Long bony fingers gradually arranged the letters into words, and the words into columns. Of the three boxes, the third had been the most difficult to open, and then it had taken seemingly forever to sort the cutout letters into their proper words, using the small irregularities in the scissor cuts as a guide. Yesterday one of his men had dared to interrupt just as he was edging the last of the letters into place, and he had come close to shooting the man dead then and there. With commendable self-control he had held his temper in check. Cleaning up the mess afterward would have been an unnecessary distraction, and he needed to focus all of his concentration on the task at hand, without the tedious annoyance of a bloody corpse. In the end he had merely shot off the man’s ear.
He had briefly considered shooting off the other ear as well, but he had decided that such a course of action would have been a trifle excessive, and he was nothing if not prudent by nature. Besides, a complete absence of auric appendia would have significantly reduced the man’s continued usefulness. The point had been made. Since then his men had been even more careful than usual not to violate his inner sanctum unannounced. The peace and quiet had been most welcome.
Assured now that he would remain undisturbed, he stared intently at the odd assortment of raggedly assembled words spread upon the table before him, searching for some overarching meaning. It was clear that they were all nouns. Perhaps, he surmised, this box had contained the nouns, and the other boxes all the remaining words of the message. He shrugged. For the moment such theories were little more than idle speculation.
There was something else here – something that connected these words, a unifying concept just out of his grasp. Arrayed now in alphabetical order, the words seemed to taunt him. Perhaps if he focused only upon some small group, rather than the entire assemblage, the larger pattern would emerge. He focused his mind just upon those words beginning with the letter ‘b’:
ball
bark
bat
bill
bluff
bore
boom
bow
Dimly he recalled having seen these very same words before, in some other setting. The thought stirred memories, and with these memories came an indefinable emotion. For a moment he felt faint, as though his very consciousness itself had become unfamiliar. Fighting a sense of panic, the analytic part of his mind attempted to understand this feeling. It was as though the emotions that had washed over him were not his at all, but rather those of another. He shook his head to clear it – how could such a thing be?
He examined the words one at a time. Individually each one was common enough, the very opposite of exotic. Yet he was certain there was a trick here somewhere, some logographic enigma, a tantalizing suggestion of pattern. If only he could see this pattern…