“Then let me take it.”
The Headmaster was annoyed; Charlie was getting under his skin. “Gifted students, scholars of the whiz, have failed this test. Many on several occasions. Whatever you were told about the Test of the Seven Bells, you should know it is not some cursory entrance exam. It is the true and final test of a learned cannon’s skill. No chump has ever taken the test, let alone passed it. This is folly.” He then addressed the kids at Charlie’s elbow. “Please, take him back to El Toro. I’m weary of this.”
“Come on, let’s go,” said one of the boys behind Charlie. He grabbed at Charlie’s shoulder, his fingers digging into his collarbone. Charlie jerked free and slammed his palms down on the desktop before him. Stacks of paper scattered across the surface; the Headmaster’s teacup nearly toppled, but the man’s agile fingers managed to stop the accident before it occurred. Charlie’s captors tried to grab him again, but he swung around, his back to the Headmaster, and shot them a defiant glare.
“Please, Charlie. Don’t embarrass yourself,” said the Headmaster. “I granted you this meeting out of consideration for your audacity, to let you speak your piece. You’ve now really overstayed your welcome. Don’t make me regret the invitation.”
“Let me prove it,” said Charlie, turning back to face the man. “Let me take the test. Let me prove to everyone that I’m a class cannon.”
The Headmaster cast a look over Charlie’s shoulder at Rachel and the two boys. They acquiesced to the man’s silent command and backed away. He stared back at Charlie and said, “And what, pray tell, would that achieve?”
“If I can pass the test, I’m as good as any graduate.”
“It stands to reason,” responded the Headmaster.
“In which case, the Cipher will have been unlawfully stolen from a proper, turned-out member of the Whiz Mob of Marseille.”
“And . . . ,” prompted the Headmaster, beginning to see Charlie’s line of argument.
“And so,” said Charlie, “I’m granted immunity. You will have to give it back to me, to return it to its rightful owner.”
There was a long breath of absolute silence in the room. Nobody moved or said a word. It was as if the occupants of the Headmaster’s office had all been struck by some supervillain’s freeze ray and were only waiting for the antidote to come along and unstick them. The antidote, in this case, happened to be a long and wheezing laugh from the Headmaster himself. The laugh poured out of his lungs like so much pipe smoke, and he doubled over from the effort of it. The rest of the occupants of the room squirmed uncomfortably to witness this uncharacteristic behavior from their principal. All, that is, except for Charlie.
Apparently the kids behind Charlie read the Headmaster’s mirth as his last straw. “We’ll get him out of here, sir,” said Rachel testily. “He won’t trouble you anymore.”
The Headmaster, still laughing, waved a hand and shook his head. He steadied himself on his desk. He removed the glasses from his face and studied the lenses through the ceiling light, then pulled a handkerchief from his coat pocket to wipe them clean. He was chortling the whole while, as if some funny film was being played through the lenses of his glasses. He then rubbed his eyes and placed the frames back on his face.
“It would,” he said, regaining his composure, “be fitting.”
“Sir?” Rachel asked from over Charlie’s shoulder.
Charlie did not share the girl’s surprise; the Headmaster’s response was the one he’d anticipated, the one he’d most hoped for.
“A genius gamble, really,” said the Headmaster. “One perfectly suiting the transference of the Cipher. To think: of all the hands it has passed through, the dozens of clutching, greedy fingers—has its ownership ever faced such a dubious gambit?”
He placed his hands in his pockets and turned to face the wall of photographs behind him—a mosaic of student body portraits over the years, a gradient of color changing from stark black and white to bright color from framed picture to framed picture. Valedictorian graduates glad-handing their headmaster on a beribboned dais; signed headshots of particularly beloved pupils, having achieved some special notoriety in the real world. The Headmaster seemed to take them all in. “Everyone on this wall has passed the Test of the Seven Bells,” he said. “Look at them all. Most failed their first and second attempts. What you don’t see are the faces of those who never passed, whose skills were never up to the challenge of the test. Those who never quite fulfilled their promise and were sent back, thrown down to the straight world from whence they came. They far outnumber the ones you see here.” The Headmaster turned back to Charlie and, frowning, said, “I will agree to your little proposition. You will have one chance. If you fail, you leave this place immediately.”
“Agreed,” said Charlie.
“You will return to your home by whatever means you arrived here. You will not speak a word of what you have seen on your little adventure. Is that clear?”
“Yes, sir,” said Charlie. “But if I pass.”
“You will not pass.”
“If I pass, you give me the Cipher.”
The Headmaster took a long look at Charlie, as if seeing him for the first time. He raised an eyebrow, adjusted the rims of his glasses, took a long sip from his teacup and, setting it down, said, “Agreed.” He turned to the kids behind Charlie and said, “Very well then, children. Let us prepare the exam room.”
Chapter
TWENTY-TWO
Don’t be fooled: Charlie was terrified. In fact, he’d never been so terrified in his life. For all the braggadocio of his performance in the Headmaster’s office, he was still Charlie Fisher, son of Charles, recently of Marseille, France, writer in training, serial lumberjack impersonator. He had not yet shed that persona completely. Thing was, he’d discovered a little depth to his second persona, the one named the Grenadine Kid. The Grenadine Kid was not daunted in the face of danger. The Grenadine Kid did not shy from adventure, and the Grenadine Kid did not—most certainly—talk into his chin. Charlie was trying his very darnedest to channel the voice of the Grenadine Kid while he was led back down the stained wood-paneled hallway of the School of Seven Bells.
By this time, enough commotion had transpired in the Headmaster’s study that it had attracted interest from the student body; many of the doors along the hallway that had previously been closed when Charlie had first been marched past them were now cracked open—prying eyes were peering out from the jambs. One such door flew open when Charlie walked by, revealing a stunned Michiko staring into the hallway. Charlie gave her a little wave before she disappeared from view.
The Headmaster had apparently decided to make Charlie’s test a public affair, because as they were walking, the PA system squawked into life, broadcasting a short announcement to the student body: “ALL STUDENTS ARE ASKED TO REPORT TO THE EXAM ARENA—REPEAT, ALL STUDENTS, REPORT TO THE EXAM ARENA FOR A SPECIAL ASSEMBLY BY INSTRUCTION OF THE HEADMASTER.” Following this announcement, there came a murmuring of excitement from the classrooms Charlie passed. Clearly, pickpocket students were no different from your traditional schoolkid—they all enjoyed any excuse to get out of class early.
It was a strange parade: Charlie and the two boys flanking him, his arms restrained by their steady grips, with Rachel following close behind. The Headmaster played the drum major of this particular marching band, walking with all the swagger of a man in his position some ten feet ahead of the procession. Children, abandoning their classrooms and study groups, fell in line. As they walked through the giant dummy-dotted room that Charlie had crossed earlier, Charlie felt a tug at his sleeve. He looked over to see Molly the Mouse in the place of his right-hand guard. She’d shed her Marseille attire for the de rigueur maroon school uniform and had pinned back the scant bangs of her short brown hair with a barrette.
“What are you doing here, Charlie?” she hissed.
“Molly!” Charlie exclaimed. He had to bat away his first instinct, which was to be genuinely enthused to s
ee his former comrade at arms. His tone changed quickly. “What does it look like?” he asked, with as much venom as he could muster.
“Um, you’re about to be publically executed?”
“No,” Charlie shot back, blanching. “I’m getting the Cipher back. The thing you guys stole.”
Molly’s eyes widened at the thought of it. “How you gonna do that, Charlie?”
“I’m taking the test.”
“The test?”
“Is there another?”
Molly puffed out her cheeks and made an expressive exhale. “Is there a pool going? What are the odds?”
“Mouse,” said Rachel, from behind them. “Leave him be.”
“Right, right,” said Molly. “Well, good luck, Charlie.”
“Whatever,” said Charlie.
“C’mon, Charlie, don’t be mad. It’s all part of the whiz. No hard feelings and all that.”
“Just leave me alone.”
Molly shot a glance at Rachel before grabbing Charlie by the shoulder and hopping up to put her mouth to his ear. “Second prat’s a dipsy,” she whispered. And then she was gone.
A crowd of kids had amassed in the foyer, the vaulted entry chamber that had been so placid and empty when Charlie had first arrived. They were queuing up to enter a pair of double doors that had been swung open to one side of the room. When they saw the Headmaster arrive, the crowd immediately hushed and parted, leaving a wide channel of tiled floor for the procession to follow. The students stared at Charlie as he passed, as if he were some bizarre creature; they whispered quiet observations to one another, their eyes never leaving the specimen. Charlie tried to stare some of them down, but they appeared unashamed of their gawking.
A dark passageway, lined with the same aged wooden paneling that had covered the walls of the upstairs hallway, opened up just beyond the foyer. This hall ended in another set of doors, these ones much larger than any Charlie had seen on the premises—massive, iron-banded things. A shiny placard above the doors read EXAM ARENA in utilitarian type. The Headmaster pulled the doors open with something approaching flamboyance, holding his hands aloft while they swung out on their large brass hinges. He then disappeared, descending into the gloom beyond.
When Charlie and his cohorts arrived at the doorway, he could now see the reason for the Headmaster’s dramatic reveal: they were standing on a short balcony overlooking a huge, circular room. Above the darkened floor loomed three tiers of galleries; they began to be filled with eager students, wandering silhouettes against the lamplight inside the galleries’ arcades. Every surface seemed to be carved from the same amber mahogany that appeared elsewhere in the school’s design. The room struck Charlie as an odd collision between a university lecture theater and a Roman coliseum.
A loud noise sounded, a kind of reverberant clunk, and a cone of light suddenly shot down from a massive spotlight hanging from the domed ceiling. Charlie gawped to see what it illuminated.
Was it a person?
No, it had no head. It was a dummy, a mannequin.
The floor of the arena was empty save for this single, headless mannequin dressed in a strange uniform. The overhead spotlight threw a perfect white circle around the dummy and cast the contours of its clothing in eerie shadow. Charlie did not have time to savor the view before the kids at his elbow rushed him down a set of stairs to the arena floor. There, he was left alone. Alone with the dummy.
The encircling arcades above him rumbled with activity—the hum of hundreds of voices busily chattering to one another as they assumed their places. Charlie took in his surrounding audience but found that the dizzying height of the galleries gave him a brief fit of vertigo—he returned his attention to the mannequin in the center of the room.
It was somewhat taller than Dennis, his practice dummy back home. It also wore a more complete outfit, as if it were readying itself to walk out onto the streets of Manhattan in December—an overcoat, or benny in the argot, hung over a three-piece suit. The lower half of a pair of tapered trousers could be seen from beneath the hem of the benny. However, what really distinguished the mannequin from poor Marseille Dennis was the fact that the pockets visible to Charlie were each labeled with an embroidered number. Charlie, from his distance, could see the numerals 1 and 2 stitched into the fabric of the topcoat’s left and right tog pits. But that was not all.
A bit of shiny chrome, just at the opening of the pits, glinted in the glow of the spotlight—Charlie had to squint in the low light to see that a single silver bell hung from each of the visible pockets.
Seven pockets. Seven bells.
Somewhere, a speaker gave a burst of feedback and squawked to life—the Headmaster’s voice was broadcast inside the cavernous room: “Welcome, Charlie,” he said. “Welcome to the Exam Arena. You have volunteered to take the Test of the Seven Bells.”
The room was silenced by this announcement. All the murmuring and laughing—the persistent buzz of the spectating students—came to an abrupt halt.
“The exam will measure your level of expertise in the field of pickpocketing, it will examine your understanding of the whiz and the breadth of knowledge you have accumulated as a matriculating student. . . .” The Headmaster’s voice trailed off. “Well, that part doesn’t apply to you, does it?” He cleared his throat and continued, the PA system clicking in and out between each sentence the man spoke. “Seven coins have been seeded into seven pockets on the dummy. Each of these pockets is numbered. Each of these pockets is rigged with a bell. You must retrieve the coin from each pocket, in the correct numerical order, without ringing the bell. If a single bell is rung, the exam is considered a fail. Are the rules understood?”
Charlie looked out into the open air of the arena and said, “Yes.”
“You may begin,” came the Headmaster’s disembodied voice.
“And if I pass, you give me the Cipher,” said Charlie loudly. “Right? I want everyone to witness this.”
There was a pause before the reply arrived: “Yes, Charlie. That was the arrangement.”
The audience gave a kind of collective, anticipatory murmur as Charlie approached the dummy, sizing up the two visible tog pits. They were uptown britches—the openings were cut diagonally—which was of some relief. He’d always had better luck with the diagonal-cut prats; he found them easier to navigate. He squeezed his hands into a fist, calming the quaver in his fingers, before raising the breast of the benny—carefully—with his index and middle fingers so that it was lifted a mere inch from the mannequin’s suit coat. In the light, he clearly saw the numeral 4 stitched on the hem of the right jerve of the jacket; next to it was a silver bell, a small yellow thread connecting it to the fabric.
Where was pocket number three?
Just then a flash of light caught his eye and he craned his neck to see a bell dangling from the tog pit—the inside pocket—of the topcoat. He caught his breath in his throat; the bell dangled dangerously from the fabric, its small clapper threatening to strike against the bell’s sloping waist at the smallest provocation. The numeral 3 was embroidered on this pocket. No other labeled pockets were visible.
Right tog tail. Left tog tail. Tog pit. Coat pit.
He decided to focus on the first four before fanning the fifth, sixth, and seventh pockets. He stepped back a few feet, steeling himself.
“Come on, Charlie,” came the Headmaster’s voice through the PA. “Make your frame. We’re waiting.”
Charlie ceremonially cracked his knuckles and got to work.
He homed in on the first pocket—the right tog tail of the topcoat. Using his thumb and forefinger in a reverse pinch, he eased open the hem of the pocket. The fabric moved, carrying its bell along with it. The clapper swung slightly, but made no contact. Transferring the weight of the pocket opening to his index finger, Charlie first hooked his middle finger into the interior of the pocket before slowly moving the rest of his hand into the prat’s now open mouth. His eyes remained fixed on the little silver bell, hung by the
thread from the hem of the pocket.
Inside the prat, his fingers felt cool metal; a coin.
Carefully, without so much as moving the heavier fabric of the pocket’s hem, his index finger stationary, Charlie managed to pinch the coin between the second knuckles of his index and middle fingers. The coin safely lodged there, he removed his hand in an exact reversal of its initial descent into the pocket. The prat slowly closed as the tips of his fingers emerged; the silver bell returned to its initial position without a noise.
Charlie stepped back. He let the coin fall into his palm.
“One!” he said loudly, triumphantly. He held up the coin, briefly, before letting it fall to the stone floor. It made a noisy clatter. The audience in the galleries hummed their approval.
“Well done,” came the Headmaster’s voice, after a short squeal of feedback from the PA system. “Very well done. Rudimentary, however. A palate cleanser. The real test begins now.”
Charlie did his best to ignore the insinuations of the voice. He remembered the Whiz Mob’s description of the test, those many weeks ago in the catacomb below Marseille: the Test of the Seven Bells grew more difficult as it went on, not merely because of each pocket’s increasing difficulty, but because of the Headmaster’s mind games, his seedings of self-doubt into the exam. Charlie breathed in the challenge; he welcomed it. In fact, he was counting on it. He moved forward, fanning the next pinch.
It seemed innocuous enough: the left tog tail—a mirror image of the first bing. As he began to reach for the pocket, however, he remembered Molly’s whisper in the hallway—something about the second pocket. What had she said? Charlie realized he’d been so overcome by his gamble at the time that he hadn’t entirely registered her words.
Best to play it safe, he decided. His caution was rewarded when he probed the lining of the pocket to discover that a safety pin, a dipsy, had been carefully threaded between the opposing fabrics of the pocket’s opening, effectively fastening it closed. It had been placed in such a way as to escape casual detection. Had Charlie simply moved in to reef the kick, he would’ve snagged the dipsy and sent the bell swinging.