The Secret Keepers Read online

  “Is there space beneath the cabinet?” Jack asked.

  Mrs. Genevieve considered. “Yes, it is very large and stands high on its legs. Even a man of your size might crawl beneath it. One might even more easily crouch inside the fireplace, the largest I have seen. There is only the short iron fender to step over, not even as high as my knees.”

  She went on to relate how the Counselor finally entered through a second door and, without shaking hands or greeting her (she seemed particularly affronted by his lack of courtesy), sat down and began peppering her with questions. His men looked on silently, she said, one guarding each door, one standing against the wall to the right, and one before the fireplace.

  “Appointed positions?” Jack said. “They weren’t just standing here and there at random, I mean.”

  “No, no, this clearly was their routine. Just as they always walk and look in certain directions.”

  “Right, Reuben told us about that. I like that these guys are predictable, at least.…”

  It would have to be the cabinet, Reuben was thinking. He couldn’t risk bumping into the man standing in front of the fireplace. That was all right. The cabinet sounded easy enough. It sounded almost perfect, in fact.

  But only for fifteen minutes.

  “Fifteen minutes?” Penny hissed. “You only get fifteen minutes? And you’re only telling us this now?”

  The rumble of water filling the tub issued from beyond the bathroom door. Mrs. Genevieve, exhausted and shaken, had excused herself to take a warm bath. She would surely feel better afterward, she said, and could think more clearly.

  Reuben was avoiding Penny’s eyes, but he felt her scowling at him from the sofa.

  “First you didn’t tell me about the blindness,” she said tersely. “You kept it a secret until you had no choice. And now this business with the time limit! What else are you keeping from us, Reuben?” She threw her arms out in exasperation. “We’re supposed to be a team!”

  Reuben shifted uneasily in his chair and looked over at her. He’d wanted to tell her everything, had wanted to from the very beginning, but he was so used to holding on to his secrets.… No, it was more than that. The clock watch made him feel powerful—for the first time in his life, he actually felt special—and revealing his vulnerabilities might take away from that feeling. That was the truth, he realized. But the thought of explaining this to Penny made him feel even more vulnerable, and all he managed to offer her was an apologetic shrug.

  Penny’s scowl only deepened at this meager response, and Reuben averted his eyes again.

  He was surprised by how much her disappointment stung him. He’d always known that he was shy and, yes, a little bit sad, but he hadn’t realized he was lonely. Being around Penny, even for such a short time, had made him realize what he’d been missing. He hadn’t ever had a friend before, he thought. Not a real one.

  Reuben tried again. The words came with great difficulty, as if he were dragging them up and out of himself, like an anchor from the ocean. “We are a team,” he said, his voice husky and strange-sounding to his own ears. “Okay? We are. I’m sorry.”

  Penny raised her eyebrows. She looked at him steadily, clearly expecting more.

  “And just so you know, I also get tired,” Reuben said, clearing his throat nervously. “Using the watch wears me out. And that’s it. Now I’ve told you everything. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you all of it before.”

  Penny started to scowl again, then stopped and adopted an expression of concern, and finally uttered a little growl of frustration.

  Jack, who had been roaming the room studying the pictures on the walls, looked over his shoulder at Reuben, then at Penny. He raised one eyebrow and looked away again. “Don’t be mad at him, redbird. He was just being careful. Personally, I’m glad to know it. I wouldn’t want to be walking into this situation with a kid who didn’t take precautions. I’m not exactly excited about doing it with a kid who does.”

  Reuben closed his eyes. He felt queasy and wished he’d had something to eat other than sweet pastries. A simple slice of toast, for instance, warm and very lightly buttered. That’s what his mom would have given him on a morning he felt sick to his stomach. He could just see the look of concern on her face, and it made him feel even worse. He opened his eyes. He needed not to think about her right now.

  His mind returned to Mrs. Genevieve’s account of her visit with the Counselor. He had a feeling that something was hiding in the details, something that either would be of use to him or—if he couldn’t identify and make sense of it—would destroy his plan and deliver him right into the hands of The Smoke. Maybe he was just anxious, but he couldn’t shake the feeling. He thought over what Mrs. Genevieve had told them about the meeting, about the questions she was asked and the Counselor’s erratic behavior.

  At one point, dissatisfied with the watchmaker’s replies to his questions, the Counselor had abruptly taken his leave. With a glance at the clock on the wall—“a cuckoo clock, no less,” Mrs. Genevieve had said—he’d risen from his chair and informed her that he needed to consult with his employer. In his first gesture of courtesy, he’d waved brusquely at the telephone on his desk and told her she could use it if she needed to. He would be making his own call on a separate line, he said, and would likely be some time in returning.

  Mrs. Genevieve was left alone once more. She had no one to call, however, and nothing to do but anxiously wait. At length she rose and examined the cuckoo clock, which was an exquisite antique and no doubt worth a fortune but was covered with dust and cobwebs. “I had no chance to see the cuckoo itself,” she’d said in a tone of real regret, “for the Counselor returned just before the hour, and I was quickly given my unpleasant instructions and dismissed.”

  Reuben found himself fixating on that unseen cuckoo. He had always been fascinated by cuckoo clocks. He’d never seen one in real life, only in cartoons. There was something so appealing about the thought of that little bird hidden away. The mystery of it. The tantalizing notion that you could see it if you were present at the right time. But even then you would get only a glance. The bird would hide away again.

  As a very young boy, Reuben had actually wanted to be such a bird. He had daydreamed about it, imagining the hiding place that the bird called home. It was mysterious, yes, but cozy, safe. And the bird had an important purpose. Part of it was public—to announce the hour to the outside world—and part of it was private—to hide away and wait.

  To hide away and wait was exactly what was going to be required of him now, Reuben thought. To hide away and wait, and then to spring into action. Jack, meanwhile, had gone to the sofa and sat down next to Penny. He put an arm over her shoulders. “You know you can’t lie to save your life, right? Better just keep quiet about the kid’s role in this. Mrs. Genevieve’s going to be nervous enough. She obviously loves him, and she’s afraid for herself, too. You’re good at cheering people up, so just focus on that.”

  “I didn’t know we were going to lie to her,” Penny said defensively. She sighed. “But you’re right, I’m terrible at it. I’ll just try to talk about clocks, I guess. They certainly seem to make her happy.” She lifted her eyes to Jack’s. “You’re sure I shouldn’t go with you?”

  “Not this time, ladybug,” Jack said. “You’d be putting yourself in danger for no reason. Imagine explaining that to Mom and Dad.”

  Penny’s face crumpled a little. She threw her arm across Jack’s chest and leaned into him, letting her hair spill over her face. She was either crying or trying hard not to. “Mrs. Genevieve isn’t the only one who’s going to be worried, you know,” she murmured from behind her hair. “What if they figure out what you’re up to? Or what if you run into that creepy man from the train?”

  Jack squeezed her. “I’m not worried about some weaselly guy in an outdated suit, Penny.”

  Mrs. Genevieve came into the room as Jack was speaking. She still looked tired, but a fresher sort of tired, with scrubbed cheeks and damp hair. Sh
e wore a blue summer sweater that made her eyes stand out even more than usual. “Who is this person you are speaking of?”

  “The man I called—that number from the newspaper ad,” Reuben told her. “He saw me on the train, on my way out of New Umbra. We had an… unpleasant encounter. He was as creepy in person as he sounded on the phone.”

  “And just now you are telling me this? Was he following you, this man?”

  “No, it was just bad luck. We were on the same subway car, and I was nervous, and I checked my watch to make sure it was set right—kind of, you know, trying to hide it at the same time. I think he noticed.”

  Penny had shifted to look at Reuben, squinting in concentration. “That’s something I’ve been wondering about. If he didn’t actually see the watch, how would he know you had it?”

  “Good question,” Reuben said. “It’s funny. It wasn’t clear to me at the time; I just knew. But now I think he knew what I was doing because he used to do the same thing. I didn’t say so earlier, Penny, but when you told me about Penelope, you mentioned that she kept sort of slyly checking her watch. Well, I knew what she was up to the moment you said it. It’s like what she wrote in her letter—a person who has one of the clock watches will understand the habits of whoever has the other one. The way that man looked at me, the way he acted, it was obvious he knew what I had.”

  “Why does this get worse?” Mrs. Genevieve asked no one in particular. She was looking at the ceiling, shaking her head.

  “Chances are we’ll never see him,” Jack said with a reassuring glance at Penny. “Like the kid said, it was a coincidence. And anyway, if the guy used to have one of these watches, that means he couldn’t even hang on to his most valuable possession. Doesn’t sound like much of a threat to me. Who loses something like that?”

  “It might have been stolen from him,” Penny said. “That’s probably what always happens, don’t you think? Some nasty person finds out about the watch, then does whatever it takes to get his hands on it.”

  “That isn’t how I got it,” Reuben pointed out. “I found it. Someone hid it and then never came back for it.” He thought back to that morning, high up on the ledge, noticing the pouch strap. It would have been so easy to overlook. And everything would have been different then. Instead, he had tugged on that strap and pulled out his future.

  “It was in a plastic bread sack,” he reflected. “How long have those been around, anyway?”

  “Forty or fifty years, perhaps,” Mrs. Genevieve said after considering a moment. “Reuben, where is it that you found this watch?”

  Reuben hesitated. The others looked at him expectantly. He saw Penny narrowing her eyes, daring him to be evasive again. “In the Lower Downs,” he made himself say. “In an alley.”

  Mrs. Genevieve did not look surprised. Reuben wondered if she had already suspected that he was from the Lower Downs. She knew he wasn’t from her own neighborhood, at any rate, and had probably guessed that he was poorer than most.

  “Do you know,” Mrs. Genevieve said thoughtfully, “that I once lived in the Lower Downs myself? This is true!” she said in response to Reuben’s surprised expression. “Long ago, after my husband died, and I was for a time very poor. It was some years before I was able to open my shop here. But I tell you this because I have remembered something.

  “Everyone in the neighborhood knew about it,” she went on. “A madman who ran screaming through the streets one day, running as if being pursued.”

  “I’ve heard about that!” Reuben exclaimed. “People still talk about it. You actually lived there when it happened?”

  Mrs. Genevieve nodded. “He was thought a madman because he was so clearly alone. There was no one pursuing him, you understand. None, at least, that anyone could see. Until now I was like everyone else—it never occurred to me that he might actually have been pursued.”

  “The Smoke,” Penny whispered, exchanging glances with Reuben and Jack.

  The man had run in a crouch, Mrs. Genevieve explained, as if cowering from an expected blow, and was screaming at his unseen pursuer to leave him alone. “I don’t have it! I don’t have it! Leave me be!” He would disappear behind buildings, and everyone would think that he had gone for good, but then he would reappear, ranting and screaming as before. From one alley he emerged limping badly, which later led some of the older neighborhood children (hoping to scare the younger ones) to insist that he’d been bitten by an invisible dog, that it was this dog that had been chasing him.

  “They tried to convince the little ones that the dog was still on the loose,” Mrs. Genevieve recalled. “If you went down the wrong alley, they said, this invisible dog would bite you!”

  He hurt his leg because he fell, Reuben was thinking. He thought he was being hunted—and maybe he was, though maybe the fear just got to him. So he climbed up to that ledge and hid the watch, then fell on his way down.…

  Eventually the police cornered the man and took him into custody, Mrs. Genevieve said. They were trying to help him, but he resisted, fighting furiously and hurting one of the officers, which made things worse for him. He began to deny crimes that no one had accused him of. His fingerprints were taken, and to everyone’s surprise they matched those of a notorious cat burglar, a thief who had been stealing jewelry and money for years. The cat burglar had never been seen, not even glimpsed, despite the fact that many of the places he’d burglarized were well guarded. The man went to prison.

  “He must have gotten out, then,” Reuben said. “That’s surely who I saw on the train.”

  Mrs. Genevieve wrinkled her brow. “I do not think so. That man died soon after going to prison. I heard at first that it was a heart attack, and later that he took his own life. I don’t know which is the truth, but he most certainly died. Everyone knew of this.”

  “I did suggest the possibility,” Jack said to Mrs. Genevieve, “that the man on the train was just a creepy weirdo who sounded like the guy on the phone. But the kid says no.”

  “It was absolutely the same person,” Reuben said.

  “Maybe the man on the train had the watch first,” suggested Penny. “Before the cat burglar did.”

  Reuben shot her a grateful look. “Yes! That would explain it. He had the watch when he was a young man—or maybe even a boy—but then he lost it, or the next guy, the cat burglar, stole it from him, and he’s been looking for it ever since.”

  “Just like The Smoke,” Jack said with a sharp nod. “Okay, here’s what I think happened: The Smoke figures out the cat burglar is his twin hunter—to use Penelope’s words—and starts hunting him. He comes close, too, maybe lots of times, and the cat burglar becomes a paranoid mess. He stops sleeping, never stays in one place, constantly looks over his shoulder, until finally he just snaps and gets himself arrested. He doesn’t have the watch on him, but The Smoke knows that he had it before, which means the guy must have hidden it somewhere in the city. So The Smoke’s been searching high and low for it ever since—just like this weird bird on the train.”

  Reuben and Penny were nodding. It made sense to them, too.

  “Such a man as this one on the train,” Mrs. Genevieve said darkly, “a man who has been obsessed for so long—he could be very dangerous as well. And now that he has seen you, Reuben, he will be searching for you.”

  “Such a man as this one on the train,” Mrs. Genevieve said darkly, “a man who has been obsessed for so long—he could be very dangerous as well.”

  “He can join the club,” Jack said. “Who isn’t looking for this kid now?”

  “Jack!” Penny scolded. “This is serious. What if you do run into him?”

  “Okay, take it easy, redbird,” Jack said more soberly. “I’m not worried about this joker, but I’m not going to be careless, either. We’ll be fine.”

  Mrs. Genevieve clicked her teeth together. “I do not like it! I do not like knowing of this man. All his life he looks for this watch? Does he do nothing else? Does he care for nothing else? Only this desire
for power, this… this ridiculous belief that a thing which makes you seem like nothing actually makes you special? It is twisted, this thinking!”

  Reuben, excusing himself, went into the bathroom.

  He stood looking at himself in the mirror. His cheeks were as red as they felt. He splashed cold water on them. What was it he was feeling? Anger? Shame? He honestly couldn’t tell. What reason did he have to feel either? Fear, certainly—he did feel afraid. But it was about more than sneaking into the Counselor’s mansion. He thought of that long-ago cat burglar running like a madman through the streets. And of the obsessed man on the train, of his voice on the phone. The years and years of advertisements in all the newspapers. Mrs. Genevieve was disturbed by the mere thought of such obsession.

  And what disturbed Reuben, thinking of her words, was that although they made sense to him, so, too, did the story of the cat burglar. Likewise the man on the train. The danger of having the watch could so easily make you crazy. He already felt a little crazy himself. But the thought of having it and then not having it? That seemed even crazier. Jack had wondered who could lose such an incredible thing, but to Reuben the bigger mystery was this: who would willingly give such a thing up?

  Reuben splashed more cold water on his face, dried off with a towel, and left the bathroom without looking in the mirror again.

  “You’re sure?” Jack was asking Mrs. Genevieve.

  “I wish I were not,” she replied. “But no, he will not interrupt his search for anything less.”

  “Makes sense,” Jack said, nodding. “If he’s this close to finding the watch after all these years. So he’s got everybody on the case, from the lowliest thug to the Counselor himself. Full throttle. Okay, then.” Something in his expression made him look like a boxer about to leave his corner. “Full throttle it is.”

  “I can’t bear this,” Penny said, covering her eyes, as if she were at that same imaginary boxing match and her brother about to be soundly beaten.