Coleman’s attempt to search Wortalleth West

Mike Coleman’s attempt to search Wortalleth West turns an anomaly in the house’s power supply into a confrontation over access, profit, and concealed infrastructure. Coleman wants to find an expensive flow battery and discover what Harkness’s unusually elaborate independent energy system supports; Don recognizes that the search could reach beyond a commercial mystery and refuses to assist. Coleman nevertheless heads for the basement, and Don has to stop him before Glenys Probert arrives and helps end the encounter without a search taking place.

The unexplained power system

Coleman’s proposal rests on a series of details from his work for Harkness. Several years earlier, when Harkness was, as far as Coleman knew, still the legal owner of Wortalleth West, he hired Sympergy to establish a large solar array in a rented field about half a mile inland. The array supplied the property with independent power, supplemented by photovoltaic film on the south-facing walls of the house and garage block. The film was transparent, less than a millimetre thick, and based on oligomer cells rather than silicon, which explains why Don had not noticed it.

The supply also included a costly flow battery, a full rack of modules roughly as tall as the room in which the two men discuss it. Coleman cannot find the battery and considers the scale of the installation excessive for the property. The question is not simply where the equipment went: the arrangement suggests that Harkness had a substantial, self-contained demand for electricity that the visible house does not explain. Don has already considered a possible answer, but keeps his suspicion about the panic room from Coleman.

The contract’s history adds another layer of uncertainty. Coleman says the arrangements were handled by a representative called Schmitz at Harkness’s Swiss headquarters, rather than directly by Harkness. Schmitz then became unreachable, and Harkness’s human-resources staff said they had never heard of him. The paperwork showed that a Swiss shell company, not Harkness Pharmaceuticals, had paid the bills, although maintenance money continued to arrive. With Harkness arrested and facing allegations including bribery and embezzlement, Coleman wonders whether the obscure contracting and missing equipment belong to a larger off-the-books operation. He cannot establish that connection; it is the suspicion that makes the information seem valuable to him.

Coleman proposes a private investigation

Before pressing Don to search, Coleman presents himself as a useful contact for affluent prospective buyers. He claims to know wealthy people who might be interested in the property and offers to introduce suitable clients. Don pretends that this might be useful, although he has no such expectation and is deliberately encouraging Coleman to reveal what he wants in return. Coleman makes the exchange explicit: he wants Don’s cooperation in locating the battery and determining what it powers.

Coleman’s intended reward is not merely an answer. He proposes that the two of them sell their findings to Quintagler Industries in the United States. He imagines that Harkness may be using Sympergy technology for a concealed accounting system connected to his dealings, and believes evidence of such an operation could be traded for money. Finding the battery might also produce the publicity Coleman had hoped to gain from the original renewable-energy contract. His speculation joins a practical business grievance—the unpaid public recognition he expected—to an opportunity for personal profit.

Don declines. He gives Coleman the impression that Mrs Harkness or her lawyer would disapprove, while concealing the more immediate reason for his caution: he has connected the missing equipment with the possible panic room. His refusal therefore marks a difference in what the two men think they are approaching. Coleman sees an unexplained asset and a marketable secret; Don has reason to suspect that the search may bring them to a concealed space whose contents and purpose remain unknown.

The attempted entry is stopped

Coleman initially accepts Don’s refusal, but then decides to look around on his own. He drains his espresso and sets off for the basement, announcing his intention as he goes. Don is briefly too surprised to react; when Coleman keeps moving, Don follows and lays a restraining hand on his shoulder. The attempt has shifted from a proposed partnership to a possible unauthorized search, and Don’s verbal refusal alone has not contained it.

Coleman turns on him and says he does not intend to abandon the chance to discover what Harkness used Sympergy’s technology for. He warns Don not to interfere and presents the investigation as an opportunity to uncover a tradable secret. Don has not yet answered when Glenys Probert appears in the doorway behind Coleman. She is dressed for gardening and carries a hoe. Her raised-eyebrow use of Don’s first name implies a familiarity between them that does not actually exist; Don plays along. The exchange creates a united front without requiring either of them to explain their real relationship to Coleman.

Coleman decides he is not prepared to take on both of them. Don suggests that their conversation is over and offers to escort him out. As they cross the hall, Coleman looks suspiciously around, as though the object of his search might reveal itself. At the door he tells Don that he is making a mistake. The warning leaves the conflict unresolved, but the immediate outcome is clear: Coleman is escorted from the house before he searches the basement, and the battery remains undiscovered.

A commercial mystery with wider stakes

The steel barrier inside Wortalleth West gives the proposed search a more consequential context. It could be a sliding door, lockable from within, behind which there might be a chamber extending over two floors. A technician cannot trace the expected electrical cables, air supply, or separate telephone line, but notes that such services could be heavily shielded. Don’s suspicion that the missing battery might relate to this hidden space is not confirmed during Coleman’s visit. It explains, however, why Don withholds what he has guessed and tries to keep Coleman from searching further.

Later revelations make the infrastructure more alarming than Coleman’s theories about financial concealment suggest. Harkness’s pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, pesticides, and other products have distributed nanobots to large numbers of people. A system at Wortalleth West can initiate Cascade, a chain reaction that triggers nanobots within ultrasonic range; the panic-room breach is described as the event that will set it in motion. In retrospect, Coleman’s interest in the house’s excessive power supply points toward machinery bound up with a much wider danger. His attempted search does not itself activate Cascade, and he does not learn what the installation enables. The scene instead establishes the tension between a hidden technical system and the people who, for different reasons, want to expose or protect it.