The Extraordinary Education of Nicholas Benedict

  I can’t believe it, Violet signed. I don’t know what to say.

  Nicholas drew an envelope from beneath his shirt. “I know the contract expires today—but not before the mining company has to officially cease its operations. That drill is in perfect condition and perfectly retrievable. A friend of mine has assured me the company will have to honor its agreement and pay your family what it owes.” He handed the envelope to Violet. “Here are the names and telephone numbers of a few high officials, as well as a powerful attorney—all friends of my friend, all of them aware of the situation now. He contacted them this morning—or, I suppose I should say, yesterday morning.”

  Violet was turning the envelope over and over in her hands. She seemed to be in a state of shock.

  Nicholas glanced at the moon, now disconcertingly low in the sky. He waved to get her attention. “I really need to hurry, Violet. I can’t stay much longer.”

  Violet nodded slowly, as if it were taking some time for his words to sink in. Then she slipped the envelope into her jacket pocket and signed, How do we explain to the company what you’ve done without getting you in trouble at the orphanage?

  “You don’t owe them any explanations,” Nicholas replied. “Let it be a miracle. The drill is worth a lot of money—it only makes sense for them to take it back and pay you. Anyway, my friend’s friends will make sure that they do.”

  But who is this friend?

  “A very fine person. You’d like him, Violet. But I’ll have to tell you more about him tomorrow, or whenever we can meet next.” Again Nicholas glanced anxiously at the sky. “I wish we could talk more, but this took me longer than I hoped it would.”

  Violet nodded, understanding the need for haste, but her face expressed her frustration. I’m sorry, I just have so many questions! Surely I can tell my parents what you’ve done, right? They’ll be so grateful! They’ll—

  Nicholas shook his head, interrupting, “You know me, Violet. I prefer to remain mysterious.” He grinned. “Honestly, you’re the only one who needs to know. That’s more than enough for me.”

  Violet frowned. We can argue about this later. But of course we will tell John, right? He needs to see what you’ve done here. He’ll be amazed! And he’ll be so proud of you, Nicholas. I know he will!

  There was no longer any avoiding it. Nicholas had to explain what had happened with John. He didn’t even want to think about it himself, but of course he had to, and so fighting back the tears that had suddenly started to fill his eyes, Nicholas told Violet he had something difficult to say and begged her not to interrupt him. Then, speaking quickly (both to get it over with and because he was in such a hurry), he began to explain. As he did, he saw, through the watery haze in his eyes, Violet’s worried look turn to one of astonishment, then confusion, and then, finally, sympathy.

  That must have been so terrible for you, Violet signed when Nicholas had finished, and she hugged him, gently patting his back as she might have done with a much smaller child.

  Nicholas thought of Violet’s little sisters. No doubt she’d had practice comforting them many a time. She was quite good at it; he could feel her sympathy through and through. Somehow, though, it made him want to cry even harder, to let all his feelings come pouring out—a dangerous impulse under the circumstances. He bit his lip, fighting back the urge.

  “I know it’s hard for you, too, Violet,” Nicholas said finally, stepping away and wiping the tears from his eyes. “I know you’ve lost a friend, too. I’m really sorry.”

  Violet smiled. She, too, wiped away tears, and she started to sign something, but Nicholas grabbed her hands.

  “We’ll talk more tonight! I promise! Tonight I’ll listen to everything you have to say! I know we have lots to talk about. For now let me just give you something before I go.” He reached into his pockets and took out several nuts and bolts, as well as two or three small, unidentifiable mechanical parts, and dumped them into Violet’s open hands. “You should keep these as souvenirs. I’m pretty sure the drill will run more efficiently without them.”

  Violet’s eyebrows shot up. Quickly she set the pieces down so that she could sign, You mean you improved the drill?

  Nicholas winked. “Don’t tell anyone,” he said.

  Violet was still trying to sign to Nicholas as he hurried away, but he dared not pay her any more attention. Both her sympathy and her tearful expressions of gratitude had already come close to undoing him. He was in a race against the sunrise, and he still had more work ahead of him. He couldn’t risk falling asleep. Not yet. Not now. Not when he was so close.

  Up the trail, over the ridge, and down again Nicholas led Rabbit. So long as he had the promise of a carrot before him, the old mule was remarkably tolerant, and Nicholas felt guilty knowing he would not get his fresh carrot. Giving it to him now would throw the morning schedule into chaos, though, and make life harder for Mr. Furrow. “I’ll make it up to you soon,” Nicholas murmured, patting Rabbit’s side. “I promise. Pretty soon there will be no more hard days for you.”

  Nicholas had had an extraordinarily hard day himself—days, actually, and nights, too—and was fairly amazed he had not collapsed. True, he had fallen asleep twice during his night’s labor, both times while crawling through that spooky, narrow tunnel, but both times his alarm clock had awakened him. (And both times, unfortunately, he had sat up in a panic, knocking his skull painfully against the tunnel ceiling. Now he had two knots on his head, both throbbing, and with his long nose and these new, knobby horns, he suspected he looked like a giraffe.) Now he had one last thing to do before returning the tools to the basement and Rabbit to the barn. He was pressing his luck, he knew. But he thought he had just enough time.

  Tethering the mule to a tree at the edge of the clearing, Nicholas took a hammer and chisel from one of the saddlebags and trotted toward Giant’s Head with a curious mixture of satisfaction, bafflement, and dread.

  On the one hand, he was pleased that it had finally occurred to him that he could simply break into the walls. But on the other, why hadn’t he thought of it sooner? He had tools enough. A few well-placed holes should be all it took to show him if there were any special, secret gears at work in the observatory. Was it because some stubborn part of him had wanted to solve the mystery with his wits rather than a chisel? Or had he been too afraid that he would find nothing behind the wall? He had to admit, he was afraid of that possibility even now.

  Nicholas shuffled through the high grass, wondering at himself. The biggest mystery of all had to be the contradictory workings of his own mind. Why, he’d even been tempted to reject this idea when it occurred to him yesterday! He’d told himself he might damage some hidden mechanism by accident. But if he damaged something, could he not repair it? Could he not repair anything under the sun? And why would he not wish to know the truth?

  There could be no more shying away from truth, he told himself. Never again, no matter what. He must always seek it out.

  Inside the observatory, Nicholas carried his lantern over to the cranks. For a long minute he stood there, considering the best place to start chiseling. Then he shook himself with a laugh. You’ve got a lot of work to do, he thought, for even now he was delaying the moment of truth. Putting down his lantern, Nicholas positioned the chisel between two stones, took a deep breath, and set to hammering.

  Five minutes later the wall had several small holes in it. All of them revealed the same thing: nothing. Nothing more than the gears and chains that moved the viewing panels and the turntable. There were no hidden mechanisms. There was no entrance to any treasure chamber in the observatory.

  Nicholas sighed and rubbed the tender bumps on his head. He was both surprised and not surprised. That is, he was surprised by the fact that he was not surprised to find nothing. For only now that he had forced himself to look inside the walls did he realize that he hadn’t really expected to find anything there. Had some part of him always known this would be the case? If so, it was amazing how long he had
put off the inevitable.

  Nicholas gathered his tools, took up his lantern, and hurried out. He could marvel at his own thickheadedness later. Right now he was still in a race against the dawn. And he still had to figure out what to do next.

  The fact was, Nicholas’s mind had been in a whirl since yesterday, and he had yet to think everything through. Part of his plan had involved the treasure, or at least some knowledge of its whereabouts. But that was as far as he’d gotten, and now even that much was lost to him. Time was short, and he was no closer to finding the treasure than he ever had been. Had he been foolish to believe it even existed?

  No, he reminded himself as he ran back over to Rabbit. He might have been overly optimistic, but he had not been utterly foolish. There was the matter of the missing inheritance, after all. There was Mr. Rothschild’s diary and its mentions of treasure. And there was Mr. Collum, who clearly believed that the treasure existed, that it was hidden somewhere on the Rothschild estate.

  So what had he missed? Nicholas put his things back into the saddlebags, awakened Rabbit again, and set off on the final leg of his long night’s journey. The moon had sunk beyond a distant hill, birds were beginning to rustle and chirp in the trees, and Nicholas’s thoughts were dashing hither and thither. Was there some evidence hidden in plain sight that he had overlooked, like that purloined letter in the story Violet had mentioned? If so, what?

  Think, Nicholas commanded himself. He tried to marshal his scattered notions.

  The first thing that occurred to him was that he had been aware of certain evidence all along but that his experience had led him to be suspicious of it. Namely, the truth about Mrs. Rothschild’s character. Both Mr. Rothschild and Mr. Furrow seemed to believe that she really had been kind, generous, and selfless, and now that Nicholas had met Mr. Harinton—now that he’d finally met a living example of such a person—he was prepared to believe it. But then how to make sense of Diana Rothschild reveling in her treasure like a greedy dragon? And how to make sense of that missing inheritance?

  Nicholas wished he could visit a different library, one older than the library in Stonetown, and read all the newspapers from that very important year. It was remarkable, really, the significance of that single year in this mystery: Mrs. Rothschild’s rich father, Mr. Rexal, had died, after which she had presumably received the inheritance, after which the Rothschilds had made that unusual trip into Stonetown… to do what? In all those business meetings and appointments with various kinds of agents, what had they been up to if not securing the treasure? Had they not been making secretive arrangements at all? Had Nicholas imagined everything?

  Something told him otherwise. They did go to Stonetown, after all, despite Mrs. Rothschild’s reluctance to appear in high society. Nicholas recalled the photograph of Mrs. Rothschild at that literary luncheon, her arms full of books; that luncheon had been the only invitation she had accepted. Next, for some reason not immediately clear to him, Nicholas imagined Mrs. Rothschild visiting the Stonetown Library. He pictured her wandering around the lobby. Why was that? Was it because she had loved books so much?

  But it was impossible for Mrs. Rothschild to have visited the Stonetown Library. Construction on the library would not begin until later that year. Wasn’t that right? Nicholas’s mind summoned the image of the plaque set into the floor of that beautiful lobby:

  Construction of this Free and Public Library of Stonetown, designed by the eminent architects Mason & Mason, funded by the Alexandria Foundation, and open to all citizens of our great republic…

  For the first time it occurred to him how appropriate those names were—a mason was a builder, after all, and Alexandria had been the site of the greatest library in the ancient world. Nicholas found himself smiling with relief, for ever since he had looked at that plaque, there had been a sort of itch in his brain, and now at last he seemed to have scratched it. No wonder he’d kept seeing those words in his mind.

  Nicholas took a few more paces down the trail, then stopped so abruptly that Rabbit’s nose bumped him between the shoulder blades and nearly sent him tumbling. He had just realized that the itch was not entirely gone. In fact, all of a sudden it seemed stronger than ever. Why was that?

  He took another look at the plaque in his mind. Then he gasped. He staggered sideways, laying a hand against Rabbit to steady himself. It was as if every thought in his mind had suddenly gone luminescent—as if his head were the observatory on the hill, and Nicholas had cranked open the roof, and the moonlight had flooded in.

  He had solved the mystery.

  “You see? I can’t wake him,” a sleepy, half-stupefied Nicholas heard Mrs. Brindle saying. He kept his eyes closed. He was in his cot. “He’s been this way all morning.”

  “Let him sleep, then,” said Mr. Collum, his voice testy but resigned. “I’ll have Mr. Pileus check on him again in an hour.”

  “But what do you suppose happened to him? Why, look at those bumps! Do you think those boys knocked him about?”

  “It’s impossible. I was in the dormitory all night and did not sleep a wink. No, perhaps he fell out of bed during one of his nightmares. I understand he often flails about quite violently.”

  “Must’ve fallen out multiple times if that’s true,” Mrs. Brindle murmured. “Shall I fetch Miss Pretty Pills?”

  “No name-calling, please, Mrs. Brindle. And no, let us leave Miss Candace out of this. He seems to be resting peacefully. No doubt his ridiculous escapades have simply left him overtired. Come, let’s return to our duties.”

  The adults returned to their duties, and Nicholas returned to dreaming. As sometimes happened in his dreams, he relived recent events as if for the first time. With an extraordinary sense of reality, his dream self staggered out of the woods with Rabbit, successfully returned the tools to the basement, put the mule safely away in the barn. He caught a fleeting glimpse of the Old Hag on the trail through the hickory trees, but luck smiled upon him, and she passed without seeing him. Shivering from the awful sight of her, Nicholas made his way back to the Manor, washed up, changed into his pajamas, hid his filthy clothes, and collapsed into the cot.

  Now the Old Hag was back. He couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe. She had passed through the solid stone wall and floated hideously over his bed. Then she was standing on his chest. Nicholas screamed, and the fearsome creature disappeared in a puff of smoke. Suddenly standing over the cot where the Old Hag had been was Mr. Pileus, looking most fretful.

  Nicholas, panting and trembling, broke into a grin. “How do you do, Mr. Pileus? I trust you slept well.” He sat up in the cot and stretched. “Do you by any chance know what time it is?”

  Mr. Pileus showed Nicholas his pocket watch.

  It was after lunchtime. He had slept through the morning. Mr. Pileus had brought up a plate of food—freshly picked beans and tomatoes, a rough chunk of brown bread, a glass of cool milk. Nicholas wolfed it all down with tremendous satisfaction as Mr. Pileus inspected his wall, casting increasingly nervous glances at Nicholas.

  At last Mr. Pileus frowned and said, “Slow down or you might choke.”

  Nicholas saluted and slowed down, but only a little. The exertions of last night had left him ravenous, and indeed he was still hungry when he’d finished. He hoped his extra chores would include pantry and kitchen work. Perhaps he could sneak an extra bite or two. First, however—and far more important than food—he needed to meet with Mr. Collum.

  “Is everyone over at the school, Mr. Pileus? And is Mr. Collum expecting me?”

  Mr. Pileus nodded. Paused. Nodded again. So yes on both counts.

  “I’ll be ready in no time, then!” Nicholas cried, and dashed to the bathroom with his things.

  Mr. Collum was in his office. He looked to be in a sad state of exhaustion. Dark circles beneath his eyes, his face drawn, his tie loosened. He sat staring bemusedly at the ledger on his desk. The ledger was closed. The jeweler’s loupe rested upon it. He was only thinking. Or trying not to think. When he bec
ame aware of Nicholas standing in his doorway, he straightened, cleared his throat, and absently tightened his tie as if preparing to go out. He was reviving himself, gathering his wits.

  “Come in, Nicholas!” Mr. Collum said. “Please close the door behind you. Have a seat. Let us waste no time.”

  Nicholas did not sit, however, but launched at once into his speech. “I agree entirely, Mr. Collum. And in the interest of not wasting time, allow me to tell you right off that I have not been entirely forthcoming with you. The fact is, I know about the treasure you’re looking for. Mrs. Rothschild’s treasure. You know how quickly I read, Mr. Collum, so you’ll believe me when I tell you that I’ve read Mr. Rothschild’s diary. I sneaked a glance at it once, in an unguarded moment. And I have solved the mystery, and I am prepared to share with you what I know.”

  Mr. Collum, who had started from his chair at the mention of the treasure, slowly sank down into it again. He laid his palms flat on his desk, his eyes swiveling left and right in confused agitation. He seemed to be having trouble absorbing Nicholas’s words. His eyes came to rest again on Nicholas’s face. “You… you know? About… everything?”

  “I do. And as I say, I will reveal it all to you.” Only now did Nicholas take a seat. He drew his legs up so that he was sitting cross-legged in the chair, and lacing his fingers together and leaning forward, he said earnestly, “I do have a few conditions, however. Things you must agree to first.”

  Mr. Collum’s face, which had begun to show excitement, colored. His hands trembled on the desk. “Conditions,” he said flatly. “You have conditions?”