Umberto eco numero zero5/13/2023 ![]() ![]() Now they’ll have worked out the truth, that I keep everything on a diskette. They’re not stupid, they’d have assumed I must have made notes about all the work we are doing in the newsroom-and therefore that, if I knew anything about the Braggadocio business, I’d have written it down somewhere. What were they hoping to find? It’s obvious-I mean, I can’t see any other explanation-they were looking for something to do with the newspaper. ![]() And, very craftily, they did what my neighbor would have done: they turned off the water. Someone was in my house, and he, they, were afraid I might have been disturbed, not by the noise they were making (they were silent as the grave) but by the drip, which might have irritated even them, and perhaps they wondered why I didn’t stir. So, my dear Watson, the valve had been closed during the night-and not by you. Obviously the water was still running then. Last night before going to bed, I took a sleeping pill with a glass of water. We can rule out a miracle-I can’t see why God would worry about my shower, it’s hardly the Red Sea. Every effect has its cause, or so they say. ![]() And I don’t have a chimney down which the Ourang-Outang of Rue Morgue could have climbed. It’s an old-fashioned tap (everything in this apartment dates back at least fifty years) and rusty besides. It couldn’t have been an electrical contact (it’s a hand valve, it can only be worked by hand), or a mouse, which, even if there was a mouse, would hardly have had the strength to move such a contraption. ![]()
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