"Well, there you are," Pete murmured.
Tommy leaned over his shoulder. "The kid was right?"
"About the hidden switch, absolutely. About the drain, there's an old security arrangement and a later fault working together. No wonder the readings didn't make sense when we treated the whole thing as a standard harness." Pete shook his head slowly. "We kept asking which part was broken. We should have asked what the circuit had been designed to do before something broke."
Rusty came over and examined the finding. He was relieved by the discovery but disturbed by the evidence of careless work left by someone who had touched the motorcycle after Arthur. "Can we make it reliable without changing what Dutch wanted?" he asked.
"Yes, if we document the original function and replace the damaged section properly," Pete answered. "The hidden feature can remain, but no one should be losing batteries because an accessory connection has deteriorated. We'd be fools to celebrate finding it and then leave the defect in place."
Rusty agreed. He had spent years telling customers that restoration did not mean preserving every dangerous mistake a machine had acquired, and he intended to live by that advice now. Pete wrote a brief explanation for Jim to keep with the motorcycle's records, including the existence of the hidden security feature and the reason the modern diagnosis had been misleading. The information would belong to the bike's authorized caretakers, not become a story for strangers who might have less honorable reasons to be curious.
When Leo returned from lunch, Pete did not pretend the answer had appeared through magic. He showed the boy a photograph taken before the repair and pointed out the tiny switch, then explained in plain language that the design and a later problem had combined to confuse them. Leo looked at the picture for a long moment, his face brightening as he recognized Arthur's sketch. "That's it," he said. "Dad drew it exactly there."
"He gave us the location," Pete replied. "And he gave us a reason to question what we thought we knew. That's worth a lot."
Dave leaned across the bench. "You hear that, kid? Pete just said something nice about another person's work. I haven't heard that in fifteen years."
"I say nice things," Pete protested.
"Name one."
"Your lunch yesterday didn't smell like a fire," Pete answered.
The laughter that followed loosened something in the room. Rusty realized it had been two weeks since his mechanics had laughed together without forcing it. They still had unfinished work, and Friday remained close, but their fear had become more manageable now that they could describe what they knew. A machine that did not respond could feel like an enemy, while a machine that revealed its faults became a problem they might solve.