A chill wind blew through a particularly affected Midwestern community called Saint Louis.  It whistled between the boards on the windows of empty brick buildings, sweeping up the ashes from urban campfires, propelling discarded paper around the alley, as if to hit an unsuspecting passerby, but they hit only walls, for nobody was there.  Only two well-dressed gentlemen, very out of place indeed in a neighborhood such as this (if it even still qualified as a neighborhood, for that would imply that people lived there), walked these streets.  They were bundled up in winter coats, one gray and one bright orange, both wearing top hats of the same colors, on a brisk walk home after a failed endeavor.  As if by some sort of luck, one of the newspapers caught in the wind planted itself on the chest of the shorter one.  He readjusted his glasses (bifocals, used for reading and seeing long distances) to look at the contents of the newspaper.  That Franco fellow was now called a “Generalissimo”.  The president had dedicated the Boulder Dam.  Scientists were still discussing that tube device for night-vision, invented right here in this very city.  Joe Medwick was setting records.  Nothing that really interested the man holding it all that much.  How do I know that?
Well, the shorter man was I.  My name is Philip Roland Egbert.  By day I worked at Washington University as a chemistry professor, but I often found myself as an assistant to a very particular private detective, whom I was with on that very day.  I walked ahead of him, for I could not look him in the face at the moment.  Not after a very particular incident which would likely cost us both a great deal of reputation and money.
But it seemed that fate was granting us a second chance, for I spied another person strolling in the direction opposite us on the other side of the alley.  She wore a torn winter coat, which looked like it may have been quite valuable ten years ago.  I could spot the signs of wear all over it.  Obviously the financial crisis of the recent past had taken quite a toll on her purse.  From the look of her hat and shoes, she was likely a former flapper as well.
As she walked out of the side of the alley we entered through, she grumbled, “If only I had a stable job, I would be able to help my sister just fine, but no, she had to be robbed… If we ever find the robber… why, I’m gonna… “  As our possible benefactor left the alleyway, I rapidly changed directions and caught up with her, stopping right at the corner, where I pulled out my cigar and adjusted my glasses and hat to seem mysterious.
“Why, you’re going to do what?” I said as I subtly lit my cigar, causing our meal ticket to become startled.  “That part I could not figure out.  But from your composure, your posture, your demeanor, the speed you walked with, I could tell that you were confused… confused, frustrated, and inconvenienced.”  I let a puff of smoke out of my cigar.  I knew what sorts of things were in there - I could recognize half of them by taste - but often I couldn’t help myself.  Plus, it gave me an aura of sophistication, befitting a professor.  “To a person who pays close attention, it would be painfully obvious that you need assistance.  And the words you let out, well, I would assume that you were a detective as well… Perhaps you noticed that we were in the business of investigation, and decided to advertise yourself to…”
But then, what I hoped beyond hope wouldn’t happen, did.  A very particular detective interrupted me.
“So, chess, am I right?” monologued my partner as he strutted out from behind me.  The woman before me seemed intrigued, like she had just discovered a peculiar new animal at the zoo.  “Everybody thinks that it’s the ‘smart people game’ that smart people play with smart people to show off just how knowledgeable they are.  But let me tell you, little miss Evangelyne, that is not what’s up.  It’s not for smart people, it’s for boring people.”  My mysterious expression melted into embarrassment from the intensity of his oddity as he whipped out a deck of cards.  “But whist!  That’s where it’s at!  That is a smart people game, because it’s a card game, and cards come in boxes!”  I was tempted to walk away as he held groups of cards like Japanese shuriken weapons.
“And you can do neat tricks with them too!”  He did a variety of strange things with the cards, some of which could constitute tricks.  After catching exactly one third of the deck with his foot, he said, “This sure isn’t boring!  Smart isn’t boring either, so whist is a real smart people game.”  He stuffed the cards back into his pocket where they belonged and stood proudly.
Shannon Anderson was not my first choice of all the private detectives I could have assisted with my forensic experience.  He first came to me when he was attempting to determine the chemical properties of an odorless, colorless, tasteless substance found in the cooking pot of a dead man (after extensive analysis, I determined that it was water).  Ever since then he has taken me along his adventures from one end of town to the next.  I’m still not quite sure why I stayed.  Perhaps it was his youthful charm that reminded my of my own young adulthood?  Or maybe he’s like the obnoxious younger brother I thankfully never had…
“So, as you can see,” said Shannon, “we are very, very logical and intelligent gentlemen.”  He swiveled towards me on his heels.  “Egbert, buddy old pal, I appreciate you trying to make a new friend, but we need to get going; there might be someone who needs the skills of a detective!”
As Shannon was about to walk away, the woman said, “I need the skills of a detective!  My sister Miranda has been robbed blind and we don’t know who the robber was.  And there’s so much crime in the city that the police ignored us!”
“Well, we will not ignore you,” I said.  “I am Professor Egbert, and this is my partner…”
“Shannon Anderson, master detective!” he interrupted.  Our client was still taken aback by Schlock’s behavior.
“Very well, Professor, Mr. Anderson.  My name is Melissa.  It is a… pleasure to meet you…”  We nodded and shook hands, and Melissa began to lead us to her sister’s apartment.
The wind was only getting worse as we approached Miranda’s apartment.
“So, tell us what else you know about the situation, Melissa,” I said.
“Yeah, give us the juicy details,” concurred Shannon.
“Well, I only know that Miranda was robbed by word of mouth from Miranda herself,” explained Melissa.  “She doesn’t write letters, you know.  All of her money and valuables were stolen, so her only means of support was me, her sister.  I suppose she still has a few coins lying around somewhere, but her apartment is so disorganized that you’d never be able to find them.  She knows for a fact that her bedroom wasn’t touched, because she locked the door before going to bed.  It was unfortunate indeed that all of her money was in a locked box in the kitchen.  Or, at least, that’s what she told me.  I haven’t actually been to her apartment, so I guess we’ll all discover what state it’s in.
“So what were you two up to in that part of town?  I’m pretty sure I saw you too earlier heading in the opposite direction, talking about the “curb”?”
I recognized what she was talking about.  “Ah, yes, the Citizens Unemployed Relief Bureau, in the old hotel.  I regret to say that we were indeed there.  My partner Shannon and I used to work with a private eye firm, but due to the same financial crisis that’s befallen you, it was dissolved.  We tried to seek relief, but my partner caused a bit of a spectacle.”  Shannon threw his hands up.
“They kicked us out, I tell you!” he asserted.  “Because everybody else was demanding unemployment benefits really loudly, I logically concluded that being really really loud and gaining attention would make them give us some sympathy, but all they did was give us the boot!  They tossed us out of the doors for Pete’s sake!”  He crossed his arms and pouted.  “I think they just don’t like us.”  I turned my head away.
“I agree, Shannon,” I sighed, “and I’m pretty sure I know the reason.”
After about a minute I turned my head back around to see if I made Shannon too upset, but he didn’t seem concerned with me at all; rather, he was distracted with something in the sky.
“Shannon,” I said, “you’re not a dog; you mustn’t go staring at birds.”  He leaned toward me and lowered his voice to a whisper without changing his eerily blank facial expression.
“My dear friend Phil,” he whispered, “I know perfectly well that I’m not a dog.  Does this sound like a snout to you?  I am a man; I’ve spent twelve solid years, half of my life, attempting to let the world know that.  I am distracted by that bird precisely because I am a man and not a beast, for if I were a beast then the bird would not concern me.  It would just be another airborne avian, just like all of the other unreachable sky-shadows that made squawking noises.  But because I am a man, I know that this particular bird, is not like other particular birds from around here.  That particular bird…”
He pointed at the seagull-looking bird as it flew out of sight.
“ … is a particular Armenian gull.  Seeing as we are not in Armenia, that bird is not from around here.  But when I was in Armenia, I partook in some of the local culture.  Particularly, the drinking culture.  And when on one night I drank copious amounts of oghi at an inn in Yerevani, I may have knocked out the daughter of a wealthy Yerevan resident with one punch.  This wealthy gentleman, due to the fact that he wore all black, was a rather unscrupulous fellow, willing to resort to petty trickery to settle his petty grudges.
“And it is those grudges that are coming to fruition right now.”  Shannon stopped walking and gestured to us both to stop as well.  He glanced all around him, as if scanning the whole area for sudden movements.  This was a slightly busier part of town, so there were plenty of those.  “I know where that bird came from.  I read in a spy novel once that assassins will use seemingly-innocuous means to distract their targets, such as trained birds.  It takes a while to train birds, and assassins don’t typically stay near the crime scene for long, so the assassin trained his bird at home.  And a bird close to an Armenian assassin’s home would be an Armenian bird, so the bird and my drunken night in Yerevan fit together perfectly!”
I tried to stop his rambling, but Melissa looked intrigued.  Obviously she didn’t believe it, but entertainment value was still value, so against my better judgment I allowed his spiel to continue.  Shannon seemed to wholeheartedly believe this paranoid fantasy, for he was obviously quite on edge, so I elected to allow it to run its course.
So on edge was he that he whipped out his umbrella, the same bright orange as his suit and his hat, and brandished it like a dueling rapier, glancing anxiously around him as he struck various sword poses with his civilian rain protection apparatus.
“Come out of the shadows, vile killer of the night!” said he.  “You know not whom with which you deal.  For in that month in Armenia, I did far, far more than visit bars and one-punch young maidens.  I visited the warrior-monk shrines high in the mountains, where I studied the ancient secrets of the connection between body and soul.  I learned from the old masters, the keepers of holy secrets, who taught me how to fight in the way that the warriors of Caucasus folklore defeated the forces of darkness and devilishness!  They taught me courage, they taught me strength, they taught me honor!
“And I learned enough about honor to know that you, you vile fiend who lurks in the dark and kills the righteous for the coin of the jealous aristocrat, have none of it!  Though I cannot see your face yet, I have reason to doubt that you even know what honor is!  But here and now, I shall give you a succinct and painful first lesson!”
Fully pumped with needless adrenaline and self-induced zeal, Shannon whacked a random passerby once in the gut with his umbrella.  It was a middle-aged man carrying groceries.  Instead of striking back, he doubled over in pain and groaned.  Shannon took one look and understood what really happened.  A second later he was off and running, a great orange blur speeding along the street, with Melissa close behind.  I too looked at the poor man on the ground, groaning in pain, and I was paralyzed by embarrassment, regret, sympathy, and confusion.  In the end I simply tossed a couple of quarters and a dime at him and fled as fast as I could.
To this day I can attest to the genius analytical mind of Shannon Anderson.  Never before or since have I met a man who could uncover crucial connections between seemingly unrelated events in order to discover the hidden, larger picture.  I often found that this was precisely his problem, because as I was reminded on that day, often the hidden connections he found simply did not exist.  Sometimes this skill was useful, but it was times like these that I wished that he would take a minute to reflect before acting; then he would be more in touch with reality.  But I suppose he did not inhabit “reality” as we understand it, but rather a different dimension entirely, where things like logic and social etiquette take on new meanings.
We arrived at Miranda’s apartment to find it in even worse shape than I had imagined.  It was as if the burglar had stolen not just her valuables but her apartment’s aesthetic decency as well.  The whole room was unpainted, objects were scattered haphazardly on tables, paintings were upside down, and the whole place was a mess in general.
Miranda herself cautiously walked in, feeling the wall as she walked.  Melissa quickly ran to her and held her hand.  I wondered what her problem was.
“Miranda,” said Melissa, “I have brought two people here to help.  They’re private detectives, so they’ll figure out who the burglar was, and maybe we can get some of your stuff back.”
Miranda turned her head toward us.
“Why hello there.  Please, make yourselves at home, and feel free to look anywhere you feel will help the investigation; I have nothing to hide.”
Shannon told me that he would check out the bedroom, and I would investigate the kitchen.
The kitchen looked largely like the other room - no wallpaper, exposed ceiling, strange arrangement of objects on tables and the floor - but there were also some differences: on the table, there was a metal box with a lock on it.  The lock was broken, and the box was wide open and empty.  There was a cushioning material within it, with several rectangular indentations, roughly the size of stacks of dollar bills.  This must have been where Miranda stored her money until the burglary.
But even more striking was the phrase “JIM BOB DORTMUND JUNIOR WAS HERE IF YOU WANT TO FIND ME COME TO MY APARTMENT NEAR THE OLD COURTHOUSE I DARE YOU” written on the wall in broad, bright-red paint, followed by the address of Jim Bob Dortmund written in smaller black paint.
I was taken quite aback by just how easy this was.  Normally a burglar would attempt to avoid detection and not deliberately give away his address and name.  It was put exactly where Miranda would be able to see it.
If she were even able to see it at all…
Maybe “Jim Bob” was not leading her to him, but taunting her.  Mr. Dortmund didn’t know that Miranda had somebody to go to, and wouldn’t be able to hire a detective now that her money was missing, so he left a clue that she would never be able to follow.  This explained her mannerisms, the home’s decor (or lack thereof), and the obvious clue that was obvious, but only visible.  Miranda couldn’t see it, because she couldn’t see anything.  She never told anyone about this because she didn’t know it was there, because Miranda was blind.
But that was when Shannon practically tackled me from behind with the fear of the Lord in his eyes.
“Shannon,” I said, trying my best to be as calm as possible, “I have learned a crucial detail about our client, and I may have just cracked this case.”
But Shannon gripped my shoulders, beginning to sweat.
“What a coincidence,” he said, “because I’ve found out an absolutely bombastic smack-your-mama ultra super crucial detail about our client, and I’ve cracked open a case which may end up being a very deep rabbit hole Pandora’s box!  The robber wasn’t in Miranda’s room, but you’ll never believe who was: a super-spy!  I can tell because there was a used handkerchief on her bedside table, and such a classy lady would never leave one there!  Here!”  He pulled a crumpled handkerchief from his pocket and tossed it in my face without warning.  “I kept it for analysis!”  I peeled the wet napkin from my face and put it in my pocket, as there was no garbage can in sight, trying my very best to contain my disgust and confusion.
“Okay…  But how does this tie into a so-called ‘Pandora’s box’?”
“On the same nightstand as the handkerchief, there was a black pawn: the lowest piece in a chess game, often used to imply servitude, being a mere part of a larger master plan.  It was under a map of the world, which had several locations crossed off and several more with notes written on them.  Clearly Miranda is taking part in some sort of global operation.
“And that became even more apparent when I looked at the wall directly opposite to the map: a painting of a pyramid with a great eye in the middle, looking at the map.  Pyramids imply hierarchy, stratification, domination.  And the eye in the center, glancing at the world, shows that this hierarchy can ‘see’ the whole world, and everyone in it.  When this is all placed together, this can only mean that a super-spy sneaked into the bedroom and left a chess piece there to remind Miranda of her status as a ‘pawn’ in an all-seeing global hierarchy of secret power: the Illuminati!”
It took me a while to gather my wits enough to refute his absurd claims.
“You are using a handkerchief to piece together several completely coincidental pieces of evidence into an extremely improbable conspiracy theory just to explain a burglary.  But all of the things you just mentioned can be explained much easier with the knowledge that Miranda is blind, and thus unable to notice these things.  She crossed off spaces on a world map rather like a calendar, am I wrong?  And she failed to notice the writing on the wall - literally - so a pair of seeing-eye detectives had to be hired to notice this.  Of course she wouldn’t be able to notice the handkerchief, because even I couldn’t smell it as you threw it in my face!
“And let’s face it, I’ve found the burglar.  We will turn in the address to the police, and they’ll investigate the criminal, Melissa will pay us, we’ll eat another week, and that’s the end of the story.  I’ll hear no more about the Illuminati.”  Shannon grumbled.
“Fine,” muttered Shannon, his spirit crushed.  “Fine.  We’ll do it your way.  We do need the money anyway.  More than we need the truth, I guess.”  He crossed his arms and followed me to Melissa.  She was admiring one of the few paintings that were left after the burglary.  It was facing the wrong way.
“Miss, we have solved the case,” I declared.  “And in record time too!  It turns out that the robber’s name was literally written on the wall in bright red paint, as well as his entire address.  Apparently he lives relatively close by.  We will turn in the address to the police so that they can investigate further.  We thank you and your sister for your cooperation and your business.”
“Well, I guess Miranda failed to look in the kitchen.  You know, forgetfulness and all that.”
“The robber really took a toll on this place.  You could say that your sister was robbed blind.”  Melissa tensed up.
“Alright, fine, I guess there’s no sense hiding it when you already know,” grumbled Melissa.  “Miranda’s blind.  She’s been blind all of her life.  But I didn’t tell you because she doesn’t want anyone’s sympathy.  It’s a silly reason, I know, but I’m going to respect her desire for privacy and…”
“I give you my sincerest apologies,” I interrupted, sensing that we were quite short on time; I needed to go to a late lunch with a friend later on.  “We hope that things turn out fine for the both of…”
“Egbert, we still need our money!” said Shannon, still fuming from having his conspiracy theory turned down.
Melissa sighed and thrust a stack of dollar bills into his pocket and shoved us out of the apartment.
On my way back to the University, where I had left my watch, I noticed that the dirty handkerchief was still in my pocket.  I cautiously lifted it from my pocket with the tips of my fingers and examined it, for something was a bit off about it.  Namely that it wasn’t really any heavier than the simple paper of an unused handkerchief.  Fighting back disgust I peeled it open.  It was only held in its crumpled ball by some sort of weak adhesive to give the impression of being used.  On the inside I saw what appeared to be writing, though in a language I couldn’t understand:
Lla ees ew
Era uoy ohw wonk ew
Itanimulli eht era ew
“Illuminati confirmed?” whispered a familiar voice behind my back.
I sighed.
“Illuminati confirmed…”
To this day I can attest to the genius analytical mind of Shannon Anderson.