“Jerry!” the door to the parlour banged shut behind Clive. “Jerry! Where are you? Jerry? I know how to save the business!”

Silence. Or something approximate.

Just the gentle sound of rusty hinges, blowing in the wind.

No, not hinges – the soft whimper of sobbing.

“Isabella?” Clive called. Could she have returned here? Waited for him? Maybe he’d had her all wrong?

But the sobbing did not sound female. Lower, more broken. Male.

Clive did not have to search long before he found him: Jerry was sitting astride a coffin. THE coffin. Phil’s coffin. The gateway to damnation, or possibly salvation (it was hard to tell with Jerry riding it). Jerry was alone, lit by single solitary candle. And he was crying.

“Jerry!” Clive brightened, coming forward, “It’s alright! I know what to do! I can save us!”

Jerry looked up at him with rheumy eyes. “Great.” There was no heart in it. None.

“Jerry? What’s the matter? And where’s Phil?”

If Jerry was the flood, then Phil’s name was the gate, and Clive had just opened it.

“Sweden!” wailed Jerry.

“Where’s that?” gaped Clive.

“I don’t know!” howled the other.

Clive grabbed Jerry by the collar and shook him hard. “Jerry! What did you do?”

“I’m sorry, Clive! I just couldn’t help m’self!”

“Couldn’t help yourself? Help yourself do WHAT?”

“I... I tried to reason with ’im. Tried again to show him my designs. I thought maybe he’d have a change of heart - maybe at the end he’d see the light! But instead – oh Clive! He flew into a loculucidal164 rage! I’ve never seen him go off like that before! He tore the oars off the FerrymanTM and used them to smash the lid of the Second Chancer!TM I ’ad to do something! I couldn’t just stand by and let him destroy my life’s work, could I, Clive?”

Clive’s answer was an even harder shake, “Jerry, WHAT DID YOU DO???”

“I carted him down to the docks in a lockdown, and signed him up... for the Swedish navy! Bloody sailors!” Jerry whined self-pitifully.

Clive hardly had the words, which was to say he had plenty of them. Choice ones. “I don’t believe this, Jerry! Just when I was about to turn everything around, you sell the Undertaker… to a foreign power!” Then, as an afterthought, “How much did you get?”

Jerry raised a single coin into the light. He grinned. “Half a crown!”

“Half a crown???”

Quite where the beggar materialised from was beyond Clive, since he was sure he had shut the door behind him–

“Money for the–”

–Clive barely blinked: “NOT NOW!”

“Righto!”

A deathly silence descended in the departed beggar’s wake.

Finally, calmer now, Clive spoke. “Alright, look! After this is all over, we’re going to get you some help,165 and rescue Phil. But, right now, we have a body to find!”

Jerry roused himself, interest piqued despite. “A… a body?”

“Yes! And we have less than 24 hours before the lease expires! Grab a shovel – let’s go! Oh – and don’t forget the ledger!”

“The ledger?” Jerry repeated dumbly. And then, he began to laugh!

Five minutes and a mealy measure of maniacal mirth later found Clive and Jerry standing before the great iron safe in the Undertaker’s secret basement.

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

“See, I told you!” said Jerry. “Solid iron! It’s got one of those fancy Chinese character locks too. And I can’t read Chinese. Or... lock.”

“Pity the one man who knows the combination is half way to Sweden, isn’t it?” spat Clive.

Jerry sniffed. “He’d never have given it, anyway. Not even to save his own skin!”

“Fortunately,” Clive said, patting over his overcoat’s considerable pockets, “I came prepared! Our benefactor foresaw something like this. Now where is it...”

“Benefactor?” Jerry quizzed.

“Er... Less you know the better. Ah-ha!” Clive produced a stoppered vial and shook it triumphantly. The contents rattled softly, black and granular.

“Is that... gunpowder?”

“Sure is! Fawkes’ stash!”

“Fawkes is still alive? I knew it! What a Guy!”

“Er, no. Dead as the danegeld! Now go fetch that candle, and some kind of taper.” Clive looked again at the safe: the locking mechanism was a set of four brass tumblers engraved with Chinese characters. “Wait! – There’s no opening for a lock! Damn! I was supposed to stuff this in a keyhole... Now what do we do?”

“Blow the hinges?”

“The powder will just fall off them onto the floor.”

“Wait – I have an idea!”

Jerry returned with a mouldy piece of bread. “Dinner,” he exposited. Dividing the bread equally into two, he made a hole in the middle of each piece, and poured half the gunpowder inside. Licking round the edges of the bread to soften it, he pressed one around each hinge.

Clive coloured himself unimpressed. “Now, how are we going to fix a taper to bread?”

“We’re not. Wait!” Jerry ran off again and came back with an oil lantern. He sprinkled the bread and dripped a trail of oil down the safe’s face and back across the floor towards the stairs. “I daren’t use any more or the whole place will burn down. When I light this, we’re going to have to run for it!”

“You sure the bread will light up enough to detonate the powder?”

“You got any better ideas?”

“Not really.”

“Ready?”

“When you are!”

“3... 2... 1—” Jerry touched the candle to the oil on the floor. Immediately, flame licked along the trail, blue and hungry!

Jerry and Clive tore up the stairs one after the other, chased by...

An angry hiss.

Not a bang.

“That didn’t sound right...” said Jerry.

The smell was distinctive. “Rotten eggs?” said Clive.

Meekly, they returned back down to the scene of the crime. The hinges were blackened, but completely intact. The bread pieces were cinders on the floor. And that was all.

“Nice one, Jerry!” said Clive. “It hardly scratched it! Now we have no more gunpowder!”

Jerry strode over to the combination lock and gave one of the tumblers a turn. “Four wheels. Four symbols on each wheel...”

Clive followed. “So four fours. Four plus four plus four plus four possible combinations. What’s that, 13?”

Jerry grinned wolfishly. “Doesn’t seem so bad does it?”

3 hours and 156 attempts later, Clive was tired, thirsty, and utterly perplexed. “This isn’t right! Jerry, you must be forgetting the ones we’ve already done!”

“Feel free to lend your aid-a-tic memory to the cause, Clive!”

“There are only 13 possible combinations! We must be repeating the same ones over and over!”

“Don’t think so... They all look pretty damn original to me!”

“‘Original’ like ‘old’ or ‘original’ like ‘new’?”166

“Both!”

Clive slumped to the floor. “This is hopeless! It’s almost dusk! The Alchemist will be here tomorrow to evict us!”

“I still fail to see how unearthing one body is going to save the entire business, Clive!”

“I’m telling you, Jerry, the key to our salvation is on the other side of that door!”

“Might as well be on the other side of the world for all the good it will do us! Face it, Clive! We’re never going to open this safe! Phil’s beaten us! He’s not even here, and he’s still winning!”

Clive stared at his feet. “I lost her, Jerry.”

“What? Who?”

“Isabella.”

“Well, let’s go find her!”

“I mean she left me.”

“Why?”

Clive gave Jerry a long look.

Jerry shrugged. “Well, I did bloody warn you! Once you’ve had Piper, nothing tastes riper!”

Clive stirred. “Pipe.”

“Sorry?”

“Pipe!” Clive repeated.

“I wouldn’t visualise it too much, if I were you. It’s not ’ealthy!”

Clive scrambled to his feet. “Let me have another look at that hinge...” He raised his nose above the safe door. “It’s a pipe! There’s a single bar running through each of the two hinges!”

“They’re called pins. So?”

“So... all we have to do is push the pins out of the hinges...”

“...and the whole thing comes apart! Damn, I love the Chinese! Always cutting corners (and shaving foreheads)!”

“Jerry – I need a long nail, and that hammer of yours!”

It was shockingly easy. A few taps upward, and the pins had popped out the top enough to be pulled. The door to the safe did not immediately fall off, as it was still held by the lock, but that lock was not designed to hold the door by itself, and it was but a few minutes work to lever the door open on the hinge side.

They were in!

Clive gingerly took the cloth-wrapped ledger from its shelf, and laid it out upon the table. Unfastening the clasp, he parted the leather cover.

Clive sighed.

“Well?” Jerry asked. “What does it say? Are we saved?”

Clive lifted the book to show him. “Jerry. It’s in code.”