Sam was the first to move. He reached for the waiter but succeeded only in getting his apron, which promptly tore off in his hand.

The waiter ricocheted off a table, upsetting a bowl of soup and sending a chair crashing to the ground, where it promptly splintered. Everyone was shouting, and the women at the bar began to shriek.

The waiter made it to the door and tore off down Forty-Fourth Street.

The kids sprinted after him. Thomas was next out the door, and then Sam. Max followed them and Pippa came last, her breath high in her throat, her head pounding. Trying to read Paulie had left her exhausted and frustrated.

What good was being a mentalist if you couldn’t read minds?

When Pippa emerged onto the street, the waiter was already crossing Ninth Avenue. Thomas was fifteen feet behind him and gaining fast. Pippa tore after them, forgetting entirely to look both ways for traffic and throwing herself into the street. Several horns blared; an ice-cream truck swerved to avoid her, and she passed practically underneath a horse pulling a coal wagon, provoking an outraged whinny and a string of curses from the driver.

Thomas was gaining on the waiter. Ten feet, then seven . . . Pippa watched with her heart in her mouth as Thomas swung himself up onto a parked car and then vaulted like a gymnast into the air. . . .

At the last second, the waiter swerved, and Thomas landed hard, directly where the waiter had been a second before. He tumbled, did a somersault, and scrambled to his feet. But by then, the waiter had regained an advantage.

“Stop him!” Sam cried. “Somebody stop him!”

Two young men in sailor uniforms were approaching from the opposite direction. Hearing Sam shout, they braced themselves, intending to block the waiter’s progress. But he barreled through them at such speed that they tumbled backward, landing in a tangled heap on the sidewalk. Sam, bolting toward them, caught a foot on one of their knees and went sprawling down to the pavement, landing with a gigantic crack where the sidewalk split underneath his palms.

Ahead of Pippa, Max suddenly stopped and began rummaging in her pockets. Pippa just managed to swerve to avoid her.

“What are you doing?” she called over her shoulder. Max was crossing the street and didn’t seem to hear. “Come on!”

The waiter was nearly at Eighth Avenue, close to a big corner magazine stand. Once he reached Broadway, he could easily lose himself in the crowd or duck into any one of the theaters. It was up to her. . . . But she couldn’t run any faster . . . she was losing him.

Suddenly, there was a whistling in her ears, and she felt a hard breeze blow by her. Before she could register what had happened, the waiter was pinned against the side of a building, his shirt at his ears, struggling like a fish on a line. Pippa approached him at a trot.

Then she saw the knives—one on each side of his neck—keeping his shirt tacked to the wooden wall of the magazine stand.

Winded and panting, Sam and Thomas joined her. Max came last, darting out across the traffic from the other side of the street, where she must have planted herself to aim.

“Nice . . . going,” Sam said, gulping for air.

“Nothing to it.” Max shrugged.

“P-please.” The waiter was wiggling and squirming, desperately trying to pull himself free of the knives that had him pinned to the wall like a bug on a display board. “P-please. Let me go. I didn’t do nothing. I swear, I swear. I didn’t mean nothing by it.”

“Yeah?” Sam reached up and withdrew the knives. The waiter collapsed in a heap, moaning a little. “Then why’d you run?”

The waiter cowered, holding up both arms to shield himself as if worried that Sam might use the two knives to gouge out his eyes. His thin bottom lip was quivering. “You gotta believe me,” he said, and Pippa thought he might start to cry. “I didn’t mean nuthin’ by it. I was just doing my job, see?”

“Didn’t mean nothing by what?” Thomas said.

“The rats.” Now the waiter did start to sniffle. He ran a hand under his nose and Pippa was disgusted to see that it left a trail like that of a slug. She could only pray he would wash before returning to work.

Thomas and Sam exchanged a bewildered look. “What rats?”

“It’s part of my job, see?” the man continued. “When the rats start to get bad, I’m supposed to take the tin from the back and spread the poison around in the corners and the kitchen.” The waiter choked back a sob. “The rats was so bad on Wednesday I put extra out. Sprinkled it even in the shelves and under the tables. But I musta—I guess I musta accidentally got some in your uncle’s grub. See? But I swear—I swear!—I didn’t mean to!”

The waiter began to wail so loudly, several people on the opposite side of the street turned to stare.

“Shhh.” Max hushed him harshly. “Calm down, all right? No need to blubber like a baby.” But this just made the man wail even louder.

“What kind of poison do you use on the rats?” Thomas asked patiently.

“Cy—cy—cy—” the waiter blubbered.

“Cyanide,” Pippa breathed, and the waiter nodded. Thomas glanced meaningfully at the other three. Potts had been killed with cyanide. Could it have been an accident after all?

Thomas put a hand on the waiter’s shoulder. “Listen,” he said. “We’re not blaming you. We know you were just doing your job. But the police have to know, too. You have to—”

“WHAT IN THE DEVIL’S NAME IS GOING ON HERE?”

The four children turned all at once. Paulie had just appeared behind them, red-faced and panting, carrying a wooden spoon the size of a shovel. In between short gasps of breath, he continued bellowing.

“CRIMINALS—TERRORIZING MY STAFF—FALSE INFORMATION—OUGHT TO BE—THROWN IN THE CLINKER—”

“Let us explain,” Sam said, but Paulie paid him no attention. He rounded on the waiter, who was still cowering on the street and making himself as small as possible.

“And YOU!” Paulie roared, pointing his spoon at the waiter’s head as though he meant to begin beating him with it. “IDIOT! COURAGE OF A COCKROACH! BRAINS OF A BEETLE!”

“I’m sorry!” the waiter cried out. “I got scared. It was the poison that did it, Mr. Paulie, sir. When I heard their uncle got bumped off on the day I put out the p-poison for the rats . . .”

Paulie had at last regained his breath. Now he turned back to the four children. Pippa had to draw back as the spoon came dangerously close to her nose.

“Oh, no you don’t,” he said, leaning in close with his foul breath. “I see what you hooligans are playing at. Trying to pin this one on me and my restaurant. You’ll have me ruined. Ruined!”

“We ain’t trying to pin nothing on nobody,” Max said.

“Or anything on anybody,” Pippa corrected her.

“The fact is,” Sam said, “the police have the wrong guy. They need to know—”

“They don’t need to know a noodle! And they won’t, either.” Now Paulie spun back around to face the waiter, who had finally managed to stand up but shrank back as soon as Paulie’s gaze fell on him. “If I hear you so much as made a peep in the direction of the cops, I’ll have your head mounted on my wall for a hat rack. I’ll have you chopped up and served as stew! You understand me?”

The waiter’s eyes moved nervously back and forth. He pointed a finger at the children. “But—but—but they said—”

“I don’t give a rat’s tail what they said!” Paulie screamed so loudly, it looked as if all the veins in his neck would burst. On the corner, a woman and her poodle both gave an alarmed yelp. “I’ll ask you again: DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME?”

The waiter hung his head, so a curtain of hair swung down over his face. “Yes, Mr. Paulie, sir. I do, Mr. Paulie, sir.”

Paulie turned to the kids. “Now get out of here before I paddle you back into next Tuesday.”

Max smiled, showing all her teeth. “I’d like to see you try.”

“Come on, Max.” Sam put a hand on her arm. “We’re going,” he said to Paulie.

Paulie’s eyes followed them all the way down the street. Pippa could feel his stare like a beam of light boring into the skin on the back of her neck.

And suddenly, in one flash, she had him. She was traveling his gaze like a path, tunneling back through his eyes, parting the dark curtain of his mind. She was there, in, sifting through images . . .

She stopped short, crying out.

“What is it?” Thomas turned to her, alarmed.

Just as quickly, the images faded. She was shoved rudely out of Paulie’s mind and found herself blinking, stunned, on Forty-Fourth Street. It was the very first time she’d read a mind and not just the contents of someone’s purse or pocket. Her heart was beating very fast, and though the effort had exhausted her, she felt like bursting into song.

“I—I did it,” she said in a whisper. “I read his mind. It was quick and I didn’t get much, but I was in.”

“Did you get anything?” Sam asked gently.

Pippa shut her eyes, thinking. “I saw Potts at the table,” she said. “He was nervous.”

“We already knew that,” Max said. Pippa opened her eyes and frowned.

“What about the man he was with?” Thomas asked. “Think, Pip. Did you get anything on him?”

Pippa licked her lips and closed her eyes again. “I . . .” The image she’d seen in Paulie’s mind was there, clear as anything, but it made no sense at all. All of the energy drained out of her at once. “I . . . I saw a fish.”

“A fish?” Max practically screeched.

Pippa nodded miserably. Thomas sighed.

“That’s all right, Pip,” Sam said. “You did your best.”

“It was a green fish,” she offered.

“Probably because the whole thing stinks!” Max said. “I don’t believe for a second Potts died because of some rat poison.”

“I don’t know,” Thomas said quietly. “It’s always possible . . .” But he sounded unconvinced.

“And what about Hugo and Phoebe?” Max was getting worked up. “I bet they’re in this mess from their elbows to their eyebrows.”

Pippa shook her head. She thought of the exhausting morning they’d had. “All they did was shop,” she said. “Until we lost them, at least. They stopped at the dressmaker’s, the milliner’s, and Woolworth’s on Fifth Avenue. . . .”

“And where’d they get the cash for all that?” Max demanded, crossing her arms. It was a good question.

Thomas sighed and raked a hand through his hair, so it stood up practically on end.

“Tomorrow we’ll try again,” he said. “Sam and Max can follow Hugo and Phoebe. And Pip and I’ll sniff around Paulie’s again. Maybe you’ll be able to get a better read this time,” he finished, and Pippa blushed.

“Fine,” she said, trying not to seem offended.

They walked back in silence to the museum, tired, despondent, and no closer to freeing Dumfrey. But Pippa comforted herself with the thought that tomorrow they would have another shot. If there was a clue to be found in Paulie’s restaurant, she would find it.

But about this, she was wrong. Because that very same night, at exactly eleven, Paulie’s restaurant burned to the ground.