Secret Files 2: Puritas Cordis Walkthrough

Here you’re up against two stand-alone puzzles — one involving the stone disks in the far wall and the other an array of lettered keys atop the wine barrel on the left. You’ll have to complete the first to attempt the second.

The first is fairly simple. Each of the three overlapping discs has a roughly triangular gap in place of the “I” symbol. You need to manipulate the three dials at the bottom of the screen so the three gaps intersect.

The dials don’t all move the discs in the same way. The lower-left disc, controlled with the left-hand dial, moves clockwise one space at a time for each left-click on the dial. The top disc, controlled via the middle dial, moves the same way — but it simultaneously moves the lower-left disc one space counter-clockwise. And the lower right disc, controlled by the right dial, simultaneously moves the lower-left disk a space counter-clockwise and the top disc two spaces clockwise.

From this, it’s easy to deduce a successful approach. The lower-right disc causes the most problems, so you want to move it as little as possible. Get it out of the way first. Click the right dial five times to move this disc into the correct position. Now you can leave it alone.

The top disc has an issue with another disc, too — and not the one we’ve just moved– so get it out of way next. Click the middle dial once.

Finally, click the left dial four times.

That’s it. You should see a signet ring in the gap. Take it, back out of the puzzle and right-click on the wooden board atop the wine barrel. Insert the ring in the indentation at the left to unlock the lettered keys.

Korell chooses this moment to reappear. He tells Nina that the plaque identifies the statue as Saint Austrebert of Roen. Which settles the issue of what code word you need to spell out (Austrebert) but not how to go about it.

It’s easy enough to spell out the name with the keys here, but the mechanism atop the wine barrel is more minefield than typewriter. There’s one correct path and unless you make use of Sister Elise’s documentation, you won’t get far.

Right-click on the sketch Korell provided earlier in this segment to display it alongside the puzzle. This diagram reveals the inter-connections between the 16 keys. Each key you press in spelling the name must possess a link to the key that comes next. If those links aren’t present, the game will reject your solution and the puzzle will reset.

It’s not difficult if you map it out in advance. The trick, inasmuch as the puzzle has a trick, is that you’ll use each of the last three letters twice.

Start with the “A” between the two Us in the top row (left side).
Then select the “U”at the puzzle’s far left side.
Then the “S” directly to the right of it.
Then the “T” at the top of the puzzle.
Then the “R” below and to the right of the “T.”
Then the “E” at the far right side of the puzzle.
Then the “B” below and to the left of the “E.”
And now just retrace your steps for the final E, R and T.

And now you’re in for a great deal of talking.

The near end of the barrel flips open and Nina waxes wroth at the poor payout: “a letter and some scraps of leather full of holes?”

The letter is a followup message from “a certain Bernard” to a Cardinal Coubertin and leather is a decoder — an overlay that, used with parchments delivered to the cardinal earlier, would expose Zandona’s plans. As we guessed earlier in Indonesia, his prophecies are of the self-fulfilled variety. It’s Zandona’s Puritas Cordis sect that destroyed Gatineau 350 years ago. And now it appears a revived Puritas Cordis means to complete the prophet’s work in bringing the world to the brink. This sets up the next destination: the secret archives at the cardinal’s Parisian estate. If you can learn the sect’s plans, you might be able to head them off.

Odds & ends: At the starting location, you can examine the surveyor and try to use the path back to the boat. At the snack-stand screen, you can examine the right-hand of the two construction vehicles in the background and try to use the hook (sans mirror). At the signpost screen, you can examine the Lazare sign and the trailer and try to use the trailer and both vehicles.

You can examine the plaque at the base of the statue and, in the close-up view, examine the statue’s other appendages. The only other one out of the ordinary is the saint’s right arm. What’s he holding? From this angle, they look like toes on a large foot … or perhaps rocks. (Then again, at the time the statue was erected, it’s unlikely the rocks that conceal the entrance to the hidden cache had tumbled down to their present location.)

The parking sign can be used on the post in the starting area (successfully) and Nina can try to use the plastic boulder on the SUV and fortune cookies on Korell and the snack-stand proprietor and the fortunes they contain on Korell.

And the pocket knife proves even more versatile than we’ve already demonstrated. It can be used to open fortune cookies and thus spare Nina the need to choke them down. On the signpost screen, you can also try to use it on the trailer, the signpost and the “Lazare” portion of the big sign. And in the statue close-up, you can use it on various appendages — with the most striking response attached to the head.

The fortunes are always the same. The three others read:

1) “If the crane flies upside-down at half past seven, fate will smile on the bearded.”

2) “When the siren sounds as the day’s labor begins, note the path of the hungry — even if the deceptive thirst springs from above.”

4) “Beware, for the long hand follows the short hand incessantly, until its time runs out.”

Each can be embedded in a cookie and fed to the bearded surveyor … and none of them influence him in any way.

Puritas Cordis Base

The scene shifts to an imprisoned Max being questioned by sect leader Shelton. (We’re not told where at this time, but you’ll identify the location as the Puritas Cordis base in the game’s final sequences.) Under threat of death , he identifies Nina and their past relationship, but can’t supply her whereabouts or plans. His impatient captor indicates he’ll return.

Paris

Nina and Korell find the cardinal’s estate in ruins. At first, there’s not much to see. You can exit the starting area and dip into the compost heap outside to find a candle and a pencil-like stick. But Nina won’t venture left into the city or right into the cemetery.

The only other draw is the blue stone at the base of the column at the starting location. Left-click on it. Nina pulls it out, but falls backward in the act and breaks through the surface into a hidden room.

There’s a puzzle down here. Some letters in the legend “Institutio viae est finis” (“Standing still is the end of the path”) on the back wall can be manipulated. This can be solved and the exit in the left wall opened now, jumpstarting the next sequence, but this will be supremely difficult without the hints a few paragraphs below.

Left-click on the hole’s edge to start screaming for help. A homeless man comes to Nina’s rescue — lowering a pew (visible to the left at the beginning of the segment) to serve as a ladder.

Talk to the man again when you regain the surface. Conveniently, he’s a student of history and knows something of both the cardinal and the strange curator who survived him — including that the curator was named Michel (or something similar) and is buried in the cemetery here.

Now you can make your way right into the graveyard. It’s very organized — even infuriatingly so! At the first intersection, you can the select one of three sections: graves from the 1650s, 1660s and 1670s. You’ve already established the curator died a decade after the cardinal passed away in 1663, so you want the 1670s.

At the next junction, you’ll find sections for rich and poor. The homeless gent referred to the curator’s “squalid basement dwelling,” so presumably he was poor (or just sloppy).

At the next, sections for the young and old. The curator served the cardinal for 40 years, so old.

A final junction has sections for men, women and families. The homeless man referred to the curator as “he” throughout.

But you’re not going to find the curator in the men’s section. Try the women’s section instead to find a large stone for Michelle de Saint-Maillefert with three letters out of skew: the “S” and “a” in “Saint” and the “f” in Maillefert. Note the exact positions of these letters: the “S” halfway between 9 and 12 o’clock, the “a” at 3 and the “f” halfway between 6 and 9.

Return to the starting point, drop down the hole and look at the rear wall. Adjust all instances of those three letters — three of the “S” and one each of the “a” and “f” — to the appropriate positions and a door opens in the left wall. (Note that the first “I” in “Institutio” and the “n” in “finis” can be turned as well. They don’t have a place in the puzzle, but their positions don’t interfere with its solution.)

The passage beyond leads down a flight of stairs to a deep chasm and another puzzle — one that can’t be solved at this time. Look at the mosaic on the floor at the foot of the stairs. There are five empty squares in this 4 x 4 grid. You can fill one of them with the blue stone you pulled from the column up above. But what of the other four?

Return to the surface and talk to your new friend about “Mosaic.” He offers that cast-off stones from bombed buildings — including those from the estate — were used in the post-war reconstruction of a nearby bridge, a Metro station, a jail and the zoo — the last of which is currently closed. He’ll provide you with a tourist map and mark the relevant sites . (“Cemetery” takes you back to the cardinal’s estate.)

You’ll find yourself at the closest of the four sites: a bridge over the Saint Martin Channel. You can also visit the jail and the abandoned Metro station, but the Metro station is the only other spot where you can transact meaningful business at this stage.

None of the stones are immediately visible, but you can locate one right now — right-click on the door of the right-hand cell at the jail to learn it’s embedded in a wall– and get a good sense of where the bridge stone must be concealed.

While the right side of the bridge is spotless, the left is covered with leaves, with a “dirt” hotspot along the upper railing. And it’s likely to stay dirty for a while. If you talk to the street sweeper at the right, he’s holding off cleaning the left end until the rain there stops.

You won’t be able to change his mind — events have to take their course — but note the presence of a puddle near his position. If a car were to come along, he’d get wet and then have no reason to avoid the rain.

Note also the ducks in the distance. They’ll come into play when you reach the zoo. And dip into the trash heap nearby to come with a 5-cent piece (actually, it’s a 5-Euro coin) and a pacifier.

Try the Metro. You can use the map or simply walk right from the right end of the bridge. (While the other locations are spread out, these two adjacent ones are directly connected.) Talk to Alessandro Rossi outside the station to establish that he’s rented the red sports car in the background to impress his in-bound friends (for whom he is waiting).

Enter the station and take the teddy bear at the far end and the umbrella to the right of the gum machine. Right-click on the umbrella in inventory to get a sense of its potential uses: Namely, it has a sharp point.

The gum machine works — you’ll need a 10-cent piece to use it — and so does the fountain. (You won’t be equipped to get it going again until the end of this segment.)

However, you can solve a little puzzle here: using the station’s stopped clock to set off the alarm on Rossi’s car below. It’s a little confusing — no clues from Nina here — but if you put together all the facts you’ve gathered, you’ll realize they connect and that, with the appropriate distraction, you can set off a chain reaction that results in the revealing of the first blue stone.

Inside the station, peer through the gap in the upper left part of the clock dial and then weight the clock’s minute hand. There are a number of prospective candidates for this job in your inventory, but some (coin, teddy bear, pacifier) are too flimsy for this purpose and some (umbrella and stick) too likely to damage the car. The only one that’ll work is the candle from the compost heap at the estate. Place on the hand below Nina, duck back inside and left-click on the clockwork mechanism twice to wind it. Nina automatically runs back downstairs and has a sturdy alibi talking to Rossi when the hand moves and the falling candle sets off the alarm. In the resulting tumult, Rossi misses his friends’ speeding van, the van crosses the channel bridge, going through the puddle and splashing the street sweeper and Rossi, freshly dejected, goes off to be by himself. Nina automatically follows him to a new map location: a park to the northeast.

You don’t have to stay with Rossi. (The park has been written to your map and you can return there at will.) Getting wet has moved the street sweeper to clean up the left half of the bridge and you can now run back to there and use the umbrella to pry out the newly-revealed blue stone from the left half of the bridge. But the stone’s been there for 60 years and it’ll keep.

Take the newspaper near Rossi’s feet — this has no practical use in the game, but read it to see coverage of the Calypso’s sinking and an ad for Puritas Cordis — and move left to find a tennis ball on the edge of the sandbox and a blue hoop in the lake.

On a bench at the far left, you’ll also find our homeless friend from the cardinal’s estate. Talk to him about the fountain to the far right to learn tourists used to make wishes here — this will be the key to boosting Rossi’s low spirits once you’ve visited the zoo — and about the booze to learn he’ll agree to knock off drinking if you get him something to eat. Also, that the zoo should now be open. (It isn’t until after you talk to him).

Let’s hit the zoo. In the entry area, you’ll find a bottle of red nail polish on the right side of the statue’s base, a soda can on the ground near the left-hand bench and the zoo keeper on the bench to the right. He’s armed with milk and bread, but Nina can’t take either. The bread’s for the ducks who traditionally appear in the lake at the crocodile enclosure and he won’t share the wealth until they appear. But he’ll reveal that a blue stone can be found in the croc exhibit.

Head right to reach the croc. Nina quickly focuses on the stone: It’s embedded in the near side of a circular platform that is currently home to a large specimen. You’ll have to distract it and a survey of your inventory suggests the teddy bear from the Metro station may be suited to this purpose. But first you’ll need some help from the elephant next door.

When the scene zooms back out, grab the noisemaker. It’s to the left near the junction of the paths.

After being on a single track, things have branched out a bit here. You can complete these three tasks in any order.

1) With the noisemaker, you’re equipped to summon the ducks to the zoo.

You’ve seen ducks before — there were a couple of them in the background at the bridge — and the noisemaker from the croc enclosure turns out to be a duck call. (It’s not described correctly in inventory until it’s been used successfully.) Return to the bridge and use it on them and they’ll fly down toward the bridge — the first of three steps in luring them to the zoo.

Now visit the park and use the noisemaker on Nina herself (being that the ducks are still back at the bridge). She’ll run to the lakeside spot where you found the hoop on your first visit and blow on the noisemaker. A moment later, the ducks land nearby.

One last step: Visit the croc enclosure at the zoo and use the noisemaker on Nina again. She runs to the dock at the far left side of the screen and plays their song one last time. The two ducks land in the pond shortly thereafter — protected from the croc by the fence. Now you can collect a baguette from the zoo keeper. That’s to feed our homeless friend.

But it’s not enough. If you deliver the hard bread as-is, he’ll complain it’s difficult to eat. He has only a few teeth remaining and needs something softer.

Dunk the bread in the zoo keeper’s milk first. When you turn over the softened bread, Nina will collect a bottle of booze.

2) With the nail polish, you’re equipped to cure Rossi’s blues.

Return to the Metro station and use the nail polish on the sports car. (Reclaim the fallen candle as well.) The scratch looks a bit better for Nina’s work — though the car appears a bit worse — and now you can return to the park and talk to Rossi about the fountain-as-wishing-well.

Now you just have to connect your good deed with the same fates that Rossi feels are so set against him. Throw the five-cent piece into the fountain. Nina tells Rossi she wished the scratch would vanish and persuades him to reinspect the car. Annoyance seems to replace depression, but he returns to the Metro station and, impressed by the result, then returns to the park and deposits 10 cents of his own in the fountain. No result of course. But he’s out of the park and out of your hair and you can now return and grab your 5-cent and his 10-cent piece from the fountain.

There’s only one spot where you can spend your “dime”: the gum machine at the Metro station. That gets you a piece of bubble gum!

3) With the soda can, you can train the monkey in the exhibit at the end of the zoo’s left path.

On first acquaintance, the monkey studiously ignores you. Stick, umbrella and noisemaker all register as usable, but none has any practical effect.

Return to the zoo keeper and ask him about the critter to learn it’s eager to learn, but responds only when the zoo keeper wields his training stick — a “regular long branch.”

Return to the monkey cage and use either the stick or the umbrella on the monkey. That does it. The monkey now watches you closely. If you walk right or left, it will follow you to the corresponding end of its branch. But it won’t pass through the hanging tire. You have to match up your actions outside the cage to what the monkey must do within to send the peanuts at the right end of the cage rolling your way.

You don’t have a tire, but you have the hula hoop from the park. This can be used on Nina herself to elicit a cute line, but she’ll have to walk through it as the monkey would the tire. Plant it in the crack in the pavement and then left-click on the hoop to pass through it. The monkey follows suit with the tire.

See the ball just to the right of the monkey? Now you need to coax the critter to throw it at the peanut can. You already have the tennis ball from the park and the soda can from the zoo entrance. You just need a foundation for the soda can comparable to the branch beneath the peanut can.

Easy: Insert the stick from the compost heap into the hole in the pavement to the right of the hoop, use the soda can on the stick and the tennis ball on the can. The monkey sees and does … and the peanut can obligingly rolls out of the cage.

Okay, where does this leave us? You can now complete two new tasks — each leading to a blue stone.

1) The booze from #1 and bubble gum from #2 set you up to spend some time in a drunk tank at the jail. (The candle you grabbed back outside the Metro station won’t come into play again until you repair the station’s fountain.)

At the jail, the blue stone can be extracted only from the right-hand of the two cells. (You’ll have to right-click on the door of this cell first to peer through the window and verify the blue stone is there.) And to guarantee that you’re placed in this cell (and to turn on Nina’s pretend drunkenness), you’ll have to prevent the policewoman from opening the door to the left one. Plug up the lock with the gum.

Now talk to the jail officer. Previously, it’s been an effort to get even small talk out of her but with the lock plugged and the homeless man’s booze in inventory, Nina can now pose a question: Can she look at the right-hand cell?

The officer wants to know if Nina is drunk. Select any of the three answers; it doesn’t matter which. The answers amount to no, no and no. It’s pretty clear Nina’s going to have to at least appear drunk to get inside.

Use the liquor bottle on Nina. She backwashes the swill into the bottle, but it’ll give her breath a liquory aroma. Now talk to the guard again. This time, Nina does a drunk act and her boozy breath backs her up. The guard takes a blood sample and, before she can run the analysis, is interrupted by a phone call from her jealous husband and leaves the syringe on the counter. Just use the liquor bottle on the syringe to really sell your story. Evidently Nina uses too much — her blood alcohol is around four times the legal limit — but it does work and the guard, returning, puts Nina in the right-hand cell.

Take the burst soccer ball and the spoon beneath it from the little platform to the left of the door and try to pry out the blue stone in the left wall. Nuh-uh. The guard hears the scraping and you’ll have to stop — until you can enlist the harmonica-playing inmate next door to play again to cover the noise. Click on the left wall to the left of the blue stone to talk to him. He agrees, but first he wants you to solve three riddles. (The game has to throw up some obstacle in your path, right?)

Riddle #1: “The first digit is a number between 1 and 5. Take a good look around your cell. It doesn’t matter how long you search, you will never find the answer.”

In other words , you’re to count up each type of object in your cell — one chair, one door, one shelf, one skylight, two bunks, two chains, three hooks, four chair legs — and provide as your answer the one quantity that isn’t present.

The answer’s supposed to be five. (But you can find five of something here as well. There are five bolts in the yellow strip at the end of each bunk. Oops!)

Riddle #2: “They have you trapped.”
 
The answer’s “9” — the number of bars covering the dormer window in the ceiling.

Riddle #3: “They all stand, but not all of them can walk.”

The “they” is legs — the four non-walking ones on the chair and the two on Nina herself, for a total of six.

Once the musician has the right answers, he’ll start to play again. It doesn’t sound like a harmonica, but it’s enough to cover the brief scraping sounds of your excavation. Once you have the blue stone. simply knock on the door to talk your way out of jail. This takes a while but, rather oddly, occurs without further player action. (It feels as though a puzzle is missing here. She seemed to be short one lover. What, the designers couldn’t set her up with Alessandro?)

2) The peanuts from #3 above get Nina into the zoo’s croc enclosure.

Elephants love peanuts. Make the one in the exhibit to the right of the croc work for them: Put them in the bird nest in the tree. The big fellow then knocks down the tree so it’s leaning against the wall of the crocodile enclosure.

Now toss the teddy bear you found in the Metro station into the water to the left of the croc. The croc’ll go after it … and Nina still refuses to go after the stone. She wants the croc to move even farther away first.

This doesn’t require some additional item. Did you notice that when you abandoned teddy to his watery grave, the view scrolled left — just far enough to reveal a little motorboat? To keep the croc occupied, just activate the boat to start the engine. The croc, mistaking the turbulence for arrival of a rival, will then wander over to the intervening fence. Activate the fallen tree and Nina enters the enclosure, automatically takes the stone and exits.

You’re about out of tasks. Only the fountain-repair job at Metro station remains.

It’s a bit short on info. You’re nowhere told that the fountain simply recirculates the water in its internal system. (i.e. It’s not piped in from the outside.) Hence, to get it going again, you’ll need to refill it — lugging water in from one of the game’s two accessible sources: the fountain and the park and the crocodile enclosure at the zoo.

And what do you lug it in? You don’t have a conventional receptacle. But you do have the burst soccer ball and that’ll do fine. Ordinarily, a task of this size would require multiple trips. but you only have to complete the first. Nina then automatically leaves the station, the screen goes dark and when it lights up again “a little while later,” the fountain is full.

Now test the fountain using the switch box to the left of the clock mechanism to discover your work isn’t quite done. The spray doesn’t reach the ceiling. You have to increase the water pressure by closing off some of the four geysers. The pacifier from the trash heap on the bridge works here as does the candle recovered from the Metro. Then switch on the fountain again and the single strong water jet quickly reveals a blue stone in the ceiling. Use the umbrella to pry it out.

Return to the estate, drop down into the hole and return to the mosaic puzzle. You’d probably guessed it won’t be enough to just drop the stones into the empty spots. All five stones have to be in specific positions within the grid. These locations are laid out plainly in the legend for the map on the wall beside the stairs.

“The king had withdrawn to Provence … ”

Unrevealing right now. That’s in the lower right corner, so we know that either the white or black king must appear in the lower right corner of the grid.

“The peasants were rising to the north …”. The peasants must correspond to the black pawn — there’s only one pawn on the board — and since they are opposed to the king, the king piece in the lower right corner must thus be white. Hence, place the white king in the lower right corner and the black pawn just above it.

“… and the reinforcements from the kingdom of Navarre, which had just crossed the border, were forced to go up against a massive fortress to the east.”

Navarre’s in the lower left hand corner, and a unit that had just crossed the border would have to be in Gascogne. Hence, the white knight — the only other white piece — goes there and the black castle or rook in Toulouse.

“Meanwhile, his opponent sat back and eagerly watched the spectacle unfold from his country estate in Brittany.”

Easy. Brittany corresponds to Bretagne in the grid’s upper left corner, so place the black king in the upper left corner of the grid.

A bridge then descends from above and Nina, soon joined by Korell, automatically enters the door on the far side of the chasm.

This is the cardinal’s secret archive. Korell evidently has found card catalog or something in his absence, for only a few minutes have passed before he’s describing to Nina what he’s discovered.

Zandona returned from a trip to the Holy Land obsessed with the notion of creating a religious state. He began to preach the apocalypse and became popular in rural areas. You’ve seen the last of his harbingers — the great flood. They’re supposed to prompt a meeting of world leaders in “the new Babel” — at which Puritas Cordis will do them all in and raise a “new world order.” Nina quickly intuits that “new Babel” corresponds to New York and the meeting the impending one of the United Nations’s General Assembly. Nina means to alert her father, but there’s no opportunity. Puritas Cordis is here and the two are taken captive. Korell dies trying to buy Nina time to escape, but she’s intercepted below the hole by the Calypso’s bartender/assassin. He takes her on “a little trip to the countryside.” (This suggests the Puritas Cordis base must be in France.)

Odds & ends: At the starting location, Nina can also examine the altar to the right. In the room below, the gap to the left (until the door is opened) and the buried entrance to the right. At the crossroads through the arch back on the surface, the car, the ruins from which Nina’s just emerged and, in the misty distance, the Eiffel Tower.

And the graveyard contains … absolutely nothing beyond what I’ve already described. (You’d think that, with such an abundance of potential wrong options, something of interest would be concealed back there.)

Inside the Metro station, you can examine the kiosk and the overgrown tracks and, outside, the clock face and the storm drain. This last one is a big tease. Have you ever played an adventure game in which a drain didn’t conceal some useful item? They clearly want you to believe this one does. But while you can test the grate with the umbrella from the station and the stick from the compost heap, nothing works here.

If you take the yellow and red “help wanted” sign on the left side of the kiosk, you’ll get one of the game’s several self-referential comments about computer games. (See the jail for another.) However, you don’t need the sign. It doesn’t do a thing.

At the park, you can examine the statue, the chateau across the lake and the bottles beside the homeless man’s bench.

At the jail office, you can examine the picture beside the door, the gun cabinet, the bulletin board, the trash can and the left-hand cell and try to use both cell doors and the gun cabinet. (This last elicits another self-referential line about “monotonous shoot-em-ups” and how “minigames are strictly forbidden here.”) In the right-hand cell, you can examine the coat hooks on the left wall, the skylight, the chair and the bunks.

At the zoo’s entry area, you can examine the statue and the two direction signs. At the scrolling screen with the croc and elephant exhibits, you can examine the two exhibit signs, the elephant and croc themselves and the water outside the crocodile enclosure.

In addition, there’s a little box on the ground just outside the elephant enclosure that contains traces of peanuts. My guess is that it’s just a clue to what the elephant might like — aimed at players who haven’t inspected the monkey exhibit — but though it’s take-able, it has no apparent use (though you can try it out on the elephant) and you can complete the segment without it.

You can try to use the hula hoop on Nina herself; the umbrella on the street sweeper; the stick in the effort to pry out blue stones other than the one at the jail; the umbrella and stick on the Metro station ceiling (before Nina exposes the blue stone); the umbrella, stick and recovered candle on the sports cars; the five-cent piece on the gum machine; the noisemaker on the elephant, the croc (before it’s permanently distracted by the motorboat engine) and a fourth time on the ducks (after they’ve arrived at the zoo); both coins and the peanuts on the homeless man; the booze on Rossi; the soda can on either of the water sources; and the tennis ball on the water in the croc enclosure.

The homeless man looks very like Detective Kanski from the original Secret Files: Tunguska — a resemblance tacitly acknowledged when Nina questions him at the estate — she says “there’s something vaguely familiar about him” — and then confirmed (and expanded upon) in the epilogue.

It’s unreadable in the game proper, but there’s some graffiti on the wall above the kiosk in the Metro station. You’ll need to grab a screenshot and zoom in to decode it. The left inscription reads “Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose!” This oft-quoted epigram by French critic Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr first appeared in the journal Les Guêpes (The Wasps) in 1849 and translates as “The more things change, the more they stay the same.”

The right-hand portion is harder to make out, as certain letters in the lower of the two words are unclear. My best guess is “Liberation maintenant!” (Freedom now!)

Puritas Cordis Base

On our last visit, televangelist Pat Shelton interviewed Max and, not getting the answers he wanted, issued some none-to-subtle threats. In this short sequence, Max takes steps to protect himself.

Take the half-eaten apple from the floor of the cell and use it on the trash picker leaning against the stove on the far wall. It knocks it down and the near end falls close to cell door. Take it and use it on the loose stove door and it’s yours.

Sect members then arrive to take Max to a meeting with Shelton. Max and Nina say their hellos, Shelton reveals the final stage of his world-domination plans — the collapse of a volcano in the Canary Islands, with the resultant tsunami wiping out the US’s east coast — and the Puritas Cordis leader then demands some answers. He sees a conspiracy against him that involves Nina, Max and Korell and now wants to know who else is involved and the next move of the “Church Intelligence Service.”

Nina appears to have three options here: set Shelton straight, say nothing or “tell all” (i.e. spin a yarn about a vast chicken-wing conspiracy that will satisfy Shelton).

But they’re not meaningful choices. Whichever option you select, Max will be shot in the chest and fall into his newly prepared grave. Nina is shackled and taken off to Max’s old cell where she sits lamenting all the things she failed to do. Boo hoo.

Thing is, Max isn’t dead.

After he rises from the grave, take the plastic vase from the adjacent dog’s grave and the shovel (here called a spade) to the right of the barrels in the inaccessible niche in the rear wall.

The courtyard down the left passage is guarded. You can’t do much there just now, but you can nevertheless inspect the scene in detail from your hiding place. Note in particular the thermometer just around the corner, the symbols inscribed on the bench to the left of the guard and the wild garlic in the lower left corner.

Instead, use the passage in little graveyard’s upper-right corner and use the trash-picker or the shovel on the big mousetrap to secure a piece of smelly cheese.

Then left-click on the farther of the two windows (to the left of the mousetrap) to step into a storage room. Take everything that isn’t nailed down: the camera atop the box at the near end of the central shelves; two empty sacks from the bottom rear portion of the same shelves, the “GameGirl” handheld console in the upper-left corner of the sewing machine table at the right ; the coat hanger above the sewing machine; the battery-operated TV in the far right corner; and the ice spray just to the right of the magazines in the room’s far left corner. (This last one is a little hard to spot, being that the label on the aerosol can is similar to the cover of the topmost magazine.)

The spray’s your path to a somewhat wider world. Max can’t explore beyond this limited region without some kind of disguise. He can’t find one on his own. But once Max has located Nina, they can help each other out.

Her cell is behind the nearer of the two windows in the mousetrap corridor. Right-click on the bars to peer through them and you’ll have one of those quick automatic chats and control will switch to Nina. (As in the jungle, you can switch between the two characters at any time.)

As Nina, click on the door to summon the guard. She can then complain about the cold, her restraints and being hungry — in the process learning that the guard’s a soccer fan.

Only the complaint about the temperature elicits any kind of reaction. The guard goes outside and checks the thermometer, returns and reports the temperature is “almost 20 degrees Celsius” — a toasty 68 degrees Fahrenheit.

Implication: It’ll have to get colder in here for the guard to act. (You don’t have to go through this stage before lowering the mercury. It’s just a hint.)

Switch to Max and send him to the thermometer. The courtyard is still guarded, but Max can reach around the corner and use the ice spray to knock the sensor down to 8 degrees (a brisk 46.4 degrees Fahrenheit).

Back to Nina. Now that she has quantitative evidence on her side, call the guard and complain about the cold again. (Dig the odd, shivery voice Nina adopts this time — as though she really is cold! She isn’t. Max just froze the thermometer.) The guard checks the temperature again and gives her the robe off the prison’s back wall. (Note that the guard is standing right in front of the cowl and that Nina’s in semi-darkness, so if you miss the spoken reference to the cowl, you may not immediately realize what’s changed in the scene.)