Mister Max: The Book of Secrets: Mister Max 2

  But even if they did suspect something, what would they do? And when would they do it? So few people had a clue about what Max was up to … He was as snared in his own secrets as trapped in the bathroom of the Starling Theater.

  He could only hope that Grammie would be worried enough to start looking for him, and that sooner or later she would think of looking in the theater, and that her later would be sooner than nine in the morning. This, he knew, was unlikely. But if she did come to the theater, and if she looked down the neglected alley by the private entrance and saw his bicycle, she would recognize it.

  Unless, he thought grimly, Kip had noticed the bicycle and stolen it.

  Max could feel it, the speeding up of his heartbeat and the dryness in his mouth, the panic rising again as he realized that there was no escape from this trap and that Kip and his cohorts would be back in the morning. His only realistic hope at this point was that they would all arrive together. He didn’t want to have to face Kip alone. He didn’t think the boy was fool enough to really think he’d killed his prisoner, but he might want to come back early and alone to do something about that.

  At those unnerving thoughts, Max’s panic rose like a river slowly, slowly rising to overflow its banks and sweep everything away in a flood.

  He had to stop thinking like that, he knew, but he didn’t think he could.

  Max took three deep, calming breaths, and let each out slowly, as he had learned to do before stepping onto the stage. He stood up, and used the toilet again. He washed his hands, then leaned over to take a long drink of cool water from the faucet, and to splash his face, too.

  He was hungry and the water gave his stomach something to do.

  Then he sat down again, to wait, leaning against the wall with his legs stretched out. Time passed, but he couldn’t measure how much, or how slowly. Eventually, the little window gleamed gold. To give himself something to do, and to keep panic at bay, and to have the company of his own voice, he recited lines from plays, then the titles of all the plays in the Starling Theatrical Company’s repertoire with a complete list of the cast of each. Over and over, the way Grammie had taught him to fix them in his memory, he conjugated Spanish verbs, first amar and tener (to love, to have), the most regular, then the irregular verb ser (to be), each verb in each of the four most common tenses: present, future, imperfect, and past. He repeated the few nursery rhymes he still remembered, and that made him wonder about Blister, and what it might mean that he recognized “Hey Diddle Diddle.” It meant a lot to the boy, that had been obvious. And what kind of life would you have to be leading for something so insignificant to mean so much?

  After that, Max recited as much as he could remember of poetry he’d memorized for school. He remembered much of “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” and all of “The Highwayman,” which was a lot more fun to perform, although, he realized, listening to his own voice saying the elegy a couple of times in order to retrieve lost lines, “the paths of glory lead but to the grave” had a real ring to it.

  Finally, because he had run out of other things to tell himself, he recited his father’s letter. “Dear Miss Nives,” he said, speaking into the shadowy air of the small room, “I was pleased to receive your letter, trapped here in the palace as I am by our mountain winter.” He went on, reading it aloud from memory, comforted by the sound of his voice and by his father’s voice, too. He recited the letter over and over, until the words no longer carried any meaning but were just familiar sounds.

  It was on the tenth recitation—or maybe the seventeenth; he hadn’t kept count—that he heard it. “When fate (as people put it) rapped on my cabin door—or you might say it rapped on my numb-skull…,” he was speaking, when he heard it. He sat up. He gathered his knees to his chest, grinning. “Certainly, the crown came gift-wrapped,” he said slowly, listening. How many times, he asked himself, did that word appear in his father’s letter, in one way or another? He counted: six times. This was not likely to be a coincidence, one word appearing six times in a very short letter, and only twice not in disguise.

  Max was so excited that he had to stand up and walk, back and forth, three paces, turn, three paces, turn, listening to the whole letter one more time, making sure he’d caught everything.

  It was a coded message. He had sent off a coded message and his father had sent one back. He couldn’t wait to tell his grandmother.

  He stopped pacing. In order to tell his grandmother the news, he would have to get out of this situation. In order to get out of this situation, he was going to have to get out of this small room. In order to do that, he was going to have to free his hands. The necessary steps lined up, like a geometric proof going backward.

  But right then, Max was entirely distracted by the discovery he’d made in his father’s letter. Maybe the word entertaining was also a clue, he thought, because not long after that his father used the word theater. Maybe those two words were a clue William Starling put in to direct his son’s attention to the fact that the letter had a hidden message.

  Was there more? Max wondered. It would be like his father’s extravagance to stuff a letter full of secrets. He thought about what his father had written, wondering about every bit of information, from the weather and geography reports to the answer to the question about being King, and the Queen’s pleasure at being thought beautiful.

  So, Max realized, there was a message from his mother, too, in this letter. How could he feel so cheerful, given the fix he was in? But he did.

  He wasn’t surprised that his father could report his mother’s popularity, but it was unexpected to hear that his charming, exuberant father wasn’t equally beloved. In fact, that was a very odd thing to say about your King, wasn’t it? “His Excellency listens politely”?

  Max slapped his bound hands against his forehead. How could they have missed that? And missed also “Her Excellency likes people,” which was, if you thought about it, either a silly or an ungrammatical thing to say about a queen. “Her Excellency likes her people,” that would make sense. Nobody would even think to notice if a queen liked people in general. They’d say she was a kind and loving person. “His Excellency listens politely,” “Her Excellency likes people”: HELP, HELP. Trapped, trapped, trapped, trapped, trapped, trapped. Max hit at his forehead again. He had to get out. He had to tell Grammie. They needed to make a plan.

  The first step was to free his hands. Max looked down at his bound wrists and only then did he notice how little light was coming into the room from the high window, and see how the window was now silvered. The long summer day was definitely ending. That meant it was already quite late.

  Grammie would be worried. Angry, too, maybe, but it was the worry he had hopes of. Worry might lead her to do something. If she called in Officer Torson, for example, or sent Ari out to look for her wandering grandson. Max concentrated on the rope that bound his wrists across one another, the right wrist tight on top of the left. They had wound it around several times in a figure eight formation. Max studied his wrists and wondered how Kip had gotten ahold of the rope.

  Cut it from somebody’s clothesline, he guessed. Probably his own mother’s, and let her laundry fall into the dirt, too.

  He couldn’t wriggle his hands free, couldn’t slip one free from under the coils. Two or three attempts at that convinced him. He then started pulling his wrists apart, trying to twist them at the same time, to stretch the cotton rope. He thought that might be having an effect and it didn’t hurt so much he couldn’t bear to do it. It would take a long time—he couldn’t guess how long—to stretch the strands of rope enough so that he could slip a hand free, but he had time. He had all night.

  However, freeing his hands was only the first step and he had no idea how to escape from his prison … unless he could rip the flush chain down from the water chest above the toilet and use it like that medieval morning star weapon, to break the glass and then, somehow—how?—reach up to the window.

  Panic rose in Max’s chest, a
gain, and dried his mouth. Still twisting his wrists, he turned on the water and bent over to drink, so awkwardly that water splashed all around, even down onto his shirt, where it soaked in. The cool, heavy wetness on his shirtfront and the clothesline wrapped around his wrists made Max think of shirts hanging out to dry, and sheets, and trousers, their weight pulling the line down—he could see it, he had seen it a hundred times—the way a clothesline was stretched by water and weight.

  He turned the water on harder and stuck his wrists under it, soaking the rope with water as he twisted his hands, pulling his wrists away from one another to stretch and weaken each strand, so as to pull apart the fabric strands that had been wound one around the other to form a rope.

  And after all, it didn’t take so very long for the strands to have loosened enough. By then the room was quite dark. The only light came from the silvery rectangle gleaming high up in the wall, but Max didn’t care. He turned off the water. He slipped his hands free and rubbed at his wrists, wondering how to tackle the next difficulty—

  Did he hear something? Out in the corridor?

  Max froze. Listening.

  Footsteps? It sounded like someone moving cautiously.

  Five doors lined the corridor, and this little bathroom’s was the fifth. The first opened onto a room full of props and costumes, the second onto a large dressing room, lined with dressing tables and mirrors, for the actors, the third onto a large dressing room for the actresses, and the fourth onto a smaller room with its own clothes rack, and two soft chairs as well as the dressing table, for the principals. Max heard a door opening, and, after a few seconds, closing. That was the sound that had first attracted him. He heard another door open. Almost opposite the bathroom door, a short staircase led up to the backstage area. If he could get to that staircase …

  Who was out in the corridor? Searching.

  Should he shout for help? Or would that be the thing that would get him into serious trouble?

  Max positioned himself beside the sink so that when the door was pulled open he would not be immediately visible. His hands were free but he draped the rope around his wrists, as if they were still bound. If it was Kip out there, he meant Max harm, and Max intended to fight back—the first step, with surprise on his side, being to get possession of the knife.

  And—he decided, picturing it—dropping the thing into the toilet bowl.

  He heard a muffled grunt—of surprise?—beyond the door, and tensed. There was the grating sound of the key in the lock. The handle gave a squeak. The door was cracked open and then pulled back, slowly, quietly, and Max saw someone in the shadows. He tensed every muscle.

  “Eyes?” a voice whispered.

  Max swallowed. “Tomi?” His own voice was a croak. Was it Tomi? Could it be Tomi? How could Tomi be here?

  “Ha!” Tomi cried as he switched on a flashlight and shone it at Max. Then he turned it off again, to save the charge on its zinc-carbon battery. “I knew it was you I was seeing. That was you, that Bartolomeo, wasn’t it?”

  “What are you doing here?”

  “More to the point, what are you doing here?” the other boy answered. The flashlight glowed again, illuminating Max briefly, before the room went dark again. “Are you tied up?” Tomi asked. “What’s going on, Eyes?”

  “Max, my name is Max,” Max answered.

  “I know, but what’s happening?”

  “Let’s get out of here, then I’ll tell you,” Max said, and added, “I need to let my grandmother know I’m safe and I’m pretty hungry, too.” He was grinning now; he could feel that smile all over his face. He grabbed Tomi’s shirtsleeve and pushed the boy back into the dark corridor, giddy with relief. Not so giddy, however, that he couldn’t think. “Wait,” he said, and turned back to push the door closed, grope to find the handle and the key below it. He locked the door.

  “What are you—?” Tomi started to ask.

  “Come this way,” Max said. “I’ve got a bicycle. I hope—”

  “How do you think I knew you were here?” Tomi asked, from behind him. “Did you know the chain at the entrance has been cut? That padlock’s useless. Can you slow down a little, Eyes? You might know where you are but I don’t.”

  Max slowed to a fast walk. He didn’t really believe any of the gang would be returning at this hour—whatever precise hour it was. Tomi stumbled a little behind him, giving himself intermittent flashes of light to see by, but Max hurried forward until he stopped at the door. Before he pulled the bolt to open it, he asked, “Will you call me Max?”

  “What?”

  “Max. It’s my name.” He slid the bolt and opened the door.

  “I know, I didn’t think you—” They stepped out into the night air. “Where are we going?” Tomi asked.

  “Are you coming?” The bicycle rested silently against the wall of the theater.

  “Are you kidding? Do you actually think I’m going to let you out of my sight before I find out what’s been going on? You were supposed to sail off somewhere. In April,” Tomi reminded him.

  “Aren’t you expected at home by now?” Max asked. He had his bicycle by the handlebars and there was just light enough to see Tomi’s face. The other boy looked relaxed, and amused, about the opposite of how Max thought he himself probably looked right then.

  Tomi shook his head. “Usually, these days, I’m at the firehouse all night, and nobody at the firehouse pays much attention to me.”

  “Get on, then. I have to—”

  “Aren’t you going to get rid of that rope?”

  “It’s a souvenir,” Max said, and laughed, and heard the edge of hysteria in his laughter. “Get on. I’ll explain when we get there.”

  “I hope it’s a good story,” Tomi said, and he mounted onto the bicycle seat, taking a firm grip on Max’s shoulders.

  The Mayor’s Job

  • ACT II •

  SCENE 4 ~ EXPLANATIONS

  They raced through the winding, empty streets. Gilded by the occasional streetlamps that stood at intersections, the rounded surfaces of the cobblestones gave off a dim glow. No lamps shone in the buildings they rushed past. Max thought it must be deep in the night, possibly even approaching dawn, although there was as yet no lightening of the eastern sky. He didn’t like to think of how worried and angry Grammie must be. “What time is it?” he asked.

  “Somewhere between dark and midnight,” Tomi said from over Max’s shoulder.

  “How can you be so sure?” Max demanded.

  “I know things,” Tomi answered, with laughter in his voice. “What’s your hurry, Eyes? You’ve got away now, and I’m not any too eager to smash my face on stones, but you’re acting like we’re being chased.”

  Max wasn’t about to admit to this boy that he was worried about the upcoming scene with his grandmother. A father might have been different, even a mother, but a grandmother for heaven’s sake … All he said was, “I asked you, call me Max. Which is my name.”

  Tomi just laughed. “I know. I like winding you up, that’s all. What’s with you, anyway? I think you have to tell me, now that I’ve saved your life.”

  Max disagreed. “Probably not my life.”

  Tomi laughed again.

  Max dropped his bicycle onto the ground beside his own back door, the house dark and silent behind it, his eyes on the lights that shone in Grammie’s kitchen windows. He was almost running when he got to the steps, Tomi at his heels. He burst into the room. “I’m sorry—”

  Grammie rose from the table, where she and Ari sat in front of mugs and a teapot. Her face was pale and expressionless.

  Max braced for trouble. “It really wasn’t—”

  But by then she had thrown her arms around him and was holding him close, the top of her head just below his nose. “You’re here,” she mumbled into his shoulder. “You’re safe. You can’t know, I was that worried …” She stepped back and looked up at him. Behind the glasses, her eyes swam with tears. “I am so happy to see you.”

  ?
??I thought you’d be angry.”

  “You gave me your word,” Grammie told him. “I knew something must have gone wrong or you’d have been here.”

  Max could only smile. Now he could feel simply glad, and relieved, and grateful to Tomi. Now he could begin to wonder what to do next. Everything was all right, now. He stepped farther into the warm, bright room and said, “This is Tomi Brandt, he’s in my class at school. Tomi? My grandmother—”

  “But you’re the librarian,” Tomi said, sounding a little puzzled. “You’re Mrs. Nives.”

  “And you’re out in the middle of the night,” Grammie answered in her teacher voice. “What kind of trouble have you gotten Max into?”

  “I didn’t—”

  Max smiled even more broadly as he interrupted Tomi’s protests. “And this is Ari. He’s my math tutor. Among other things.”

  The two shook hands.

  “Well, then,” Grammie said. “Are you two hungry? Thirsty?”

  “Yes!” said Max, so vehemently that they all laughed.

  By the time they had finished the loaf of brown bread and the chunk of sharp white cheese, and the frittata Grammie set down on the table, large enough to feed all of them (“I wasn’t hungry before,” she admitted, adding, “Even Ari didn’t eat much”), and another pot of tea, Max had finished telling them his tale, and it was Tomi’s turn to explain that he’d sighted the bicycle and noted how it was hidden in the alleyway, so he’d come back, as the afternoon and evening wore on, to check on it. “I was already suspicious,” he explained to Grammie and Ari. “I recognized that bicycle—and that gardener, who said he’d found it. I barely saw his eyes but they were that burned-meat-on-a-spit color and … I was suspicious.”

  “You’re the only one,” Grammie remarked, studying Tomi. “You must be a noticing person. I haven’t seen much of you in my library.”

  Tomi avoided that subject and went on to say that when the bicycle was still there beside the empty theater building and it was so late in the evening, he thought something might have happened. “Something not good, to Max, which is who I thought it was, or even this Bartolomeo character, if he was real, which I doubted. It’s just that—there was something not right about it all. And then I checked the entrances and found the chain was cut—”