Nose First into Trouble

You are Fenwick Sly, freelance 'acquisitions consultant', and you have squeezed through the coal-hatch into the cellar laboratory of the great (and currently absent) inventor Oskar Brix. Word on the street is that Brix cracked the formula for a self-heating soup concentrate last Tuesday — revolutionary stuff, worth a fortune to the right canning company. The cellar is a wonderland of half-built contraptions, crackling wires, and at least three things that are definitely on fire in a controlled way. Follow your nose, Fenwick. The prize is in here somewhere, and so — you just heard the coal-hatch creak again — is someone else.