The Mysterious Benedict Society

by Trenton Lee Stewart

  Reynie moved silently to the window.

  “Sticky . . . Washington,” Sticky said again, in a much weaker voice, and Reynie knew they hadn’t much time.

  Mr. Curtain’s eyes were still closed. Now was his chance. Reynie waved his hand back and forth in front of the window. It was dark outside, but the room was well-lit — his hand would be visible from outside. Back and forth he waved, back and forth, back and forth. Please, please, let somebody notice, he thought. Please, Rhonda, let it be true what you said. Through the telescope we appear to be only a few feet away. Through the telescope you watch the island constantly. Please let it be true. And please let your eyes be sharp.

  With one final attention-gathering wave, he placed his hand against the glass so that the message scrawled on his palm could be read, if only someone was out there to read it: We need K & C here! Now!

  The Great Kate Weather Machine

  K and C, as it happened, were still in bed. It had been an awful night for Kate. Try as she might, she couldn’t forget the look in Milligan’s eyes as the Executives and Recruiters paraded him through the cafeteria. She slept poorly, in and out of a doze, constantly worried and miserable, and never once did she have a shred of an idea what to do.

  Now it was almost dawn, time to rise, though rising hardly seemed worth the trouble. Worsening Kate’s mood, if that was possible, was a distant, irritating beeping sound, the erratic honking of a faraway horn. A car alarm on the mainland, or some obnoxious kid fooling around with an air horn. It had been going on for several minutes now. Long honks, short honks, long honks again, on and on. Irritating, and irritatingly familiar, like something she was supposed to remember but couldn’t. Almost like a code, she thought. Almost like . . .

  “Morse code!” Kate said aloud, sitting bolt upright in bed.

  A long honk, a short honk, a long one again, a pause. That would be a K. She listened intently. Here came some more. Oh, why hadn’t she been studying her Morse code? Flying to her desk, Kate wrote the code down as it came. Short, long. Long, short. Long, short, short. A pause. That spelled and, she was fairly sure. Long, short, long, short — a C. K and C.

  “Will somebody turn off that stupid alarm?” Constance moaned in her sleep.

  “Shush! No, don’t shush! Constance, wake up! We’re being signaled!”

  But Constance, lost in a sleepy fog, only buried her head under her pillow.

  The code kept coming. Kate struggled to decipher it. “I hope the boys are getting this,” she thought. “Sticky will know it for sure.” After a pause the message started to repeat, and Kate studied what she’d jotted down: k and c to flauto were now. Good grief! It made no sense at all. “K and C” stood for Kate and Constance, obviously. But what did “flauto” mean? Was it Spanish? Latin? Again she hoped Sticky was listening — he knew every language in the book. Here came the message again. Kate paid close attention, careful not to mistake short for long or vice versa, making sure to recognize pauses. She came up with this: k and c to flau tower now. What in the world? What was a “flau tower” anyway?

  “Flag tower!” she exclaimed, realizing her mistake. “Good gravy, Kate! The boys are in the flag tower already! Constance, wake up!”

  “Quiet down!” came the muffled voice from beneath the pillow.

  Kate threw on her shoes, fastened her bucket to her belt. Who knew how long they’d been up there? Who knew what sort of danger they were in? What if she was too late? She’d have to —

  Kate stopped in mid-thought, staring at the tiny lump of bedclothes that was Constance Contraire. How could she possibly make it with that belligerent girl along? Kate would have to carry her, assuming she could even get her out of bed. What if Constance slowed her down so much she couldn’t help the boys in time?

  It occurred to Kate to leave her behind. An inviting thought — so inviting she almost did just that. She went to the door. Hesitated. Looked back. The plan had called for all four of them. That was what Mr. Benedict had said mattered most, and it was what they’d agreed upon only yesterday. All four of them. That was the plan. No way would she be the one to mess it up. In a flash Kate was at the bedside, shaking Constance like a maraca. “Wake up, Constance! It’s an emergency!”

  Even with the shaking and urging, it took Kate a minute to get Constance fully awake. Dawn had broken, daylight grew stronger by the second, and with it her fear that she’d be too late. By the time Constance understood what was happening, Kate had jammed her shoes onto her feet. “Get on my back!” she ordered, ignoring Constance’s whining that her toes hurt (Kate had forced the shoes onto the wrong feet). Constance climbed on — still grumbling — and Kate dashed from the room.

  In the corridor they passed several students clinging miserably to paper bags, standing in line for the overcrowded bathroom. There were slick spots here and there on the floor that the Helpers hadn’t mopped up yet, and Kate nimbly avoided these, trying not to think about them. When a queasy-looking Executive approached to ask their business, Kate cried, “Get back! She’s about to barf her Brussels sprouts!” The Executive, who had already seen more of this sort of thing in one night than she cared to see in a lifetime, stepped aside without another word.

  Faster and faster Kate ran, catching her pace, her bucket bouncing against her hip and Constance clinging desperately to her shoulders. Past exhausted Helpers with their buckets and mops, out of the dormitory, and straight for the secret entrance behind the Institute Control Building. With the help of Mr. Curtain’s elevator, Kate figured they could be outside the Whispering Gallery in thirty seconds or less. “Provided we get lucky,” she thought, “and the entrance isn’t guarded.” She rounded the boulders, kicked the door open, and burst through the foyer into the secret passage.

  The entrance was guarded, unfortunately. And by none other than Martina Crowe.

  Kate drew up short, trying to think of what to do.

  Martina was so astounded by Kate’s sudden appearance, she almost looked afraid, as if Kate had come to deal her some blow. But she quickly grew haughty. “How did you two get down here? You’re in serious trouble now, do you realize that?”

  Kate scarcely heard Martina. Her mind was racing. Could she get past Martina? Alone, maybe, but with Constance on her back? Martina would call for help, and the Recruiters guarding the computer room would come running. All Martina had to do was hold Kate off a few short moments. No, they’d never make it. They would have to try another way.

  “Well, what do you have to say for yourselves?” Martina snarled, advancing threateningly.

  Kate bit her lip, clenched her fists, and for once, said nothing. Instead she whirled on her heel, hitched Constance higher on her back, and ran away.

  Martina stared after the girls, extremely confused. It was not like Kate Wetherall to back down like that, not like her at all. And why had they come into the secret passage in the first place? They’d been in a hurry, clearly rushing toward some urgent business. Her face darkened as she contemplated the possibilities.

  Just then Jillson rounded the corner. She’d spent a dreadful night in the bathroom making sounds like a sea lion, but now that she was feeling better she was coming to relieve Martina from guard duty. “Jackson told me to take over for you. If Mr. Curtain doesn’t finish the job with Reynard and George, you may be having another session in a few hours. Go get some rest.”

  Martina wasn’t listening. Her mind was awhirl with speculations about Kate. The wicked little snoop must know this was the way up to the Whispering Gallery, she thought. Why else would the girls have come here? And what had they been in such a hurry for? And . . . and what was that infernal beeping sound in the distance? Martina was finding it difficult to concentrate.

  “Jillson, did you pass Kate Wetherall in the foyer just now?”

  “And that little squirt Constance? You bet I did. I sent them straight back to their room. Some kids never learn. It’ll be a brainsweep for those two, no doubt about it.”

  “They aren’t going
back to their room,” said Martina. “Something’s going on.”

  Jillson frowned. “Is that so? Do you think it has anything to do with that maddening honking sound? What is that, anyway?”

  “You’ve noticed it, too, then. I don’t know. It almost sounds like — no, it definitely sounds like a code. Yes, it’s a code! Morse code. Jillson, you don’t know Morse code, do you?”

  “Why on earth would I? Nobody uses Morse code anymore. But you know, Mr. Curtain keeps all sorts of code books in his office cabinet. We could take a look. I have the cabinet key with me — privilege of a senior Executive.”

  Moments later the two of them were in Mr. Curtain’s office, poring over a chart of Morse code, hastily scrawling a transcription of the distant honks.

  “What’s a ‘flauta’?” Jillson asked, scratching her head.

  Martina corrected the mistake. Not short short long, but long long short — not U but G. Flag tower. “I knew it! Let’s go find Jackson. We have two more spies to catch!”

  The spies in question were at that very moment hurrying down a corridor in the Helpers’ barracks, where Kate had just burst into a storage room and snatched a ladder from an alarmed Helper. Now they were tripping and stumbling toward the exit. Kate stumbled because of the unwieldy ladder. Constance stumbled because it was her natural method of locomotion, and because her feet hurt from being in the wrong shoes.

  “Come on!” Kate urged, panting for breath. “Can’t you move any faster? Honestly, I can’t carry you and the ladder both.”

  “Just leave me then! You don’t want me along, anyway.”

  “We don’t have time for this,” Kate muttered, banging the door open at the end of the corridor and hauling the ladder out into the early morning light. Constance came tottering after her, struggling to keep up as Kate rounded the classroom building and charged onto the empty plaza.

  The horn still sounded from across the water, insistently repeating its urgent message.

  Kate was just thinking, I wish they’d knock it off now, someone else is sure to catch on, when the horn abruptly stopped. Unfortunately, even as it did so, two Executives emerged from behind the boulders on the hill to stare curiously toward the mainland. (One of them was S.Q., whose gangly frame Kate recognized even from this distance. The other, judging by the size of her head, was a tall-haired Executive named Regina.) They were too distracted at the moment to notice the girls. Still, this would never do. Constance was dragging behind. If the Executives spotted them, she was sure to be caught.

  “Listen,” Kate puffed as they crossed the plaza, “if the sashes come after us, I’ll slow them down. You keep going. Head straight up the hill behind the Institute Control Building — to that stone wall below the brook. I’ll catch up with you there.”

  Constance stopped. “All the way up there? But I can’t walk that far! I’m exhausted! My feet are killing me!”

  Kate skidded to a halt. “You can’t make anything easy, can you? Not even now, the most important moment of your life?” She dropped the ladder and reached into her bucket for the rope.

  “What are you doing?” said Constance. “I thought we were in some huge hurry.”

  “Put a lid on it,” Kate said.

  Before Constance could think of a grumpy reply, Kate had tied the ladder to her belt and hoisted the smaller girl upon her back. “I’ll just have to drag the stupid thing. It’s going to make an awful racket, though, so hang on.”

  With that, Kate was off, faster than she would have thought possible herself, perhaps spurred on by the tremendous bang and clatter and scrape of the ladder dragging behind her. In the distance Regina began to shout — the ruckus had caught her attention. Kate glanced up the hill to see S.Q. tripping over his feet, and Regina tripping over S.Q., as they started out after the girls. “Bless those size fifteens,” she thought. “Now we may just make it.”

  Kate made her way to the back of the Institute Control Building, hustled past the boulders and the drapeweed trap, and started up the hill. It was a difficult ascent. There was no path here, the slope was steep and slippery with gravel, and Kate — unlike her pursuers — was dragging a ladder and carrying someone on her back. Even so, Kate was halfway up before S.Q. and Regina even arrived at the bottom. She was just about to feel encouraged when Martina, Jackson, and Jillson came swarming out the back of the Institute Control Building.

  “Well, that’s unfortunate,” Kate said. She smiled and waved.

  “Unfortunate?” cried Constance. “Unfortunate?”

  “Don’t you think so?” Kate asked, panting under her burden. Jackson sent S.Q. and Regina scurrying away — probably to notify Mr. Curtain — and started up the hill with Jillson and Martina close behind.

  They were moving very fast.

  Kate stopped glancing back and pressed on, hard, until she and Constance came to the stone wall. From below them they heard the rapid scraping of boots on gravel. Quickly Kate worked to untie the ladder from her belt — but after the long drag uphill, the knot had grown too tight. Come on, come on, she thought, unfastening her belt to slip the knot free. In her haste she missed her grip on the bucket and, to her horror, it slipped loose and tumbled several yards down the hill behind her.

  “Leave it!” Constance cried, seeing her look of dismay. “There’s no time!”

  Constance was right. They would lose their narrow head-start. But even worse was to lose her bucket. And so, to the mocking laughs of Martina from halfway down the hill (“Fat lot of good that bucket will do you when we catch up with you!”) she handed her rope to Constance and scampered back to retrieve it. Everything had spilled out, including her precious spyglass, but here Kate drew the line — she snatched up the bucket and left the rest behind.

  “You lost your lead!” Jackson called. “You might as well wait for us there.”

  “Just wanted to give you a fighting chance!” Kate called back. With the ladder in place and Constance (fuming with disapproval) on her back, she began to climb. She was really sweating under her load now. The wearier she grew, the heavier Constance seemed. In a final determined burst, she scaled the last few rungs just as Jackson reached the ladder. She scrambled forward onto the high, sloping ground above the wall.

  A few paces ahead, just above the rock wall, ran the brook Kate had spotted their first day on the island. It streamed along a shallow gully for some distance before finally spilling over the wall and running downhill. Kate stumbled quickly toward it. By the time she’d dumped Constance — rather unceremoniously — next to the brook, Jackson and Jillson were both on the ladder, and Martina was preparing to climb.

  “What good is your bucket doing you now?” Jackson jeered.

  “I’m glad you asked!” Kate said, bending over the brook to scoop the bucket full of water. Instantly it was as heavy as a bowling ball. Returning to look down into Jackson’s icy blue eyes — he was only a few rungs from the top — she gave him a friendly wink.

  And dropped the bucket.

  Surprised though he was, Jackson resisted the urge to let go and catch the bucket. It didn’t matter. The bucket caught him. It landed squarely on top of his head and sent him tumbling backward down the ladder, in the process knocking Jillson down as well. They landed in a wet, moaning heap at Martina’s feet.

  “Instant ton of bricks,” Kate said with satisfaction. “Just add water.”

  There wasn’t time to reflect upon the pleasing scene. Martina had been quick-witted enough to grab the ladder before Kate could haul it out of reach, and was waiting only for her dazed companions to climb to their feet again. Slinging Constance over her shoulder, Kate splashed across the brook (too tired now to leap it) and made her way up the last, steep stretch of ground to the tower wall.

  “Ugh!” Constance cried. “Get your shoulder out of my belly, you big —”

  “Listen,” Kate said, setting her down and hastily forming a lasso with her rope. “I need to concentrate, so keep quiet, will you? We have to reach that window as quick as
we can.” As she spoke, she swung her lasso round and round, eyeing the flagpole that jutted out from the tower wall high above them, the Institute’s red flag rippling gently beneath it.

  Careful, Kate warned herself. Don’t let the lasso get fouled up with that flag. It was essential she didn’t miss — there’d be no time for a second attempt.

  Kate concentrated, took aim, said a prayer, and . . .

  “You don’t really think you can lasso that flagpole, do you?” Constance blurted just as Kate flung the lasso upward.

  The outburst nearly broke Kate’s concentration, but her throw was true enough — with a perfectly timed twitch of the rope, she adjusted its path. The lasso dropped neatly over the end of the flagpole. Kate heaved a sigh of relief. “You call that quiet?” she asked, tightening the loop with a tug.

  “It could have been louder,” Constance replied.

  “Thanks ever so much,” said Kate, already tying the rope around the smaller girl’s waist. “Now don’t argue. I’m doing this so I can haul you up after me. I can climb faster this way.”

  Constance, of course, began to argue, but Kate had already completed the knot and begun scrambling up the rope. She didn’t waste time looking back. She knew that at this very moment Martina was leaping the brook. She knew she had only a matter of seconds. And when at last she’d reached the flagpole, balanced atop it, and looked down to see Martina charging toward Constance far below, she knew that those seconds were not in her favor. As tired as she was, as fast as Martina was moving, she wouldn’t have time to pull Constance out of reach.

  It took only one of those seconds for Kate to think: It has to be all four of us, but Constance can’t handle them. You can handle them, though. It will be rough, but you can handle them.

  (Part of Kate believed this — a very important part, for Kate’s sense of invincibility was the main thing that had sustained her all her young life alone. But another part did not believe this — and it, too, was an important part, for unless you know about this part it is impossible to understand how brave a thing Kate was about to do.)