Using the file, Peter picked the lock in record time, then glanced around. So far no one had noticed him. He lifted the lid, and Dorothy sat up. He pulled the gag from her mouth. She took a deep breath and mouthed a thank-you to Peter. He loosened the knots at her wrists and feet. As she pulled the ropes off, Peter located Tunie.
Soon all three were free.
“Should we scream?” Tunie whispered. “How do we know if these men are working with Shade and Reid?”
Dorothy was already filling her trunk with sacks of sand stacked nearby. Peter and Tunie looked at her, surprised.
Dorothy whispered urgently.
“The longer they think we’re in here, the more time we have to escape,” she said.
Peter and Tunie nodded and followed suit. As soon as they’d filled the trunks, Peter, Tunie, and Dorothy crept away, keeping to the shadows. They ducked down and ran as quietly as they could to the other side of the boat.
Peter whispered to Tunie and Dorothy that the boat had just left the harbor.
“We should swim for it,” he whispered.
“I think we can make it,” Dorothy agreed. “Let’s jump!”
Tunie’s face fell. “I don’t know how to swim,” she said. She surveyed the deck. “You two go. It will be easier for just one of us to hide anyway. Then you can send help.”
Dorothy and Peter looked at each other.
They were getting farther from the dock with every passing second. Peter had to make a decision.
“Okay. We’ll go. Quick, take your shoes off, Dorothy!” He and Dorothy pulled off their shoes and threw them inside a giant coil of rope. Tunie climbed into another and tucked herself down into the dark.
Peter peered at Tunie over the coil’s edge.
“I hate to leave you here,” Peter said, “but we’ll bring help. I promise.”
Tunie nodded, looking resolute. “Go! I’ll be fine.”
Then Dorothy and Peter ran to the ship’s rail, climbed up, and leaped overboard.
The sensation of falling lasted only a moment, and then the cold water closed over Peter’s head. He swam upward, toward the moon, and took a breath when he emerged. The saltwater stung his chafed wrists. The massive shadow of the ship passed to his left. He spied Dorothy, already swimming for the dock. Peter set to it, too, with strong strokes, not looking back. He would make it to shore. More than his life depended on it.
Officers Hill and Lovejoy knocked on the door of Billowing Sails Shipping, Inc. When no one answered, they let themselves in through the sagging doorframe.
“Curtis Reid? Dorothy? Tunie?” Officer Hill called, stepping into the dark room. “Peter, are you in here?”
He and Lovejoy turned on the lights and searched through the ratty offices on the first floor and the shabby apartment on the second floor, from the threadbare carpets to the water-stained ceilings. There was no sign of Reid or the kidnapped children.
Officer Hill looked around.
“There’s another floor above this one. Let’s look for access,” he said to Lovejoy. They searched high and low until they found a trapdoor above a gloomy servants’ staircase at the back of the building. Officer Hill climbed up the ladder first, with Lovejoy close behind him. As he entered the room and looked around, holding his lantern high, a dark shape flitted near his head and a sheet of paper came sailing down from the rafters. It fell at Officer Hill’s feet. He bent down and picked it up.
“Why, it’s a note—to me!” Officer Hill exclaimed.
Lovejoy hurried over and stood beside him. Reading over Hill’s shoulder, Lovejoy whistled.
“Look at that fancy handwriting! Fine work, that is. Did a lady write it?” Lovejoy asked.
Officer Hill squinted.
“It’s not signed. Looks like the writer was interrupted. She mentions Detective Shade and a Curtis R. That’d be Reid, of course,” he said. He thought about the boy, Peter, telling his father he’d seen a mugging, instead of mentioning the Dorothy James case. Could Shade have influenced him?
“The way she mentions Shade and Reid…do you think Shade could be involved?”
“I do,” said Lovejoy sourly.
“Well, yes, actually, it isn’t so hard to believe, is it,” Officer Hill agreed. “Weaselly fellow. Can’t leap to conclusions, I suppose.”
But he had his suspicions.
A quick search of the attic showed that the children were no longer there.
“This note could be from Tunie Webster,” said Officer Hill. “She’s associated with the two missing kids mentioned here. They might still be nearby. Let’s get more men down here. We’ll search the harbor. If Reid knows we’re onto him, I bet he’ll make a run for it. Or a sail for it.”
The men did not see Perch dart through the open trapdoor and fly down the stairs, making his way out into the night. They did not see George, the night watchman, follow them down the path to the harbor, nor did they see at his side the small, determined mummy with the brightly gleaming eyes.
On the ship they’d ransomed from Dorothy James’s father, Reid paced back and forth in the cramped captain’s quarters, while Detective Shade sat nearby, brooding. Finally Shade snapped.
“Look, he signed over this ship, right? It’ll be fine. Now would you stop ranging back and forth like a mad hyena and let me think?” What a half portion this Mr. Curtis Reid was, Shade thought, and mean to boot. A few minutes earlier, while Reid was using the toilet, Shade had found a wicked-looking knife in the coat Reid left behind. Shade hid the knife and replaced it with a banana, to make sure Reid didn’t do anything stupid. Once they were in the Caribbean, he’d find a way to get rid of the man.
Reid stopped and glared.
“You said you’d keep this contained,” Reid snarled at Shade, jabbing a finger at the air in his direction. “But that was a copper we saw pulling up at the shipping company, you wet sock.”
Shade rubbed his hands over his face. “We have a head start. We’ll take one of those routes through rough waters to save time. They won’t follow us there.”
Reid stared at him with his narrow eyes. “With the man’s daughter on board? You’re wacky. He won’t stop until he has her back!”
Shade exhaled. The numskull had a point. “You’re right, you’re right.” He tapped a pen on the desk as he thought. “So we put our plan into effect a little earlier than we thought—using her as a decoy. Go set her off in a lifeboat with a torch. They’ll sooner go after the girl than us, dig?”
Reid nodded. “All right. What about the other two?”
Shade waved a dismissive hand. “Lock ’em in the hold, now that the men are done loading. We’ll ditch them once we get there.”
“Right.” Reid pulled on his coat and strode on his long legs to the door. He looked over his shoulder at Shade, who was leaning back in his seat. “Come on, then, shake a leg. I ain’t doing this on my own.”
Reluctantly, Shade got to his feet—or foot. He’d removed the boot, and he followed Reid with a rap-rap-rapping of his peg leg to the shadowy nook where they’d stashed the trunks. Shade was a bit unsteady. He put a hand out to keep himself from falling over on the rolling deck.
“The one marked fragile holds the James girl,” Shade whispered.
Reid stooped to the trunk.
“That you, Dorothy?” he said.
Detective Shade shushed him. “Don’t draw attention! They can’t answer you anyway. They’re gagged, you twit. Help me carry this over to the lifeboat.”
The turning of the ship changed the position of the moon, and it lit up their part of the ship.
He and Shade each took one end of the trunk.
Reid shook his head. “Shouldn’t have bothered with these special containers,” he grumbled. “One without airholes would have done away with the kids. Then we wouldn’t have to worry about ’em.”
“What’s wrong with you? We’re no murderers.”
They lowered the trunk to the deck with a thud. Shade opened it, expecting to find Dorothy
bound and gagged. Instead, he discovered the bags of ballast the children had left behind. The two men stared.
Shade slammed shut the lid of the trunk.
“What have you done now? You’ve gone and lost her!” He glared accusingly at Reid. “I gave you one thing to do—smuggle the kids on board this ship—and you couldn’t even manage that? Is there a brain in your skull at all, or just a little loose gravel rattling around?!”
Reid narrowed his eyes hatefully at Shade.
“Me?” he hissed. “This is all your fault, you grifter. You’re trying to get me hanged, is what.”
Shade laughed in disbelief. “What are you talking about?”
Reid reached into his coat and pulled out…a banana. He glanced at it, perplexed, and then pointed it at Shade.
“How did those kids know I took Dorothy to that rooftop?” Reid shook the banana. “You tipped them off, that’s how! No one else could have seen me there, unless they were flying about overhead!”
He advanced on Detective Shade, brandishing the banana. Shade edged to the side, keeping the weighted trunk between them. The wet deck was slippery beneath his wooden peg leg.
Shade held his hands out in a peaceable gesture. “All right, all right, now. Let’s calm down and think for a minute.”
Reid, however, did not put away the fruit. He kept his dark eyes on Shade.
“Oh, I am thinking,” Reid said, “and what I’m thinkin’ is, you’re implementin’ your own plan here. You’re going to steal the money we make from selling this ship for yourself! Or you’ll tell the coppers I was the one who kidnapped Dorothy, and you were trying to stop me! At the very least, you’d skip going to the big house, and you’d get the reward from James. He doesn’t know you an’ me are the ones holdin’ his daughter for ransom, after all.”
Shade nearly roared in anger. “You absolute dimwit! I’m not plotting against you! Don’t you see the problem is we don’t know where the children are?! They’ll implicate us both if we don’t find them!”
“You’re wrong,” Reid said. “They won’t implicate us both.”
He lunged over the trunk and started whapping Shade around the head with the banana. The two men grappled, and Shade took a swing at Reid’s jaw but missed. With a kick of one long leg, Reid managed to knock Shade’s good foot out from under him. Shade slid on his peg leg, landing half in the open trunk. He struggled to stand, but Reid wrestled him down all the way into the trunk, then slammed the lid and fastened it with the lock.
Shade banged on the wall of the trunk.
He called out, “Without me, you’ll lose everything! I’m the one who knows the buyers for this ship! They won’t trust you!”
“Quiet, or I’ll heave you over!” Reid snarled. “I need to think what I want to do with you.”
Shade ceased his thumping and hollering. He peered out through one of the airholes in the trunk.
Reid straightened his clothes. Shade felt him shove the trunk along the deck. Reid leaned down to the airholes.
“One peep out of you and over you go, you understand?”
Shade didn’t respond.
“Good,” Reid said. He stood as if to leave. Then Shade and Reid heard it. It came from the coils of rope beside Shade’s trunk.
There it was again—a muffled, but still audible, “Ah-choo!”
Perch soared out over the sea in the humid night air. The ocean was an odd, vast space, the echoes coming back empty, empty, empty. He scanned the undulating surface below him until suddenly: There! A shape below. It was a ship! He knew instantly that Tunie was on board.
There was no time to check on her. Perch swooped like a boomerang, heading back to the docks. He found Officers Hill and Lovejoy questioning dockworkers, and flew down, squeaking his news: he’d found Tunie!
“Argh! Get it away!” Lovejoy swatted at Perch with his officer’s hat, nearly knocking Perch out of the sky. Perch landed upside down on a lamppost, squeaking.
“Something wrong with that creature,” muttered Hill, eyeing the bat. “Why isn’t it flying off? Might have rabies.”
Perch squeaked with frustration. How could he communicate with these people? All at once, he spotted a familiar figure, hanging back by a docked ship. His bandages dangled loosely at his elbows, wrists, and knees, and his eyes pierced the inky dark like candle flames. Perch glided over to Horus.
“Why, hullo,” Horus said to Perch, who found purchase on a dangling rope. “Are you looking for Tunie, too?”
Excited, Perch squeaked an affirmative.
Horus’s eyes glowed. “And you found her?”
Again Perch squeaked, flying toward the water and then back to Horus.
“She’s on a boat?” Horus guessed.
Perch nodded.
Horus looked out at the harbor and then tiptoed over to another man Perch hadn’t noticed. It was George, their neighbor! Perch flapped nearby. George looked up.
“Oh! Hiya, Perch,” George said, glancing at Perch and then turning his attention back to the police.
Horus sidled right up to George and spoke as loudly as he could.
“Tunie is on a boat! We must look for her! Now—before it’s too late!”
George frowned.
“These police are taking too long questioning folks,” George said quietly to himself. “Tunie’s probably out on a boat somewhere.”
George looked around and saw an old man sitting in a patchwork dory, getting ready to do some night fishing. He approached the fisherman.
“I’m wondering if I could rent your boat,” George said to the whiskery fellow.
The old man, who had only one or two teeth left in his mouth, spit off to the side. “Not fer rent,” he said.
“I’ll pay you,” George said, and named a week’s salary. The old man’s eyes widened.
“Let’s see it,” the old man croaked. When he saw the bills, he cackled with glee.
“I’m off to the tavern, then! Bring my boat back safe! I know the police around here if you don’t!” the old man threatened, but then scampered off, jolly at the idea of a pint instead of a night’s work.
George and Horus climbed on board. Perch flew back and forth from the boat in Tunie’s direction.
Horus said loudly, “We should head southwest.”
George untied the boat and sat at the oars.
“Southwest, I think,” George muttered.
Perch made sure they were headed in the right direction and then flapped off into the night to find Tunie. A tremor of exhaustion shook his wings, and he dropped momentarily before righting himself. The tiny bat felt a rush of anxiety as he fluttered out over the measureless, surging sea.
Another small, unexpected wave slapped Peter roughly in the face. He took in a mouthful or two of seawater and coughed. Beside him, he could hear Dorothy sputtering.
This was not good.
They were both strong swimmers. Using a slow sideways stroke, Peter had caught up with Dorothy, and the two of them had been swimming side by side in the choppy brine for what felt like hours. Peter’s arms and legs were growing weary from the exertion of swimming, and his lungs burned. Yet for all his labor, the harbor lights seemed only slightly closer, and a little bit farther east than when they’d started. Were they swimming against a current, or had he misjudged the distance?
Dorothy abruptly stopped swimming. She flipped onto her back, floating and breathing heavily.
“I can’t make it,” Dorothy said, breathless. “I’m too tired to keep swimming. I’ll drown for sure if I keep at it. You go ahead. I’ll float here as long as I can,” she said. “Send help.”
Peter turned over onto his back, too.
“I can’t do it, either,” Peter said helplessly, staring up at the stars. They looked glittery and powdery to him, like snow. The water lapped at his ears. He reached out his wet fingers and touched Dorothy’s hand reassuringly.
Peter thought of how he’d resented this ocean, the insurmountable cost and effort of crossing it, a
nd his mother for choosing to go to its other side. The cure for her disease—the brisk air of the Alps—had not saved her. He wondered if his dad ever felt angry about it, too—that she’d chosen to go there on her own, and left them. He wished he’d discussed it with his father. He’d never have the opportunity now.
“I’m scared,” Dorothy whispered.
Peter swallowed. “Me too.”
“Nobody knows where we are. We’re drifting out to sea. It’s nighttime, and there aren’t many ships, and even if there were, they’d never see us. They’d run us over!” Dorothy said. She was starting to sound panicked.
Peter could feel himself growing more anxious with every point Dorothy made. It was true. Chances were they’d die out here. He pictured WindUp, lying alone by the shrubbery where Peter had tossed him. His robot would rust in the rain if no one came to get him. Peter shoved the thought away.
“We just have to keep calm,” Peter said. “It doesn’t take much energy to float. Your dad is going to come after that boat.”
“But when?” Dorothy said softly.
“Soon,” Peter lied. It made him feel better to say it, so he said it again. “Soon.”
Tunie had tried to muffle the sneeze but couldn’t. She heard Reid’s footsteps stop.
He knew she was there.
Tunie crouched down as far as she could inside the dank, shadowy coil of rope and gripped the file in her fist. Reid was moving quietly now. She could no longer hear his boots treading on the wooden deck.
He was going to find her. She might as well use the element of surprise to her advantage.
She leaped out of the coiled rope and shouted at the top of her lungs, “BAH!”
Reid startled, but a moment later he lunged forward, his hand closing punishingly around her upper arm.
“Where are the other two?” he snarled, shaking Tunie hard.
“They jumped ship,” Tunie shot back. “They’re swimming to shore right now. The police will be here soon!”
But Reid only laughed wickedly. “Then they did the job for us! They’ll never make it to the harbor. The tide’s going out—they’ll be swept out to sea. Now it’s your turn.”
Horus and the Curse of Everlasting Regret Page 11
