The Secret Keepers

by Trenton Lee Stewart

  If The Smoke used the rope ladder, why did he need the fireman’s pole? Just because it was faster? Just for fun? Maybe. But maybe there was another reason, too.

  Reuben backed away from the ladder. He wanted to get a better look at the balcony if he could. But as he turned and walked carefully out toward the middle of the ballroom, it was the floor that confirmed his misgivings.

  Beginning just to the side of the rope ladder, a narrow, roughly rectangular span of scarred wood ran all the way out to where Reuben had stopped. It seemed much like the path he had followed along the tabletop, but here the wood wasn’t just worn—the varnish was completely ruined, the grains of the wood battered and chipped and scraped. It was as if someone had taken a hammer to it. The rest of the floor looked pristine in comparison. Reuben had no idea what to make of it.

  He scanned the ballroom again. Huge faded tapestries hung beneath the high windows, obscuring much of the wall. One of them, near the bar in the corner, did not seem to hang quite flat. Reuben went over for a closer look. A tall metal ladder had been stowed behind it, propped against the wall. Draped over one of the lower rungs was, of all things, a long blue cotton robe.

  Reuben held the robe out in front of him by the shoulders, wondering. The material felt weirdly greasy beneath his fingers. He lowered the robe and peered across the ballroom at the fireman’s pole—and everything came together. He got it.

  Each night The Smoke climbed up to the balcony using this metal ladder. Then he kicked it away from the railing so that no one could sneak up on him. The ladder banging down every night was what had scarred the ballroom floor. Sure, an intruder could set it up again, but not without making considerable noise, not with a metal ladder like this. The Smoke would have plenty of warning if anyone tried that.

  The rope ladder had to be a trap, then. No question about it. As for the robe—Reuben eyed the greasy garment again. Yes. Every morning The Smoke slipped this robe on over his clothes before zipping down the fireman’s pole. At the bottom he set the pillows back in place, then took off the robe and hid it behind the tapestry, along with the ladder. Naturally, any trespassers sneaking into the ballroom during the day would be drawn to the rope ladder, and thus into The Smoke’s trap.

  Not Reuben, though. He found himself grinning again. He’d put all the pieces of the puzzle together.

  The ladder was chained and padlocked to a bracket in the wall, but this didn’t discourage Reuben. On the contrary, he was glad. That the ladder couldn’t be used by his enemy must give The Smoke all the more reason to feel confident. It was a false confidence now, though, for Reuben already knew how he was going to reach the balcony, and he already had a plan.

  The first part was even easier than Reuben had expected. The distance between the wall beneath the balcony and the nearest marble support column was perfect. His feet braced against the wall, his hands pressed against the column, he began to make his way up. Right hand, left hand. Right foot, left foot. Six inches at a time. He was careful but quick, remembering how he had tired that day in the alley. It seemed strangely perfect that he should acquire the second watch in the same way he had found the first one. More than perfect—fated. Destined. That’s how it felt to Reuben, as if he had been supposed to find the first watch and then, having discovered its secret, use it to reclaim its twin from The Smoke.

  Fated or not, the next part of his climb was tricky. At the top of the column, the marble flared outward in a decorative scroll that Reuben found difficult to navigate with his hands. By the time he’d worked himself into position, with his back against the underside of the balcony edge, he was sweating heavily. Now he had to try to swing a hand up and grab the bottom of the iron railing above him. If he missed, he would fall, as simple as that.

  Yet he would only get weaker the longer he hesitated. And so, with a quick-whispered “One two three!” Reuben reached up as high as he could—and felt, just as his other hand slipped free, his fingers touch metal.

  In the next instant Reuben’s legs were swinging beneath him as he clung to the bottom of the railing. He used their momentum to his advantage, swinging them back and forth like the pendulum in a grandfather clock, until with one straining stretch he got a foot up onto the balcony edge. After that it was easy again. A few seconds later he was up over the railing, standing safely on the balcony, breathing hard.

  Reuben checked his watch, put it away again, and looked around. As he’d predicted, the balcony doors had been boarded over. A small bed, sloppily made, stood at the back, its headboard against the wall. Beside it was a nightstand. There was also an antique wardrobe, a dressing table, and a chest of drawers.

  And yet, despite the furniture, The Smoke’s balcony home seemed empty to Reuben. It took him a minute to understand why: there were no pictures. No photographs hanging on the wall, none standing in frames. He wondered if The Smoke had never cared about anyone, or if he had once cared too much and didn’t wish to be reminded. Whatever the case, he seemed to be living the loneliest existence imaginable.

  Reuben found himself thinking of the people he cared about—his mom, and Mrs. Genevieve, and Penny and Jack—and imagined having none of them. Having nobody. It was awful even to contemplate.

  He knelt to inspect the rope ladder. Its ends were not secured to the railing but instead to levers on a control box, painted black to resemble the wrought iron. Wires stretched across the tile floor of the balcony, disappearing into a drilled hole in the wall. No doubt they connected with a triggering device beneath the ballroom floor. If Reuben had put any weight on the rope ladder, he would have pulled the levers and sprung the trap beneath him. The levers themselves were probably designed to break clean off the box, so that clinging to the ladder would have done him no good.

  Reuben wondered if The Smoke had been some sort of handyman in his early life, in his time before the watch. Or had he learned how to do all these things since? The amount of work he must have put into designing and building the trapdoors, the chutes, the jail cell—it was astonishing.

  Reuben stooped to check under the bed. Nothing but dust bunnies. He went to the nightstand, and there he found exactly what he’d been looking for. He hadn’t known what it would look like, but this was clearly it: a pedestal supporting a red velvet cushion, in the center of which was a round indentation formed, Reuben knew, from all the nights—years and years of nights—of bearing the weight of The Smoke’s most prized possession.

  Of course. The pedestal made more sense than a safe. The Smoke wanted his watch always to be at hand. He needed to be able to use it at a moment’s notice, not have to fiddle with a combination lock. If The Smoke woke to the sound of an intruder, he could simply reach over and vanish, as quick as that.

  It was just what Reuben would have done himself. Withdrawing the watch from his pocket, he lowered it, ever so gently, into the impression in the velvet. A perfect fit. It looked beautiful there, too, like jewelry on display. Beside the pedestal on the nightstand was a lamp, and Reuben imagined that The Smoke had spent countless evenings lying on his bed, gazing at his watch, admiring how it gleamed in the lamplight.

  When he lifted the watch from the pedestal, so carefully that it made not the faintest sound, Reuben imagined it was not his own watch he was taking but The Smoke’s. Flushed with excitement, he tucked it away.

  He had yet to be wrong about anything. He’d known that the balcony was The Smoke’s home. He’d known that the rope ladder was a trap. He’d expected the doors that had once led onto the balcony to be closed off, and sure enough, they were completely boarded over. The Smoke was taking no chances. It would be impossible for anyone to sneak onto the balcony while he slept.

  But Reuben wouldn’t have to. No, when The Smoke climbed up to his balcony and kicked the ladder away, Reuben would already be up here, invisible, waiting.

  It shouldn’t be difficult to pull off. In fact, it would almost be easy.

  He would hide under the bed, invisible when necessary, until The Smoke fel
l asleep. Then he would creep out and steal the watch. He would move stealthily to the railing, stealthily climb it. If anything went wrong, if at any point The Smoke woke up, Reuben would forget stealth and make a dash for it. Either way, The Smoke would probably hear him when he hit the fireman’s pole, so whatever happened before then, his plan once he landed on the pillows was to run like mad.

  At that point Reuben would have both watches. The only advantage left to The Smoke would be his knowledge of the mansion. He knew the way out, and he had years of practice navigating the traps. What Reuben needed to do now, therefore, was find a different way out, some way The Smoke wouldn’t expect. Let the poor desperate villain go chasing off in the wrong direction as Reuben disappeared and went out his own way.

  Before he left the balcony, Reuben practiced crawling out from under the bed, stealing the watch, and making his way to the railing. He did it several times, smoothly and quietly. Satisfied, he moved on to contemplate the jump to the fireman’s pole. He couldn’t do it with the watches in his hands, and in his front pockets they might bang against the pole when he jumped on. Pulling his arms out of their sleeves, Reuben shifted his sweatshirt around until the front pockets were in back. Yes, that would work. He felt the comforting pressure of his watch there as he climbed over the railing.

  Sliding down the pole was every bit as thrilling as Reuben had expected. Only the bottom ten feet had been greased, and so when he hopped from the balcony, he was able to get a good grip, hugging the pole like a koala bear on a eucalyptus trunk. He slid slowly at first, then hit the greased part and shot down to the pillows in a blink. He took special care in replacing the pillows he’d dislodged. If the pile wasn’t exactly as it had been before, it was very close. Yet another benefit of his well-trained memory.

  Now to find his exit.

  Reuben nibbled the last of his cheese, considering. The ground floor was riddled with The Smoke’s traps, but what about upstairs? The prospect of someone breaking in through a second-story window was so unlikely, The Smoke probably hadn’t taken similar precautions up there. Besides, to get at The Smoke’s watch, the hunter would have to come downstairs anyway, where all the traps were.

  An escape route, a window, and a way down—that was what Reuben needed to find, and quickly. There was no telling when The Smoke would return. Jack would do his best to stall, to give Reuben time to snoop, but he also had to make his own getaway. Jack would have to take his best opportunity, and who knew what would happen then?

  Reuben worked fast. Keeping an eye out for traps, he found the staircase that used to lead to the balcony (it proved not to be booby-trapped) and soon was exploring the mansion’s second floor—a wasteland of dusty, cobwebby rooms. Time-faded paintings hung on the walls. Mice scurried out of view beneath once-beautiful old furniture. Most of the lights had long since burned out. The rooms and hallways were faintly lit by sunlight filtering through filthy windows and rotted lace curtains.

  In one bedroom, Reuben discovered a chaos of leftover construction materials spread out over the floor and furniture—sheet metal, old lumber, wires and cables and rope, buckets full of nuts and bolts, nails and ball bearings—all the evidence of The Smoke’s downstairs trap-building, now abandoned, dust-coated and forgotten. Reuben hefted a coil of rope over his shoulder and left the room shaking his head.

  Of all the rooms, only one stood empty, the one nearest the stairs behind the balcony. This was clearly the room from which the Smoke had scavenged his furniture: the wooden floors still bore deep scratches, the telltale tracks of heavy objects that had been dragged. The man wasn’t finicky. He’d taken what he needed from the most convenient room to the balcony. And then he had boarded up his doors.

  Such a strange, strange man. Reuben shifted the coil of rope on his shoulders and moved on, thinking again about that little black club. It seemed like ages since he’d watched the Smoke hiding it up his sleeve. He’d been trying not to think about it, about what might happen to Jack. He chose to believe that Jack would find a way to escape. Perhaps he’d already done so. Perhaps even now he was talking with Penny and Mrs. Genevieve, all of them worrying about Reuben, wondering when he would return.

  The last bedroom on that hallway had a window overlooking the grounds behind the mansion, and in the property’s perimeter wall Reuben spied one of the holes he’d noticed earlier. Unlike some of the others, this one was not entirely choked with brambles but was instead only partly obscured by overgrown rosebushes. From the mansion to that hole was a straight shot. Reuben could manage it easily, even while invisible.

  The only trick was getting down. With a bit of straining, he confirmed that the window could be opened. Squinting in the sunlight, he could make out distant rooftops, glimpses of homes beyond the trees of the neighborhood. He spotted the church spire, which oriented him in the direction of the park. There was not a soul in sight. He looked at the ground, fifteen feet or so below. He would come down behind a wall of overgrown shrubs, but he could see a place where the growth was thin enough for him to press through.

  Yes, this would be his escape route. The fact that it was the last bedroom on the hallway made it even better. He wouldn’t have to count doors in the darkness, wouldn’t dart into the wrong room by mistake. Just one straightforward pell-mell flight to the end of the hall, and here he’d be. From the fireman’s pole to this spot—Reuben figured he could make it in under thirty seconds. Maybe even faster. The Smoke might still be rubbing his groggy eyes, fumbling for the switch on his lamp, and Reuben would be long gone.

  He let the thin curtain fall over the window again. He tied one end of the rope securely to the leg of the canopy bed, hiding the coil under the bed skirt. Then he retraced his steps along the hallway and went downstairs.

  During all this time, Reuben had not allowed himself to consider the last remaining question, a critical element of his plan. He’d told himself he needed to focus on the task at hand. But now that he had his escape route, now that he had his plan, the question had to be answered: When are you going to do this? And now that he thought about it, Reuben understood why he hadn’t wanted to do so sooner.

  Because the answer was today. Right now.

  The answer was now.

  Reuben put a hand to his head. He broke out in a sweat.

  Never again would he have such a good opportunity. He was already inside the mansion, and The Smoke believed that the second watch was elsewhere, in the hands of a man who didn’t know its secrets but only wanted money for it. His wariness and suspicion, his fear of a twin hunter in the night, would be at their lowest.

  Reuben’s stomach was in knots now. Yes, he had to go through with this. When The Smoke returned, Reuben would have to act fast. He would watch from one of the entranceway windows, and at the first glimpse of the limousine, he would race back to the balcony and settle in for his long wait.

  Reuben stood in the ballroom, peering up at the balcony with a feeling of anxious resolution. So this was it. From this moment forward he would be carrying out his plan, one way or the other. He took a deep breath. Was he ready? He had to be. You’re the expert, he thought.

  And no sooner had Reuben thought this than all the problems with his plan suddenly exploded in his head like fireworks.

  How could he just go back up there and wait until The Smoke went to bed? He needed to call his mom! And what about Penny and Mrs. Genevieve? They would be worried out of their minds! And what about Jack? What if he hadn’t gotten away? What should Reuben do then?

  Reuben stood frozen in place, horrified by every new thing that occurred to him. He reached behind him and took his watch from the sweatshirt pocket. After gazing at it for a moment, he began to calm down. The simple fact that he could still turn invisible if something went wrong was remarkably reassuring.

  He just needed to check in, he decided. Call Mrs. Genevieve. Maybe Jack was already there. Maybe Jack could even call Reuben’s mom, put her at ease the way he’d done with Mrs. Genevieve. It could all be fig
ured out. And he could talk to Penny, too. Hearing her voice would shore up his resolve.

  Reuben hurried toward the front of the mansion, retracing his furniture-hopping path in the nearest hallway, running through the dining room, scurrying across the long table in the last hallway, and finally arriving in the parlor. He listened a few moments, then darted into the office. He went straight to the desk, put his hand on the phone—and hesitated, suddenly struck by new doubts.

  It was an old-fashioned phone with no digital display, but perhaps this was yet another ruse. Perhaps The Smoke had some secret way of knowing when it had been used. Probably he did. Probably he could track the calls that had been made on it. After all, he knew where people called from, didn’t he? He knew that Jack had called from a pay phone—and now that Reuben thought about it, he understood how The Smoke had known to move his search to the Lower Downs: Reuben had stupidly called him from a pay phone in the library there.

  So now, after all that hurrying, Reuben was left to stare at the phone on the desk. Did he dare risk it? How could he not? What else was he supposed to do?

  “Oh, you stupid phone!” he whispered, putting his hands to his head.

  At that very moment, as if responding angrily to his insult, the phone rang—a loud, jangling ring that sent Reuben leaping back, his nerves jangling to match it. “Oh man,” he muttered, shaking his head. The phone continued its angry ringing.

  Reuben wiped his brow with his sweatshirt sleeve. He remembered Jack chuckling to himself after the cuckoo clock had startled him. Reuben almost smiled. He would have to tell Jack about this when everything was over. When they’d gotten through it all and everyone was safe and sound, they would surely laugh about it together. First the cuckoo clock, then the phone. What next? he thought as the phone rang and rang. What other simple household sound would suddenly scare the wits out of him?