Jackson knuckled Reynie painfully on the head. “If you would use your brain, Muldoon, you might figure a few things out. The spy obviously hopes to steal some of Mr. Curtain’s secret technology, then sell it to someone who might use it for wicked purposes.”
“That would be terrible,” Kate said.
Reynie was rubbing his head. “Anyway, yes, we’ve heard about the spy.”
“And yet one thing you probably have not heard about is this.” Jackson reached into his pocket and drew out a marble. Kate’s marble.
“The spy is a marble?” Reynie asked.
“Ha ha, young man. Ha ha. No, this marble happens to have been found somewhere last night, somewhere — let me put it this way — somewhere it should not have been.”
“That seems a reasonable way to put it,” Reynie said.
Martina leaned forward, peering into Kate’s bucket. “So Jackson and I are looking for the marble’s owner. I don’t want to point any fingers,” she said silkily, “but it seemed to me Kate’s bucket might be a good place to look. She has so many odds and ends in there, you know.”
Reynie and Sticky tried to appear unconcerned, but their minds were in turmoil. Kate had mentioned losing a few things in the water last night, but she’d said nothing about the marbles and slingshot.
“Mind if we have a look?” Martina asked, already reaching.
“Not at all,” replied Kate. Before Martina could actually touch anything, she dumped the bucket’s contents onto the table: a magnet, a Swiss army knife, a spool of twine, a kaleidoscope, and a rope (which was damp, but you couldn’t tell without touching it). No marbles. No slingshot.
“Oh,” said Martina, with a look of bitter disappointment.
“Okay, then,” said Jackson. “Just checking. We have other people to ask, so we’ll leave you to continue your fascinating conversation. Come on, Martina.” With some effort he drew the reluctant Martina away.
Kate winked. “I may not know when the Cenozoic Era was —”
Sticky was aghast. “Kate, we live in the Cenozoic Era. Sure, it began 65 million years ago, but —”
“What I was going to say,” Kate continued stubbornly, “is that I may not know when the Cenozoic Era was, but I wasn’t born yesterday.”
“What in the world are you people talking about?” asked Constance.
“She just means to say she’s not stupid,” said Reynie. “So you got rid of the marbles and the slingshot on purpose, Kate?”
“Of course. I figured he’d find that marble, so I had to dump the others. I sure hated to, though. I won most of them in a game with a lion tamer.”
“Poor Kate,” said Constance, “she’s lost her marbles.”
Everyone but Kate was chuckling about this one when Martina and Jackson, halfway across the cafeteria, suddenly seemed to change their minds and returned to their table. An intimidating look of cruel pleasure on Martina’s face dried up all their laughter and made them wait in silence for the explanation.
“Jackson forgot to mention something else,” Martina said. “He just so happened to spit out a piece of licorice last night in the same place he found that marble. But when he looked for it later, it was gone.”
Reynie felt Kate stiffen next to him. They were in trouble.
“Funny thing about licorice,” said Jackson. “It’s just the sort of thing to get stuck in the bottom of your shoe without your realizing it.”
“I get it, I get it,” said Kate, squirming in her seat. “So now you want to see the bottoms of my shoes.”
“If you’d be so kind,” Martina said with a wicked grin. She’d noticed Kate squirming and was delighted to think she’d frightened her.
“Well, sorry about the dripping, but Reynie just spilled juice all over them,” Kate said.
“Oh, yes, we saw that,” Jackson said. He let out an amused rattle of laughter that sounded like a sheep in pain.
While Jackson was bleating at her expense, Kate pressed something sticky, gritty, and cold into Reynie’s hand beneath the table. She hadn’t been squirming from nervousness — she’d been twisting her legs up to get at the licorice. As she lifted her sodden shoes now for the Executives to inspect, Reynie reached across under the table and pressed the hunk of licorice into Sticky’s hand. The further away from Kate the better, he thought. Sticky had the same idea, immediately passing the licorice on to Constance.
Constance, unfortunately, did not understand what it was.
In horror the boys watched her raise the slimy, dirty, half-chewed glob of candy above the tabletop to examine it. Reynie’s eyes swiveled to the Executives, who, having been disappointed in Kate’s shoes, were now asking her to show her empty hands, then checking for stickiness under the edge of the table. He looked back to Constance and saw the realization hit her, her eyes widening with alarm. And then, an instant before Martina glanced up to see it, Constance popped the licorice into her mouth, chewed it up, and swallowed it.
“Eww, that was the most disgusting thing I’ve ever seen,” Sticky said later, when the crisis had passed and the Executives were off harassing other children. Constance’s cheeks, normally a rosy red, had turned a faint shade of green.
“Disgusting, yes, but heroic,” Reynie said.
“We all have to make sacrifices,” Constance muttered miserably.
“What we need to make is a decision,” said Kate. “We need a plan, and quick. Does anybody have any ideas? I’m fresh out.”
Constance only groaned and put her head in her hands.
“I do have one thing to say,” said Reynie, then hesitated. He had intended to say that he couldn’t face the Whisperer again — that the mere thought of it turned his mind to jelly, so how much worse would it be if he actually experienced the Whisperer again? Wouldn’t he be certain to give up? This was what Reynie had meant to say. But now he found he couldn’t. He was too ashamed.
Constance groaned again without looking up. “Reynie, you’re the king of saying you have something to say, then not actually saying anything. Do you realize that?”
“Sorry,” Reynie said. “I . . . I forgot.”
He was not the only one at the table with troubled thoughts. Sticky felt the same way Reynie did, and Kate was still wishing she’d been able to sabotage those computers, to have solved the dilemma all on her own. (And having failed to do that, she was trying to pretend to herself that she hadn’t.) Constance, meanwhile, was trying not to contemplate what might happen to her when Mr. Curtain boosted the messages to full power. Thus all the children were trying not to think of things instead of trying to think of things, and trying not being generally less productive than trying, they weren’t coming up with ready answers.
In the midst of going round and round in his mind about not facing the Whisperer, however, Reynie did stumble against something which — if seen from a distance and not stared at directly — might resemble a plan. A hundred times he’d thought to himself, “I can’t face the Whisperer again.” But this time, for some reason, he had tacked on the word “alone.” And this was how he stumbled against the planlike thing.
“Okay, everyone. I think I do have a plan now. Didn’t Mr. Benedict tell us that we must rely upon one another in all things? That every single one of us is essential to the success of the team? We have to take into account that we need each other.”
“That’s the plan?” Constance said. “To give each other big hugs?”
Reynie ignored her. “I was thinking maybe if we faced Mr. Curtain and his Whisperer together, we could figure out what to do.”
“You mean all of us in the Whispering Gallery at the same time?” said Constance doubtfully. “With Mr. Curtain there? What could we possibly do?”