The Perilous Journey (7 page)

“Go,” Miss Perumal said, waving them toward the door. “But stay in the house, and remember what Rhonda told you.”

“And come back soon to eat,” Mrs. Washington said. “It will be a long day, and you’ll need your strength.”

“Those poor children,” said Miss Perumal’s mother. She meant to say it under her breath, but her voice carried after the children as they hurried from the room. “Oh, the poor, poor dears!”

The children sat in a circle on the floor of Constance Contraire’s bedroom. Around them were the piles of Constance’s laundry — some dirty and some clean — that they had shoved aside to make room for themselves. Clothes hung on the back of Constance’s miniature desk chair, too, and blankets and towels were draped haphazardly across her unmade bed. Given the state of her room, it would be no surprise to find her chest of drawers utterly empty; and under different circumstances one of the children would have made a point of checking, just to see. But right now, no one was in the mood to tease Constance about her disorderliness or anything else.

The window shade was drawn; the door was locked. They spoke in hushed tones, and every so often one of them checked the hallway for unwanted listeners. The secrecy of their discussion — and the anxiety and urgency that attended it — lent a strange feeling of familiarity to the scene, for only a year had passed since the Mysterious Benedict Society had held meetings just like this at the Institute. In the middle of their circle lay the sealed envelope. Reynie had put off opening it but hadn’t said why.

“He didn’t tell you anything more?” Reynie asked Constance, who evidently knew as little about Mr. Benedict’s trip as the others.

“Don’t you think I’d have said so if he had?” Constance snapped. “I’ve spent the whole morning crying, Reynie — ever since that stupid bird showed up. If I could think of some important fact, you know I’d tell you.”

“I know,” Reynie said gently. He was used to Constance and had a better way with her than the others did. “Now please don’t be upset, but can you tell me how the pigeon got here?”

Constance sniffled and swiped at her eyes. “There was a knock at the door, and when one of the guards went to open it, that box was on the doorstep. He didn’t see who left it, but one of the upstairs guards was watching through a window. She said it was a man in a suit. He was carrying a briefcase.”

“I knew it,” said Kate, curling her lip, and in a tone that implied considerable loathing she said, “A Ten Man.”

The others looked at her.

“A what?” Sticky asked.

“This was something I was going to tell you about. Do you remember Mr. Curtain’s Recruiters?”

Constance stared at Kate. “Do I
remember
them?” she said, her face darkening. “Hmm, let me think, Kate. Oh, wait! You mean like the men who tried to kidnap me — the ones who shot wires out of their watches, shocked the wits out of me, and stuffed me into a bag?”

“Exactly,” Kate said. “Those guys. Well, they’re still working for Mr. Curtain, only they aren’t called Recruiters anymore. Milligan and the other agents call them Ten Men.”

“Because they’re heartless?” asked Reynie, thinking of
The Wizard of Oz.

“Not Tin Men, Reynie.
Ten
Men. It’s true they’re heartless, though, and they’ve gotten even more dangerous. The agents call them Ten Men because they have ten different ways of hurting you.”

“Not just the shockwatches?” Sticky asked, cringing as if he didn’t really want to know.

“Apparently they’ve expanded their wardrobe,” Kate said.

Reynie was rubbing his chin. “If a Ten Man delivered the pigeon,” he mused, “then another Ten Man could be waiting at its roost. Mr. Curtain wouldn’t have to be there himself. They could just call him when the reply came. That means Mr. Curtain could be anywhere in the world — and wherever
he
is, that’s where Mr. Benedict and Number Two are.”

“I have a feeling you’re going somewhere with this,” Kate said.

“Not just me,” Reynie said. “All of us.”

“We’re going somewhere?” Sticky asked, confused.

“Okay, Reynie, why haven’t we opened the envelope yet?” Constance said. “Why have you been stalling?”

“Because I think we need to be resolved,” Reynie said, taking the envelope and staring at it intently. “Whatever Mr. Benedict has written in here could put us on his trail.” He looked up. “And I think we should follow it.”

“You mean actually go on the trip?” Sticky said, his eyes widening.

“By ourselves?” Kate said. She considered for perhaps half a second. “Okay, I’m in.”

Constance looked faintly hopeful. “You think we could actually find them?”

“It’s worth a shot,” Reynie said.

Sticky was polishing his spectacles now. Beads of sweat had appeared on his bald head. “It might be dangerous. You realize it might be dangerous, right?”

“Yes,” Reynie said. “But if we find them — or if we can just get close — we won’t do anything foolish. We’ll contact Rhonda and Milligan, and they can decide what to do.”

“What if we come across a Ten Man?” Constance asked.

“Don’t worry about that,” said Kate, with a dismissive wave of her hand. “We’ll just need to keep an eye out for suits and briefcases — and, you know, be prepared to run for our lives.”

“Thank you,” said Constance with a quaver in her voice. “That’s ever so comforting.”

“A Ten Man probably wouldn’t even notice us,” Reynie said. “Four children don’t exactly look like a rescue team, you know.”

“Well, I suppose
that’s
true,” Constance said in a somewhat stronger voice, and Reynie smiled encouragingly. He didn’t quite believe what he’d just said — he suspected at least some of Mr. Curtain’s henchmen would have heard about them. But Mr. Curtain, of all people, would hate to admit he’d been outsmarted by children, and it was possible he’d avoided mention of them. At any rate, Reynie thought it best to shore up Constance’s courage, for he could tell she intended to come along regardless.

Kate cracked her knuckles. “If we’re going to do this we need to get started. Four days, the letter said, and we may need every minute.”

“So what’s the plan?” Sticky asked, putting away his polishing cloth and resettling his spectacles.

“If we’re in agreement,” Reynie said, “we’ll go wherever these instructions lead us. Secretly, of course. The adults would never let us go now — not even if Rhonda and Milligan came with us.”

“Of course not,” said Kate. “We’ll have to sneak out.”

“Oh boy,” said Sticky, who hadn’t thought about this yet. “If a Ten Man doesn’t kill me, my parents surely will.”

Reynie grimaced, imagining how Miss Perumal would react when she discovered he’d gone. He quickly forced the image out of his mind (just as, moments before, he had forced away the image of a Ten Man seizing him in some far-off place where no one could protect him).

“Are we agreed, then?” Kate asked.

“Agreed,” said Constance and Reynie.

Sticky let out a deep breath. “Agreed.”

Everyone looked at the envelope then, wondering where in the world — and into what unknown dangers — it was to take them.

Reynie opened the envelope, took out two sheets of stationery, and began to read:

Dear friends,

I greet you from afar! By now I trust you’re enjoying one another’s company again. I’m very pleased to think of it.

Rhonda will have given you a few details concerning your trip. The rest are these: She and Milligan shall accompany you, but you should think of them as passengers and yourselves as pilots. It is you who must solve the clues that will bring us together again for our celebration. I know you are more than up to the challenge, and I do look forward to hearing stories from your journey.

That journey begins here, where the four of you are gathered. Your first steps should be in the direction that the riddle on the following page takes you. May your adventures bring you closer together, even as they take you far from home.

Warm regards,

Mr. Benedict

For a short time the children sat in silence. Now that they’d been given a moment to reflect upon it, they were deeply moved by Mr. Benedict’s gesture. He’d gone to a great deal of trouble to offer them something special. Little had he known that his own fate was about to take such a terrible turn, or that his gift would lead the children into danger. He would never want them to put themselves at risk — least of all on his account — which was one reason they cared enough about him to do so.

“Are you ready?” Reynie asked finally.

The others murmured their assent, adopting expressions of concentration as Reynie read the riddle aloud:

“Looking for something? Open me.

I’m sure that your something inside of me lies.

Of course you can always find hope in me

,

What’s sought, though, depends on the seeker —

One looks for bobbin; another, for beaker;

Others, for nature; still others, for nurture —

The quarry will vary from searcher to searcher.

And yet (I suspect this will strike you as strange),

My contents are set and will not ever change.

If you still cannot guess what I mean, here’s a clue:

The answer — what I mean — lies inside of me, too.”

“You must be kidding,” Kate said when Reynie had finished. “That’s the riddle? But it’s nonsense! Nothing can hold all those things!”

Reynie looked at her curiously. “It isn’t nonsense, Kate.”

“It’s impossible, is what it is,” said Constance, rolling her eyes. “I wouldn’t have thought I could feel angry at him — not right now — but did he really have to make it so hard? How are we supposed to help him?”

“It sounds like magic,” Sticky said in an awed tone. “After all, he wouldn’t give us an impossible riddle. Maybe the answer just
seems
impossible, but isn’t really! Like magic!”

Constance made a point of getting Sticky’s attention, then rolled her eyes again. “It isn’t magic, Sticky.”

Sticky glared at her. “Well, do you have a better idea? If it isn’t nonsense, and it isn’t impossible, and it isn’t magic —”

“It’s a dictionary,” Reynie said, standing up. “Now let’s go find it.”

When Kate had stopped smacking herself on the forehead; and Sticky had worked through the riddle aloud (“So ‘hope’ comes after ‘despair’ but before ‘surprise’ because the words are in alphabetical order! I get it!”); and Constance had rudely pointed out that the riddle had been solved already and didn’t require Sticky’s decoding; and Reynie had grabbed Sticky’s arm to prevent him from giving Constance a painful finger-thump on the head — when, in short, they were ready, the children developed their plan.

Mr. Benedict’s house, as they all knew perfectly well, contained more books than boards. Almost every available surface held stacks of books; almost every wall was lined with bookshelves. According to Sticky — who remembered the exact placement of every book in the house — there were seventeen dictionaries (twenty-six if you counted foreign languages), any one of which might contain the next clue. The children decided to start on the third floor, where Constance’s bedroom was located, and work their way downstairs if necessary.

The third floor consisted of three long hallways, a dozen rooms, and quite a few nooks and crannies — space enough for thousands of books, and searching for the dictionaries would have taken hopelessly long if not for Sticky. As it was, the children were able to move swiftly from shelf to shelf (and from coffee table to windowsill), examining one dictionary after another as Sticky pointed them out. In minutes they had looked at most of the dictionaries on the third floor — including the Greek, Latin, and Esperanto dictionaries in Mr. Benedict’s tiny room, which saddened them even to enter — but although they’d found lots of silverfish, a pretty silk bookmark (which Constance pocketed), and the definition of a Greek word Sticky had been meaning to look up, they came upon no clue.

“What about Number Two’s bedroom?” asked Kate.

“No dictionaries in there,” Sticky said. “Number Two told me she prefers to go find a dictionary when she needs one. Searching the shelves helps her remember where everything is.”

Constance was staring at Sticky as if he’d just said he liked to eat sawdust. “You two have conversations about dictionaries?”

“We used to,” Sticky said sadly. “I haven’t seen her in months, you know.” Then he realized Constance had been making fun of him. “It wouldn’t hurt
you
to look in a dictionary every now and then, Constance. Some new words might improve your rotten poetry.”

“My poems would sound
good
if your ears weren’t of
wood,
” Constance said.

“My ears,” Sticky said through gritted teeth, “are fine.”

“For whittling, maybe, your ears are well suited. For poetry, though —”

“Please don’t finish that, Constance,” interrupted Reynie. “We don’t need a rhyme attack right now. We need to find that dictionary.” To Sticky he made a private gesture that clearly meant “stay calm and ignore her.”

“I saw that,” Constance said, giving him a very cross look.

Reynie sighed.

Only one hallway on the third floor remained to be searched. They had put it off until last, for on that hallway lay the chamber that contained the Whisperer. Two guards were always posted at the chamber door, and the children had hoped to avoid speaking to anyone. But Sticky said two dictionaries were to be found there, so they were compelled to go look. Luckily there were none in the chamber itself, Sticky said, for as they all knew, no one was ever allowed in there without Mr. Benedict. (Reynie didn’t point out that Mr. Benedict wouldn’t have left the clue where they couldn’t possibly get to it, and he was relieved when it didn’t occur to Constance to say so.)