When the sailor arrives for the Ourang-Outang, M. Dupin pulls out his pistol, quickly locks the door, and quietly asks the sailor to give him "all the information in your power about these murders in the Rue Morgue." He assures the sailor that he knows that the sailor is innocent, but that an innocent man is being accused of the murders. The sailor then tells how he acquired an Ourang-Outang in Borneo and brought it back with the intent of selling it. One night, however, he came home late and found that the animal had escaped from the closet where he had kept it and was in the sailor's bedroom. Furthermore, the animal had a razor in its hand (it had apparently often watched the sailor shave). In fright, the sailor reached for his whip to drive the animal back into the closet, but it sprang through the open door and disappeared down a street. The sailor followed and watched it climb up the lightning rod to a lighted window, swing through the shutters and into an open bedroom. The sailor, accustomed to climbing ropes, climbed up, and since he could not swing, as did the Ourang-Outang, he was forced to watch as the animal, in frenzy, began slashing about with the razor. The screams were heard throughout the neighborhood. The sailor watched as the animal cut Madame L'Espanaye's throat and yanked out handfuls of her hair. Then, seeing blood, the animal became inflamed into a frenzy. It "seized . . . the corpse of Mademoiselle Camille and thrust it up the chimney . . . then . . . it immediately hurled [the old woman] through the window."
Thus, the words which the neighbors heard were the horrified exclamations of the sailor outside the window, and the other shrill "sounds" were the "jabberings of the brute," who escaped just as the door was being battered down by the neighbors.
When M. Dupin carries his report to the Prefect of Police, we read that it is difficult for the Prefect to conceal his chagrin "at the turn which the affairs had taken." As has now become traditional at the end of the detective novel, the police accept Dupin's solution to the murder — which they were incapable of solving. But instead of being grateful, there is, as was noted, a sense of resentment.
