“I hope you like lemon juice!” Kate said as the man howled and covered his face. Already she had dropped the bottle, grabbed the briefcase, and flung it across the room at Reynie, who saw it flying toward him with alarm. He was not the most athletic of children, and he felt lucky indeed when he managed to catch the briefcase before it knocked his teeth out. It was quite heavy, and Kate had thrown it with a great deal of force.
“Reynie!” Kate cried. “Throw it out the wind — OW!”
The Ten Man, though temporarily blinded, had used Kate’s voice as a guide, snatching her ponytail and yanking her back toward him. He thought better of this when she began to kick at his shins, however, and after a brief tussle he tossed her high into the air away from him. Kate flipped around like a cat, but even so she landed hard on her bucket, and had it not been for the mattress cushioning her fall, she would almost certainly have broken a rib. Wincing with pain, she looked up to see Reynie turning from the window, still clutching the briefcase. “Reynie! Why —”
“The sidewalk’s too crowded,” Reynie said. “I couldn’t throw it out. It might kill someone.” He sounded half apologetic and half scared out of his wits. He had wanted nothing more than to get rid of that box of horrors, yet now he stood holding it against his chest. A humming sound came from inside the briefcase, like that of a hive full of angry hornets.
Kate grimaced. Of course Reynie couldn’t risk it; she should have thought of that. She’d hoped the briefcase was so precious that the Ten Man would run to retrieve it, giving them a chance to escape. Instead she ought to have snatched it and fled. The Ten Man would have chased her, and the others might have gotten away. Now they were trapped — and Kate was out of ploys.
The Ten Man had recovered from the lemon juice and was watching them from across the room. His eyes were puffy and red, and he was no longer smiling. “I was right about you, ducky. You do bite. But that won’t happen again.” His fingers moved up his necktie like a pale and hairless tarantula. With one smooth, practiced motion he slid the tie loose from his collar, revealing a thin, metallic fringe at the end like that of a bullwhip.
“I’ve already said we’ll give you the papers,” Reynie said, speaking with some difficulty. His mouth was dry as dust. “And I’ll give the briefcase back, too. Just please let us go.”
“Oh, tsk tsk,” the Ten Man said. “Weren’t you supposed to be the clever one? And you really think I would let you go? After such rough treatment? Oh, no, Reynard. Naughty children must be punished.” He flicked the necktie, which made a terrible snapping sound as it streaked across the room and knocked a piece of plaster from the wall near Sticky’s head. The children flinched — especially Sticky, who almost fainted — and the Ten Man’s lip curled into a sneer. “That was just to show you what you’re in for.”
Reynie’s mind was racing. The Ten Man stood between them and the exit, and even if they managed to get past him — which was very unlikely — Reynie now saw another man in a suit, lurking in the entryway just beyond the door. The Ten Man had a partner. This observation did nothing to worsen Reynie’s terror (he was already as terrified as he could be), but it did help him understand, fully and completely, that there was no way out, and that he needed to brace himself for what was coming.
Kate, climbing to her feet, had realized the same thing. “Fine,” she said bitterly. “Do your worst. You will get bitten again, though. Both of you will. That much I promise.”
“Both of us?” the Ten Man said with a frown. He glanced sharply toward the entryway. “Why aren’t you guarding the eleva . . .” His eyes widened. “You aren’t Mortis!”
“I should hope not,” said the other man.
“What have you done with Mortis?” the Ten Man snarled, spinning toward the doorway and raising his necktie-whip.
“I’ll show you,” the other man said, and in the same moment there came a strange whistling sound — swit! — and the feathery end of a dart appeared in the Ten Man’s shoulder.
Angrily the Ten Man snatched the dart out. But he didn’t have time to get a proper look at it before he hit the floor.
The other man entered the room, stepped over the unconscious Ten Man’s body, and knelt down with his arms out. Kate threw herself upon him.
“Oh, Milligan!” she cried. “Oh, Milligan, you’re here!”
Milligan was there, although he was rather difficult to see beneath the pile of jubilant children mobbing him in their excitement. And even when he had freed himself with a lot of hugging and head-patting and handshakes and smiles, Milligan resembled himself but slightly. His normally yellow hair was black, his blue eyes were brown, and his ears, strangely enough, seemed to have shrunk. His ruddy complexion was the same, and he possessed the same tall, lanky build, but at a glance he was hardly recognizable even to those who knew him.
“I thought you were another Ten Man!” Kate said. “I can’t believe I didn’t recognize you!”
“You were concentrating on the more immediate threat,” Milligan said. His eyes twinkled. “You sounded awfully fierce, by the way. Now listen, all of you, the police are coming and we can’t spare the time to deal with them. We need to make our exit. Quick now!” He took the Ten Man’s briefcase from Reynie, who handed it over with relief.
“The police are coming?” Sticky said.
“Quick now,” Milligan repeated, stepping over the Ten Man’s body.
“You’re just going to leave him lying here?” Constance said. “You aren’t going to tie him up or anything?”
Milligan turned to see Constance staring at the Ten Man on the floor, afraid even to walk past him. “Forgive me,” he said, coming back and picking her up. “Quick now, all of you. And please don’t make me say it again.” He carried Constance from the room.
At the end of the hallway the children could see a man’s feet sticking out through the elevator doors, which kept sliding shut, only to bump the feet and slide open again with a ding. Presumably the feet, shod in expensive black shoes, belonged to the Ten Man’s tranquilized partner.
“Couldn’t you have moved his feet out of the way?” Constance asked. “That ding is annoying.”
“True, but this way the police have to use the stairs,” Milligan said, leading the children in the other direction. They hurried down another hallway and at last to an open window, beyond which a fire escape descended into a side alley. Sticky took one glance out the window and reached for his spectacles. Milligan put a hand on his shoulder. “Don’t look at the ground. Just watch your feet and keep moving. You’ll be fine. Kate, you go first and we’ll follow you.”
Just then they heard a door bang open, followed by the sound of officers (heavily winded from their climb up the stairs) storming into the other hallway. Kate vaulted the windowsill and led the way down the fire escape steps, down and down, flight after flight, until she leaped the last few steps and landed beside a parked car. Only then did she realize it was a police car.
“Get in, Kate,” Milligan called from above. “That’s our car.”
“A police car?”
“I borrowed it,” said Milligan. “Quick now, boys.”
Reynie and Sticky scrambled down the final steps of the fire escape and jumped into the back seat with Kate. Milligan put Constance in front with him. “Keep your heads down,” he said, reversing out of the alley. As he drove past the front of the hotel he murmured, “Three police cars. Good. And that woman in the lobby must be who called. She looks distraught. Small wonder there.”