Cinderella Six Feet Under(87)

“Then shush. I must concentrate.” Ophelia brought her right foot up the clothesline, too. The upper clothesline hung at about rib-height. The lines wobbled, but she told her body to stay at once relaxed and springy, in the manner she’d always used while trick riding. The clotheslines went still.

Ophelia edged along, stepping carefully around wooden clothespins and flapping laundry. It would be a shame to mess up some poor lady’s work. Her crinoline swayed like a big bell and her injured little toe pulsed.

She reached the center of the courtyard, which was the droopiest, swingiest point of the clothesline. She lost her balance. Her feet, on the bottom clothesline, went one way. Her hands, clinging to the top clothesline, went the other. She squawked.

“Miss Flax!” Penrose exclaimed.

Her skirts sagged, pulling her. Her muscles strained.

“I’ll catch you.” Penrose opened his arms.

“I’m not going to fall.” With a great heave, Ophelia got herself vertical again. She inched forward. She breathed hard, and sweat trickled from her hairline. Her corset stuck like glue to her damp middle. However, she reached the window.

She went through headfirst, and her hands hit the floorboards. Her ankles and feet stuck up into the air, and her skirts puffed around her hips. It was too dark for the professor to see anything, wasn’t it?

She collapsed on the floor, sat up, and looked around. Weak moonlight illuminated piles of crates. This was some sort of storeroom.

She gathered herself up and hurried to the door. Unlocked, thank goodness. She groped along a corridor, lit dimly from the storeroom window behind her, and found a flight of stairs leading downward. Once the stair hooked around a landing, the darkness was so thick she had to feel along the wall. At the bottom, she felt for the courtyard door.

The door seemed to be fastened with three sliding bolts and a latch. Bang-bang-bang-clack. She opened the door.

“Brilliant.” Penrose slid inside. They left the door open for light, and crept to the workshop door.

Penrose peered at the four brass locks on the workshop door. “These are moving combination locks, I’m afraid.”

“Afraid?”

“One cannot pick them.”

Cripes.

“These small dials—with letters, see?—twist about,” Penrose said. “You’ve got to line up the correct sequence of letters on the lock, and then it falls open.”

Ophelia peered closely. Tiny carved letters went around each of the dials. The top two locks had only three dials, but the third one had six, and the fourth had five. “But there are five or six letters on each dial. It looks impossible.”

“That is precisely the point. However, there are certain things to be observed about these locks.”

“Like what?”

“First, they appear to have been made—or at least, designed—by Colifichet himself. Do you see how finely they are wrought? In addition, he chose to make the dials with letters rather than numbers.”

“What’s the difference?”

“None, from a mechanical standpoint. Yet, from the standpoint of cryptography—code breaking—letters are, or I ought to say, might be, more easily broken than numbers, because letters suggest that the locks spell out words. My suspicion of the existence of words is further augmented by the irregular number of dials on the locks—three, three, six, and five.”

“How is it you know about all this?”

“The cavalry,” Penrose said vaguely. He fiddled with the top lock. “There is, of course, the question of language. Colifichet is a Frenchman.” He tried a few combinations: MOI, CLE, ECU. The lock held fast. “But he also speaks English.” AGE, RID. No go.

“On the other hand,” Ophelia said, “Monsieur Colifichet is not only a Frenchman, he’s a snob.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, do you fancy he knows Greek or something?”

“Latin,” Penrose murmured. He tried a few combinations that Ophelia could not read, and then there was a gratifying, sighing snap, and the top lock fell open.

“What does that mean?” Ophelia squinted at the winning combination: ARS.

“Art. Colifichet does indeed hold his art—or industry—in the highest esteem.”

“By golly, he does. What’s next? Beauty? Science? God?”

“It’s another three-letter word. If it is a sentence, I suppose the next word would be a verb of some kind.” Penrose tried a few words, and then—snap!—it was open. EST. “That means it is.”