The Mysterious Benedict Society and the Riddle of Ages Read online

  And just like that, the Society was reconvened.

  As many things seemed to do, the appearance of Constance Contraire—prodigious telepath, reluctant genius, accomplished composer of rude poetry—drew a gasp from Tai Li. In this case, the little boy was surprised by the way she looked. Over the last two days, as she had mentally guided him on his journey to Stonetown, Constance had kept him entertained by recounting the adventures of the Society. But in those tales, she had been very young—even younger than he was himself—and although he knew that years had passed since the dark days of the Society’s first mission, Tai’s only mental image of Constance was of the girl she’d portrayed herself to be back then: small, blond-haired, blue-eyed, and rather on the round side. Thus, the girl who appeared in the stairwell doorway looked nothing like the girl he’d been imagining. Tai had no doubt it was Constance, however—her crankiness was unmistakable—and he flew to her with an excited squeak.

  “Good grief, you’re filthy,” Constance muttered as he flung his arms around her, but nonetheless she gave him a good long squeeze.

  The current version of Constance was, to Tai, a fascinating hodgepodge of features: the bright blue eyes of her earlier years had changed, as young children’s blue eyes often do, and were now an indeterminate mixture of blue, green, and gray. Likewise had her wispy blond hair darkened into a light shade of brown, another common change, but in Constance’s case she had promptly begun to dye it extremely uncommon colors—it was currently a shoulder-length mop of scarlet. She was much taller than Tai, though much shorter than her friends, and much to his delight she was wearing a very baggy green plaid suit, which was quite familiar to him from her stories.

  “You’re wearing one of Mr. Benedict’s old suits!” he exclaimed, running around her to admire the outfit from all sides. “The kind you said he used to wear to keep him calm!”

  “Yes, well,” Constance said, holding out her hand to stop his circling, which was making her dizzy. “I’ve been in serious need of some calming lately. Number Two altered the size for me—as much as possible, anyway.”

  Tai could picture Number Two, that brusque young woman with her yellowish complexion, her affinity for yellow clothing, and her eraser-red hair. And he knew that, like Constance, Number Two was one of Mr. Benedict’s adopted daughters and that, like everyone else who’d been drawn into Mr. Benedict’s circle, she was uniquely talented. But he hadn’t realized that she knew how to use a sewing machine, and upon discovering this now, he gasped.

  Constance rolled her eyes. “Really?”

  “Is it working?” asked Tai, evidently immune to sarcasm. “Is the suit keeping you calm?”

  “Don’t I seem calm to you?”

  Tai frowned. “Maybe you should get a hat, too.”

  “Maybe I should.”

  During this exchange, the three older members of the Society were trading glances and shaking their heads. It seemed as though everything in the world were happening at once.

  “I don’t see how we’re ever going to get caught up,” Kate said. “Stick—sorry, George. Do we need to take care of this mess right now? Will the chemicals eat through the roof or anything?”

  “It can wait,” Sticky said. “Reynie and I should just secure the dangerous ones. The rest… Okay, why are you looking at me like that, Kate?”

  Kate put on an innocent expression. “Like what? Oh, sorry, it’s just that—I know I haven’t been away that long, but I’d already forgotten about your new spectacles. You look so stylish! To be honest, it’s kind of distracting.”

  “Oh, please,” Sticky said, grimacing. “Can we please not do this again?” He gave Reynie a warning look, but it did no good.

  “She’s right,” said Reynie with a serious air. He tilted his head to one side, then to the other. “They’re so perfect on you. Something about the symmetry, I think. It’s like you’re a magazine advertisement.”

  “I can’t help it!” Sticky said, feeling, as usual, a flustering combination of embarrassment and pleasure. Ever since he’d reverted to his bald, bespectacled look (abandoning the contact lenses and varying hairstyles of recent years), his friends had been unable to resist teasing him for being suddenly, noticeably handsome. Even now, they were sneaking amused glances at each other—or pretending to sneak glances, at any rate, for Sticky’s benefit, and after a moment he said, “You know I can see you doing that.”

  In the next moment the three of them were laughing. Even before the crisis of the last couple of days, there had been significant tension and no small degree of sadness among the three friends, the result of developing plans—Reynie’s, Sticky’s, and Kate’s alike—that had put a strain on their long-established, easy way with one another. This shared laughter came as a great relief to all of them. For the moment, it almost felt as if nothing had changed.

  “Is this not an emergency?” Constance snapped from the stairwell, and their laughter fell away. “Do we even have a plan?”

  “Of course we do!” Kate replied cheerfully. “We’re going to find a way to stop the Baker’s Dozen from breaking out Mr. Curtain!”

  “Without, you know, getting hurt by them in the process,” Sticky put in.

  “Definitely,” said Reynie. “That’s definitely an important part of the plan.”

  Constance stared. “And that’s it?”

  “Well, we need to sort out the details,” Kate admitted, “which we can do over lunch!”

  It was decided that Kate would hustle down to the kitchen while Sticky and Reynie carried the chemicals to the basement lab (or the “Blab,” as Kate insisted on calling it, though the term had yet to catch on). Constance, grudgingly accepting a forehead kiss from Kate, also grudgingly agreed to help Tai wash his hands.

  “After we eat,” Kate informed Tai, “you’ll be taking a bath. Maybe two baths.”

  “Okay!” Tai cried, as if nothing sounded more wonderful than two baths. He pointed at Kate’s parachute, snagged on the broken railing and fluttering in the breeze. “But don’t you need to put your thing away?”

  “I’ll do that after lunch, too,” Kate said with a wink. “Maybe we’ll all clean up while you’re cleaning up.”

  Tai giggled, then grew serious again. “But what if someone sees it?”

  With a raised eyebrow, Kate looked at Constance.

  “He knows we’re keeping a low profile,” Constance said.

  “It’s supposed to just look like Captain Plugg is staying here,” Tai said. “That’s what Constance told me.”

  Kate plucked at his chin. “That’s right. You’re very smart to be so careful. Don’t worry; nobody can see up here to this patio. We made sure of that long ago.”

  “Great,” said Tai, beaming from the compliment. “Can we go down the same way I came up? That was fun!”

  “For you,” Constance grumbled.

  “You two go ahead,” said Kate, gesturing at the platform, where Sticky and Reynie were now waiting with their beakers. “I’ll take the stairs.”

  Approximately two seconds later, already on the third floor, Kate could hear the rattling of the platform machinery kicking into gear. With a quick window peek to verify that her falcon, Madge, had settled onto a favorite branch in the elm tree, Kate slid down the stairway banister (polished smooth from countless previous slides) and landed at a run. Above her the platform was just settling into place, and as she disappeared down the long hallway, Kate heard Tai asking if they could do it again.

  The dining room, situated on the second floor of Mr. Benedict’s house, had never been tidy. Like all the other rooms in the house, its walls were lined with cluttered bookshelves, and in order to sit at the long table, or in any other available chair, one usually had to move a newspaper or book. Yet the room’s present state of disarray was such that Kate, on her way into the kitchen, felt compelled to stop and take it all in. The magnitude of the mess was remarkable, for sure, but what froze Kate in her tracks, and caught at her heart, was the nature of the mess: the multitude of dirty dishes on the table, the forgotten reading glasses on an open newspaper, the abandoned needlework in the corner easy chair—all signs of a happy, busy day, suddenly and alarmingly interrupted.

  Given what she’d been told and what she saw before her now, Kate’s mind had no trouble conjuring the scene. Most of their community of family and friends would have been in this room when news of the breakout reached them, for though Sticky and his parents lived in the house across the street, and the Perumal family (Reynie and his mother and grandmother) had their own quarters downstairs, as a general practice everyone converged here to take their midday meal together. Moocho Brazos, the former circus strongman and much-admired cook, always prepared something delicious (he had rooms in the basement, as did Kate and her father, Milligan), and the wonderful aromas emanating from the kitchen signaled the approach of hubbub and laughter as surely as any clock could. So it had been for years now.

  And yet change had been in the air lately, as unmistakable as the scent of Moocho’s baked apple pies, though not as sweet. “Bittersweet” was the word for it. Reynie had joked some time ago that perhaps they should acquire a taste for the bittersweet. But it was not a taste easily acquired. When Rhonda Kazembe had moved out, for instance, everyone was happy for her: She’d married a charming physicist and seemed delighted about the development. The couple were moving to a different city, where they both had excellent job opportunities at laboratories; they had plans to start a family. It was all good news, and Rhonda remained in close touch. Nonetheless, her departure had prompted many a tear, and her absence was still felt.

  And that had been just the beginning. There was much more in the works. It wasn’t long after Rhonda’s departure that Reynie had begun to receive those extraordinary university invitations, and then, even as they were all trying to make sense of this new development, Sticky had been offered something even more remarkable: a chance to direct—not just work at, but run—the most important chemistry lab in the country. The position would be open in the fall. If Sticky took it, he would be, not surprisingly, the youngest person ever to have held it. He would make history.

  Kate’s own aspiration, meanwhile, was by its nature not the sort of thing to make headlines. Her success could never be measured by fame, for her plan was to become—like her father before her—a secret agent. Not just any secret agent, either, but a top special agent in Milligan’s own agency. She was already well on her way.

  All these new possibilities, so pleasing to contemplate on their own, had sent everyone’s minds spinning, for every possibility came at a cost. Even a single departure spelled the end of the Society as they had known it, and each of its members felt a kind of horror at the prospect of being the first to open the door—the one responsible for ending what they had.

  But all consideration of what might be coming next had been rudely interrupted two days earlier, when bad news arrived in this very room. The impossible had happened. The infamous villains known as the Ten Men (so called for their reputation of having ten ways to hurt you) had been broken out of the Citadel in Brig City. Kate and Milligan, who had been away on an intelligence-gathering mission, got the word first: Thirteen Ten Men, current whereabouts unknown, but certainly headed for Stonetown.

  “That’s a bad baker’s dozen,” Kate had muttered grimly, and thus was the moniker born.

  She’d known at once who was behind the breakout. The fact that several top agents in the Stonetown area had been ambushed in recent months, sending every one of them to a high-security hospital, was the reason she and Milligan had gone to do their sleuthing in the first place. Those ambushes had been executed by the last two uncaptured Ten Men, the notoriously elusive Katz brothers. (The brothers’ gift for always smelling a trap, and always avoiding it, had led to their being nicknamed—by Kate, of course—the Scaredy Katz.) It was the Scaredy Katz, naturally, who had just freed the other Ten Men.

  But how? The brothers had never engaged in risky confrontations before. Instead they’d been known to be secretively looking for someone—they had been at it for years—but exactly whom had remained a mystery.

  After the ambushes started, that mystery was what Kate and Milligan had gone to investigate. They had just hit upon a kind of answer, too, when they learned of the Scaredy Katz’s mystifyingly successful breakout operation at the Citadel. The agent reporting to Milligan could relay only a single, tantalizing clue: Some guards swore they had counted fourteen figures fleeing the site. Fourteen, not thirteen. (The rest of the guards had all been unconscious and could not confirm.)

  “Regardless,” Kate had said to Milligan, “if they’re headed to Stonetown, we know what they’re planning to do.”

  “I’d have to agree with you there, Katie-Cat,” her father had replied. They hadn’t even needed to say it out loud.

  The Ten Men’s plan, no doubt, would be to infiltrate Stonetown’s brand-new, maximum-security facility and break out its only current prisoner: the most dangerous genius in history, their former employer, Ledroptha Curtain. With Mr. Curtain free again, the threat of the Baker’s Dozen would be magnified exponentially. Their unique talent for violence paired with his terrible brilliance had once almost changed the world.

  Almost. That word pertained only thanks to the Society, and therefore the Baker’s Dozen probably also had revenge in mind. They were Ten Men, after all. They wouldn’t have taken kindly to the role Mr. Benedict and his associates played in their capture.

  What troubled Kate and Milligan most, however, was that the Ten Men knew about Constance. A telepath—especially one who hated them—might well endanger their future schemes. The Baker’s Dozen would surely make it a priority to eliminate any such threat.

  Milligan had radioed Mr. Benedict’s house.

  “It’s happened,” he’d said to Number Two. “Less than an hour ago. Waste no time.”

  And just like that, the meal was over. Life as they had known it was over, and whether it would ever be the same again—or even close—would depend on what happened next.

  Kate took one last look around at the mess, at the evidence of the life they’d been living. Then she moved on to the kitchen. It was not at all her style to leave dirty dishes on the table. But these she would leave just a little bit longer.

  A few minutes later, on Kate’s suggestion, the Society members and young Tai Li carried their sandwiches down the hall to the sitting room, where the untidiness was more typical and therefore less depressing. On the contrary, the familiarity of the room was a comfort. The piano in the corner, the grandfather clock, and the giant globe, now long outdated, sat exactly where they had on the first day the Society members set foot inside this room, the very same day they had met one another. The books on the crowded bookshelves were the same books; the same paintings hung on the walls. One painting was of an observatory, the other of a boy on a bluff. Both featured starry skies—and both, Mr. Benedict had told them, were the work of a childhood friend. The sitting room was a kind of history itself, a history of new friendships and lasting ones alike.

  Tai Li admired everything, exclaiming at the piano, spinning the globe, pointing up at the paintings, which fortunately were out of reach of his fingers. “I can see the Big Dipper in that one!” he declared. “It’s the consultation in the sky above the boy!”

  “Well, it’s Orion,” Sticky corrected gently, “but you’re right that it’s a constellation, whereas the Big Dipper, strictly speaking, is what we call an asterism, which—”

  “I can see Orion!” Tai cried, looking over his shoulder at Constance for approval.

  “Nice work,” Constance mumbled wearily as she settled onto the rug.

  The others joined her. They were all hungry, and for a minute or so there was scant talking and a great deal of chewing. The sandwiches were variously loaded with vegetables, cheeses, lunch meats, and condiments—each according to the taste of the person for whom Kate had assembled it (for Tai she’d taken a successful gamble on peanut butter and jelly)—and after noting the others’ differing compliments and expressions of thanks, Tai realized that something extraordinary seemed to have occurred in the time it had taken him to wash his hands.

  “Kake,” he said (meaning to say “Kate,” but with a mouthful of peanut butter), “were these sankwiches already make?”

  “No, and thank goodness,” Kate replied. “The kitchen was a nightmare. I wouldn’t have eaten anything prepared in there, not until I’d gotten the place cleaned up first.” (At this Tai’s eyes grew huge, and he swiveled them around to see if anyone else was astonished that Kate had done so much so quickly. No one seemed to be.)

  “How in the world did it get that bad?” Kate pressed, likewise looking around at the others. “I know things have been crazy since the evacuation, but that doesn’t account for what I just saw in there. Do you realize there was a spoon stuck to the outside of the refrigerator? The outside!”

  Reynie and Sticky glanced at Constance, then glanced away again and shrugged. Now was not the time to engage in a blame battle. The truth was they hadn’t even seen Constance the last two days—she’d been holed up in her room, and they’d been too busy dealing with the present crisis to try and draw her out. The mounting mess in the kitchen, evidence of her nighttime raids, had actually been a source of reassurance. Yes, it was annoying to find globs of jelly in the silverware drawer, empty ice-cream cartons in the cupboard, and the floor so mysteriously sticky it almost pulled one’s shoes off. But at least they knew Constance was alive and eating.

  “Never mind,” said Kate, who could guess the answer easily enough. “Let’s get up to speed. I have things to tell you, but I want to hear more about how it all went down here when the news hit. And of course we need to hear about this.” Kate waved her sandwich in the direction of Constance and Tai, who were sitting next to each other on the floor. (They were all on the floor, in fact, for it was the Society’s long-established custom to begin serious discussions at ground level, and seated in a circle.)