McMurphy's Mansion - SynTax Disk PD 196 Author: David Martin Solution by Bev Truter on PC You are in your bedroom in McMurphy's mansion, and McBee has just departed after handing you a small brass key. Get the box and unlock it, then look in box and get the bar and coin.(Bar #1). N to the West end of the Hallway, move hutch to reveal a narrow door behind it leading West. E-E to the Blue Bedroom. Look under bed for 2nd gold bar, and take note of the number of times the hallclock strikes. (7 times). Look South and you see a beautiful garden with rose bushes and small golden flowers in the centre. X player, turn crank. W, then drop the coin here outside the locked door, and drop the brass key as well. W-N to the Master Bedroom. Examine the table to find a drawer, then open drawer and look in drawer. Aha! A diary, but unfortunately you can't read it yet... S-E-D-W to the Living Room. Look in mirror and you see a painting of McMurphy which hangs on the South wall reflected in the mirror. Look at painting, look at signature, examine signature in mirror - the letters in the corner of the painting read "turn the urn". Look on table to find matches, get matches. Examine the emblem on the wall; under the shield on the emblem is a banner which proclaims "Aurum Sub Est". (This is a splendid test indeed for all that Latin you learned at school). Roughly, it translates into "Gold is underneath". Push banner - it moves and you can now see behind it, so look behind banner for the 3rd gold bar. Go East to the Foyer, where you see a hallclock and a mahogany table with some strange curios arranged on it. X curios to find a weird urn, then "turn urn" to activate the mechanism which makes the painting in the Living Room slide away, revealing a safe in the wall. Look in urn, and you find another gold bar - #4. Get bar, then look inside the clock, and you realize there's yet another gold bar stuck among the gears and pulleys. The door of the clock seems stuck though, and won't open....X clock, and you find it has a small dial at the top, and the time is 2 o'clock ... Strange ... you could have sworn the clock struck 7 earlier on. Turn dial to 7 and the clock door opens - get bar (#5). Go East to the Study and examine the globe there. Turn globe, X globe (nothing seems to have altered much), turn globe again, X globe - Europe and Africa are now facing you, and Scotland appears to have a "bump" which makes it bulge slightly away from the rest of the globe. Push bump, and a small trapdoor in the bottom of the globe opens and a gold bar falls out! Get bar (6th). W-W-N-E to the Kitchen. Drop the matches and diary, then look in drawer to find a candle. N-N-W-N - inside Workshop. Examine the tools, then get shovel, hammer and board. S-E-S-S-W-S-E-S to the Front Porch. Then S-S through the rose bushes (Ouch!) to the centre of the rose garden. Dig 4 times, and you uncover the 7th gold bar. S-S-W-U to the fork in the tree that has gold berries. You spot another gold bar hidden in the berries, but can't seem to get it ... shake tree twice and the bar falls to the ground. D, Look, get bar (#8). E-E-E to the Southeast corner of the grounds. Look behind rock, then get paper and read it - it's Master Clue 2, and reads "R-61". W-W-N-N-N-N-N to Foyer, drop paper.(There are short cuts from the grounds of the mansion to inside the mansion, but the consequences can be disastrous. You can also exit via the ground-floor windows, but then you drop most of your belongings.) U-W-N to the Master Bedroom. Look North, and you see McBee leaving the small building below with something shiny in his hand ... Open North window and go N to the ledge outside the window, where you notice crumbling stone to the East. Drop board - it falls across the gap and you can now go East to the ledge outside the locked room, but the board crashes to the patio below. There's a pigeon sitting in a nest directly above you. Look in nest - it's too far above you, so feel in nest, and you find another gold bar (9th). {Pause for a moment here to give silent thanks to Tom Lorimer for this "feel in nest" bit - Ta, Tom}. Get bar, open South window, S to the Gameroom. Open the door and examine the machine - apparently it's a fortune-telling machine, the pride and joy of your Uncle McMurphy. X plate - it contains a vertical slot. Look behind machine, put cord in outlet, and the purple curtain moves aside revealing a miniature fortune-teller holding her hand over a crystal ball. S, get coin, N, put coin in slot, get card and read it. It's Clue 1, and to translate the coded message, go back one letter in the Alphabet for each letter on the Clue card. The message then reads "look in sofa". S-D-W to the Living Room, look in sofa - Hooray! You've solved Clue 1 and found another coin. Drop shovel, N-E to the Kitchen, Look. Get the candle, diary and matches, W-S-E-U-W-W to the bottom of the stairs. Drop the coin and diary here, then light candle and go U-E to the East Storage Room. Light candle each time it goes out, otherwise you will crash through the floor and temporarily "die" if you attempt to move in the dark. X trunk - it has a padlock, X padlock - it's old and rusty. Hit padlock with hammer and it breaks open. Open trunk, look in trunk, get bar (#10), bible and book. Round about now McBee bustles in and hands you the 11th gold bar. W-D, drop hammer, get diary. Read bible to discover that Aaron McMurphy's birthdate was March 11th, 1923. Then "read on 3-11-1923 in diary" - this entry mentions something hidden under a board ... Drop bible and diary, U to the West Storage Room where you notice some of the boards in the floor are loose. The following sequence will only work after you have read the passage in the diary on the appropriate page, and remember to keep the candle lit! Push board - it comes loose and the 12th and last gold bar is added to your inventory. As soon as you have all 12 bars McBee appears and whispers Master Clue 3 to you; L-7. D, get coin, read book, read chart - it's a chemical chart of Elements and their abbreviations. E-E-N, put coin in slot, get card and read it (Clue 2). It lists all words ending in -EST, except the word "nest". N, feel in nest and you find another coin. S, put coin in slot, get the next card (Clue #3) and read it. The message on the card translates into ordinary English as ".....look outside in the garden under the yellow/golden ovaries/fruits/flowers".....No, not under the golden berries in the tree, but I digress. S-D-S-S-S to the Rose Garden. Look. Look under flowers - you find that coin again! N-N-N-U-N to the Gameroom, put coin in slot, get card and read it. This contains a 4-word message in code, using the abbreviations of the elements in the book. Read book, and decode the message to read: 1) Copper, Beryllium = CUBE 2) Iodine, Nitrogen = IN 3) Tungsten, Astatine, Erbium = WATER 4) Boron, Lutetium, Einsteinium - Sulphur = BLUE So, the message reads "cube in water blue", but WHERE is the water?? Drop card, get cube and examine it - the colours (sorry, "colors") on each side are all mixed, so "turn cube" repeatedly until you get one side all blue, then go S-D-W-N-E to the Kitchen. Look. Fill sink with water - water gushes from the tap (sorry, "faucet") until the sink is full. Put cube in water, and a (wet) coin is now yours. W-S-E-U-N to the Gameroom. Put coin in slot, get card, read card - it's Master Clue 1 - "R-38". S-D-W to the Living Room, Look, X safe. First just fiddle with the safe - eg, "turn knob left". Then "turn knob right to 38", then "turn knob right to 61". If the safe doesn't open now, then repeat the last two numbers in the same sequence. The safe opens!!! Look in safe....but what's this?? It's empty! Devoid of contents! Horrors! Look again, and you hear someone chortling with laughter behind you. It's McBee ... or is it? - o -