Pencils, Erasers, and Disqualification

In a city called Stonetown, near a port called Stonetown Harbor, a boy named Reynie Muldoon was preparing to take an important test. It was the second test of the day — the first had been in an office across town. After that one he was told to come here, to the Monk Building on Third Street, and to bring nothing but a single pencil and a single rubber eraser, and to arrive no later than one o’clock. If he happened to be late, or bring two pencils, or forget his eraser, or in any other way deviate from the instructions, he would not be allowed to take the test, and that would be that. Reynie, who very much wanted to take it, was careful to follow the instructions. Curiously enough, these were the only ones given. He was not told how to get to the Monk Building, for example, and had found it necessary to ask directions to the nearest bus stop, acquire a schedule from a dishonest bus driver who tried to trick him into paying for it, and walk several blocks to catch the Third Street bus. Not that any of this was difficult for Reynie Muldoon. Although he was only eleven years old, he was quite used to figuring things out for himself.

From somewhere across the city, a church bell struck the half hour. Twelve-thirty. He still had a while to wait. When he’d checked the doors of the Monk Building at noon, they were locked. So Reynie had bought a sandwich at a deli stand and sat down on this park bench to eat. A tall building in Stonetown’s busiest district must surely have many offices inside, he thought. Locked doors at noon seemed a little peculiar. But then, what hadn’t been peculiar about this whole affair?

To begin with, there was the advertisement. A few days before, Reynie had been reading the newspaper over breakfast at the Stonetown Orphanage, sharing sections with his tutor, Miss Perumal. (As Reynie had already completed all the textbooks on his own, even those for high school students, the orphanage director had assigned him a special tutor while the other children went to class. Miss Perumal didn’t quite know what to do with Reynie, either, but she was intelligent and kind, and in their time together they had grown fond of sharing the morning newspaper over breakfast and tea.)

The newspaper that morning had been filled with the usual headlines, several of them devoted to what was commonly called the Emergency: Things had gotten desperately out of control, the headlines reported; the school systems, the budget, the pollution, the crime, the weather . . . why, everything, in fact, was a complete mess, and citizens everywhere were clamoring for a major — no, a dramatic — improvement in government. “Things must change NOW!” was the slogan plastered on billboards all over the city (it was a very old slogan), and although Reynie rarely watched television, he knew the Emergency was the main subject of the news programs every day, as it had been for years. Naturally, when Reynie and Miss Perumal first met, they had discussed the Emergency at great length. Finding themselves quite in agreement about politics, however, they soon found such conversation boring and decided to drop the subject. In general, then, they talked about the other news stories, those that varied day to day, and afterward they amused themselves by reading the advertisements. Such was the case on that particular morning when Reynie’s life had so suddenly taken a turn.

“Do you care for more honey with your tea?” Miss Perumal had asked — speaking in Tamil, a language she was teaching him — but before Reynie could answer that of course he wanted more honey, the advertisement caught Miss Perumal’s eye, and she exclaimed, “Reynie! Look at this! Would you be interested?”

Miss Perumal sat across the table from him, but Reynie, who had no trouble reading upside down, quickly scanned the advertisement’s bold-printed words: “ARE YOU A GIFTED CHILD LOOKING FOR SPECIAL OPPORTUNITIES?” How odd, he thought. The question was addressed directly to children, not to their parents. Reynie had never known his parents, who died when he was an infant, and it pleased him to read a notice that seemed to take this possibility into account. But still, how odd. How many children read the newspaper, after all? Reynie did, but he had always been alone in this, had always been considered an oddball. If not for Miss Perumal he might even have given it up by now, to avoid some of the teasing.

“I suppose I might be interested,” he said to Miss Perumal, “if you think I would qualify.”

Miss Perumal gave him a wry look. “Don’t you play games with me, Reynie Muldoon. If you aren’t the most talented child I’ve ever known, then I’ve never known a child at all.”

There were to be several sessions of the test administered over the weekend; they made plans for Reynie to attend the very first session. Unfortunately, on Saturday Miss Perumal’s mother fell ill and Miss Perumal couldn’t take him. This was a real disappointment to Reynie, and not just because of the delay. He always looked forward to Miss Perumal’s company — her laughter, her wry expressions, the stories she told (often in Tamil) of her childhood in India, even the occasional sighs she made when she didn’t think he was aware. They were gentle and lilting, these sighs, and despite their melancholy Reynie loved to hear them. Miss Perumal sighed when she was feeling sad for him, he knew — sad to see him teased by the other children, sad the poor boy had lost his parents — and Reynie wished he hadn’t worried her, but he did like knowing she cared. She was the only one who did (not counting Seymore, the orphanage cat, with whom Reynie spent the day in the reading room — and he only wanted to be petted). Quite apart from his eagerness to take the special test, Reynie simply missed Miss Perumal.

He was hopeful, then, when Mr. Rutger, the orphanage director, informed him late that evening that Miss Perumal’s mother was considerably improved. Reynie was in the reading room again, the only place in the orphanage where he could be assured of solitude (no one else ever ventured into it) and freedom from persecution. At dinner, an older boy named Vic Morgeroff had tormented Reynie for using the word “enjoyable” to describe the book he was reading. Vic thought it too fancy a word to be proper, and soon had gotten the entire table laughing and saying “enjoyable” in mocking tones until Reynie had finally excused himself without dessert and retreated here.

“Yes, she’s much better, much better,” said Mr. Rutger, through a mouthful of cheesecake. He was a thin man with a thin face, and his cheeks positively bulged as he chewed. “Miss Perumal just telephoned with the news. She asked for you, but as you were not to be found in the dining hall, and I was in the middle of dinner, I took the message for you.”

“Thank you,” said Reynie with a mixture of relief and disappointment. Cheesecake was his favorite dessert. “I’m glad to hear it.”

“Indeed, nothing like health. Absolutely nothing like it. Best thing for anyone,” said Mr. Rutger, but here he paused in his chewing, with an unpleasant worried expression upon his face, as if he thought perhaps there had been an insect in his food. Finally he swallowed, brushed the crumbs from his waistcoat, and said, “But see here, Reynie, Miss Perumal mentioned a test of some sort. ‘Special opportunities,’ she said. What is this all about? This isn’t about attending an advanced school, is it?”

They had been through this before. Reynie had repeatedly asked permission to apply elsewhere, but Mr. Rutger had insisted Reynie would fare better here, with a tutor, than at an advanced school. “Here you are comfortable,” Mr. Rutger had told him more than once. And more than once Reynie had thought, Here I’m alone. But in the end Mr. Rutger had his way, and Miss Perumal was hired. It had proved a blessing — Reynie would never complain about Miss Perumal. Still, he had often wondered what life might have been like at a school where the other students didn’t find him so odd.

“I don’t know, sir,” Reynie said, his hopefulness slipping into dejection. He wished Miss Perumal hadn’t mentioned the test, though of course she must have felt obliged to. “We just wanted to see what it was about.”

Mr. Rutger considered this. “Well, no harm in seeing what things are about, I suppose. I should like to know what it’s about myself. In fact, why don’t you prepare a report for me when you return? Say, ten pages? No hurry, you can turn it in tomorrow evening.”

“Tomorrow evening?” said Reynie. “Does that mean I’m taking the test?”

“I thought I told you,” said Mr. Rutger with a frown. “Miss Perumal will come for you first thing in the morning.” He took out an embroidered handkerchief and blew his nose with great ferocity. “And now, Reynie, I believe I’ll leave you to your reading. This dusty room is a hardship on my sinuses. Be a good man and run a feather duster over the shelves before you leave, will you?”

After hearing this news, Reynie could hardly return to his reading. He flailed about with the feather duster and went straight to bed, as if doing so would hasten the morning’s arrival. Instead it lengthened his night, for he was far too eager and anxious to sleep. Special opportunities, he kept thinking, over and over again. He would have been thrilled to get a crack at plain old regular opportunities, much less special ones.

Just before dawn he rose quietly, got ready with the lights off so as not to disturb his roommates (they often snarled at him for reading in bed at night, even when he used a tiny pen light under the covers), and hurried down to the kitchen. Miss Perumal was already waiting for him — she had been too excited to sleep, as well, and had arrived early. The kettle was just beginning to whistle on the stove, and Miss Perumal, with her back to him, was setting out cups and saucers.

“Good morning, Miss Perumal,” he said froggily. He cleared his throat. “I was glad to hear your mother’s doing better.”

“Thank you, Reynie. Would you —” Miss Perumal turned then, took one look at him, and said, “You’ll not make a good impression dressed like that, I’m afraid. One mustn’t wear striped pants with a checkered shirt, Reynie. In fact, I believe those must belong to a roommate — they’re at least a size too big. Also, it appears that one of your socks is blue and the other purple.”

Reynie looked down at his outfit in surprise. Usually he was the least noticeable of boys: He was of average size, of an average pale complexion, his brown hair was of average length, and he wore average clothes. This morning, though, he would stand out in a crowd — unless it happened to be a crowd of clowns. He grinned at Miss Perumal and said, “I dressed this way for luck.”

“Luckily you won’t need luck,” said Miss Perumal, taking the kettle from the stove. “Now please go change, and this time turn on your light — never mind how your roommates grumble — so that you may have better luck choosing your clothes.”

When Reynie returned Miss Perumal told him that she had a long errand to run. Her mother had been prescribed new medicine and a special diet, and Miss Perumal must go shopping for her. So it was agreed that she would take him to the test and pick him up when it was over. After a light breakfast (neither of them wanted more than toast), yet well before anyone else in the orphanage had risen, Miss Perumal drove him across the sleepy city to an office building near Stonetown Bay. A line of children already stood at the door, all of them accompanied by their parents, all fidgeting nervously.

When Miss Perumal moved to get out of the car, Reynie said, “I thought you were dropping me off.”

“You don’t think I would just leave you here without investigating first, do you?” replied Miss Perumal. “The notice didn’t even list a telephone number for questions. It’s a bit out of the ordinary, don’t you think?”

So Reynie took his place at the end of the line while Miss Perumal went inside the building to speak with someone. It was a long line, and Reynie wondered how many special opportunities were available. Perhaps only a very few — perhaps they would all be given out before he even reached the door. He was growing anxious at this idea when a friendly man ahead of him turned and said, “Don’t worry, son, you haven’t long to wait. All the children are to go inside together in a few minutes. They made the announcement just before you arrived.”

Reynie thanked him gratefully, noticing as he did so that a number of parents were casting grumpy looks at the man, apparently disliking the notion of being friendly to competitors. The man, embarrassed, turned away from Reynie and said nothing else.

“Very well,” said Miss Perumal when she returned, “everything is set. You may call me on their telephone when you’ve finished the test. Here is the number. If I’m not back by then, simply call a taxi and Mr. Rutger will pay the fare. You can tell me all about it this afternoon.”

“Thanks so much for everything, Miss Perumal,” said Reynie, earnestly taking her hand.

“Oh, Reynie, you silly child, don’t look so grateful,” said Miss Perumal. To Reynie’s surprise, there were tears on her cheeks. “It’s nothing at all. Now give your poor tutor a hug. I imagine my services won’t be needed after this.”

“I haven’t passed it yet, Miss Perumal!”

“Oh, stop being silly,” she said, and after squeezing him tightly, Miss Perumal dabbed her eyes with a handkerchief, walked determinedly to her car, and drove away just as the children were ushered into the building.

It was a curious test. The first section was rather what Reynie would have expected — one or two questions regarding octagons and hexagons, another devoted to bushels of this and kilograms of that, and another that required calculating how much time must pass before two speeding trains collided. (This last question Reynie answered with a thoughtful frown, noting in the margin that since the two trains were approaching each other on an empty stretch of track, it was likely the engineers would recognize the impending disaster and apply their brakes, thus avoiding the collision altogether.) Reynie raced through these questions and many like them, then came to the second section, whose first question was: “Do you like to watch television?”

This certainly was not the sort of question Reynie had expected. It was only a question of preference. Anyway, of course he liked to watch television — everybody liked to watch television. As he started to mark down the answer, however, Reynie hesitated. Well, did he really? The more he thought about it, the more he realized that he didn’t, in fact, like to watch television at all. I really am an oddball, he thought, with a feeling of disappointment. Nonetheless, he answered the question truthfully: NO.

The next question read: “Do you like to listen to the radio?” And again, Reynie realized that he did not, although he was sure everyone else did. With a growing sense of isolation, he answered the question: NO.

The third question, thankfully, was less emotional. It read: “What is wrong with this statement?” How funny, Reynie thought, and marking down his answer he felt somewhat cheered. “It isn’t a statement at all,” he wrote. “It’s a question.”

The next page showed a picture of a chessboard, upon which all the pieces and pawns rested in their starting positions, except for a black pawn, which had advanced two spaces. The question read: “According to the rules of chess, is this position possible?” Reynie studied the board a moment, scratched his head, and wrote down his answer: YES.

After a few more pages of questions, all of which Reynie felt confident he had answered correctly, he arrived at the test’s final question: “Are you brave?” Just reading the words quickened Reynie’s heart. Was he brave? Bravery had never been required of him, so how could he tell? Miss Perumal would say he was: She would point out how cheerful he tried to be despite feeling lonely, how patiently he withstood the teasing of other children, and how he was always eager for a challenge. But these things only showed that he was good-natured, polite, and very often bored. Did they really show that he was brave? He didn’t think so. Finally he gave up trying to decide and simply wrote, “I hope so.”

He laid down his pencil and looked around. Most of the other children were also finishing the test. At the front of the room, munching rather loudly on an apple, the test administrator was keeping a close eye on them to ensure they didn’t cheat. She was a thin woman in a mustard-yellow suit, with a yellowish complexion, short-cropped, rusty-red hair, and a stiff posture. She reminded Reynie of a giant walking pencil.

“Pencils!” the woman suddenly called out, as if she’d read his thoughts.

The children jumped in their seats.

“Please lay down your pencils now,” the pencil woman said. “The test is over.”

“But I’m not finished!” one child cried. “That’s not fair!”

“I want more time!” cried another.

The woman’s eyes narrowed. “I’m sorry you haven’t finished, children, but the test is over. Please pass your papers to the front of the room, and remain seated while the tests are graded. Don’t worry, it won’t take long.”

As the papers were passed forward, Reynie heard the boy behind him snicker and say to his neighbor, “If they couldn’t finish that test, they shouldn’t even have come. Like that chess question — who could have missed it?”

The neighbor, sounding every bit as smug, replied, “They were trying to trick us. Pawns can only move one space at a time, so of course the position wasn’t possible. I’ll bet some stupid kids didn’t know that.”

“Ha! You’re just lucky you didn’t miss it yourself! Pawns can move two spaces — on their very first move, they can. But whether it moved one space or two is beside the point. Don’t you know that white always moves first? The black pawn couldn’t have moved yet at all! It’s so simple. This test was for babies.”

“Are you calling me a baby?” growled the other.

“You boys there!” snapped the pencil woman. “Stop talking!”

Reynie was suddenly anxious. Could he possibly have answered that question wrong? And what about the other questions? Except for the odd ones about television and bravery, they had seemed easy, but perhaps he was such a strange bird that he had misunderstood everything. He shook his head and tried not to care. If he wanted to prove himself brave, after all, he had better just stop worrying. If he must return to his old routine at the orphanage, at least he had Miss Perumal. What did it matter if he was different from other children? Everyone got teased from time to time — he was no different in that respect.

Reynie told himself this, but his anxious feeling didn’t fade.

After all the tests had been turned in, the pencil woman stepped out of the room, leaving the children to bite their nails and watch the clock. Only a few minutes passed, however, before she returned and announced, “I shall now read the names of children admitted into the second phase of the test.”

The children began to murmur. A second phase? The advertisement hadn’t mentioned a second phase.

The woman continued, “If your name is called, you are to report to the Monk Building on Third Street no later than one o’clock, where you will join children from other sessions who also passed the test.” She went on to lay out the rules about pencils, erasers, and disqualification. Then she popped a handful of peanuts into her mouth and chewed ferociously, as if she were starving.

Reynie raised his hand.

“Mm-yes?” the woman said, swallowing.

“Excuse me, you say to bring only one pencil, but what if the pencil lead breaks? Will there be a pencil sharpener?”

Again the boy behind Reynie snickered, this time muttering: “What makes him so sure he’ll be taking that test? She hasn’t even called the names yet!”

It was true — he should have waited until she’d called the names. He must have seemed very arrogant. Cheeks burning, Reynie ducked his head.

The pencil woman answered, “Yes, if a sharpener should become necessary, one will be provided. Children are not to bring their own, understood?” There was a general nodding of heads, after which the woman clapped the peanut grit from her hands, took out a sheet of paper, and continued, “Very well, if there are no other questions, I shall read the list.”

The room became very quiet.

“Reynard Muldoon!” the woman called. Reynie’s heart leaped.

There was a grumble of discontent from the seat behind him, but as soon as it passed, the room again grew quiet, and the children waited with bated breath for the other names to be called. The woman glanced up from the sheet.

“That is all,” she said matter-of-factly, folding the paper and tucking it away. “The rest of you are dismissed.”

The room erupted in outcries of anger and dismay. “Dismissed?” said the boy behind Reynie. “Dismissed?”

As the children filed out the door — some weeping bitterly, some stunned, some whining in complaint — Reynie approached the woman. For some reason, she was hurrying around the room checking the window locks. “Excuse me. Miss? May I please use your telephone? My tutor said —”

“I’m sorry, Reynard,” the woman interrupted, tugging unsuccessfully on a closed window. “I’m afraid there isn’t a telephone.”

“But Miss Perumal —”

“Reynard,” the woman said with a smile, “I’m sure you can make do without one, can’t you? Now, if you’ll excuse me, I must sneak out the back door. These windows appear to have been painted shut.”

“Sneak out? But why?”

“I’ve learned from experience. Any moment now, some of these children’s parents will come storming in to demand explanations. Unfortunately, I have none to give them. Therefore, off I go. I’ll see you this afternoon. Don’t be late!”

And with that, away she went.

It had been a strange business indeed, and Reynie had a suspicion it was to grow stranger still. When the distant church bell struck the quarter hour, Reynie finished his sandwich and rose from the park bench. If the doors to the Monk Building weren’t open by now, he would try to find another way in. At this point, it would hardly surprise him to discover he must enter the building through a basement window.

As he mounted the steps to the Monk Building’s broad front plaza, Reynie saw two girls well ahead of him, walking together toward the front doors. Other test-takers, he guessed. One girl, who seemed to have green hair — though perhaps this was a trick of the light; the sun shone blindingly bright today — was carelessly flinging her pencil up into the air and catching it again. Not the best idea, Reynie thought. And sure enough, even as he thought it, the girl missed the pencil and watched it fall through a grate at her feet.

For a moment the other girl hesitated, as if she might try to help. Then she checked her watch. In only a few minutes it would be one o’clock. “Sorry about your pencil — it’s a shame,” she said, but already her sympathetic expression was fading. Clearly it had occurred to her that with the green-haired girl unable to take the test, there would be less competition. With a spreading smile, she hurried across the plaza and through the front doors of the Monk Building, which had finally been unlocked.

The metal grate covered a storm drain that ran beneath the plaza, and the unfortunate girl was staring through it, down into darkness, when Reynie reached her. Her appearance was striking — indeed, even startling. She had coal-black skin; hair so long she could have tied it around her waist (and yes, it truly was green); and an extraordinarily puffy white dress that gave you the impression she was standing in a cloud.

“That’s rotten luck,” Reynie said. “To drop your pencil here, of all places.”

The girl looked up at him with hopeful eyes. “You don’t happen to have an extra one, do you?”

“I’m sorry. I was told to bring —”

“I know, I know,” she interrupted. “Only one pencil. Well, that was my only pencil, and a fat lot of good it will do me down in that drain.” She stared wistfully through the grate a moment, then looked up at Reynie as if surprised to see him still standing there. “What are you waiting for? The test starts any minute.”

“I’m not going to leave you here without a pencil,” Reynie said. “I was surprised your friend did.”

“Friend? Oh, that other girl. She’s not my friend — we just met at the bottom of the steps. I didn’t even know her name. For that matter, I don’t know yours, either.”

“Reynard Muldoon. You can call me Reynie.”

“Okay, Reynie, nice to meet you. I’m Rhonda Kazembe. So now that we’re friends and all that, how do you intend to get my pencil back? We’d better hurry, you know. One minute late and we’re disqualified.”

Reynie took out his own pencil, a new yellow #2 that he’d sharpened to a fine point that morning. “Actually,” he said, “we’ll just share this one.” He snapped the pencil in two and handed her the sharpened end. “I’ll sharpen my half and we’ll both be set. Do you have your eraser?”

Rhonda Kazembe was staring at her half of the pencil with a mixture of gratitude and surprise. “That would never have occurred to me,” she said, “breaking it like that. Now, what did you say? Oh, yes, I have my eraser.”

“Then let’s get going, we only have a minute,” Reynie urged.

Rhonda held back. “Hold on, Reynie. I haven’t properly thanked you.”

“You’re welcome,” he said impatiently. “Now let’s go!”

Still she resisted. “No, I really want to thank you. If it weren’t for you, I couldn’t have taken this test, and do you want to know something?” Glancing around to be sure they were alone, Rhonda whispered, “I have the answers. I’m going to make a perfect score!”

“What? How?”

“No time to explain. But if you sit right behind me, you can look over my shoulder. I’ll hold up my test a bit to make it easier.”

Reynie was stunned. How in the world could this girl have gotten her hands on the answers? And now she was offering to help him cheat! He was briefly tempted — he wanted desperately to learn about those special opportunities. But when he imagined returning to tell Miss Perumal of his success, hiding the fact that he’d cheated, he knew he could never do it.

“No, thank you,” he said. “I’d rather not.”

Rhonda Kazembe looked amazed, and Reynie once again felt the weight of loneliness upon him. If it was unpleasant to feel so different from the other children at Stonetown Orphanage, how much worse was it to be seen as an oddball by a green-haired girl wearing her own personal fog bank?

“Okay, suit yourself,” Rhonda said as the two of them started for the front doors. “I hope you know what you’re in for.”

Reynie was in too much of a hurry to respond. He had no idea what he was in for, of course, but he certainly wanted to find out.

Inside the Monk Building, conspicuously posted signs led them down a series of corridors, past a room where a handful of parents waited anxiously, and at last into a room crowded with children in desks. Except for the unusual silence, the room was just like any schoolroom, with a chalkboard at the front and a teacher’s desk upon which rested a pencil sharpener, a ruler, and a sign that said: NO TALKING. IF YOU ARE CAUGHT TALKING IT WILL BE ASSUMED YOU ARE CHEATING. Only two seats remained empty, one behind the other. To guarantee he wouldn’t be tempted to cheat, Reynie chose the one in front. A clock on the wall struck one just as Rhonda Kazembe dropped into the desk behind him.

“That was close,” she said.

“There will be no talking!” boomed the pencil woman, who entered just then, slamming the door behind her. She strode briskly to the front of the room, carrying a tall stack of papers and a jar of pickles. “If any child is caught cheating, then he or she will be executed —”

The children gasped.

“I’m sorry, did I say executed? I meant to say escorted. Any child caught cheating will be escorted from the building at once. Now then, are you all relaxed? It’s important to be relaxed when taking such an extremely difficult test as this, especially considering how long it is and how very little time you’ll have to complete it.”

In the back of the room someone groaned in distress.

“You there!” shouted the pencil woman, pointing her finger. Every head in the room swiveled to see who had groaned. It was the same girl who had abandoned Rhonda Kazembe on the plaza. Under the savage stare of the pencil woman, the girl’s face went pasty pale, like the underbelly of a dead fish. “I said no talking,” the woman barked. “Do you wish to leave now?”

“But I only groaned!” the girl protested.

The pencil woman frowned. “Do you mean to suggest that saying, ‘But I only groaned!’ doesn’t count as talking?”

The girl, frightened and perplexed, could hardly muster a shake of the head.

“Very well, let this be a warning to you. To all of you. From this moment on there will be no talking, period. Now then, are there any questions?”

Reynie raised his hand.

“Reynard Muldoon, you have a question?”

Reynie held up his broken pencil and made a pencil-sharpening motion with the other hand.

“Very well, you may use the pencil sharpener on my desk.”

Reynie hustled forward, sharpened his pencil — he felt all eyes upon him as he ground away, checked the tip, and ground away again — and hurried back to his seat. As he did so, he noticed Rhonda Kazembe slipping a tiny piece of paper from the sleeve of her cloud-dress: the list of test answers. She was taking quite a risk, Reynie thought, but he had no chance to reflect on it further, as the pencil woman now launched into the rest of her speech.

“You shall have one hour to complete this test,” she barked, “and you must follow these directions exactly. First, write your name at the top of the test. Second, read all the questions and answers carefully. Third, choose the correct answers by circling the appropriate letter. Fifth, bring the completed test to me. Sixth, return to your seat and wait until all the tests have been graded, at which time I will announce the names of those who pass.”

The children were shifting uneasily in their seats. What had happened to the fourth step? The pencil woman had skipped from third to fifth. The children looked at one another, not daring to speak. What if the fourth step was important? Reynie was waiting, hoping someone else would raise a hand for a change. When no one did, he timidly raised his own.

“Yes, Reynard?”

He pointed to his mouth.

“Yes, you may speak. What is your question?”

“Excuse me, but what about the fourth step?”

“There is no fourth step,” she replied. “Any other questions?”

Utterly baffled now, the children held their tongues.

“To pass this test,” the pencil woman went on, “you must correctly answer every question, by which I mean every question. If you skip even one question, or answer one incorrectly, you will fail the test.”

“No problem,” whispered Rhonda Kazembe from behind Reynie.

The pencil woman’s eyes darted to their side of the room. She stared hard at Reynie, whose mouth went dry. Why on earth didn’t Rhonda keep her mouth closed? Was she trying to get them thrown out?

“You may begin the test as soon as you receive it,” said the pencil woman, turning away at last, and Reynie resisted the urge to sigh with relief — even a sigh might disqualify him. Besides, what relief he felt didn’t last long: The pencil woman had begun handing out the tests.

The first child to receive one was a tough-looking boy in a baseball cap who eagerly grabbed it, looked at the first question, and burst into tears. The girl behind him looked at her test, rubbed her eyes as if they weren’t working properly, then looked again. Her head wobbled on her neck.

“If you begin to feel faint,” said the pencil woman, moving on to the next child, “place your head between your knees and take deep breaths. If you think you may vomit, please come to the front of the room, where a trash can will be provided.”

Down the row she went, distributing the tests. The crying boy had begun flipping through the test now — there appeared to be several pages — and with each new page his sobs grew louder and more desperate. When he reached the end, he began to wail.

“I’m afraid loud weeping isn’t permitted,” said the pencil woman. “Please leave the room.”

The boy, greatly relieved, leaped from his desk and raced to the door, followed at once by two other children who hadn’t received the test yet but were terrified now to see it. The pencil woman closed the door.

“If any others flee the room in panic or dismay,” she said sternly, “please remember to close the door behind you. Your sobs may disturb the other test-takers.”

She continued handing out the test. Child after child received it with trembling fingers, and child after child, upon looking at the questions, turned pale, or red, or a subtle shade of green. By the time the pencil woman dropped the pages upon his desk, dread was making Reynie’s stomach flop like a fish. And for good reason — the questions were impossible. The very first one read:

The territories of the Naxcivan Autonomous Republic and the Nagorno-Karabakh region are disputed by what two countries?

A. Bhutan, which under the 1865 Treaty of Sinchulu ceded border land to Britain; and Britain, which in exchange for that land provided Bhutan an annual subsidy, and under whose influence Bhutan’s monarchy was established in 1907.

B. Azerbaijan, whose territory in 1828 was divided between Russia and Persia by the Treaty of Turkmenchay; and Armenia, a nation founded after the destruction of the Seleucid Empire some two thousand years ago, likewise incorporated into Russia by the aforementioned treaty.

C. Vanuatu, which having been administered (until its independence) by an Anglo-French Condominium, retains both French and English as official languages (in addition to Bislama, or Bichelama); and Portugal, whose explorer Pedro Fernandez de Quiros became in 1606 the first European to discover the islands Vanuatu comprises.

Although there were two more answers to choose from, Reynie didn’t read them. If every question was like this one, he had absolutely no hope of passing. A quick glance at the next few questions did nothing to encourage him. If anything, they got worse. And this was only the first page! All around him children were shivering, sighing, grinding their teeth. Reynie felt like joining them. So much for those special opportunities. Back to the orphanage he would go, where no one — not even good Miss Perumal — knew what to do with him. It had been a nice idea, but apparently he did not have what it took.

Even so, he wasn’t ready to leave. He had yet to follow the directions, and because he was determined not to quit until he had at least tried, he proceeded to follow them now. Dutifully he wrote his name atop the first page — that was the first step. Well, you’ve accomplished that much, he thought. The second step was to read all the questions and answers carefully. Reynie took a deep breath. There were forty questions in all. Just reading them would take him most of the hour. It didn’t help that the pencil woman now sat eating pickles — they were especially crisp ones, too — as she watched the children struggle.

The second question wanted to know where the common vetch originated and to what family it belonged. Reynie had no idea what a common vetch was, and the possible answers offered no helpful clue — it might be an antelope, a bird, a rodent, or a vine. Reynie went on to the third question, which had to do with subatomic particles called fermions and an Indian physicist named Satyendranath Bose. The fourth question asked which church was built by the emperor Justinian to demonstrate his superiority to the late Theodoric’s Ostrogothic successors. On and on the questions went. To his credit, Reynie recognized the names of a few places, a few mathematic principles, and one or two important historical figures, but it wouldn’t do him any good. He would be lucky to answer a single question correctly, much less all of them.

When he was exactly halfway through the test (he was on question twenty, regarding the difference between parataxis and hypotaxis), Reynie heard Rhonda Kazembe rise from the desk behind him. Was she already finished? Well, of course! She had all the answers. Reynie grimaced in irritation, and as Rhonda stepped forward to turn in her test, the other children gasped in amazement. But the pencil woman seemed not the least bit suspicious. If anything, she was absorbed in Rhonda’s bizarre appearance and hardly glanced at the test as she took it.

Reynie had a sudden insight: Rhonda was calling attention to herself on purpose. It was a trick. No one would suspect her of cheating, because who in her right mind would make such a spectacle of herself if she intended to cheat? The green hair (it must be a wig), the poofy dress, the whispering — they were all meant to distract. Most people would assume that if a child intended to cheat, then surely she would call as little attention to herself as possible, would be as quiet as a mouse and as plain as wallpaper. Reynie had to hand it to Rhonda: She might not be smart enough to pass the test, but she was clever enough to get away with cheating on it. He felt a pang of jealousy. Now Rhonda would move on to experience those special opportunities, while Reynie would mope his way back to the orphanage, defeated.

As Rhonda passed by him on the way to her desk, she winked and let fall a tiny slip of paper. It drifted down like a feather and settled lightly upon Reynie’s desk. The test answers. Reynie peeked over at the pencil woman, but she hadn’t noticed — she was busy grading Rhonda’s test now, making check mark after check mark and nodding her head. So the answers were indeed the right ones. And here they sat on his desk.

If he’d felt tempted before, when he’d had no idea how hard the test would be, that temptation was nothing compared to now. No matter that he’d resisted, no matter that he’d chosen this seat precisely to avoid this situation, here he was, staring at a slip of paper that contained the key to his hopes. All he had to do was turn it over and look at the answers. The other children were too busy sniffling and biting their fingernails to notice, and if he hurried, he might even copy the answers down before the pencil woman looked up again. She had finished grading Rhonda’s paper and was concentrating on the nearly empty jar of pickles, trying to fish out the last one. Reynie stared a long moment at the paper, sorely tempted.

Then he reached out and flicked it from his desk and onto the floor.

What good would those opportunities do him if he wasn’t qualified to be given them? And where was the pleasure in cheating? If he couldn’t pass fairly, he didn’t want to pass. He thought this — and mostly believed it — and felt his spirits boosted by the decision. But even so, a few seconds passed before he could tear his eyes from the paper on the floor. All right, he told himself, returning to the test. Get a move on, Reynie, and don’t look back. There’s no time to waste.

Indeed there wasn’t, as a glance at the wall clock confirmed. Less than half an hour remained, and Reynie had more than half the test yet to read. He finished reading about parataxis and hypotaxis (they either had something to do with writing or else with futuristic transportation, but he couldn’t decide which), and moved on to question twenty-one, which read: “After the fall of the Russian Empire, when a failed attempt to create a Transcaucasian Republic with Georgia and Armenia led to the creation of the country Azerbaijan (which currently disputes with Armenia the territories of the Naxcivan Autonomous Republic and the Nagorno-Karabakh region), from what key powers did Azerbaijan . . .”

Reynie stopped. Something about the question seemed awfully familiar — so familiar that he felt pressed to think about it. Hadn’t he seen those names before?

Flipping back to the beginning of the test, Reynie read the very first question again: “The territories of the Naxcivan Autonomous Republic and the Nagorno-Karabakh region are disputed by what two countries?” He blinked, hardly believing his eyes. Armenia and Azerbaijan. The answer to question one lay hidden in question twenty-one. This wasn’t a test of knowledge at all — it was a puzzle!

Reynie looked at question twenty-two, which began: “Despite having originated in Europe, the vine known as the common vetch (a member of the pea family), is widely . . .” There it was! The answer to question two! With mounting excitement, Reynie read the next one, and sure enough, although the question itself made no mention of subatomic particles or Indian physicists, there was a long discussion of them in answer D. Not only were all the answers buried in the test, he realized, they were listed in order. Number one’s answer was found in number twenty-one (and vice versa), number two’s answer was found in number twenty-two, and so on, all the way up to number forty, which cleared up the mystery of parataxis and hypotaxis raised in question twenty.

Reynie was so delighted he nearly leaped from his desk and cheered. Still, he couldn’t spare even a moment to congratulate himself — time was running short. Eagerly he set to the task of finding the correct answers. This took a good while, as it was necessary to flip back and forth between pages and read a great deal of text, and in the end it took Reynie almost exactly one hour to finish the test. He had only just circled the last answer, placed his test on the pencil woman’s desk, and looked around at the other children (some were furiously circling numbers at random, hoping to get lucky; and some were not to be seen at all, having crept out of the room in bleak despair), when the pencil woman shouted: “Pencils! Time’s up, children. Lay down your pencils, please.”

After a certain amount of blubbering and wiping away tears, the children stacked their tests on top of Reynie’s and returned to their seats. In exhausted silence they waited as the pencil woman flipped through the tests. This took but a minute — she had only to look at the first question, after all. When she came to Reynie’s at the bottom of the stack, she ran through the pages, making checkmarks and nodding.

“Nice work,” Rhonda whispered from behind him. “You managed it on your own.” She seemed genuinely pleased that he hadn’t cheated, despite having encouraged him to do just that. She certainly was a strange one.

“I shall read now the names of those who passed the test,” announced the pencil woman. “If your name is called you will advance to the third stage of testing, so please remain seated and await further instructions. Those whose names are not called are free to go.”

Reynie’s ears perked up. There was a third stage?

The pencil woman cleared her throat, but this time she didn’t bother looking at the paper in front of her. “Reynard Muldoon!” she called out.

On her way out of the room, she added, “That is all.”

Buckets and Spectacles

Reynie, alone in the room now, was trying to make sense of what had happened. Why hadn’t Rhonda Kazembe’s name been called? Was it because she cheated? Did she have the wrong answers, after all? And where did she get those answers in the first place? It was all very mysterious, and not the least intriguing was Rhonda’s behavior when she was dismissed along with the others: “Well, best of luck, kid,” she’d chirped, playfully mussing his hair and scudding from the room in her cloud-dress, apparently not the slightest bit confused or disappointed that she hadn’t passed.

Reynie’s musings were interrupted by the pencil woman poking her head in through the doorway: “We’ve finally gotten rid of the other children, Reynard. Had to give them consolation doughnuts and hugs and whatnot. Only a few more minutes now to wait.” She was already withdrawing again when Reynie called after her.

“Excuse me! Miss, uh — Miss? I’m sorry, you never told us your name.”

“That’s fine, Reynard,” she said, stepping into the room. “You’ve nothing to be sorry for.” Reynie waited for her to give her name. Instead she simply wiped doughnut crumbs from her lips and said, “You had a question?”

“Oh, yes. May I please telephone Miss Perumal, my tutor? No one has any idea where I am. I’m afraid she’ll be worried.”

“Very good of you, Reynard, but don’t worry. We’ve already called Miss Perumal, so all is taken care of.” The pencil woman began once again to retreat.

“Miss? Excuse me, Miss?”

She stopped. “Yes, what is it now, Reynard?”

“Forgive me for asking this, Miss. I wouldn’t ask if it weren’t important, but . . . well, you wouldn’t happen to be lying to me, would you?”

“Lying to you?”

“I’m sorry to ask it. But, you know, you did tell Miss Perumal this morning that I could use your phone, and then later you told me there was no phone. So you see why I’m concerned. It’s just that I don’t want Miss Perumal to worry.”

The pencil woman seemed unperturbed. “That’s a perfectly reasonable question, Reynard. A perfectly reasonable question.” She gave him an approving nod and made as if to leave.

“Miss, but you didn’t answer my question!”

The woman scratched her head, and Reynie began to suspect that she was either a little daft or a little deaf. After a moment, however, she said, “I suppose you want the truth?”

“Yes, please!”

“The truth is I haven’t called Miss Perumal, but I will do so immediately. In fact, I was about to call her when you asked me if I had called her yet. Does this satisfy you?”

Reynie hardly knew what to say. He didn’t wish to offend the woman, but he could hardly trust her now, and it was more important to know that Miss Perumal’s mind was at ease. “I’m sorry, Miss, but may I please just call her myself? I’ll only take a minute.”

The pencil woman smiled. When she spoke this time her voice was quite gentle, and she looked Reynie in the eyes. “You are very good to be so concerned about Miss Perumal. What would you say if I told you that I have in fact called her already? No, don’t answer that. You won’t believe me. How about this? I’ll relay her message to you: ‘Do you see now that you didn’t need luck? I’m glad you wore matching socks.’ That is what she told me to tell you. Are you satisfied?”

Before Reynie could make up his mind how to answer, she slipped out of the room, leaving him to puzzle over her mystifying behavior. The message from Miss Perumal was obviously real, so why hadn’t she told him in the first place?

As he pondered this, he heard footsteps in the hall, followed by a timid knock at the half-open door. A young boy’s face appeared in the doorway. “Hello,” the boy said, adjusting his spectacles, “is this where I’m supposed to wait?” He spoke so softly that Reynie had to strain to hear him.

“I have no idea. It’s where I’m supposed to wait, though, so maybe it is. You’re welcome to join me, if you like. I’m Reynie Muldoon.”

“Oh,” the boy said uncertainly. “My name is Sticky Washington. I’m just wondering if this is the right place. The yellow lady told me to come down the hall and sit with someone named Reynard.”

“That’s me,” Reynie said. “People call me Reynie for short.” He put out his hand, and after a moment’s hesitation Sticky Washington came and shook it.

Sticky was a notably skinny boy (which Reynie suspected was how he got his nickname — he was thin as a stick) with light brown skin the very color of the tea that Miss Perumal made each morning. He had big, nervous eyes like a horse’s, and, for some odd reason, a perfectly smooth bald head. His tiny wire-rimmed spectacles gave him the distinguished look of a scholar. A fidgety scholar, though: He seemed quite shy, or at the very least anxious. Well, why shouldn’t he be anxious, if he’d been through what Reynie had been through today?

“Are you here for the third test?” Reynie asked.

Sticky nodded. “I’ve been waiting all day. I had to be here at nine o’clock this morning, and the test was over at ten. Since then I’ve just been sitting around in an empty room. Lucky I had a pear with me or I might have starved. I think all the other children got doughnuts. Why didn’t we get doughnuts?”

“I wondered the same thing. Were you the only one who passed, then?”

“The first test, no. A little girl passed it, too, but I haven’t seen her since yesterday. Maybe they told her to come at a different time — they’ve had tests here all day. Was there an extremely small girl in your group, about half our size?”

Reynie shook his head. He would have remembered anyone so tiny.

“Maybe she’s coming later. Anyway, as for the second test, yes: I was the only one who passed. Which surprised me because —” Sticky stopped himself with a glance at the doorway. He opened his mouth to continue, thought better of it, and at last pretended to notice something on the ceiling, as if he hadn’t been about to say anything at all. Obviously he had a secret. Reynie had a sudden suspicion what it was.

“Because there was a girl who cheated?”

Sticky’s eyes widened. “How did you know?”

“The same thing happened to me. I think it’s a trick of some kind. Tell me, this girl didn’t happen to drop her pencil on the way into the building, did she? Out on the plaza?”

“Yes! I couldn’t believe anybody would take such a chance. We were only allowed to bring one pencil, you know.”

“What did you do?”

“I tried to help her. A few other kids said they were sorry but they didn’t want to be late, and one boy even laughed. I felt awfully sorry for her, so I had her hold onto my feet and lower me down through the grate. She was strong as a bear and had no trouble doing it, and I’m so skinny I fit right through the bars. It was terrifying, though, I don’t mind admitting it, hanging upside down, scrabbling around in the dark. I think something even nibbled at my finger, but maybe I imagined it. I can get a little mixed up when I’m scared.”

“You were lucky to find her pencil,” Reynie observed. “It was pitch-black down in that drain.”

“Oh, no, I didn’t find it. But you know what she did? She hauled me back up through the grate and said, ‘Oh well, never mind. I have an extra one.’ And she pulled another pencil right out of her sleeve! Can you believe it? Why she would let me go down into that awful drain when she had an extra pencil, I can’t imagine. Then, to top it off, she offered me the answers to the test, to repay me for trying to help her. Apparently they didn’t do her any good, though. I’m glad I refused.”

“Me, too,” Reynie said. “I think refusing was part of the test. If we’d cheated, they would have known it, and I doubt either one of us would be here.”

From his shirt pocket Sticky took out a thin piece of cotton cloth and polished his spectacles with it. “If you’re right, it’s a little creepy that they’re tricking us like that.” He put the glasses back on and blinked his big, nervous eyes. “But I shouldn’t complain. They were very nice to let me continue to the third stage even though I missed a few questions. Very generous of them —”

“Wait a minute,” Reynie said. “How could you possibly have missed any? Did you circle the wrong letters by accident?”

Sticky seemed embarrassed. He shuffled his feet as he spoke. “Oh, well, I suppose the questions were easy for you, but for me they were rather difficult. Time ran out before I could answer the last three, so I had to just circle some answers and hope I’d get lucky. I didn’t, of course. But as I said, they were very forgiving.”

Reynie couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “You mean you knew the answers to those questions?”

Sticky grew more dejected with Reynie’s every question. Tears brimmed in his eyes as he said, “Well, yes, I suppose I do look rather stupid, don’t I? I look like a person who doesn’t know any answers. I understand that.”

Reynie interrupted him. “No, no! I didn’t mean that! I meant that I’m surprised anybody knew the answers. One or two, maybe, but certainly not all of them.”

Sticky brightened, smiling shyly and straightening his back. “Oh! Well, yes, I suppose I do know a lot of things. That’s why people started calling me Sticky, because everything I read sticks in my head.”

“It’s perfectly amazing,” Reynie said. “You must read more than anybody I’ve ever met. But listen, once you figured out the test was a puzzle, why didn’t you just solve it that way? It would have saved time — you could have finished it.”

“A puzzle?”

“You didn’t notice that the answers were all right there in the test?”

“I did notice that a lot of information was repeated,” Sticky reflected, “but I didn’t really pay attention to it. I was concentrating too hard on getting the answers right. That question on colloidal suspensions really had me sweating, I can tell you, and as I said, when I’m anxious I can get mixed up.” After a pause, he sighed and added, “I tend to get anxious a lot.”

Reynie laughed. “Well, you didn’t know it was a puzzle, and I didn’t know any of the answers, but we’re both here now. We’d make a good team.”

“You think so?” said Sticky. He grinned. “Yes, I suppose we would.”

The boys waited there for some time, discussing the curiosities of the day. Sticky was more relaxed now, and soon the two of them grew comfortable together, joking and laughing like old friends. Sticky couldn’t stop giggling about Rhonda Kazembe’s crazy getup, and Reynie smiled until his face hurt when Sticky told him more about hanging upside down in the storm drain. (“My shoes started to slip off in her hands,” Sticky recounted, “and for a second I thought she was going to take them and leave me down there under the grate. I panicked and started wriggling like crazy — I think it was all she could do to pull me back up without dropping me!”)

Then Reynie told Sticky about the pencil woman’s sneakiness regarding the phone call to Miss Perumal.

Instead of laughing, as Reynie had expected, Sticky slipped back into his nervous behavior. He began polishing his spectacles again, even though he’d just done it minutes before. “Oh, yes,” he said. “Yes, I tried to call my parents, too. Same thing happened. But in the end it was fine. She called them. Nothing to worry about.”

Reynie nodded politely. He saw perfectly well that Sticky was trying to hide something. Maybe he hadn’t thought of calling his parents and felt guilty about it now? But Reynie decided not to press him on the matter — Sticky seemed uncomfortable enough as it was.

“So where do you live?” he asked, to change the subject.

This only made Sticky polish all the harder. Perhaps he simply disliked personal questions. “Well,” he began. He cleared his throat. “Well —”

Just then the door flew wide open, and a girl raced into the room carrying a bucket. She was extremely quick: One moment she was bursting through the door, golden-blond hair flying out behind her like a horse’s mane, and the next she was standing right beside them. Sticky leaped back in alarm.

“What’s the matter?” he cried.

“What’s the matter with you?” the girl replied calmly.

“Well . . . what were you running from?”

“From? I wasn’t running from anything. I was running to this room. Old Yellow Suit told me to come down here and wait with you two, so here I am. My name’s Kate Wetherall.”

Sticky was breathing hard and casting glances at the door, as if a lion might fly in next, so it fell to Reynie to introduce them. “I’m Reynie Muldoon and this is Sticky Washington,” he said, shaking her hand and immediately regretting it — her grip was so strong it was like getting his fingers caught in a drawer. (Sticky noticed Reynie’s pained expression and quickly thrust his own hands into his pockets.) Rubbing his tender knuckles, Reynie went on, “I think the question is why you were running instead of walking.”

“Why not? It’s faster. Now I’m here with you boys instead of trudging along the empty hallway, and it’s much better, isn’t it? You seem like nice fellows. So why do they call you Sticky?” She touched Sticky’s arm. “You don’t feel sticky.”

“It’s a long story,” Sticky said, regaining his composure.

“Let’s have it, then,” Kate said.

So Sticky told her about his name, and then Kate revealed that she had always wanted a nickname herself. “I’ve tried to get people to call me The Great Kate Weather Machine,” she said, “but nobody ever goes along with it. I don’t suppose you boys would call me that, would you?”

“It does seem a bit awkward for a nickname,” Reynie said mildly. “It takes a long time to say.”

“I suppose it does,” Kate admitted, “but not if you speak very quickly.”

“Let us think about it,” said Sticky.

Kate nodded, agreeing. She seemed pleasant enough. She had very bright, watery blue eyes, a fair complexion, and rosy cheeks, and was unusually tall and broad-shouldered for a twelve-year-old. (She announced her age right away, for children consider their ages every bit as important as their names. In return she learned that the boys were eleven.) But what Reynie was most curious about was her bucket. It was a good, solid metal bucket, painted fire-engine red. As they were talking, Kate unfastened her belt, slipped it through the bucket handle, and fastened the belt again so that the bucket hung at her hip. From the way she did this, it was obvious she’d done it a thousand times. Reynie was fascinated. Finally he asked her what it was for.

She gave him a quizzical look. “What kind of person doesn’t know what a bucket’s for? It’s for carrying things, silly.”

“Yes, I know that,” Reynie said, “but why do you have one with you? Most people don’t carry buckets around for no particular reason.”

“That’s true,” Kate reflected. “I’ve often noticed that, but I can’t understand why. I can’t imagine not having a bucket. How else am I to tote my things?”

“What things?” asked Sticky, who, like Reynie, was trying to sneak a peek at the bucket’s contents.

“I’ll show you,” Kate said, and began removing things from the bucket. First came a Swiss Army knife, a flashlight, a pen light, and a bottle of extra-strength glue, which Kate examined to be sure its lid was tightly closed. Then she produced a bag of marbles, a slingshot, a spool of clear fishing twine, one pencil and one eraser, a kaleidoscope, and a horseshoe magnet, which she yanked with some effort from the metal bucket. “I’ve been through dozens of these,” she said, holding the magnet up for them to admire. “This is the strongest I’ve found.” Finally she showed them a length of slender nylon rope coiled around the bottom and sides of the bucket.

“That’s a lot of stuff to carry,” Sticky remarked.

“It’s all useful,” Kate said, putting her things away again. “Take this morning, for example. Some crazy-looking girl dropped her pencil down a storm drain out on the plaza —”

Reynie and Sticky looked at each other.

“— and if I didn’t have my bucket with me,” Kate continued, “she’d have been up a creek without a paddle.” A thoughtful expression came over her face. “Hmm, a paddle would be great to have. But no, I suppose it would be too big to haul around. Still, it would come in handy sometimes —”

“Did you help Rhonda get her pencil back?” Reynie asked.

“Of course I did. I just . . . now wait a minute. How did you know her name?”

“Finish your story,” Reynie said. “We’ll tell you later.”

So Kate told them how she had pried up the edge of the metal grate with a screwdriver on her Swiss Army knife. After dragging the grate aside, she tied her rope to a nearby bench and lowered herself into the drain, using her flashlight to find the pencil in the darkness.

“It had rolled down into a crack,” she explained, “about ten and a half inches deep, so I put a drop of glue on the end of some fishing twine — that’s why it pays to have a pen light, too, you know, so you can hold it in your mouth and point it when you need both hands for something like putting glue on twine. Anyway, I poked the twine down into the crack until it reached the pencil. Gave the glue a few seconds to dry, then pulled it right out. I couldn’t have done any of that without my bucket, now could I?”

“Weren’t you afraid?” Sticky asked. He’d been terrified himself and didn’t want to be the only one.

“Of what? Getting wet? It was perfectly dry down there. We haven’t had rain for days.”

Something about Kate’s story had caught Reynie’s attention. “How did you know that crack was ten and a half inches deep?” he said. “I don’t see a tape measure in your bucket.”

“Oh, I can always tell distances and weights and that sort of thing,” said Kate with a shrug. She glanced around. “For example, just by looking at it I can tell this room is twenty-two feet long and sixteen feet wide.”

Sticky, irritated that Kate hadn’t been frightened in the dark drain, was inclined to be skeptical. “Are you sure?”

“Of course I’m sure.”

“Let’s measure,” said Reynie, fetching the ruler from the pencil woman’s desk.

The room was twenty-two feet long and sixteen feet wide.

Impressed, Reynie whistled, and Sticky said, “Not bad.”

“Okay, back to your story,” Reynie said. “Did Rhonda offer to help you cheat on the test?”

Kate’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. “You sure seem to know a lot about it. Were you spying on me somehow? If you were, then I guess you know I called her a loon.”

“We weren’t spying, but that’s what I figured,” Reynie said. “So I take it you solved the puzzle? Unless, of course, you knew all the answers.”

Kate snorted. “Who in the world could possibly know the answers to a test like that?”

“Sticky did,” said Reynie.

It was Kate’s turn to be impressed. “Not bad,” she said, and Sticky ducked his head shyly. “Now what’s this about a puzzle?”

Once again Reynie and Sticky looked at each other.

“But if you didn’t know about that,” said Sticky, “how did you pass?”

“I didn’t pass. Nobody in my session did. To tell you the truth, I think the only reason they let me stick around was because I helped Old Yellow Suit out of a tight spot.”

Of course the boys wanted to hear what had happened, and Kate was happy to oblige them.

“After the test was over,” she said, “Old Yellow Suit took us down the hall to give everybody doughnuts and tell the parents that she was sorry but that they had to go now, thanks for coming, that sort of thing. Some of the parents were furious. One started shouting how this was some kind of trick, and another demanded to know what these tests were all about, and Old Yellow Suit started glancing toward the exit. I could tell she was nervous, but a few people stood between her and the door, and she was trapped.

“I felt sorry for her, you know, because I figured she was only doing her job, whatever it is, and at least she’d given me something interesting to do today, so I decided to help her out. While the grown-ups were all yelling, and the other kids were making themselves sick on doughnuts, I whipped out my Army knife screwdriver and took off the doorknob. Then I pointed and yelled, ‘There’s the man behind all this! That’s him in the corner!’ And everybody turned and pushed against one another to see — except Old Yellow Suit, of course, who made a beeline for the exit. As soon as she was out, I turned off the light and closed the door, and the two of us ran off down the hall. We had a good head start, because it was dark in the room now, and they kept reaching for the doorknob and not finding it. Finally someone turned on the light, and I suppose they all came flying out like angry hornets, but by then we were hiding in a closet.

“After we heard the last person leave, Old Yellow Suit smiled at me and said, ‘I believe you should stay for the next stage of testing.’ And so here I am.”

“Amazing!” Reynie said.

“I can’t believe it!” cried Sticky. “You’re a hero!”

“Oh good grief,” Kate said, frowning with embarrassment. “It was no big deal. Anybody could have done it. Now, I’ve told you my story, so you have to tell me yours. How did you know about Rhonda Kazembe? And what’s all this about the test being a puzzle?”

Before they could answer her, the pencil woman poked her head into the room and said, “It’s time for the third test, children. Please report immediately to Room 7-B.” Then she disappeared again.

“Where in the world is Room 7-B?” Sticky said, exasperated. “She never tells us where anything is. It took me half the night to find the Monk Building.”

“I’m sure we can find it easily enough,” Reynie said, but privately he was thinking about Sticky’s words — “half the night.” What was Sticky doing in the city alone at night? Where were his parents?

“You’d better fill me in quick,” Kate said. “You know Old Yellow Suit isn’t particularly patient.”

“You’re right,” Reynie said. “We’ll tell you on the way.”

And with that, the three new friends went in search of Room 7-B.

Squares and Arrows

The room was on the seventh floor, as Reynie had suspected. The door had no sign on it, but after roaming the empty hallways and looking at all the other door signs (there was a 7-A, a 7-C, a 7-D, and a 7-E), they returned to the unmarked door, upon which Kate knocked boldly. After a pause, she knocked again, still more loudly. This happened several times before they got a response — which, as it happened, came not from beyond the door, but from directly behind them.

“That’s enough with the knocking,” said a deep voice, quite close.

The children whirled around in surprise.

Before them stood a tall man in a weatherbeaten hat, a weatherbeaten jacket, weatherbeaten trousers, and weatherbeaten boots. His ruddy cheeks were dark with whisker stubble, while his hair (what little peeked from beneath his hat) was yellow as flax. If not for the alertness in his ocean-blue eyes, he would resemble, more than anything, a scarecrow that had come down from its stake. On top of all this, the man’s expression was profoundly sad. All the children noticed this at once. Reynie was so struck by it that instead of saying hello, he asked, “Are you all right, sir?”

“I’m afraid not,” the man said. “But that’s neither here nor there. Are you ready to begin the next test?”

“But we haven’t even met yet!” Kate said, sticking out her hand. “My name’s Kate Wetherall, though my friends call me —” She glanced at the boys, who looked at her doubtfully. “Well, my friends call me Kate.”

The man shook Kate’s hand, somewhat reluctantly. Even his handshake seemed sad — he hardly squeezed at all. The boys introduced themselves and the man sadly shook their hands, too. “There,” he said. “We’ve met. Now —”

“But you haven’t given us your name,” Kate insisted.

The man sighed, considering this. “Call me Milligan,” he said at last.

“Is that your first name or your last name?”

“Just Milligan. And no more questions. We have to proceed. Now, which of you is George?”

Kate scowled. She was getting very impatient with this man. “Weren’t you listening? Our names are Sticky, Reynie, and Kate!”

Sticky cleared his throat. “Uh, well, actually, my name is George. Sticky’s my nickname.”

“Your name is George Washington?” Kate said. “Like the president? The father of our country?”

“It isn’t that unusual,” Sticky said defensively. “You don’t have to tease me about it.”

“Take it easy, pal,” said Kate. “I wasn’t teasing you.” Clearly Sticky was a bit touchy about his name.

“Sticky or George, whichever it is,” said Milligan. “You’re to go first. Step through that door now and shut it behind you.”

Sticky’s eyes grew wide. “I have to go in alone?”

“It’s all right. It’s only a test. The others will be with you soon.”

“Good luck, Sticky,” Reynie said, clapping him on the shoulder. “I’m sure you’ll do fine!”

“Go, Sticky!” said Kate.

Sticky removed his spectacles, polished them, and replaced them. After a moment’s consideration, he removed them and began polishing again. There seemed to be a speck on the lens he couldn’t remove.

“Quit stalling,” Milligan said. “Nothing’s going to harm you in that room.”

At last Sticky nodded, settled his glasses on his nose, tucked away his polishing cloth, and passed through the door. Milligan closed it behind him and went away without a word.

“How do you like that?” Kate said. “He didn’t even tell us what to do, or how long it would take, or anything.”

“Big surprise,” said Reynie.

Soon Milligan came back and announced that it was Reynie’s turn. He gave no hint about what had happened to Sticky.

“See you on the other side,” said Kate. “Wherever that is.”

Reynie took a deep breath and went in, the door closing behind him. He found himself in an empty room. On the opposite wall, above another closed door, hung a large sign that read: CROSS THE ROOM WITHOUT SETTING FOOT ON A BLUE OR BLACK SQUARE.

Reynie looked down. On the cement floor just inside the door, where he now stood, was a large red circle. On the other side of the room, by the opposite door, was another red circle. Between these circles the floor resembled a giant checkerboard, with alternating rectangles of blue, black, and yellow. Reynie studied the pattern. There was far more blue and black than yellow. So much more, in fact, that he soon realized it would be impossible to cross the room without stepping on blue or black. The yellow parts were so widely scattered that he doubted even a kangaroo could hop from one to the other. He looked at the sign again, and after a moment’s consideration, he laughed and shook his head. Then he strode confidently across the room, into the other red circle, and out the far door.

Sticky and Milligan stood waiting for him beyond the door. They had been watching him secretly through tiny holes in the wall. Sticky looked confused and started to ask Reynie something, but Milligan shushed him. “You boys can watch, but you must be quiet,” he said. He went away to tell Kate it was her turn.

Moments later they saw Kate step boldly into Room 7-B. After reading the sign, she studied the floor, considering whether she might manage to leap from yellow to yellow. At last she shook her head, rejecting the idea. Next she looked from one door to the other, gauging the distance. Then, taking the length of rope from her bucket, she fashioned a loop at the end, and with one expert throw lassoed the doorknob at the far side of the room. Fastening the other end to the doorknob behind her, she pulled the rope tight, knotted it securely, and climbed up. “Now, if I only had that paddle,” she said aloud to herself as she walked along the rope, “I could hold it out in front of me for balance.”

Indeed, a paddle might have helped, for halfway across the room she nearly fell (the boys caught their breath), but after wobbling back and forth and wheeling her arms around, she recovered. After a few more careful steps, she hopped down into the other red circle.

“Wow!” Sticky whispered. “She did it!”

But before Kate could join the boys, Milligan appeared and took her back to the starting point to try again, this time without her rope, which he informed her would be returned upon completion of the test.

“That’s hardly fair,” Sticky whispered. “Nobody told her she couldn’t use a rope.”

Kate, meanwhile, was removing all the items from her bucket and stuffing them into her pockets. When she’d finished, her pockets bulging ridiculously, she unscrewed the handle from her bucket and tucked it through her belt. Then she was ready. Kicking the bucket onto its side, she hopped onto it and began rolling it forward with her feet, like a circus bear balancing on a ball. Rolling first this way, and then that, she zigzagged across the room to the other red circle.

Reynie and Sticky looked at each other in awe. Who was this girl?

Yet once again, as Kate reattached the bucket handle and emptied her pockets, Milligan entered the room. He returned her to the starting circle, this time taking away her bucket and tools, which she handed over with evident reluctance. She recovered quickly, however. Before Milligan had even closed the door behind him, Kate shrugged and cracked her knuckles, flattened her palms against the cement, and lifted her feet into the air above her. And this was how she crossed the room, walking on her hands, not once setting foot upon the floor.

“Never mind,” said Milligan when she opened the door. He handed her bucket back. “You pass.”

“What I don’t understand,” Sticky was saying to Reynie as they followed Milligan down a dark stairway, “is how you passed that test. I’m glad, of course, but I don’t see how you did it. I crossed on my hands and knees so my feet didn’t touch any blue or black squares, and Kate did her acrobat tricks, but you just walked right across the room. You were stepping on dark squares left and right!”

They had reached the bottom of the stairs now. Milligan ushered the children into a damp, dimly lit underground passage, where centipedes twisted away at their approach and other slithery creatures they heard but didn’t see retreated into the shadows. By this gloomy route, he was leading them to what he had called their “final testing place,” which struck Reynie as having a particularly ominous sound.

“Just walked right across?” said Kate. “Reynie, how did you get away with that?”

“It was another trick. Those weren’t squares on the floor — they were rectangles. Their sides weren’t all the same length.”

“Gosh, that’s true,” Kate reflected.

Sticky slapped his forehead. “I got my pants dirty for nothing? I crawled across the floor like a baby for nothing? I’m so stupid! I can’t believe they’re letting me go on.”

“You’re hardly stupid,” Reynie said. “You’re here, aren’t you?”

“Just where is here, anyway?” Kate asked. “Hey, Milligan, where are we?”

Without looking back or slowing down, Milligan said, “Right now we’re passing under Fifth Street.”

“I don’t suppose we could walk above ground, could we?” Sticky asked. “Where there’s sunlight and the path isn’t wet? Where it doesn’t smell like spoiled fish?”

“Where creepy things don’t keep falling on our heads?” Reynie added with a shudder, brushing away a beetle that had tried to skitter under his shirt collar.

“Sunlight just ahead,” Milligan replied. And sure enough, presently he led them up another set of stairs into an empty cellar, then through the cellar doors onto a quiet street lined with elm trees and old houses. The children couldn’t see this right away — it took a moment for their eyes to adjust to the brilliant sunlight.

And in that moment, Milligan disappeared.

They had followed him out through the cellar doors, they knew that for certain, but whereas Milligan had been tall and straight in his battered hat and scuffed jacket, the children were now accompanied by a stooped little man with a big belly, wearing dark glasses and a bright yellow cap.

“Who are you?” Kate cried, crouching into a defensive stance. “Where’s Milligan?”

“Right here,” the man said wearily, lowering his sunglasses to reveal a pair of sad, ocean-blue eyes. “I’m in disguise.”

The children regarded him closely. It was indeed Milligan. Somehow, without their noticing, he had stuffed his hat and jacket under his shirt to create the impression of a fat belly; had produced the cap and sunglasses (from where, they couldn’t guess); and hunched his shoulders and bent forward to appear shorter than he was. It was a remarkable transformation.

“Are you a magician?” Sticky asked.

“I’m nobody,” Milligan replied, and without further explanation, he pointed across the street to a three-story house with stone steps leading up to its front door. “Please go wait on those steps. Rhonda will be with you soon.”

“Rhonda Kazembe?” Reynie asked. “The green-haired girl?”

But even as he spoke, the cellar doors slammed shut, and Milligan was gone.

“Do you suppose we’re going to meet anybody normal today?” Kate asked.

“I’m beginning to doubt it,” Reynie said.

The children went across the street and through the gate of the house Milligan had pointed out. It was a very old house, with gray stone walls, high arched windows, and a roof with red shingles that glowed like embers in the afternoon sun. Roses grew along the iron fence, and near the house towered a gigantic elm tree, perhaps older than the building itself, its green leaves tinged with the first yellows of autumn. Shaded by the elm’s branches were an ivy-covered courtyard and the stone steps upon which they were to wait. The steps themselves were half-covered with ivy; they seemed an inviting place to rest. And indeed it was with some relief that the children, tired from the day’s challenges, sat upon them now in the cool shade of the elm.

“Sticky,” Reynie said when they had settled, “there’s something I wanted to ask you about your parents. Did they know that —?”

“We already talked about this, remember?” Sticky said, interrupting him. Turning to Kate, he explained, “That yellow lady gave Reynie and me the runaround when we told her we had some phone calls to make. Reynie was afraid his tutor would be worried, and it was the same with me and my parents. Turns out she called them, but she was very odd about it. Very odd indeed. Did that happen to you?”

This was not what Reynie had been going to ask about. He had wanted to ask if Sticky’s parents knew he’d spent “half the night” looking for the Monk Building. For some reason, Sticky was avoiding the subject.

“I didn’t have anybody to call,” said Kate with a shrug. “My mother died when I was a baby, and my father ran away and left me when I was two.”

Sticky’s face fell. “Oh. I’m . . . I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t worry,” Kate said lightly. “I don’t even remember them.” She paused, reflecting. “Actually, I do have one memory of my father.”

“That’s one more than I have,” said Reynie. “What is it?”

“Well, down the road from our house was an old mill pond, and my father took me there to swim once. I was only two, but a good swimmer. The water was cold, the day was warm, and I thought it all felt wonderful. I laughed and splashed until I was exhausted. Then my father — I can’t picture his face, but I can still feel his strong arms lifting me out of the water — he carried me on his shoulders back to our house. I remember asking if we could swim there again, and he said, ‘Of course we can, Katie-Cat.’ I remember that very well. He called me ‘Katie-Cat.’”

“You never went back to the mill pond, did you?” asked Sticky, looking even more regretful now that he’d heard Kate’s story.

“No, the next thing I remember I was in an orphanage,” said Kate.

Reynie shook his head. “It’s strange, Kate. Your father sounds, well, he sounds —”

“Like a nice man?” finished Kate. “I know, I’ve often thought of that. I guess it shows that people aren’t always what they seem. Or else he just changed. I suppose I’ll never know.”

“It’s terrible,” Sticky whispered, almost as if to himself.

“Hey, it’s okay,” Kate said cheerfully. “That was a long time ago. Anyway, I’ve had a fine life. The circus has been good to me.”

Reynie widened his eyes and glanced at Sticky, but Sticky seemed too disturbed to have noticed what Kate said. Reynie looked back at Kate. “Did you just say the circus has been good to you?”

“Oh, yes,” said Kate with a laugh. “When I was seven I ran away from the orphanage to join the circus. They brought me back, but I just ran away again, and I kept running away every time they brought me back. Eventually it was agreed that I could join the circus and save everybody a lot of trouble. So that’s what I’ve been doing the past few years. It’s been great fun, too, but I was ready for something different. When I read about these tests, I said adios to my circus pals, and here I came.”

“That’s quite a life,” Reynie said, more than a little amazed. “And has it — I mean, has circus life helped, then? You haven’t ever missed your parents?” He was always curious about how other orphans felt. His own parents were never known to him, and so he didn’t miss them in particular, but on rainy days, or days when other children taunted him, or nights when he awoke from a bad dream and could use a hug and perhaps a story to lull him back to sleep — at times like these he didn’t miss his parents, exactly, but he did wish for them.

Kate, apparently, felt otherwise. “What’s to miss?” she said breezily. “Like I said, I don’t even remember my mother, and who wants a father who’ll run away and leave his baby daughter all by herself? I’d much rather spend my time with elephants and clowns.” She frowned. “Sticky, what’s wrong with you?”

Throughout their conversation, Sticky’s expression had grown more and more dejected, his big eyes sadder and sadder, so that at last his face had taken on the exact gloomy look of that miserable man Milligan.

Reynie put his hand on Sticky’s shoulder. “Hey, are you all right?”

“Oh . . . yes,” Sticky said, unconvincingly, “I was just, you know, feeling sorry for Kate. It must be terrible to think you weren’t wanted.”

Kate laughed (a bit stiffly, it seemed to Reynie) and said, “Weren’t you listening, chum? I told you, I’m having a ball!” She went on to regale them with stories about circus life — hanging from trapezes, leaping through flaming hoops, getting shot from cannons — until gradually Sticky cheered up, and the matter of parents was dropped.

They had been waiting on the steps for perhaps an hour, and were beginning to grumble about how hungry they were, when the front door opened, and Rhonda Kazembe appeared. At least, they thought it was Rhonda Kazembe. She did have the same features and coal-black skin, and she was the same height as Rhonda, but gone were the puffy white dress and long green hair. Instead, her hair hung in lovely dark braids all about her face, and she wore a smart blue jumper and sandals. When she saw them on the steps, she laughed with pleasure.

“Hi, kids! Remember me?”

“Rhonda? Is it really you?” Sticky asked.

“I hope so,” she replied. “Otherwise someone’s played a very clever trick on me.”

When Rhonda sat down with them and Reynie had a closer look at her, he realized something that he’d missed before. “You’re not even a child!” he exclaimed. “You’re a grown-up!”

“Well,” said Rhonda, “a very small, very young grown-up, yes.”

“I knew you were hiding something with that funny get-up, but I thought it had to do with the cheating.”

“No,” said Rhonda, laughing again. “It was just to call attention away from my age, and to distract you in general.”

“I have an idea,” said Kate, whose stomach was growling loudly. “Why don’t you give us some food and tell us what this is all about?”

“Soon, Kate, very soon. There remains one more test, but after that, whether you pass or fail, I promise you all a good supper. Fair enough?”

“It’s a deal,” Kate said.

“Then let’s begin. When I tell you to, each of you must go through this front door. At the very back of the house is a staircase. You’re to reach the staircase as quickly as possible, hurry up the stairs, and ring the bronze bell that hangs at the top. Speed is important, so don’t dawdle. Any questions?”

“Will this test be any harder than the last one?” Kate asked, with a show of bravado.

“Some find it quite difficult,” said Rhonda. “But you should all be able to do it with your eyes closed.”

“Will it be scary?” Sticky asked, almost in a whisper.

“Maybe, but it isn’t really dangerous,” Rhonda said, which did nothing for Sticky’s confidence.

“Who goes first?” Reynie asked.

“That’s an easy one,” Rhonda answered. “You.”

It had been a day full of challenges, all of which Reynie had met successfully, and when he stepped through the front door he was brimming with confidence. By this point he knew there would be some kind of trick involved; and knowing this, he felt sure he’d be ready for it.

He found himself in a brightly lit room with pitch black walls. The front door, which Rhonda had just closed behind him, had no knob on the inside and was likewise painted black, so that it blended into the wall. The room was rather cramped, perhaps six feet wide and six long (Kate would know for sure, he thought), and was entirely empty. Not counting the nearly invisible front door behind him, it had three exits: to the left, to the right, and immediately before him. These doorways had no doors in them, and the rooms beyond were unlit, so that Reynie couldn’t see into them.

Are we expected to walk into dark rooms? he wondered. This is going to make Sticky extremely unhappy. But he was only thinking of Sticky to take his mind off himself, for the prospect of groping about in the darkness intimidated him more than he cared to admit.

“Well,” he said aloud, to bolster his courage, “there’s no time to waste, so here goes.” He plunged through the doorway ahead of him (this ought to be the most direct path to the rear of the house) and, as if by magic, seemed to walk into the very room he had just left. It was cramped, brightly lit, painted black, and he could see a dark doorway in each wall.

“What in the world?” he said, turning to look behind him, then in confusion turning round again. At once he realized his mistake. If he hadn’t turned around, he might have kept his bearings, but now he’d lost them. He was in a maze of identical rooms. Everything looked exactly the same in every direction.

His confidence was quickly draining away.

“Now, think,” he told himself. “When you enter a room, its light must turn on automatically, and when you leave, it goes off. But there are light switches by each door. Perhaps if you throw a switch, the light stays on. It might be as simple as that.”

With a quick inspection of the nearest doorway, however, this hope vanished. What Reynie had supposed were light switches were only decorative wooden panels. He was about to turn away and try to retrace his steps when it occurred to him the panels themselves might be important. He took a closer look at one. About the size of a playing card, the panel had four arrows etched into it, pointing in different directions and painted different colors. A blue arrow pointed to the right, a green one to the left, a wiggly-shaped yellow one straight ahead, and a purple one down.

Of course, Reynie thought, feeling foolish. The arrows weren’t for decoration — they were meant to show the way. But which was he to believe? After going round to every panel he was no better off. Four doorways with four arrows each meant sixteen arrows to choose from, and there was no apparent pattern. Reynie racked his brain: Should he follow the green ones? Green arrows on a traffic signal mean “Go.” But perhaps that was too obvious. Perhaps the red arrows were the ones to follow — perhaps that was the trick. Yet that hardly seemed fair. What if he’d been color-blind and couldn’t even tell the difference?

No sooner had this occurred to him than he knew the secret.

Running his finger over the carved arrows in the panel before him, Reynie smiled. The only one you could know by touch would be the wiggly shaped one. What was it that Rhonda had said to Kate? “You should all be able to do it with your eyes closed.” It had seemed she was offering encouragement. Actually she was offering them a clue: Even in the dark, even with his eyes closed, Reynie could feel the panels with his fingers and find the wiggly shaped arrow.

Just to be certain, he hurried around the room, checking the panels. Sure enough, though the other arrows followed no particular pattern, the wiggly arrows all directed him toward the same door — the one whose wiggly arrow pointed straight ahead. Reynie took a deep breath, hoped for the best, and charged through. The next room looked exactly the same, but this time the wiggly arrows indicated the door on his right. He took it.

By the time he’d gone through ten rooms in this way, Reynie had no idea where in the house he was. He might have been at the front door again and would not have known it. Or he might be in the very middle of the maze. And with the walls painted black as they were, if all the lights went out he would be in utter darkness. Suddenly he wondered if they intended to turn the lights out on him as part of the test. The thought started an uncomfortable flutter in his belly. But just as he began to worry, he entered a room and stumbled smack into a staircase. With a shout of triumph he raced up the stairs onto a narrow landing, found the bronze bell Rhonda had told them about, and rang it.

There was a sound of quick footsteps coming down stairs. Then a door unlocked and out came the pencil woman with a stopwatch in hand. She examined it and said, “Six minutes fourteen seconds.”

“Is that good?” Reynie asked.

Without answering, she said, “Please close your eyes and stand still.”

Something about this made Reynie uneasy. Had he done so badly? Was this meant to test his courage? He did as he was told, closing his eyes and bracing himself as best he could.

“Why are you flinching?” the pencil woman asked.

“I don’t know. I thought maybe you were going to slap me.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. I could slap you perfectly well with your eyes open. I’m only going to blindfold you.”

Having done so, she led Reynie down the stairs again. With her hand on his shoulder, the pencil woman guided him back through the maze into the first room, where she removed the blindfold. Starting the stopwatch, she said, “Please go ring the bell again.”

This time it was easy. Reynie trotted through the rooms, glancing at the panels for guidance, and in a few short minutes had rung the bell again. The pencil woman came up behind him, reading her stopwatch. “Three minutes even,” she said. She led him up more stairs into a sitting room and pointed him toward a sofa.

“Does this mean I pass?”

“We ask you to complete the maze a second time to see if you’ve actually solved it. We need to make sure you didn’t just come upon the staircase by luck. If you’ve discovered the secret, you should be much faster the second time around. Which you were. Therefore you seem to have solved the maze. Therefore you pass. Therefore —” Interrupting herself, she took a cracker from her pocket and ate it very quickly, as if she hadn’t eaten in days and couldn’t wait another moment.

Reynie cocked his head curiously. “But why did you have me go through again when you could have just asked me? I could have told you the secret, you know.”

“You’d be surprised how few children have pointed that out,” said the pencil woman as she moved toward the door.

“You mean you wondered whether I’d notice that?”

The pencil woman winked. “And now we know, don’t we?”

She hurried from the room, leaving Reynie alone on the sofa. He was getting used to her abrupt entrances and exits. Still, it was strange to find himself in an unknown house, sitting on this sofa by himself. He looked around the room. The walls were lined with books, many of them in languages he didn’t recognize. In one corner stood an old piano; in another, a marvelous green globe. Reynie went to look at the globe. If the others took as long as he did to finish the maze, it would be some time before he had company. He might as well entertain himself.

But hardly had he given the globe a single spin — he hadn’t even located Stonetown Harbor on it yet — when he heard the bell clanging outside on the stairway landing. It rang and rang, very loudly and with no sign of stopping, and from this he gathered it was Kate at the bell. Sure enough, within a few moments the ringing had ceased and the pencil woman had led Kate into the sitting room to join him. Kate was grinning ear to ear. The pencil woman had a hand to her forehead, as if perhaps all the bell ringing had given her a headache.

“She doesn’t have to go through a second time?” Reynie asked, surprised.

“No point,” said the pencil woman, and left them there alone.

“What do you mean, a second time?” Kate asked.

“I had to finish it twice to prove I’d solved it. But you got through so fast, I suppose it would be hard to do it any faster.”

“Not as long as I have my bucket with me,” Kate agreed.

After turning this over in his mind a few times, Reynie gave up and said, “Okay, what did your bucket have to do with getting through the maze?”

“Well, of course I saw right away that I was in a maze, and I knew that I had to get to the opposite side of the house. So I looked around for a heating vent —”

“A heating vent?”

“Sure. And there in the floor of the very first room I saw one, so I got out my army-knife screwdriver and removed the grate and squeezed down into the heating duct. It was a tight fit, I’ll tell you — had to tie my bucket to my foot and pull it along behind me. Those old ducts run all over the house, but the central duct runs more or less in a straight line to the back, so with my flashlight in one hand and my army knife in the other, I just followed it all the way there, pried up the vent, and popped out by the staircase. I sort of had to bend the grate on that last one. I think maybe Old Yellow Suit’s mad about that.”

“I bet she’ll forgive you.”

“Don’t you think? It’s not like it’ll be hard to fix. Only a little one-by-one grate. Hey, this is an impressive globe.”

For a while the two of them entertained themselves finding places on the globe, but eventually they’d had enough of it, and Sticky Washington had yet to appear. Kate went over to the piano and tried to play it. The keys made no sound. Together they lifted the lid and looked inside. The piano strings had been removed, and in their place were more books.

“These people certainly have a lot of reading to do,” Kate observed. “Oh well, no great loss. I only know ‘Chopsticks,’ anyway.”

Almost twenty minutes had passed, and still no sign of Sticky. Kate began to sort through the items in her bucket, making sure each was in its proper place. She had found an arrangement that kept her things secure and within easy reach, and she was very particular about it. She was the sort of person who liked to be constantly busy, Reynie realized. She hadn’t much use for idleness. Which reminded him of something he wanted to ask her. “You know, Kate, something’s been nagging me. You told us you carry all these things around in your bucket because they’re useful, right?”

“Absolutely,” Kate replied.

“Then why the kaleidoscope? It’s interesting to look through, maybe, but how is it useful?”

Kate stopped double-checking the things in her bucket and gave Reynie a searching look. At last she nodded. “You know, I think I can trust you, I can already tell. All right, here’s the secret.” She took out the kaleidoscope and popped off its colorful prismatic lens. Only then did Reynie see that the prismatic lens had been concealing a different lens beneath.

“The kaleidoscope is a spyglass in disguise,” Kate explained. “It’s a good spyglass and I wouldn’t want anyone to steal it. The kaleidoscope, on the other hand, is rather a bad kaleidoscope. I don’t think it would tempt anyone.”

The very idea of disguising a good spyglass as a bad kaleidoscope made Reynie laugh with pleasure. “It’s terrific!” he cried.

Kate wasn’t sure what Reynie was laughing about, but she was eminently agreeable, and before long she was laughing with him. When Reynie had taken a good look at the spyglass, Kate tucked it away again and flopped onto the sofa. “Do you think Sticky’s ever going to finish? I’m having a fine time and all, but I’m about to drop dead from hunger.”

In answer to her question, the bell rang — only once, and almost imperceptibly, as if Sticky had just tapped it with his fingernails. Through the closed door they heard the pencil woman speaking in her brusque way, then an embarrassed murmur that must have been Sticky’s response. After a moment all was silent again. Again they waited.

“Shouldn’t be long now,” Reynie said. “It’s easy once you’ve figured out the secret. It only took me three minutes the second time through.”

Three minutes soon passed, however. Then four, then five. Not until almost fifteen minutes had gone by did the bell ring again, just as softly as before. A moment later the door opened, and Sticky entered the room with the pencil woman behind him. He gave a great smile when he saw Reynie and Kate, not so much because he’d finished the test but because he was relieved to have company again.

“Congratulations,” said the pencil woman. “You all pass.”

The children cheered and clapped each other on the backs, and when they were done cheering and clapping, they realized that the pencil woman had left them yet again.

“She’s awfully fond of leaving, isn’t she?” asked Kate. “I never saw anybody who left so much. I suppose she expects us to wait again?”

“Maybe Rhonda’s coming for us,” Reynie said.

“I hope so. Otherwise I’m going to have to eat some of these books. Sticky, what on earth took you so long? Didn’t you know how hungry I was?”

Sticky seemed about to cry. He was reaching for his spectacles when he saw Kate was only teasing him. Then he smiled and shrugged. “I had to go through twice.”

“So did Reynie. But he said there’s some kind of secret that gets you through faster. So why did it take you so long the second time?”

“It was a little faster,” Sticky protested. “Now what’s this secret you’re talking about?”

“The secret to getting through the maze,” Reynie said. “You know, the arrows.”

“Arrows? You mean the ones on those panels?”

Reynie gave Kate a look of amazement, but Kate replied, “Don’t look at me. I don’t know anything about arrows, remember? I took a shortcut.”

“That’s true,” he said. “Sticky, if you didn’t use the arrows, how did you get through?”

Sticky shuffled his feet and said, “I just kept trying one door after the other, until finally I found the staircase. It was sheer luck.”

“And you found it more quickly the second time? That’s the really lucky part, I guess.”

“Oh, no, that part was easy,” Sticky said. “I just remembered how I got through the first time: First I took a right, then a left, then straight ahead, then right, then right again, then left, then left again, then right, then straight ahead, and so on, until I came to the staircase. I didn’t have to waste time scratching my head over those panels, or worrying they were going to turn the lights off, or any of that stuff. I just hurried through exactly as I did before.”

“Exactly as you —,” Kate began, then just shook her head. “That’s incredible.”

Reynie laughed. “You did it the hard way, Sticky!”

“What’s the easy way?”

“Follow the wiggly arrows.”

“Oh,” Sticky said thoughtfully. “That would have been useful to know.”

The Trouble with Children Or, Why They Are Necessary

Their supper was served in a cozy dining room with crowded bookshelves on every wall and a window overlooking the courtyard. Redbirds twittered in the elm tree outside the open window, a gentle breeze drifted into the room, and in general the children were in much better spirits, having passed the tests and at last having gotten some food in their bellies. Rhonda Kazembe had already brought them bowls of tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches, which they’d eagerly devoured; now she set out a great platter of fruit, and as the children reached happily for bananas and grapes and pears, she sat down and joined them.

“It’s all part of the test, you know. Being hungry and irritable. It’s important to see how you behave when other children are getting doughnuts and you’re getting nothing, and how well your mind works despite being tired and thirsty. You all did brilliantly, I must say. Just brilliantly.”

Sticky, who still felt sensitive about his performance in the maze, said, “I wouldn’t say I did brilliantly. I didn’t figure out the solution or find a shortcut, I just stumbled around like a twit.”

“You mustn’t belittle yourself,” Rhonda said. “I daresay very few people could have done what you did the second time through, retracing your steps so exactly. You made over a hundred turns!”

“I doubt I could have done it,” Reynie remarked.

“I know I couldn’t have,” said Kate through a mouthful of grapes.

Sticky ducked his head.

“Besides, you aren’t the only child ever to have trouble with the maze,” said Rhonda. “When I first went through it, I got terribly lost.”

“You got lost in the maze?” Sticky said. The others’ ears perked up.

“Oh, yes, several years ago, when I took these same tests. I thought I was very clever, because I knew right away that I was in a maze of identical rooms. I’ve often been able to sense such things. ‘Well,’ I thought to myself, ‘if every room has three exits, and I always take the exit to the right, then I’ll make my way around the house to the back in no time.’ Of course, Mr. Benedict had thought of that.”

“Who’s Mr. Benedict?” Reynie asked.

“Mr. Benedict is the reason we’re all here. You’ll meet him after supper.”

“What happened to you in the maze?” Kate asked.

“Well now, if you do what I did,” Rhonda went on, “after about six rooms you come upon a dead end, and your clever little plan flies out the window. I was so frustrated, I didn’t bother trying to solve the panels. Instead I just tried to follow the green arrows for a while — green so often means ‘go’ — and when that didn’t work I tried the red ones. When the solution finally occurred to me, more than an hour had gone by.”

“But you still passed?” Sticky asked, heartened to learn of someone else having difficulty with the maze.

“Of course she passed,” said the pencil woman, entering the dining room. “Rhonda was the most gifted child ever to take the tests. She did so well on everything else, she would have passed no matter what happened in the maze.”

“Don’t be silly,” Rhonda said. “If you aren’t the most gifted person ever to have taken Mr. Benedict’s tests, I’m the queen of England.”

At this, the pencil woman’s cheeks turned as red as her hair.

As he had already admitted, Sticky often got mixed up when he was excited, and in this frenzy of mysteries and revelations, he could hardly think straight. “What’s that you said about being the queen of England?” he asked Rhonda. “Was it a riddle?”

Rhonda laughed. “That was only a joke, Sticky. I’m hardly a queen, you know, and I’m not from England. I was born in a country called Zambia and brought here to Stonetown when I was a child.”

“Zambia? So did you speak Bembi, then, or one of the other Bantu languages?”

“Why, Bembi,” Rhonda answered, taken aback. “And how on earth did you know that? Do you speak it?”

“Oh, no, I’m sure I couldn’t. I can read most languages, but I have trouble speaking anything but English. Can’t get my tongue to do what it’s supposed to.”

Rhonda smiled. “I can hardly speak it myself, these days — it’s been so long.” She gave him a significant look. “I rarely meet anyone who knows what the languages of Zambia are, much less who can read them.”

“Sticky knows a good number of things,” said Reynie.

“I wish he knew when we’re supposed to meet this Mr. Benedict,” Kate said. “It’s been an awfully long day, and I’d like to learn what this is all about.”

“As for that,” said the pencil woman, “the reason I came in was to tell you that Mr. Benedict is ready to see you. He’s waiting in his study.”

“What about the other one?” asked Rhonda Kazembe.

“Apparently there’s been some delay. Mr. Benedict said he will meet with these children now, and she can join them when she arrives.”

The children wanted to know who this other girl was, but there was no time for questions, for Rhonda and the pencil woman ushered them out of the room and down a long hallway into the study of Mr. Benedict.

Like every other room in the old house, Mr. Benedict’s study was crammed with books. Books on shelves that rose to the high ceiling, books in stacks on the floor, books holding up a potted violet in desperate need of water. On four chairs arranged before an oak desk rested still more books — which Rhonda and the pencil woman removed so the children could sit — and on the desk itself, piled in precarious, leaning towers, were even more. The children took their seats and looked about the study. Except for the books, the furniture, and the violet, it appeared to be empty.

“I thought you said he was waiting for us,” Kate said.

“And indeed I have been,” said a voice, and out from behind the desk where he’d been sitting, hidden by the piles of books, appeared a bespectacled, green-eyed man in a green plaid suit. His thick white hair was shaggy and mussed, his nose was rather large and lumpy like a vegetable, and although it was clear he had recently shaved, he appeared to have done so without benefit of a mirror, for here and there upon his neck and chin were nicks from a razor, and occasional white whiskers that he’d missed altogether. This was Mr. Benedict.

With a friendly smile, Mr. Benedict stepped round to introduce himself to the children, shaking hands and calling each by name. As he did so, Rhonda Kazembe and the pencil woman followed him, standing on either side as he moved from child to child. When he stepped back to lean against his desk, the two women again followed him and stood closely on either side, watching him with alert expressions, as if worried what he might do. It was very curious, and more than a little unsettling.

“First, children, I wish to congratulate you,” said Mr. Benedict. “You have all done exceedingly well today. There is much to explain, of course, but I’m afraid the explanations must wait a bit longer, until we are joined by another.” He took out a pocket watch, checked the time, and sighed. To the pencil woman he said, “Number Two, any word from Milligan about our missing young friend?”

“Not yet,” said the pencil woman. “But he said it should be soon.”

“Would you please go meet them? I want to be sure she’s had a bite to eat.”

The pencil woman gave him a doubtful look.

“I’ll be fine,” he assured her. “Rhonda is right here.”

With an uncertain nod, the pencil woman took her leave.

“Did you just call her Number Two?” asked Kate.

“She prefers we use her code name,” explained Rhonda. “She’s shy about her real name. For no good reason, if you ask me. It’s a perfectly fine name.”

“For good reasons or not, we all have things we’re shy about,” said Mr. Benedict with a significant look at Sticky, who immediately took to polishing his glasses.

Kate and Reynie glanced at each other wonderingly.

“I know you have questions,” Mr. Benedict said. “And I may be able to offer some answers now, though some must come later. What’s on your mind?”

“I’d like to know who we’re waiting for,” said Kate.

“That I can answer. Her name is Constance Contraire, a test-taker like yourselves. I must say she’s given us all quite a turn. A most amusing child. Rhonda, how many pencils did you say she brought with her this morning?”

“Thirty-seven,” said Rhonda, with a shake of her head. “We tell her to bring one, and she brings thirty-seven.”

“How do you know that?” Sticky asked.

Rhonda shrugged. “She told me so herself. Remember the storm drain? Constance stopped to help me, but instead of trying to get my pencil back, she simply opened her raincoat. She had pockets and pockets full of pencils. ‘Thirty-seven,’ she said. ‘Just help yourself.’”

“Wasn’t that cheating?” Kate asked. “Why wasn’t she disqualified?”

“It was certainly taking a risk,” said Mr. Benedict. “However, she refused the test answers Rhonda offered her, and the point of the test wasn’t to see if you would bring only one pencil, you know. The pencil itself is inconsequential.”

Reynie was curious about something else. “Why was she wearing a raincoat? It was sunny outside today.”

“You’re an attentive listener,” said Mr. Benedict. “That should serve you well — will serve us all well, I daresay. As for the raincoat, I believe she wore it to conceal the pencils.”

“But why bring all those pencils?” Kate said, exasperated. “It’s ridiculous!”

“If that amuses you, Kate,” said Mr. Benedict, “you might also enjoy some of her test answers. Let me see, I believe I have them right here.” He disappeared behind the desk, again followed closely by Rhonda, who stood watchfully as he shuffled among some papers. The children could see just the top of his rumpled head as he searched.

“Ah, here it is,” he said, stepping back around the desk. As before, Rhonda positioned herself close to his side. He scanned the pages. “Oh, here’s a clever one. Do you remember this question from the first test? It reads, ‘What is wrong with this statement?’ And do you know what Constance wrote in reply? She wrote, ‘What is wrong with you?’” At this, Mr. Benedict burst into laughter — a squeaky, rapid, stuttering expulsion that sounded rather like a dolphin.

The children’s faces wrinkled in confusion.

“Here’s another,” said Mr. Benedict. “Remember this one? It shows a picture of a chessboard with only a black pawn out of its original position, and it reads, ‘According to the rules of chess, is this position possible?’ Constance writes in response, ‘Rules and schools are tools for fools — I don’t give two mules for rules!’”

Again Mr. Benedict laughed his dolphin laugh. This time he couldn’t stop, but laughed louder and louder, until tears entered his eyes. And then without warning, his eyes closed, his chin dropped to his chest, and he fell asleep.

Rhonda leaped forward to catch his glasses, which had slipped from his nose. Fortunately Mr. Benedict had been leaning against the desk — when he fell asleep, he only slumped forward a bit and didn’t fall to the floor. Even so, Rhonda took him carefully about the waist and said, “Quick, one of you bring me a chair.”

Kate jumped to her feet and slid her chair over. Rhonda lowered Mr. Benedict into it and eased his head into a comfortable position. His breathing deepened into a gentle snore, as if he’d been asleep for hours.

Recovering from his surprise, Reynie realized why Rhonda and Number Two stuck so close to Mr. Benedict when he walked around. If he often fell asleep like this, he must risk some nasty falls.

“Is he all right?” Sticky whispered.

“Oh, yes, he’s fine,” Rhonda said. “He’ll be awake any moment. He seldom sleeps longer than a minute or two.”

And indeed, even as she spoke, Mr. Benedict’s eyelids fluttered open, and he rose abruptly from the chair and said, “Ah.” Taking out his pocket watch, he squinted to read it, then touched the bridge of his nose as if searching for something. “I’m afraid I can’t read without my glasses.”

“Here,” said Rhonda, handing them to him.

“Thank you.” With his glasses on, Mr. Benedict checked the watch and gave a nod of satisfaction. “Only a few moments, then, that’s good. I would hate to have left you waiting long.” He gave a ferocious yawn and ran his fingers sleepily through his hair, as people often do when they first awake, which likely accounted for its disheveled state.

“This is another thing I need to explain to you,” said Mr. Benedict. “I have a condition known as narcolepsy. Are you familiar with it?”

“Sure, it’s a disorder characterized by sudden and uncontrollable attacks of deep sleep,” said Sticky, then ducked his head shyly. “At least, that’s what the dictionary says.”

“The dictionary is correct. Although the condition takes different forms with different people, in my case an attack is usually triggered by strong emotion. For this reason I wear green plaid suits — I discovered years ago that green plaid has a soothing effect on me — and always try to remain calm. However, every now and then I must allow myself a hearty laugh, don’t you agree? What is life without laughter?”

The children, uneasy, nodded politely.

“Now then, where did I leave off? Oh, yes, Constance. I take it you didn’t find her answers as amusing as I do. I’m not sure, however — perhaps you laughed while I was sleeping?” He glanced at them hopefully, but was met with blank faces. “I see. Well, perhaps you’ll find this amusing: Instead of answering the questions on the second test, she composed a long poem about the absurdity of the test and its rules, particularly about the missing fourth step — which apparently reminded her of doughnut holes, because these were the topic of a second poem. She is very irritated, it seems, that every doughnut contains a hole. She feels she is being robbed. I remember a particularly felicitous rhyme between ‘flaky bereft’ and ‘bakery theft.’ Let’s see, where was it? I have it right here. . . .” He began flipping through the test pages.

“Excuse me,” Sticky said. “Sir? How is it this girl passed the tests if she didn’t answer any of the questions? I mean, if she didn’t even try?”

“There are tests,” said Mr. Benedict, “and then there are tests.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“It will all come clear presently, Sticky. Ah, here they are at last.”

The door was opening, and into the room now came Number Two, looking vexed, followed by Milligan, looking gloomy. And with them was Constance Contraire, looking very, very small.

It took a moment for the children to realize that Constance had arrived with the others. From Milligan’s sad face, their eyes had to travel quite a distance downward before lighting upon the girl’s. She was very little indeed, and very pudgy, too, which made her almost exactly the size and shape of a fire hydrant (a resemblance strengthened by her red raincoat and rosy red cheeks). Reynie’s first impulse was to feel sorry for her — it must be difficult to be so much smaller than other children — but then Constance gave him a cross look, as if she positively disliked him, and Reynie’s sympathy diminished.

Helping the girl into a chair (it wasn’t a particularly large chair, but she still needed help getting up into it), Number Two said, “Rather than finish the maze, Constance chose a quiet corner and sat down to have a picnic. It took Milligan some time to find her.”

“I’m not apologizing,” Constance said.

“Nor were you asked to,” replied Mr. Benedict. “I’m pleased to hear you’ve had supper. Did you enjoy your picnic, then? Have quite enough to eat?”

“Quite,” said Constance.

“Very well. Thank you, Milligan.”

With a nod, the unhappy man pulled his hat down over his eyes and withdrew from the study. Number Two, meanwhile, took up her position next to Mr. Benedict, who, after introducing Constance to the other children (she gave them all such crabby looks that no one offered to shake her hand), at last began to explain.

“My young friends,” he said, his face growing solemn, “let me cut to the chase. I wish I could tell you that, having passed these tests, you are now to enter into a pleasant period of education. On the contrary, what I have to tell you is extremely unpleasant, extremely unpleasant indeed.”

The children frowned in puzzlement. Was he joking? He certainly seemed serious. Perhaps this, too, was a test — a way of gauging their commitment.

“For years now,” Mr. Benedict went on, “I have conducted these tests in hopes of forming a team of children to help me on an urgent project. You may be aware that some years ago Rhonda took the tests, as did Number Two. In fact a great many children have taken these tests, and yet I have been unable to form a team. Why is this? For one thing, very few children pass. For another, those who have passed have not done so at the same time, and this, you see, is crucial. I do not simply need a team; I need a team of children. Yet children do not remain children for long, and herein has lain the difficulty. Rhonda was a child only a few years ago, and Number Two a few years before that, but as you see they are now quite grown up. They have stayed on with me as assistants — and indeed their prodigious gifts have helped me tremendously — but like myself, they cannot form a part of the team.”

So far, Mr. Benedict had said nothing that struck Reynie as particularly unpleasant. If anything, he had begun to feel even more proud of himself, and of his new friends, for having done something unusual. It was obvious that Mr. Benedict believed they had what it took to form this special team. But already he sensed that Mr. Benedict did not speak lightly — if he promised something unpleasant, Reynie was sure that something unpleasant would come. Next to him Sticky was squirming uncomfortably, apparently thinking the same thing. And Kate had just glanced in Reynie’s direction, seen the uncertainty in his eye, and nodded her silent agreement: The bad news was coming.

“I see you are wondering where the unpleasantness comes in,” said Mr. Benedict, “as well you might. Let me tell you, then: The project is dangerous. It is a mission — one that may put your lives at risk.”

The children all straightened in their chairs.

“I want to make some things perfectly clear,” said Mr. Benedict. “It is not my wish to put you in harm’s way. Quite the opposite: I despise the notion. Children should spend their time learning and playing in absolute safety — that is my firm belief. Now then, assuming that I am telling the truth, can you guess why I would nonetheless involve you in something dangerous?”

“Why should we assume that you’re telling the truth?” challenged Constance.

“For the sake of discussion,” said Mr. Benedict, “let us assume that I am.”

“If you’re telling the truth,” said Reynie, “then the only reason you would put us in danger is that you believe we’ll fall into greater danger if you don’t.”

Mr. Benedict tapped his lumpy nose and pointed at Reynie. “Precisely. And I do believe this. I am certain, in fact, that you — and a great many other people — are in danger even as we speak, and that this danger shall only increase.”

Sticky coughed and mumbled something about needing to use the bathroom.

Mr. Benedict smiled kindly down at him and said, “Sticky, never fear, you aren’t compelled to join the team. I hope to explain a bit more about it, and then you’ll be given the choice to stay or go. Fair enough?” After a moment’s hesitation, Sticky nodded, and then Mr. Benedict added, “Now, do you truly need to use the bathroom, or can you wait a few minutes longer?”

Sticky truly did, but he said, “I can wait.”

“Very well. Now, in the interest of further explanation, I’ll ask you all another question. What is it the four of you have in common? Can you tell me?”

“We all passed your boring tests,” said Constance.

“We’re all gifted,” said Kate.

“We’re all children,” said Sticky.

Mr. Benedict nodded at each response, then looked at Reynie, who said, “We’re all alone.”

Mr. Benedict raised his eyebrows. “What makes you think that?”

“For one thing,” said Reynie, “the newspaper advertisement wasn’t addressed to parents but to children, which makes me think you were looking for kids who might be alone. And then at that first test there were a lot of parents, but later in the Monk Building I saw only a handful of them waiting — and I know at least a few kids showed up all by themselves. And now here we are. I’m an orphan, and Kate’s mother died when she was a baby and then her father left her, and I’m only guessing about Constance, but as for Sticky, well — I’m sorry, Sticky, but I think you’ve been hiding something. I think somehow you’re alone, too.”

“Before you say anything,” said Mr. Benedict to Sticky, who was staring at Reynie with a shocked expression, “let me tell you this. I have always had a strict policy against taking on runaways. In light of the circumstances, however, I’m willing to make an exception. When it’s time for you to decide about staying or leaving, please keep in mind it won’t be necessary to make up stories. And if you decide to leave, Rhonda and Number Two will offer you assistance. I have no intention of letting you go out into the city again with no money, food, or shelter.”

By this point Sticky had turned his shocked expression toward Mr. Benedict. He opened his mouth to speak, reconsidered, and finally stared down at his shoes.

Kate leaned over and put her hand on his shoulder. “A runaway, eh?” she whispered. “You’ve got more gumption than I realized, pal.”

“All of you have answered correctly,” said Mr. Benedict. “You’re all gifted children who passed my ‘boring’ tests — in one way or another — and you’ve all shown yourselves to be unusually resourceful. For example, I happen to know that Constance has been living secretly in a public library in a city north of Stonetown, and that she managed to catch a bus, and then a subway, and finally a taxi to come here. And I know that Kate stole aboard a boxcar in Chicago, while Sticky stowed away on a river barge. You’ve all shown ingenuity in one form or another — and yes, in one form or another, you’re all alone.”

Again he paused, gazing at the children now with what appeared to be a mixture of great pride and great sympathy. Indeed, tears had welled up in his eyes, and the sincerity in his expression made Reynie — who was used to ignoring his loneliness — grow almost heartsick. He felt a keen desire to see Miss Perumal again. Had it only been this morning that she’d surprised him by crying when they parted? It already seemed so long ago.

“Oh dear,” cried Rhonda just then, for Mr. Benedict, awash in strong emotion, had gone to sleep. With a sudden loud snore he toppled forward into the attentive arms of Rhonda and Number Two, who eased him to the floor.

“What’s with him?” Constance asked.

“He has narcolepsy,” said Kate.

“He steals a lot?”

“That’s kleptomania,” Sticky said. “Mr. Benedict sleeps a lot.”

“Well, I don’t like it,” Constance said crossly.

“I assure you, Constance,” said Number Two, looking vexed, “Mr. Benedict doesn’t like it, either. None of us does. It simply can’t be helped.”

Before any more could be said, Mr. Benedict opened his eyes, blinked a few times, and ran his fingers through his tousled white hair. Rhonda said gently, “Only a minute, Mr. Benedict. You were only out for a minute.”

“Is that so? Very good, then, very good. Thank you, my friends, thank you as always.” He patted Rhonda and Number Two on the arms, and they helped him to his feet.

“Usually happens when I’m laughing,” he explained to the children, “but these days it’s often something else. Now then, what was I —? Oh, yes. All alone. Let me tell you why that part matters. For one thing, children without guardians happen to be in a peculiar kind of danger that other children are not — this I shall explain later, to those of you who join my team. For another, it would be simply impossible for me to put at risk any child who wasn’t alone. No matter how important the cause, parents are disinclined to send their children into danger, as well they should be. As it so happens, however, I now find myself in the presence of the best possible team of children I could ever hope for — indeed, have long hoped for — and with not a minute to lose. In other words, you are our last possible hope. You are our only hope.”

The Sender and the Messages

In the end, every child agreed to join the team, though the decision was more difficult for some than others. Kate took out a stick of gum and said, “I’m in,” without even pausing to consider. Reynie, less fearless than Kate, had to give the matter some thought. If he didn’t join the team, what would he do? Return to the orphanage? Seeing Miss Perumal again would be nice, but he would be in the same pickle as before: out of place among the other children, purposeless and lonely. Moreover, if Mr. Benedict was to be trusted (and for some reason Reynie did trust him) then feeling purposeless and lonely were the least of his problems. Something terrible was happening, and Mr. Benedict needed them to stop it. A strange sense of duty, not to mention a powerful curiosity, compelled him to join.

Constance was more skeptical. It was becoming clear that this was her natural approach to things. “So if I stick around, and you tell me this big secret, what’s to stop me from going out and telling everyone?”

“Nothing will stop you,” said Mr. Benedict. “You’re free to leave at any time. However, if I hadn’t determined I could trust you, you would never have been invited into this room. And for that matter, even if you were to tell, no one would believe you, for you are only a child. Is that not why you came to take these tests in the first place?”

Constance’s face screwed up as if she might burst into tears — or, more likely, throw a screaming fit.

“I don’t mean to attack you, child,” Mr. Benedict said gently. “Let us strike a bargain. If you join the team, this shall be our understanding: You will follow my instructions, but only because you have agreed to do so, not because I told you to. No one is making you do anything. It is all of your own free will.”

“Fine,” said Constance at last. “Now where do we sleep?”

“I know you’re tired, but first we must wait for Sticky to make up his mind.”

Sticky had been shrinking in his chair. He had drawn his feet up beneath him, crossed his arms over his knees, and buried his face behind them. At Mr. Benedict’s words, he looked up with an expression of something like panic, then quickly hid his face again. His voice muffled, his words mumbled, Sticky said, “May I make the decision tomorrow?”

“I’m afraid not, my friend. There’s no time to waste. I hate to press you, but you must decide tonight.”

“Do you think the team is good enough without me?” came the muffled voice.

“Frankly, no. I think the team needs you to succeed.”

“Then how can I say no?”

Mr. Benedict spoke gently. “Sticky, it’s quite reasonable for you to be afraid. It’s a terrible thing for a child to be asked to join a dangerous mission. You have every reason to say no, and I will not blame you in the least.”

“Come on, Sticky,” said Kate, “it’ll be fun!”

Sticky peeked out from behind his knees, first at Kate, who gave him a smile and a wink, then at Reynie, who said, “I’m with Mr. Benedict. I don’t blame you if you don’t join us. But I’d feel a whole lot better if you did.”

“You would?”

Reynie nodded.

Sticky hid his face again. For a long time the room was silent, full of expectation. Although Constance yawned and scratched at an insect bite on her ankle, no one else moved or spoke a word. There was only the hushed sound of their breathing, and, from somewhere in the room, the ticking of a clock, which must have been hidden by books.

Finally Sticky looked up. “I’ll do it. Now may I please use the bathroom?”

Much as the children longed for more answers, it had grown late, their eyes were heavy, and Mr. Benedict deemed they should rest tonight and leave further explanations for morning. In short order they were given toothbrushes, pajamas, and warm slippers — it was drafty in the old house at night — and shown to their rooms. The bedroom Reynie shared with Sticky was small but comfortable, with a worn rug on the wooden floor, bunk beds against the wall, and, of course, more bookshelves. When Reynie returned from brushing his teeth, he found Sticky already asleep on the lower bunk, the lamp still lit, spectacles still on his nose, and slippers still on his feet. On his chest, rising and falling with the deep, regular breaths of a solid sleeper, lay a thick book about tropical plant life that he’d taken from a shelf. It was open to the very middle. In only a few minutes, Sticky had read half the book.

Reynie marveled at this. He was a fast reader himself — faster than most adults — but compared to Sticky he must seem positively sluggish. Such an incredible gift, and yet here the boy lay, a runaway sleeping in a stranger’s house. What had he run from? Standing there in the lamplit room, reflecting upon Sticky’s life as he slept, Reynie experienced a curious mixture of admiration, affection, and sympathy — curious because although he’d known the boy for only a day, it seemed as if they’d been friends for ages. And Kate, too, he reflected. He was already quite fond of her. And Constance . . . well, with Constance he would have to wait and see.

Anyway, Reynie thought, if nothing else comes of this, at least you’re making friends. That’s more than you had yesterday. He eased Sticky’s slippers from his feet and his glasses from his nose, setting them, along with the plant book, upon a bedside stand. Then he drew a cover over his friend, turned off the lamp, and crept from the room.

Down the dark, quiet hall — the girls must have been asleep, too — and down a flight of creaky stairs, Reynie made his way back to Mr. Benedict’s study. He knocked softly on the door, and from within a voice called, “Please come in, Reynie.”

Reynie entered to find Mr. Benedict alone in the room, seated on the floor with his back against the desk, surrounded by books, papers, and a variety of colored pens. He gestured toward a chair and said, “Have a seat, will you, while I clear some of this away?” He began sorting things into piles. “Awkward business, working on the floor, but that is my compromise with Rhonda and Number Two. They’ve grown overprotective, I’m afraid, and can hardly stand to leave me alone for a minute. Thus I promise them to remain seated as much as possible — and on the floor, when possible — and in turn they allow me some occasional privacy.”

Mr. Benedict finished tidying his things and sat in a chair across from Reynie. “I’ve been expecting you. I imagine you wish to call Miss Perumal and apprise her of your situation.”

Reynie nodded.

“You’re very good to think of it. Number Two told me how you resisted her attempts to befuddle you on the same matter earlier today. I assume you realize her deceptions were another aspect of the testing?”

Again Reynie nodded. He hadn’t known it at the time, but looking back on the encounter later he had suspected as much.

“You behaved admirably,” Mr. Benedict said. “Polite but steadfast, and with appropriate consideration. Now, I’m afraid you can’t make your telephone call this time, either, but it has nothing to do with being tested. As it happens, Miss Perumal phoned while you were being shown to your room. Her mother, it seems, has had an unfortunate reaction to her new medicine, and Miss Perumal found it necessary to take her to the hospital. She begs you not to worry, it’s only a mild reaction and the doctors assure her that her mother will be spry as a robin come morning. But she wanted you to know how proud she is of you — proud but not surprised, she said — and sends you her best regards.

“And now,” he continued, removing his spectacles and looking frankly at Reynie with his bright green eyes (they were made greener still by his green plaid suit), “I will anticipate your other questions. First, I’ve made all the necessary arrangements with Mr. Rutger at the orphanage: We have considerable skills and resources here and can do many things you might not expect. And second, on a more solemn note: No, you won’t be able to contact Miss Perumal again. I’m afraid the urgency of our mission, and its necessary secrecy, forbids it. It is for Miss Perumal’s protection as well as your own. But if all goes well — which is, of course, our most desperate hope — you will see her again. Indeed, if our mission is to succeed, it must do so very quickly, and so with luck your reunion will be sooner rather than later.”

Reynie nodded again, though not quite as bravely as before, and glanced away to hide the tears in his eyes. He had thought this might be the case, but it still saddened him to think he might not ever again share a cup of tea with Miss Perumal or attempt to tell her, in his limited Tamil, about his adventures. He was sad at the thought of what lay ahead, yes, and more than a little afraid.

“I am sorry, Reynie,” said Mr. Benedict with a quaver in his voice.

Reynie didn’t look at him just yet. He kept his eyes averted until he had composed himself, which he did with a few deep breaths and a quick swipe at his tearful eyes. When he felt sufficiently recovered, he turned back to Mr. Benedict — who was sound asleep in his chair.

Before Reynie could rise and tiptoe from the room, however, Mr. Benedict’s eyes popped open, and he laid a hand on Reynie’s arm to stop him. “Forgive me,” he said, clearing his throat and running his fingers through his unkempt hair. “Please stay just a moment longer. I wanted to ask you something. I wasn’t asleep long, was I? I trust I haven’t kept you up?”

“No, sir, only a minute or two.”

“Ah, good. Usually it is only a minute or two, but occasionally it’s longer. Now then, for my question.”

“Yes, sir?”

“It regards the chess problem from the first test. You, Reynie, happen to be the only child ever to answer the question correctly, and I should like to hear your explanation for it. The board clearly shows that only the black pawn is out of its starting position, while all the other pieces and pawns rest on their original squares. Yet according to the rules of chess, the white player always moves first. Why, then, did you say the position was possible?”

“Because the white knight may have changed its mind.”

“The white knight?”

“Oh, yes sir. The pawns can only move forward, never backward, so none of the white pawns could have moved yet. And the bigger pieces are trapped behind the pawns — because only knights can jump over things — so they couldn’t have moved yet, either. But a white knight might have opened the game by jumping out in front. Then, after the black pawn was moved, the knight returned to its original square. So it looks like the white player never moved at all.”

“Bravo, Reynie. You’re quite correct. Now tell me, would you consider this a good move?”

“I’m no great chess player, but I would say not. By starting over, white loses the advantage of going first.”

“Why, then, do you think the white player might have done it?”

Reynie considered. He imagined himself moving out his knight only to bring it right back to where it had started. Why would he ever do such a thing? At last he said, “Perhaps because he doubted himself.”

“Indeed,” said Mr. Benedict. “Perhaps he did. Thank you, Reynie, you’ve been very kind and very patient, and I’m sure you’re ready for a night’s sleep. I’ll see you at breakfast, bright and early.”

Reynie rose and went to the door, but there he hesitated. He looked back. Mr. Benedict had replaced his spectacles and lowered himself onto the floor again, was again leaning against the desk, and had taken up a book. His eyebrows rose expectantly when he noticed the boy lingering.

“Yes, Reynie?”

“Mr. Benedict, sir, have you read all the books in this house?”

Mr. Benedict smiled, glancing fondly about at the many books in his study before looking at Reynie again. “My dear boy,” he said, “what do you think?”

Bright and early, Mr. Benedict had said, and indeed it was early, but it was far from bright. As the children rose and went down to the dining room (not knowing where else to meet), rain was slashing against the windows, wind groaned in the chimneys, and odd drafts sent papers flying from desktops and skittering across floors. The blackened sky outside seemed to creep gloomily into the house, dimming the lamps and lengthening their shadows; and along with the howling chimneys was heard the growling of thunder, low and menacing and close at hand, as if a tiger prowled the dark rooms beyond their walls. From time to time the lamps flickered with the thunder, and once — just as the children were taking seats at the table — they went out entirely. The room was dark only for a few moments, yet when the lamps came back to life, Milligan stood before the children with a pitcher of juice, having appeared out of nowhere.

Constance shrieked. The other children jumped.

Milligan sighed.

Filling their juice glasses, he said, “Rhonda’s coming with toast and eggs. Number Two’s stopping a leak in her bedroom wall, but she’ll fetch Mr. Benedict when she’s done.”

“Milligan, may I have some milk, please?” Kate asked cheerily. She’d been awake longer than anyone, had already bathed and dressed in the fresh clothes Rhonda had given her, and — apparently unaffected by the storm — was in a much better mood than the others.

Without doubt she was in a better mood than Milligan, who nodded glumly and said, “Anything else?”

“You wouldn’t have any tea, would you, Milligan?” asked Reynie. “And perhaps a little honey?”

“And candy?” asked Constance.

“No candy for breakfast,” Milligan said, leaving the room.

Rhonda appeared with a tray of wheat toast, eggs, and fruit. “Good morning, everyone,” she said. “Quite a bit of weather we’re having, isn’t it? On a day like this, you have to set something on every stray sheet of paper if you don’t want a draft carrying it off. A map of Stonetown Harbor passed me in the hall just now, and on the stairs I found a grocery list I misplaced two weeks ago!”

“Leaks in the walls and drafts in every room,” Constance grumbled. “You should have these things fixed.”

“Leaks and drafts aren’t priorities, I’m afraid,” Rhonda said. “Our project — which is now your project, too — has required every spare moment, and all our resources have gone toward the research, the investigation, and the tests. Constance, will you pass the juice pitcher, please?”

“No,” the girl replied, crossing her arms.

“Perhaps you’ll be less cranky after you’ve eaten,” Rhonda said, getting the pitcher herself. At this, Constance’s pudgy, rosy cheeks grew redder still, so that her wispy blond hair seemed almost white in contrast, and her pale blue eyes shone bright as stars. Rhonda noticed this and said, “Constance, I had no idea how lovely your eyes were until just now. They’re spectacular!”

This compliment, somehow upsetting to Constance, kept her quiet for some time.

Milligan returned with the milk, a pot of tea, and a jar of honey. Mumbling something to Rhonda about being on duty, he left without another word.

“What does he mean by that?” Sticky said. “‘On duty’?”

“Milligan is our — well, for lack of a better word — our bodyguard. He has other tasks, but his first duty is to make sure we’re safe. Of course, until now, we haven’t been in direct danger, but now that you’re here . . . I’m sorry, I don’t mean to alarm you. The important thing is that he’s here to protect you.”

“Protect us from what?” Reynie asked.

“I’ll let Mr. Benedict explain all that to you when he comes down. The main rule is this: You must never leave the house without Milligan’s company. Inside the house, you’re quite safe; we have defenses here. The maze, for example, wasn’t just a test — it’s the only entrance. And this reminds me: All the arrows in the maze point to the stairway, which isn’t helpful if you’re trying to leave the house. That’s another reason you should never go without Milligan. We have a special way of opening the front door — you’ll remember it has no inside knob — and Milligan knows the maze like the back of his hand.”

“I’ve always thought that was a funny expression,” Kate said. “Because how well do people really know the backs of their hands? Honestly, can anyone here tell me exactly what the back of your hand looks like?”

They were all contemplating the backs of their hands when Mr. Benedict came in, followed very closely and attentively by Number Two, who no longer wore her yellow suit but had changed into a comfortable pair of yellow coveralls, so that she still looked every bit the pencil. She stuck close to Mr. Benedict until he had greeted everyone and taken his chair, after which she swooped upon the platter of toast and eggs, accidentally jostling Rhonda in the process.

“Pardon me,” she said, embarrassed.

“Not at all,” said Rhonda. To the children she said, “Number Two is always hungry because she never sleeps. A person needs a great deal of energy to stay awake all the time, and thus a great deal of food.”

“It also makes me somewhat nervous and irritable, I’m afraid,” said Number Two. She proceeded to eat the crusts off her toast by turning it round and round and taking tiny, rapid bites.

“You never sleep?” Kate asked, after watching this curious procedure a moment.

Number Two swallowed. “Oh, yes, I do, but only a little.”

“Don’t we make a fine pair?” said Mr. Benedict, pouring himself a cup of tea. “I can’t stay awake, and Number Two can’t go to sleep.” He started to laugh, then cut himself short, apparently not wanting to risk it. “By the way, Rhonda, have you seen my map of the harbor? It appears to have escaped the study.”

“It drifted by me in the hallway,” Rhonda said. “I placed it by the bell under the Swiss book on electron-positron accelerators.”

“Thank you. Now, children, speaking of the bell, do you all remember where it is — on the second-floor landing? If you ever hear that bell ringing, I want you to gather on the landing immediately. It will only be rung in case of emergency, so don’t delay. Drop what you’re doing and go there at once. Understood?”

The children nodded uneasily. All this talk of danger and emergencies, without explanation, was beginning to wear on them.

“I’m sorry to put you ill at ease,” Mr. Benedict said. “And I haven’t much to say to comfort you. I can finally offer some answers to your questions, however. Who wishes to begin? Yes, Constance?”

To the great exasperation of the others, Constance demanded to know why they couldn’t have candy for breakfast.

Mr. Benedict smiled. “A fine question. The short answer is that there is no candy presently in the house. Beyond that, the explanation involves a consideration of candy’s excellent flavor but low nutritional value — that is to say, why it makes a wonderful treat but a poor meal — though I suspect you aren’t interested in explanations but simply wished to express your frustration. Is that correct?”

“Maybe,” Constance said with a shrug. But she seemed satisfied.

“Other questions?” said Mr. Benedict.

There were, of course, other questions, and all speaking at once, the children asked him to explain his “project” and why he needed children and what sort of danger they were in.

Mr. Benedict set down his teacup. “Very well. I shall explain everything, and you may listen as you eat your breakfast.” (When he began, however, Constance was the only child who continued to eat. The others were unable to concentrate on anything besides his explanation.)

“Several years ago,” Mr. Benedict said, “in the course of my research on the human brain, it came to my attention that messages were being delivered to people all across the world — delivered, I should say, quite without their knowledge. It is as if I secretly hid a letter in your pocket, and later you found and read it, not knowing where it came from. In this case, however, the messages were going directly into people’s minds, which absorbed them not only without knowing where the messages came from, but without realizing they had received or read anything at all.

“The messages appear to be in a kind of code,” Mr. Benedict continued. “They come across like poetic gibberish. But from early on I’ve had reason to believe they’re having a powerful effect — a most unfortunate effect — on those who receive them, which is to say almost everyone. In fact, I believe these messages are the source of the phenomenon commonly known as the Emergency — though, I admit, I don’t know to what end. And so I have devoted myself to discovering their ultimate purpose and who it is that sends them. Unfortunately, I’ve not entirely succeeded.”

“But you’ve learned a great deal!” protested Number Two.

“Certainly I have. I know, for instance, how the messages are being delivered —”

“And where they’re sent from!” Rhonda said impatiently.

“And what the Sender is capable of doing!” cried Number Two.

Obviously Rhonda and Number Two were worried the children might misjudge Mr. Benedict. Sensing this, he gave an appreciative smile. “Yes, my friends, it’s true. We do know some things. For instance, we know the Sender uses children to deliver the hidden messages.”

“Children?” Sticky said. “Why children?”

“And what exactly do the messages say?” Reynie asked.

“When you’re quite finished with your breakfasts, I’ll show you. In the meantime, let me tell you —”

“Please, can’t breakfast wait?” Kate interrupted. “Let us see right now!”

“Well, if you all feel this way . . . ,” said Mr. Benedict, noting their looks of impatience.

This time not even Constance resisted (perhaps because she was already full), and so the children were taken straightaway up to the third floor, down a long narrow hallway, and at last into a room packed with equipment. It was a terrific mess. On a table against the wall sat a television, a radio, and a computer, and upon every other available surface were scattered countless tools, wires, books and charts and notebooks, disconnected antennas, disassembled gadgets, and various other unrecognizable oddments. There was hardly anywhere to step as Mr. Benedict — closely attended by Rhonda and Number Two — led them over to the television.

“Listen carefully,” Mr. Benedict said, turning on the television.

Instantly Reynie felt his skin crawl. It was a familiar feeling, he realized, but he had never paid it much attention before. Meanwhile, a news program had appeared on the screen. A red-haired reporter with shiny gold earrings stood outside the White House, where a crowd of people had gathered, as usual, to wave signs and demand something be done about the Emergency.

“They’re calling for change,” said the reporter, her features gathered in an expression of thoughtful seriousness, “and their cries are not falling on deaf ears. The President has repeated his agreement that something must be done, and soon. Meanwhile, in the halls of Congress —”

Constance gave a loud yawn. “I don’t hear anything unusual.”

The other children looked at Mr. Benedict. It was rude of Constance to say it that way, but she was right.

Mr. Benedict nodded. “Now pay attention, please. Number Two, engage the Receiver.”

Number Two sat at the computer and with quick, agile fingers, typed a string of commands. The television screen flickered; its picture grew distorted. The children could still make out the wavery image of the news reporter gesturing toward the crowd behind her, but her voice faded away, replaced by that of a child.

“What in the world?” Kate said.

“Just listen,” said Number Two.

The unseen child — it sounded like a girl about Kate’s age — spoke in a plodding, whispery monotone, her voice half-drowned in static. At first only a few random words were clear enough to be understood: “Market . . . too free to be . . . obfuscate . . .” Number Two typed more commands into the computer; the interference lessened considerably, and the child’s words came clearly now, slipping through the faint static in a slow drone:

“THE MISSING AREN’T MISSING, THEY’RE ONLY DEPARTED.

ALL MINDS KEEP ALL THOUGHTS — SO LIKE GOLD — CLOSELY GUARDED. . . .”

Again the words were overcome by static. Number Two muttered under her breath. Her fingers flew across the keyboard, and the child’s slow, whispery voice returned:

“GROW THE LAWN AND MOW THE LAWN.

ALWAYS LEAVE THE TV ON.

BRUSH YOUR TEETH AND KILL THE GERMS.

POISON APPLES, POISON WORMS.”

It went on like this. The child’s voice never faltered, never ceased, but delivered the curious phrases in an eerie, chantlike progression. The news reporter, meanwhile, had vanished from the distorted picture, replaced by a cheerful-looking weather forecaster, but it continued to be the child’s voice they heard. Mr. Benedict signaled Number Two, whose fingers flew over the computer keyboard. The child’s voice faded. The weather forecaster was promising clear skies by afternoon.

Mr. Benedict switched off the television. On the blank television screen the children could suddenly see their reflections. Every one of them was frowning. When they realized this, their faces all adopted looks of surprise, then of intense curiosity.

“What does ‘obfuscate’ mean?” asked Constance.

Sticky, as if someone had pulled a string in his back, promptly answered, “To make so confused or opaque as to be difficult to perceive, or to otherwise render indistinct.”

Constance looked frightened.

“It means to make things muddled,” Reynie said.

“Thank you for the dictionary definition, Sticky,” said Mr. Benedict, “and thank you, Reynie, for the translation.” He crossed his arms and regarded the children. “This child’s voice is currently being transmitted on every television, radio, and cell phone in the world. Which means, of course, it is being absorbed by millions of minds. And yet, although in an important part of every mind this child’s messages are being heard, understood, and taken seriously, in another part — the part that is aware of itself — the messages remain undetected. But this Receiver I’ve invented is capable of detecting and translating them, much as Reynie translated Sticky’s definition a moment ago.”

“But how could people who speak different languages understand that kid?” Kate asked. “What about people in Spain?”

“The messages transmit in every language. I’ve tuned the Receiver to English only because that’s what we all speak.”

“This is too creepy,” Sticky said, glancing nervously behind him. “It’s like . . . like . . .”

“Like having a strange person whisper in your ear while you sleep?” Mr. Benedict suggested.

“Okay, that just made it creepier,” Sticky said.

Reynie was shaking his head wonderingly. “How is this happening, Mr. Benedict? These messages — whatever they are — how are they being sent?”

“To put it simply,” Mr. Benedict began, “they depend for their mobility upon external agents —”

“Mr. Benedict, that’s hardly putting it simply,” interrupted Rhonda with a significant look at Constance, whose face had darkened with frustration.

“Forgive me. You’re quite right. Simply put, the messages ride piggyback on signals. Television, radio, cell phones — all these things make use of invisible signals, and the Sender has found a way to take advantage. The messages aren’t picky; they will ride on any kind of signal. The Sender has discovered how to control the adhesive property of thoughts.”

“The what?” asked the children all together.

“The adhesive property of thoughts. That is, the way thoughts are drawn to signals and then stick to them — much as little pieces of metal may be drawn to a magnet. They’re attracted to all kinds of signals, even other thoughts.”

“So the messages are just thoughts?” Kate said.

“Indeed,” Mr. Benedict replied. “Although I wouldn’t say ‘just.’ Thoughts carry a great deal of freight.”

“But why does the Sender use children to send them?” Reynie asked.

“A devilish trick,” said Mr. Benedict, “and a necessary one. You see, only a child’s thoughts can be slipped into the mind so secretly. For some reason, they go unnoticed.”

“No surprise there,” Constance humphed. “I’ve never met a grown-up who believed me capable of thought.”

“She’s absolutely right,” put in Number Two with a sharp edge in her voice. “People pay no attention to what children say, much less to what they think!”

Rhonda patted Number Two’s shoulder. “Number Two is a bit testy about this. She was often ignored as a child.”

“That doesn’t change the truth!” Number Two snarled.

“Easy now,” said Rhonda. “Only teasing.”

“Sorry. Blood sugar’s low,” said Number Two, hastily unwrapping a granola bar.

“At any rate,” Mr. Benedict continued, “I believe the Sender uses children as a sort of filter. After passing through the minds of children, the messages become virtually undetectable. Where adult thoughts would lumber into the mind like an elephant, children’s creep in on cat feet and find a shadowy place to hide.”

“Nobody notices them at all?” Sticky asked.

“Oh, some may be vaguely aware of mental activity,” Mr. Benedict said, “but if so, they attribute the uneasy sensation to something else. They think, perhaps, they’ve had an original idea, or have drunk too much coffee.”

“I don’t recall ever having felt that way,” said Constance. “Like something’s happening but I don’t know what.”

The others shook their heads, indicating they hadn’t either.

“That is because you love the truth,” said Mr. Benedict. “You see —”

Number Two interrupted him. “Mr. Benedict, before you go on, won’t you take a seat? Makes me so nervous, you standing there like that. Too many hard things about. Just look at this chair, and the desk, and the television cabinet, and all these tools —” Turning this way and that, Number Two was pointing at almost everything she saw.

“Fine, fine, Number Two, we’ll all sit,” said Mr. Benedict, settling into a cross-legged position on the floor. He gestured for the others to join him. Shoving aside books, papers, and odd pieces of machinery, the children made room to sit. Number Two took a deep breath to calm herself.

“You see,” Mr. Benedict began again, “although most people care about the truth, they can nonetheless — under certain circumstances, and given proper persuasion — be diverted from it. Some, however, possess an unusually powerful love of truth, and you children are among the few. Your minds have been resisting the hidden messages.”

“Is that why your test asked whether we liked television and radio?” asked Reynie.

Mr. Benedict tapped his nose. “Exactly. Of course, it’s possible you enjoy watching an occasional TV show, or listening to the radio every now and then, but in general you find you don’t like it. This is because your minds, so unwilling to be deceived, are avoiding exposure to the messages.”

“I don’t see what’s dangerous about all this,” Constance said with a sour expression. “So people are receiving some kids’ thoughts and don’t realize it. That hardly seems reason to panic.”

“We haven’t yet come to the panic part,” replied Mr. Benedict gravely.

“Oh,” said Constance.

“Great,” said Sticky.

“Something is approaching,” Mr. Benedict said. “Something dreadful. These messages are connected to it, but they are only the beginning. What’s coming is worse, far worse — a looming darkness, like storm clouds sweeping in to cover the sky.”

“Wh-what,” Sticky stammered, “wh-what is it?”

Mr. Benedict scratched his rumpled head. “I’m afraid I don’t know.”

The children blinked. Was he joking? He didn’t know?

“Ah, I sense your confusion,” said Mr. Benedict. “I should have said I don’t exactly know.”

Rhonda spoke up. “We have good reason to believe in this coming threat, children. It’s just that —”

“But if you have good reason,” Constance interrupted, “why are you just sitting around? Call the government! Alert the authorities!”

“An excellent point, Constance,” said Mr. Benedict (who, it seemed to Reynie, was surprisingly tolerant of the girl’s rudeness). “In fact I was once a trusted advisor to certain high officials, many of whom presided over government agencies. But things have changed. Not only have those agencies been dismantled — and a number of good men and women gone missing — but officials formerly attentive to my remarks have grown skeptical of them. They have come to look upon me as a friendly kook, and some even regard me with suspicion. Everything I do now, I do in secret.”

“Did you just say ‘good men and women gone missing’?” asked Reynie, hoping he had misunderstood.

“Vanished,” said Mr. Benedict grimly. “Years ago, when it first came to my attention that some operatives had disappeared, I naturally inquired about them. But my questions, no matter to whom I put them — and I put them to many people — were met with an astonishing lack of regard. It was perfectly silly, I was told, to be asking such questions. Somehow it was believed that these missing agents chose to go away — were given plum assignments in sunny climates, perhaps, or else had gone into early retirement — although there was no evidence of any such thing. No one seemed to care where the agents had gone. But everyone knew, so I was told again and again, everyone knew the agents hadn’t gone missing. No, no, the very idea was preposterous.”

The children were dumbstruck. Government agents had disappeared and nobody cared? Nobody even believed it?

Reynie found his voice first. “So that’s how you know these strange messages are having an effect on people.”

Mr. Benedict nodded. “Quite right, Reynie. At least, it’s one example.”

“Wait a minute,” Kate said. “How do you know the messages have anything to do with that?”

“Because of that phrase we heard on the Receiver,” said Reynie. “‘The missing aren’t missing, they’re only departed.’ Don’t you think there’s a connection?”

“Hey, you’re right!” said Kate, who had already forgotten that phrase.

Constance seemed exasperated. “Okay, so the authorities are being snookered by these hidden messages. But how could they resist the facts? Show them your Receiver gizmo, Mr. Benedict. They’ll have to believe you.”

“I’m afraid they won’t,” said Mr. Benedict. “The Receiver would be considered insufficient evidence. For all they know, the messages might be my own invention, generated by the Receiver itself. I am no longer considered a trustworthy source of information.”

Reynie was puzzled. “But Mr. Benedict, if you explained how it worked — scientifically, I mean — how could they not believe you? Surely you can demonstrate the principles involved!”

Mr. Benedict hesitated. “A reasonable suggestion, Reynie. A very . . . Now let me see. How to put it? I can’t exactly . . . Well . . .”

Number Two interrupted him. “What Mr. Benedict is too embarrassed to say, children, is that even if he did explain it, no one would believe him because no one would understand him. That’s the downside to being a genius — just because you understand something doesn’t mean anyone else will. Mr. Benedict is too modest. He can never bring himself to say it.”

“He’s tried to explain it to any number of people,” Rhonda put in. “But not only are they skeptical to begin with, Number Two and I — and a few of the other assistants — are the only people who have understood him.”

Mr. Benedict’s cheeks and forehead had gone pink with embarrassment. He coughed. “As usual, my friends, you overstate my accomplishment. Nevertheless, the essence of what you say is true. Among the authorities these days it is difficult to find a sympathetic listener.”

“In other words, compared to you, they’re all dummies,” Kate said with a laugh.

“That is perhaps not the most polite way to put it, Kate,” said Mr. Benedict.

Unlike Kate, the others were in no mood to laugh. Hidden messages being broadcast to the world, good men and women gone missing, the authorities beyond convincing — and the children were somehow going to be involved in all this? The prospect had caused a deep, indefinable dread to settle upon them like a cold mist.

Constance’s reaction, by now a predictable one, was to express irritation. “Fine, I get it. A lot of people have vanished without a trace, and someone’s sending out secret messages, and nobody will believe you about it. But we aren’t really in danger, are we?” (Though her tone was scoffing and irritable, it was evident from her eyes — which darted back and forth — that Constance was growing afraid.) “You said we were all in danger . . . but that was just an exaggeration, wasn’t it?”

“I am sorry to say it, Constance,” Mr. Benedict said somberly, “but I did not exaggerate in the least. You are all in danger even as we speak.”

And indeed, even as they spoke, the bell on the landing began a furious clanging.