The Eye of Midnight Read online

  “Get down!” hissed a voice.

  The unseen stranger yanked them back into their hiding place, where the cousins lay motionless, petrified with fright.

  “Who are you?” gasped William.

  “Where is Colonel Battersea?” came the reply.

  The timbre of the voice startled William as much as Grandpa’s name.

  “It’s just a kid,” he whispered. “A girl!”

  “I am meeting Horatius Battersea here tonight,” said the girl, speaking the words with a careful accent that leaned hard on every syllable. “Where is he?”

  “Are you the courier?” asked Maxine.

  “I came with a package,” said the girl. “I seek Colonel Battersea’s protection. My name is Nura.”

  The three children scrambled out of the brush and retreated from the Needle, staying in the shadows and off the paths.

  “The man at the obelisk—who was he?” asked William, breathing hard.

  “He belongs to the Hashashin,” answered Nura. “They are the enemy—the servants of the Old Man of the Mountain.”

  The cousins’ faces were blank.

  “The Old Man is the author of bloodshed,” said Nura, “the king of all the sons of pride. His eye and his blade reach everywhere.”

  She walked quickly and offered no further explanation, leading them down a wide gully that wound through a thick stand of elms. They emerged in a remote quarter of the park, behind a small, shingled pavilion, and there, in the light of a solitary streetlamp, the cousins finally came face to face with their new companion.

  The girl’s skin was the color of oiled teak; her lashes were long and thick, her teeth uneven but pearly white. She wore a checked shawl over her smooth dark hair, and a coarse brown dress that brushed the ground. Across her shoulder she carried a canvas haversack. Her face was solemn, and although she was slight and seemed rather breakable, she set her jaw and met their eyes directly.

  “Where are you from?” asked William.

  “How’d you find us?” Maxine added.

  “Do you have the package?” they both said at once.

  Nura only shook her head at them and asked, “Where is Colonel Battersea?”

  “Not here,” replied Maxine coolly. “He sent Will and me.”

  The two girls eyed each other with suspicion.

  “You can trust us—honest,” said William. “Colonel Battersea is our granddad.”

  At this Nura’s brows lifted slightly.

  “If you give us the package, we can take it to him for you,” William added.

  “You’re the courier, right?” said Maxine, watching the tight-lipped girl carefully. “You do have a package for us?”

  Nura’s defiance faltered, and she looked away. “I had it,” she replied. “The parcel was lost.”

  “You mean you lost it. How clever of you.” It was a petty, mean-spirited thing to say, but Maxine couldn’t help herself.

  “I carried the parcel safely for six thousand miles,” said Nura with a glare, “on horseback and on foot, by camel and by ship. No harm came to it. Only here at the end of my journey was it snatched from my hand.” She turned away to hide the tears welling in her eyes.

  “Aw, don’t pay any attention to Maxine,” said William. “She’s pretty much a world champion when it comes to making people feel small.”

  He thought for a moment. “How old are you, anyways?” he asked.

  “Twelve.”

  “And you traveled six thousand miles to get here?” he said with a low whistle. “So what happened? With the package, I mean.”

  Nura shut her mouth and said nothing, but the cousins’ stares were so steady and expectant that finally she shook her head and sighed.

  “A month ago I left my home in Turkey with the parcel,” she said.

  “Were you alone?”

  “Who sent you?”

  Nura halted and gave them a stinging look that made it clear she would suffer no further interruptions.

  “I left home and traveled the desert road over many hills and plains and came to the coast, to the house of a friend of my father’s. I rested there, and then the man put me on a ship bound for America. For two weeks I never left my berth, except for necessities. I made myself gorunmeyen—invisible. The package I kept with me always, as I was afraid for it, and there was no knowing which of the passengers might be the enemy. For the length of the voyage I spoke to no one.

  “Then, two days ago, I arrived here in New York and met disaster. I left the ship. There were long lines, hundreds of people, men asking questions and stamping papers. When it was all over, my feet and my head ached, and I sat down on a bench to rest. My long journey had left me weary, and I was careless.

  “The package was in a leather satchel that I carried over my shoulder. I took it off and placed it by my side. A man sat down next to me on the bench. He wore a white hat and white clothes that were not fitting, and I didn’t care to look at him—he was like a sneaking animal. But for some reason, I don’t know why, I only pulled the bag closer to me and closed my eyes to rest. That was my ruin.”

  Nura’s voice cracked, and she paused, resenting the memory.

  “The man tore the bag from my arms and ran down the street, clutching his hat to his head. I was crying out, ‘Stop!’ but the people all around just moved out of his way, staring like sheep.”

  “Was he the enemy?” asked William. “Hashashin?”

  Nura shook her head impatiently. “Impossible. He was clumsy and stupid—a common thief.”

  “So why didn’t you go to the police?” William asked.

  “I found a policeman, yes.” Nura nodded. “He laughed and told me to forget the package. He said it was hopeless. He said I would never see my bag or the thief again.”

  “Well, of course not,” replied Maxine. “The police aren’t going to search the whole city for one bag belonging to a little gir—”

  “But I did see the thief again,” interrupted Nura, and her eyes flashed. “I went back this morning to the place where the bag was taken. He was wandering the harbor in the same white suit and hat, like a rat scratching in his favorite garbage heap. But what could I do against a grown man? He sneered when he saw me. I ran to try to find a policeman again, but when I am returning, the White Rat is gone.” Nura paused, and her lip trembled. “I came to the Needle, even though I had nothing to deliver, because I was thinking maybe Colonel Battersea could help me. I saw you then,” she said at length. “I watched you reach the circle and hide in the bushes. I waited, wondering who you were. I had decided to come to you, but then the Hashashin stepped into the circle.”

  “I thought we were goners for sure.” William nodded.

  Nura smiled for the first time. She pursed her lips and repeated the shrill warble.

  “That was you?” William said. “It sounded like some kind of strange bird.”

  “It is a signal used by the Hashashin,” Nura replied.

  The cousins blinked in surprise, regarding the girl with a mixture of respect and reservation.

  “When you found us, what made you so sure we weren’t Hashashin, too?” asked Maxine.

  “The enemy takes many forms,” said Nura, “but I did not think two children hiding in a bush were cause for fear.”

  “Oh no?” snapped Maxine. “Well, you were plenty afraid of something. What’s so precious about this package of yours, anyhow?”

  Nura raised an eyebrow. “You told me Colonel Battersea sent you to collect it,” she said cautiously, “and yet you don’t know what it contains?”

  Her hand went to a blue stone that she wore at her throat—a flat glass disk with concentric blue circles that looked like a staring eye—and she shook her head and would speak no further.

  “Maybe we should get out of the city,” Maxine whispered to William. “If we hurry, we might catch the last train.”

  Behind her Nura’s mouth tightened in a thin, obstinate line. “We cannot leave without the package,” she said.

/>   William looked back and forth between the two girls, wondering which of them to listen to. “I wish Grandpa were here,” he said. “He’d know what to do.”

  Maxine grimaced. “Let’s just hope he’s all right.”

  “Something has happened to Colonel Battersea?” asked Nura with alarm.

  “A couple of men grabbed him at the train station,” William admitted. “That was the last we saw of him.”

  Nura uttered an oath in Turkish and paced the sidewalk.

  “We cannot leave the city,” she said at last.

  “Well, we certainly can’t stay here,” replied Maxine. “We shouldn’t even be in the city in the first place. Grandpa only brought us along because he had to. He never meant for us to be wandering around out here all on our own. It’s better if we go back and wait for him at Battersea Manor.”

  Nura shook her head. “Your grandfather will not return home,” she said with chilling certainty. “The enemy has him now; his life hangs by a thread. If you want to see him again, we must recover the parcel. It is the only way.”

  “I don’t get it,” said Maxine. “How did Grandpa get involved in all of this anyhow? He’s supposed to be retired.”

  Nura twisted her shawl around her thumb, and for a moment the cousins thought she might explain, but instead she closed her eyes and sighed.

  “Go if you will,” she said, “but I must stay. Tomorrow I will return to the harbor to look for the White Rat. It is your grandfather’s only hope.”

  The cousins watched Nura make her bed on a hard park bench, unwrapping her headscarf and covering herself as best she could.

  “So what’s the plan?” Maxine asked in a low voice. “Are we spending the night here with our new friend?”

  William bit his thumbnail and pondered their predicament thoughtfully.

  “Do you trust her, Will?” asked Maxine.

  “I’m not sure. I don’t think she’s telling us everything. Where did she learn that secret whistle? And what do you make of that strange necklace she’s wearing?”

  “It looks sort of like an eyeball, doesn’t it?”

  William nodded. “ ‘Seek the Needle, find the Eye,’ ” he said.

  The recollection of the riddle slowed them both for a moment.

  “Is that necklace what we were supposed to find?” asked Maxine with a doubtful frown.

  “Who knows?” said William. “The necklace, or maybe the girl. I wonder what she’s doing here all by herself. She’s a million miles from home.”

  “I don’t know,” replied Maxine. “Somehow I don’t think Grandpa was expecting the courier to be a twelve-year-old girl.”

  “She seems to think the package is pretty important, though, doesn’t she? She’s got her own reasons for wanting it back, I’ll bet—something more than just helping us track down Grandpa.”

  “So why should we do her dirty work for her?” said Maxine. “Let her find it herself. I’ll take my chances back at the manor any day over playing hide-and-seek in the city with that creep from the tunnel.”

  “What if she’s right, though, M? What if that package really is our only chance to find Grandpa?” William turned his back for a moment and stared at the small girl on the bench. “Did you ever come to a fork in the road and get the feeling that whatever path you chose was bound to be the wrong one?” he asked. Not waiting for an answer, he shoved his hands deep in his pockets and ambled toward Nura.

  Maxine watched him go. She knew her cousin well enough by now to guess that he had already decided to stay. She knew herself well enough to realize that, despite her doubts, she would stick with him, that his choice would be her choice, even though it was all perfectly absurd.

  She followed William halfheartedly and joined him in front of the park bench, her hands on her hips.

  “What will you say to the thief?” she asked Nura, who was already half-asleep. “If you find your White Rat again somehow, what will you say? May I please have my package back? How do you know he hasn’t already gotten rid of it? Sold it or something?”

  Nura sat up abruptly. “Has he sold it?” she said, her voice shrill as if she were confronting the thief already. “I do not think so. But if he no longer possesses the parcel, he will know who does, and he will tell me, and I will follow, and I must follow, and I will never stop until it comes to me again, and from me to Colonel Battersea.” Her voice had risen almost to a hysteria, and her eyes were glassy and wide.

  “Easy, kiddo,” said William, sitting down and putting his arm around her shoulders. “Don’t give yourself a nosebleed. You talked us into it, all right? We’ll help you get your package back.”

  The cousins and their new companion woke the next morning with sore necks and foggy heads and no clear memory of where they were. They opened their eyes and sat bolt upright in alarm. A shabby drifter carrying a bindle on the end of an old axe handle was shuffling around the pavilion, eyeing them with interest in the pale light of dawn.

  “Bite to eat in there, by any chance?” he asked, pointing at Nura’s haversack. “Haven’t sunk my teeth into a thing in two days. Gospel truth.”

  Nura shook her head tensely, pulling the sack tight under her arm, and the man responded with a philosophical shrug. “It’s a bad habit,” he said, nibbling off a bit of his fingernail and spitting it over his shoulder. “Sleeping on park benches, I mean. Nothing for youngsters.”

  The children shifted uncomfortably.

  “Ain’t you seen the papers? There’s cutthroats loose in the city. Two nights ago they murdered a police sergeant down on Maiden Lane. Two days before that, it was a carpet merchant in Brooklyn. Police don’t have a clue.”

  He looked the three of them over and shook his head, then turned at last and wandered off.

  Maxine clutched her hand to her nose and mouth. “He smelled terrible,” she said, watching the drifter leave.

  “We’ve slept too long,” said Nura. “We should have been at the harbor already. The White Rat may have come and gone without our knowing, and the package with him.”

  Above them, the skies had filled with clouds, and through the trees they could see a few early visitors to the park glancing upward and fumbling with their umbrellas. Maxine pulled her mother’s red hat down tight and held out her palm to catch the opening notes of a May shower, while Nura wrapped her scarf around her head and shouldered her haversack, starting off without looking back.

  William glanced at Maxine and shrugged, and the two of them rose from their benches and trotted after.

  They hurried downtown under a steady rain that bloomed in perfect circles in the puddles on the street. Nura pulled a few coins from her bag, and they caught the Broadway trolley, which brought them all the way to Battery Park, to the gray harbor and the ships moored there, to the pier where the parcel was stolen.

  Across the waves Lady Liberty held her pale green torch aloft and searched the horizon while the children sat and waited and the morning passed into afternoon.

  A ferry landed from Ellis Island. A great press of tired, damp souls churned into the city, clutching their every earthly possession, glancing side to side in uncertainty as they pondered what might come next and then moved on.

  William and Maxine sat beneath a steady drizzle and watched the passing crowds. They began to believe they had come on a fool’s errand, that Nura’s thief would never darken this dock again. But just when they had convinced themselves that the entire day had been wasted, a particular individual among the host of weary immigrants caught William’s eye.

  It was a young man, a gangling, disagreeable-looking sort, wearing a white suit that rode high at the wrists and ankles and set him apart from the drab crowd like a pale scarecrow. He had a vulgar face with a wisp of a mustache, and a prominent Adam’s apple, and he moved among the skittish population of the Battery with a predatory air.

  William pinched the girls, and their sagging eyelids snapped open. He jerked his head toward the man, and Nura’s face went rigid.


  “The White Rat,” she said.

  The thief wandered the waterfront, casing the park, then turned and angled toward a huddle of young women in tattered shawls, sprawling on a bench behind them with a heavy sigh and a sideways glance. He popped a match with his fingernail, lit a cigarette, and pretended to stare off into the distance.

  The cluster of women glanced uneasily at the White Rat and edged away, and he tossed his spent match aside and cursed under his breath, surveying the park for less wary prey.

  His eye fell on Nura, who had been watching his charade with disgust. He smoothed an eyebrow and gave her a sneer, then rose and sauntered off, leaving a sickly-sweet waft of pomade in his wake.

  The cousins sat frozen in indecision, but Nura sprang to her feet and motioned wildly for them to follow.

  The white hat bobbed away, and the three children raced after, doing their best to stay out of sight. Hiding in doorways and behind street-corner postboxes, they darted through the constant stream of pedestrians on the sidewalk until the chase led them several blocks from the Battery, where the wet streets turned dank and desolate.

  The afternoon was dwindling. The White Rat turned off the waterfront down a lonesome boulevard lined by burned-out buildings and vacant lots overgrown with withered, whispering grass. The factories and warehouses here lacked the rigid perpendicularity of the living part of the city and loomed ponderously over the three children with a gothic malevolence. From a rooftop nearby they heard the cooing of a dove, and the sound was hollow and unearthly to their ears. If there were monsters in the city, this was where they lurked.

  The White Rat stopped at a boarded-up warehouse. In the light of a bare bulb, he glanced over both shoulders and descended into a gloomy stairwell.

  “Now what?” said William.

  “Let’s just wait a minute,” Maxine replied. “Maybe he’ll come back out.”

  They stood and watched from a distance, listening to the steady patter of the rain. Nura shivered and fingered the blue pendant that dangled at her neck.