The Perilous Journey (26 page)

The Ten Man had recovered from the lemon juice and was watching them from across the room. His eyes were puffy and red, and he was no longer smiling. “I was right about you, ducky. You do bite. But that won’t happen again.” His fingers moved up his necktie like a pale and hairless tarantula. With one smooth, practiced motion he slid the tie loose from his collar, revealing a thin, metallic fringe at the end like that of a bullwhip.

“I’ve already said we’ll give you the papers,” Reynie said, speaking with some difficulty. His mouth was dry as dust. “And I’ll give the briefcase back, too. Just please let us go.”

“Oh, tsk tsk,” the Ten Man said. “Weren’t you supposed to be the clever one? And you really think I would let you go? After such rough treatment? Oh, no, Reynard. Naughty children must be punished.” He flicked the necktie, which made a terrible snapping sound as it streaked across the room and knocked a piece of plaster from the wall near Sticky’s head. The children flinched — especially Sticky, who almost fainted — and the Ten Man’s lip curled into a sneer. “That was just to show you what you’re in for.”

Reynie’s mind was racing. The Ten Man stood between them and the exit, and even if they managed to get past him — which was very unlikely — Reynie now saw another man in a suit, lurking in the entryway just beyond the door. The Ten Man had a partner. This observation did nothing to worsen Reynie’s terror (he was already as terrified as he could be), but it did help him understand, fully and completely, that there was no way out, and that he needed to brace himself for what was coming.

Kate, climbing to her feet, had realized the same thing. “Fine,” she said bitterly. “Do your worst. You
will
get bitten again, though. Both of you will. That much I promise.”

“Both of us?” the Ten Man said with a frown. He glanced sharply toward the entryway. “Why aren’t you guarding the eleva…” His eyes widened. “You aren’t Mortis!”

“I should hope not,” said the other man.

“What have you done with Mortis?” the Ten Man snarled, spinning toward the doorway and raising his necktie-whip.

“I’ll show you,” the other man said, and in the same moment there came a strange whistling sound —
swit!
— and the feathery end of a dart appeared in the Ten Man’s shoulder.

Angrily the Ten Man snatched the dart out. But he didn’t have time to get a proper look at it before he hit the floor.

The other man entered the room, stepped over the unconscious Ten Man’s body, and knelt down with his arms out. Kate threw herself upon him.

“Oh, Milligan!” she cried. “Oh, Milligan, you’re
here
!”

Milligan
was
there, although he was rather difficult to see beneath the pile of jubilant children mobbing him in their excitement. And even when he had freed himself with a lot of hugging and head-patting and handshakes and smiles, Milligan resembled himself but slightly. His normally yellow hair was black, his blue eyes were brown, and his ears, strangely enough, seemed to have shrunk. His ruddy complexion was the same, and he possessed the same tall, lanky build, but at a glance he was hardly recognizable even to those who knew him.

“I thought you were another Ten Man!” Kate said. “I can’t believe I didn’t recognize you!”

“You were concentrating on the more immediate threat,” Milligan said. His eyes twinkled. “You sounded awfully fierce, by the way. Now listen, all of you, the police are coming and we can’t spare the time to deal with them. We need to make our exit. Quick now!” He took the Ten Man’s briefcase from Reynie, who handed it over with relief.

“The police are coming?” Sticky said.

“Quick now,” Milligan repeated, stepping over the Ten Man’s body.

“You’re just going to leave him lying here?” Constance said. “You aren’t going to tie him up or anything?”

Milligan turned to see Constance staring at the Ten Man on the floor, afraid even to walk past him. “Forgive me,” he said, coming back and picking her up. “Quick now, all of you. And please don’t make me say it again.” He carried Constance from the room.

At the end of the hallway the children could see a man’s feet sticking out through the elevator doors, which kept sliding shut, only to bump the feet and slide open again with a
ding.
Presumably the feet, shod in expensive black shoes, belonged to the Ten Man’s tranquilized partner.

“Couldn’t you have moved his feet out of the way?” Constance asked. “That ding is
annoying.
”

“True, but this way the police have to use the stairs,” Milligan said, leading the children in the other direction. They hurried down another hallway and at last to an open window, beyond which a fire escape descended into a side alley. Sticky took one glance out the window and reached for his spectacles. Milligan put a hand on his shoulder. “Don’t look at the ground. Just watch your feet and keep moving. You’ll be fine. Kate, you go first and we’ll follow you.”

Just then they heard a door bang open, followed by the sound of officers (heavily winded from their climb up the stairs) storming into the other hallway. Kate vaulted the windowsill and led the way down the fire escape steps, down and down, flight after flight, until she leaped the last few steps and landed beside a parked car. Only then did she realize it was a police car.

“Get in, Kate,” Milligan called from above. “That’s our car.”

“A
police
car?”

“I borrowed it,” said Milligan. “Quick now, boys.”

Reynie and Sticky scrambled down the final steps of the fire escape and jumped into the back seat with Kate. Milligan put Constance in front with him. “Keep your heads down,” he said, reversing out of the alley. As he drove past the front of the hotel he murmured, “Three police cars. Good. And that woman in the lobby must be who called. She looks distraught. Small wonder there.”

“What woman?” Sticky asked, dutifully keeping his head down.

“One of the desk clerks. She called the police and told them she’d been bribed and threatened, and that some bad men were on the way to the hotel. She was afraid they were going to do something to a group of children there.”

“How do you know all that?” Constance asked.

Milligan glanced at her. She was sitting up straight in the passenger seat — unlike the others she hadn’t needed to duck — and Milligan frowned as something occurred to him. “You should be in a child’s car seat. It’s dangerous without one.”

Constance looked at him incredulously. “Are you joking?”

“A bit. Still, let’s do buckle up, everyone.” Keeping his eyes on the road, Milligan reached across and pulled down Constance’s seatbelt strap, which because of her height (or lack thereof ) ran diagonally across her face. She glared at him with her one visible eye.

“Feel free to adjust that,” Milligan said, giving her a lopsided grin. “Now, to answer your question, I knew what I did by listening to a police radio scanner. My Dutch isn’t perfect, but I know enough to do the trick. And luckily I was already in the neighborhood. The police had mentioned you on the scanner earlier today, too. They said you’d just left the science museum and should be brought into the station for questioning. You four have been busy.”

“I’m glad you found us,” said Reynie. “Things were about to get awfully unpleasant.”

“I’m so sorry I didn’t catch up with you sooner,” Milligan said, the regret plain on his face. “Five minutes earlier and I could have spared you that encounter — and spared myself the worry. I was detained, unfortunately, or I would have met you the moment you came ashore in Lisbon. It didn’t help matters that you’re all so horribly clever. I can’t tell you how troubled I was to discover you weren’t on the train in Thernbaakagen.”

By now the children were all sitting up. Milligan was driving through a gritty warehouse district near the harbor. All but Constance, who was too short, could see the shimmer of the North Sea in the near distance.

“But how did you know we were on that train?” Reynie asked. “How did you even know we were in Lisbon?”

“It’s my job to know things,” Milligan said with a mysterious air. Then he shrugged. “Also, you left the travel journal Mr. Benedict gave you.”

“Oh!” said Kate. “Then we’re lucky we forgot it! I
told
you it was a good thing, Constance!”

“It was indeed,” said Milligan. “When I arrived at Mr. Benedict’s house, Rhonda had already discovered your note, and we found the journal soon after. It took us some time to figure out the clues, though, and by the time we did the
Shortcut
had launched. Still, I knew you were in good hands with Captain Noland, and that by catching a plane I would arrive in Lisbon before you, so I didn’t really worry until Joe Shooter — Cannonball, I mean — informed me you were all alone at the castle. I was ready to race up there when you radioed, Kate. I couldn’t make out a single word, but it was clear enough from the background noises that you were at the train station.”

Milligan shook his head. “I barely missed you. I even saw your train pulling away. But at that point I had to take Jackson and Jillson in hand. Yes, they’re in custody,” he said in response to the children’s exclamations. “And we had a nice talk. They’re stubborn, those two, but luckily they’re also quite stupid. They told me more than they realized, and I quickly gathered you were in no danger on that train. So once again I didn’t worry; once again I caught a plane — the ticket agent had told me you were headed for Thernbaakagen — and once again I arrived before you. But I didn’t take into account your own wariness. I should have guessed you’d get off at a different station… Ah, this is perfect.”

Milligan pulled the police car off the road and into a warehouse, which somehow he had deduced was empty despite its wide open bay doors. Shutting off the engine, he turned to make eye contact with all of them — first Kate, then the others, then Kate again. “You were brave to do what you did,” he said slowly. “And I know you did it out of love for our friends. But if you ever do something like this again, I can promise you that Ten Men and Executives are going to be the least of your worries — do you understand?” His expression was very severe, his jaw was set, and his words were clipped and terse as if spoken with much suppressed anger.

Kate burst out laughing. Milligan’s eyebrows shot up, and Kate, seeing this, laughed even louder. “Milligan,” she said, “I’ll bet you scare the wits out of bad guys, but as a dad you don’t scare anyone very much.”

“She’s right,” Constance said. “I can tell you aren’t really angry.”

Milligan frowned and looked at Reynie, but Reynie averted his eyes to avoid disappointing him — for he, too, had been unfazed by Milligan’s stern admonition. Only Sticky, furiously polishing his spectacles in the back seat, showed the effect Milligan had hoped for. But Sticky was easily unnerved and could hardly be used as a measure.

“Well,” Milligan said, his face relaxing. “At least I tried.” He jumped from the car and let them all out. Then he went to the trunk, out of which he took a large duffel bag and into which he put the Ten Man’s briefcase. Shadowing him, the children saw three other briefcases already inside. Milligan slammed the trunk closed.

“If this place is abandoned, why are the doors open?” Sticky asked.

“Broken,” Milligan said, reaching inside his suit jacket. He took out a small tool rather like an Army knife, and in seconds he had done something to the winch mechanism that allowed the bay doors to come rattling down.

It was dusky gray in the warehouse now, the only light being that which filtered in through dirty windows and a broken skylight. And though the day was warm, the warehouse was cold, and Constance began to shiver. Milligan took off his suit jacket and draped it over her shoulders. The jacket hung all around her and down to her feet like a cloak.

“Time for a quick change,” Milligan said, picking up his duffel bag. “Excuse me a minute.”

Kate followed him into what once had been the warehouse office. She was so happy to see Milligan she didn’t want to be separated even for a minute. In fact, during the car ride she’d kept having the urge to hug him again — and now she did just that, throwing her arms around him and squeezing with all her might. Milligan winced, but as his expression was the same as that of everyone Kate hugged, she thought nothing of it until a minute later, when Milligan was changing shirts and she saw his torso covered with a shocking display of cuts and bruises.

“What happened to you?” she cried, staring.

“Hm?” Milligan looked down. “Oh. These. I told you, Katie-Cat. I was detained. That’s why I missed you in Lisbon.”

Kate was aghast. “I thought you got caught up in
traffic
! Or, I don’t know, had an urgent, top-secret meeting or something!”

“It was a sort of meeting,” Milligan said, pulling on a different shirt. “I’ve had lots of meetings lately. Not all go as smoothly as the one at the hotel.”

Kate suddenly felt worried about Milligan, which had almost never happened, and it was a very disagreeable feeling indeed. She felt guilty, too, for it occurred to her that if she was this worried about Milligan, Milligan must have felt at least as worried about her. Probably more so. She was his daughter, after all.

“Milligan,” Kate said, “I really am sorry to have worried you.”

“Well, you couldn’t have had better intentions,” Milligan said, winking at her. “I appreciate the apology, though. When I heard you’d gone — well, I know you’re very capable, Kate, but I don’t suppose I’ve slept two hours in as many days. I admit it’s taken its toll. I’m not Number Two, after all.”

At this, their faces grew somber, and Milligan laid his hand on Kate’s shoulder. “We’re going to get them back. Don’t you worry.”

Her father’s words were an unexpected comfort to Kate — who hadn’t realized till now that she really could use some comforting — and the effect was to bring tears to her eyes. Kate had always thought crying an acceptable thing for others to do, but she didn’t particularly care to be seen doing it herself, so she leaned out of the office door, pretending to check on her friends. (The boys had opened the police car’s trunk and were peeking in at the briefcases, while Constance was hopping up and down to keep warm.) By the time Kate had blinked her eyes clear and turned back to him, Milligan had almost completed his transformation.