The Secret Keepers Read online

  Now he saw, in the opposite wall, another door.

  What Reuben discovered on the far side of that door he did not at first comprehend. When he did, he suddenly understood several other things, too. A man like The Smoke—one of the watch’s twin hunters—was not only searching all his life for the other watch. He also spent all his life being afraid that the other hunter would catch him unawares. Was it any wonder that the tension between longing and fear had such strange consequences?

  The Smoke had gone to a lot of trouble and expense. Reuben had never been in a jail, but he had seen plenty in old-time westerns he’d watched with his mom. He wondered if The Smoke had taken inspiration from the same movies. The steel bars rose from floor to ceiling. He took hold of two bars and pulled. It would take a bulldozer, he thought.

  The homemade jail was much larger than the ones in the old movies. It occupied almost the entire basement. It also had a bizarre feature: a fine black net, the sort used to catch tightrope walkers, had been strung a few feet above the floor. The net spanned the whole jail cell, its lead lines secured to the walls and the steel bars.

  And in the middle of the net was Reuben’s watch. The sight of it made him wobbly with relief. He held on to the bars to steady himself. It occurred to him that since the first moment he’d found the watch on that alley ledge, he had never been separated from it by so much as a room’s length.

  And in the middle of the net was Reuben’s watch.

  Soon Reuben began methodically testing the bars, taking care to pull on every single one of them. He wondered if he should be disturbed that such a weird scene made sense to him. For he had to admit that The Smoke’s logic seemed clear enough. If the other hunter came looking to steal The Smoke’s watch, he was also giving The Smoke a chance to steal his. Even if the intruder didn’t have the watch himself but had been hired by someone who did, he might have information that would lead The Smoke to the other watch. That was the reason for the net—to protect this captured intruder, to prevent him from knocking his head on the floor when the chute deposited him in this jail cell. The Smoke needed to be able to question him, after all. To bribe him, threaten him, trick him—whatever it took to get that other watch.

  All the steel bars were solid. Reuben glanced around for a key to the metal door, hoping that perhaps it hung on a nail nearby. Finding nothing, he yanked on the door. It rattled in its frame, but he could tell it would never budge. He eyed the bars of the jail cell. He turned sideways, gauging. The Smoke seemed to have thought of everything—except that the hunter might be a child.

  This was going to hurt, Reuben thought. Yet there was nothing for it but to try.

  His small boy’s body squeezed through with little problem. His head was a different matter, though. It felt like his ears would be stripped right off. He whimpered—he couldn’t help it—and tears started to his eyes. But then he was through. Just like that, he was in. He grabbed the edge of the taut net and hauled himself up onto it. With his arms at his sides, he rolled to the middle of the net, which sagged only slightly under his weight, and snatched up his watch.

  Reuben lay on his back, inspecting it. The metal of the watch felt greasy but was not even scratched; no, it was perfectly intact, including the watch key, which was still inserted. He polished the watch with his sweatshirt, held his breath, and pulled out on the winding key. The room went black. Never had he felt more grateful for darkness. He let his breath out in a rush. Everything was still in order.

  Reuben pushed in on the winding key. The ceiling reappeared above him. Now that he knew the watch was fine, he noticed something that, in his anxious hurry, he had overlooked before. There was not just a single opening in the ceiling, but several. At least a dozen. A dozen openings, a dozen chutes. The trapdoor in the hallway had been only the beginning. The entire mansion was a trap, designed to capture anyone who trespassed.

  Reuben thought of all the dream homes he and his mom had cooked up together. The Smoke had made his own dream home a reality. Only his dream was a very bad one indeed. His was a nightmare.

  Reuben crawled back to the bars and got down from the net. He didn’t give himself time to dread the pain but forced himself to squeeze through the bars again straightaway, whimpering again as he did so, tears once again springing to his eyes. Afterward he checked his ears, twice, to see if they were bleeding. Even if they had bled, though, he would have been in high spirits.

  He had his watch back. He had avoided the first trap, and now he knew about the others. He also knew that The Smoke had designed his homemade jail to hold a full-grown adult. It couldn’t hold a child.

  Reuben was smiling as he switched off the light and headed back upstairs. He had the advantage. The Smoke was never going to know what hit him.

  Reuben was looking for two things. The first was a safe. People who lived in mansions always had safes, at least in the movies. What better place for The Smoke to keep his watch when he wasn’t using it? If Reuben could find the safe, he might also be able to find a hiding place nearby, a vantage point from which to spy on The Smoke as he entered the combination.

  The other thing Reuben was looking for was a bathtub. The Smoke surely put the watch somewhere safe and dry when he bathed. Was it too much to hope for an antechamber, a little room outside the bathroom proper, where The Smoke might leave the watch temporarily unguarded?

  Reuben started with the cabinet in the first hallway. It did not contain a safe. There was a very old pair of soft-soled black shoes, a worn black overcoat, and two hooks. One of the hooks was empty. Hanging by a short strap from the other one was another miniature billy club, wrapped in black electrical tape, like the one Reuben had seen The Smoke put up his sleeve. He wondered how many night watchmen had awakened with headaches, with knots on the backs of their heads, to discover that the bank vault was empty or the jewelry store cleaned out. Or how many perceived enemies of The Smoke had suffered similar fates in their own homes, waking to a mystery and a note of warning.

  But such things would have happened many years ago, Reuben realized. The Smoke had long since run the city now. He no longer needed to steal paintings from museums or sneak into the homes of his enemies. He had the city under his thumb. All he had to do was keep up his weird charade as the Counselor. The Directions brought him whatever money he needed. He could spend all his time trying to find the other watch. And looking out for the other hunter.

  The cabinet doors had not been perfectly closed. Reuben was careful to leave them exactly as he’d found them. Now that he thought about it, the cabinet had been an unlikely place to find a safe. If he had a safe of his own, and he kept his watch in it, where would he want that safe to be? Somewhere close to him. A room that he spent most of his time in. His bedroom.

  That, really, was where he should begin his search. The Smoke’s bedroom. Reuben didn’t have time to inspect every nook and cranny in this whole mansion. He needed to be smart, check the most likely places first.

  The great oak doors at the end of the hallway opened onto a long, narrow dining room. Dusty paintings lined the walls. A dusty grandfather clock stood in the corner, not ticking. The beautiful old table, as dusty as everything else, was surrounded by beautiful dusty chairs. From the doorway, Reuben could just barely make it all out, with the light from the hall seeping in around him and casting his faint shadow on the floor. Should he cross the room on the table? Or was the floor safe? He needed better light to inspect the floorboards.

  The switch wasn’t by the door, where he would have expected to find it. It was a few feet in along the wall. He almost thought nothing of it. Then he reminded himself that he should be wary of anything out of the ordinary. He tested the floor. It seemed sturdy enough. He peered at the wall and noticed a discolored spot in the plaster where he’d expected the light switch to be. Had the original switch been moved?

  Clinging to the doorframe, Reuben leaned into the room, his arm outstretched. He flipped the switch and quickly pulled back. A few lights flickered
on in the chandelier over the dining room table. Nothing else happened. He was about to step into the room when he heard a barely discernible whirring sound, accompanied by an intermittent clicking, as if there were beetles under the floorboards.

  Directly beneath the light switch, a trapdoor fell open with a bang. Reuben gaped at the opening in the floor, his pulse racing. He shook his head, first in amazement, then with a rising sense of—well, what exactly was he feeling? Joy? If not joy, then something close to it. A kind of amused thrill. This was like a big game, and The Smoke was losing. The trapdoor needed maintenance. There should have been no delay between the throwing of the switch and the opening of the door.

  But even if Reuben had fallen through, even if he had plummeted down the chute and into The Smoke’s homemade dungeon, he could have squeezed out through those bars again, just as he’d already done. The traps were scary, but they posed no real danger to him. He even wondered if sliding down one of the chutes might not be fun.

  He leaned in and threw the switch again. Gears clanked loudly as the trapdoor rose back into place. No, the only thing Reuben had to worry about now was time. The mansion was big, and his cautious exploration would be slow. He’d better not waste a moment.

  Beyond the dining room lay another hallway lit by fake candles in sconces. He had decided earlier that the candles’ weak, flickering light helped mask irregularities in the floorboards. But in this hallway not much of the wooden floor was visible. A faded carpet runner depicting scenes of an old English fox hunt ran the length of it, all the way to another set of grand old doors. There were also a couple of doors opening off the hallway to the left and right. No long table, just a few odd pieces of furniture here and there—a simple straight-backed wooden chair; a low set of shelves displaying china plates on stands; a larger, upholstered chair; and a wooden footstool that looked as if it went with the chair but had been moved away from it.

  Reuben didn’t trust the carpet runner. It could easily cover a hole in the floor. To walk on either side would be difficult, though, because of the furniture. He tested the floor near the doorway, found it solid, and made his way over to the wooden chair. Its seat was scuffed and worn. He tried to move it. The chair didn’t budge. It was nailed to the floor.

  Once he was standing on the chair, Reuben thought he understood. The low shelves displaying china plates were only a few feet away. The plates were all on the lower shelves. The top of the shelves was empty, and only slightly higher than the chair. An easy jump. But what if one of the plates fell off and broke? Hiding the pieces would do no good, for The Smoke would surely notice if a plate was missing. They were a warning system in disguise, Reuben thought, a way of knowing if an intruder had passed down this hallway.

  But if that was true, then how was he to proceed? He could see no safe way to do so. Reuben considered, then considered some more, and then thought, They’re meant to put you off the track, to make you try a different path. It seemed crazy, but it was the only thing that made sense to him.

  He jumped.

  He landed on top of the shelves as lightly as possible. A heavier landing wouldn’t have mattered, though: the shelves didn’t even tremble. Nor did the china plates. He knelt down to get a better look at them. He even reached and tried to take one from its stand, without success. The plates were all attached to their stands, and the stands were secured to the shelves. Reuben had to admit it was a clever idea.

  He shouldn’t have touched that plate, though. What if he’d been wrong? He’d done it without thinking, confident of what to expect. But it had been an unnecessary risk. He had more than enough necessary risks to take without adding unnecessary ones to the list. Next time he would be more careful.

  From the shelves, Reuben had to leap across the runner to the big upholstered chair, whose springs squeaked beneath his weight. Now he could see through an open doorway opposite him into a kitchen. He saw a refrigerator, a sink, part of a counter. He moved on, jumping to the footstool, which almost certainly would have tipped over if it hadn’t been nailed down. Now he was positioned outside the other doorway, this one opening onto a library full of armchairs and side tables, with bookshelves built into the walls. He was curious about what books he’d find on those shelves, but he resisted his impulse to go and see. The room had trap written all over it. No way.

  Reuben got down from the footstool. Avoiding the carpet runner and testing the floor with every step, he made his way over to the grand doors at the end of the hall. They were made of a beautiful dark wood, almost black. Their brass knobs were tarnished, though, and almost black themselves. He knelt and peered through a keyhole. He could make out only a sense of open space, faintly lit as if by sunlight from windows.

  He turned one of the knobs and pushed gently. The door swung open. Reuben stood a long time in the doorway, taking it all in.

  The ballroom was easily the largest room he’d ever seen, even bigger than his school gymnasium. Shafts of light from very high, very dirty windows slanted down through the vast empty space, illuminating swirls of dust motes that Reuben had stirred up with the opening of the door. Two enormous chandeliers hung from a ceiling marred by great peeling strips of plaster and paint. In the far corner of the ballroom stood a dusty grand piano. In the nearer corner, off to Reuben’s left, was an old bar from which drinks had once been served, the tall shelves behind it still bearing an array of bottles that, although of widely varying shapes and sizes, all wore the same uniform shade of gray, the accumulation of years’ worth of dust. Projecting outward from the wall on the right was a balcony from which, once upon a time, high-society guests could gaze down upon the dancers below.

  All of which seemed normal enough, as far as abandoned ballrooms went. What did not look normal—what in fact looked downright bizarre—was the fireman’s pole. Descending from the ceiling high above, it passed within a few feet of the balcony and ended in a pile of dingy pillows on the ballroom floor. Reuben was in awe. He had always dreamed of having a fireman’s pole, had almost always included one in his designs for a dream home.

  Reuben approached the pole, testing with his toes as he went. The ballroom floor was made of a dark tan-colored wood, which looked still to be in good condition. It wasn’t even dusty, he noticed, and with a quick curious glance around, he spotted a warehouse broom in the shadows beneath the balcony. The wall and the doors under there were lined, Reuben could see, with mounds of dirt and broken plaster. Evidently, The Smoke found it desirable to sweep the ballroom floor, but he found no use for a dustpan. Hard to blame him for that, Reuben thought. Who liked using a dustpan? Still, he wondered why The Smoke bothered to sweep in here at all. There seemed to be no accounting for the man’s eccentricities.

  The pillows piled around the fireman’s pole numbered at least twenty, and they were a motley assortment—some with pillowcases, some without, some meant for sleeping on, some smaller and decorative. At the base of the pile were a few big couch cushions, their zippered edges poking out. Reuben looked up at the balcony. He imagined himself up there, climbing over the low wrought-iron railing. It would be an easy jump to the pole, little more than a giant step. The balcony wasn’t so high, perhaps fifteen feet; the pillows seemed unnecessary. Then again, if you lost your grip on the pole, you’d be glad for them. Perhaps The Smoke had learned that the hard way.

  Reuben stepped on a couch cushion and balanced against the pillow pile to touch the pole. The metal was covered in a thin film of grease. He’d been thinking of climbing it, seeing if he could reach the balcony. So much for that. The pole was unclimbable, a one-way route only.

  He took care stepping off the couch cushion, not wanting to disturb the arrangement of pillows. Only then did he notice the rope ladder. From the doorway, the dangling ropes had appeared to be part of the decorative fluting on one of the balcony’s support columns. Reuben frowned, disconcerted not to have realized his mistake sooner. He would have liked to blame the general gloom, but the truth, he knew, was that he’d been too di
stracted by the fireman’s pole.

  And now a rope ladder.

  He stared at it, his frown deepening. Why didn’t The Smoke use the stairs? There had to be a second-floor entrance to the balcony, so why not use it?

  Because you can’t climb stairs and then pull them up after you, Reuben thought, and he knew at once that he was right. If you did that with the rope ladder, and if you’d booby-trapped the stairs and boarded up the balcony doors, you’d be safely out of reach of stealthy intruders, like a bird secure in its nest.

  In this entire gigantic mansion, The Smoke made his home on the balcony of an abandoned ballroom. That was where he lived.

  Reuben began to quiver with excitement. The fireman’s pole was all but forgotten now. He was close. He was very close. He extended a foot toward the ladder, tested the floor, put his weight on it. Extended the other foot, did the same. Cautiously he proceeded, scanning the floor with each step. Just when he reached the bottom of the ladder, the floor creaked beneath his foot, and he froze. He stepped back, the floor creaking again when he took his weight from it.

  It might be nothing. In fact, Reuben thought, it was probably nothing. The Smoke had stepped onto that part of the floor every day for years. Little wonder there should be a loose floorboard. And it had borne his weight, hadn’t it? He waited, listening for any unusual sounds, then stepped carefully forward again. The creak sounded again. The floor held. It was nothing.

  Reuben gazed up along the lines of the ladder. The ropes appeared to be in good shape. Why, then, did he feel so uneasy? Unlike the trapdoors, there was nothing hidden about the rope ladder. On the contrary, it called attention to itself. It wasn’t a secret. It was simply the way The Smoke got up to the balcony. Some things simply couldn’t be hidden.

  Reuben reached out to one of the rope rungs. His hand hovered over it. Couldn’t the rope ladder have been hidden, though? At least mostly? He thought about the window blinds in his apartment, how they could be drawn down or raised up with a slender cord. If it had been him, he would have arranged something like that with the rope ladder. A single dangling cord, especially a transparent one like fishing line, might well go unnoticed. Reuben lowered his hand to his side. Something wasn’t right.