by Kirby Larson
“No harm done, El—I mean, Mrs. Finch.” The Commodore executed a hasty two-step around a work island. “I’m sure you’re eager to get at it, eh? Soup’s on, as they say!” He chuckled at his own tepid joke. “Shall we be back for the lot of you around four?”
“The lot of us?” Audie asked.
Mrs. Finch concentrated on the pots hanging from the rack above her head. “You mean, Annie and me, of course,” she said.
“Of course,” the Commodore blustered.
Having selected a pot to suit her needs, Mrs. Finch brought it down to the work surface with a clang.
The Commodore jumped, turning his hat uneasily in his hands.
Mrs. Finch clucked her tongue. “Be on your way. Some of us have got work to do.”
“Mind Mrs. Finch, then, Annie.” He plunked his hat upon his head, and swept out of the room, humming something that sounded a lot like “Wait Till the Sun Shines, Nellie.”
Audie’s left ear began to buzz. It wasn’t that the Commodore’s humming was unpleasant. He had a nice voice, a baritone; she’d told him on several occasions that he should consider joining the choir at the Methodist church.
She gently tapped at her left temple with the heel of her left hand. Maybe the crash with Charlie had caused some trouble in her ears. She tapped again, testing to see if that alleviated the buzzing.
“Girl, are you going to help me or not?” Mrs. Finch dumped a bowl of peeled onions on the worktable, rattling off a set of instructions.
Audie obeyed the Commodore’s words. She did exactly as she was told. She pinned her hair bonnet—over the rosette—like that. Lined up the measuring tools thus. Gathered up the ingredients there. She followed Mrs. Finch’s orders to the letter. To the very letter.
Mrs. Finch held out an enormous kitchen knife. Audie reached for it and began to chop. One of the regular kitchen staff was assembling a congealed salad at the other end of the long worktable. The young man smiled at Audie. “Ain’t seen you before,” he observed.
“It’s my first time,” said Audie.
“Ain’t this kitchen somethin’?” He pointed upward with his index finger. “President Roosevelt put in this newfangled electric lighting system. Best light I’ve ever worked in.” He gave his head a shake. “Though the buzzing can drive a fella mad sometimes.”
Before Audie could say anything more, Mrs. Finch cut in. “She’s here to help me,” she said. “Not chatter.” The look she shot the kitchen boy put an end to any further conversation.
Pondering the boy’s words as she chopped a mound of onions, Audie soon convinced herself that the buzzing she’d heard when the Commodore departed had to be due to President Roosevelt’s electric lighting.
It was the only explanation that made sense.
The fact that Bimmy was shorter than Audie had never been worth noting. Now her lack of height was a gift of Providence. Had she stood eye-to-eye with the cyclops, as did Audie, Bimmy might never have found the courage to turn the tarnished black doorknob and enter the Punishment Room. Already terrified, Bimmy would have turned to stone to realize the creature she was staring at was a chimera.
She reached for the door. “Ready, girls?”
Three heads nodded.
“As ready as we’ll ever be,” Violet said.
Bimmy’s fingers encircled the fat knob. She took another deep breath.
“Hurry!” Violet poked her in the back. “Someone’s coming!”
With a quick twist of her left wrist, Bimmy spun the knob around, releasing the latch, and put her shoulder into the heavy door. It opened wide enough for the four of them to slip through and she quietly pushed it closed again.
Lavender—the shortest of the triplets—peered through the keyhole. “Divinity!” she whispered. The foursome froze in their places until they heard the self-satisfied tap-tap-taps of Divinity’s boot heels pass along the hall and down the stairs.
“That was close,” whispered Lilac.
The fear of nearly being caught by Divinity had briefly supplanted the fear of being in the Punishment Room. All too soon, the full realization of their location once again descended upon Lilac. She shivered. She sniffled. She tried the door. It wasn’t locked. They could escape. She drew a shaky breath of relief.
“Look at this!” Violet stepped away from her sisters into the center of the enormous room, engaging in a slow turn. “Books!” Floor to ceiling. Wall to window. Across the way, a fire was laid. In front of the fireplace sat a plump wing chair and a side table. “Is that Jarlsberg?” Violet wandered over and broke off a bit of the cheese. “And look, gingersnaps, too.”
“Don’t eat anything!” Lilac rushed to her sister’s side. “Might be poisoned.”
Violet shrugged. “Tastes fine.” She finished chewing. Cocked her head to the left. To the right. “See. Nothing to worry—” Her hands flew to her throat. She began coughing and gagging. She dropped to her knees.
Her sisters flew to her. “Violet! Violet!” Tears streamed down Lavender’s face. “Don’t die!”
“I told you not to eat it,” Lilac sobbed.
Violet stopped coughing. She grinned. “Gotcha.”
“Oh, you!” Lavender grabbed her sister’s arms, pulled her upright, and began shaking her. “That was horrible.” They wobbled around like a pair of tops, caroming off a pedestal table and setting an expensive-looking vase atwirl. Bimmy raced over and caught it before it crashed to the ground.
“That was a horrible joke to play,” said Lilac.
“I’m never speaking to you again,” said Lavender.
Bimmy held her head. Sisters! “Please don’t forget the reason we’re in here. And we’ve got to snap it up or we’re not going to be any good to Audie at all.” Bimmy’s brain felt a bit like that file cabinet there in the corner—stuffed so full of papers and folders that it was nearly bursting open. Instead of papers, however, her mind was full of notions.
First, she was trying to fathom why such a place—such a wondrous place!—would ever have been called a place of punishment. Look at that section there: Daredevils of the 17th Century. And that cluster of books: Flying Machines. And those: Stories from the Orient. Why, this was heaven on earth! There would be words with Audie, yes there would, about why she’d kept this astonishing room under her hat for so long. So unlike her to be selfish. But then again, Bimmy knew not to judge another without trying on her pinafore and boots. Being an orphan must have its secret sorrows and secret needs, of a nature that a Wayward Girl might find it hard to understand. All right, then, Bimmy decided. She would not hold a grudge against Audie about the Punishment Room. And she would hope that, in her own good time, Audie would explain her secret keeping.
“Bimmy?” Lilac tapped her on the arm, bringing her back to the task at hand. Which was to figure out how they might find a way to help Audie in this very room. Hadn’t Audie said the Punishment Room held answers? But how? Where to begin? “The clock’s struck two. Miss Maisie …”
Bimmy didn’t wait for Lilac to finish the sentence. Miss Maisie would be up from her after-lunch nap soon. No time to dawdle! She made a quick plan and barked out orders to the triplets. “My parents had this big book. Daley’s Circus Almanac. It was how they knew which circus was performing where.”
Violet ran her fingers along the closest bookshelf. “And that book is in here?”
It was not in Bimmy’s nature to be dishonest. But it was in her nature to be optimistic. “Yes,” she said with great optimism. “Yes.” It must be, mustn’t it? From the looks of things, nearly every other book in the world resided in this room. “But I’ve no idea where.”
The four friends scrambled around the room, searching high and low. With every tick of the big grandfather clock in the corner, the muscles in Bimmy’s neck drew tighter and tighter. She would not admit to the triplets that her faith was dimming. Where was that doggoned book anyway? It had to be here. Just had to. But it wasn’t with the other almanacs. Nor with the As. Nor with the Ds. They’d lo
oked everywhere.
Nothing.
Violet nibbled on another bit of cheese. “Maybe we’re looking in the wrong places.”
“I would think that was perfectly obvious.” Bimmy made a face. “Otherwise, we’d have found it by now.” She cringed at her tone of voice, which was a perfect snide echo of Divinity’s.
Lavender caught sight of herself in the big mirror behind the dictionary table. “My braid’s come undone. Will you fix it, Bimmy?”
“Now?” What did a little mussy hair matter at a time like this?
“I can’t work with my hair a mess.” A tear threatened to spill out of Lavender’s lower lid.
Bimmy gritted her teeth but motioned Lavender over. Audie would entertain this foolish request, that Bimmy knew. The little girl plunked down on a footstool to make it easier for Bimmy to minister to her braid.
“Tell me one more time what we’re looking for?”
Bimmy nearly tugged Lavender’s braid in frustration. How dare she ask after they’d been looking all this long while? She answered through clenched teeth. “We’re looking for a book called Daley’s Circus Almanac.” Bimmy finished off the braid and retied Lavender’s ribbon. She stepped back, fingers tugging at the locket her mother had given her the first time she’d performed sans net. That had been such a moment of triumph. But this moment—“I’m afraid it’s not here.” Bimmy’s heart pinched to think of letting Audie down in her hour of need.
“It must be, don’t you think? This library has every book imaginable.” Lavender swung around on the footstool. She blinked her blue eyes. “Maybe we should look under C for circus,” she said.
Bimmy stared at Lavender. Then she snatched her off the footstool and twirled her around. “C for circus! Of course!” She set Lavender down and ran to the C section of Mr. Witherton’s expansive library, and there, completely out of order and making no sense at all, she found exactly what she was looking for.
She snatched the book off the shelf and plopped it on the floor, running her finger from the top of each page to the bottom, flipping as fast as she could skim.
Lilac looked at the big clock over the mantel. “Better hurry, Bimmy.”
“I am!” Bimmy’s finger raced up and down the pages.
“Have you found anything yet?” Lavender asked.
“Let her concentrate,” said Violet.
“But it’s nearly two-thirty!” Lavender fretted.
Bimmy’s heart was in her throat. Only a few pages remained in the almanac. She turned them, searching intently. Then her finger stopped. Circus Kardos. “Madame Volta,” she exclaimed. “And Igor. It’s perfect!” She looked up at her comrades. “Now all I need is for you three to create a diversion. Will you do it?” She snatched a piece of paper and pencil from Mr. Witherton’s desk and copied down an address from the almanac.
“In for a penny, in for a pound,” said Violet.
“Oh boy,” said Lavender.
“You can say that again,” said Lilac.
So far, the most exciting thing about being the soup maker’s helper had been scrubbing the bottom of the copper soup kettle with baking soda and lemon juice.
“Elbow grease, girl.” Mrs. Finch tackled a butcher block with a bristle brush and bleach water. “I should be able to see myself in that pot.”
Audie applied the elbow grease of ten girls before satisfying Mrs. Finch. Then she filled the kettle with ten cups of water and was ready to add twelve whole cloves—“not ten or eleven, but twelve,” ordered Mrs. Finch—when the jingling of harness bells was heard outside. Audie dropped in the twelfth clove and ran to the window.
A horse clip-clopped into the courtyard, pulling a wagon painted with a colorful logo for the Zastrow Brothers Fish Stall at the Center Market. “Whoa, there, Jem.” The swarthy deliveryman hopped down from the driver’s seat, tossing the reins over the back of the steady steed as he did so. Jem looked as if he had no intention of moving, ever again. Audie spied a small apple in an enamelware bowl on the table opposite and snatched it up. She weaved around the cook’s helpers in the main kitchen, then scurried out through the open doorway, fast on Mrs. Finch’s heels.
Jem’s soft lips worked the apple into his mouth and he chewed contentedly while the deliveryman unlatched the wagon’s doors. He wrangled an enormous bucket out of the back—it was big enough to hold Audie—and staggered through the arched doors, along the narrow main kitchen, and to Mrs. Finch’s workstation.
“Where do you want ’em?” he asked.
In answer, Mrs. Finch pointed to a deep sink. The man upended the bucket, and out slid a dozen green turtles, mouths opening and closing, as if calling out to Audie, their fins cutting through the air as they had cut through the water in Audie’s nightmare the night before.
Mr. Zastrow started to carry out the empty bucket.
“Oh, leave that, please.” Mrs. Finch wiped her hands on her apron. “I’ll use it for the shells.”
The deliveryman nodded. “I’ll pick it up tomorrow, then.” He took the cup of coffee Mrs. Finch pressed on him before she turned to the sinkful of turtles. The first one was plucked out and plopped onto the chopping block. It turned its oval head toward Audie, its eyes meeting and holding hers.
Now, it wasn’t that Audie was a vegetarian. She herself was fond of chicken and dumplings and had on more than one occasion assisted Cook in dispatching a hen in preparation for Sunday supper. It may well have been that Audie was still a bit out of sorts after having been run over by the bicycle. Or perhaps the buzzing in her left ear was having a greater impact than she realized. Or perhaps she should have eaten more for breakfast than one piece of dry toast. Whatever the reason, after locking gazes with that turtle, when Mrs. Finch picked up the cleaver and drew back her arm, it was more than Audie could bear.
Charlie glanced at the clock and stifled a yawn. Mother and Father had given him strict instructions not to abandon Dorothy again. They were up to their eyebrows in preparations for the big New Year’s Day reception.
Actually, it was more like Mother was up to her eyebrows in preparations and Father was up to his eyebrows fretting about whether it was all too much for Mother. It would be her first official social event since the stroke.
“How about another round of charades after lunch?” Dorothy asked.
Charlie’s eyes nearly spun ’round in his head. If there was anything more deadly dull than charades for two players, he couldn’t think what it might be. “I’ve no more ideas of what to act out,” he said.
“Well, then.” Dorothy pouted. “It’s your turn to think of something to do.”
Charlie exhaled through flared nostrils. His turn! His turn! Every time he’d suggested something halfway diverting, she’d gone all floofy on him. “Oh, I can’t do that. Oh, I can’t do this.” Gee willikers. Why did God make girls anyway? Total waste of time, as far as he could see. Well, maybe not that girl this morning. She was a pip. Dorothy could take lessons from her.
His cousin picked up her cup and sipped at the hot chocolate. “I’m having such a grand time.” She sighed. “I wish I could stay longer.”
Charlie managed to turn his groan into a cough. He reached for his water glass.
Dorothy eyed him over her cup. “You think I’m a huge bore, don’t you?”
Though Charlie wanted to agree with her, good manners—and the thought of her reporting his reply to his parents—kept him from answering. “What about a game of Spite and Malice?” he countered.
“I hate playing cards,” Dorothy answered. “I always lose.”
Charlie sighed in utter defeat. “I guess it’s charades, then.” He could hardly believe he was saying those words. But maybe if he was extra-nice to Dorothy, Mother would let him have his bicycle back sooner.
“What about one of the games you play with your friends at school?” she asked.
Charlie could just see her going at cops and robbers. Or stickball. Or Pom Pom or Blindman’s Bluff.
“You think I can’t pl
ay at boys’ games?” Dorothy sat up tall. “Try me.” There was a glitter of determination in her eye that Charlie had not seen before.
“Well—” Charlie nearly suggested something, then stopped himself. “What if you get mussed up? Or skin your knee? You’ll go crying to Mother and then I’ll be in for it.”
“I won’t tattle.” Her eyes shuttered into straight lines. “Pirate’s pledge.”
“Do you know what you’re saying?” Charlie leaned forward in his chair. “There’s no backing down from a pirate’s pledge.”
Dorothy tossed her curls back and grinned. From this angle, she carried the look of a pirate about her. Definitely the look of a pirate. “Oh yes. I know what I’m doing.”
“Deal.” Charlie spit in his palm. Held out his hand.
Dorothy spit, too. Met his hand. Shook. Hard. “So what’s the game?”
This would be like taking candy from a baby. But Charlie felt remarkably free from guilt. “Hide-and-seek,” he said.
“That’s so easy.” Dorothy sounded disappointed.
Charlie grinned wickedly. “Not the way I play it.” He wondered how long it would take her, once she’d found her perfect hiding spot, to deduce that she was not being sought. That stubborn set to her jaw led him to believe it could be as long as half an hour or so. Maybe long enough to read another few chapters in Five Children and It.
“May the best man”—she arched an eyebrow—“or woman, win.”
“One, two, three,” Charlie began to count.
“You’ll never find me!” Dorothy skipped from the room.
“That’s the entire idea,” he muttered under his breath.
Bimmy did wish she’d had more time to devise a plan, but that was not to be. The telegram had to be sent right away and there was one method and one method only of getting into town and back: the bicycle that had been Miss Maisie’s gift to the Waywards. Of course it had to be the day for Divinity’s turn. It couldn’t have been Katy or someone more amenable. Such is life.