Mr. Benedict’s house, as they all knew perfectly well, contained more books than boards. Almost every available surface held stacks of books; almost every wall was lined with bookshelves. According to Sticky — who remembered the exact placement of every book in the house — there were seventeen dictionaries (twenty-six if you counted foreign languages), any one of which might contain the next clue. The children decided to start on the third floor, where Constance’s bedroom was located, and work their way downstairs if necessary.
The third floor consisted of three long hallways, a dozen rooms, and quite a few nooks and crannies — space enough for thousands of books, and searching for the dictionaries would have taken hopelessly long if not for Sticky. As it was, the children were able to move swiftly from shelf to shelf (and from coffee table to windowsill), examining one dictionary after another as Sticky pointed them out. In minutes they had looked at most of the dictionaries on the third floor — including the Greek, Latin, and Esperanto dictionaries in Mr. Benedict’s tiny room, which saddened them even to enter — but although they’d found lots of silverfish, a pretty silk bookmark (which Constance pocketed), and the definition of a Greek word Sticky had been meaning to look up, they came upon no clue.
“What about Number Two’s bedroom?” asked Kate.
“No dictionaries in there,” Sticky said. “Number Two told me she prefers to go find a dictionary when she needs one. Searching the shelves helps her remember where everything is.”
Constance was staring at Sticky as if he’d just said he liked to eat sawdust. “You two have conversations about dictionaries?”
“We used to,” Sticky said sadly. “I haven’t seen her in months, you know.” Then he realized Constance had been making fun of him. “It wouldn’t hurt
“My poems would sound
“My ears,” Sticky said through gritted teeth, “are fine.”
“For whittling, maybe, your ears are well suited. For poetry, though —”
“Please don’t finish that, Constance,” interrupted Reynie. “We don’t need a rhyme attack right now. We need to find that dictionary.” To Sticky he made a private gesture that clearly meant “stay calm and ignore her.”
“I saw that,” Constance said, giving him a very cross look.
Reynie sighed.
Only one hallway on the third floor remained to be searched. They had put it off until last, for on that hallway lay the chamber that contained the Whisperer. Two guards were always posted at the chamber door, and the children had hoped to avoid speaking to anyone. But Sticky said two dictionaries were to be found there, so they were compelled to go look. Luckily there were none in the chamber itself, Sticky said, for as they all knew, no one was ever allowed in there without Mr. Benedict. (Reynie didn’t point out that Mr. Benedict wouldn’t have left the clue where they couldn’t possibly get to it, and he was relieved when it didn’t occur to Constance to say so.)
The children had been inside that guarded chamber only once, when Mr. Benedict took them in to look around. They had admired the soothing colors and soft lighting he used to calm his visitors (or “guests,” as he called them, to make them feel welcome). It came as no surprise that Mr. Benedict’s guests might stand in need of calming, for they were the Whisperer’s former victims, the extremely unfortunate people whose memories Mr. Curtain had hidden from them — memories Mr. Benedict now employed the Whisperer to restore. The cozy room was a far cry from the cold, austere atmosphere of Mr. Curtain’s Whispering Gallery.
“It can be disturbing to have one’s memory suddenly return,” Mr. Benedict had said, “to remember all at once the important things that have been missing for so long. I do my best to lessen the shock.” He indicated an overstuffed chair in the corner. “That is where my guests sit. It is easily within the Whisperer’s range, and I should think they find it more comfortable — and far less threatening — than the seat my brother designed.”
Mr. Benedict kept the Whisperer hidden behind a decorated screen, but the children didn’t need to see it to remember it. All but Kate, in fact, had sat in its hard metal chair, their wrists cuffed, a helmet pressed tightly over their heads. And all four of them remembered the terrifying moment when they’d realized Mr. Curtain could use his device to wipe away their memories — brainsweeping, he called it — even when they were standing several feet away. Yes, they all remembered the Whisperer perfectly well, and they were quite content to leave it hidden behind the screen in that locked and guarded chamber.
As the children entered the hallway on which the chamber lay, the two guards at its door offered them faint, polite smiles. The guards were not supposed to fraternize while on duty, of course, and they knew the children were free to roam the hallways; they might well let them pass without comment. But depending on their security clearance (depending, in other words, on their access to classified information), the guards might also know something of the children’s history, and this made Reynie worry they would be suspicious of any unusual activity.
“Are you sure there’s a dictionary here?” he said to Sticky, as if they were in the middle of a discussion.
“Yes, there certainly is, Reynie, I am sure of it,” Sticky replied in a tone so stiff that Reynie almost winced. They needed to brush up on their acting.
To her credit, Kate was more convincing than either of the boys had been. Casually retying her ponytail, she winked at the guards and said in a breezy tone, “Just looking up a word.”
The guards nodded, but one of them — a burly, bulldoggish man — watched the children with an appraising look that verged on suspicion. Reynie turned his back, the better to hide his own nervous expression. Sticky had already located the first dictionary and was rapidly examining it as the others looked on. He closed it with a discouraged sigh. “No luck.”
The burly guard leaned toward them. “Must be an unusual word, eh? You ought to try the other dictionary. It’s really big.”
“How do you know there’s another dictionary?” asked Sticky, surprised.
“What else do we have to look at all day but these bookshelves?” said the guard. He pointed a little way down the shelves. “It’s right over there, a great huge fat one. Wait, now where is it? I remember it perfectly — terrible condition, falling apart at the seams. It was right there, I’m sure of it.”
“I know the one you mean,” Sticky said, pointing to a gap on the shelves. “It
