“Hear, hear!” growled Cannonball, and a chorus of approving voices rang out from among the rest of the crew, as well as from some of the other security guards.
Reynie and the other children (except Constance, who was staring at the door with a frown of concentration) looked gratefully about at all these frightened people willing to risk themselves for strangers. Mr. Benedict raised his hand and offered a friendly wave of appreciation. If he was disturbed by the fact that someone had just suggested throwing him and the children to the wolves, he didn’t show it. Nor did he seem surprised by the courage and decency of the others. He simply made his wave, then knelt beside Constance, who was still staring at the door.
“What are they doing, my dear?”
“Something bad,” Constance whispered. “They have a plan to get in, and they know we’ll be hurt, but they don’t care. Oh!” Her eyes grew very wide. “They intend to —”
But what Constance said next was overwhelmed by the sound of a loudspeaker outside the ship.
“Attention! You in the ship! Come onto the deck with your hands up!” boomed a voice over the loudspeaker. The Royal Navy had arrived.
Everyone cheered, and from beyond the door came the sound of loud cursing and arguing, followed by thumping noises as Mr. Curtain and his crew rushed away from the door and up the several levels to the deck. At this the cheering grew still louder and more boisterous — so much so that it was some moments before Constance, who’d been frantically repeating herself over and over, could make herself heard.
“— to blow the door open!” she was shouting. “They set an explosive!”
There was a sudden collective intake of breath, followed by a moment of shocked silence, and then pandemonium broke out as several people nearest the door tried to move farther away from it, while those in back tried hard to not to be crushed against the wall. The only ones to move toward the door were Captain Noland, who unlocked it as quickly as he could, and Kate Wetherall, who sprang forward the moment he did.
Stuck to the outside of the door what appeared to be an ordinary business calculator was emitting a faint, electronic beep. Kate’s sharp eyes immediately made out the display: 31.
The 31 changed to 30. Then to 29.
Snatching the device from the door, Kate turned and bolted up the passage. Captain Noland shouted after her, “No, Kate! Let me!” But Kate was already scurrying up a ladder, quick as a monkey. She raced along the passages as fast as her weary legs would carry her. As long as she didn’t slip, she thought, she had a fair chance of reaching the deck in time. And once on deck . . .
A strange thing began to happen then. As Kate ran down passage after passage and climbed ladder after ladder — and as the calculator continued its menacing countdown — her mind began to sort through a great jumble of images and thoughts. She saw the Ten Man in Thernbaakagen, the one who had intended to lash them with his whip. She saw Mr. Curtain standing over her with those wicked, shiny gloves, and she heard him speaking gleefully of what he planned to do to Mr. Benedict. But more than anything she thought of Milligan, of what McCracken and the others had done to him. Was this her life flashing before her eyes? If so, why did she have the odd feeling that she was making her mind up about something?
She was almost to the deck now. She glanced at the calculator readout: 15. 14. 13.
Kate flew up the final ladder and over to the railing, where her eyes were met with a scene of utter chaos. Two Royal Navy patrol boats were coming around the ship’s stern, loudspeakers booming and floodlights crisscrossing every which way through the mist. The Salamander was directly below, its occupants — Mr. Curtain and the Ten Men — looking up at Martina Crowe, who had become tangled in a line on her way down and was hanging by her foot some ten feet above them, screaming for Mr. Curtain to help her. All of this Kate observed in a split second.
In the same split second, Mr. Curtain saw Kate at the railing with the calculator in her hand. He gave a visible start. “Move!” he ordered McCracken. “Leave Martina! Leave her, I say!”
McCracken sent the Salamander roaring backward, its treads spewing mud and water, but Kate was in perfect position. It would be so easy to stop them. A well-placed throw — and Kate was nothing if not a good shot — and the calculator would land directly in the Salamander’s path. The explosion would wreck it. Sure, it might kill the wicked men inside, but those men had had no qualms about such matters when they’d stuck the explosive on the security hold door, had they? If anyone deserved to be sent sky-high with their own evil contraption, it was these men, and no doubt about it.
Kate saw Garrotte flick his wrist. She leaped to the left — a razor-sharp pencil whistled past her shoulder. You just made it even easier, she thought, cocking her arm to throw. The men in the Salamander, powerless to do anything else, bent down and shielded their heads with their arms. They were sitting ducks. This would be the easiest thing in the world . . .
Except that Milligan was right.
Kate was not like Mr. Curtain and his nasty associates. Not at all. Back on that rooftop in Thernbaakagen Milligan had told her as much, and she saw now what he meant. Seeing those men there, helpless to stop her from doing what they themselves would never hesitate to do, Kate realized — with a certain degree of disappointment but also a degree of pride — that she could never do it, could never do something that would make her more like her enemy and less like her father. And so, instead of throwing the calculator into the Salamander’s path, she flung it out over the bay, where it splashed into the water. An instant later the Shortcut trembled with the concussion of an underwater explosion, and from the spot where the calculator had splashed a geyser of water shot twenty feet into the air. The patrol boats, though a safe distance away, rocked back and forth in the waves caused by the blast.
From the Salamander a cheer erupted, followed by laughter, and Kate watched as the machine moved rapidly away on the bay shore, where the patrol boats were helpless to stop it. The Ten Men were clapping — applauding her decision with scornful delight. As the Salamander rumbled away, Mr. Curtain smiled and blew Kate a kiss.
Kate made sure he saw her wipe it off.
Apologies, Explanations, and Most Agreeable Notions
I don’t like it,” Constance said. “How am I supposed to find anything?”
“You mean you used to be able to find things in here?” Reynie asked.
“That’s not the point,” said Constance.
The young members of the Mysterious Benedict Society were sitting in a circle on the floor of Constance’s bedroom, which during their absence had been thoroughly cleaned and tidied. Indeed the whole house had been scoured, and many of its drafts sealed up and leaky faucets fixed, for the Washingtons and Perumals, having no other outlet for their anxious worry, had kept themselves busy. Constance had been back only a week, which was hardly enough time to return things to their proper state of disorder, and she’d complained about her room every chance she got.
“It’s a little better, isn’t it?” Kate said, pointing to the pile of laundry on Constance’s unmade bed. “You haven’t washed anything since we got back, and your top drawer is completely empty except for a moldy corn dog. I don’t even want to know why that’s in there.”
“Why were you going through my drawers?” Constance demanded.
“Looking for this,” said Kate, waving the travel journal Mr. Benedict had given them. “And I see you cheated — you took another turn.”
Constance stuck up her nose. “When inspiration calls,” she said, “I have no choice but to answer.”