Wally couldn’t wait to get home. As soon as Rod dropped him off, he raced inside, called his poker buddy, Arthur, and offered to buy him a drink at the corner bar. Arthur, a computer geek who was a whiz at mathematics and loved every kind of numerical gadget almost as much as he loved a free drink, jumped at the invitation. But when he was served his beverage of choice and heard about Wally’s plan for him to go into a loft and try to break the code of a safe, he refused.

“I don’t need to take that kind of risk,” he stated firmly, his thin face looking pained, his pale eyes astonished. He shook his head back and forth and jutted out his lower lip. “No no no. Ah-ah.”

“Arthur, we could pick up some extra money. You could buy another computer or two.”

Arthur’s eyes blinked several times. Thoughtfully, he took a sip of the frosty beer Wally had paid for. “Why don’t you have me up there when you’re working alone? Don’t you work by yourself sometimes?”

“Yes, but that’s unlikely to happen on this job. And the woman who owns the loft is home a lot. She and her husband are living there while the work is being done.”

“Then aren’t they there now?”

“No! They’re away for several days. Rod said we don’t have to go back to work there until next Wednesday when they’ll finally be back.”

Unbeknownst to Wally, Regan Reilly had been expecting them on Tuesday.

Arthur adamantly refused, drank his beer, and went home to his computer. On Saturday and Sunday, Wally tried again. Arthur remained stubborn, a mulish expression plastered on his face as he swilled all the beers charged to Wally’s growing tab.

Then today, Wally had heard from the first Mrs. Spreckles that the second Mrs. Spreckles was on her way back from England, that she didn’t know the loft had been sold, and that she certainly wouldn’t be happy about it because she was there all the time. Without her husband.

Wally immediately realized that the safe had to be hers, and that he had to act right away. If she had valuables in there, she’d certainly try to get them back. He had to beat her to it. In the back of his mind, Wally realized that this was more like stealing than just finding something left behind, but he didn’t care. He was on a wild ride, and the proverbial train had left the station. Saying he wanted to stretch his legs, Wally casually strolled out to Mrs. Spreckles’s expansive back yard and called Arthur yet again. Luckily, Arthur had just lost a load of money at the track. All his fancy calculations figuring out which horses should win, place, and show, taking into account all the variables of the race, failed him miserably. Reluctantly, he agreed to go into the loft after dark and attempt to crack the code of the safe. He told Wally to try to find out the date of Lorraine’s birthday. People often used some combination of their day, month, and year of birth as their passcodes on everything from ATM machines to alarm systems. It was a stupid thing to do because it made it easier for thieves to break the codes.