advertisement in the local newspaper asking if anyone has lost such an animal, and a sailor soon arrives looking for it. The sailor offers to pay a reward, but Dupin is interested only in learning the circumstances behind the two murders. The sailor explains that he captured the orangutan while in Borneo and