The Mysterious Benedict Society and the Perilous Journey

so the adults could speak in private, they lost no time in bolting for the door.

Still, as they walked out into the orchard, Sticky looked suspiciously back toward the farmhouse. “Why do they want to speak privately, I wonder?”

“It’s Mr. Benedict’s surprise,” Reynie said. “They’re in on it.”

“They are? So that explains why my parents have been whispering. I thought they were discussing Mom’s getting a second job. They know I’m dead set against it. I’d sooner go back to quizzing, you know, but they’re dead set against that.”

Reynie knew from Sticky’s letters that his father already did work two jobs. Their family’s finances were terribly strained due to the unhappy events leading up to the last year. Sticky’s prodigious memory and reading abilities had made him an incomparable quiz champion, but he had suffered badly under the pressure to make his family’s fortune and ultimately had run away from home. The Washingtons had spent every penny — in fact had gone deep into debt — in order to find Sticky and bring him back to them. They had been distrustful of money’s allure ever since, and were stubbornly unwilling to let Sticky be subjected to unusual pressures. (“They can hardly stand even to hear me talk about our time at the Institute,” Sticky had written. “The very thought of my being in danger makes them tremble.”) And so the Washingtons remained quite poor.

“How did you find out they know about the surprise?” Sticky asked as they settled down in the shade of the apple trees.

“Amma got a letter from Mr. Benedict,” Reynie said. “I saw it on her dresser, but she neglected to mention it to me, and later I overheard bits of a conversation she had with Pati. Pati’s hard of hearing, so Amma had to say a few things rather louder than she meant to. None of it was enough to give me any clues, but I could tell they knew something I didn’t. Not long after that I got my own letter from Mr. Benedict — the one he sent all of us — and I knew we were in for something good.”

“Of course it will be good! How could it not be good?” said Kate, leaning back on her elbows with a satisfied smile. “It’s already good. We’re together, aren’t we? And tomorrow we’ll see Mr. Benedict!”

“Not to mention Rhonda and Number Two,” Reynie said, referring to Mr. Benedict’s brilliant assistants (who also happened to be his adopted daughters, though this wasn’t widely known). “I can’t wait to see them, either.”

“Neither can I!” Sticky said. In a somewhat more subdued tone he added, “And, well . . . Constance, too, of course. And what about Milligan, Kate? At lunch you said he’d meet us at Mr. Benedict’s house, but wasn’t he supposed to be here?”

“That was the plan, but then he got called away on a mission.”

“What kind of mission?” asked Reynie and Sticky at the same time. They were both hungry for details.

Kate shrugged. “No idea. He never tells me anything beforehand, only afterward. I always read the paper for clues, of course — I’d love to be able to tell him I figured out what he’d been up to — but I never find anything.”

“So you have been keeping up,” Sticky said. “I asked about that in my last letter, but you never replied.” His tone was slightly resentful, but Kate either ignored it or else was blithely unaware.

“Of course I’ve been keeping up! But I’m not like you, Sticky. I can’t read ten newspapers every morning, and half of them in foreign languages. I only read the Stonetown Times. Why? Have you seen anything suspicious?”

Sticky grunted. “I wish. What about you, Reynie?”

Although this conversation might have seemed strange if overheard (for it is rare to hear children discuss the newspaper, and still more so to hear one ask whether anything “suspicious” has been found), to Reynie and his friends it felt perfectly natural. All of them had long had the habit of reading the paper — in fact it was a newspaper advertisement that had first led them to Mr. Benedict — and ever since their mission they had scanned the daily headlines with particular interest. It was doubtful any activity concerning Mr. Curtain would be declassified and printed, but it was always possible that some seemingly innocent story might reveal a connection to something deeper and darker — something the children would recognize even if other readers would not. In this single respect they still felt like secret agents, though reading the daily paper was hardly exciting field work.

This morning’s front page of the Stonetown Times, for instance, had been devoted to nothing more sinister than finance, freight, and forestry: INTEREST RATES SHARPLY ON THE RISE, read one headline; CARGO SHIP SHORTCUT TO MAKE MAIDEN VOYAGE, read another; while still another read, PINE WEEVIL MAKES MEAL OF SOUTHERN FORESTS. And the news only grew less interesting on page two.

“Suspicious?” Reynie said. “Not unless you think pine weevils are suspicious. Everything I’ve read has been dull as doorknobs.”

Kate’s eyes twinkled. “Hey, that reminds me! Sticky, I —”

Reynie cleared his throat and gave her a warning look. It was too late, though. Sticky might be slow to make certain connections, but he was exceptionally quick at recognizing personal insults. “Go on,” he said, burying his face in his hands. “It’s about my account of the mission, isn’t it?”

Now Kate looked regretful. “Oh . . . no . . . I was, uh, just going to . . .” She looked helplessly at Reynie, unable to think of what to say.

Much to their relief, Sticky lowered his hands and smiled. It was a sheepish smile, but at least he didn’t seem wounded. “Out with it.”

“Well, it’s . . . factual,” Kate said.

“And thoughtful,” Reynie added, hurriedly taking the account from his pocket in hopes of finding something to praise.

Kate nodded vigorously as Reynie unfolded the papers. “Oh, yes, it’s very thoughtful! And grammatical!”

Sticky winced. “Is it that bad? Oh well, I knew it was probably dreck. You should have seen the earlier drafts. This was my sixth attempt.” He took the account from Reynie and looked it over ruefully before stuffing it into his pocket. “Don’t worry, I figured I could never publish it anyway. I just wanted to do something to celebrate the