Mister Max: The Book of Secrets: Mister Max 2

  Max stood up to his full height, and took the offered hand. “You must be Mr. Bendiff.”

  Neither of them said, Pleased to meet you.

  “You look young,” Pia’s father said, and his voice added that this was not a good thing.

  “I am,” Max agreed. He was Lorenzo Apiedi, youthful patriot and hero, so sure of the rightness of his cause that no man could abash him, not the great, not the powerful, and not the merely rich and successful, either. He might be doomed, but he was not going to bow down before his fate. He was untroubled by the man’s size and authority. “Will you sit?” he asked.

  And Pia’s father laughed. “When I’ve gotten myself a cup, and maybe—was that a chocolate cake on that plate? I haven’t yet tasted Gabrielle’s chocolate cake and there’s always someone with a taste for chocolate, after a good dinner. You two wait here,” he told them. He dropped his wet hat onto the floor beside an empty chair and moved off.

  They watched him go to the back of the line and loom there, over the children and their mothers. “He’s like a bear,” Max said.

  “But smart,” Pia said, keeping an eye on her father.

  “Who says bears aren’t smart?” Max asked, also watching the man. That was the effect Mr. Bendiff had: You waited for him to decide what was going to happen next.

  Abruptly, Mr. Bendiff stepped out of line and returned to their table. “You get me what I want, will you, Pia? And I’ll have a little conversation with your Mister Max.”

  Pia grinned at Max as she rose obediently.

  “I can talk with Gabrielle later, or another time when it isn’t so busy in here,” Mr. Bendiff said, as if he was answering a question Max had just asked. He sat down in Pia’s chair and went on to report, again as if Max had asked a question, “The restaurant’s coming along pretty well. That was a good site you located—outside of that termites’ nest of an old city is good, and there’s been no vandalism either out there or not much. I’d like to see them try something with me. I’d show them, whoever they are.”

  Max didn’t doubt it.

  “And that’s a good thing for Pia, tutoring that young woman.” He nodded. “I didn’t really mean you should pay her,” he announced, and then he sat back in his chair, unfastening the clips on his raincoat, waiting to see Max’s reaction to him.

  Young Lorenzo Apiedi concerned himself only with justice for his people, so he did not speak, although his face was a portrait of readiness. He didn’t know if he would end up at the end of a hangman’s rope or in the seat of an elected delegate, but he wasn’t afraid of either outcome. And he wasn’t afraid of this man.

  “It’s not as if she needs money,” Mr. Bendiff said after a while. “What she needs is something to do. But”—and now he leaned forward, his big, square-jawed face serious, earnest—“I don’t want you putting my little girl in danger.”

  Little girl? Pia? “I wouldn’t do that,” Max said.

  “I heard about the break-in at your house,” Mr. Bendiff warned him. “She told me. We have an understanding, Pia and I. I don’t tell her not to do things, and she tells me everything she does.”

  Had she told him about discovering who Simon was and where he lived? Max wondered, and he wondered if Mr. Bendiff would be interested in such things and then he wondered how he might find out which house on Tassiter Lane belonged to the Melakrinos family. He could take his bicycle and wait at the head of the road at about the time the boy should arrive home from school—But how did Simon get home? What did he look like, other than six or seven years old?

  “Listen up, you! I don’t much care for not being listened to.” But the growly voice sounded as much curious as cross.

  “Sorry,” Max said, and he was, sort of. He knew his mind had drifted. “I was thinking.”

  Mr. Bendiff studied Max again. There was nothing special, nothing out of the ordinary, about this fellow. But was he trustworthy? He’d found a good location for the restaurant, that was true, so he wasn’t a fool. He’d gotten Pia interested in something besides picking fights at school, and also had her tutoring somebody, and in the kitchen of a Baroness for a wonder. His girl a guest in a Baroness’s castle? Who’d have predicted that? So this Mister Max must be sharp enough to see the good in her. He had an honest expression, honest and also alert—but there were the eyes of him. Mr. Bendiff didn’t know what to make of those eyes, the dark, variegated brown and black and gray color like the fur of some of the half-starved wolves that came down from the mountains in winter, and circled the isolated farmhouses. He said, “I know my girl, she’s like me—and maybe that’s hard luck on her—but she’s not very good at being a child. It’ll be better for her when she grows up. The bad news is, that’s years away and …”

  Max understood the man’s concern. Now he leaned forward, the Caliph’s doctor, assuring his master that the birth of his child was proceeding normally, emitting truthfulness and trustworthiness the way the sun emits warm rays of light, to tell Pia’s father, “I’ll do my best to keep her out of trouble.”

  “That’s good enough for me,” Mr. Bendiff decided. He sat back in the chair and told this strange fellow, “Pia will do what she wants, I know,” with a fierce, not exactly friendly smile.

  Max could have laughed out loud at how alike they were, this father and his daughter.

  Simon’s Job

  • ACT I •

  Max spent the next morning finishing his map of South America for Grammie, who was now focusing their tutoring work on that continent. She told him to include not only major cities but also geographical details such as rivers, lakes, mountains, and savannas. South America, he noted, was very large and Andesia not much more than a short, wormy squiggle alongside a long mountain range. After that, he studied the Pythagorean theorem for Ari. Then he dressed himself in overalls and a wide straw hat, tied a red bandanna around his neck, and set off on foot for the Starling Theater.

  He wanted to assure himself that the empty theater had not been attacked by either fire or vandals. What he would do if it had been, Max had no idea, but certainly he ought to know. Almost every other day he dressed like Greek Jonny, whom Arabella had rejected particularly gently and which happened also to be his first and favorite disguise, and made his way through the twisting streets and alleys of the old city to see that the Starling Theater was still standing, undamaged. The theater had originally been a small warehouse for spices, a wooden building that faced out onto a little paved square with a fountain at its center in what had become a quiet, residential section of the old city. It was, William Starling declared, the perfect site for a theater. The shops and cafés clustered around larger squares were an easy walk from the theater but enough distant to give audiences a pleasant stroll to their suppers after a performance.

  As usual, everything seemed in order. Max checked the stage door first, then strolled casually in front of the building, taking quick glances to see that the glass in the entrance had not been smashed, that the chains were still looped between the massive handles. He slipped around the corner of the building to be sure that the private entrance, a doorway at the rear of a narrow alley, was undisturbed. Something bright lay on the ground by the door, a coin? Had someone stood at this door? But no one except for the theatrical company, and Grammie of course, even knew about it. He picked the coin up, gave the door handle a quick turn and rattle to see that it was securely closed and locked, then returned to the street.

  Max glanced at the coin in his hand, to see how much it was worth before slipping it into a pocket. But it wasn’t a coin in his palm. Or at least, it wasn’t any coin he’d ever seen before, and there was some thin hook on the back.… Had some foreigner been wandering around the old city, and hoped to see a play, and dropped a coin? Max wondered. He looked more carefully at it, to find out what country that foreigner had come from.

  A familiar three-peaked design stamped onto the front of the coin took his breath away. He closed his hand around it—as if afraid to be seen with it in his poss
ession. As if he had stolen it. Or—worse—as if someone, watching him find the coin and recognize it, would know whose son he was.

  Max dropped it into his pocket and headed home. It couldn’t be from Andesia. It was a simpler design than the one stamped on top of the writing paper from the nonexistent Maharajah of Kashmir. Also, it was not nearly so intricate as the brooch sent to his mother in the same packet with the letter and two first-class boat tickets. Also, too, and he felt in his pocket to be sure of this, the piece was much too thick for a coin. It was more like a button, an innocent lost button. Maybe it had fallen off the jacket of some servant or soldier charged with the duty of keeping a young nobleman safe as he completed his education with a world tour, which included a performance by the Starling Theatrical Company. Maybe it wasn’t at all what Max was afraid it was.

  As he walked, he pulled the piece out of his pocket and glanced down at it. It was definitely a button, with a delicate wire on the back for thread to pass through. It was also definitely gold. And those were definitely three mountain peaks stamped onto the front of it. Yes, there was the suggestion of a curve running across their base, which made the peaks look like a crown.… But Max knew he was fooling himself. The resemblance was too strong, the coincidence too great.

  Max’s heart shrank and he wanted to drop the button onto the ground, for someone else to find. But he couldn’t, he knew; so he dropped it back into his pocket.

  The button had to be a message from Andesia. But what was the message? And who was the messenger? Was the button dropped by an Andesian soldier who’d followed his father to this private door? Before the mysterious invitation was even sent? The button seemed too shiny to have lain in the alley for long. So, was there an Andesian soldier in Queensbridge even now, following Max? He resisted the urge to look behind him, but he did quicken his pace.

  Or, and here was a happier thought, could the button be a message from his father? A bread crumb left for Max to follow? The notes his father had sent were certainly just as mysterious. But a button? To say … What? Keep your mouth buttoned shut? Unbutton this secret so I can come home? Where are you (if it was a button-button, who’s got the button? message)? Or, it could even be one of his father’s dramatic gestures, a wordless waving of the hand, while Max’s mother looked on in approval and admiration, to say to their son, Button your shirt, polish your boots, walk with straight shoulders while you are out there, being independent, the way I said you were.

  In fact, Max’s shoulders slumped and his hand jerked back out of his pocket as if some poisonous snake was in it. He hadn’t done any of that, had he? He hadn’t kept his mouth buttoned, or brought them back from Andesia, or even, really, been more than half independent. He doubled his pace again, to get to Thieves Alley more quickly. There, he ran up the stairs to bury the button in the back of a drawer crammed with underwear and socks, where he wouldn’t have to see it and his grandmother wouldn’t find it.

  Because he didn’t intend to tell her that there had been a message—in however strange a form—from Andesia. He felt bad enough about his failure, and maybe even ashamed, and her sympathy would only make him feel worse. Especially after that silly letter he’d written, thinking he was so clever, as if it was some child’s game his parents were playing, and not real trouble. But they couldn’t have gotten his letter yet, could they? In which case, they didn’t even know he knew where they were. Which meant that the button must have been sent out—and how had it been delivered, anyway?—as some kind of clue to their location. His parents must be feeling so … lost.

  Max hesitated, stopped in his tracks by a feeling so dark and shadowy he wasn’t sure he had the energy even to pull out his dresser drawer. Then he shook his head, hard. It might be a clue, but it wasn’t a very good one. He felt a flare of annoyance at a father who would send such ridiculous clues—and he dropped the button into his drawer and went back downstairs.

  Simon’s problem was something he could actually do something about. Maybe. If he knew more. So he kept the overalls-bandanna-straw-hat costume on, mounted his bicycle, and headed out to make his way through the old city and over the wide drawbridge to The Lakeview and Tassiter Lane, where he might be able to find out the more he needed to know. He didn’t bother eating any lunch. He didn’t have any appetite.

  The Lakeview ran along the eastern side of the lake, from the Royal Gate up past the gates of the summer palace to the little lakeside village of Summer. Wide meadows separated the roadway from the water. Closer to the city, small roads, lined with well-kept homes on broad lawns, led off into the low foothills, where they turned abruptly into mountain paths. Farther from the city and closer to the summer palace, great houses were announced by their stone or marble or wrought-iron gates, which were guarded by little gatehouses, but that afternoon, Max was going no farther than the lanes.

  He slowed down when the long, one-story old firehouse came up on his left. The New Town had its own brick fire station, with big doors that opened only to let the two pump wagons in or out, but at the older lakeside firehouse the wide door stood open and the one pump wagon had been pulled out into the sunlight. Men sat around in chairs, enjoying the quiet of the afternoon, their sleeves rolled up. A few boys were occupied polishing the hubs and bells, the harnesses and hose ends. These were apprentices and those who hoped to be taken on as apprentices. More eager to be out working among men than sitting in kitchens with their mothers finishing homework papers, they made this their first stop every afternoon on their way home from school. Several bicycles and rucksacks lay in a jumble beside the wagons where they had been dropped.

  Just as Pia had said, Tassiter Lane entered only a few yards past the firehouse, at a place where a high fence had been put up to keep private a wide section of meadow. The fence blocked the lake beyond from sight, and beside it grew undergrowth dense enough for Max to hide his bicycle among low bushes. He did not look back to see if anyone from the firehouse had observed this odd activity. If you do not wish to be noticed, one of the worst things you can do is look furtively around to see if anyone’s suspicions have been aroused.

  Bicycle safely stored, Max crossed The Lakeview and entered Tassiter Lane, his face shadowed by the broad straw brim of his hat. He walked down the road like a man on his way to work.

  The houses on Tassiter Lane were painted cheerful pinks, yellows, and greens, with bright white shutters and flower-filled window boxes and wide grassy lawns all around, enclosed by low white picket fences. In front of some of the gates a woman waited, a young mother or a nursemaid, or an older mother or a housekeeper, and one might even have been a grandmother. They were all looking toward The Lakeview, and Max attracted no attention. Gardeners were a common sight on Tassiter Lane.

  At the point where the lane began to curve up into the hills, Max stopped and turned around. It wasn’t long before the children of Tassiter Lane came home from school, the older ones on bicycles, chattering with their friends, the younger in groups under the care of an older sister or brother. Max strolled slowly back down the lane, wishing he had asked Pia for a description of Simon Melakrinos. There were more than a dozen small children in the uniform of the Hilliard School being escorted home, and at least half of them were little boys. None of them wore convenient name tags.

  He watched the homecomings. Some children ran up for a quick embrace, but a few just sauntered up to the waiting woman and those, he guessed, would include his Simon, whose mother was missing.

  Max made his way slowly toward them, just a gardener on a June afternoon, looking lazily at these fine houses. Two of the boys seemed to him to be the right age. One of them was stocky while the other had long, skinny legs. One had pale brown hair, the other hair of a darker brown, in need of a trim. One, he saw as he walked past the house, took the woman’s hand and carried his own rucksack inside, while the other handed his rucksack over to the woman and led the way into the house.

  It could be either one of them, Max thought, making a mental note of the two
houses, numbers 37 and 41; and then he heard the rucksack-carrying woman call, “If you go right to the kitchen, you’ll see there’s a nice piece of pie for you, Master Andrew.”

  This was a piece of luck. He knew now which boy was probably his Simon and which was probably the house from which Simon’s father disappeared in the evenings. If he was right, his Simon had dark brown hair and skinny legs, the knees like knobs, and lived in a pale yellow stucco house with an overgrown garden in the front, although the grass was in good trim. As he approached the house, Max tried to look like a man who had at last arrived at the address he had been looking for.

  A worker who knew his place did not go to the front door, so Max followed a gravel path around to the rear of the house. This door had no polished brass knocker. He rapped on the wood with his knuckles and heard voices inside, then light footsteps. When the door was opened, the woman called back over her shoulder as she dried her hands on her apron, “You keep on with your milk and cookies, little fellow. I’ll be right here where you can see me.” She turned her plump, curious face to Max and smiled just a little. “Yes? What is it?”

  Max removed his straw hat and held it clutched respectfully at his waist, as Greek Jonny did. “I see in front, Missus,” he said, “I see”—and he gestured with his hand back toward the lane—“I see weeds. I garden, Missus, I garden good. You want me to garden you?”

  She smiled sympathetically as she shook her head to say, “I’m sorry, I’m not the mistress here, only the housekeeper. I don’t know if Mr. Melakrinos wants those gardens attended to or not. You’ll have to ask him, and he doesn’t arrive home until half after six. I’m sorry I can’t help you.”