“Are you all in there?” said Rhonda. “You have a visitor.”
The children exchanged frustrated glances. If they didn’t want to raise suspicion, they had no choice. For the moment, this meeting of the Society was adjourned.
Half-Truths and Deceptions
I left as soon as I received Rhonda’s telegram,” Moocho Brazos was saying. “I hoped to catch up and warn you, but you were too far ahead. I’m afraid I was rather agitated when I got here.”
“Perfectly understandable,” said Miss Perumal, passing him a platter of cold cuts. “It was good of you to try to warn us.”
Everyone was gathered in the dining room again except Rhonda — who’d returned to the questioning interrupted by Moocho’s arrival — and the recent confusion had been sorted out. Moocho and the police officers had apologized to one another (much to the displeasure of Mr. Bane, who would not be soothed), and Kate had whistled Madge down from the eaves — for the bird Sticky had seen was indeed Kate’s clever falcon.
(“What a bird!” Kate had exclaimed. “She must have seen me get into the station wagon and followed it all this way! Oh, you must be exhausted, you foolish, naughty thing!” she scolded, stroking the bird’s feathers. She was clearly flattered to discover her falcon was so attached. Nevertheless, she felt obliged to leave Madge outside, for a bird of prey could hardly be trusted in the same house with the precious homing pigeon.)
“Does Milligan know about any of this?” asked Moocho, politely taking only enough cold cuts to feed a normal-sized person.
“Rhonda’s been unable to reach him,” said Mrs. Washington.
Mr. Washington, who had been staring out the window, spoke up for the first time since they’d arrived. “What is Milligan doing, anyway? I thought he’d already tracked down everyone Mr. Benedict wanted to help.”
“Everyone but the Executives who disappeared with Mr. Curtain,” Kate said through a mouthful of turkey cold cut. She swallowed and continued, “Lately he’s been going on other kinds of missions. He’s . . . uh . . . I’m actually not supposed to know about them,” she said nervously.
“Don’t say anything you shouldn’t, dear,” said Mrs. Washington.
“If the missions have had anything to do with Mr. Curtain,” said Reynie (who was hoping to stall questions about the envelope Mr. Benedict had given them), “it might be important for us to know about them.”
“That’s true,” said Mr. Washington, coming to sit at the table. “This concerns all of us. Do you know anything that might be relevant, Kate? You should keep quiet about anything that isn’t, of course.”
Kate cast a wary glance at the dining room door. Miss Perumal’s mother, seeing this, rose from her seat. “I’ll stand guard,” she said. “You can fill me in later. I can’t hear a word when you’re all whispering, anyway, and this is certainly a time for whispering.” She went out. The others looked expectantly at Kate.
“He’s been investigating the activities of Mr. Curtain’s creepy henchmen,” Kate said. “The Ten Men. They’ve been up to something these past few months — breaking into offices, stealing things from laboratories — but no one can figure out what it is.”
“Ten Men?” said Miss Perumal. “What a curious name.”
“They’re called that because they have ten different ways of hurting you,” Sticky said knowingly.
Sticky’s parents turned to stare at him. “I see you’ve already heard about them,” said Mr. Washington.
“We don’t know any details, though,” Reynie said quickly, as Sticky averted his eyes.
“Ten Men look pretty much like regular businessmen,” Kate said, “which can make them hard for the authorities to spot. But everything they carry is a weapon. You already know about their shockwatches, right? Well, they also use their neckties like whips. And their pocket handkerchiefs are soaked in something — if they hold it to your nose you’ll be knocked right out — and their briefcases are chock-full of evil stuff, too: razor-sharp pencils, poisonous chewing gum, even a laser pointer that fires a real laser — not just a red light, I mean, but a beam they can cut your ears off with!”
At this, everyone at the table looked uncomfortably at their plates of cold cuts. Sticky’s hands went to his ears. “They really cut them off?”
“Well, I don’t know if they really do,” Kate admitted, “but they could if they wanted to.”
“We get the picture,” said Mrs. Washington, pushing her plate away. “These are bad men.”
“Nasty men,” Kate corrected. “Milligan has been in some awful scrapes, I can tell you. If he weren’t Milligan, I’d be worried about him all the time.”
Beside her, Sticky was polishing his spectacles, feeling even more troubled now at the prospect of bumping into a Ten Man. The adults were disturbed as well. All around the table they were shaking their heads, clucking their tongues, and looking very somber indeed. Only Reynie felt unsurprised by Kate’s report, for he retained the feeling — despite Mr. Benedict’s argument against it — that wickedness was something to be expected.
“That’s all I know,” Kate said apologetically. “It doesn’t really shed any light on our situation.”
Reynie noticed Miss Perumal looking thoughtful and prepared himself. He figured he knew what was coming. Sure enough, she turned to him and said, “I’m assuming the envelope Rhonda gave you doesn’t clear anything up. Otherwise you’d have told us right away.”
“It didn’t give us the least idea of where they might have gone,” Reynie said, which was true in a sense. “Maybe Milligan will have some answers. Surely he’ll be here soon.”
“In the meantime, may we see the letter?” Mr. Washington asked.
“Of course,” said Reynie at once, before his friends betrayed any alarm. “We left it up in Constance’s room. Should I get it now?” He made as if to rise.
“Finish your lunch first,” Miss Perumal said, which was what Reynie had hoped she’d say. “You can go up afterward.”
Reynie settled into his seat again. He was so nervous he had no appetite, but he did try to eat something. If he and the others were going to sneak out, they had to do it right after lunch. After that, who knew where his next meal would come from?
Eventually Rhonda Kazembe rejoined them in the dining room, closing the door behind her. With a weary shake of her head, she reported that Ms. Argent very much wanted to interview the children but had been put off until later. “I insisted she allow you time to recover from the shock, and that at any rate you could hardly be expected to know anything. Now tell me,” she said with a keen look, “what was in the envelope? Did you learn anything?”
Reynie quickly repeated his half-truth, saying that the letter hadn’t given them any idea about where their friends had gone. Rhonda, who had no reason not to trust him — indeed she put great stock in his opinions — looked bitterly disappointed. In that case, she said, she would wait to see the letter until she’d dealt with another matter. Reynie nodded, feeling every bit as guilty as he did relieved.
Rhonda moved to sit beside Constance (who squirmed uncomfortably, as if in danger of being shown affection) and placed a small, clumsily wrapped box on the table. “I couldn’t give you this earlier,” she said. “It was in Mr. Benedict’s study, and the inspectors wouldn’t let me take anything out until they’d gone over it with a fine-toothed comb. I’m sorry to say they’ve already examined this, even though it was a personal present to you from Mr. Benedict. I did make them rewrap it.”
“They sure did a terrible job,” Kate observed. “They put the paper on inside out!”