A Void by Georges Perec

first go missing
    — as possibly an offshoot of his noticing, just two days prior to
    this vanishing act, a most alarming story in his Figaro.
    It was all about an unknown individual (a man, so rumour
    had it, of such vast, almost occult authority that no journalist
    had sought to crack his incognito), who had, at night, unlawfully
    burst into a commissariat building that was said to contain many
    important official manuscripts and got away with a particularly
    hush-hush account of a major scandal implicating a trio of guards
    at Poulaga Prison. Normalising such a situation was an awkward
    task; convincing so diabolically crafty a burglar to hand back such
    a compromising manuscript just as awkward; but it was crucial
    to do so, for this kind of traitor usually has no difficulty in finding
    a nation willing to buy his goods at any cost. But though it was
    obvious that X . . . (for our burglar holds a high-ranking position
    to this day and is, I am told, a notoriously litigious man) had
    put it away out of sight in his flat, ransacking that flat again and
    again had thrown up nothing significant.
    Staking all on a hunch, a Commandant, Romain ("I just want
    th' facts, ma'am") Didot, along with Garamond, his adjutant and
    Man Friday, pays a visit to Dupin, known for his unfailing gift
    for nosing things out.
    "/4 priori ," Didot informs him, "it's not our constabulary's job to worry about such a burglary. For anything . . . 'normal', shall
    I say, in our filing library, for an x or y, nobody'd complain too 3 7
    much. But this sort of McGuffin is, I'm afraid, just a tiny bit too
    significant to —"
    "McGuffin? McGuffin?" Dupin, to whom this word's conno-
    tation is a total blank, savours it in his mouth for an instant or
    two.
    Didot grins. "Pardon my film buff slang. Put simply, I want
    you to know that solving this burglary is vital to us, in that it'll
    ruin, it'll undo, what can I say, it'll play bloody havoc with our
    organisation. Why, it risks cutting our working capacity by up
    to 20%!"
    "So," asks Dupin, "you say you shook down our burglar's flat,
    high and low, with a toothcomb? Is that right?"
    "Uh huh," admits an unhappy Didot, "but I can't say I found
    anything incriminating. And I was as thorough as any of my
    rivals from Scotland Yard!"
    "Hmm," grunts Dupin. "It's as plain as daylight. You hunt
    high and low, you tap walls and floors, but without any luck;
    for whilst you may think that your approach is obvious, it's ironi-
    cally that which is truly obvious that it can't account for. Hasn't
    it struck you that your criminal had to find a hiding spot that a
    big, plodding flatfoot - it's you I'm alluding to, Didot - wouldn't
    think of looking at, and would probably not stash his loot away
    at all but simply stick it into an ordinary blotting pad, a blotting
    pad that you probably had your hand on again and again, without
    knowing what it was, without caring or trying to know that
    what it had on it was no casual scrawl but your own almighty
    McTavish!"
    "McGuffin," says Didot sulkily, still smarting from Dupin's
    insults. "Anyway, I saw no such blotting pad."
    "That's what you think," Dupin murmurs with ironic
    suavity.
    Putting on his mackintosh, taking a big black brolly out of its
    stand and unlocking his front door, Dupin turns to Didot and
    says, "I'm off. In a twinkling I'll hand you back that manuscript
    of yours."
    3 8
    But — not that anybody could fault his logic - but our famous
    dick was, on this particular occasion, all wrong.
    "I'm PO'd, truly PO'd" (PO was a contraction of "piss off"),
    sighs Dupin; who, at that point, as consolation, and allowing
    Didot and his constabulary to work it all out without his aid,
    starts tracking down a homicidal orang-utan with a grisly trio of
    victims.
    If Dupin should fail, though having it all within his grasp from
    A to Z, how can I possibly look forward to my own salvation,
    to my own absolution? That's what Anton Vowl jots down in
    his diary - adding:
    "I did