The Clue! - Art of the Steal

Written by MenhirMike

I am not going to lie, this session was a real struggle for a while. Not so much because of the game, which is still great despite some interface troubles I will get into. But because these last three sessions were essentially me keeping notes in an Excel sheet and then writing those notes into prose that read more like math homework than a blog about a game. I am happy to report that the game did pick up on story bits again at the end, but until then it’s going to be a bunch of facts and numbers.

In the previous episode, we’ve burgled the Jeweller, got arrested for 24 hours as part of the story, sold our stolen goods, and are now left with 2398 pounds and no clear direction. Time to look at the available targets, and it’s clear that the next heist is going to be art: 

• Suterby’s: Not to be confused with Christie’s and Sotheby’s, it’s a smaller auction house
• Chiswick House: An old, aristocratic mansion
• Osterly Park House, Isleworth: One of the many country houses around London, having its walls covered by precious paintings instead of wallpaper
• Ham House, Richmond: Another country house with impressive hedges 

Despite the name, it's not a butcher's store.

Before picking a target I also made my rounds to see what new accomplices and tools are available. There is a ground auger to open safes with (very loud, but only needs 15% safes skill and a power generator) and dynamite (even louder, needs 11% explosives skill instead of safes skill). The dynamite has a 10% chance of injury which seems laughably low, but I guess that after World War II, every adult Englishman knew how to handle it. Another highlight is the oxygen cutter, which requires a slightly higher 43% skill in safes than the cutting torch, but is significantly faster.

The game has a pretty uncanny ability to add tools to the tools shop that would’ve been perfect for the heist completed just before they became available. Is this a deliberate game design decision to allow a player to try harder heists with worse tools and accomplices for a bigger cash reward earlier? I’m going to make a comparison that’s probably a bit of a stretch, and yet doesn’t seem too far fetched: It reminds me a bit of Capcom’s Mega Man games, players can play levels in any order, but there is an optimal route that acquires special weapons in time to make the next level much easier. I wonder if that was an inspiration here?

I bought the radio (140p), a power drill (50p), and the power generator (340p). The generator is expensive, but I will be encountering steel doors and safes much more and the drill opens them much quicker.

Next up was a tour to see if any new accomplices show up. I met Samuel Rosenblatt, who says he’s an agent (are they supposed to just tell people that?). I met Prof. Emil Schmitt, who knows a thing or two about explosives. But I also found that sometimes, potential accomplices hang out in places outside of the bar - when I went to the Cars & Vans location, I met John O Keef.
 

Keef The Thief was reviewed as Game #110 on the CRPG Addict blog.

This makes me wonder if I missed any potential accomplices, so I toured all locations and ran into what seems to be a game bug: There is a person named Garry Stevenson in the Tools Shop, but it’s impossible to talk to him. Normally when you select “Talk” and multiple people are in a location, you get to choose whom to talk to. But in the Tools Shop, “Talk” always initiates the menu to buy/sell tools. I could not find a way to talk to Garry, and could not find him in other locations even after waiting for a week in either of the pubs.

Basically the opposite of this.

The car dealer has some sweet new cars, including one that I would love to drive myself, a 1952 Cadillac for a whopping 6800 pounds (according to the Bank of England, that would be 168,000 pounds in 2026 money).
 

I wonder if it used to belong to Geronimo or MC Thunder?

I’m not really sure why I’d buy a car like this for a heist. The Cadillac has a 76% rating for conspicuous appearance, which puts it up there with the Jeep. It’s in great shape, has 160 horsepower and also 160 km/h top speed - is there a use-case for a fast and very noticeable car to outrun the police, or is this just the developers having great taste in cars and wanting to put it into the game?

For my target, I’ve chosen Ham House. This one took me a few tries to figure out: It has three alarm systems that are wired in unintuitive ways. There is a guard that also has a new gameplay mechanic: A time check clock that needs to be regularly interacted with, in this case every 10:40 minutes.

 

Even a burglar has to clock in and out of work.

I learned that when I knock out the guard, a “check clock card” automatically appears in my inventory, which allows any team member to interact with the time clock.

This location also trolled me in two different ways. One is that there is a giant steel safe to open, which contains… forty pounds of cash. Nope, not a typo. There is another locked cabinet that contains 20 pounds worth of articles of daily use. I have heard of decoy safes before, but since I can fully inspect the loot after observing the building, it’s not like this is a big “gotcha!”. The whole observing/planning part of the game feels just a bit undercooked here.

The second way the game got me actually makes logical sense: There are a bunch of statues, which are heavy and big, and trying to have one person pick them all up leads to an inevitable “Can’t carry any more” message.

Maybe we should have stopped by Maniac Mansion for some weight training first.

Now I wonder if the capacity of the car will become an issue at some point - the game has some actual delivery vans for sale. I didn’t need one for this heist, but I will keep this in the back of my mind.

One more oddity I noticed is that sometimes, adding accomplices actually improves my share of the loot. For example, if I add Miguel Garcia and make it a two-person heist, he leaves me with 10%. But if I then also add Justin White as a third team member, my cut actually increases to 16%. Adding Margarete Briggs as a fourth member, my share goes down to 15%.

With all the preamble out of the way, let’s get into the actual heist, starting with the floor plan:

There is no actual ham among the loot in this place.

I’ve annotated the alarm systems and some of what they protect. All the important loot is protected by alarm A3, which is in a room that has doors protected by A1 and A3. Alarm A1 is in a room that is protected by Alarm A1. Alarm A2 protects all the windows.

So the initial plan is to come in through the front door, disable Alarm A2, then go all the way out again and break in through one of the windows to disable Alarm A1, then break into the room that has Alarm A3 and finally take the loot.

The blueprint view has been invaluable for this, because it shows exactly what each alarm protects. It can only show one alarm at a time - as I mentioned last time, this is absolutely a “Keep notes with pen & paper” game, and I love that because it was fun to figure this out. 

Also shows guard routes and loot - hence realizing that cracking the safe is pointless.

In the end, I decided to make this a two-person job, inviting back Thomas Groul to handle the guard and the car. I have a feeling that the mutually very beneficial business relationship with Justin White might be at an end because it looks like every heist needs a fighter or safe specialist - but we’ll see which new locations unlock later.

I have since bought a mask from the tools shop, hoping that the prior identification of Thomas won’t be an issue.

The heist itself should’ve been relatively straight forward:

1.  Matt unlocks the front door and the upper door with a drill and works on Alarm A2.
   Thomas walks behind him (closing the doors) and waits in the A2 room until the guard enters the entrance room and faces down.
2. Thomas takes out the guard and operates the time clock.
3. Matt leaves the building and enters through the window (with a glass cutter) to work on alarm A1.
4. Instead of spending time breaking the A1 steel doors, Matt leaves through the window again, goes to the A2 room, breaks the A1 steel door to the A3 room and disarms that alarm, then radioes Thomas.
5. Thomas operates the time clock once more, just to make sure we have the full 10 minutes, enters the statue room through the window, and waits for the radio call from Matt.
6. With A3 disabled, Thomas enters the statue room through the window, takes the paintings and two statues, and goes to the car.
7. Matt breaks the bottom A3 steel door, breaks into the display cabinets to steal some more art and a bible, goes the long way around through the window to the statue room and takes the other two statues.

Figuring this out took a few failed attempts. It’s here that I discovered a weird quirk: Anytime you select “Start burglary”, the time in the game advances by about 3 weeks, even if you exit out of the “Select which plan to execute” menu and don’t actually do the burglary. I don’t know if time actually matters, but I ended up reloading my game a bunch of times back to July 7, 1953.

Still not 100% sure how guards work, but I think I always need to approach them from behind.

A much more significant interface issue was with the radio: Matt radioed Thomas about A3 at 17:27 minutes. Thomas had been waiting since 10:45 minutes. When I selected “Wait for radio call” on Thomas, the time did NOT advance to 17:27. Instead, I was planning Thomas’ actions as if it was 10:45 minutes. This means that I was planning to steal a statue protected by A3 while Matt was still working on A1.

When executing the heist it all lined up perfectly and Thomas was actually waiting for the radio call, but during planning it was weird and also a bit problematic: Thomas’ job was also to close the A2 window, but because Matt was working on it he said that the window was already closed. It’s a bit hard to describe, but we basically had two timelines: The planning timeline which didn’t advance the time when waiting for a radio call, and the burglary timeline which did properly wait until A3 was disarmed. I can foresee this being a bit pain in the butt for more complicated heists, but I think I can work around this by having the accomplice wait for a few minutes to get roughly into the correct time frame and then wait for the radio call, this way it’s hopefully only a few seconds out of sync. 

The Lord giveth.

I don’t even mind some uncertainty during planning - I’ve already noticed last time that there is some variance between the plan and actual execution (hence my desire to use the radio), which makes sense because no plan ever goes 100% right. But it’s important to coordinate the actions of accomplices, and this makes it really hard to do so. I have not verified whether this happens in the MS-DOS version as well.

The burglary was finally a success - except that the car was identified. But unlike last time, the police could not find it and vow to keep looking for it. I don’t know what this means in practical terms (is my car “marked” now?), but I still have a car.

Those are some pretty light statues.

Afterwards, we got some significant story developments. Back in the hotel room, Matt laments that Gludo is watching him, which makes all the dealers nervous, and that he has do so something about this. Indeed, my attempt to fence any loot was immediately denied.

Good thing that the London police have only one person assigned to watching me.

The solution for this was pretty easy: Go to the police station. In a bit of slapstick humor that’s definitely inspired by Inspector Closeau from Pink Panther, Matt goes to report that his purse has been stolen and talks up Gludo’s ego. While trying to walk over, Gludo trips on the carpet edge, which flings his glasses across the room and breaks them. Matt decides to seize the opportunity to ask Gludo for a light. Of course, Gludo accidentally lights his tie on fire, then tries to take it off and flings it on the carpet, which also catches fire.

As a coincidence, the USA passed the Flammable Fabrics Act in 1953, the same year this game is set in.

This throws Gludo off of Matt’s trail for a bit, and allows me to finally sell all the loot (all to Mrs. Parker) and end up with 16,639 pounds left over. But that’s not the only thing that happened here - Matt got a phone call that will really change things up.

 

Tune in next time to see who’s calling!

Session Time: 3 hours 15 minutes
Total Time: 11 hours 45 minutes