The Parcel Office At SonnbornOne hour until the carters come

The second page lies flat and the office clock says five. The telephone on the counter has rung twice, the Board's secretary wanting to know whether the book adds yet, and you have said not yet both times. The parcel nobody signed for is on the counter in front of you with its label soaked off.

Page Three: the panels

An unsigned-for parcel on the office counter, in the flat violet, orange and black inks of a 1960s poster: an open wooden crate with a blank white label, a row of white enamel strips laid side by side next to it, a black dial telephone, and the office clock on the wall. Nobody in the room.

It came in on the last service, a wooden crate, and inside it are eight enamel panels off a scrapped carriage, scoured and re-lettered in the clerk's own hand, side by side in a row, the sort with a warning across them.

Each panel is one strip of the sign, the width of a single letter, with a band for each line of the writing. The sign had four lines. The panels came out of the crate in no order at all, and nothing in the crate says which order they hung in.

Here is each panel, read from its top band to its foot, in the order it came out of the crate. A dot is a band where the enamel is bare.

The eight panels, as unpacked

PANEL   BANDS, TOP TO FOOT
  1     T  R  N  E
  2     N  G  .  E
  3     E  .  .  D
  4     M  .  I  O
  5     .  A  U  H
  6     H  .  S  A
  7     I  .  T  V
  8     D  E  R  R

Hung in the right order, left to right, the four lines of the sign read across the eight panels.

Hang the panels in the order they belonged, left to right, so that the sign reads. Tap them in that order, then hang them.

Hung so far: nothing yet

This page, in words

The eight panels are eight buttons named Panel 1 to Panel 8, numbered as they came out of the crate, in two rows of four: Panel 1, Panel 2, Panel 3, Panel 4 above and Panel 5, Panel 6, Panel 7, Panel 8 below. Each panel's four bands, top to foot, are in the table above the buttons, a dot for a bare band. Tap each panel once, in the order they hang, left to right; the strip under the buttons reads back the order hung so far. Then Hang them, or Take them down to start again.

Read what he wrote. Go through.