The Orphan and the Mouse Read Online Free Page B

until you’re called to testify.”

Chapter Nine

    Randolph’s critics were right. The chief director was greedy, and he had long outstayed his usefulness. What they didn’t realize was that Randolph knew all this himself. And he further knew that as a result, his hold on power was tenuous.
    A better mouse would have given up his post and retired into respectable obscurity.
    But Randolph liked being chief director.
    He liked the way all the other mice had to be nice and pretend to like him. He liked ordering every mouse around. Most of all, he liked his pictures. Unlike pups or mates or subordinates, his pictures expected nothing and demanded nothing. They were faithful, constant, and beautiful. Other mice might make fun of him behind his back, but no mouse made fun of his pictures. Indeed, they wanted his pictures for their own.
    No, Randolph wasn’t ready to retire. And this was why, in recent months, he had resorted to extraordinary measures to protect his job. For example, when word had reached him that dissatisfied mice were organizing a Zelinsky takeover, he had spoken to some mice, who spoke to some mice, who put certain obstacles in the art thief’s way the next time he embarked on a mission.
    So much for Zelinsky.
    Then, having seen that the art thief job might be a springboard to higher office—his own office—he had suggested the appointment of Mary Mouse. Old-fashioned himself, Randolph couldn’t imagine any mouse taking seriously the idea of a female as chief director . . . until one day word reached him that times had changed, that he was wrong, that Mary Mouse might be a viable candidate in spite of her gender.
    All right, then. No problem. Randolph’s scheme to undermine Zelinsky had worked perfectly. There was every reason to think the same scheme would work again.
    Only it hadn’t. Instead, Mary Mouse had been seen by humans. The exterminator had been mentioned.
    And now Randolph faced an awful prospect. The life he loved was over. Because of his own machinations, he, Randolph, would not only have to abandon his precious pictures, he would have to bring his mice through the colony’s most severe crisis since its ancestors had migrated to Cherry Street from the Delaware River docks some fifty generations before.
    Randolph had many qualities desirable in a leader. He was intelligent, resolute, well organized, and—born with an unusually resonant squeak—a persuasive speaker. Now, having gotten himself and every other mouse into this dire predicament, he determined he would get them out . . . or die trying.
    And the first order of business was to drag his sorry bulk down from his divan, out of his nest, along the main pathway, and up the plumbing to the directors’ chambers on the second floor.

Chapter Ten

    The business of the emergency meeting of the Cherry Street directorate was soon accomplished. Once Mary had given her testimony, Randolph and his four colleagues agreed on the nature of the threat and the need for quick action. The challenges of moving more than a thousand mice were daunting, and thereafter most of the meeting was given over to logistical considerations.
    As for Mary Mouse, Randolph committed one more act of perfidy when he convinced the other directors that her ineptitude and bad judgment had brought down calamity on them all. In Randolph’s defense, he could hardly have told the truth. If he had, he would have been overthrown on the spot, leaving the colony leaderless in its darkest hour. Likewise, he could hardly have kept Mary around. Her insistence on an investigation into both her own thwarted mission and her mate’s disappearance would pose an ongoing threat to his authority.
    So it was that even though Mary was virtuous, smart, popular, and a mother—even though she had right on her side—she was sacrificed, her punishment the harshest possiblein the world of mice: exile. Every other