The Perilous Journey (3 page)

“I think it’s brilliant,” said Reynie with perfect sincerity. “The chickens feed themselves, and the livestock open and close their own gate.”

“You saw that?” said Kate, looking pleased. “Yes, they come and go whenever Moocho sounds the farm bell.” She pointed toward the orchard. “Speaking of Moocho, there he is now. Hey, Moocho! Here’s Reynie!”

Kate had mentioned Moocho Brazos in her letters, so Reynie knew a few things about him. He knew, for instance, that Milligan had wanted someone to help out on the farm, as well as to look after Kate when he was away on missions, and that Kate had persuaded him to hire one of her old circus friends. But now, as the swarthy figure of Moocho Brazos emerged from the apple trees, Reynie realized that Kate had neglected to mention a detail or two. She certainly didn’t need to fill him in now, for it was perfectly clear from Moocho’s enormous muscles, slicked-down hair, and handlebar mustache that he’d been the circus’s Strong Man.

Moocho was toting a heavy tub full of apples that Reynie and Kate had picked earlier that morning. They’d left it at the far edge of the orchard to be retrieved by Moocho — in the farm truck, Reynie had supposed, not having conceived that anyone could carry it more than a few steps. But Moocho had gone on foot, and in his hands the apple tub looked no more substantial than a bowl of cherries.

“So you’re the wonderful Reynie Muldoon,” he said as he came up. “I’ve heard so much about you.” Given his daunting appearance, Moocho’s soft, melodious voice was every bit as unexpected as his attire — a flowery apron worn over coveralls and house slippers. He set the apple tub down and gave Reynie’s hand a gentle squeeze. “Very pleased to meet you.”

“Overslept, have you, Moocho?” Kate said.

Moocho yawned as if on cue. “We were up so late waiting, you know.”

“Madge and I were up late.
You
went to bed at nine.”

“Which, as you know perfectly well, is long past my bedtime,” Moocho said, “so no scolding, young lady. Unless, of course, you don’t care to eat any of my apple pies tonight.”

Kate immediately repented of her teasing, then told him about the broken-down car. Moocho offered to fetch Miss Perumal and her mother in the farm truck, but Reynie said he expected them to arrive soon. The mechanic had promised the car would be fixed before lunch.

“Well, if they aren’t here by then I’ll go for them,” Moocho said, scooping up the apple tub and starting for the house. “We can’t let them eat in town — the café is dreadful.”

Reynie watched him go, still marveling at how effortlessly he carried the tub. “I see why you asked Milligan to hire him. He must do the work of several people.”

“Oh yes, I suppose he does,” said Kate. She grinned. “But wait till you try his pies. Then you’ll know the real reason.”

Noontime found Reynie and Kate perched high atop the farmhouse roof. They had gone up to replace a broken shingle and to right a listing weather vane, and afterward they had lingered to survey the countryside. The view was excellent from that height, and Kate was pointing out the distant mill pond, scene of her earliest memory (that of swimming with Milligan), when a faraway sound caught their attention. They turned to see a plume of dust rising over the lane in the distance.

“That must be Amma and Pati,” Reynie said, but Kate, fixing the dust plume in her spyglass, gave a little gasp and cried, “They’re
all
here, Reynie! I mean Sticky’s here, too!”

Reynie took the spyglass — Kate was thrusting it upon him with such zeal he feared she would knock him off the roof — and sure enough, down the dusty lane came Miss Perumal and her mother in the station wagon, followed by an old sedan: the Washingtons had arrived earlier than expected.

Kate scrambled nimbly to the edge of the roof, gripped the sides of the ladder, and slid down it like a firehouse pole, bypassing the rungs altogether. By the time Reynie had descended in more conventional fashion, the farmyard was full of automobiles, the Perumals and Washingtons were chatting with Moocho Brazos (who had hurried out to greet them), and Kate was helping Sticky up from the ground and dusting him off.

To Reynie’s surprise, Sticky looked exactly as he’d looked a year ago: a skinny boy with light brown skin, anxious eyes (though perhaps the anxiety came from not yet having recovered his breath), and a completely bald head. The baldness was the surprising part. The last time Reynie had seen Sticky, all his hair had grown back; it had since disappeared. His spectacles were missing, too, but this was only because Kate was just now picking them up from where her hug had knocked them free.

Clutching his ribs, Sticky gave Reynie a feeble smile. Then the two boys laughed and hugged and clapped each other on the back. All around them, the adults were chattering about faulty carburetors and making good time on the highways and bumping into one other unexpectedly in town. Mr. Washington was getting a wheelchair out of the trunk for Mrs. Washington, whose troubled knees kept her from walking much, but who nonetheless took a few painful steps to embrace Reynie and Kate. A short woman with walnut-colored skin, narrow shoulders, and a rather pouty mouth belied by the kindness in her eyes, Mrs. Washington couldn’t stop shaking her head as she turned the children’s faces left and right in her hands.

“You both look years older already,” she said ruefully, as if she couldn’t bear the thought. Mr. Washington came up with the wheelchair, and his wife lowered herself into the seat and dabbed at her shining eyes. Mr. Washington, who resembled a larger version of Sticky — tall, slender, and bespectacled — was not much for words, but he smiled fondly and greeted the children with reserved pats on their shoulders.

Meanwhile, Miss Perumal (her arms crossed protectively over her ribs) had come over to hug Kate. “Don’t you look wonderful, dear? Oh! And I see you’ve put a lid on your bucket! How clever!”

Kate beamed — she was always flattered when someone complimented her bucket — and only her desire to steal away and talk privately with the boys prevented her opening the bucket and showing Miss Perumal its entire inventory. They were already going to have to wait much too long to be alone, for first the luggage had to be brought in, and lunch eaten, and the dishes cleared away, and the guests situated in their rooms — all of which was perfectly pleasant but took ages to accomplish. By midafternoon the three young friends were casting nearly constant, yearning glances at one another, and when Miss Perumal finally asked them to make themselves scarce so the adults could speak in private, they lost no time in bolting for the door.

Still, as they walked out into the orchard, Sticky looked suspiciously back toward the farmhouse. “Why do they want to speak privately, I wonder?”

“It’s Mr. Benedict’s surprise,” Reynie said. “They’re in on it.”

“They are? So that explains why my parents have been whispering. I thought they were discussing Mom’s getting a second job. They know I’m dead set against it. I’d sooner go back to quizzing, you know, but they’re dead set against
that.
”

Reynie knew from Sticky’s letters that his father already did work two jobs. Their family’s finances were terribly strained due to the unhappy events leading up to the last year. Sticky’s prodigious memory and reading abilities had made him an incomparable quiz champion, but he had suffered badly under the pressure to make his family’s fortune and ultimately had run away from home. The Washingtons had spent every penny — in fact had gone deep into debt — in order to find Sticky and bring him back to them. They had been distrustful of money’s allure ever since, and were stubbornly unwilling to let Sticky be subjected to unusual pressures. (“They can hardly stand even to hear me talk about our time at the Institute,” Sticky had written. “The very thought of my being in danger makes them tremble.”) And so the Washingtons remained quite poor.

“How did you find out they know about the surprise?” Sticky asked as they settled down in the shade of the apple trees.

“Amma got a letter from Mr. Benedict,” Reynie said. “I saw it on her dresser, but she neglected to mention it to me, and later I overheard bits of a conversation she had with Pati. Pati’s hard of hearing, so Amma had to say a few things rather louder than she meant to. None of it was enough to give me any clues, but I could tell they knew something I didn’t. Not long after that I got my own letter from Mr. Benedict — the one he sent all of us — and I knew we were in for something good.”

“Of course it will be good! How could it not be good?” said Kate, leaning back on her elbows with a satisfied smile. “It’s
already
good. We’re together, aren’t we? And tomorrow we’ll see Mr. Benedict!”

“Not to mention Rhonda and Number Two,” Reynie said, referring to Mr. Benedict’s brilliant assistants (who also happened to be his adopted daughters, though this wasn’t widely known). “I can’t wait to see them, either.”

“Neither can I!” Sticky said. In a somewhat more subdued tone he added, “And, well… Constance, too, of course. And what about Milligan, Kate? At lunch you said he’d meet us at Mr. Benedict’s house, but wasn’t he supposed to be here?”

“That was the plan, but then he got called away on a mission.”

“What kind of mission?” asked Reynie and Sticky at the same time. They were both hungry for details.

Kate shrugged. “No idea. He never tells me anything beforehand, only afterward. I always read the paper for clues, of course — I’d love to be able to tell him I figured out what he’d been up to — but I never find anything.”

“So you
have
been keeping up,” Sticky said. “I asked about that in my last letter, but you never replied.” His tone was slightly resentful, but Kate either ignored it or else was blithely unaware.

“Of course I’ve been keeping up! But I’m not like you, Sticky. I can’t read ten newspapers every morning, and half of them in foreign languages. I only read the
Stonetown Times.
Why? Have you seen anything suspicious?”

Sticky grunted. “I wish. What about you, Reynie?”

Although this conversation might have seemed strange if overheard (for it is rare to hear children discuss the newspaper, and still more so to hear one ask whether anything “suspicious” has been found), to Reynie and his friends it felt perfectly natural. All of them had long had the habit of reading the paper — in fact it was a newspaper advertisement that had first led them to Mr. Benedict — and ever since their mission they had scanned the daily headlines with particular interest. It was doubtful any activity concerning Mr. Curtain would be declassified and printed, but it was always possible that some seemingly innocent story might reveal a connection to something deeper and darker — something the children would recognize even if other readers would not. In this single respect they still felt like secret agents, though reading the daily paper was hardly exciting field work.

This morning’s front page of the
Stonetown Times,
for instance, had been devoted to nothing more sinister than finance, freight, and forestry:
INTEREST
RATES
SHARPLY
ON
THE
RISE
, read one headline;
CARGO
SHIP
SHORTCUT
TO
MAKE
MAIDEN
VOYAGE
, read another; while still another read,
PINE
WEEVIL
MAKES
MEAL
OF
SOUTHERN
FORESTS
. And the news only grew less interesting on page two.

“Suspicious?” Reynie said. “Not unless you think pine weevils are suspicious. Everything I’ve read has been dull as doorknobs.”

Kate’s eyes twinkled. “Hey, that reminds me! Sticky, I —”

Reynie cleared his throat and gave her a warning look. It was too late, though. Sticky might be slow to make certain connections, but he was exceptionally quick at recognizing personal insults. “Go on,” he said, burying his face in his hands. “It’s about my account of the mission, isn’t it?”

Now Kate looked regretful. “Oh… no… I was, uh, just going to…” She looked helplessly at Reynie, unable to think of what to say.

Much to their relief, Sticky lowered his hands and smiled. It was a sheepish smile, but at least he didn’t seem wounded. “Out with it.”

“Well, it’s… factual,” Kate said.

“And thoughtful,” Reynie added, hurriedly taking the account from his pocket in hopes of finding something to praise.

Kate nodded vigorously as Reynie unfolded the papers. “Oh, yes, it’s
very
thoughtful! And grammatical!”

Sticky winced. “Is it that bad? Oh well, I knew it was probably dreck. You should have seen the earlier drafts. This was my sixth attempt.” He took the account from Reynie and looked it over ruefully before stuffing it into his pocket. “Don’t worry, I figured I could never publish it anyway. I just wanted to do something to celebrate the occasion.”

Reynie had a sudden insight. “That’s why your hair’s gone, isn’t it? For old times’ sake!”

“I thought you might get a kick out of that,” Sticky admitted. “This time Dad helped me shave it — no more hair-remover concoctions.” He shuddered at the memory.

“Well, I love it!” Kate said, giving Sticky’s scalp an affectionate rub, and Reynie grinned and nodded his appreciation.

For a long time the three friends lingered in the orchard, reveling in one another’s company and reminiscing about their mission to the Institute. Laughing, groaning, occasionally shivering as they recalled their experiences — all of which remained perfectly vivid in their memories — they let the afternoon slip past them. When Kate noticed how long the shadows had grown in the farmyard, she gave a start and hopped up.

“Good grief! They’re going to call us inside soon, and Sticky hasn’t even met Madge yet!”

“Who’s Madge?” Sticky asked.

“Her Majesty the Queen!” Kate said, as if this explained everything. Impatiently she hauled the boys to their feet and ushered them out into the farmyard, where she blew on her whistle and tugged on the protective glove. Almost instantly the falcon appeared, streaking down from an unseen height to settle upon Kate’s wrist.