“What happened?” asked Constance, a little short of breath, as if at that very moment Mr. Benedict were about to topple from the precipice.
“He fell backward instead of forward. As simple as that. He got a rather nasty bump on his head, but when I think of the alternative . . .” Captain Noland shuddered. “Just like that,” he said, snapping his fingers, “and I would have lost my friend forever — to say nothing of all the lives he saved that year. And it would have been entirely my fault.”
“Was it the westernmost wall he nearly fell from?” asked Reynie. He had a good many questions he wanted to ask — for instance, what was this about Mr. Benedict saving lives? Whose lives did the captain mean? But more pressing at the moment was understanding this clue and what they were to do about it.
“It was indeed,” said Captain Noland. He yawned and pointed toward the chest, still tied to a lower bunk. “I don’t suppose there’s any coffee left in the pot, is there? Did you finish it off last night?”
“We, uh — we couldn’t,” Reynie said. “We got seasick right after you left.”
Captain Noland squeezed past him and opened the chest. “Why, there’s still a good half pot left! I’m in luck!” He wiped out his cup from the night before and filled it with the treacly black liquid. Perhaps being cold and stale improved the coffee’s taste, Reynie thought; certainly it couldn’t make it any worse. Regardless, the captain had forgotten to offer them any, and for this all the children were grateful.
Captain Noland downed half the cup in one gulp, refilled it, then closed the chest and sat on it. “Much better,” he said. “I’m of no use to you if I’m asleep. Now then, as for Nicholas’s directions, they all make sense to me now. Things should be pretty straightforward when we get up to the castle.”
“How so?” asked Reynie.
“Well, as you might imagine, there aren’t any olive trees in the castle itself,” said the captain, “so Nicholas has to be referring to the outer wall of the castle grounds, which are rather like a big park. I remember quite a stretch of wall on the western side, but I’m sure these other clues — the description of which trees are nearby and which aren’t — will narrow the location down exactly. No doubt we’ll see right away where he’s buried the envelope. We’ll look for a spot where the earth has been freshly turned.”
“You think it’s buried?” Sticky asked.
“Surely that’s what Nicholas meant by ‘not visible’ and ‘need tool.’ He meant for us to dig. I’ll have Joe fetch a shovel as soon as we dock.”
The children looked at one another with expressions of relief and surprise.
“Well, that was easy,” said Kate, putting the letter away inside her bucket. “Now all we have to do is get there!”
“You can leave that to me,” said Captain Noland. “I’ll radio ahead to have a taxi waiting at the docks. We’ll waste no time that way. Joe and I will change into civilian clothes — the better to avoid notice — and accompany you to the castle.”
“What do you mean by civilian clothes?” asked Constance. “Aren’t you a civilian?”
“Ha!” cried Captain Noland, scratching his beard. “An old habit, Constance. I was in the navy for so long, I tend to forget things have changed. I only meant to say we won’t wear our uniforms.”
“That reminds me,” said Kate. “Did you say that you and Mr. Benedict met in the navy?”
“It’s a fact,” said Captain Noland. “We were in naval intelligence together. Of course, this was very long ago . . . Has Nicholas never told you?” Seeing their blank faces, the captain chuckled and shook his head. “It doesn’t surprise me. He couldn’t have told you much without seeming to brag — and Nicholas is anything but a braggart. I’m perfectly happy to brag on him, though. I used to joke that he saved a hundred lives every morning before breakfast, and the truth wasn’t far from that. We were engaged in a terrible war, you see — a long-forgotten war that no one likes to talk about now — and Nicholas was our best code breaker. Whenever an enemy transmission was intercepted, we brought it straight to him. He usually cracked the code within minutes, if not sooner. Our soldiers avoided any number of surprise attacks thanks to Nicholas.”
The children grinned, pleased to hear good things said about Mr. Benedict. In his absence they found themselves especially eager for details about him — as if by gathering details they might, in some small way, bring him back.
“Didn’t you say he saved your life once, too?” asked Reynie.
Captain Noland had just slugged the rest of his coffee and stood to open the chest. He took out the coffee pot and refilled his cup. “Actually, Nicholas saved my life more than once. The first time, we’d been sent on a secret assignment. It was an unusually important assignment, too — otherwise they wouldn’t have sent Nicholas, who never did field work. His narcolepsy might put him at risk, you see. Well, we managed to complete the assignment, but in the process we were captured by the enemy. I should say that I was captured. Nicholas was not. But in order to rescue me he turned himself over to my captors.”
Captain Noland settled onto the chest again. “I’m sure you’re thinking what I was thinking. How on earth did he hope to save me by sacrificing himself? Well, that was when I discovered that Nicholas is the most persuasive man in the world. Mysteriously so. Over the next two days, he spoke with every officer in the enemy headquarters. If he couldn’t convince one officer of what he was saying, he would switch tactics, arguing that a different officer ought to be sent in to speak with him. One way or another, he always succeeded, and by the end of the second day he’d found just the right things to say to just the right people, and had convinced our enemy that we should be let go. To this day, I can’t quite believe it.”
“That’s amazing!” Kate cried. “How did he possibly manage it?”
“I can’t say for sure, but I think part of the answer is that people sense something in Nicholas that makes them trust him. And of course that’s with good reason. Compared to Nicholas, even the best of men are untrustworthy.”
Reynie felt a sudden, unexpected twinge of suspicion. This last statement of the captain’s sounded rather like a justifi-cation, as if one could be untrustworthy and still be considered among “the best of men.” What was more, the captain’s expression had shifted subtly in a way that Reynie couldn’t quite interpret. Perhaps he simply felt jealous of Mr. Benedict’s trustworthy character — or of other people’s perception of it. That could be a natural feeling for a good man who wished he were more trustworthy. Still, the thought made Reynie uneasy.
Sticky, meanwhile, was asking Captain Noland how else Mr. Benedict had saved his life, and Reynie tried to set aside his suspicions and listen. He did like Captain Noland, after all. And if Mr. Benedict trusted him, shouldn’t Reynie?
“He saved me once again by saying the right thing to the right person,” Captain Noland said. “This time the person was me. The war had just ended, and Nicholas was leaving the navy to return to his research. I was thinking of leaving the navy myself, for I was extremely miserable half the time. I’d grown up on ships — my father was a merchant sailor — but by the end of this war I felt I’d missed my calling. How else was I to explain my feeling depressed so much of the time?
“When I told him this, Nicholas laughed so much he fell asleep. I was fairly annoyed, I can tell you. But then he always did like to laugh, and when he woke up he apologized sincerely and said, ‘Phil, it isn’t being on ships that makes you miserable. It’s getting off them. You’re always sad when you head for port, and you’re sad the entire time you’re on land — except for the day you set sail again. The worst thing you could do would be to stay ashore.’