The Mysterious Benedict Society and the Riddle of Ages, page 6
“The telepath,” Reynie interrupted. “I mean, that’s obvious, right?” He glanced at Constance and Sticky, who both nodded.
“For crying out loud!” Kate exclaimed, throwing up her hands. “Do I not even get to tell my story?”
“Sorry,” Reynie said, though in truth everyone except Kate was now in a better mood. “Please go on.”
“Thank you,” Kate replied curtly. And then, in her usual spirited tone (for she couldn’t hold a grudge more than a second if she tried), she continued: “I actually wasn’t going to say the telepath. You’re right, though; it is obvious now that you mention it. What I was going to say was that the Scaredy Katz were looking for a Helper!”
“Wait,” Sticky said. “You mean a Helper Helper? From the Institute?”
Kate tapped her nose and pointed at him.
Her listeners suddenly understood much more than Kate had said aloud. When the Society members had gone on their mission to the Institute on Nomansan Island, enrolling as students while operating as spies for Mr. Benedict, they discovered that the laborers there—the infinitely sad and subservient Helpers—had suffered the same fate Milligan had: They’d been brainswept by Mr. Curtain’s Whisperer, all memory of their true lives hidden away from them.
Unlike Milligan, whose secret-agent training had helped him to escape immediately after he’d been brainswept, the unfortunate Helpers had been given new identities and convinced that everything was as it should be—that all was well as long as they did Mr. Curtain’s bidding. Their presence at the Institute had been the unsettling, unhappy background to the children’s secret investigations. And in the aftermath of their mission, using the Whisperer to return the Helpers’ memories had been Mr. Benedict’s first priority. It had been a daunting, exhausting job, but it had met with complete success—or so they had thought, until now.
“So one of them got away? Like Milligan?” Reynie asked.
“It turns out that Milligan was the reason she got away,” Kate replied. “That day he escaped—overcoming his guards, running from the school, diving into the bay from the island cliffs—he set off every alarm. The Ten Men—or, you know, the Recruiters, as they were called back then—”
“We know!” Constance snapped. “Get on with it!”
“The Recruiters,” continued Kate, unaffected, “were shouting all kinds of orders, sounding all the alarms, getting Executives and Helpers involved. They broke out the boats, they opened the bridge gate, they tried to form an unbreakable perimeter on the mainland shore—they made use of every single body they could muster. Well, it did them no good. Milligan escaped, as you know—”
Constance made a hissing sound.
“—and in the process, a lot of the Helpers got confused and wandered away. They went off looking for this person they were being told to stop. In the commotion, most of them made it a fair distance before they were missed. So then the efforts had to be directed toward catching them. Eventually they were rounded up—all except one.”
Sticky whistled. “So she’s been out there all these years, not knowing her real identity?”
“Right. And she moved from city to city, keeping a very low profile, because she sensed that someone was trying to find her, and it scared her. That’s what Milligan and I think, anyway. We think Mr. Curtain put the Scaredy Katz on her trail, and they’ve been playing a game of—well, of cats and mouse—all this time, until recently. They finally tracked her down.”
“And they’ve either forced her or somehow persuaded her to help them,” Reynie said. “That’s why she was so important to Mr. Curtain. He must have known she was a telepath. In fact, I’m sure that’s why he brainswept the poor woman in the first place—he perceived her as a threat to his plans.”
Constance made another hissing sound.
“Yes, yes, we know you already know all this, Constance,” Kate said. “We’re just trying—”
But the sound Constance was making was not a hiss of exasperation. Rather, she was shushing them, for she had sensed that the radio was about to squawk. And now it did. Reynie, who had carried it down from his study, snatched it up and set it on the table.
The next squawk was followed by the familiar voice of a sentry named Clarion, who rattled off a code phrase. Once Reynie had given the appropriate response, Clarion said, “This is a high alert, my friends. Be advised that two well-dressed businessmen have entered the neighborhood in a rented luxury vehicle. The one in the passenger seat is extremely large, and his description seems to match—wait, Captain Plugg has just walked into the room; she’s telling me something.…”
Garbled sounds followed, and when Clarion spoke again, his voice was in a higher pitch: “Yes, she saw him, and she says there’s no doubt about it! A pair of Ten Men are headed your way, and one of them is McCracken!”
I repeat with all urgency,” Clarion was barking into the radio, “it’s McCracken! It’s McCracken! And look, my orders are not to engage with Ten Men, but you’re in danger—”
Reynie cut him off with the press of a button. “No, thank you, Clarion, but under no circumstances engage any Ten Men! You won’t be able to stop them, and you’d pay a heavy price for trying. Please tell Captain Plugg to stay with you for now. Tell her that’s our best chance. Over and out.”
Kate was already whistling for Madge, dashing from the dining room and headed to the roof, for McCracken had good reason to recognize the falcon, which had once spoiled his plans in style. Most people wouldn’t notice a particular bird tucked away in the branches of the giant elm tree. McCracken would.
“What do you think, Reynie?” Sticky asked. “Fight or flight? And by fight, I mean hide.”
Reynie was up and pacing. He thought of Tai napping in Constance’s room. He considered what they risked if they fled, what they risked if they stayed. Everything depended on what happened in the next few moments. So why did his mind keep returning to the ship, when he and Sticky were putting on the sailor uniforms and Constance, unbeknownst to them, was sneaking into the crate?
“I know what you’re thinking,” Constance said, startling him. “And, yes, I can do this.” She was already rising from the table and walking to the window that overlooked the courtyard. “I just need a good reason to give him.”
Reynie jumped to her side. “Captain Plugg wouldn’t have left the house unprotected if there was anything or anyone of value inside, right? There’s your good reason.”
Constance eyed him. “That’s why you told her not to come back.”
“Well, that and the fact that there’s nothing she could do, anyway, except get hurt.”
On every side of Mr. Benedict’s house, certain specially designed windows had been installed. They appeared to be normal windows, but in fact they were impossible to see through from the outside—they always looked as if the light were just at the wrong angle—while from the inside they remained perfectly transparent. Their design had been one of the Society’s educational projects. On this side of the house, the two lookout windows were in Reynie’s study and here in the dining room. Constance took her place at the window, therefore, with no danger of being spotted, and her view of the courtyard and front gate was clear. Nonetheless, her skin prickled and her breathing was shallow, as if she were about to face down a charging bull—as if a single misstep would be the end of her.
Sticky came and looked over her shoulder. “There,” he whispered, pointing. A small black limousine, polished and iridescent as a raven’s wing, had just eased around the corner and onto their street.
“I see it,” Constance said. “Now don’t say anything else. Your breath is bad.”
Sticky started to protest, then thought better of it. Now was not the time. He did, however, make a mental note to brush his teeth as soon as possible, assuming he got out of this situation with his teeth intact.
Kate crept into the dining room, having gotten Madge safely within the house, and stole over to stand with Reynie and Sticky. They could all see past Constance easily enough, and all watched in tense silence as the car pulled up to the curb. It seemed to tilt slightly toward them, as if its passenger-side tires were very low—indeed, almost flat. Then the front passenger-side door opened, and the explanation for the tilt became apparent.
The well-dressed man who stepped from the vehicle was enormous. Even had he not been wearing such an expertly tailored suit, even had his brown hair not been so perfectly coiffed, even if a large silver watch had gleamed on only one wrist rather than on both—even then there could have been no mistaking the imposing figure of McCracken.
With a word to the driver, who remained in the car, the most feared of all Ten Men approached the courtyard gate, absently straightening his tie. His eyes roamed the windows of the house. They glanced up into the elm tree, then back at the house. McCracken rested one hand on top of the gate—it might have been the gate to a children’s play area in a library, so small and insubstantial did it seem before him—and stood there as if considering.
“He saw Captain Plugg on her motorcycle,” Constance breathed. “He knows she isn’t here.” She glanced nervously at Reynie, just the quickest flick of her eyes, but he saw it and leaned in close to her ear.
“He certainly doubts that she would leave us here unprotected,” Reynie murmured. “And, after all, the Katz brothers reported that we weren’t here. Witnesses saw us get on that ship.”
Constance nodded. She squinted in concentration. “Yes,” she whispered. “He felt the need to check for himself, but would she really leave us here unprotected? This really is a waste of his time.”
“Such a waste of his time,” Reynie murmured. “It really is.”
Constance stared and stared.
McCracken removed his hand from the gate. Still he remained there on the sidewalk, studying the house.
The Society members collectively held their breath. It had been years since they were this close to any Ten Man, much less the worst of them all. McCracken’s shock-watches glinted in the sun. His dangerously scented handkerchief peeked from his suit coat’s breast pocket. His elegant necktie might have been a serpent. The man positively radiated menace.
McCracken crossed his massive arms, evidently deep in thought. Then, at long last, he glanced up at the clear sky, smiled to himself, and returned to the limousine. The vehicle, once more listing to the passenger side, eased from the curb and cruised away.
“You did it!” Kate whispered, grabbing Constance by the shoulders and giving her a little shake of congratulations. Sticky and Reynie echoed the whispered cheer, but Constance pushed away from them and walked unsteadily to her chair at the table. Her eyes shone with tears, and she looked very pale and downcast.
“Did that make you feel sick?” Sticky asked, for influencing others’ minds had used to take a terrible toll on Constance. When she gave a slight nod in response to his question, Sticky hurried from the room, returning a few minutes later with a beaker of orange liquid. “Try this,” he urged. “Don’t worry, I added way too much sugar.”
Constance dutifully sipped from the beaker, her breathing growing deeper and steadier.
At length she was ready to talk. After insisting that they not prompt her with questions (the others obliged her by locking their lips with invisible keys), Constance began to relate what they all had been present for but only she had observed.
“Before McCracken decided against opening the gate,” Constance said, “he was wishing he had the Listener with him. He figured she could tell him if anyone was here or not. Which, you know, she probably could. But he doesn’t like moving her around town, because he feels it’s too risky. She’s as precious as gold to him. In fact, he was anxious to get back to her and make sure she was being well guarded. He’d left her with Crawlings, and you know how he feels about Crawlings not using proper caution.”
The others nodded and kept quiet.
“So I played that up, too,” Constance went on. “I turned up the volume on his anxiety, and that sealed it. He decided to get moving. But then—you all saw him just stand there for a while? Well, he was thinking about me. How he wished I’d been here, because he wants to use me if he ever gets a chance.”
The others exchanged grim looks as Constance shuddered and went on: “He was thinking—so casually, the way you might think about what to have for breakfast—that if he can’t make me do what he wants, he’ll just get rid of me. It wasn’t like he was thinking about a person at all! I’m just a potential weapon—like something he keeps in his briefcase—and if I don’t work for him, he’ll throw me away, as simple as that, just as he would anything else that’s useless to him. Like a piece of trash. It was horrible.”
The others’ expressions now ranged from deep sympathy to fury, but Constance had looked down at the table purposely to avoid seeing them.
“So,” Constance said, “there was that. But I’m not the only person McCracken has his eyes on. He and the others are making long-term plans. Right now they’re awaiting word from Mr. Curtain, but if they don’t hear something soon, they may move on. They each have a long list of people they intend to seek revenge against—just to get started—and there’s an even longer list of people who stand between McCracken and the power he seeks. Did you see him smile? He was thinking about those lists. He was amusing himself with visions of overflowing hospitals and long lines at the morgue. Not just in Stonetown, either—all over the world.”
Constance shivered again. “They weren’t just dark fantasies,” she said. “They were plans.”
The Society remained at the dining room table for some time, urgently discussing the situation. It had occurred to Reynie that the Listener might have sensed Constance reading McCracken’s thoughts. If so, and if she reported it to McCracken, their location would be betrayed after all. Fortunately, this had also occurred to Constance, and even as she’d been dealing with everything else, she’d thwarted that possibility by cycling through various memories of McCracken.
“Like showing a horror film,” Constance said, “except all of it was true. The Listener doesn’t know whether to believe any of it—she knows I might be trying to trick her. But the point is, I gave her too much to process. She’s already moved on. She’s just back to listening again.”
It was a little unsettling for Reynie to think of Constance privately developing and employing such tactics. But it wasn’t only Constance. Until recently, there had never been an occasion when each member of the Society operated so independently of all the others. For the past two days, while Kate was off completing her mission with Milligan, Reynie had been wedded to the radio: communicating in code with Milligan’s remaining local sentries and agents, tracking the arrival at Stonetown of the Baker’s Dozen, and exchanging coded messages with the MV Shortcut II (whose passengers, dismayed by the disappearing act Reynie had orchestrated, were equally grateful to hear that he and his friends were safe).
Sticky, meanwhile, had been glued to his specialized computer station, monitoring the radio waves (among other invisible signals) to ensure that Reynie’s communications were not themselves being monitored, and to pick up—as he had done three or four times—private chatter among the Ten Men, whose conversations skittered across frequencies like water bugs on the surface of a pond and were impossible to keep up with for long. On such occasions Sticky would engage the intercom and recite to Reynie what he’d overheard, and Reynie, for his part, had kept Sticky up to speed on all his coded communications. For two whole days the young men, working on the same floor of the same house, had seldom laid eyes on each other—and never on the presumably sulking Constance, who in fact had been hidden away dealing with her own secret missions.
The experience had been unsettling for all of them, not only for Reynie, and despite what had just happened with McCracken, there was also an unmistakable sense of relief in the air. They had come through the ordeal of the Ten Man’s visit successfully. The Society was, for the moment, all together again.
Constance was still on the subject of the Listener. “What Kate was telling us about her before he showed up was actually good news,” she said, “and it couldn’t have come at a better time. It boosted my confidence when I was muddying the picture for her about McCracken.”
“That’s great!” Kate said. “But how so?”
“Until then,” Constance explained, “I’d been thinking that she was stronger than I am.” She tapped her head. “Up here, I mean. Sure, I’d been able to put her off, but it took a lot of work, and whenever I tried to get a better look at her, I had no luck at all. She didn’t even seem to be trying—she just projected an emptiness that I couldn’t penetrate. But do you see? I couldn’t get at what was hidden because she can’t get at it, either! She has no idea who she is! She hardly knows what she’s doing!”
“That is good news,” Reynie said, nodding. “The best news since all of this started.”
Kate looked back and forth between Reynie and Constance. “Once again, I’m delighted to hear it,” she said. “But can you explain why? I mean, is there some sort of ‘battle of the telepaths’ scheduled that I’m unaware of?”
“There’s been one all along,” Reynie said. “When I spoke with Mr. Benedict, he told me that Constance should only reach out to him if we knew she could do it safely. We had no idea of the telepath’s whereabouts or identity, no idea of the extent of her abilities. What if she eavesdropped on our plans? The Ten Men would know everything. But if Constance feels confident that she can keep the line clear, so to speak…”
“I can at least make it incredibly hard for her,” Constance said. “It’s scary, and it makes me nervous, but that much I think I can do. And I can keep our location secret, no matter what. I’m sure of that now.”
“So you can get in touch with Mr. Benedict,” Sticky said. “That’s what you’re saying? We can make our next move?”
Constance tapped her nose and pointed. “He can tell us what to do!”
“Yes!” said Kate and Sticky at the same time. They traded amused glances and crossed their eyes, for long ago this had become the settled response among the Society members to such occurrences, which were hardly uncommon.
