I turned to Noor and whispered, “You okay?” and she returned a tiny smile and a shrug that said, As I can be. Then she narrowed her eyes at something over my shoulder.
It was an apparently empty glass box. Above it a sign read THE ULTIMATE AND PENULTIMATE FLATULATIONS OF SIR JOHN SOANE, BUILDER OF THIS HOUSE.
“What was this Bentham guy’s deal?” Noor said. “Why’d he collect all this crap?”
“He was an obsessive, clearly,” said Addison. “With far too much time on his hands.”
“It ain’t crap,” a sharp voice said from across the room, and we all snapped our heads to see Nim appear from a patch of shadow. “Master Bentham’s peculiarium is treasurous and precious and I’d like to you leave at once, if it pleases you—or even if it don’t!”
He chased us onward, flicking at our heels with a broom.
As the others laughed about Nim, I wondered about Bentham. Was he just another obsessive nerd who, thanks to the Panloopticon he helped develop, happened to have access to vast swaths of the peculiar universe? Or was he squirreling away evidence of a world he feared his brother might one day obliterate? And if that was something he’d worried over, why hadn’t he done more to stop it?
Shoved into a corner, I spied the person-sized cases that had once contained people—living ones—paralyzed by some obscure temporal reaction and imprisoned here in a kind of sadistic wax museum. The kernel of pity I’d begun to feel for Bentham evaporated. Granted, in some sense he’d been a prisoner himself, kidnapped and forced against his will to work for the wights. And yes, he hated his brother and worked in various subtle ways to subvert Caul’s aims. But his efforts had not been enough. Noor and I weren’t entirely to blame for Caul’s resurrection. In the years he lived here Bentham must have had opportunities to destroy the Panloopticon or, better yet, kill his brother. But he hadn’t. What might he have achieved for peculiarkind if he’d been toiling alongside his sister for all those years rather than Caul?
The last of Bentham’s museum rooms had been turned into a photo studio, its walls covered in framed portraits. A cross-eyed photographer was dashing between his camera, a giant black box stamped with the words MINISTRY OF PHONO- AND PHOTOGRAPHIC RECORDS, and his subject, a small girl posing woodenly on a chair. A cluster of nervous kids waited nearby to have their turn, several clutching newly stamped temporal transit papers. The Ministry was documenting them almost as soon as they arrived, which wasn’t the usual procedure. As if they worried there might not be another chance.
We left the studio and came into a high-ceilinged vestibule. The walls here were so thickly covered in gilt-framed paintings that I could hardly tell where the door to Bentham’s office was, until I heard Miss Peregrine’s voice shouting from the other side of it: “Well then, what the devil are you up to down there? It certainly doesn’t seem like you know what you’re doing!”
“I think that’s Perplexus she’s slagging off,” Emma said.
“Yes, obviously the work is important!” Miss Peregrine said. “But you’re going to break Devil’s Acre if you continue failing this way, so either fix it, or find somewhere else to do your blasted experiments!”
“Maybe we should come back later,” Bronwyn said.
Enoch shushed us all and cupped his ear against the door—which then flew open. Miss Peregrine stood in the frame, the color high in her cheeks. “You’re back!” she cried, and, flinging out her arms, she engulfed us in a flutter of black fabric. “I thought . . . I thought . . . Well, never mind what I thought. You’re back.”
I caught a glimpse of Perplexus in the room behind her, but whatever drama we’d interrupted had been all but forgotten.
“I’m so glad to see you,” I whispered, and her stack of inky hair brushed my cheek as she nodded vigorously in reply. I’d often felt relief at seeing Miss Peregrine but never so much as I did right then, having spent the past several hours trying and failing to imagine the world, and my life, without her. And it struck me, in a way that seemed both obvious and profound, that what I felt for this strange, small woman was love. I clung to her for another moment after Noor disengaged from a nervous hug, both to assure myself she was there and because I was realizing with some astonishment how frail she seemed through the voluminous folds of her dress. It frightened me how much weight rested on such slight shoulders.
She let me go and stepped back to take us in. “My goodness, you’re soaked to the bone.”
“Me and Addison found ’em at Mr. Jacob’s house just ten minutes ago,” said Bronwyn, “and brought ’em straight to you.”
“Thank you, Bronwyn, you did the right thing.”
“Oh, you dears, you poor creatures!” called Miss Avocet from inside the room, and I looked past Miss Peregrine to see the elder ymbryne sitting by the window in a wheelchair. She gestured for us to come in, then snapped at two ymbrynes-in-training hovering nearby. “Ladies, fetch some clean towels, fresh clothes, Russian tea, and something hot to eat.”
They chorused, “Yes, miss,” and dipped their heads. One was named Sigrid, a serious-looking girl with perfectly round glasses, and the other was Francesca, Miss Avocet’s promising favorite. Enoch sighed and turned his head to watch Francesca go as she slipped past us. Then he caught me looking and immediately resumed his usual scowl.
“We need to talk to you in private,” I said to Miss Peregrine.
She nodded, and I wondered if she already knew what we’d come to tell her.
“Private?” Enoch’s scowl deepened. I could see he wanted to argue, but held back; perhaps the memory of her shouting at Perplexus was too fresh.
“I need you to go round up the others,” Miss Peregrine said to our friends. “Tell them Jacob and Noor have been found. Bring them all back to Ditch House and wait for us there.”
“Millard and Olive are searching the New York loop,” Emma said, consulting a thin watch on her wrist. “But they should be back any minute.”
“Go get them now, please,” Miss Peregrine said. “Don’t wait.”
“Yes, miss.” Emma gave Miss P a look that seemed to beg her not to keep them in the dark too long. “See you soon.”
Emma, Enoch, Bronwyn, and Addison went out. Perplexus cleared his throat irritably, reminding me he was in the room. “Mi scusi, Signora Peregrine, we haven’t finished—”
“I believe we have, Mr. Anomalous,” Miss Peregrine said in a pleasant but clipped tone, which coming from her was practically a shove out the door. He turned red and left muttering curses in Italian.
Miss Peregrine saw Noor rake rain-plastered hair from her neck and asked us if we wanted to change.