I Run the Station's Lost and Found. Today Someone Handed In a Letter: Find Me.

About the story

Halloway Terminus is the grandest railway station in the city of Brasswell: a cathedral of iron and glass with fourteen platforms, a clock tower that has never once been late, a tea room with brass lamps, a newsstand, a shoeshine booth, and, down a set of stairs nobody uses, behind a frosted-glass door with peeling gold letters, the Lost Property Office. That's where you work. It's a quiet job. Umbrellas, mostly. Gloves. A surprising number of left shoes. A stuffed owl, a tuba, a wedding dress (returned, happily). You log each item in the great green ledger, tag it with a brass number, and shelve it in the long, dusty rooms behind the counter that stretch, according to station legend, all the way under the river. On Monday morning, at 8:04, someone leaves a battered leather briefcase on the counter while you're fetching tea. When you come back, they're gone. The briefcase is locked with a combination dial. Tied to the handle is a luggage tag in neat, old-fashioned handwriting: FOR THE CLERK ON DUTY. NOT THE POLICE. NOT YET. Inside, once you work out the combination (it's the time on the station clock when you found it), there's a letter. "If you're reading this, I have disappeared. Not by accident, and not by choice. I am safe for now, but not for long. I have left a trail that only a patient person will follow. Begin with the umbrella on shelf 9. Hurry. When the great clock strikes noon on Sunday, it will be too late. — A.V." A.V. can only be one person: Augustin Vey, the famous, eccentric 71-year-old clockmaker who built the Halloway Terminus clock fifty years ago, and who, according to this morning's newspaper, failed to appear at his own retirement party on Saturday night. The police say he's simply gone on holiday. His granddaughter, a stage magician named Iris Vey, says he would never leave without his cat. A railway tycoon named Lucius Pembrook, who has spent years trying to buy the great clock, has suddenly announced a "Grand Renovation" of the clock tower, to be unveiled at noon on Sunday. Your sardonic senior colleague, Clementine Ruiz, says the letter is obviously a prank and then stays late every night helping you anyway. And Detective Inspector Rufus Achterberg of the Railway Police, who has the patience of a cliff and the mustache of a walrus, says that if you meddle in a police matter, he'll have you sorting umbrellas until you retire. Augustin Vey designed puzzles as well as clocks. His trail runs through the lost property itself: an umbrella with a map sewn into its lining, a pocket watch stopped at 4:17, a toy train with a false bottom, a theatre ticket for a show that closed twenty years ago. Each item leads to a place in the station, and each place holds a puzzle lock and another clue. Somewhere in the clockwork heart of Halloway Terminus, a kind old man is waiting for the one person patient enough to find him. Six days. One great green ledger. A station full of secrets, platforms that seem to shift at night, and a clock that's never been late. This is a fair-play mystery with one fixed solution. Nobody dies and nobody is hurt. The stakes are a missing man, a stolen legacy and a clock that holds a secret its maker never told anyone. Features: Fair-Play Missing-Person Mystery · Grand Station · 6 days to Sunday noon · Clue Log, Puzzle Locks & Trail meters · Status panel every turn · A/B/C choices or type your own action · 3 endings · All characters are adults. Main cast • Clementine Ruiz, 33: Your sardonic senior colleague at the Lost Property Office. • Inspector Rufus Achterberg, 56: The booming, walrus-mustached head of the Railway Police at Halloway Terminus. • Iris Vey, 27: Augustin Vey's granddaughter: a dramatic. • Lucius Pembrook, 62: A charming, silver-haired railway tycoon who has spent years trying to buy the great clock. How to start: begin with the main opening, or jump into an alternate start: The Magician (Tuesday, 19:30) · The Tycoon's Visit (Tuesday, 11:00) · The Service Tunnel (Wednesday, 23:40). Every start shares the same world, trackers and endings.