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14
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He went into the next room and sat down at a desk. He placed the paper on top of the desk, Shooter's note facing up. Then he placed a blank piece of paper next to it. He took out a pen and wrote down what he had discovered.
When he had finished, he put the pen down and held the new piece of paper with the answer up to his face so he could read it.
It had all been so simple. He didn't know why he hadn't picked it up as soon as he had laid eyes on the disturbed piece of writing. The answer was the first letter of every word. It made a sentence. And that new sentence was going to lead him in the right direction to solving this case-- Or so he hoped.
"Look at the keys," Mort read aloud from the new piece of paper. "Look at the keys..."
Mort rested his head and arms down on the desk and sighed. This sentence made just as little sense as the other one had. He was hopeless.
What keys? Mort thought.
"There are no keys!" Mort yelled, and pounded his fist on the desk.
The photocopy fluttered to the floor. It landed with the engraving facing upwards.
Mort lazily reached down for it and picked it up. He placed it back on the desk and looked at the picture. "Keys..," Mort said, seeing keys in the hermit in the picture's hand. "Keys!" He repeated. He stared at the engraving for some moments.
"I'm looking at the keys, Shooter. But I don't see anything special..," Mort said, slightly annoyed at all these riddles.
He looked at the keys once more, stared at them long and hard, then spoke, "The keys.. Hadn't they been in the other hand?" Mort asked aloud. Yes, he remembered looking at this engraving in Balkan's copy of the book and the keys had definitely been held in the opposite hand.
But what did this mean?