The Mysterious Benedict Society mbs-1 Read online

  Indeed, a paddle might have helped, for halfway across the room she nearly fell (the boys caught their breath), but after wobbling back and forth and wheeling her arms around, she recovered. After a few more careful steps, she hopped down into the other red circle.

  “Wow!” Sticky whispered. “She did it!”

  But before Kate could join the boys, Milligan appeared and took her back to the starting point to try again, this time without her rope, which he informed her would be returned upon completion of the test.

  “That’s hardly fair,” Sticky whispered. “Nobody told her she couldn’t use a rope.”

  Kate, meanwhile, was removing all the items from her bucket and stuffing them into her pockets. When she’d finished, her pockets bulging ridiculously, she unscrewed the handle from her bucket and tucked it through her belt. Then she was ready. Kicking the bucket onto its side, she hopped onto it and began rolling it forward with her feet, like a circus bear balancing on a ball. Rolling first this way, and then that, she zigzagged across the room to the other red circle.

  Reynie and Sticky looked at each other in awe. Who was this girl?

  Yet once again, as Kate reattached the bucket handle and emptied her pockets, Milligan entered the room. He returned her to the starting circle, this time taking away her bucket and tools, which she handed over with evident reluctance. She recovered quickly, however. Before Milligan had even closed the door behind him, Kate shrugged and cracked her knuckles, flattened her palms against the cement, and lifted her feet into the air above her. And this was how she crossed the room, walking on her hands, not once setting foot upon the floor.

  “Never mind,” said Milligan when she opened the door. He handed her bucket back. “You pass.”

  “What I don’t understand,” Sticky was saying to Reynie as they followed Milligan down a dark stairway, “is how you passed that test. I’m glad, of course, but I don’t see how you did it. I crossed on my hands and knees so my feet didn’t touch any blue or black squares, and Kate did her acrobat tricks, but you just walked right across the room. You were stepping on dark squares left and right!”

  They had reached the bottom of the stairs now. Milligan ushered the children into a damp, dimly lit underground passage, where centipedes twisted away at their approach and other slithery creatures they heard but didn’t see retreated into the shadows. By this gloomy route, he was leading them to what he had called their “final testing place,” which struck Reynie as having a particularly ominous sound.

  “Just walked right across?” said Kate. “Reynie, how did you get away with that?”

  “It was another trick. Those weren’t squares on the floor — they were rectangles. Their sides weren’t all the same length.”

  “Gosh, that’s true,” Kate reflected.

  Sticky slapped his forehead. “I got my pants dirty for nothing? I crawled across the floor like a baby for nothing? I’m so stupid! I can’t believe they’re letting me go on.”

  “You’re hardly stupid,” Reynie said. “You’re here, aren’t you?”

  “Just where is here, anyway?” Kate asked. “Hey, Milligan, where are we?”

  Without looking back or slowing down, Milligan said, “Right now we’re passing under Fifth Street.”

  “I don’t suppose we could walk above ground, could we?” Sticky asked. “Where there’s sunlight and the path isn’t wet? Where it doesn’t smell like spoiled fish?”

  “Where creepy things don’t keep falling on our heads?” Reynie added with a shudder, brushing away a beetle that had tried to skitter under his shirt collar.

  “Sunlight just ahead,” Milligan replied. And sure enough, presently he led them up another set of stairs into an empty cellar, then through the cellar doors onto a quiet street lined with elm trees and old houses. The children couldn’t see this right away — it took a moment for their eyes to adjust to the brilliant sunlight.

  And in that moment, Milligan disappeared.

  They had followed him out through the cellar doors, they knew that for certain, but whereas Milligan had been tall and straight in his battered hat and scuffed jacket, the children were now accompanied by a stooped little man with a big belly, wearing dark glasses and a bright yellow cap.

  “Who are you?” Kate cried, crouching into a defensive stance. “Where’s Milligan?”

  “Right here,” the man said wearily, lowering his sunglasses to reveal a pair of sad, ocean-blue eyes. “I’m in disguise.”

  The children regarded him closely. It was indeed Milligan. Somehow, without their noticing, he had stuffed his hat and jacket under his shirt to create the impression of a fat belly; had produced the cap and sunglasses (from where, they couldn’t guess); and hunched his shoulders and bent forward to appear shorter than he was. It was a remarkable transformation.

  “Are you a magician?” Sticky asked.

  “I’m nobody,” Milligan replied, and without further explanation, he pointed across the street to a three-story house with stone steps leading up to its front door. “Please go wait on those steps. Rhonda will be with you soon.”

  “Rhonda Kazembe?” Reynie asked. “The green-haired girl?”

  But even as he spoke, the cellar doors slammed shut, and Milligan was gone.

  “Do you suppose we’re going to meet anybody normal today?” Kate asked.

  “I’m beginning to doubt it,” Reynie said.

  The children went across the street and through the gate of the house Milligan had pointed out. It was a very old house, with gray stone walls, high arched windows, and a roof with red shingles that glowed like embers in the afternoon sun. Roses grew along the iron fence, and near the house towered a gigantic elm tree, perhaps older than the building itself, its green leaves tinged with the first yellows of autumn. Shaded by the elm’s branches were an ivy-covered courtyard and the stone steps upon which they were to wait. The steps themselves were half-covered with ivy; they seemed an inviting place to rest. And indeed it was with some relief that the children, tired from the day’s challenges, sat upon them now in the cool shade of the elm.

  “Sticky,” Reynie said when they had settled, “there’s something I wanted to ask you about your parents. Did they know that —?”

  “We already talked about this, remember?” Sticky said, interrupting him. Turning to Kate, he explained, “That yellow lady gave Reynie and me the runaround when we told her we had some phone calls to make. Reynie was afraid his tutor would be worried, and it was the same with me and my parents. Turns out she called them, but she was very odd about it. Very odd indeed. Did that happen to you?”

  This was not what Reynie had been going to ask about. He had wanted to ask if Sticky’s parents knew he’d spent “half the night” looking for the Monk Building. For some reason, Sticky was avoiding the subject.

  “I didn’t have anybody to call,” said Kate with a shrug. “My mother died when I was a baby, and my father ran away and left me when I was two.”

  Sticky’s face fell. “Oh. I’m . . . I’m so sorry.”

  “Don’t worry,” Kate said lightly. “I don’t even remember them.” She paused, reflecting. “Actually, I do have one memory of my father.”

  “That’s one more than I have,” said Reynie. “What is it?”

  “Well, down the road from our house was an old mill pond, and my father took me there to swim once. I was only two, but a good swimmer. The water was cold, the day was warm, and I thought it all felt wonderful. I laughed and splashed until I was exhausted. Then my father — I can’t picture his face, but I can still feel his strong arms lifting me out of the water — he carried me on his shoulders back to our house. I remember asking if we could swim there again, and he said, ‘Of course we can, Katie-Cat.’ I remember that very well. He called me ‘Katie-Cat.’”

  “You never went back to the mill pond, did you?” asked Sticky, looking even more regretful now that he’d heard Kate’s story.

  “No, the next thing I remember I was in an orphanage,” sai
d Kate.

  Reynie shook his head. “It’s strange, Kate. Your father sounds, well, he sounds —”

  “Like a nice man?” finished Kate. “I know, I’ve often thought of that. I guess it shows that people aren’t always what they seem. Or else he just changed. I suppose I’ll never know.”

  “It’s terrible,” Sticky whispered, almost as if to himself.

  “Hey, it’s okay,” Kate said cheerfully. “That was a long time ago. Anyway, I’ve had a fine life. The circus has been good to me.”

  Reynie widened his eyes and glanced at Sticky, but Sticky seemed too disturbed to have noticed what Kate said. Reynie looked back at Kate. “Did you just say the circus has been good to you?”

  “Oh, yes,” said Kate with a laugh. “When I was seven I ran away from the orphanage to join the circus. They brought me back, but I just ran away again, and I kept running away every time they brought me back. Eventually it was agreed that I could join the circus and save everybody a lot of trouble. So that’s what I’ve been doing the past few years. It’s been great fun, too, but I was ready for something different. When I read about these tests, I said adios to my circus pals, and here I came.”

  “That’s quite a life,” Reynie said, more than a little amazed. “And has it — I mean, has circus life helped, then? You haven’t ever missed your parents?” He was always curious about how other orphans felt. His own parents were never known to him, and so he didn’t miss them in particular, but on rainy days, or days when other children taunted him, or nights when he awoke from a bad dream and could use a hug and perhaps a story to lull him back to sleep — at times like these he didn’t miss his parents, exactly, but he did wish for them.

  Kate, apparently, felt otherwise. “What’s to miss?” she said breezily. “Like I said, I don’t even remember my mother, and who wants a father who’ll run away and leave his baby daughter all by herself? I’d much rather spend my time with elephants and clowns.” She frowned. “Sticky, what’s wrong with you?”

  Throughout their conversation, Sticky’s expression had grown more and more dejected, his big eyes sadder and sadder, so that at last his face had taken on the exact gloomy look of that miserable man Milligan.

  Reynie put his hand on Sticky’s shoulder. “Hey, are you all right?”

  “Oh . . . yes,” Sticky said, unconvincingly, “I was just, you know, feeling sorry for Kate. It must be terrible to think you weren’t wanted.”

  Kate laughed (a bit stiffly, it seemed to Reynie) and said, “Weren’t you listening, chum? I told you, I’m having a ball!” She went on to regale them with stories about circus life — hanging from trapezes, leaping through flaming hoops, getting shot from cannons — until gradually Sticky cheered up, and the matter of parents was dropped.

  They had been waiting on the steps for perhaps an hour, and were beginning to grumble about how hungry they were, when the front door opened, and Rhonda Kazembe appeared. At least, they thought it was Rhonda Kazembe. She did have the same features and coal-black skin, and she was the same height as Rhonda, but gone were the puffy white dress and long green hair. Instead, her hair hung in lovely dark braids all about her face, and she wore a smart blue jumper and sandals. When she saw them on the steps, she laughed with pleasure.

  “Hi, kids! Remember me?”

  “Rhonda? Is it really you?” Sticky asked.

  “I hope so,” she replied. “Otherwise someone’s played a very clever trick on me.”

  When Rhonda sat down with them and Reynie had a closer look at her, he realized something that he’d missed before. “You’re not even a child!” he exclaimed. “You’re a grown-up!”

  “Well,” said Rhonda, “a very small, very young grown-up, yes.”

  “I knew you were hiding something with that funny get-up, but I thought it had to do with the cheating.”

  “No,” said Rhonda, laughing again. “It was just to call attention away from my age, and to distract you in general.”

  “I have an idea,” said Kate, whose stomach was growling loudly. “Why don’t you give us some food and tell us what this is all about?”

  “Soon, Kate, very soon. There remains one more test, but after that, whether you pass or fail, I promise you all a good supper. Fair enough?”

  “It’s a deal,” Kate said.

  “Then let’s begin. When I tell you to, each of you must go through this front door. At the very back of the house is a staircase. You’re to reach the staircase as quickly as possible, hurry up the stairs, and ring the bronze bell that hangs at the top. Speed is important, so don’t dawdle. Any questions?”

  “Will this test be any harder than the last one?” Kate asked, with a show of bravado.

  “Some find it quite difficult,” said Rhonda. “But you should all be able to do it with your eyes closed.”

  “Will it be scary?” Sticky asked, almost in a whisper.

  “Maybe, but it isn’t really dangerous,” Rhonda said, which did nothing for Sticky’s confidence.

  “Who goes first?” Reynie asked.

  “That’s an easy one,” Rhonda answered. “You.”

  It had been a day full of challenges, all of which Reynie had met successfully, and when he stepped through the front door he was brimming with confidence. By this point he knew there would be some kind of trick involved; and knowing this, he felt sure he’d be ready for it.

  He found himself in a brightly lit room with pitch black walls. The front door, which Rhonda had just closed behind him, had no knob on the inside and was likewise painted black, so that it blended into the wall. The room was rather cramped, perhaps six feet wide and six long (Kate would know for sure, he thought), and was entirely empty. Not counting the nearly invisible front door behind him, it had three exits: to the left, to the right, and immediately before him. These doorways had no doors in them, and the rooms beyond were unlit, so that Reynie couldn’t see into them.

  Are we expected to walk into dark rooms? he wondered. This is going to make Sticky extremely unhappy. But he was only thinking of Sticky to take his mind off himself, for the prospect of groping about in the darkness intimidated him more than he cared to admit.

  “Well,” he said aloud, to bolster his courage, “there’s no time to waste, so here goes.” He plunged through the doorway ahead of him (this ought to be the most direct path to the rear of the house) and, as if by magic, seemed to walk into the very room he had just left. It was cramped, brightly lit, painted black, and he could see a dark doorway in each wall.

  “What in the world?” he said, turning to look behind him, then in confusion turning round again. At once he realized his mistake. If he hadn’t turned around, he might have kept his bearings, but now he’d lost them. He was in a maze of identical rooms. Everything looked exactly the same in every direction.

  His confidence was quickly draining away.

  “Now, think,” he told himself. “When you enter a room, its light must turn on automatically, and when you leave, it goes off. But there are light switches by each door. Perhaps if you throw a switch, the light stays on. It might be as simple as that.”

  With a quick inspection of the nearest doorway, however, this hope vanished. What Reynie had supposed were light switches were only decorative wooden panels. He was about to turn away and try to retrace his steps when it occurred to him the panels themselves might be important. He took a closer look at one. About the size of a playing card, the panel had four arrows etched into it, pointing in different directions and painted different colors. A blue arrow pointed to the right, a green one to the left, a wiggly-shaped yellow one straight ahead, and a purple one down.

  Of course, Reynie thought, feeling foolish. The arrows weren’t for decoration — they were meant to show the way. But which was he to believe? After going round to every panel he was no better off. Four doorways with four arrows each meant sixteen arrows to choose from, and there was no apparent pattern. Reynie racked his brain: Should he follow the green ones? Green arrows on a traffi
c signal mean “Go.” But perhaps that was too obvious. Perhaps the red arrows were the ones to follow — perhaps that was the trick. Yet that hardly seemed fair. What if he’d been color-blind and couldn’t even tell the difference?

  No sooner had this occurred to him than he knew the secret.

  Running his finger over the carved arrows in the panel before him, Reynie smiled. The only one you could know by touch would be the wiggly shaped one. What was it that Rhonda had said to Kate? “You should all be able to do it with your eyes closed.” It had seemed she was offering encouragement. Actually she was offering them a clue: Even in the dark, even with his eyes closed, Reynie could feel the panels with his fingers and find the wiggly shaped arrow.

  Just to be certain, he hurried around the room, checking the panels. Sure enough, though the other arrows followed no particular pattern, the wiggly arrows all directed him toward the same door — the one whose wiggly arrow pointed straight ahead. Reynie took a deep breath, hoped for the best, and charged through. The next room looked exactly the same, but this time the wiggly arrows indicated the door on his right. He took it.

  By the time he’d gone through ten rooms in this way, Reynie had no idea where in the house he was. He might have been at the front door again and would not have known it. Or he might be in the very middle of the maze. And with the walls painted black as they were, if all the lights went out he would be in utter darkness. Suddenly he wondered if they intended to turn the lights out on him as part of the test. The thought started an uncomfortable flutter in his belly. But just as he began to worry, he entered a room and stumbled smack into a staircase. With a shout of triumph he raced up the stairs onto a narrow landing, found the bronze bell Rhonda had told them about, and rang it.

  There was a sound of quick footsteps coming down stairs. Then a door unlocked and out came the pencil woman with a stopwatch in hand. She examined it and said, “Six minutes fourteen seconds.”