The extraordinary details which I am now called upon to make public, will be found to form, as regards sequence of time and story, a series of scarcely intelligible coincidences, which, viewed individually, are quickly passed over, ignored and unnoticed by the reader.  But taken as a whole, they slowly, word by word, thought by thought, establish a pattern, a pattern that clearly reveals the existence of a relationship between The Beale Papers and my body of work.  Establishing, to a reasonable certainty, that the anonymous author of The Beale Papers was either Edgar Allan Poe or someone mimicking my work, may advance considerably the march toward a solution to the enigma.  Of course, only by solving the ciphers can my identity as the author be established beyond any doubt.  

            The investigation of the mystery of The Beale Papers over the past century has almost always focused, at least so far as can be seen in the public record, on developing a solution to the ciphers.  This may, in fact, be a necessary step in cracking the codes.  However, an investigator who limits his inquiry to the immediate, obvious path, with total disregard of the collateral or circumstantial events, may miss important evidence that can lead to a solution to the problem. As I previously stated, I will not provide a solution to the ciphers.  However, I strongly suggest that a study of the text, in addition to the numbers, set forth in The Beale Papers, may provide important evidence that has been overlooked by previous analysts.

            Those of you unfamiliar with my ratiocination stories, The Murders in the Rue Morgue, The Mystery of Marie Roget and The Purloined Letter, may wish to read them now.  In these stories, I introduce Chevalier C. Auguste Dupin, detective, analyst and observer extraordinairre.  Would be cryptographers who take up the challenge of The Beale Papers could do worse than to adopt Dupin’s methods.  Indeed, all those who call themselves detectives, analysts or cryptographers would do well to review Dupin’s comments on analysis by police, poets and mathematicians. 

In The Purloined Letter, after the police have failed to secure a stolen letter from the apartment of the cunning and brilliant Minister D, Dupin observes:

            “This functionary (the Prefect) has been thoroughly mystified; and the remote source of his defeat lies in the supposition that the Minister is a fool, because he has acquired renown as a poet. All fools are poets, this Prefect feels and he is merely guilty of a non distributio medii in thence inferring that all poets are fools…

As poet and mathematician [Minister D] would reason well, as mere mathematician he could not have reasoned at all, and thus would have been at the mercy of the Prefect.”

My point, through Dupin, is thus; the successful analyst must develop the skills of the poet and the mathematician!  This is an old story, rewritten many times since my era and it remains true today. To those mathematicians who would take an interest in The Beale Papers, I urge you to develop your poet qualities.  True, the mathematical reason has long been regarded as the reason par excellence, but the ciphers have yet to be broken and a new approach to the problem may be in order.  Perhaps, some variation of the mathematical principles is needed.  As to the poets who will explore the observations set forth in this monograph, it may be necessary from time to time to come down from the clouds and consider the benefits of a mathematical approach.  More than likely, the analytical skills of the mathematician and the reasoning powers of the poet will be needed to develop a solution to this enigma.