Ruby Redfort 1 - Look Into My Eyes (11 page)

Now, this was more like it
— question three was one of those questions that keep highly respected mathematicians up all night. Ruby furrowed her brow — for about twenty-eight seconds, then she grinned.

Oh, I get it.

When Froghorn walked back into the room, he found Ruby hunched over the test papers, chewing her pencil.

“Oh, dear, you seem to be stuck — too hard?” asked Froghorn, barely able to contain his mirth.

“Well, it’s just I’m sorta confused.”

“Never mind, little girl, it
is
a very difficult test — tricky for children to make sense of.”

“Oh, that’s a relief because this question didn’t make any sense at all.”

He looked over her shoulder.

(25) Spectrum agents Bret and Emily and Chuck are all driving to a Clairvoyants concert. They set off an hour before the concert. Bret takes route A which is twice as long as Emily’s route B but the average of their two routes is the same as Chuck’s route C. Trouble is Bret gets lost and goes 10 miles out of his way, meaning he ends up traveling as much as the combined distance Chuck and Emily travel. Assuming they all drive at 40 miles an hour, how late is Bret for the concert?

“I have to admit, less able people do find that a tough one.” He smiled meanly.

Ruby looked at him, all big-eyed innocence. “Oh, that’s not the problem. I get that the answer is fifteen minutes — it’s just I don’t get why anyone would travel for over an hour to go see a lame band like the Clairvoyants.”

Miles Froghorn’s mouth twisted into a mean little O. He snatched up the papers and stormed out of the room. Ruby wished she could tell Clancy about this super sap. She could just see Clancy’s expression, mouth wide, eyes blinking — boy, would she love to tell him all this.

While she waited, Ruby amused herself by doodling unflattering pictures of Froghorn in the back of her notebook — they were pretty good actually.

Twenty-five minutes later there were footsteps in the corridor and Ruby was relieved when it was Hitch who walked into the room and not the Silent G.

“Ready to go, kid?”

Ruby nodded.

Hitch motioned to the door. “Come on, then, let’s get out of here before Froghorn sees those unpleasant little cartoons you did of him.”

“Hey, how did you know about that?”

“I was watching you on the monitor. Not bad, you have a talent for caricature.”

“Thanks,” said Ruby. “Clancy and me are thinking of publishing our own comic book.”

“Good for you,” said Hitch.

They walked in silence for about fifteen seconds before Ruby blurted, “So?”

Hitch gave her a blank look.

“So, how did I do?” said Ruby.

“Oh, that,” replied Hitch. “Yes, well done — thirty-six out of thirty-seven. Not bad.”

“I got one
wrong
?” said Ruby, dumbfounded.

He winked. “Nah, kid. I’m just messing with you.”

Ruby stopped walking. “So you’re saying I passed? I musta passed, right? I mean thirty-seven out of thirty-seven, that has to be a pass.”

Hitch looked at her. “Don’t get your underwear in a twist kid. You passed.”

She tried to keep her cool but still, she
had
just passed the ninety-nine-second test; anyone would find themselves smiling about that,
wouldn’t
they?

When they stepped inside the elevator, Ruby asked, “So who is this mystery Bradley Baker guy?”

“Bradley Baker?” replied Hitch. “He’s no one.”

There were a lot of things Ruby didn’t know about Spectrum but one thing she was already sure about was that Bradley Baker was not “no one.”

*
TO TAKE THE 99-SECOND TEST, GO TO
WWW.RUBYREDFORT.COM

HITCH LED RUBY TO A RAINBOW-COLORED
office where Buzz was sitting. Her desk was a circle and she sat in the middle surrounded by telephones — each one a different color.

“Now what?” said Ruby.

“Now you wait here, good as gold until someone tells you otherwise,” said Hitch firmly.

“What am I waiting
for
?” asked Ruby.

“LB,” he said. “She wants to brief you — so don’t go wandering off, kid. Sit tight. That’s a rule, remember?”

Ruby
did
sit tight — for all of twenty-nine seconds. And then she had an idea. This might just be her chance to return the watch before anyone knew it was missing.

She looked over at Buzz, who seemed to be waiting for one of the fifty-two phones to start ringing.

“So that’s why you’re called Buzz,” said Ruby.

Buzz looked baffled.

“The phones, people always buzzing you?”

“No,” said Buzz. “That’s not why.”

It didn’t take long before one of the telephones
did
start to ring, the yellow one. Buzz picked it up and started talking in Japanese. That’s when Ruby stood up and signaled that she urgently needed to take a trip to the restroom.

“It’s OK,” she mouthed silently. “I know where it is, I’ll be fine.”

Buzz bit her lip anxiously and pointed at her watch to indicate “Don’t be long.”

Ruby opened the door and walked speedily down the corridor until she got to the restroom. She went in, took off her sneakers, and placed them in one of the stalls. This way if anyone were to come in, what they would see would be Ruby’s feet. She then silently slipped back out and ran softly up the corridor, remembering to turn right when she reached crimson, and left when it dissolved into cerise. The door, she remembered, was about halfway down. Now for the code. She recalled how Buzz had looked at her watch before she had punched in the numbers.

I’ll bet that’s it.

She pulled the Fly Escape Watch from her pocket, checked the dial, and punched in the exact time.

The door clicked open.
Too bad I gotta return this watch, it’s coming in kinda handy.

As she walked, the lights in the display cases popped on around her, the gadgets gleaming under the glass, like jewels at a jewelers. She went over to the drawer where the watch belonged and was about to open it when something caught her eye. It was a silver whistle — it looked like a dog whistle but the label was smudged. Maybe it was the ribbon, maybe it was the fact that she had always wanted a silver dog whistle, but Ruby found that she couldn’t resist slipping it over her head and looking at her reflection in the glass.

She blew into it — no sound at all. Surely it wasn’t
just
a dog whistle? She blew into it again and again, still nothing. In her frustration she started blowing and inhaling in the way that one might suck air in and out of a harmonica.

“Must be broken,” said Ruby out loud, but her voice seemed to be coming from far, far away.

Wow, so it’s a voice thrower.
She inhaled again. “Hello,” she said. This time her voice sounded as if it was coming from right behind her. She experimented some more — there were four little holes in the whistle, and whichever one her finger covered determined the direction her voice came from — north, east, south, or west of her. Point the whistle up — her voice was thrown above her.

It was precisely at the moment she called out the words, “I’m over here!” that someone else decided to enter the room.

Ruby quickly ducked down behind the cabinets.

“Did you hear that?” said a voice she didn’t recognize.

“Hear what?” said a second voice.

“Hey, these lights shouldn’t be on.”

“Must be something wrong with the sensors.”

“You think? Unless of course . . .”

“What? Someone set them off? Should I call security?”

Ruby froze.

Oh, boy, now I’m in trouble.

She was almost about to give herself up when the first voice said, “Well, either that or go get some bug spray — could be a large spider. You know how many spiders set off alarms and sensors? I’ll tell you,
a lot.
”

“Really? Must have been a pretty elephant-sized spider.”

“Don’t tell me you’re scared of spiders.”

“Not scared,” said the second voice, a little aggravated. “Just don’t like ’em is all.” Ruby could hear the footsteps moving toward her.

Darn it,
she mouthed silently as she tucked the whistle inside her T-shirt. Now she had managed to steal
two
things. She made herself very flat and began to crawl forward on her stomach. She could just about squeeze her way under the cabinets and make it to the door. Once in the corridor she sprinted as fast as she could to the restroom and retrieved her sneakers.

When she returned to her seat in Buzz’s office she was flushed and perspiring.

“You know, you don’t look so good,” said Buzz.

“Yeah, well, I don’t
feel
so good,” said Ruby sincerely. “But give me a few minutes and I’ll be OK.”

“So long as you’re sure.” Buzz looked concerned; she wasn’t used to queasy kids. “Well, if you’re really certain you’re OK,” she said warily, “LB wants to see you. I’ll walk you to the waiting area outside her office. Don’t go anywhere, don’t touch anything. In fact, don’t move until LB comes to get you.”

“Sounds like fun,” said Ruby.

No one was around, which gave her a good chance to snoop about. On the walls were big colorful paintings, all of them abstract. Some of them made your eyes ache to look at them.

LB must be a fan of op art,
thought Ruby. Her mother sold a lot of this kind of work at her modern-art gallery, and Ruby knew that it was usually very expensive. One entire wall was painted with concentric circles in colors that seemed to buzz and vibrate. Ruby stared at it so hard that she eventually lost her balance and fell forward. Putting her hands out to save herself, she unwittingly pressed a hidden catch, and what had looked like a wall sort of became a door and swung open.

Oops.

There in front of her was a room completely empty but for hundreds of black-and-white photographs, which covered the walls from floor to ceiling. Photographs mainly of people: people and cars, people up mountains and in jungles, people on elephants, people canoeing down rapids. One picture particularly intrigued her. It was of a youngish boy, sitting at the controls of an airplane and smiling at the camera. She guessed he must be the son of one of the agents. There was another of him scuba diving.

Lucky kid,
she thought. Up high on the far left was a picture of a man looking a huge crocodile in the eye. He was making a stupid face, his eyes were crossed and he appeared not even slightly bothered by the reptile. The man looked familiar but even with her glasses on Ruby couldn’t quite make out who he was or where she had seen him before. Curiosity getting the better of her, she dragged a chair from the lobby and climbed up to take a closer look.

“Well, I’ll be darned, he certainly is
some butler
!” she said out loud. Hitch could only have been about twenty in the picture, and out of a suit he looked quite different.

“So, you’re a snoop, Ruby Redfort.”

Ruby spun around, and losing her balance, she toppled off the chair and landed in an undignified sprawl on the cool rubber-coated floor.

She was eye level with a pair of bare feet — the toenails painted red.

“Oh, sorry, I didn’t mean to, it was sort of an accident, the door kinda opened on its own,” Ruby stammered.

“What next? It
wasn’t me
?” LB’s voice was chilly. She wasn’t mad — she was furious.

“I’m not making excuses or anything — just saying it was an honest accident.”

“You accidentally opened a concealed door? Accidentally dragged a chair into a private room? Accidentally stood on it and started accidentally examining my personal photographs? What complicated accidents you have.”

“Well, when you put it like that it sounds kinda bad,” said Ruby.

“Too much curiosity can be fatal,” said LB. “Something it is wise to remember.” This statement sounded a little sinister and Ruby quickly picked herself up off the floor. She noticed she had torn a hole in her jacket — a huge rip down the left sleeve — which only added to her humiliation.

“I’m sure I didn’t see anything important — by the way, that’s a very nice picture of you. When was it taken? You look kinda young, is that your boyfriend?” Ruby was pointing at a picture of a girlish looking LB, who was smiling warmly at a good-looking young man. However, the real life LB was not smiling, she was glaring. If Ruby thought she was going to distract LB with the old flattery and fast talk routine then it seemed she had a great deal to learn about LB.

“If it wasn’t for your test results and what we already know about you, I might be sorely tempted to think again.”

“Look, I’m sorry. I’m not a snoop, not normally anyway . . .”

“OK, cut the baloney, Redfort. You have one chance but use it carefully because right now I’m this close to telling you to take a walk.” LB was holding her thumb and forefinger very close to represent the amount of slack she was prepared to give Ruby — it wasn’t much, about a millimeter.

Ruby kept her mouth shut.

LB pointed at the chair and Ruby sat down, but before anything could be said, a light flashed on LB’s desk intercom.

She sighed an exasperated sigh and said, “Now, I am going to leave you for about three minutes, certainly no longer; try not to touch
anything.
Sit on your hands if you have to.”