The Prisoner's Dilemma (31 page)

Reynie jumped up and started to pace. “I think he was trying to give you the details, Constance, but the words didn’t come through as well. But he also sent you that coded image—”

“And that was the only thing that came through clearly,” Constance said, nodding excitedly. “It’s right, it
feels
right! And that comforting feeling—he was trying to tell me everything was going to be fine, that he had a plan, that they were coming to rescue us!”

“He used the information you gave him to hatch his plan,” Reynie said. “They must have waylaid the real spies somehow, and they’re coming in their place.”

“Milligan’s going to be busy,” Kate said with a hint of nervousness. “There’s a bunch of Ten Men. But at least he’ll be taking them by surprise—he always says that’s the most important thing with them—and once he’s inside…
oh no!
” She sprang to her feet. “The password! The question Mr. Curtain’s going to ask them! They won’t know the answer!”

“They’ll be attacked before they ever get through the gate,” Sticky said, and he covered his face as if he couldn’t bear to look, as if he were already witnessing what was about to happen. “They won’t have a chance…”

Reynie started to speak, then seeing Constance’s eyes squeezed shut and her hands over her ears, he froze and kept quiet. Sticky and Kate noticed, too, and silently the three of them watched her, trying to be hopeful. But when Constance opened her eyes again, she still looked very much alarmed.

“I tried to warn him, and I… I’m pretty sure he heard me—but they’re still coming! They’re still going to try!”

“Are you sure?” Sticky asked.

“Well, I didn’t get words, just a sort of feeling, but… no, I’m sure of it. They’re going to risk it for our sake! Oh no, oh no…” Her lips began to tremble and she closed her eyes again, this time to stop herself from crying.

“It’s a pretty desperate gamble,” Sticky said grimly.

“They must think it’s their only chance to save us,” Reynie said.

“But there’s just no way!” Kate cried. “They’ll be in the worst possible position! Forget about us—who’ll save
them
?”

There was a long, heavy pause. And then, in the back of Reynie’s mind, a gear began to turn. And then another. And then he looked round at his friends and said, “It’ll have to be us.”

Sticky blinked. “You… you realize that we’re still prisoners, right? That we were counting on them to save
us
?”

“That’s step two,” Reynie said. “Step one is getting them inside.”

Kate was starting to smile. “Wait, are you saying we have to save
them
so they can save
us
?”

“That’s exactly what he means,” said Constance, peering at Reynie’s face.

Kate laughed and clapped her hands together. “I love it! So where do we start?”

“Where do you think?” Reynie said, his eyes flashing. “We escape.”

T
heir escape attempt would be dangerous, to say the least, and the timing would have to be perfect. As Reynie pointed out, they had had some practice already; they just needed to make a few important adjustments. But even so, as they frantically set about making preparations, Sticky was so anxious he almost threw up, and perspiration streamed down his head and dripped from his ears. Reynie, for his part, kept stopping to review the plan, worried that he’d overlooked something, and Kate was utterly serious for once. Constance just covered her eyes and waited with a growing sense of dread. They knew that Crawlings would come to the room as soon as the other Ten Men were dispatched to the guard towers—and everything,
everything
depended on their being ready when he did.

The elevator door opened, and Crawlings stepped out and walked briskly down the corridor. He had his radio out and was listening to the other Ten Men bantering as they took their positions. They were in high spirits, and why shouldn’t they be? Unlike Crawlings, none of
them
had just been threatened by Mr. Curtain. And
they
might have a chance to wreak terrible damage soon, whereas Crawlings was relegated to guarding the building. But he was determined to have his fun, regardless. When he drew near the room where the children were being held, he turned down the radio and began to tiptoe.

Setting down his briefcase ever so quietly, Crawlings unlocked the door and flung it open in one quick movement, hoping to startle the children. Much to his delight, his entrance prompted a cry of alarm—in fact the children appeared not just startled but completely dismayed. And the reason was immediately apparent. They were up to something.

Across the room, a bookcase had been moved aside to expose a large window, which had been raised, and a big desk that previously had been shoved to one side of the room was now sticking halfway out the window. It had been flipped over so that its writing surface was balanced on the window ledge and its legs stood up in the air like those of a petrified animal. The two boys stood frozen by the desk, each holding a leg, and they gaped at Crawlings with horrified, guilty expressions—very much like petrified animals themselves. Beside them the pudgy little girl was scowling ferociously.

“Well, well, chickies!” Crawlings cried. “What are we up to?” As he spoke, he noticed a rope tied around one of the desk legs. They were trying to escape! This was even better than he’d hoped! Now he had a good excuse to punish them.

But just as he was about to stride across the room and snatch the boys violently away from the window, he noticed that the rope stretched across the room and disappeared behind the open door. Crawlings hesitated, his eyebrow twitching with suspicion, and for a split second he considered investigating. But then, seized by the conviction that nothing important was behind the door, and that even now the older girl was outside the window climbing down, Crawlings plunged confidently forward.

A swift, furtive movement from behind the door caught his eye, and he whirled just in time to see Kate’s lasso dropping over his head and shoulders. “Now!” she shouted. Crawlings felt the lasso tighten, pinning his arms to his sides. Worse, he felt himself being drawn irresistibly backward, and with rising horror (and a humiliating yelp) Crawlings realized that the boys had shoved the desk out the window—and that he was now tied to the desk.

Completely off balance, Crawlings couldn’t keep from staggering backward. But when he came to the wall he managed to fling his legs out, bracing his heels against it, and dropping the radio he caught awkwardly at the window ledge with his hands. He snarled at the boys, who were anxiously dragging Constance out of harm’s way. For some reason she looked quite ill, but all Crawlings could think about was getting loose—getting loose and getting even—without being yanked out the window. He couldn’t get at the rope without letting go of the ledge.

Kate, meanwhile, had snatched up his radio. “We’ll be taking this,” she told him as she hurried to the door, “and your briefcase. You won’t be needing them, you know, since you’re
all tied up
at the moment!” And cutting Crawlings off in mid-curse, she closed the door and locked it.

“That was pretty lame, Kate,” said Sticky, already picking up the briefcase.

“I had to say
something,
didn’t I? Hey, what’s wrong with Constance?”

“Carry her, will you?” Reynie said with a worried look. “I’ll take the radio. We can talk while we run.”

At the end of the corridor they hid the briefcase in a closet (it was too heavy to keep carrying), then sent the elevator up to the fourth floor and slipped into the stairwell. Their hope—indeed their plan—was that when Crawlings finally got free he would try to recapture them himself, since reporting their escape would be humiliating. Even if he wasn’t fooled by the elevator trick, he would probably search for the children in all the wrong places, because the children were going to the last place he would expect—straight to Mr. Curtain.

As they hurried down the stairs, Reynie whispered, “I think you saved us, Constance. I don’t think he was going to fall for it.”

Constance, clinging weakly to Kate’s back, managed the faintest flicker of a smile. “I didn’t even mean to,” she muttered. “I just saw that he looked suspicious, and we so badly needed him to…” She groaned and put a hand to her head. “Oh, but I feel so sick! I feel horrible!”

The others exchanged worried looks, and Sticky whispered, “Do you think she can manage it now? Should we try something else?”

“But what else can we try?” said Kate.

Just then McCracken’s voice came over the radio announcing that the van had arrived at the access road and would be at the gate in five minutes.

“I can do it,” Constance moaned, resting her head against Kate’s shoulder. “I
have
to do it.”

“We don’t have much choice,” Reynie said after a moment’s deliberation. “It’s now or never. Hang in there, Constance!”

Mr. Curtain was expecting word from McCracken any minute when he heard a suspicious noise in the next room. It was a surreptitious, scraping sound—the sound of someone taking something quietly from a shelf. “Crawlings!” he roared, rocketing out into the corridor. “You have no business—” He screeched to a halt in the neighboring doorway, staring in disbelief.

Four guilty faces stared back at him. Kate had frozen in the process of belting her bucket to her hip. The other three were crouched in the corner, where the Whisperer had been before he and Hertz moved it to his hidden staging room. All of them looked as if they’d been caught stealing from a cookie jar.

“Snakes and dogs!” Mr. Curtain bellowed. “You? Here? Now? Where is Crawlings? No, never mind—I haven’t time for this!” He leaped from the wheelchair and reached into his suit coat.

“We’re sorry!” Reynie cried. “Please don’t punish us! We’ll do whatever you say—you don’t have to get the gloves out!”

“Oh, you
will
be punished!” Mr. Curtain snarled, but then he hesitated. He cocked his head, listening—he had left the radio in the other room—and after considering for the briefest of moments he snapped, “It will have to wait until later, however. Come with me at once!”

The children obeyed and soon were in the other room, sitting compliantly in a corner where Mr. Curtain could see them. Grumbling and glaring, he wheeled back and forth between different computers, making minute adjustments and checking readouts. Computer code no longer streamed across the four monitors; he seemed to have finished whatever he’d been doing before.

“Your timing couldn’t be worse,” Mr. Curtain said, shooting the children an icy look. “But no doubt you planned it that way. Somehow you knew the building was empty. What better time to steal your ridiculous bucket back?”

“It isn’t stealing,” Kate began, “not if—”

“Do not speak to me!” shouted Mr. Curtain, suddenly looming over Kate like a thundercloud. “Speak to me again and face the consequences! One day you will learn to hold your tongue, Miss Wetherall! Now give me that bucket—there must be something important inside for you to have taken such a chance retrieving it.”

Kate had no choice, and Mr. Curtain was rummaging through the bucket, muttering irritably to himself, when McCracken’s voice sounded over the radio: “Mr. Curtain, the van has arrived at the gate. The driver appears to be a red-haired man with glasses. He has called out that his name is Mr. Rubicund.”

Mr. Curtain shot over and snatched up the radio, smacking his lips. “Excellent! Very good, McCracken, very good indeed! Ask Mr. Rubicund to answer correctly the question he once missed as a student at my Institute, the question he was sent to the Waiting Room for missing. He’ll know what I mean.”

“One moment,” McCracken said. “I’ll ask him now.”

The older children were watching Constance out of the corners of their eyes. She appeared to be gazing intently at Mr. Curtain, but she was so pale and shaky she might have been slipping into a daze. After a moment her eyes widened and she whispered, “Something about energy waves produced by the acceleration or the oscill… oscill…”

“Oscillation?” Sticky whispered frantically. “Energy waves produced by the acceleration or the oscillation of an electric charge?”