“I only asked him about going to see the Bolden Brothers,” Max said later. Before Pippa could protest, she added, “I thought he had the right to speak for himself. Anyway, he was only there on Dumfrey’s orders, to see whether they might buy some of our old equipment. He’s not as bad as you think,” Max finished as pink rushed to her cheeks.
Pippa said nothing. She actually agreed with Max. She thought Howie was likely much, much worse.
A week to the day after Lash had abruptly quit, Pippa was helping Miss Fitch straighten the attic. Since Lash’s departure, the attic had become even more chaotic than usual: piles of paper intermingled with dirty socks, and half the surfaces were obscured by a clutter of personal belongings, cups, combs, half-empty perfume bottles, and long strings of costume jewelry.
“Disgusting,” Miss Fitch said, bending over to retrieve what looked like a dirty handkerchief from underneath Smalls’s dresser. Miss Fitch’s hairstyle was, as usual, a measure of her great unhappiness. Over the past week, as she had grown more and more miserable, her hair had become scraped and parted so severely that Pippa was beginning to think her head might soon split in half. “Animals, all of you. Hasn’t anybody heard of dusting? Pippa, run upstairs to the loft. We should have a second mop tucked away somewhere. The floor feels terribly sticky.”
Before Pippa could move, Max sprang to her feet with a little cry. “I’ll get it,” she volunteered quickly, and dashed for the stairs.
“Well.” Miss Fitch gave a tight smile—her first in about a week. “I’d say her attitude is improving, wouldn’t you?”
“Mmmm.” Pippa didn’t want to say what she really thought: Max was hiding something.
“Turn the radio up.” That was Thomas, who’d been sitting cross-legged on the carpet, trying to figure out new rules for DeathTrap, ever since two of the most critical pieces—the crocodile jaw and the Cyclops eye—had been sold off to keep the museum from having to close its doors. But suddenly his head appeared on the far side of the maze-like formation of bookshelves that divided the room, like a gopher popping up from a hole. “Quick, Pippa. They’re talking about Rattigan.”
Pippa lunged for the radio and cranked up the volume, just in time to hear the news reporter say:
“. . . Multiple reports have now confirmed that the man captured in Chicago and detained for the past seven days at a federal detention center is, in fact, not Nicholas Rattigan, but only a very convincing look-alike. . . .”
Pippa felt as if the roof of her mouth were crumbling into dust. Beside her, Miss Fitch gasped and dropped her broom with a clatter.
“Federal investigators confirmed that over the course of the past week, the fraudulent Rattigan was revealed in certain telling details, personal habits, and physical characteristics that over time convinced them that the man was a fake.”
“God help us.” Miss Fitch was gripping the broom so tightly her knuckles each showed a single white moon. “That monster.”
“At last, after an intense and prolonged interview, the man, whose real name is Richard C. Dobbinshire, confessed that he was paid over the course of several months to study and assume the identity of Professor Rattigan, whom he believed had been wrongly prosecuted in the courts. . . .”
“It can’t be true,” Thomas said, shaking his head.
“If Rattigan isn’t in Chicago,” Pippa said slowly, as the dreaded realization knit together in her chest, cold as a creeping mist, “then he could be anywhere.”
Thomas’s eyes clicked to hers. She knew, in that moment, he was thinking of the note Max had found on the kitchen door: Soon, my children.
The floor began to seesaw under her feet. The radio passed on to other news: sports scores, celebrity gossip. How strange, Pippa thought, that the world could keep spinning even after a personal explosion.
“Come on,” Thomas said, moving for the door. “Chubby always has the latest news. Let’s see what he has to say.”‘
Pippa unfroze. She hurried after Thomas, feeling an urgency she couldn’t name.
They pushed past Max, just descended from the loft, so forcefully that she spun halfway around on the landing.
“Hey!” she shouted. “Hey, where are you going?”
They didn’t stop to reply. They pounded down the central stairs and burst into the street, pushing through the small group of reporters that had been clustered for several days in front of the Sadowski brothers’ home, hoping to catch a glimpse of the notorious recluse or, even better, be allowed upstairs to his fabled home. It was a dull day, sunless; the sky was the color of tarnished silver, and the wind coming off the river was tinged with an unexpected chill.
Still, the streets were crowded. The Viceroy Theater had already flung open its doors, and tinny music piped onto the street, where women in knee-length skirts and red lipstick stood smoking next to clusters of sailors. The day porter at the St. Edna Hotel was just finishing his shift, dozing on a stool with a paperback on his lap. Sal was shutting down the corner luncheonette candy store, rolling down the grates over the large windows displaying colorful jars of jawbreakers, boxes of bubble gum, and barrels of sugarcoated almonds, and he gave a brief wave as Thomas and Pippa dashed past.
They zigzagged through the neighborhood, listening for the trademark foghorn of Chubby’s voice. But on the corner of Thirty-Seventh Street they had an unexpected surprise: not Chubby, but Bits, the gap-toothed messenger who had delivered Richstone’s letter to Thomas on Chubby’s instructions. He had a bag of papers strapped to his sizable middle, and every so often he croaked out a “Papers! Papers! Get your papers!” but with none of Chubby’s trademark enthusiasm.
“What’s happened?” Thomas demanded as he and Pippa came to an abrupt halt. “Where’s Chubby?”
Bits turned his piggy eyes on Thomas. “Don’t know,” he said shortly. “Ain’t seen him.” He started to turn away.
Pippa grabbed his arm. Perhaps remembering how she had previously toppled him, he froze, his eyes suddenly fearful.
A little electric thrill traveled up Pippa’s arm. She saw, with a sudden vivid clarity, as if someone had taken a photograph in her mind, a medallion nestled in Bits’s pocket: the same medallion Chubby had proudly boasted that Freckles had once given him.
Unconsciously, she tightened her grip on Bits’s arm, and he yelped.
“Don’t lie to us,” she hissed. “What’d you do to him?”
“I—I didn’t do nothing,” he stuttered, suddenly losing much of his swagger. “I swear.”
Before he could protest, she plunged a hand into his pocket and withdrew the medallion. “So how do you explain this?” she spat out. “And if you try to feed us another line,” she added when he opened his mouth, “we’ll have a friend cut out your tongue.”
“Or knock you back to next Tuesday,” Thomas said, doing his best to look menacing, although the impression was rather spoiled by a smudge of chocolate around his mouth, left over from lunchtime.
Fortunately, it had the intended effect. Bits lost all pretense of toughness.
“Look, I don’t know where Chubby’s been,” he whined. “I swear. One day he was here, strutting up and down, talking about some top secret mission and driving everybody crazy. The next he wasn’t. Poof. He dumped all his stuff, just left it in his squat on Grand Street. Me and the other guys, we figured he wouldn’t miss it.” He blushed a deep red when Pippa made a squeak of protest. “Well, why would he leave his stuff if he was planning on coming back?”
“Idiot,” Pippa said. “He would have taken his stuff if he wasn’t planning on coming back.”
Bits scratched his forehead with a stubby finger. The logic of this statement obviously confused him. “So, what? So, like someone kidnapped him?” Bits shook his head. “What would anyone want with Chubby?”
Pippa had to admit, she had no ready answer to that question. Still, it was suspicious.
Even after they said good-bye to Bits—who offered them a free paper, obviously eager for Pippa and Thomas
to leave him alone—Thomas was distracted and moody, kicking at cans in the street and walking, head down, in gloomy silence.
“I’m sure Chubby is all right,” Pippa said with forced cheerfulness. “He’s done this before, remember, and he’s always turned up just fine.”
Thomas shook his head.
“Maybe he decided to go underground for a few days,” she said, as much to make herself feel better as to cheer Thomas. “Or maybe he’s doing a job for someone out of town. Or maybe—maybe Andrea von Stikk finally tracked him down and chucked him into her school.”
At last, Thomas cracked a smile. “Poor Chubby,” he said, shaking his head. “For his sake, I almost hope he’s been kidnapped.”
At the museum, they were greeted by an unexpected sight: Betty, Quinn, Smalls, Danny, Goldini, and Howie were sitting on the stoop outside the front doors, holding hands. A small crowd had gathered to stare, and the newspaper reporters previously grouped outside Sadowski’s building had gravitated toward them, murmuring excitedly and snapping pictures.
Thomas felt as if he’d been jolted out of his own body, as if he were being squeezed and compressed into the lens of a camera. Suddenly, he pictured how it must look to the crowd of outsiders: Betty, with her light brown beard looped over one shoulder; Quinn, snow-pale, with her eyes protected by dark sunglasses, a large sun hat perched on her head; Smalls, towering over all of them, casting an elongated shadow over the stoop; Danny, a mere tenth his size, balanced like a doll on Smalls’s left knee; and Goldini, clutching his magician’s hat with one hand, sweating freely. And Howie, dark-haired and handsome, a hint of a smile playing on his lips.
Thomas and Pippa pushed through the throng, ignoring the bursts of laughter, the excited mutterings, and the word freaks, freaks, freaks following them like a snake, hissing through the grass.
“What are you doing?” Thomas cried.
Betty’s hairy cheeks turned pink. “It’s a protest,” she said.
“To sin by silence when we should protest makes cowards out of men,” added Smalls, in a resonant voice.
“Hush now,” Pippa said sharply, casting a nervous glance over her shoulder. The crowd had grown even larger; two businessmen were pointing with sausage-like fingers, laughing openly, while their wives tittered behind gloved hands.
“What in the world are you protesting?” Thomas directed the words to Howie, who was as infuriatingly calm as ever. But it was Danny who answered.
“Good work deserves a good wage,” he said loudly so as to be heard. Pippa tried to hush him again but he merely glared at her. “I don’t care if they do hear me. Let ’em write it up in the papers!”
“I don’t believe this,” Thomas groaned.
“We haven’t been paid in three weeks,” Goldini said, turning his hat in his hands.
“So what?” Pippa fired back. “Dumfrey hasn’t been paid in three years. You know if he had it to give”— she lowered her voice as the reporters leaned closer—“he would give it.”
“That doesn’t make it right,” Goldini mumbled, but he ducked his head. Thomas noticed that Betty shifted uncomfortably, and even Danny looked embarrassed. There was still a chance, perhaps, to fix this—to solve it before the situation got out of control.
“This was your idea, wasn’t it?” he said to Howie. He felt as if he had a rubber band around his throat. He couldn’t breathe. He was sick with anger. Pippa had been right about Howie—he was trying to destroy the museum.
“It was everyone’s idea,” Howie said calmly. To Thomas’s disgust, Howie spoke clearly, as if he were onstage, and angled his head slightly, flashing a quick smile for the sudden burst of cameras. Thomas felt like clocking him in the face, but knew it would only bring more unwanted attention.
Apparently Pippa had the same idea. Before he could stop her, she’d grabbed the newspaper Thomas had tucked in his back pocket, and, using it as a baton, waded into the small assemblage of performers on the stairs, swatting and swiping. The laughter of the crowd swelled to a roar, but she didn’t seem to notice.
“You should be ashamed of yourself,” she said. “You, too.” In quick succession, she went down the line of performers, raining blows on their heads and shoulders, while they cowered and protested.
“You gave me a paper cut!” Quinn wailed.
“I’ll do more than that unless you get inside this instant,” Pippa said, leveling the paper at her as though it were a sword.
“No compromise without compensation!” Goldini said in a trembling voice. Thomas had no doubt he’d been fed that line by Howie as well. But the magician squeaked with fear when Pippa knocked the top hat from his hands.
“You heard her. Get inside, all of you, before I stick you through the stomachs like a bunch of moths to a corkboard.”
Max had just pushed out of the front doors, glowering menacingly. When no one moved, she drew her hand back, as though reaching for a knife in her pocket. There was a sudden frenzied burst of movement. Quinn sprang to her feet and scurried inside, staying as far from Max as possible. Goldini followed her, along with Betty, who ducked her head and murmured, “We didn’t mean anything by it.”
Only Smalls, Danny, and Howie were left on the stoop. Danny shifted uneasily. Max took a step toward him, and he climbed to his feet, toddling up the stairs and pushing roughly past her.
“We got our rights,” he said gruffly, refusing to make eye contact—partly because it would have necessitated that he either crane his neck back, or stand on several stacked chairs.
“I got rights, too,” she said. “The right to turn you into mini sausage.”
Smalls stood up, and the crowd let out a gasp, and then a titter. Thomas had nearly forgotten they were being observed. Drawing himself up to his full seven foot eight, Smalls took a deep breath, and Thomas braced for another lofty quote. But Max held up a hand, and he shut his mouth so quickly, Thomas heard his jaw click.
“Save it, if you value your tongue,” she snarled. With her black hair wild and grown halfway to her waist, she really did look live a savage. Thomas could see, in that moment, why Sam liked her so much.
Smalls obeyed—in silence, thankfully.
Howie was the only performer left on the stairs. There was a moment of electric silence. Thomas wondered what Max would do—whether she would still insist that Howie wasn’t so bad, whether she would defend or forgive him.
Next to him, Pippa was very still.
Max’s eyes were the hard gray of cold slate. “You, too,” she said, and Thomas felt a quick bubble-burst of happiness in his chest. Max, their Max, was back.
Howie stood up leisurely, stretching his arms above his head, yawning, as though he had merely tired of the protest and was not being compelled to give up on it. “Come on, Max,” he said, giving her a lazy smile. “Don’t be mad. You know as well as I do that Dumfrey’s packing up shop.”
Max didn’t blink. “Quickly now,” she said, drawing her lips back a little, and displaying teeth that were small and pointed, like a coyote’s. “Before I slit that swiveling neck of yours straight down the middle.”
Howie’s face changed. Gone was the smile, the look of casual unconcern. In its place, in an instant, was an expression of rage. It twisted his lips, distorted his cheeks, made him look feral and ugly.
Howie leaned in. Thomas started forward, afraid he would strike her. But he only whispered something too low for Thomas to hear. He saw Max’s face collapse, like a soufflé taken too soon from the oven. But before she could respond, Howie had hurtled through the doors of the museum.
Just as quickly, Max’s face hardened again. “That goes for all of you nimrods, too!” she cried to the crowd of onlookers and reporters. “You heard what I said! Get out of here!”
The laughter rapidly died out. Both businessmen shepherded their wives away in a hurry, and the remaining crowd broke up just as fast. The reporters, sensing that the moment was over, drifted back toward the Sadowski house.
“That was amazing!” T
homas hurried up the stairs to greet Max, who was still standing, face flaming, practically trembling with anger.
“Yeah,” Pippa said. For once, she was smiling at Max and had nothing unpleasant to say. “I wish Sam had seen you.”
“I did.”
They turned. Sam was crossing the street, carrying a rolled-up newspaper, his face flushed with pleasure. It was the first time in many weeks that Thomas had seen him looking something other than unhappy.
“Nice work, Max,” he said when he reached their group, sweeping his long curtain of hair away from his eyes.
Max shrugged and looked away. “Idiots,” she muttered. But her lips twitched into a smile.
Then Sam’s face clouded. “Bad news,” he said. “Rattigan’s still on the loose.” He indicated the newspaper tucked under his arm. “It’s all over the news.”
“What?” Max screeched.
“I know, we heard,” Thomas said.
“And no one thought to mention it to me?” Max’s bad temper had obviously returned.
“We didn’t exactly have time,” Thomas said. “We just found out ourselves.”
“Hmmph.” Max shoved past them and jogged down the steps to the street.
“Where are you going?” Sam said.
“And what are you wearing?” Pippa added.
Thomas had been so distracted, he hadn’t previously noticed that Max was dressed in what appeared to be, at first glance, a shapeless black-dyed flour sack, belted at the waist with a tassel that looked suspiciously like something that might be affixed to a curtain.