“What’s happened, Rhonda?” asked Reynie.
Before Rhonda could answer, Miss Perumal and her mother came up, followed by the Washingtons. Rhonda greeted them with apparent relief. “Come inside,” she said soberly. “Come inside and I’ll tell you everything.”
“Tell us everything about what?” Kate insisted.
“Mr. Benedict and Number Two,” Rhonda replied, and her eyes suddenly brimmed with tears. “They’ve been taken.”
The children stared at her in shock. Taken?
“But . . . but who —?” Sticky began.
Rhonda angrily wiped her eyes. “Who do you think?”
They all knew the answer at once. Reynie said it aloud. “It’s Mr. Curtain, isn’t it?”
“I’ll explain everything when we’re in the house. I don’t know if you’re safe out here. Someone had to deliver it, after all. They may yet be close by, and who knows what they intend?”
“Deliver what?” Reynie asked, but Rhonda wouldn’t say more until she had ushered them inside.
Gone were Reynie’s visions of a happy reunion inside Mr. Benedict’s old house. The rambling, three-story stone building was perfectly familiar, yet the knowledge that Mr. Benedict and Number Two were missing gave the place an alien feel. As Mr. Washington helped his wife up the front steps and Rhonda carried up her wheelchair, Reynie and his friends kept casting anxious looks all around.
Through the front door they entered Mr. Benedict’s maze, which Rhonda and the children knew by heart. The maze had been the last of Mr. Benedict’s tests, as well as a line of defense against intruders. Together they moved quickly through its many identical rooms, up the staircase at the far side, and at last into a sitting room, where their entrance surprised another group of officials, all of whom turned toward the doorway with apprehensive expressions.
“Oh, it’s just you,” a silver-haired woman said to Rhonda. “Sorry, we’re a bit on edge.” She glanced inquiringly at the children. “I take it these are —?”
“Yes, Ms. Argent,” Rhonda said. “And I would like for them to see it.”
Exchanging uncertain looks, Ms. Argent and the other officials nevertheless stepped aside to let the children approach. On a table in the center of the room sat a brown box.
Rhonda gestured toward the box. “What happens to Mr. Benedict and Number Two depends on that,” she said grimly. She sounded as if she still couldn’t believe it, and indeed, as if speaking to herself, she repeated in a whisper, “Everything depends on that.”
The children moved closer. It was an ordinary-looking box, about the size of a fruit crate, with several holes punched into it. Together they peered through the holes into the box’s dark interior, anxious to see just what it might be — what the box might possibly contain that would determine the fate of those they held so dear.
It was a pigeon. Only that. A pigeon.
The Society Reconvenes
What can this bird have to do with the kidnapping?” Kate asked.
The government officials seemed reluctant to speak until Rhonda pointed out that the children might be directly affected by this situation. Finally a blond man with prominent cheekbones stepped forward to address them. “It’s a carrier pigeon,” he said, “sent by Mr. Curtain. It had a message strapped to its leg. We’re expected to send a reply by the same method.”
“Actually,” Sticky interjected, “it’s a homing pigeon.”
Everyone in the room looked at him. The Washingtons, who were standing with Miss Perumal and her mother inside the doorway, shifted uncomfortably, unsure whether their son had just been helpful or rude.
The blond man coughed into his fist. “I hate to argue with you, son —”
“Then please don’t,” said Rhonda impatiently. “I assume the difference is important, Sticky?”
“It could be,” Sticky said. “Homing pigeons can fly great distances — sometimes thousands of miles. Carrier pigeons aren’t really suited for long flights.”
Ms. Argent, the silver-haired woman, said, “So we can’t necessarily expect it to fly somewhere around Stonetown?”
Sticky shook his head. “Its roost could be anywhere on the continent.”
Ms. Argent cast a dark, meaningful look at the blond man, who mumbled something about needing to make a phone call and left the room. Rhonda watched him go, her expression grave.
“Tell me you haven’t started a search,” she said.
“Don’t worry,” Ms. Argent replied. “We’re taking appropriate measures.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of,” Rhonda said, turning on her heel. Beckoning her friends to follow, she left the sitting room without another word. She led them down the hallway to the dining room, where she had them sit at the long table. “It’s exactly what they should not be doing,” she muttered, closing the door behind her. “Not until they know more. I’m going to have to be aggressive, I see.”
“Rhonda,” said Miss Perumal, “what did the message say?”
“I would show it to you,” Rhonda said, “but they’ve already confiscated it as evidence. In essence, it said —”
“Can you quote it exactly, Rhonda?” asked Reynie, who knew Rhonda had a prodigious memory almost as good as Sticky’s. “There might be something important in the phrasing, you know.”
