Secret in St. Something
ATHENEUM BOOKS BY BARBARA BROOKS WALLACE
PEPPERMINTS IN THE PARLOR
THE BARREL IN THE BASEMENT
PERFECT ACRES, INC.
THE TWIN IN THE TAVERN
COUSINS IN THE CASTLE
SPARROWS IN THE SCULLERY
GHOSTS IN THE GALLERY
SECRET IN ST. SOMETHING
Secret in St. Something
BARBARA BROOKS WALLACE
Sonia Chaghatzbanian
ATHENEUM BOOKS for YOUNG READERS
NEW YORK LONDON TORONTO SYDNEY SINGAPORE
Atheneum Books for Young Readers
An imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division
1230 Avenue of the Americas
New York, New York 10020
www.SimonandSchuster.com
Copyright ©2001 by Barbara Brooks Wallace
All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction
in whole or in part in any form.
Book design by Sonia Chaghatzbanian
The text of this book is set in Bembo.
Printed in the United States of America
2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Wallace, Barbara Brooks, 1922—
p. cm.
Summary: Fleeing from a cruel stepfather, eleven-year-old Robin takes his baby
brother and finds shelter with street boys living in a church in a tenement area of
New York City.
ISBN 0-689-83464-0
eISBN: 978-1-439-13468-9
ISBN: 978-0-6898-3464-6
[1. Homeless persons—Fiction.
2. Brothers—Fiction.]
I.Title.
PZ7.W1547 Sc 2001
[Fic]—dc21 99-049711
Dedication
For my husband, Jim,
who lights up my life.
CONTENTS
I Robin
II OUT!
III A Sad Explanation
IV Escape!
V A Desperate Measure
VI A Whole Nest!
VII St. Somethin’
VIII Duck’s Tale
IX A Disappointing Discovery
X A Startling Scene
XI A Chilling Customer
XII A Puzzling Report
XIII Pawnshop Revisited
XIV Peril Under the Pier
XV A Good Boy
XVI A Final Wish
XVII A Terrible Confession
XVIII A Supper Invitation
XIX A Vile Crime
XX An Invite Accepted
XXI Quite a Story Indeed!
Chapter I
Robin
Not a flicker of light from a gas lamp, nor even an oil lantern, lit the dank entryway of the tenement building. Nothing, that is, more than the chilling, early-evening light that had to force its way through the grimy sliver of cracked glass set in the door. One flight up the narrow, steep stairs, and Robin found himself swallowed by darkness. Suffocating darkness reeking with the collected smells of rotting wood, clammy stained walls, general filth, and cabbage soup, made by someone lucky enough to have afforded the cabbage to put in it.
To screw up his failing courage, Robin tried to suck in whatever air was available to him, only to have his pounding heart quickly pump it right back out of his thin chest. Nor did it help keep the icy knot forming in his stomach from drawing tighter and tighter.
Robin wondered if he would ever be anything less than terrified every time he had to climb these stairs, or the stairs of other buildings just like it. Same darkness. Same smells. Same misery and fear huddled behind every door in the building, especially fear of him. Fear of his knock on the door and what it meant.
Robin hated the thought of that almost more than he hated the dark hallway. Yet why would they need to be afraid of him? No one else was, certainly not the street boys, boys whose homes were anyplace they could find to sleep at night. Street boys had the uncanny ability to smell out the fact that under his clothes trembled a body as threatening as a pale chicken hanging in the butcher’s window—a chicken so reduced to skin and bones it could well have been nearly dead before anyone came along to wring its neck. Why then should the people behind the doors not be able to recognize that this puny, barely-turned-eleven boy, who could have passed for nine, was as frightened as they were?
But in the end, Robin knew there was no way to change that. For he also knew they were not so much frightened of him as of the person who sent him. Of that person they would be deathly afraid. And had reason to be!
Creeping along the hallway, he found the first door. After a hesitant knock, he waited. The voices behind the door came to a sudden stop, now as dead as the air in the hallway. The silence dragged on, as if a long enough silence would drive him away. Timidly, he knocked again.
The door finally opened, and a man peered out. Coarse stubble on his face did nothing to disguise the deep hollows in his cheeks. A worn vest sagged on his gaunt form. The curiously blank expression in his eyes never changed as he opened the door wider.
“I’ll get the rent money,” he said in a flat voice. Then he turned and walked heavily across the room, disappearing into the dark, windowless closet that served as a bedroom.
Standing miserably uncomfortable outside the doorway, Robin could see the entire meagerly furnished room. Intended for no more than one or two human beings, it was where seven lived, eight counting the baby asleep on a pile of rags in the corner, watched over by a small girl.
The narrow windows let in whatever fading light they could steal from the airless space not more than an arm’s length away from the neighboring tenement building. It fell on a woman with her head bent low over a table barely lit by a small oil lamp, where she was at work beading ladies’ slippers. An old woman and two young girls sat with her, sorting the beads she needed. Even the little boy sitting with them was at work, pasting paper onto cardboard candy boxes.
No one in the room looked up at Robin except the girl tending the baby. She stared at him curiously, but at a warning glance from her mother, quickly returned her attention to the baby.
The man soon came back. “Here,” he said thrusting some coins and a paper bill into Robin’s hand. “You don’t have to count it. I can tell you it’s … it’s fifty cents short. You just tell him please, I know it’s short.” The man hesitated. His thin, veined hands began to twitch nervously at his sides. “My wife was … she had to see the doctor….” He faltered and gave a hopeless shrug. “Tell him
