That evening, following a modest but nutritive repast of brown bread and bean porridge prepared by my ever-devoted Muddy, I retired to our little parlor and seated myself before the beneficent warmth of the fireplace, seeking to dispel the ague-like chill that had taken such a tenacious hold on both my body and spirit. The hours which had elapsed since the unprecedented events of the morning had been among the most dreary and difficult of my existence.

My wonted routine had been utterly disrupted, all efforts at literary creation having been rendered thoroughly impossible by the teeming phantasma that swirled within my overstimulated brain. How could my imaginative faculties operate under such intensely unsettling conditions? How could the sources of artistic inspiration assert themselves when my mind was thus overwhelmed with images so turbulent and fearful?—visions of the horribly slaughtered land-lady—of the suspected assailant, so simian-like in appearance as to resemble a hideous Borneo ourangoutang—and of the grim, and ghastly, and ominous fowl that eyed me with such strange, if inscrutable, meaning?

Since literary exertion was out of the question, I had passed the better part of the afternoon attempting to resolve the mystery posed to me in parting by Captain Russell—to wit, if the bloody markings left at the murder scene did not spell out the name “Neuendorf,” what, then, were they meant to signify?

My efforts at deciphering the message, however, had come to nought—in large part, I felt sure, because the agitations of the morning had so worked upon my brain as to render largely ineffectual my powers of cogitation. Now, as I stared into the wavering glow of the fireplace, it suddenly came to me that what I needed was a far more methodical approach than mere contemplation.

Rising from my seat, I hastened to my study, removed a sharpened lead pencil from the drawer of my writing table, and on a blank sheet, boldly printed the letters that I had positively identified, leaving the remaining spaces blank. The resulting inscription looked like this:

NE_E__OR_

I then carried the paper and pencil back into the parlor and resumed my place before the crackling hearth.

Holding the paper before me, I mentally inserted the letter “A” into the first blank space. My plan was to proceed, in a systematic fashion, through the entire alphabet—one letter at a time—and see what words suggested themselves.

The first two products of this experiment—“NEAE_ _OR_” and “NEBE_ _OR_”—yielded nothing. The third letter, however, produced “NECE_ _OR_.” Immediately, the word “Necessary” sprang to mind—a possibility that depended on my having misread the letter “a” as an “o.”

While I felt reasonably confident that I had not committed such an error, I could not be absolutely certain. I therefore inscribed the word “necessary”—followed by a small question-mark—at the top of the paper, and returned to my procedure.