“Just do this one thing, Professor,” Joel said. “Then I’ll go to bed.”
“Yes, well, all right,” Fitch said, getting out his chalk. He knelt to begin drawing on the floor.
“It makes things quiet,” Joel said. “You have to know that. It sucks in sound.”
“How do you know…?” His voice grew much quieter when he finished the drawing.
Fitch blinked, then looked up at Joel. “Well, that’s something,” he said, but the voice sounded far diminished, as if he were distant.
Joel took a deep breath, then tried to yell, “I know!” That was dampened even further, so it came out as a whisper. When he whispered, however, that sound came out normally.
Fitch dismissed the line. “Amazing.”
Joel nodded. “The ones we found at the crime scenes no longer worked, so the line must run out of power after a time, or something like that.”
“Joel,” Fitch said, “do you realize what you just did? You solved the problem your father spent his life trying to uncover.”
“It was easy,” Joel said, suddenly feeling very tired. “Someone gave me the answer—they tried to kill me with it.”
Chapter 22
Harding arrested Exton early the next morning.
Joel heard about it from Fitch as they crossed the green on their way toward the cathedral for Joel’s inception. Joel’s mother held to his arm, as if afraid some beast were going to appear out of nowhere and snatch him away.
“He arrested Exton?” Joel demanded. “It doesn’t make sense.”
“Well, hum,” Fitch said. “Murder rarely makes sense. I can see why you might be shocked. Exton was a friend of mine too. And yet, he never did like Rithmatists. Ever since he was expelled.”
“But he came back to work here!”
“Those who have intense hatred often are fascinated by the thing they detest,” Fitch said. “You saw that drawing at Charles’s house—the man with the bowler and the cane. It looks an awful lot like Exton.”
“It looks like a lot of people,” Joel said. “Half the men in the city wear bowlers and carry canes! It was a small chalk sketch. They can’t use that as proof.”
“Exton knew where all of the Rithmatist children lived,” Fitch said. “He had access to their records.”
Joel fell silent. They were fairly good arguments. But Exton? Grumbling yet good-natured Exton?
“Don’t worry about it, Son,” his mother said. “If he’s innocent, I’m sure the courts will determine that. You need to be ready. If you’re going to be incepted, you should be focused on the Master.”
“No,” Joel said. “I want to talk to Harding. My inception…” It couldn’t wait. Not again. But this was important. “Where is he?”
They found Harding directing a squad of police officers who were searching through the campus office. Principal York stood a distance off, seeming very dissatisfied, a weeping Florence beside him. She waved to Joel. “Joel!” she called. “Tell them what madness this is! Exton would never hurt anyone! He was such a dear.”
The police officer at her side quieted her—he was apparently questioning both her and the principal. Inspector Harding stood at the office doorway, leafing through some notes. He looked up as Joel approached. “Ah,” he said. “The young hero. Shouldn’t you be somewhere, lad? Actually, as I consider it, you should have an escort. I’ll send a few soldiers with you to the chapel.”
“Is all of that really necessary?” Fitch asked. “I mean, since you have someone in custody…”
“I’m afraid it is necessary,” Harding said. “Every good investigator knows that you don’t stop searching just because you make an arrest. We won’t be done until we know who Exton was working with, and where he hid the bodies … er, where he is keeping the children.”
Joel’s mother paled at that last comment.
“Inspector,” Joel said, “can I talk to you alone for a moment?”
Harding nodded, walking with Joel a short distance.
“Are you sure you have the right man, Inspector?” Joel asked.
“I don’t arrest a man unless I’m sure, son.”
“Exton saved me last night.”
“No, lad,” Fitch said. “He saved himself. Do you know why he got expelled from the Rithmatic program thirty years ago?”
Joel shook his head.
“Because he couldn’t control his chalklings,” Harding said. “He was too much of a danger to send to Nebrask. You saw how wiggly those chalklings were. They didn’t have form or shape because they were drawn so poorly. Exton set them against you, but he couldn’t really control them, and so when you led them back against him, he had no choice but to lock them out.”
“I don’t believe it,” Joel said. “Harding, this is wrong. I know he didn’t like Rithmatists, but that’s not enough of a reason to arrest a man! Half of the people in the Isles seem to hate them these days.”
“Did Exton come to your aid immediately?” Harding asked. “Last night?”
“No,” Joel said, remembering his fall and Exton screaming. “He was just scared, and he did help eventually. Inspector, I know Exton. He wouldn’t do something like this.”
“The minds of killers are strange things, Joel,” Harding said. “Often, people are shocked or surprised that people they know could turn out to be such monsters. This is confidential information, but we found items belonging to the three missing students in Exton’s desk.”
“You did?” Joel asked.
“Yes,” Harding said. “And pages and pages of ranting anger about Rithmatists in his room. Hatred, talk of … well, unpleasant things. I’ve seen it before in the obsessed. It’s always the ones you don’t expect. Fitch tipped me off about the clerk a few days back; something reminded him that Exton had once attended Armedius.”
“The census records,” Joel said. “I was there when Fitch remembered.”
“Ah yes,” Harding said. “Well, I now wish I’d been more quick to listen to the professor! I began investigating Exton quietly, but I didn’t move quickly enough. I only put the pieces together when you were attacked last night.”
“Because of the wiggly lines?” Joel asked.
“No, actually,” Harding said. “Because of what happened yesterday afternoon in the office. You were there, talking to Fitch, and he praised how much of a help you’d been to the process of finding the Scribbler. Well, when I heard you’d been attacked, my mind started working. Who would have a motive to kill you? Only someone who knew how valuable you were to Fitch’s work.
“Exton overhead that, son. He must have been afraid that you’d connect him to the new Rithmatic line. He probably saw the line when your father was working on it—your father approached the principal for funding to help him discover how the line worked. It wasn’t until some of my men searched his quarters and his desk that we found the truly disturbing evidence, though.”
Joel shook his head. Exton. Could it actually have been him? The realization that it could have been someone so close, someone he knew and understood, was almost as troubling as the attack.
Things belonging to the three students, in his desk, Joel thought, cold. “The objects … maybe he had them for … I don’t know, reasons relating to the case? Had he gathered them from the students’ dorms to send to the families?”
“York says he ordered nothing of the sort,” Harding said. “No questions remain except for the locations of the children. I won’t lie to you, lad. I think they’re probably dead, buried somewhere. We’ll have to interrogate Exton to find the answers.
“This is disgraceful business, all of it. I feel terrible that it happened on my watch. I don’t know what the ramifications will be, either. The son of a knight-senator dead, a man Principal York hired responsible…”
Joel nodded numbly. He didn’t buy it, not completely. Something was off. But he needed time to think about it.
“Exton,” he said. “When will he be tried?”
“Cases like these take months,” Harding said. “It won’t be for a while, but we’ll need you as a witness.”
“You’re going to keep the campus on lockdown?”
Harding nodded. “For at least another week, with a careful eye on all of the Rithmatist students. Like I said. An arrest is no reason to get sloppy.”
Then I have time, Joel thought. Exton won’t be tried for a while, and the campus is still safe. If it ever was.
That seemed enough for now. Joel was exhausted, worn thin, and he still had his inception to deal with. He would do that, then maybe have time to think, figure out what was wrong with all of this.
“I have a request of you,” Joel said. “My friend, Melody. I want her to attend my inception. Will you let her out of the lockdown for today?”
“Is she that redheaded troublemaker?” Harding asked.
Joel nodded, grimacing slightly.
“Well, for you, all right,” Harding said. He spoke to a couple of officers, who rushed off to fetch her.
Joel waited, feeling terrible for Exton sitting in jail. Potentially becoming a Rithmatist is important, Joel thought. I have to go through with this. If I’m one of them, my words will hold more weight.
The officers eventually returned with Melody, her red hair starkly visible in the distance. When she got close, she ran toward him.
Joel nodded to Harding and walked over to meet her.
“You,” she said, pointing, “are in serious trouble.”
“What?” Joel asked.
“You went on an adventure, you nearly got killed, you fought chalklings, and you didn’t invite me!”
He rolled his eyes.
“Honestly,” she said. “That was terribly thoughtless of you. What good is having friends if they don’t put you in mortal peril every once in a while?”
“You might even call it tragic,” Joel said, smiling wanly and joining his mother and Professor Fitch.
“Nah,” Melody said. “I’m thinking I need a new word. Tragic just doesn’t have the effect it once did. What do you think of appalling?”
“Might work,” Joel said. “Shall we go, then?”
The others nodded, and they again began walking toward the campus gates, accompanied by several of Harding’s guards.
“I guess I’m happy you’re all right,” Melody said. “News of what happened is all over the Rithmatic dorm. Most of the others are red in the face, thinking that the puzzle was solved and they were saved by a non-Rithmatist. Of course, half of the red-facedness is probably because none of us can leave yet.”
“Yeah,” Joel said. “Harding’s a careful guy. I think he knows what he’s doing.”
“You believe him, then?” Melody said. “About Exton, I mean.”