legends · 4 min read ·
Pick Log
A lock-picking hobbyist's journal follows an old lock that learns how he opens it.
**Lock journal of Ravi Nair. I practise on locks I own. Entries: lock, pins, time, notes.**
**3 Oct.** Abus 55/40 padlock, 4 pin. 1 min 40. Clean pick.
**5 Oct.** Master No. 3, 4 pin, with spool. 3 min 10. Spools set.
**8 Oct.** Euro cylinder (Yale), 5 pin, 8 min. Frustrating.
· · ·
**12 Oct.** Bought a job lot of old locks at a car boot. Twenty-three assorted, some rusted, some with keys. Among them a heavy brass mortise lock, the size of a paperback, with a keyhole shaped like a pair of eyes, no maker's mark. Weight about a kilo.
I clamped it in the vice. A seven-lever. The levers are stiff. The key it came with is gone. I like a challenge.
**13 Oct.** Worked on the mortise for an hour. Four levers set. The spring behind them is stronger than it should be, as though it is pushing back on purpose.
**14 Oct.** Seventh lever set. The bolt moved. It slid out of the case, slowly, with a sound like a swallowed breath.
· · ·
**15 Oct.** The bolt is out but nothing has opened. A mortise lock is meant to be fitted to a door. This one has no door. I put it on the bench and looked at the case. The side plate was off. I could see the levers, the springs, the back of the bolt.
Behind the levers is a hollow. I took a torch and looked into it. The hollow goes back further than the lock is thick. There is a second set of levers behind the first, and a third behind that. It is a lock of locks. It goes in and in, row on row of brass, farther than the torch can reach.
**16 Oct.** I put my ear to the case. Inside it there was a sound. A ticking, very faint. And under it, at intervals, a soft metallic click, as of a lever dropping into place.
Someone was picking it from the other side.
· · ·
**17 Oct.** I locked the bolt again. I turned the key, which I have made from a blank, and the bolt went home. The ticking stopped. I thought: that's that.
A minute later there was a click. A lever. Then another. I stood at the bench, watching the bolt, with the torch off. After forty seconds the bolt slid out, by itself, an inch, with a sigh.
I put the key in my pocket. I did not touch the lock for two days.
**19 Oct.** The case is warm.
· · ·
**20 Oct.** I decided to see what was behind it. I took the back plate off with a screwdriver and a hammer. There was nothing there. A brass plate, a few screws, a block of oak.
But the levers, when I tipped the case, moved. They moved in a pattern. A slow sequence of dropping and lifting, one lever at a time. A pattern I recognised. I have picked that pattern. It is the one I used on the 14th. It is a record of my own picking, replayed from the inside, by the lock.
It had learned how I did it.
**21 Oct.** I heard the bolt slide in the night. I went to the bench. The bolt was out its full length. At its tip, on the steel, a small drop of oil.
· · ·
**23 Oct.** I put the lock in a drawer and locked the drawer. At three in the morning I woke to the sound of the key turning, a small steady scrape, in the drawer lock. From the inside.
I got up. I did not turn on the light. I stood in the study doorway and listened. The drawer lock turned. The drawer slid open. I could hear the brass lock being lifted, slowly, and set down on the desk.
Then a tick. Then another. Then a long run of ticks, the levers dropping one by one. And a last, heavy clunk: the bolt. Shot home.
· · ·
**24 Oct (last entry).** In the morning I found the mortise lock on the desk, bolted, key in the hole. It had been locked from the outside. Beside it, on a sheet of paper, the lock's work: a diagram of the levers in pencil, perfectly drawn.
Under the diagram was a single line.
*Thank you. It has been a very long time since anyone opened me. Now it's your turn. I am told you pick a good lock.*
The key is in the keyhole. It turns easily. I can feel it, in my hand, as I write this. It sits, at the point where the last lever lifts, for me to push.