By now Reynie had regained his breath enough to come to Kate’s aid. “We’re sorry, Ms. Plugg, but it’s true—we can’t discuss it with you. But it is extremely important.”
Ms. Plugg’s steely gray eyes roamed from face to face. All three children tried to look both humble and beseeching. At last she nodded curtly. “Milligan isn’t back yet. You can speak with Mr. Benedict in the car. Milligan’s sentries just went in to fetch him. Here they all come now.”
Sure enough, out of the house spilled not just Mr. Benedict and the sentries (two men in plainclothes whose alert eyes darted ceaselessly all around) but also the Washingtons, the Perumals, Rhonda, Number Two, and finally Moocho Brazos carrying four small brown bags. The children eventually discovered that the bags contained snacks for the police station, but first they had to endure such tongue-lashings as they had never experienced—a frantic, furious scolding from all quarters, amplified by a need for haste.
“Across the street—!”
“—without permission—!”
“—without telling any of us! And in that cellar, of all places! Why on earth—?”
“—searched high and low! Have you any idea, young man—?”
It went on like this, at great speed and considerable volume, for about twenty seconds. Then all at once it ended, and in a rush the three of them were swept up and clutched and patted and even wept over, and their hair fussed with (in Reynie’s and Kate’s case) and clothes brushed off (they all had cobwebs and beetles on them), and in her confusion of emotion the crying Mrs. Washington declared that Sticky was getting so big—and then with earnest pleas to be careful and tearful promises to see them at the station, the children were bustled into the backseat of the armored car with Mr. Benedict.
Throughout all this commotion they had said nothing to defend themselves. In part this was because they’d been given little chance, but it was also because Mr. Bane had sidled up and was observing the group with keen attention. Reynie, his eyes downcast as he mumbled apologies, had steadied himself with the knowledge that soon they could speak privately to Mr. Benedict.
But it was Mr. Benedict who seemed to have the most pressing things to say. As soon as the car doors closed he said, “I realize you have something to tell me. I see it on your faces, and obviously you had reasons for leaving the house. I have things to tell you as well, and the sooner the better. How urgent is your news? Must we discuss it here, or can it wait a few minutes?”
The children glanced at one another. They were bursting to show Mr. Benedict the letter—and to see it themselves, for that matter—but they all had the sense it could wait a few minutes.
“Very well,” said Mr. Benedict. “We can begin after we’ve made a brief stop in the next block. There’s no sense interrupting ourselves at the outset.” And at a signal from him the driver eased the car away from the curb. (It occurred to Reynie that they had left behind their bags and jackets, but that hardly mattered now.) “This is Mr. Hardy, by the way, and in the passenger seat is Mr. Gristle.”
The sentries glanced over their extremely wide shoulders and gave jaunty salutes to the children. Their faces, however, were deeply serious. Hardy was a tall, wiry man, with tall, wiry hair that brushed the ceiling; Gristle was a blockish, balding fellow with wisps of gray hair like scattered clouds. Their shoulders were so broad that they met between the front seats, and between them the children had no view at all of the road ahead.
But as the car headed out of the neighborhood and turned toward downtown, they saw through the side windows that traffic had begun detouring out of the congested main streets. With headlights as its sole source of illumination, the city seemed to exist only at street level. And yet what it appeared to lose in height it was gaining in breadth, as the normally dark back alleys were lit now by a growing stream of traffic.
It was in just such an alley that the limousine pulled over behind a dilapidated taxi parked against a wall. Car horns blared as the sentries jumped out and stopped traffic. Mr. Benedict explained that they were changing cars. Bemused yet anxious to keep moving, the children quickly got out—squinting in the myriad headlights—and packed themselves into the back of the taxi. Then Mr. Benedict and the sentries leaped in, the tall-haired driver gunned the engine, and the taxi shot away up the alley, its rattling muffler echoing off the walls.
“There,” said Mr. Benedict, and as if they had just sat down to tea he folded his hands in his lap and said, “Now that that’s settled, we can have a proper conversation. I’ll begin with why we’ve changed cars, and why we aren’t going to the police station.”
“We aren’t going to the police station?” cried Sticky, already disturbed to have traded an armored car for a mere taxi.
“The police station was the cover story,” said Mr. Benedict. “We’re going to a different secure location, and Milligan will meet us there when he can. The subterfuge was necessary because of Mr. Bane, who—as I believe you already suspect—is a spy for my brother.”
“We knew it!” Kate exclaimed, drumming triumphantly on her bucket (she was holding it in her lap). “We knew something fishy was going on ages ago, didn’t we? But you said… what did he say, Sticky? That it would be…”
“Imprudent to speak of it further,” Sticky said.
“I’m afraid it would have been,” said Mr. Benedict. “If you had known Mr. Bane was a spy, you would have found it difficult to behave normally around him. It is a strain always to be acting, and I preferred to spare you that. Furthermore, I could not chance Mr. Bane’s discovering that I suspected him, and were he to overhear an incautious comment—from Constance, for example, in a fit of temper—we would lose a key component of our defense.”
“But how is letting a spy guard your house a defense?” Kate asked.
“We discovered that Ledroptha had worse plans,” said Mr. Benedict. “He intended to make a desperate, terrible attack that would have resulted in far greater casualties than we’ve yet seen. But this was risky to my brother as well, whereas with a spy in place he could wait for information that might lead to a better opportunity. And so I allowed Mr. Bane to be kept on, having already determined him to be the least dangerous of my brother’s spies. He is not thoroughly wicked, you see, though he has a weak character. As you saw tonight, he was terrified by the Ten Men. I believe he got in over his head, as they say.”
“So you weren’t worried about him trying to kidnap us or anything?” Kate asked.
“Actually,” Mr. Benedict said, “that was one of the few things I didn’t worry about. I had set an abundance of precautions in place, you see—far more than you’re aware of, since by necessity many were kept secret. And at any rate I considered the four of you more than a match for Mr. Bane.”
(Kate beamed at this last remark, so obviously sincere and stated so matter-of-factly, and with which she entirely agreed. And the boys, somewhat less confident, felt a stirring of pride nonetheless.)
“Not that I expected you to be tested,” Mr. Benedict continued. “Milligan’s sentries were on high alert, and if not for this complete power and communication outage—which I am sorry to say I failed to predict—the Ten Men could never have reached the house. As for Mr. Bane, I was confident he would never personally harm any of you—not directly, I mean.”
“It’s true he never did anything worse to us than snap and snarl,” Sticky reflected.
“Until today,” said Mr. Benedict with a pained expression. “As we have just seen, under certain circumstances even indirect action can do terrible harm. Indeed, my task all along has been to manage the circumstances so that everyone was safe—and I do mean everyone—from any potential wicked actions, indirect or otherwise.” Mr. Benedict started to say something else, no doubt an apology or an expression of regret, but then seemed to think better of it, perhaps to avoid the children’s inevitable protests.
“That was an awfully tricky line for you to walk,” Reynie said after a pause.
“A treacherous one,” Mr. Bene
dict said in a somber tone. “But necessary, and it had the potential of creating a lead to my brother. This was why I didn’t have Mr. Bane arrested on the spot after he let Constance run away, and why I tried to mask my suspicion. He may not have offered much of a lead, but he was all I had. He still is, I’m afraid. Arresting him might spoil our chances of retrieving the Whisperer—and Constance—before it’s too late.”
The children were eager to reveal that they possessed a new lead to Mr. Curtain, but before any of them could speak Mr. Benedict’s head lolled forward, his spectacles slipping from his nose.
As Kate tried to shake him awake, it dawned on Reynie that Mr. Benedict’s voice had faltered at the mention of Constance’s name. Of course. He was incredibly worried, upset, probably guilt-ridden—he’d let Mr. Bane guard his house, after all, and Mr. Bane had let Constance go! Yet his manner had been as calm as ever, and Reynie, his mind in a whirl, hadn’t realized that Mr. Benedict’s composure was the product of great effort. In fact it was a house of cards, and just the thought of Constance in danger had sent it tumbling down.
“Try tickling his nose,” Sticky said. “That worked once.”
But before Kate could try it Mr. Benedict started and sat up straight. He turned apologetically to the children, resettled his glasses, and without wasting a moment said, “I’m afraid that may happen again, so let me speak quickly, for if the situation worsens there are things you must know. The timing of my brother’s attack is no accident. He arranged everything so that it would come to pass today. If Mr. Pressius had succeeded in removing Constance from the house, Ledroptha knew I would go after her, and that Milligan would accompany me as a bodyguard. My absence and Milligan’s was key, of course, for my brother knew that if he attacked while I was home, I would sabotage the Whisperer before he could possess it—and that Milligan would ensure I had enough time to do so.”
Mr. Benedict grimaced. “I would never have allowed that to happen, and yet I made a different, foolish mistake by not anticipating what Constance, in her agitated state, might—”
He fell asleep again.
“Good grief!” Kate cried.
“What’s the matter?” Hardy said, glancing in the rearview mirror to see Kate holding Mr. Benedict’s spectacles with one hand and shaking him with the other. “Is he all right?”
“No!” said Kate, exasperated. She caught herself. “Sorry, I mean yes, he’s fine. He’s asleep again, but he’s fine.”
“Well, the traffic isn’t,” Hardy returned darkly. “Even the sidewalks are packed, and I’d hoped to use them.”
It was true. All over Stonetown, stranded subway trains and hopelessly stalled buses and taxis were emptying out, their passengers abandoning them to walk instead. This was a novelty for many people, whose confusion, combined with the apprehension the blackout caused, led to a disorderly crowd that spilled around the cars and flowed along the sidewalks like water streaming around boulders and gushing down gullies.
Mr. Benedict opened his eyes, rubbed his face, and instantly pressed on: “It goes without saying that Constance caught us off guard by running away. It was a lucky break for Ledroptha that Mr. Bane was posted at the back door today, though no doubt this was part of his original plan. If we had left the house to deal with Mr. Pressius—as my brother hoped—then Mr. Bane could make some excuse and abandon his post just as the Salamander arrived, thereby eliminating any chance of a warning.”
“That’s exactly what happened!” Sticky said. “We saw him go around the front to talk to Ms. Plugg, and the very next second we saw the Ten Men!”
“Yes, it was well orchestrated, and I’m afraid it was only the beginning. Do you recall Mr. Gaines saying that the government’s top advisers were being convened to deal with the Whisperer? If Ledroptha has his way, the Whisperer will deal with them. I am certain he plans to obtain highly classified codes and passwords from those advisers, then use those secrets to his advantage. It will be the very sort of thing he’s accomplished tonight in Stonetown, but on a much grander scale.
“I’m telling you this now, children, because the next twenty-four hours will be most chaotic, and we are likely to be separated. If the situation worsens, you and your families must leave Stonetown and go into hiding. Mr. Hardy and Mr. Gristle here will be assigned to help you and protect you.”
The children exclaimed in alarm. They were to go into hiding? Without Mr. Benedict? But what did he think was going to happen? What—?
Mr. Benedict, sadly affected by their dismay, fell asleep again.
“Look, what he was trying to get across to you,” said Hardy sympathetically, when a long bout of pleading and shaking failed to wake Mr. Benedict, “is that things could change fast. Mr. Curtain will want to get rid of anyone who knows the truth—anyone who knows the Whisperer still exists and what it’s used for. That means you and your families, kids, sorry to say. Us, too, of course. Anybody associated with Mr. Benedict, and of course Mr. Benedict himself.”
“Especially him,” said Gristle. “But not before Curtain gets what he wants out of him.”
“What would that be?” asked Reynie, feeling shaken. His voice was barely strong enough to be heard over the blatting muffler.
Hardy shrugged. “Answers about this sleeping problem they both have. Curtain knows Benedict was working on something that could stop it, right? Everything else, Curtain can figure out for himself. But he wants to put the kibosh on this narcology—”
“Narcolepsy,” Sticky corrected.
“—this narcolepsy, right, and he’ll do whatever it takes. And he holds the cards now—he’s got the Whisperer—so Benedict’s got to find a way to catch him off guard. But that’s not going to be easy, is it? We don’t even know where he is. And even with Milligan on his side, and Gristle and me and the other agents he can trust… well, the odds aren’t exactly good.”
By now Kate was shaking Mr. Benedict so vigorously she looked to be attacking him. Like the others, she wanted to believe Mr. Benedict could solve this problem if only he could stay awake for it. But he was not to be wakened. His haggard, drawn face betrayed just how far he had pushed himself. Now his exhaustion was pushing back.
In the front seat Hardy and Gristle were muttering to themselves about the traffic (“Like a herd of turtles,” Gristle kept saying) and how best to proceed. At present they could hardly be said to be proceeding at all. Ten minutes passed, then twenty, and Kate had no more luck waking Mr. Benedict than the sentries did reaching the next intersection. At last the men made a decision.
“Look, we didn’t want to draw attention to ourselves,” said Hardy to the children, “but we’re never getting anywhere if we don’t do something. You three sit tight.” He and Gristle got out of the taxi and began speaking to the drivers of the cars ahead of them, flashing badges and gesticulating. Apparently they had some plan for clearing a lane.
A plan would be good, Reynie thought. So much was happening at once it was hard to keep even the simplest thoughts in mind before others flew in to replace them. Constance, the Ten Men, Amma and Pati, Mr. Curtain, Constance again… And behind them, flashing with still more urgency now, was that mysterious sequence—that code or whatever it was. 133 N292. What was that, anyway? For the first time since it made its appearance, Reynie had a moment to concentrate on it. He closed his eyes and tried to organize his thoughts.
“I give up,” said Kate. “I’ve tried tickling, patting, hair-pulling—you name it. Nothing’s working.”
“Maybe we should go ahead and look at those instructions,” Sticky suggested. “We could try to work them out ourselves.”
“You’re right,” Kate said, opening her bucket. “Reynie, are you ready?”
But Reynie was thinking, Organize my thoughts! Organize—that’s it! “Sticky,” he said, his eyes popping open, “what do you think this sequence is?” He described the code exactly as he saw it in his mind, including the space in the middle.
“Sounds like a call number,” Sticky said instant
ly. “You know, for a library book—a Dewey decimal number.”
“That’s what I thought!” said Reynie. “Listen, I think I know where Constance is!”
“What? How?” Kate asked.
“No time to explain! Sticky, does that call number belong to any book you know? A book in the Stonetown library system? You memorized the entire catalog, right?”
Sticky thought a moment. “Well… yes. It’s the call number for The Myth of ESP by Perry Normal. I’ve read that book. It isn’t very good. Sketchy research, and—”
“But where is it shelved?” Reynie interrupted. “Is it at one of the branch libraries, or…?”
“Oh. No, there’s only one copy in the system. It’s at the main library.”
“Constance is at the main library!” Reynie cried.
Kate closed her bucket, ready to move. “That’s not far from here. I can be there in five minutes.”
“I should come, too,” Reynie said. “If she’s still mixed up, she might give you trouble. Sticky, if Mr. Benedict wakes up you can tell him where we went.”
Sticky frowned. “The Ten Men are prowling around looking for her, right? What if you get cornered somewhere, or Constance runs off again and you have to go after her, or…?” He shook his head. “We have to stick together. You might need me.”
“He’s right, Reynie,” said Kate. “It should be all three of us.”
“And the sentries, too, yes?” asked Sticky, trying to blink sweat from his eyes. (His forehead had suddenly begun to perspire.)
“I wish, but then who would protect Mr. Benedict?” Reynie said. “He’d be a sitting duck sleeping here all alone. Hardy and Gristle wouldn’t leave him even if we wanted them to. Anyway, they probably wouldn’t believe me—I can’t exactly prove what I know.”
“So we go alone,” said Kate, “and we go now. The Ten Men could be closing in on her this very minute.”
Reynie reached for the door handle, then stopped and slapped his forehead. “I’m not thinking straight! We should leave a note in case he wakes up before we get back, or…”