by Lauren Child
There was a trick to it, and after only a few minutes she had worked it out: eight turns clockwise, four anticlockwise and another eight clockwise – bingo. With some effort she lifted the lid and peered down into utter blackness.
Ruby Redfort’s one real fear was the small confined space. Not cupboards or tiny rooms, or tunnels she knew her way out of – no, it was the small dark space she had never before encountered… the small dark space with no way out… with no oxygen… that’s what she was scared of.
She stared into the void for five minutes, thirty-two seconds before she got a grip on herself.
Was she really going to come this far and no further? Her instinct told her it would be OK, her body wasn’t so sure. Very slowly she eased herself down into the drain and jerkily pulled the manhole cover over her head. She merged with the dark; no more hands, no more feet – it was as if she had dissolved into black. The panic rose up through her body and started to play its usual tricks on her mind. Her breathing became short and rapid; she felt dizzy and sick.
‘Get a grip Ruby,’ she hissed. There was something reassuring about hearing her own voice spilling out into the darkness. She thought of Mrs Digby – all her life, Mrs Digby had been there to squash her fears and prop up her spirits. If she were here now she would say,
‘Don’t tell me you’re troubled by a little darkness Ruby? Good gracious! You don’t want to be bothered being scared of the dark when there are so many other bigger things to be frightened of – like for example getting to my age and losing your marbles or being run down by one of those city buses with their maniac drivers. These are fears – the dark’s the least of your worries, kid.’
Just thinking about Mrs Digby made Ruby breathe more easily. ‘Mind over matter,’ that’s what Mrs Digby always said and she was right. Ruby had made it RULE 12: ADJUST YOUR THINKING AND YOUR CHANCES IMPROVE.
Actually, it was probably the best rule there was.
Never panic!
RULE 19: PANIC WILL FREEZE YOUR BRAIN. Panic will get you nowhere. Panic can get you killed.
She began to edge forward through the nothingness, and as she moved her senses got sharper. She felt the tunnel getting steadily bigger, and realised that the surfaces were smooth – not gritty as she might expect them to be. It didn’t smell dank; in fact it didn’t really smell of anything. She could feel twists and turns and before long was standing not crawling – yet still there was no light. All sense of time had melted away and she could not accurately say how long she had been down there.
She was hot and tired when she stumbled into what amounted to a brick wall. She felt around her, stretching up and reaching across in all directions but there was no way forward, only back. It seemed the tunnel led nowhere – it had all been for nothing.
Ruby sank to the ground, put her head in her hands and wondered how she was ever going to summon the energy to get herself out of there. How long she sat there she did not know.
A sudden deep shuddering sound as if the earth were on the move.
A blinding light – light as white as the dark was black.
Ruby was jolted to her feet, eyes squinting, heart racing.
And then the voice.
‘So you made it, Ruby Redfort.’
Chapter 10.
The voice
RUBY KNEW THAT VOICE. It was the voice of the telephone, the voice of the codes and the riddles, but she could not see where it came from.
Slowly her eyes began to adjust and she found that the wall was no longer a wall, and she stumbled forward into an entirely white room.
It was a big room, huge, at its centre an enormous desk. Behind the desk sat a woman; the owner of the gravelly voice. The woman was older than her mother but not “old”. Dressed completely in white, she was elegant and strikingly beautiful, immaculately groomed – although in no way “dolled-up”, as Mrs Digby would put it.
Under the white desk Ruby could see the woman’s feet – she wore no shoes and her toenails were painted cherry red, the only visible colour in the room. She was studying some papers which were spread out across the tabletop, engrossed in these, too busy to be bothered looking up.
A fly buzzed aimlessly around the room.
Ruby wasn’t bad at physics, in fact she was pretty good, but even she couldn’t work out how a space this big could fit into a space this small – it was like she had crawled through a drain and found herself in a ballroom.
‘Wow,’ said Ruby. ‘Your decorators really know how to make a place feel roomy.’
The woman reached for her glasses, then, showing only the merest hint of curiosity, she peered across the desk. She paused before asking in a far from joking tone, ‘Do you know why you are here?’
‘Because you called me up and got me crawling down a tunnel?’ said Ruby.
The woman paused again. ‘Do you know who I am?’
Ruby looked at the desk, then above it at the all-white painting, and then at the carpet on the floor. After some close looking she began to see a pattern in the white mat and gloss paint, and another in the pile of the carpet. The patterns were all made up of the same letters, two letters.
‘LB?’ she said.
The woman nodded, almost smiling. ‘LB is correct. I am in charge here.’
‘And where exactly is here?’ asked Ruby
‘The hub of it all, the hub of intelligence.’
‘Come again?’ said Ruby
‘Well if you must have a label – Spectrum.’
‘Nope,’ said Ruby. ‘Still means nothing to me.’
‘And nor should it,’ said the woman. ‘Spectrum is a secret agency – a very secret agency.’
‘Well, nice going,’ said Ruby, ‘cause I never heard of you. So who do you work for, the government?’
‘To put it simply – we work outside the government but not against the government if you know what I mean.’
‘So what you’re saying is, you’re the good guys.’
‘We like to think we are the good, good guys, but good guys will do.’
‘Everyone always thinks they’re the good guys,’ said Ruby.
‘Yes they do,’ said LB. ‘But happily for us, we are.’
‘Well you might know that but how do I?’
LB took a deep breath. ‘As I understand it, part of your “intelligence” lies in your almost impeccable instincts. Ask yourself one thing: something led you here, but was it your good instincts or just simple curiosity? Would you take the risk of crawling through a suffocating black tunnel if you thought we were the bad guys?’
It was a good point.
‘So what does LB stand for?’ asked Ruby ‘None of your beeswax, as someone your age might say,’ replied LB.
‘No one my age would say that – not unless they were pretending to be someone your age.’
LB didn’t seem bothered by this remark, but instead opened a drawer and selected a red Perspex file. ‘Are you curious to know why we had you crawl through a tunnel?’
‘Pretty eager,’ Ruby drawled – as if she couldn’t care less.
LB opened the file. ‘We first became aware of you five years ago. We took a look at that code you created for the Junior Code-Creator Competition, and we heard about the Harvard offer – I imagine you remember?’
‘Yeah, I remember,’ Ruby mumbled – it was an experience she had tried hard to live down. She had not relished the attention.
‘We were interested, but when we discovered exactly how old you were, that you were just some little kid, we thought again.’
‘So, what? You don’t think I’m just “some kid” now?’
‘Well, since you’re asking, yes, but now we’re desperate,’ replied LB.
‘Wow, you sure know how to pump up a person’s ego.’
LB gave her a hard stare. ‘We’ve been watching you for a number of years. Since you appeared on our radar we have had access to your grades and school assignments. You’re not normal.’
‘That’s you paying a
compliment, right?’
‘I wouldn’t take it that way.’
Ruby shrugged. ‘So why’d ya call?’
‘I need to know if you are willing to work for us – just the one job you understand.’
‘Doing what?’ asked Ruby.
‘We’ll get to the details in due course but I need to know, are you in or are you out?’
‘You must have a lot of confidence in me.’
‘That, or I’m crazy,’ said LB shuffling her papers.
‘But can I be trusted?’ said Ruby.
LB stopped shuffling and looked up. ‘We think so – one thing you seem good at is keeping your mouth shut.’
‘And if you’re wrong?’ said Ruby
‘And if we’re wrong,’ sighed LB, leaning forward. ‘And if you do turn out to be a blabber mouth, then who’s going to believe you?’
It was true, a schoolgirl was going to have a hard time convincing anyone but Clancy Crew that there was a secret agency situated beneath the street if you only took the trouble to lift the drain cover just underneath the sign for Lucky Eight gas.
‘So, are you willing to take the assignment?’
‘I have no idea what it is.’
‘You’ll be briefed once you have taken and passed the required Spectrum test and been cleared by security.’ LB paused. ‘I should make clear that this will be a desk job: there will be no car chases, no jumping out of aeroplanes in black turtle-neck sweaters, and it will not make you one of us, you will not become an agent, you will simply be carrying out this one task and when it’s over you will go back to your boring hum-drum schoolgirl life.’
‘Gee lady,’ Ruby exhaled. ‘It’s on the tip of my tongue to say yes.’
‘Oh, I forgot,’ said LB. ‘There is a small fee.’
‘Do I pay you or do you pay me?’
LB ignored this last comment. ‘Your decision?’
‘But you haven’t told me what I have to do.’
‘This is a once in a lifetime offer – yes or no?’
‘Well, I don’t know,’ said Ruby chewing on her finger nail. ‘There is this biology assignment I’m working on – you see I have to imagine my life as a plankton, and I reckon thinking like a plankton is going to take time, I mean gee, I’m not sure I can spare the hours.’
‘Look, plankton girl,’ drawled LB. ‘Cut the baloney and let’s get things straight, are you in or are you out?’
Ruby gave LB one of her sideways stares before answering. ‘I guess the plankton can wait.’
‘Good, glad to have that sorted. We will arrange for you to be excused from class – other than that, don’t call us we’ll call you.’
‘Anything I need to know?’ said Ruby.
‘Uh huh, RULE 1: KEEP IT ZIPPED.’
Ruby lifted the drain cover, and felt a large hand grab her by her jacket collar.
She shrieked in a most un-Ruby-Redfort-like way.
‘Take it easy kid, I thought you might like to throw your bike in the trunk and get a ride home.’ Ruby looked up to see the tan face of the Redfort household manager.
‘How’d you know I was here?’
‘I guess you just struck me as the kind of girl who likes to spend her evenings crawling down drains.’
Ruby looked at him hard. ‘Who exactly are you?’
‘Spectrum sent me to babysit you,’ said Hitch, wiping dust from his hands.
‘Well, sorry to put you out of a job,’ said Ruby. ‘But I’ve been putting myself to bed since I could climb into my cot.’
‘Well, Ms All-grown-up, what you’ve got to understand is that this isn’t just any job, they’re trusting you kid – trusting you with things no one gets trusted with.’
‘So what you are saying is, you work for them?’
‘Yeah, I work for them.’
‘Don’t tell me you’re a spy too,’ said Ruby.
‘Agent,’ corrected Hitch.
‘Right, so you’re not even slightly an actual household manager?’
‘No, I am just looking out for you while my arm heals, I needed an assignment without the action – though you can’t deny I keep a pretty tidy kitchen.’
‘Should I believe you?’ asked Ruby. ‘The truth isn’t exactly your strong point – how’s your housemaid’s elbow by the way?’
‘Getting better thank you.’
‘Good – so what actually happened?’
‘I got shot.’
‘Who by?’
‘Someone.’
‘I had no idea butlering could be so dangerous. What did you do, break one of the Wellingfords’ Ming vases?’
‘There are no Wellingfords.’
‘I didn’t think so. Who shot you, then?’
‘Trust me kid, you don’t want to know.’
‘And why would I trust you?’
‘I’ve got an honest face.’
‘A pretty one maybe, but I wouldn’t call pretending to be a butler honest.’
‘Well, I can assure you it doesn’t feel like pretending to me – feels like hard work. Your parents are kind of pernickety.’
‘Maybe you aren’t as good as you think you are. Clancy had a hunch that there was more to you than the whole butler thing.’
‘I’ll take that as a compliment.’
‘I wouldn’t – I thought you were a bozo. What normal person travels with his own toaster?’
‘Communication device actually – it sends and receives written messages.’
‘That figures.’ said Ruby recalling the image of Hitch examining his toast. ‘So how does this whole undercover thing work?’
‘Well, your parents, they must never suspect a thing, no one must ever suspect a thing – and that includes your pal Clancy Crew. That’s rule number one: keep it zipped.’
‘So I heard,’ said Ruby dryly.
‘So you’re clear on this?’
‘Yeah, don’t blab, sounds pretty simple to me.’
‘No kid, that’s where you’re wrong – that’s the difficult bit. Code breaking and all that other stuff, that’s easy compared to keeping a secret like this.’
Mrs Digby
was beginning
to make herself
at home. . .
She had investigated her surroundings and discovered that although she was trapped – nothin’s gonna budge these locks – in what amounted to a giant warehouse, she was at least very comfortable.
So this is how it feels to be a Redfort, she said to herself as she stretched out in Brant Redfort’s designer lounge chair. She was by now attired in one of Sabina Redfort’s evening gowns – it was a full length silver sequined affair and rather dressy for kicking about an old warehouse but Mrs Digby had always wanted to try it and besides, who was ever going to know?
Mrs Digby, ever practical – my ancestors were pioneers, they panned for gold, survived eating boiled raccoons and raw berries, sometimes boiled berries and raw raccoons – had managed to find a long extension cord and had powered up the well-stocked refrigerator. She wasn’t going to starve anytime soon, that was something.
The Digbys have always survived and always will because we’re not afraid of a little hard work and a little discomfort, said Mrs Digby to herself as she arranged Mrs Redfort’s faux mink stole around her shoulders.
Now, if I could just find a way of getting reception on this TV.
Chapter 11.
The eyes followed the hands
‘SHE WILL BE IN MIAMI,’ said Brant Redfort.
‘Who will be in Miami?’ repeated Sabina.
‘Mrs Digby,’ said Brant. ‘Remember that time she got so mad at you for putting us all on that pickle diet? Said it would pickle us from the inside out.’
‘Uh huh.’
‘Well, what did she do? She took off for Miami, stayed there till you saw sense.’ Brant folded his arms like a man who had just successfully completed the cryptic crossword.
‘You know what Brant? You’re a genius!’ She turned to Ruby. ‘Your father�
��s a genius, Ruby!’
Ruby thought this unlikely but said nothing.
‘Miami! That’s exactly where she is,’ continued Sabina. ‘Playing poker I’ll bet. Thank goodness for that.’ She poured herself another tomato-celery health juice. ‘How she loves to gamble!’ Sabina picked up her magazine, Faces of the Absurdly Rich. ‘Well, this is going to make old Freddie happy, it says here that security has been stepped up to record levels – Twinford City Bank now has the safest bank vaults in the whole of the country.’
‘Well I’m relieved to hear it,’ said Brant. ‘I just deposited my latest paycheck! I certainly don’t want to gamble with that!’
Sabina laughed like he had just cracked the joke of the century.
Ruby, who despite appearances had actually been paying attention to this conversation, thought about what her father had said – not about the gold, but about Mrs Digby. Gambling in Miami – it was certainly a possibility.
She was roused from her thoughts by a piece of toast freshly delivered to her plate. It was telling her something:
‘Be ready in ten, wear your boots.’
Mrs Bexenheath, the school secretary, looked up to see what at first glance she imagined must be some Hollywood film star. It was as if he had accidentally strayed off the ‘walk of fame’ and wandered unwittingly into the shabby halls of Twinford Junior High – so entirely out of place was he. However, this handsome man struck up an easy conversation with her and before a minute had passed Mrs Bexenheath had found herself agreeing to excuse Ruby Redfort from all lessons for the foreseeable future. She had concentrated carefully, all the while staring into his Hollywood eyes, wondering were they brown or were they hazel. And although after he had left she couldn’t exactly remember why she had excused Ruby from classes, she did find herself very sympathetic.
‘Of course! Of course, she must take all the time she needs,’ she had gushed.
‘Just remember, Mrs Bexenheath, keep it hush hush – oh and don’t bother Mr and Mrs Redfort, if you need to ask anything then be sure to bother me.’