To keep from forgetting the combination, Lou would sing it to himself as he walked to the locker, every day around 4pm. He wasn’t allowed to write it down, and numbers had a way of slipping through his brain, so the song was a compromise that the boss allowed so long as he didn’t sing it where anyone could hear.

After Lou “disappeared” and the boss “retired,” it seemed there was no one left that knew the combination. Eventually, a group of safecrackers showed up with their tools, and an angle grinder for good measure, to take possession even without the combination. They found that they had been beaten to it, with the lock open and whatever the boss had stored long-gone.

No one could figure out how it had been done without explosives or tools, at least not until dawn was approaching. Then they heard a mockingbird singing, from the top of a nearby tree, Lou’d old combination song.

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