Paul and Sophie Try to Rescue the Three Trapped People

Paul and Sophie’s attempt to rescue Mr Tanner’s mum, Arthur, and Pip turns on a practical but dangerous discovery: the Portable Door can bring them back to the room, but it cannot free people whom a hidden lock has been set to hold inside. The pair recover the door and return for the trapped three, only to find that crossing the threshold is not a matter of simply getting everyone to the exit.

The Promise and the Way Back

Before explaining how to escape, Mr Tanner’s mum insists that Paul and Sophie promise to return and let the people in the room out. Sophie agrees, and Mr Tanner’s mum points them toward the PREFECT Badges Ricky Wurmtoter had given them. Pressing a badge and calling for help, she explains, will use counter-inversion to send them back to the office. Sophie is ready to try it; Paul hesitates at the prospect of returning there, a hesitation that makes their promised return feel less automatic than the simple instructions suggest.

The counter-inversion works. Paul finds the sensation violently unpleasant, likening it to being expelled backwards from a divine nostril; the alternative journey is hardly gentler. They hurtle through the clouds on Dietrich Wurmtoter’s milk-white winged horse, which seems to know its destination without guidance. The horse carries them over Birmingham at several times the speed of sound and drops them on the platform at Stafford just as a train is arriving. Its speed gets them there in time, but the return is anything but comfortable.

Recovering the Portable Door

As the train stops, Paul and Sophie rush aboard and see the Portable Door being put into a cleaner’s black plastic sack. Paul pauses; Sophie does not. She snatches the door from the sack, grabs his arm, and pulls him off the train as it begins to leave. Her decisive action retrieves the object their return depends on.

On the platform, Sophie asks what the door does. Paul tells her, and she is bitterly hurt and offended that he had not told her earlier. He has no reply to that grievance, though he knows there is something else he must say before they go further. The rescue thus requires more than recovering the device: the journey exposes a serious omission between the two partners at the moment they are trying to act together.

Returning to the Room

Sophie stays behind to keep the door open while Paul goes through to check the room. The three intended beneficiaries are still there, now sitting around a table playing cards with the two clerks. The clerks are undressed; Mr Tanner’s mum explains that, because Paul and Sophie had been gone so long, they had resorted to strip canasta to amuse themselves. Paul presses for everyone to get moving, and Mr Tanner’s mum leads the way, followed by Arthur and then Pip, who is still struggling with his bootlaces.

The escape fails at the threshold. Arthur says he is stuck, but Mr Tanner’s mum initially takes this for a joke. When she grabs his elbow and tries to haul him across, he cries out and remains immobile. She then asks Pip to try; he cannot pass through either. Their failure makes clear that bringing the Portable Door back has not removed whatever is keeping them inside. Paul and Sophie can cross the opening, but the others cannot.

The Lock and the Abandoned Attempt

Mr Tanner’s mum identifies Humphrey as the person who has locked the door. The Portable Door snaps shut, goes limp, and falls off the wall. Paul and Sophie try to set it up again, but it will not stick and keeps rolling down like wallpaper. With a guard approaching alongside a policeman, they leave the station rather than risk a public confrontation with Mr Tanner’s mum, who might begin disembowelling people in broad daylight.

As they walk away, Mr Tanner’s mum explains the lock: it works like an ordinary lock, except that it affects only selected people, those the user wants to keep in, and cannot be seen. Paul asks whether there is a key. She says there is, but finding it is the problem; she believes Humphrey has it and has hidden it somewhere safe. The rescue therefore changes the immediate situation without achieving freedom: Paul and Sophie have fulfilled their promise by returning and recovered the means of passage, but the unseen lock defeats their effort and leaves the three still confined. The attempt also establishes that this magical barrier is selective and key-operated, so reopening the route will require locating what Humphrey has concealed.