The Mysterious Benedict Society and the Riddle of Ages, page 16
“—IN THE WORLD ARE YOU?” Constance’s voice was screeching through the intercom speaker. “ARE YOU AT A SPA GETTING A MASSAGE, OR WHAT? DID IT EVER OCCUR TO YOU THAT WE MIGHT—”
“Intercom off,” Sticky said quickly. The speaker went silent.
He took another deep breath and reached, once more, for his polishing cloth.
“Check this out,” Reynie said as Sticky entered the sitting room. He handed over the plastic pouch, resisting a sudden urge to tell his friend everything. Was this a mistake, after all? Or did he just feel guilty, even though he was trying to do the right thing?
Everyone formed a semicircle around Sticky, who studied the plastic pouch. “‘Remember the duskwort,’” he murmured (for he could read most languages, including Tamil). “I wonder what he means, exactly.”
“I’m sure we’ll find out,” Reynie said. “Mr. Benedict clearly wants you to be the one to read those papers, though.”
Sticky nodded. “It sure looks that way. Okay, let’s see what we have here.” He unsealed the pouch. A strong chemical odor filled the room, and all of them wrinkled their noses.
“We look like bunnies!” Tai exclaimed.
Sticky’s brow was wrinkled in addition to his nose, for he was pondering the source of the odor. He paused, looking thoughtfully to the side and saying, mostly to himself, “What do you suppose that’s about? I can name at least five chemical agents that smell like that.”
“Any of them dangerous?” Reynie asked quickly.
Sticky shrugged. “No, but some have curious effects when combined—”
“Maybe the answer will be in those papers,” Reynie interrupted.
A hint of annoyance appeared on Sticky’s face. “Okay, that’s true enough,” he said, and removed the contents from the pouch. After a process of careful (and, to his friends, agonizingly slow) unfolding, those contents were revealed to be blueprints: three very large sheets of paper covered with diagrams of buildings, some of the drawings obviously incomplete, others represented in great detail. The margins were filled with a variety of tiny sketches and notes written in three different colors of ink. The semicircle of onlookers craned their necks to get a glimpse of what Sticky was seeing. At least three of them felt a little sick—the amount of information on those pages was overwhelming.
“Let me take these to the dining room table,” Sticky said as he perused the blueprints. “I’d like to spread them out.”
“Let’s just do it right here!” Kate said. “We can use the floor!”
Sticky gave her a puzzled look. “It would be easier on a table, but whatever.” He placed the three pages side by side on the floor and knelt over them. He gave a low whistle. “This required a lot of work.”
Reynie noticed Tai about to say something and put a finger to his lips. Tai nodded and dutifully covered his mouth. He had already been advised that they should keep as quiet as possible to allow Sticky to concentrate.
“The thing is,” Sticky said, “there’s a lot of contradictory information on here. There are three separate keys—red, gold, and blue. Do you see the different colors?” He looked up for confirmation, and everyone nodded quickly. “Okay, well, each key is consistent within itself, but not with either of the others. I think we can trust only one of the keys. But which one?” He leaned back on his haunches and looked thoughtfully to the side again. “I wonder if he expects me to figure it out just by studying the schematics. If so, I’m not sure how yet. Maybe there’s some other kind of clue.”
“We can all think about it together,” Reynie said as casually as he could. “Right now you can just make sure you’ve looked carefully at everything, and then—”
Now Sticky was visibly frustrated, and with a sharp look at Reynie, he said, “So I can’t even take five seconds to think about something? And do you think I’m not going to look carefully? For crying out loud, Reynie, everything doesn’t have to be done exactly your way.”
“I’m sorry, George,” Reynie said, averting his eyes. “You’re right.” He put his hands behind his back and clenched his fists.
Sticky sighed. “Well, I certainly don’t want to argue about it. I’m sorry, too.” He turned back to the blueprints. After only a moment, however, he looked up again. “The odor has faded, hasn’t it? Or is it just that I’ve gotten used to it?”
The odor had indeed faded, almost entirely, and the others hastened to agree that this was the case.
“Hmm,” Sticky said. “That narrows the options. About the chemicals, I mean.”
Tai shuffled close to Constance and tugged on her sleeve. She bent down so that he could whisper in her ear. “Shouldn’t he be going faster?”
It was indeed a whisper, but not an especially soft one—and in that quiet room, at such close quarters, it might as well have been a shout.
Sticky stiffened. He jerked his gaze toward Tai and Constance, then at Kate and Reynie. “Wait a minute, is there some kind of time constraint I’m unaware of?” Their expressions, at once sheepish and anxious, spoke every bit as loudly as Tai’s whisper had.
“Oh, great,” he moaned, immediately returning to the blueprints.
Everyone leaned silently forward, and everyone saw, at the same time, the markings on the pages growing fainter. The papers themselves weren’t disintegrating, but they were going blank. Everyone held their breath, including Sticky, who stared and stared. In less than a minute there was nothing left to stare at.
The silence held. No one spoke. Then Sticky released his breath and looked up. “Don’t worry, I got it all,” he said, and smiling at their sighs and relieved expressions, he added, “I actually had it almost immediately, you know. I’ve just been making sure I didn’t miss anything.”
“You could have told us!” Constance snapped. “That would have been nice.”
“Yeah, and you could have told me the ink was going to disappear!”
“We didn’t know it would!” Tai said cheerfully. “We thought the paper was going to disintegrate.”
Sticky looked at Tai and bit his lip. After a moment he said, “Did you think that was interesting, Tai, seeing the ink disappear?”
“It was amazing!” Tai exclaimed.
Sticky smiled, nodded, and gathered up the empty pages. “Do you want to keep these?”
“I can keep them?” Tai whispered as Sticky handed them over. “Thank you so much! Kate, can I put them in your bucket?”
“Knock yourself out,” replied Kate with a wink.
“THANK YOU SO MUCH!” Tai squealed, and with great reverence he folded the blank sheets of paper and placed them inside the bucket.
As Tai busied himself with Kate’s bucket under the dining room table, the others sat around it, discussing what Sticky had learned. Or rather, they were going to discuss it as soon as Sticky was ready. He’d felt so annoyed with his friends—especially with Reynie, whose idea he knew it had been to keep him in the dark—that he’d declared himself hungry again, though he wasn’t really. He’d only wanted a minute to calm down, and he’d claimed it by going into the kitchen. By the time he returned with an entire stack of fresh toast, settled into his chair, and poured more tea for everyone, his friends were almost quaking with impatience. But all, even Constance, were careful not to show it.
“So, about these conflicting keys,” Reynie said gently, passing Sticky the marmalade. “What kind of information do they relate to?”
“The location of entrances, the layouts of certain buildings, schematics for various alarm systems, several other things. If you were trying to infiltrate the multiple layers of security, your choices would depend entirely on which color key you trust.” (Here Sticky interrupted himself with a grunt of frustration. In preparation for the marmalade, he was trying to spread butter on his first slice of toast, which he kept accidentally tearing with his table knife.) “That even includes your approach to the buildings. Which makes me think that two out of the three routes would lead you directly into traps.”
“That’s great,” Constance muttered. “Really, really great. I’m loving this.”
Kate was eyeing Sticky’s clumsy efforts to spread the butter on his toast. She had to make herself look away.
“There are also lots of cryptic notes,” Sticky went on. “Directions written like riddles. You could spend ages trying to figure them all out—which might not even be possible, since we have to consider that some of the notes could simply be gibberish, meant to engage your attention while offering zero hope of finding a solution—but even if you succeeded, how would you know which of them to heed and which to disregard?” He looked dejectedly at his mangled toast. “It’s colossally tricky.”
“It doesn’t have to be, though,” Kate said cheerily. She presented him with a perfectly intact slice of toast she had just buttered for him. “Once we know how to do it, right? We just have to figure out which key to use, and then rely on our different skill sets. Mr. Benedict obviously made those blueprints specifically for us, so he knows we can do it.”
“Why do you think Dad hid the blueprints, anyway?” Constance asked. “If he expected us to need them for some reason, why not tell us ahead of time?”
“You said it yourself earlier,” Reynie said. “Mr. Benedict always has multiple backup plans. He probably had a suspicion that we might need them someday, but he couldn’t share them with us because we don’t have the proper security clearances. I’m guessing there’s a clause in his contract that allows him to share the information with trusted individuals, but only in the case of dire emergency.”
“I would think this qualifies,” Constance said.
“Imagine if the Ten Men had searched the house,” Reynie went on. “Or anyone, for that matter. First of all, there’s almost no chance they would find the blueprints. But even if they did, if they didn’t happen to read Tamil, they would probably open the pouch without realizing they would have only a minute or two to study the blueprints.”
“And even if they had a camera handy,” said Sticky, “and took pictures of everything, the pictures would be useless without knowing which key to follow.”
“Speaking of pictures,” Kate said, “do you think you could reproduce the blueprints for us, George? We could study them with you. It might help.”
Sticky shook his head noncommittally. “I can try it as a last resort. But it would take me hours, and, well, I don’t have your artistic abilities, you know.”
“Good point,” Kate conceded. “You aren’t exactly steady with a pencil.”
At this Sticky narrowed his eyes, but he couldn’t disagree. And in fact, he had a feeling that Kate had been trying to put it nicely.
“Maybe George can try to draft a few of the more important things later,” Reynie said, “but I don’t think that’s how we’ll figure out the right key to use. I think the answer is in the message Mr. Benedict sent to us yesterday. The first three lines helped us find the blueprints, right? My guess is that the last line will tell us how to use them.”
Kate slugged the last of her tea and clapped the cup onto its saucer. “Right! Let’s get this figured out!” She turned to Constance, who was looking increasingly sullen, and said, “Do you think you could try again to remember exactly what Mr. Benedict said?”
“I told you,” Constance mumbled. “Something about a door made out of clay. A kind of door that the French use. That’s all I’ve got. I was fighting a war in my head at the time.”
“We know,” Reynie said gently. “And you’re having to ward off the Listener even as we speak. We all know this is incredibly hard for you.”
“And, frankly, amazing,” Kate said. “It’s amazing, what you’re doing.”
“Agreed,” said Sticky.
“Agreed!” came Tai’s voice from under the table.
“Agreed,” said Reynie.
Constance looked as though she wasn’t certain whether to cry or scream. Her face contorted, and she averted her eyes. “Thanks,” she said. “I’m sure you maybe mean that a little, but I also know you’re just trying to soften the blow. Because you want me to leave. I can’t be here when you solve this.”
It was true. Between Constance and Tai, there was too much risk of information leaking out. Sticky had the blueprints in his head, Tai couldn’t control his abilities, and Constance was in ceaseless battle with the Listener, whose own abilities might increase at any time. They all knew it.
“We don’t want you to leave,” Reynie said. “And we all mean that more than a little. But we do have to be careful.”
Constance gave a curt nod and rose from her chair. “Come on, Tai,” she said, rapping on the table. “Let’s go find something fun to do.”
“Can we play with the Husher in the Blab?” they heard Tai ask.
“I think you just like saying those words,” Constance said.
“I do!” Tai said, emerging from beneath the table.
“You can get the Husher,” Sticky cautioned, “but you’ll need to take it elsewhere, Tai. There’s no playing in the… in the Blab.”
Kate flickered her eyebrows, delighted to hear Sticky use her word.
Reynie caught Constance by the arm. “Before you go, can you tell us what the message looked like in your mind?”
Constance considered. “It didn’t look like anything. It was just Dad’s voice. He wasn’t trying to send me images.”
“That’s what I figured,” Reynie said. “Images would have been too risky. They would have given away too much. Okay, thank you, Constance. And listen,” he said, squeezing her arm, “we won’t be long. You’ve already helped me more than you realize.”
Constance shot him a wry look. “Well, I’m glad your confidence is back. That should help. But you shouldn’t say stuff like that. It’s hard for me not to think about it, you know.”
“You’re right,” Reynie said, frowning. “That was bad judgment. I only wanted—”
“To make me feel better. I know. But you’re wasting your energy.” Constance pulled away from him. “Just… just figure it out so we can move on.” She looked down at Tai, who was butting his head against her hip like a goat, evidently trying to move her toward the door. “Okay, little goat, lead the way.”
Tai bleated happily, and the two of them went out.
Reynie watched them go, then turned back to Kate and Sticky, who were watching him expectantly.
“Well?” Sticky asked.
“I don’t know yet,” Reynie replied. “I was trying not to think about it too hard while they were in the room.”
Kate pointed at him. “But you think you’re close. We heard what you asked her. You weren’t just satisfying your curiosity. You think it matters that she could only hear his voice.”
“We’ve known from the beginning that images are easier to communicate,” Reynie said. “Mr. Benedict might simply have imagined a piece of paper with those words written clearly on it—that wouldn’t have given away images of Orion, right? It would have been like Tai seeing Mr. Curtain’s letter in George’s head.”
“That’s plausible,” Sticky said. “It could also be that he thought Constance would find his voice comforting.”
“Both could be true,” Kate said. “Doing several things at once is kind of the way Mr. Benedict operates. So, what do you think, Reynie? And by that I mean, think, Reynie.”
Reynie did. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and thought.
Poetic license. He did it for the sound.
Reynie opened his eyes. “Okay,” he said. “I have it.”
What took you so long?” asked Kate.
She was joking, of course, but Reynie thought it a good question. Strange that something he hit upon so easily today had felt so impenetrable yesterday. Sleep and food had made a difference, he knew. But he also knew there was more to it than that.
“What’s most surprising to me,” Reynie said, “is that Constance didn’t solve this herself. She’s the one with the perfect sense of rhyme and meter, and we know how she identifies patterns without even trying. For her not to be able to reconstruct the last line of Mr. Benedict’s message—well, I think it shows us better than anything what she’s really dealing with. We can’t see that battle raging in her head, but it’s obviously a fierce one.”
For a moment they all considered this, all felt a pang of sympathy and protectiveness. Nobody was a greater test of their patience than Constance, it was true, but neither was there any person in their lives more remarkable.
“So, what’s the secret, Reynie?” Sticky asked, keeping his voice neutral. He still felt mildly resentful but was determined not to show it. “What do rhyme and meter have to do with this?”
“Okay, think of the pattern of the message,” Reynie said. “He gave it to us in the form of a poem:
“Where one who stands defies the name,
Dare hunt the hunter in his frame
And strike the clenches from their floor…
“We didn’t get the exact wording of the last line,” Reynie continued, “because Constance was distracted, but we can figure it out based on the rhyme and meter.”
“Rhyming couplets,” Sticky said, nodding, “in iambic tetrameter. Da DUH da DUH da DUH da DUH. And the last word of the last line rhymes with ‘floor.’”
“Door!” Kate cried. “Constance said there’s a door made out of clay!”
Reynie tapped his nose. “She also said it was the kind that the French use.”
“Which made no sense,” Kate said, frowning.
“Right,” Reynie said, “but think about what we know Constance heard—she absolutely heard the words ‘French’ and ‘door,’ and based on rhyme and meter, we can guess where those words would appear in the last line.”
“There’s a rhyme connection between ‘French’ and ‘clench,’” Sticky observed, “and ‘floor’ and ‘door’!”
“How about this?” Reynie said. “And like the French, use the clay door.”
