The Prisoner's Dilemma (26 page)

“Is this your new office?” Kate said, glancing about in an appraising way. “Cold, dusty, empty—it suits you, I think.”

Mr. Curtain’s smile faded. From the doorway came the sound of a hastily swallowed chuckle. Mr. Curtain glanced at the Ten Men (Crawlings was staring at his feet), then reached inside his suit coat and took out a pair of shiny silver gloves. At the sight of these the children flinched and recoiled, recalling with painful clarity how it felt to be touched by them. “Ms. Wetherall,” said Mr. Curtain as he tugged the gloves on, “did you not hear what I just said about being too bold?”

“Mr. Curtain! Mr. Curtain, sir!” cried a familiar voice, and barging into the room (squeezing with some difficulty through the group of Ten Men) came none other than S.Q. Pedalian. “The van’s here!”

Mr. Curtain scowled and turned on him, waving his arms. “Of
course
the van is here, S.Q.! Look around you—what do you see? Hmm? Through whom did you just pass to enter this room? Are they not the very men we expected to
arrive
in the van? And who are these children before me? Are they not the very ones I expected to be
brought
to me in the van?”

S.Q. blinked and looked over at the snickering Ten Men. “I’m… I’m sorry, sir. I just got excited when I saw it, and…” He started to nod in greeting at the children, caught himself, and turned away from them. “It won’t happen again, I promise.”

Mr. Curtain rolled his eyes in exasperation. “Of course it won’t, you idiot! How could it?” He held up one hand to stop S.Q. from speaking. “Do not try to answer that.” Shaking his head, he contemplated his gloves a moment, then sighed and slowly began taking them off. “And now, thanks to your interruption, I find my enthusiasm for using these has passed. Perhaps later.”

Kate looked gratefully at S.Q., but he would not meet her eye. She vividly remembered the last time they had seen each other. S.Q. had been deceived by Mr. Benedict and the children—the deception, unfortunately, was vital to their escape—and was utterly distraught. No matter that his distress resulted more from his fear of Mr. Curtain’s anger than from anything else, it was the deception he had fixated on, and Kate wondered how he felt about it now. If she hadn’t known better, she might have thought his blundering entrance was a ruse meant to spare her those silver gloves.

But
did
she know better? As Mr. Curtain tucked away the gloves and climbed into his wheelchair again, Kate studied S.Q.’s bland, impassive face. What was he really thinking? He looked the same as ever, though perhaps he had grown into his gangly frame a bit—yes, he had almost certainly filled out—and the boots on his oversized feet had developed gaps along the seams; he desperately needed new ones. But Kate and the others knew Mr. Curtain’s dark secret now; they knew how he had managed to manipulate S.Q.’s kind nature. Time had passed—was passing still—so might not S.Q. be starting to grow beyond the man’s influence?

If so, his subservient manner wasn’t revealing it. If anything, he seemed more eager than ever to please Mr. Curtain, or at least to avoid incurring his wrath. Even the eternally optimistic Kate had to admit the possibility that S.Q. still felt loyal to Mr. Curtain—and still felt betrayed by Mr. Benedict and the children. They certainly couldn’t count on his help.

“I shall not abide further interruptions,” Mr. Curtain said. “Therefore I advise you children not to speak unless you are specifically told to do so. Do I make myself clear?”

Kate and the boys nodded. Constance opened her mouth to respond, but Kate quickly clapped her hand over it.

Mr. Curtain smirked. “Much better. You may have noticed that I often prefer silence.” His wheelchair backed away from them, and crossing his legs in a relaxed manner he continued in scarcely more than a whisper, forcing them to lean forward and strain their ears.

“Here is what I expect of you. You will remain quietly in this room, causing no disturbance whatsoever. Failure to comply shall result in immediate punishment. You will eventually be given some food, so do refrain from asking for it. The same is true for bathroom visits. In fact, your best course of action—the one least likely to result in punishment—would be to lie still on the floor with your eyes and mouths closed.”

Mr. Curtain stared at them a long moment to be sure he’d been understood. Then he whirled about in his wheelchair and rocketed out the doorway, moving with such speed and force that if the Ten Men had not expected it and stepped neatly aside they would have been scattered like bowling pins. With winks and smiles they followed their employer out, and S.Q. brought up the rear, hurriedly closing and locking the door behind him with nary a glance at the children.

As soon as the door had closed Kate turned to the others and whispered, “I’m so sorry! I should have waited for Reynie to think things through. We’d never have gotten into this mess if I had. I would have said so sooner, but we were never alone. Oh, this is all my fault!”

“Forget it,” Reynie said. “You just wanted to stop Mr. Curtain. We all did.”

“I still do, actually,” said Sticky. “Before he does… well, whatever it is he’s going to do to us.”

Constance, who had slept almost the entire time in the van, was still groggy and exceedingly cross, and now—in response to Kate’s apology—she said, “You’re sorry?

We get packed in a van like sardines in a can,

I have to sit by a stinky Ten Man,

Thirsty and terrified hour after hour,

Certain that Curtain has us in his power…

And you say you’re sorry? You think sorry covers it?”

“Constance!” Reynie scolded, and Sticky shot her a disapproving look.

Kate bit her tongue. In recent months she had finally come up with a rhyming response for the next time Constance attacked her in verse (at long last she had hit upon “remonstrance” as a suitable rhyme for “Constance”), and she’d been most eager to use it. But the timing was all wrong, and so she said lightly, “Sorry will have to do for now, Connie girl.”

Constance, ashamed of her outburst but in no mood to admit it, sat on the floor and covered her eyes with her hands. The events of the past several minutes had all seemed far too loud and upsetting, and at the moment she simply wished she could hide inside her own shell like a turtle.

Kate turned to the boys. “So what do you think he intends to do with us? Why did he tell the Ten Men he wanted us awake and alert?”

“He wants to trade us for something, right?” Reynie said. “I think he means to show Mr. Benedict we haven’t been brainswept. That way he can threaten to use the Whisperer on us if Mr. Benedict doesn’t give him what he wants.”

“So he wants us to be able to prove we still have our memories?” Kate said. “My, how practical of him. Well, guess what? If it comes to that, I’m going to pretend to be brainswept—just to get his goat!”

“Let’s not let it come to that,” Reynie said, walking over to the light switch. “We need to get out of here.”

“So you’re… turning off the light?” asked Sticky, perplexed.

“I’m looking for the window,” Reynie said, throwing the switch. The room went dark, but not completely so—a faint glow of sunlight filtered out from behind one of the big metal bookcases. “We need to move that bookcase,” he said, turning the light back on.

Kate hurried to inspect the bookcase. “Awfully heavy,” she murmured. “It’ll be noisy to slide it. Anyway, we’ll want to be able to put it back fast. Here, give me a hand with that desk.”

With the boys on one end and Kate on the other (and Constance uncovering her eyes to supervise), they carried the desk to where Kate wanted it. Then, moving slowly and with the utmost caution, they tilted the bookcase forward until its top rested against the desk. The metal shelves groaned and twanged, but only a little, and after a tense few moments of listening they decided no one was coming to check on them. Crowding into the narrow space behind the tilted bookcase, they peered out the large, dirt-streaked window they had exposed.

The view was not very encouraging. Three stories below them lay a kind of bleak, square courtyard sparsely covered with dead brown grass and surrounded by four brick buildings—or rather four wings of the same building—four stories high. The wings were identical, with identical flat roofs and identical long rows of dirty windows. The arrangement reminded Reynie of a hospital he had visited once, and Sticky of a dreary office complex where his mother used to work. But there was no obvious clue as to what this place was—or used to be, rather. The only thing that seemed certain was that it had been abandoned and neglected for a while.

“What do you think?” Reynie murmured to Kate. “I still have your rope.”

Kate was craning her neck this way and that. “I’m glad, but it’s not going to be much use. We’re too high up.” She studied the roofs across the courtyard for clues about the roof directly above them, then shook her head. “There’s no good way to climb up, either—not even a gargoyle to lasso, just standard old gutters. Although…” She frowned. “No, never mind, that wouldn’t work.”

“What were you about to say?” Sticky asked. “Maybe if the rest of us hear it—”

“No, really. It won’t work.”

It wasn’t quite like Kate to say something couldn’t work, much less to refuse even to discuss it. Everyone looked at her quizzically. She might be an accomplished trickster around her enemies, but to her friends she was remarkably transparent.

“What are you trying to hide, Kate?” Reynie asked. “What’s going on?”

Kate had walked away from the window as if to dismiss it out of hand. “Nothing. I’ll tell you later. Right now we should put the bookcase back up.”

“She thinks she could get away!” exclaimed Constance, who had been staring keenly at Kate’s troubled face.

Kate looked stunned, then quickly tried to recover. But try as she might, she couldn’t hide her guilty expression. She could hardly have looked more shamefaced if she’d been caught stealing.

“Is that right, Kate?” Sticky asked, his eyes growing round with hope. “But that’s great! Why wouldn’t you tell us?”

Kate shook her head, fretfully knitting her brow. “I’m sorry—I couldn’t help it! It’s not like I can keep from having ideas, right? I didn’t
mean
to…”

Reynie was going to ask Kate what in the world she was talking about—she seemed to have misunderstood Sticky’s question—when suddenly he understood. Kate believed
she
could get away, but not the rest of them. And she wasn’t about to leave her friends behind. She was ashamed even to have thought of it.

“Kate,” Reynie said urgently, “listen, you have to do it! If you think you can, you have to—it’s our best chance! You could figure out where we are, then find your way back to Mr. Benedict and the others. They’ll know what to do to rescue us, don’t you see?”

Kate was bouncing on the balls of her feet, her face tense with distress. (In fact she looked like someone who desperately needed to find a bathroom.) “Oh, of
course
I see, Reynie! But how can I possibly—? No, I just can’t do it!”

Sticky grabbed her arm. “Yes, you can, Kate. You can and you will! Don’t worry about us, we’ll be all right—but only if you go and get help!”

Rarely had Sticky spoken with such force, and Kate was somewhat taken aback. She stood blinking at him a moment, then gave a small, tight nod. “You’re right. I… I know you can manage without me, of course, and… all right. I’ll go.”

Her decision made, Kate was once again her usual self—and her usual self was all action. Retrieving her rope and Swiss Army knife from Reynie, she wrapped the rope around her waist, tucked her shirt in over it so that it was hidden, then opened a short blade on the knife. She had already noticed that the window was painted shut, and with precise, deft strokes she began to work her way along the frame, cutting through the paint.

As Sticky and Constance watched her work, Reynie was watching Sticky. Now that his forceful speech to Kate was finished, he seemed more anxious than ever; in fact he was gazing mournfully at Kate as if he would never see her again, and Reynie was struck by a sudden realization. Sticky had done his best to convince Kate to go, not because he thought she could save them—a doubtful prospect at best—but simply because he hoped she could save herself.

And he said exactly the right thing, too,
Reynie thought.
He knew she needed to see that we’d be all right.

Reynie turned away, fairly overcome by a surge of emotions—pride in his friend, concern for Kate’s safety, and fear that Sticky was right, that they might not ever see Kate again. He started pacing the room, averting his eyes. Kate needed to go at once; she didn’t need distractions. And so Reynie paced, and as he did his thoughts circled around Kate’s escape attempt. What if someone was watching out one of those other windows? What if she had to break a window or pick a lock to get out of that courtyard? Could she do that quietly? And how did she mean to get down into that courtyard, anyway? Reynie went over these questions again and again, until he was so distracted himself that Constance had to speak his name twice to get his attention.

“Clean out your ears, Reynie,” she said. “Kate’s ready!”