The Mysterious Benedict Society and the Prisoner's Dilemma Page 24

  Completely off balance, Crawlings couldn’t keep from staggering backward. But when he came to the wall he managed to fling his legs out, bracing his heels against it, and dropping the radio he caught awkwardly at the window ledge with his hands. He snarled at the boys, who were anxiously dragging Constance out of harm’s way. For some reason she looked quite ill, but all Crawlings could think about was getting loose—getting loose and getting even—without being yanked out the window. He couldn’t get at the rope without letting go of the ledge.

  Kate, meanwhile, had snatched up his radio. “We’ll be taking this,” she told him as she hurried to the door, “and your briefcase. You won’t be needing them, you know, since you’re all tied up at the moment!” And cutting Crawlings off in mid-curse, she closed the door and locked it.

  “That was pretty lame, Kate,” said Sticky, already picking up the briefcase.

  “I had to say something, didn’t I? Hey, what’s wrong with Constance?”

  “Carry her, will you?” Reynie said with a worried look. “I’ll take the radio. We can talk while we run.”

  At the end of the corridor they hid the briefcase in a closet (it was too heavy to keep carrying), then sent the elevator up to the fourth floor and slipped into the stairwell. Their hope—indeed their plan—was that when Crawlings finally got free he would try to recapture them himself, since reporting their escape would be humiliating. Even if he wasn’t fooled by the elevator trick, he would probably search for the children in all the wrong places, because the children were going to the last place he would expect—straight to Mr. Curtain.

  As they hurried down the stairs, Reynie whispered, “I think you saved us, Constance. I don’t think he was going to fall for it.”

  Constance, clinging weakly to Kate’s back, managed the faintest flicker of a smile. “I didn’t even mean to,” she muttered. “I just saw that he looked suspicious, and we so badly needed him to…” She groaned and put a hand to her head. “Oh, but I feel so sick! I feel horrible!”

  The others exchanged worried looks, and Sticky whispered, “Do you think she can manage it now? Should we try something else?”

  “But what else can we try?” said Kate.

  Just then McCracken’s voice came over the radio announcing that the van had arrived at the access road and would be at the gate in five minutes.

  “I can do it,” Constance moaned, resting her head against Kate’s shoulder. “I have to do it.”

  “We don’t have much choice,” Reynie said after a moment’s deliberation. “It’s now or never. Hang in there, Constance!”

  Mr. Curtain was expecting word from McCracken any minute when he heard a suspicious noise in the next room. It was a surreptitious, scraping sound—the sound of someone taking something quietly from a shelf. “Crawlings!” he roared, rocketing out into the corridor. “You have no business—” He screeched to a halt in the neighboring doorway, staring in disbelief.

  Four guilty faces stared back at him. Kate had frozen in the process of belting her bucket to her hip. The other three were crouched in the corner, where the Whisperer had been before he and Hertz moved it to his hidden staging room. All of them looked as if they’d been caught stealing from a cookie jar.

  “Snakes and dogs!” Mr. Curtain bellowed. “You? Here? Now? Where is Crawlings? No, never mind—I haven’t time for this!” He leaped from the wheelchair and reached into his suit coat.

  “We’re sorry!” Reynie cried. “Please don’t punish us! We’ll do whatever you say—you don’t have to get the gloves out!”

  “Oh, you will be punished!” Mr. Curtain snarled, but then he hesitated. He cocked his head, listening—he had left the radio in the other room—and after considering for the briefest of moments he snapped, “It will have to wait until later, however. Come with me at once!”

  The children obeyed and soon were in the other room, sitting compliantly in a corner where Mr. Curtain could see them. Grumbling and glaring, he wheeled back and forth between different computers, making minute adjustments and checking readouts. Computer code no longer streamed across the four monitors; he seemed to have finished whatever he’d been doing before.

  “Your timing couldn’t be worse,” Mr. Curtain said, shooting the children an icy look. “But no doubt you planned it that way. Somehow you knew the building was empty. What better time to steal your ridiculous bucket back?”

  “It isn’t stealing,” Kate began, “not if—”

  “Do not speak to me!” shouted Mr. Curtain, suddenly looming over Kate like a thundercloud. “Speak to me again and face the consequences! One day you will learn to hold your tongue, Miss Wetherall! Now give me that bucket—there must be something important inside for you to have taken such a chance retrieving it.”

  Kate had no choice, and Mr. Curtain was rummaging through the bucket, muttering irritably to himself, when McCracken’s voice sounded over the radio: “Mr. Curtain, the van has arrived at the gate. The driver appears to be a red-haired man with glasses. He has called out that his name is Mr. Rubicund.”

  Mr. Curtain shot over and snatched up the radio, smacking his lips. “Excellent! Very good, McCracken, very good indeed! Ask Mr. Rubicund to answer correctly the question he once missed as a student at my Institute, the question he was sent to the Waiting Room for missing. He’ll know what I mean.”

  “One moment,” McCracken said. “I’ll ask him now.”

  The older children were watching Constance out of the corners of their eyes. She appeared to be gazing intently at Mr. Curtain, but she was so pale and shaky she might have been slipping into a daze. After a moment her eyes widened and she whispered, “Something about energy waves produced by the acceleration or the oscill… oscill…”

  “Oscillation?” Sticky whispered frantically. “Energy waves produced by the acceleration or the oscillation of an electric charge?”

  Constance nodded. “What you said. But that’s just the question. I can’t…” She shook her head in despair. “I can’t see the answer…”

  “Electromagnetic radiation!” breathed Sticky. “That’s the answer, Constance—electromagnetic radiation!”

  Constance squeezed her eyes closed. Perspiration trickled down her pale cheeks.

  McCracken’s voice came over the radio again. “He says the answer to the question was electromagnetic radiation, Mr. Curtain. He says he still can’t believe he missed that one.”

  “Ha!” Mr. Curtain shouted, and he raised his fists in triumph. “That’s it! It really is Rubicund! You may open the gate, McCracken! Deliver everyone to the conference room immediately. I have one final adjustment to make, and then I shall be with them.”

  Mr. Curtain laughed again. Then, half-closing his eyes, he began snapping his fingers and jerking his wheelchair side to side as if dancing. After a moment Reynie realized he was dancing. He was humming a tune barely audible over the sound of the wheelchair’s rubber tires, which made sharp chirping noises against the floor, rather like the squeak of sneakers on a basketball court.

  With a final flourish—a somewhat awkward attempt to make ocean-wave motions with his arms—Mr. Curtain stopped and leered smugly at the children. “I am exulting,” he said, “for it is not every day that one’s plans, so painstakingly developed and so often delayed by resistance, finally, at long last, fall so perfectly into—”

  He was interrupted by a distant boom. He froze, listening. The boom was followed by a series of crashes and bangs. “What’s happening?” he whispered to himself.

  Kate couldn’t resist answering his question. “Gosh, Mr. Curtain,” she said, “maybe it’s just me, but I think it sounds kind of like your Ten Men are getting bushwhacked.”

  It took a moment for this comment to settle in Mr. Curtain’s brain. Then his eyes grew very wide, and he slowly turned to fix them on Constance, who was lying on the floor whimpering, too miserable even to gloat. “Contraire!” he gasped. “She… she…”

  “Read your mind?” Kate finished. “Yes, she di
d.”

  “And she… but she can’t possibly have…”

  “Given the answer to Mr. Benedict? If you say so.”

  Just then Mr. Curtain’s radio crackled, and into the room came the most wonderfully welcome sound in the world—the sound of Milligan’s voice. “Constance,” he shouted (for in the background was an incredible clamor of crashes and shouts), “you and the others stay where you are! I’m coming for you! I’ll be—” His voice cut off, giving way to static.

  Mr. Curtain, staring at the radio, began to pant rapidly like a puppy. Anyone else might have thought he was panicking, but Reynie understood he was trying to calm his surging emotions. He could not afford to fall asleep at this most inopportune of times. Slipping the radio inside his suit coat, he shot over to a computer and tapped a rapid sequence onto its keyboard. Then he spun his wheelchair about and barked, “Come with me!”

  “Sorry, but no,” Reynie said. “We’re going to do what Milligan said and stay where we are. You’re welcome to wait here with us if you’d like.”

  “I’m welcome to—” Mr. Curtain bit his lip, quivering with anger and considering what to do. His eyes were wild, but his voice seemed to regain its assurance as he said, “No, thank you, Reynard. I haven’t time for pleasantries. But I encourage you to enjoy the next few minutes—they are all you have.” His wheelchair zipped to the doorway, where he paused for a final word without bothering to look back at them. “Oh, you should be aware that I have engaged a defense mechanism. If anyone attempts to disable or destroy my computers, they will explode. Miss Contraire can verify that I am telling the truth.”

  With that Mr. Curtain shot silently away.

  The children exhaled with relief, but they were still much too frightened to congratulate one another, for they had no idea who was winning the battle that raged outside. Kate retrieved her bucket, which Mr. Curtain had left behind, and Reynie patted Constance, who still lay curled up on the floor. Otherwise all they could do was wait and hope.

  A long minute passed, during which they continued to hear strange cries and noises from beyond the walls, before Constance opened her eyes and said, “Milligan’s coming down the corridor!”

  They were still cheering when Milligan burst into the room. His jacket was torn and his face was streaked with dirt and sweat—but he seemed in good shape and even better spirits. “Kate!” he cried, laughing and sweeping her up. “Oh, how glad I am to see you’re all right—that all of you are! Except, is Constance—?” He went to kneel beside the miserable girl.

  “I’ll be okay,” Constance muttered with her eyes closed, “if you’ll just stop talking.”

  Milligan smiled. “You did very well,” he whispered. “Mr. Benedict understood everything perfectly. And now I am going to get you out of here.” He glanced quickly around the room. “We had better wreck these computers first.”

  The children hastily intervened, explaining what Mr. Curtain had done.

  “That figures,” Milligan said. “He still hopes to use the Whisperer against us. We need to move now.”

  “Crawlings is down the hall!” Constance suddenly announced. “He’s getting off the elevator!”

  “How far is that, Kate?” Milligan muttered. He reached into his back pocket and took out a pair of rubber gloves.

  “Sixty feet,” Kate hissed, watching him with concern. “Um, shouldn’t you be getting out your tranquilizer gun?”

  “It’s jammed,” Milligan said, putting on the gloves. “I took an awkward hit. My radio’s busted, too. Now go stand against the wall, please. Everything’s going to be fine.”

  The children ran to the wall just as Crawlings’s head appeared in the doorway. It only flickered there for an instant—a shiny pate, a single eyebrow—and then the doorway stood empty again. But in that instant Crawlings had perceived that Milligan was unarmed—indeed, Milligan had his hands up to demonstrate this—and when he reappeared his arms were extended and his silver shockwatches gleamed under the fluorescent lights.

  Everything happened in a flash: a whiff of cologne, an electric hum, two wires streaking from Crawlings’s watches. In the same instant Milligan made blindingly quick snatching motions in the air before him, and then he stood grasping the wires, one in each gloved hand, like a chariot driver holding the reins. Even before Crawlings could look shocked, Milligan had yanked him across the room. Then Crawlings did look shocked (indeed the bristly hairs of his eyebrow all stood on end), and Milligan lowered the unconscious Ten Man to the floor.

  The children were beside themselves with amazement.

  “Nice trick!” Kate cried, dancing up and down.

  “You liked that?” Milligan said. “All right, everyone, time to go.”

  “You grabbed the wires!” Sticky said, as if Milligan himself didn’t know what he’d done, and Reynie nodded excitedly in agreement. “You—you grabbed them, Milligan!”

  “So I noticed,” Milligan said. “And as I may have to do it again, Kate had better carry Constance. Let’s get moving now. Oh, and brace yourselves—I’m afraid things are about to get dangerous.”

  Milligan intended to take them out through the prison gate, but not until it was safer. At the moment, he said, a battle was raging there between his sentries Hardy and Gristle and at least two Ten Men, possibly more. “It depends on how many McCracken dispatched to come after me,” he said with a wry smile. “I guess we’ll soon find out his opinion of my skills.”

  Leaning out the doorway, Milligan looked both ways, sniffed the air, then motioned for them to follow him. The children hurried out into the long corridor, where Milligan, having made some private decision, began walking in the direction opposite the elevator.

  “Where are we going?” Kate whispered as they followed after him.

  “Away from that room,” Milligan replied. “The Ten Men will have heard me on the radio telling you to stay put, and by now Mr. Curtain has informed them where you were, so that’s where they’ll start their search. We don’t want to make it easy on them, do we?”

  “What about Mr. Benedict and the others?” Reynie asked, glancing apprehensively over his shoulder. “Where are they?”

  “Still in the van. Mr. Benedict fell asleep when the battle started. Don’t worry, he and the others are disguised as sentries, so the Ten Men probably won’t risk a direct assault on the van. And I have twenty more sentries on the way. With luck Hardy and Gristle can hold their own for a while, especially if most of the other Ten Men are out looking for me.”

  “You mean us,” Sticky gasped. He was suddenly having difficulty breathing. There was so much empty corridor behind them, and so many doors on either side, he hardly knew where to look. “We’re with you.”

  “That’s true,” Milligan admitted, leading them around a corner onto the next long corridor. “But we’ll stay on the move, and since they’ll have to spread out to search for us, I should be able to deal with them one at a…” He stopped, cocking his head to the side as if he’d noticed something amiss.

  Reynie, following his gaze, saw a door ahead that was very slightly ajar. Milligan glanced at Constance, who had just lifted her head from Kate’s shoulder with a look of confused suspicion. Her eyes were glassy and heavy-lidded, and her chin was shiny with drool, but her nose was wrinkled with distaste.

  “Hold on a second,” Milligan said. “My shoe’s untied.”

  Sticky instinctively looked down at Milligan’s boots, which appeared to be tightly laced. It was hard to get a good look, however, for Milligan was moving swiftly toward the door, and in the next instant had kicked it open and disappeared into the room. There was a shout, a thump, and—oddly—a thin twanging sound like a broken ukulele, and then Milligan reappeared carrying a briefcase.

  “That was Garrotte,” Milligan said, closing the door softly behind him. “He sends his regards.”

  Reynie needed a minute before he could hear Milligan over the sound of the blood roaring in his ears. When it had subsided a bit, he interrupted Milligan a
nd asked him to repeat himself.

  Milligan started over. Their plan, he said, would be to make a circuit through the building’s four wings, each of which would have four corridors that formed a rectangle. “We’ll work our way along the sides of each rectangle, do you see? Then we’ll move on to the next wing and do the same thing. It’s best not to backtrack—if Ten Men get on your trail they inevitably double up.”

  “Can’t we hide in there?” Reynie suggested, gesturing toward the door Milligan had just closed. “If Garrotte’s already down, wouldn’t it be safer…”

  Milligan shook his head. “The Ten Men make regular reports by radio. When Garrotte doesn’t call in, they’ll come running to this spot in full force.”

  “But how would they know to come here?” asked Sticky, who like Reynie much preferred the idea of holing up and waiting for reinforcements.

  “Their radios are equipped with tracking devices,” Milligan said. “Which, incidentally, is why I’m not using Garrotte’s.” He put his hands on the boys’ shoulders. “Listen, I know it would probably feel better to hide, but in this case the safest thing is to keep moving. Just concentrate on the plan, and we’ll be out of here before you know it. Are you ready, Kate?”

  “Sure, but will you just move Constance’s head to my other shoulder?” Kate said, wincing. “Her chin is starting to dig into my… Okay, that’s better. Ready!”

  With Milligan in the lead and Kate hard on his heels, the group continued down the corridor. The boys trailed some paces behind, looking constantly about and trying hard to focus on the plan. (“Rectangles,” Sticky whispered to himself, “rectangles, rectangles, rectangles.”) It was of course a very basic plan, hardly worth explaining, and Reynie felt sure Milligan had done so just to give them something less scary to think about. It probably did keep them both a little calmer. But Reynie still couldn’t help anxiously wondering how many more doorways might conceal Ten Men, and Sticky kept reaching up and briefly, lightly touching his spectacles, as if to reassure himself they were still there.