The Mysterious Benedict Society and the Riddle of Ages, page 18
Constance blew hair out of her eyes. “Fine,” she said. She glanced down at Tai. She took his hand. “Hold on, you.”
Constance stomped.
Reynie stomped.
Kate stomped.
Sticky stomped.
The trapdoor in the ceiling fell open, and up they went.
It had been a while since the Society had used what Kate liked to refer to as the Zipper. The first reason they had stopped using it was because Number Two (once she’d found out about it) had inspected it and deemed it too dangerous. After that happened, the Society had secretly made adjustments to address Number Two’s safety concerns. The second reason they had stopped using the Zipper was because Number Two had found out again and inspected it again and had again declared that the Zipper was not safe enough. Unfortunately, their families had all agreed with Number Two. (“Take only necessary risks, Kate,” Milligan had reminded her.) And so promises were solicited from the Society members not to use the Zipper again.
“Except in case of emergency,” Reynie had made sure to say.
Number Two had narrowed her eyes. “Except in the case of a genuine emergency.”
And to this they had all reluctantly agreed.
Now here they were, accompanied by a little boy firmly secured to Kate’s belt by a tether, making use of carefully placed handholds and footholds to climb the roof’s northwesternmost gable. Before long the rooftop patio was a distance below them, they were peering out over the tree-lined street, and all except Kate felt a nervous fluttering in their bellies. Directly across from them was the Washingtons’ house, a cozy abode that Sticky had for some years now called his “home across the street” (for Mr. Benedict’s house was also his home), whose rooftop lay well below their current position. Rising vertically from the peak of the Washingtons’ roof was what once had been a decades-old television antenna—the sort that looked like a skinny metal tree stripped of its leaves and lower branches—but currently functioned as the Society’s drop-off point.
After confirming that the street was clear and quiet, Kate opened her duffel bag and removed an oversized crossbow, followed by a grappling hook attached to a coiled length of cable. After securing the free end of the cable to a metal bracket in the roof, Kate moved the heavy coil to her opposite side, well out of Tai’s reach. She loaded the grappling hook into the crossbow.
“Are you going to shoot that?” Tai whispered. He started to edge sideways for a better look, but three pairs of hands had a firm grip on him, and he found he couldn’t move an inch. He held still.
Kate gave him a nod. She shifted her position, raised the crossbow to her shoulder, and took a slow, deep breath. As she exhaled, she squeezed the trigger. There was a sharp twang! The grappling hook vanished, the coil of cable beside Kate made a metallic sizzling sound (it seemed to melt away as if by magic before Tai’s astonished eyes), and then Kate was yanking back on the crossbow as if she were wielding a fishing pole and had just landed a big one. Across the street, the grappling hook wound round and round one of the metal projections of the antenna, catching and holding with a distant clink! that set the now-taut cable quivering. Kate worked a small crank attached to the bracket in the rooftop, tightening the cable even further. Then she put away the crossbow, took out a rather complicated-looking harness-and-pulley contraption, and, adjusting the harness to accommodate the parachute on her back, buckled herself in.
“Is Kate going to zip across the street?” Tai breathed when he saw her attaching the pulley to the cable.
“Kate always goes first,” Sticky whispered in reply. “Just to be on the safe side, in case something goes wrong.”
“But what would she do if something went wrong?”
Sticky shrugged. “We have no idea. We just know we’d have to see it to believe it.”
Kate connected the end of a spool of almost invisible fishing line to the harness and handed the spool to Sticky, who explained to Tai that this was for bringing the harness back. The spool was attached to a reel to make the retrieval easier. Tai studied the reel, then looked at Sticky to signal that he understood. When he looked back, Kate was gone.
Past the highest branches of the elm tree she zipped, over the tops of the smaller trees along the sidewalk, over the street, over the Washingtons’ front yard, and at last to the drop-off point, where she came to a stop not with a loud bang or clang (the pulley was equipped with special padding) but with more of a satisfying thunk. For a moment Kate dangled from the antenna (which had been reinforced with much stronger metal and heavy bolts to support the Zipper’s true function), and they could all see her grinning even from across the street. Then she lowered herself onto the rooftop, put down her duffel bag, and removed the harness.
As Sticky reeled the harness back, he explained to Tai that Kate would now inspect and doubly secure the grappling-hook end of the cable. “So it really is very safe,” he whispered. “There’s no need for you to worry.”
“I’m not worried!” Tai whispered. “Can I go next?”
Of course he could go next, Sticky said, and so Tai did, covering his mouth the entire way to keep himself from exclaiming in delight. Kate caught him at the other end, removed him from the harness, and tethered him to her belt again. Constance went next, then Reynie, and finally Sticky. They had always crossed the street in this exact order because Kate needed to go first, Constance hated waiting, and Sticky wanted as much time as possible to work up his nerve. Today, however, Sticky went last simply out of tradition.
“You did it!” Tai whispered when Sticky arrived. (He had whispered the same thing to Constance and Reynie.) “Let’s all stick our tongues out at the camera on the fence! Because we tricked it!”
And so, from the peak of Sticky’s home across the street, the five of them stuck their tongues out at the camera, which could not see them.
They had completed their first daring maneuver of the day.
There were many more—and much more dangerous ones—to come.
From the roof of the Washingtons’ back porch, Kate leaped into a tree and then to the ground, and presently she returned with a ladder for the others. Soon they were all bustling into the cellar, where Kate unlocked the heavy steel door that opened onto the secret passage to the Monk Building.
Everyone looked expectantly at Tai.
He gasped.
The improvement of lighting and the reduction of vermin in the secret passage had been one of the Society’s many projects, and so it was into a rather pleasantly lit and only moderately dank and creepy tunnel that they now hurried. Kate removed her parachute and handed it to Reynie to carry; Tai handed Kate’s bucket to Sticky (having first tried to hand it to Constance, who only looked at him); and then Kate took off with Tai riding piggyback, followed at a distance by the others, who knew better than to try to keep up.
“This is the tunnel!” Tai said into Kate’s ear. “The one you took from the Monk Building to Mr. Benedict’s house on the day you met!”
“Right you are,” Kate said. “We’d just gotten through one batch of Mr. Benedict’s tests and were on our way to more. It’s so strange to think that we had no idea where we were heading then. Nowadays this tunnel is where we tend to go when we want some peace and quiet. Especially on rainy days. With so many people around, it never gets completely quiet indoors.”
“You could use the Husher if you wanted things to be quiet.”
“Well, it uses a lot of energy. Even with special batteries, it doesn’t last long enough for you to really clear your head. No, the best thing is usually just to come here—see how quiet it is? The only trouble is that sometimes we all want to use it. We had to make a sign-up sheet. Isn’t that funny? Everybody taking turns just to get into a boring old empty tunnel?”
“It isn’t boring! It’s a secret!”
“Excellent point. If you put it that way, what could be better?” Kate hitched Tai up a little higher.
“You don’t come here together, though?” Tai asked a bit sadly.
“We used to every now and then, of course,” Kate said. “But usually this is a spot for solitude. A place to escape to when everyone seems to be stepping on your feet and getting on your nerves. You want to know my secret name for it?”
“Oh, yes!” Tai whispered.
“Bill,” Kate said.
Tai giggled. “Bill?”
“Why not? Bill is a good, solid name, Tai.”
They had arrived now at the bottom of the stairs leading up to Mr. Benedict’s office on the seventh floor of the Monk Building. Kate glanced back to ensure that her straggling friends were fine (and so they were, though she could hear their panting even from a distance), and she headed up the winding stairs with Tai on her back. By the time the others caught up, she and Tai had already reached the office’s secret anteroom, looked through hidden peepholes to ensure that the office was empty, and selected from a rack some clothing that would form Kate’s disguise.
Constance, Reynie, and Sticky arrived gasping and perspiring. As they stood with hands on hips, regaining their breath, Kate put on her parachute again. Over it she slipped a pair of coveralls that normally fit the circus-strongman physique of Moocho Brazos. “I’ll have to be a hulking figure with a hunched back,” she told her friends. “Since it won’t do to be seen in public with a parachute.”
“We discussed it!” Tai declared proudly. “Also, we have to hide Kate’s bucket in her duffel bag because it’s famous.”
“I don’t recall using that exact word,” said Kate, pulling her hair up into a tight bun, over which she placed a greasy mechanic’s cap.
“You said it’s ‘well known,’” Tai amended.
“And that much, I think, is safe to say,” said Kate with a satisfied nod.
Soon they were all ready, the anteroom vacated, and the plain interior of office 7-B filled with an unlikely assemblage: a large, stooped mechanic; an average-looking young man in the blue uniform of a local high school; a handsome young dockworker with stylish glasses; an angry-looking kitchen employee with a flour-dusted apron and an ugly hairnet; and a delighted-looking little boy (undisguised). The backpacks made the disguises less than perfect, but as long as they weren’t seen together as a group, they should attract little special attention.
Reynie looked at Constance. “Based on my information, we probably have a clear route to the parking deck, but what’s your feeling about this building?”
“Nothing weird on this floor,” Constance said at once. “Let me take a look outside.” After listening at the door a moment, she slipped out of the office and down to the end of the hallway. A window there afforded a good view of the city streets around the building. She looked out for several seconds, then returned and said, “I think you’re right.”
They used the building’s public stairwell, which was always empty, and descended together, stopping every so often for Constance to sniff the air with her mental bloodhound’s nose. No, the building was safe, she was sure of it now, and at last they were gathered on the first floor. Everyone donned sunglasses. The mechanic went out first, holding hands with the little boy and carrying a duffel bag. Two minutes later, the kitchen worker and dockworker left together. And finally the high school student walked out of the doors of the Monk Building onto its sunlit front plaza.
Never particularly graceful, Reynie walked as casually as he could, his mind in a state of agitated confusion. The first time he’d crossed this plaza, years ago, he was walking into a new life. He could not help but wonder if he was doing the same thing yet again, this time walking in the opposite direction. His future had seemed so mysterious to him then. Now, after so much had changed, he found himself walking across the exact same plaza feeling almost exactly the same way. It seemed so strange. How many more plazas, Reynie wondered, would he cross in his life?
Meanwhile the city streets appeared no different than usual. Plenty of pedestrians, plenty of traffic, plenty of noise. Plenty of businessmen in nice suits, too, and at first Reynie walked slowly, his wary eyes darting this way and that. Then he spied, some blocks ahead of him, the kitchen worker and the dockworker disappearing around a corner. If any of the Baker’s Dozen were around, Constance would know it. Reynie picked up his pace.
On the dimly lit underground level of a parking deck, a dilapidated old station wagon occupied one of the rental spaces. Only its tires looked to be in good condition; otherwise it gave the impression of having been abandoned, with dents, scrapes, rusty patches, two missing hubcaps, and an empty bird’s nest in the radiator grille. As Reynie hastened to join the others already inside the car, Kate cranked the engine, which came to life with the roar of a hundred lions.
“Hop in!” she called brightly. Reynie hurriedly stowed his backpack in the rear of the car, with Kate’s parachute and the other packs. The front passenger seat had been left unoccupied for him. He had to yank a few times on the door to get it to open, but finally he succeeded and climbed in. Sticky and Constance were seated in the back, flanking Tai Li, who was making a cheerful fuss about his booster seat.
“I’ve never been in a booster seat or a station wagon!” Tai informed Reynie.
“Today’s your lucky day!” Kate laughed, and she threw the engine into reverse.
“Um, Kate,” Reynie cautioned, hurriedly buckling his seat belt, “we need to avoid drawing attention to ourselves, remember?”
Kate’s hand tapped the gearshift, a look of disappointment settling onto her face. “Right,” she murmured. “Right, right, right.” She backed out of the parking space—smoothly and expertly, but without the least bit of panache. She sighed and drove them up onto the street.
Kate, Reynie, and Sticky had already discussed their route out of Stonetown. Every train station, airport, and tollbooth in the city was compromised. The Ten Men had their old network of local spies up and running—sharp-eyed informants who, out of fear or greed or both, would immediately contact McCracken with any news of the information he sought. In this case, believing most of the Society to have fled the city, McCracken had positioned those spies at all the usual points of entry. If Mr. Benedict’s young friends came back to help him, McCracken hoped to know it.
“But they aren’t on the lookout for people leaving the city,” Sticky was explaining now to Tai, “so as long as we’re careful, we’re not likely to be spotted.”
“Oh, good!” Tai said. He was craning his neck left and right, curious to see out of as many of the station wagon windows as possible. “But how will we give Mr. Benedict what he needs if we’re going away?”
“We’re coming back soon,” Sticky said. “First we just need to get a little help.”
Constance removed her hairnet and threw it onto the floorboard with a look of disgust. She pulled her hair over her eyes. Outside the station wagon, the downtown streets gave way to those of quieter neighborhoods. Kate was taking a roundabout path to an old, lesser-used highway out of town.
Perhaps because everyone had been silent for several minutes, when another question occurred to Tai, he didn’t blurt it out but rather raised his hand politely. Sticky smiled and asked him what his question was.
Tai lowered his hand. “Why were we worried about McCracken trying to get S.Q.? Didn’t he work for Mr. Curtain, just like the others?”
Sticky hesitated. He saw Kate’s eyes studying him in the rearview mirror. The fact was, he hadn’t considered how to answer this complicated question—not to a five-year-old, not under the circumstances—and he felt a horror of messing something up. He cleared his throat. “Someone else want to take this one?”
“Why don’t you, Reynie?” Kate suggested. “I’m so busy driving and everything.”
Reynie shifted in his seat so that Tai could see his face. “You’re right,” he said. “S.Q. and the Ten Men used to be on the same team, kind of. But here’s the situation, Tai. Mr. Curtain’s letter said that S.Q. was getting something for him—that serum we mentioned. Well, if you were a bad guy like McCracken, and you weren’t crazy about the idea of trying to break into a place that’s supposed to be impossible to break into, and you realized that this serum, if you got your hands on it, might make you so powerful that you would never need Mr. Curtain’s help for anything again… well, you might prefer to get it from S.Q. before he could bring it to Mr. Curtain. That way you wouldn’t have to try to do the big break-in—you wouldn’t have to take any risk at all. Does that make sense?”
Tai’s eyes widened. “You mean McCracken was going to portray Mr. Curtain?”
“Do you mean betray? Then, yes.”
“But that’s terrible!”
“You can say that again,” Kate put in. “They don’t call them the Ten Men because they have ten ways of helping people, you know. Hurting people is what they do best. But S.Q. got away, thanks to Milligan. So now if McCracken wants to get more powerful, he either has to do what Mr. Curtain told him to do in the letter, which is risky for him, or—”
“Or he could try to catch us!” Tai said. “Because Sticky made the serum he wants!”
Three hands tapped three noses. Constance, for her part, said nothing. Behind her screen of scarlet hair, she might have been sleeping for all anyone could tell. (No one believed she was, however.)
“McCracken and his men might still try to break Mr. Curtain out,” Reynie said, “even if he did catch us and get the serum. Mr. Curtain gave them a lot of reasons to try. But, you know, we’d rather not get caught. I assume you feel the same way, Tai?”
“Oh, yes, I do!”
“Perfect. We’ll make sure not to get caught, then.”
Eventually the station wagon made its way through the outskirts of Stonetown, crossed an out-of-the-way old bridge, and finally turned onto a rural highway that passed through pleasant rolling farmland. The road was wide open, with excellent visibility, and would seem to invite—indeed, even beg for—driving at excessive speeds. And yet the station wagon proceeded at a sensible pace, observing the speed limit with remarkable precision.
