The Mysterious Benedict Society and the Riddle of Ages, page 17
Kate tried it out:
“And strike the clenches from their floor
And like the French, use the clay door.
“I like it, Reynie,” she said. “It seems right. But how is this the answer?”
“Because it’s all about the sound!” exclaimed Sticky, almost leaping from his chair. “Mr. Benedict wasn’t talking about a door made out of clay! In French, it sounds like ‘clay door’—”
“Oh!” Kate cried, slapping her forehead. (For although neither she nor Reynie could compete with Sticky in the language department, they both had studied several and knew a good deal of French.) “‘And like the French, use the clé d’or’!”
“Exactly!” Reynie said. “It sounds like the English ‘clay door,’ but it’s actually the French ‘clé d’or’—the gold key!”
The three friends couldn’t help grinning, laughing, and congratulating one another, for even in emergencies—especially in emergencies—it’s no small thing to solve a puzzle upon which so much depends, and here was one whose solution had determined their course. True, that course was dangerous, but this they had already known. What mattered most was that they had significant information McCracken didn’t have. They had an advantage. They had their start. They were on their way.
Soon enough, however, celebration turned to deliberation. Sticky perused the blueprints in his mind’s eye, focusing only on the diagrams and notes in gold ink. “It all holds together,” he murmured. “The path is fairly clear even if the obstacles along the way aren’t. I think some of the notes aren’t going to make sense until we’re actually there—like the last line about the clé d’or. Before we found the blueprints, we never could have figured out what that means.”
“Well, that’s great news!” Kate said.
Sticky looked at her askance. “How is it great news that we’re heading into a dangerous situation with a ticking clock counting down to potential disaster without knowing ahead of time how to get through these different layers of security?”
Kate was already, and very speedily, clearing the table. “Because it means we can get moving!”
Reynie and Sticky jumped to help her. (And by working as fast as they could, they even did help her, a little.) Soon everything was squared away to Kate’s satisfaction, and in the meantime the three of them had discussed what their next steps would be. With Sticky monitoring from his computer workstation, Reynie spent some minutes on the radio, obtaining and distributing necessary information. And then it was done. The arrangements had been made. They had their plan.
A quick use of the intercom system brought Tai Li bursting into the dining room, where he found Kate and Reynie waiting. Trudging in behind him came a still decidedly grumpy-looking Constance Contraire.
“We used the Husher to sneak up on Captain Plugg!” Tai announced with a burst of giggles. “She sprayed coffee out of her mouth like a fountain!”
Kate gave him a stern look. “I told you we had rules about that, remember?”
“But you don’t even like the rules!”
“True,” Kate said. She snatched her bucket from Tai, placed it on the floor, and pointed to it. “Nevertheless, have a seat on the red stool, young man.”
Tai’s eyes widened. He looked as if he were about to be given a marvelous present. He dropped onto the bucket and sat very still, his hands on his knees. “Am I being punished?” he asked with a hopeful look.
“Severely,” Kate replied.
Tai covered his mouth to suppress a giggle, then composed himself and made an obvious effort to look unhappy.
Constance, meanwhile, had slouched into the easy chair in the corner and drawn her feet up under her. “So you three got it all figured out,” she said gloomily. “That’s so great.”
“You did say you wanted us to, after all,” Reynie said. He hoped that his light tone might make a difference in her mood, but Constance only looked coldly at him from behind a veil of scarlet hair. He cleared his throat. “You also said you wanted to move on, and it’s time to do that. We all need to pack a small overnight bag. No matter how things go, there’s a good chance we won’t be back here for a day or two, maybe longer.”
Tai, who was still enjoying his punishment, raised his hand. Kate gave him a nod of permission, and he asked brightly, “Where are we going? I don’t have any other clothes. Or a bag. Or a toothbrush.” He thought for a moment. “Or toothpaste.”
“We’re going to help Mr. Benedict,” Kate said. “Sticky’s going down to the Blab right now to make a serum he needs—”
“We saw George on the stairs!” Tai interjected.
Kate gave him another stern look, and he clapped his hands over his mouth. “Anyway, we’re bringing that serum to Mr. Benedict, and we’re going to stop the Ten Men from breaking out Mr. Curtain.”
Tai whispered, “Wow!” behind his hands.
“But to do that we have to go out of town first. We’ll explain that part later. Right now, you can change into the clothes you were wearing yesterday—I’ve already taken them from the fumigator and washed and dried them. And ironed them. And replaced your broken shoelaces.”
Tai’s eyes grew enormous. He raised his hand.
“I was up early,” Kate said, and he lowered his hand.
Reynie turned to Constance. “Will you please help him pack a bag? You’re the only one with old clothes here that are small enough to fit him.”
Constance gave a grudging nod and climbed out of the chair. Despite her unhappy look of reluctance, she was actually moving quickly. It was only by a constant force of will that she was managing her anxieties about Mr. Benedict. No matter what required doing right now, Constance would not be a source of delay. Not this time.
“Let’s go, Tai,” she snapped as she headed for the door.
Tai looked at Kate, who signaled that he could get up. He leaped to his feet. “That was terrible!” he exclaimed. He drew the back of a hand across his forehead as if in relief. “Can I bring your bucket on our trip?”
“Are you kidding? You have to bring the bucket,” Kate replied. “What if you misbehave again?”
Ten minutes later, Reynie stood in the dining room once more. The lights were off, but morning sunlight streamed pleasantly through the windows. He was wearing his backpack, ready to go. The room was very quiet, very still. He wondered how many times he had seen it like this. Not many. For it was not just empty. There are empty rooms, and then there are rooms that feel crowded, corner to corner, with absence.
Not long ago, in this very room, Reynie and Mr. Benedict had talked about the exact thing Reynie was feeling now. It was after lunch, the dishes had been cleared away, and the others had all excused themselves. Mr. Benedict had decided to enjoy an extra cup of tea before returning to his study and, no doubt having sensed the hesitation in Reynie’s goodbye, invited him to sit and have an extra cup himself.
“I know I’ve spoken to you often about my artist friend Violet,” said Mr. Benedict, passing Reynie the honey. “And I know you’re familiar with her work. You’ve told me you admire her paintings in the sitting room, of course, but if I recall correctly, you also spent some time with the catalog of her work that I keep in my study.”
Reynie was stirring honey into his tea. He smiled. “If you’ve ever failed to recall something correctly, Mr. Benedict, I certainly can’t recall the occasion. Yes, that was just before we built the platform. I remember hearing Constance yelling about the leak in the ceiling—how the plaster was peeling, how annoyed she was feeling—just as I finished looking through the catalog.”
Mr. Benedict tapped his nose. “I recall that we intended to discuss Violet’s work further, yet we were understandably sidetracked and never returned to the subject.”
“That’s true,” Reynie said, sipping his tea. This was not news to him. There were many subjects that they had agreed to discuss at some point, and the list was always growing. They both kept mental track of these bookmarked conversations and often returned to topics months after they’d first been mentioned. “I admired everything I saw in the catalog.”
“So you said at the time, and I was pleased to hear it. Some of her work does not appear in that catalog, however, and I thought now might be an appropriate time to mention it.” Mr. Benedict set down his teacup and laced his fingers together. “When Violet was a child, she lost her brother, and her early artwork reflected her grief in a striking way. She rendered familiar scenes in which one would typically expect to see people, yet the people themselves were missing.”
“I imagine that made for unsettling effects,” Reynie observed.
“Indeed,” said Mr. Benedict. “And appropriate. Nothing is more unsettling than losing those we’ve loved. Yet I would propose for your consideration, Reynie, that there is something powerful, even important, in missing them. Missing our loved ones is in itself a connection with them, is it not? Painful, perhaps, but special.”
Reynie nodded, a little embarrassed. He assumed Mr. Benedict was hinting at Reynie’s own worries about missing his friends and family—indeed, everyone in Mr. Benedict’s circle, not least Mr. Benedict himself—if he went away to a university. Reynie had talked about it with Miss Perumal, but only a bit. More than once he’d come close to knocking on Mr. Benedict’s study door, only to change his mind and creep away. Now it occurred to him that Mr. Benedict had been aware of those almost-knocks. In fact, Mr. Benedict’s decision to “have an extra cup of tea” had likely been meant to make it easier for Reynie to approach him. No need for knocking. Mr. Benedict had removed the door.
“When the time comes for you to go away, Reynie,” Mr. Benedict said after a pause, “whether that be soon or far down the road, and whether it be for a temporary sojourn elsewhere or a more permanent relocation…” Mr. Benedict’s voice faltered slightly. He cleared his throat, and with a small shock Reynie realized that Mr. Benedict’s bright green eyes had tears in them. “When that time comes, my friend, I shall miss you dearly. Just as I miss Rhonda; just as I shall miss all the others whose cherished faces I’m so accustomed to seeing around this table, yet who may find it best, at some point, to leave the table for good.”
Mr. Benedict took a handkerchief from his pocket and blew his large, lumpy nose. “But special people tend to go and do special things,” he continued, “and one must accept it as best one can. Whenever I miss old friends, I remind myself that this very act makes them a part of my life. We may be separated by time and distance, and very often by the lack of hours to write each other proper letters, but we remain friends, and I remain grateful. Violet, for instance, I haven’t seen in years, but I think of her every day, and I take pleasure in knowing she’s in the world.”
Something occurred to Reynie. He was surprised that he had never thought of it before. “The violet you keep on your desk…”
Mr. Benedict tapped his nose and smiled.
Reynie thought of Kate’s bucket and spyglass in his chest. He also had a pair of Sticky’s old spectacles on his dresser, and he knew that Sticky had given Kate a different pair. (She and Reynie had preferred different ones, so it had worked out neatly.) What would they remember him by? he wondered. He needed to think about something to give them. Constance, too, of course. Nothing sprang to mind, though, and for some reason Reynie found this troubling. Was it really because he couldn’t think of a specific memento? No, he decided, it was that he had never thought of these items as mementos before. Thinking of them in that way made everything all too real.
Reynie realized that he had been staring into his teacup. Mr. Benedict was sipping his own tea, politely giving Reynie time with his thoughts. When their eyes met again, Mr. Benedict’s expression had shifted slightly. There was a reluctance in it that made Reynie uneasy. What was he about to say?
“I’ve shared these perspectives of mine,” Mr. Benedict began, “simply in the hope that you may find some of them useful in the days ahead. Perhaps you will, perhaps you won’t. My own perspectives are admittedly sometimes strange. But there is one related matter, a bit closer to home, that I would urge you to address.”
Suddenly Reynie understood. Having anticipated Reynie’s embarrassment, Mr. Benedict had been trying to help Reynie by talking about himself. But now he was going to offer direct advice, without having been asked, and it made him uncomfortable to do so.
Mr. Benedict cleared his throat again. “In short, Reynie, if you find yourself missing someone long before you have even decided to part, you should consider the possibility that you are suffering unnecessarily. Sometimes when you’ve lost something, it won’t come back on its own. Sometimes you must attempt to retrieve it. That can be a frightening endeavor, for of course there is always the prospect of failure.”
Reynie’s throat felt tight, and he was having to make an effort not to avert his eyes. He was glad that he did; otherwise he would have missed the sudden twinkle in Mr. Benedict’s own eyes. He would have missed the wink.
“Of course,” Mr. Benedict had said, rising, “there’s also the prospect of success, and you have rather a good record of succeeding, have you not?”
Standing alone in the dining room, Reynie found that his eyes had naturally drifted to the chairs in which he and Mr. Benedict had sat that day. He’d been imagining the scene. There had been so many scenes in this room, he thought, from the mundane to the frightening to the wonderful. Through those currently sunlit windows he had looked out upon windy days and snowy days, sunshine and storms. They all had.
Reynie heard Sticky’s familiar footstep in the doorway. Reynie started to turn, but something checked him, and he remained as he was, thumbs hooked in the straps of his backpack, regarding the empty room. After a moment he heard Sticky walking quietly up beside him. He hadn’t needed to turn. Sticky knew that Reynie knew he was there. And he knew that if Reynie had wanted to be left alone, he would have done something different. They had been friends a long time. Still, Reynie found that he wished he had turned, had gestured for Sticky to join him.
“It is a really interesting room,” Sticky murmured. He adjusted a strap on his own backpack. “I can see why you’re so fascinated.”
Reynie smiled and glanced over at him. “We’ve always come back to this table. Every time we’ve gone and done something dangerous together, we’ve come back here and sat around this table.”
“And talked about everything that happened,” Sticky said, nodding. “And enjoyed feeling safe.”
They stood in silence for a time, taking in the room together.
“Let’s make sure we do that again,” Reynie said.
The cameras placed by the Scaredy Katz meant that leaving Mr. Benedict’s house by the front or back door was out of the question. Thus, in accordance with their plan, Sticky and Reynie found Kate standing near the third-floor platform, saying goodbye to Madge. The beautiful falcon was perched on Kate’s leather-glove-protected arm, and Kate was stroking her feathers. Kate was wearing her parachute, the better to carry it while also toting the large duffel bag she had packed, which rested on the floor nearby.
Hiding behind Kate was Tai Li, holding the red bucket up in front of his face like a shield.
“It’s nonsense,” Kate was saying to him. “You can’t listen to what Constance says.”
“But Constance can read her mind!” Tai squeaked.
Kate turned to Sticky and Reynie with a look of exasperation. “Constance is in a fine mood. She told Tai that Madge wants to eat his toes.”
“Maybe she does!” Tai cried. He seemed genuinely nervous but also appeared to be enjoying the dramatic possibilities of being hunted by a falcon.
“Don’t be silly,” Reynie said. “Madge doesn’t want to hurt you.” Even as he said this, however, he shared a private look with Sticky. Neither of them had ever been entirely certain that Madge didn’t want to hurt them.
“Why would Constance say something like that?” Sticky asked.
“Because I didn’t want to wear my shoes, and she said I had to, and I said I didn’t want to, and she said I didn’t get to choose—” Tai took a breath.
“You do have to wear your shoes,” Sticky said simply, and Tai nodded. Maintaining his balance with some difficulty, he lifted one foot to show that he had already complied.
Constance came stalking down the hallway with her backpack on. Reynie started to ask where Tai’s bag was, then thought better of it. Probably she had packed his things in the backpack with hers. And if she hadn’t? One glance at her face suggested that the wise course was to let the matter drop.
Kate tossed a treat down the long hallway and sent Madge after it. Meanwhile, Captain Plugg had come up to say goodbye. She hugged them each in turn (despite the sullen look on Constance’s face, she squeezed the beloved guard rather fiercely); implored them to be as careful as they possibly could; then took the protective glove from Kate, for she had promised to care for Madge until Kate’s return.
“Now, don’t you worry,” Captain Plugg said, adjusting the strings of the glove to account for her thick forearms. “You know I’ve taken good care of that sweetheart in the past, and you can be sure I’ll do it again. We’ll have a lovely time together, won’t we, Your Majesty?” This last she called down the hallway, then blew Kate’s whistle to summon the falcon to her arm.
“Oh, Madge, we’re all sorry you can’t come with us,” Kate said as Sticky and Reynie made polite noises of agreement. “But that nasty old McCracken remembers you too well. You stay here and be a good girl, okay? You mind Captain Plugg!”
With that, Kate snatched up her duffel bag and joined the others on the platform. They all waved at Captain Plugg and Madge (all except Constance, who was glowering at her shoes), and Kate said, “Let’s do this the proper way, shall we?”
“Let’s not,” Constance muttered.
“Doesn’t someone have to stomp on the floor?” Tai asked.
“Come on, Connie girl,” Kate prodded. “When was the last time we did it together?”
