Old Faithful Plot (Edward Ware Thrillers Series Book 7)

by Dora Benley

  Dora could now discern in the early morning sunlight that the iconic hotel was painted all white with chimneys made to look like ship's smokestacks as a curiosity. But it hardly mattered now. They were leaving the hotel behind in a cloud of smoke as they zoomed away from the Bald Knob Summit at 2906 feet. Dora recalled all the tourist literature from the check in desk and the restaurant where they had eaten dinner last night. She shook her head. Pursued by spies and detectives, Mrs. Byrne could have cared less at this moment that from that vantage point where the hotel stood a tourist could see three states and seven counties — and perhaps even that rascally brown bear who had appeared in the hallway and in her nightmares last night.

  As they headed down the Seven Mile Stretch where Dora could see from ridge to ridge, she was too busy today to gawk out the window or to stop to take a photo. She was checking all around for spies.

  Mile after mile of road got put between them and the creepy photographers whom they had to assume spent the night at the hotel. But they must not have gotten up as early, and Edward and Dora had made a successful escape.

  Edward dared to pull off the road at the Zeppelin Cafe in Jennerstown before any of the tourist buses got there for the day. Her fiance's eyes opened wide at the building which was built in the shape of a dirigible, or zeppelin. He shook his head at what Americans would think up next.

  They entered the odd-shaped tourist resort, which Dora and her parents had seen on numerous occasions. The Colonel sat her down at a counter with stools (at least nobody else was there right now!) and ordered two complete breakfasts for fifty cents each. At least Edward usually came to America with all the small change he needed for a visit. She had to step in only for very large sums like the unexpected Phaeton. She warmed her bones with the hot coffee with cream and sugar and tried hard not to think about anything else for the moment.

  Edward had to put up with the hot coffee. At roadside stops like this they frequently did not serve English breakfast tea which the British preferred. Besides, the coffee would keep him awake for all the many miles of driving ahead before they reached Pittsburgh, which they had to reach today or else.

  After scrambled eggs and flapjacks washed down by orange juice and hot coffee with a side of grapefruit, Dora excused herself while Edward paid for the meals and bought a map to study of the route ahead through western Pennsylvania. He spread it out on the counter before him. He had never driven this way before. The last time he had come so far about fourteen years ago, he had arrived by train. All other times they had stayed strictly in New York or on one occasion in 1929 headed back to Europe together.

  Dora washed her hands and tried to freshen up combing her hair and putting on a touch of lipstick and powder. But out the bathroom window looking towards the tourist camp with cabins, she thought she saw two all too familiar men in trenchcoats emerging from one of them and closing the door behind them. Her hair stood up on end and she backed away towards the door.

  Weren't those the goons from Gettysburg? The spies Hitler sent to America to chase down Edward and steal the Lawrence maps? Those maps were about as misplaced in rural backcountry Pennsylvania as the Rosetta Stone would be. Sure enough years ago that was where she and Edward had been forced to stash the maps during an inside job in the British Museum. That clever move had been made possible only by a friend of Lawrence's, Leonard Woolley. But where was Leonard Woolley now? Certainly not where he ought to be — at Dora's elbow in backcountry Pennsylvania where Woolley had probably never visited once in his life.

  She wished she knew somebody in back country Pennsylvania with connections, maybe with a pack of nasty dogs to finish off those two troublemakers and prevent them from haunting them every step of the way to Pittsburgh. She flew towards Edward still sitting at the counter. He was marking the map of Pennsylvania with a pen. She tapped him on the shoulder. When he did not respond at once, she hissed in his ear, "Edward, we've got to go right now! Hitler's henchmen are advancing on the breakfast counter."

  He looked up towards the door where they had entered startled.

  "No!" she pointed behind her. "They are coming up the hill from behind the restaurant. It's where the tourist camp is located, where the cabins are."

  He grabbed her by the elbow and catapulted her out of the restaurant. Christ!" he spat. "Not a moment's peace! It seems that between Michael and Hitler every other person we meet will be after us. Forget about the Fascist Dictator Mussolini in Italy. Hitler ought to form a pact with your husband, darling."

  He stepped on the gas and zoomed away. She looked over her shoulder. Sure enough the creeps were approaching the door to the Zeppelin Diner. If she had not spotted them in the middle of nowhere, by now there could be real trouble. Had they been hired to gun them down and make away with the goods? She would not put anything past Hitler.

  Chapter 8:

  Dora and Edward had to put the Allegheny Mountains behind them before they could get to Pittsburgh. They crossed Chestnut Ridge and Laurel Ridge. They had to make another unlikely stop at an amusement park of all things, Idlewild Park in Ligonier about fifty miles from Pittsburgh, to use the facilities. There was nothing else for miles around.

  As Dora waited outside the men's room, she saw none other than Hitler's German spies who were no doubt making their way to Pittsburgh, too. They were talking to each other in a dark corner. They must have been informed that Dora hailed from there and would be likely to return there if she felt threatened or pursued. Either that or somehow the agents had caught sight of Dora and Edward and were following them at a distance.

  She stepped behind the outhouse building and concealed herself until Edward came out of the men's room. She pointed out the spies. He shoved her onto a train ride that was just leaving the station. He climbed in beside her.

  "I have to talk to Churchill later today. We have to make plans about where to hand over the maps. Here I am stranded at a blasted amusement park outside Pittsburgh!" Edward clutched his fists.

  She slipped her hand over his and squeezed it. In this sort of odd predicament it was hard to say exactly what would happen next.

  Finally they climbed back into the Phaeton after the German agents had disappeared and the amusement park train ride had ended. They were underway again. Edward drove all the way through East McKeesport on the outskirts of Pittsburgh, which was lined with tourist lodgings on the Lincoln Highway. He crossed an iron bridge built in 1925 right next to the Westinghouse Electric Plant in East Pittsburgh and then crossed into Forest Hills. They found themselves on the parkway surrounding downtown Pittsburgh. The skies were getting darker. Clouds of smoke from the blast furnaces drifting out of the city blew across the three rivers.

  Dora had to guide him to Bethel Boro through Castle Shannon where many of the steel workers and those who worked in her father's plants lived. She hoped that the Germans would not be able to follow them through the internecine streets of suburban Pittsburgh where only locals knew where to go.

  Especially private and hidden was the entrance to her parents' house just off Bethel Church Road. It was unmarked. They had to make a sharp right onto what looked like a narrow gravel road that was only one lane. She shivered as they passed the solitary, empty house she had shared with Michael for all too many years, though they were rarely at home at the same time and though she could tell by the absence of Michael's car in the driveway that he was not at home right now either.

  Then they made another sharp right down a gravel drive that was essentially her parents' driveway. They passed the shed and garage where she had once encountered a saboteur during the Great War who had been seeking the first Lawrence military maps ever drawn. She had been forced to shoot him and kill him to save her own life. She clasped Edward's hand and squeezed it hard.

  Finally they stopped in the lower drive right below the front steps that led up to the front door. The upstairs bedroom window burst open. The Italian maid peeked her head out. "Miss Dora, you and your English lord can't stay here. It's not saf
e." She gesticulated down at them. "Two strange men with German accents came here about an hour ago. They were asking for you." Viola warned them as she waved her arms about. She shook her head "no" and scowled.

  "What did they look like?" Edward leaped out of the Phaeton.

  The maid described them briefly.

  Dora nodded. "That is them all right, the same two we narrowly avoided this morning at breakfast, the two goons that Hitler sent across the Atlantic to follow Edward around."

  Viola crossed herself at the mention of the Dictator. "I got rid of them. whoever they are. I said I didn't know anything. I even said you did not live here anymore." She waved her arms about for emphasis. "But that tipped me off that I would see you and your English lord next and very soon. I was right."

  Dora leaped out of the car and raced up to the front door. She embraced the maid who was like a second mother to her. Viola had been with her over the years of her wild and adventurous relationship with the English lord from the time when she first left America on May 1, 1915 to sail to England for her father's tire deal with Sir Adolphus Ware, Edward's father, to when she returned home to Pittsburgh as one of the survivors of the sinking of the Lusitania, to when she had to fight off saboteurs during the Great War, one of whom made her trolley jump the tracks. Viola was there when Dora got locked in her bedroom by her parents for engaging in dangerous activities though she was in her twenties at the time. She was there when Dora climbed out the window and ran away to reach her British lord, escaping to Paris at the time of the Paris Conference in 1919.

  The maid had been there when Dora thought that Edward was dead and married Michael Byrne instead. She had also answered the door the day when Edward Ware first showed up after he returned seemingly from the dead in late 1919 to claim Dora again. She was the one Dora confided in about her comings and goings in New York at the Waldorf Astoria with Edward Ware. It was fitting that Dora and Edward should both turn to Viola first to help them fight off Hitler's spies who were now in hot pursuit.

  "We need to stock up the car for what might possibly be a long trip," Dora told the maid. "I hope nobody is here right now."

  Viola shook her head "no". "Not a soul. Your parents are both downtown at the Duquesne Club entertaining clients."

  "I have got to make a phone call to Winston Churchill." Edward brushed past them standing in the door way. He entered the house as if he owned it and turned right into the living room and the parlor. Dora's tycoon father, Mr. Benley, President of Benley Tire and Rubber, had all the latest equipment and could make international phone calls if need be.

  Viola glared at the Lincoln Phaeton alone in the driveway drawing attention to itself as if it could be a big problem. She glanced up the drive to see if anyone else was coming, grumbled to herself, and locked the front door behind them. Sighing and warning Dora about the dangers of hitching herself to a lord with such precarious connections, she led the heiress back into the kitchen.

  "I don't know how many times you almost got yourself killed, Dora!" Viola groaned. "And all while following this English lord about."

  The housekeeper started to prepare a quick lunch for the two of them and a picnic basket for a possible dinner on the road. In the background they could hear Edward talking to the backbencher far away in London in his crisp, British accent.

  Edward's voice was drowned out by the sizzling sound of the hamburgers grilling on the stove. Viola was preparing bacon slices on a separate burner. She flipped them into homemade white buns with pickles, lettuce, and tomatoes. She heated some of her freshly made Italian minestrone soup. She grated Parmesan cheese on top of it and set the table in the dining room where Dora had eaten countless meals over the years prepared by none other than the Benley maid and cook, Viola.

  Viola's husband, Frank, emerged from the basement where he had been shoveling coal into the furnace.

  "Frank," Viola hissed at her husband, dramatically throwing her hands up into the air, "put up a barrier at the entrance to the road so nobody can come down the driveway and surprise us at lunch. Dora is here with her fancy English lord."

  Frank's eyebrows shot up. He smiled at Dora. He nodded as if he understood perfectly and was in on the conspiracy against the rest of the world. He hurried out the sitting room door onto the patio and up the driveway the way she and Edward had just come. He leaped over a rock and hurried on his way. Keeping them safe here for only a couple of hours was amounting to a major military maneuver.

  Chapter 9: 3121 Bethel Church Road

  Dora was seated sipping Italian lemonade made fresh today by Viola using both lemons and limes. Edward finally entered the dining room shaking his head and sighing, which could not be good. He plopped down unceremoniously in the seat Viola had prepared for him across the table.

  "What have you and Churchill concluded?" Dora broke the silence as she bit into her cheeseburger complete with a thick slice of cheddar cheese and lots and lots of Heinz ketchup. There was so much ketchup that she had to use her napkin to wipe a smear off her cheek.

  Edward lifted up the top of the bun to peer down his long aquiline nose at it. Evidently he had never seen anything quite like it before to judge by the expression of disdain on his face. He was being confronted with still another affront, an Americanism just like the strange Zeppelin Diner where they had been forced to eat breakfast this morning on the Lincoln Highway. But Dora knew her Edward. After a delay of a few seconds, he bit into it anyway as if it were military fare and because he was hungry.

  "Dora, I do not have the best news," he began.

  She nodded. That was only to be expected. After talking to Winston Churchill, there was usually some new kink or development with the Chancellor of Germany. And that was always bad news.

  "Winston says we have got to meet somewhere nobody could find us, somewhere nobody could associate with us. Pittsburgh is your home territory, darling. We have got to venture a lot farther afield," Edward announced.

  "What does he suggest?" she was almost afraid to ask. "Winston never lacks for ideas and suggestions."

  "He had a map spread out in front of him. He suggested that since we are on the Lincoln Highway we keep on following it until we get to —"

  "It goes all the way to California!" She dropped her burger. She picked up the uneaten Heinz pickle and slipped it back inside the bun.

  "California is associated with your family, too. Your father has ships that come into the port of Long Beach and import rubber to make tires," Edward said. "You have a family compound there on Coronado Island even though I have never visited it."

  "How far do we go then?" she questioned him.

  He spread out the map he must have purchased this morning on the Lincoln Highway. He pointed to a place that truly did seem to be in the middle of nowhere.

  "But that's out west!" she exclaimed. "It is in Wyoming, in fact," she read the map. "I have — I have never been there in my life."

  "Neither have I," he sighed, "but that's where Churchill is sending his agent to meet us and take the maps from me."

  She stared even harder at the map. "Yellowstone National Park?" She could not believe it. She was dumbfounded.

  He nodded as he folded up the map. "Winston thinks it is perfect. It is indeed in the middle of nowhere. But at the same time it is a fashionable hideout for the rich and famous, which ought to suit you. They have hotels and cabins that you can rent as well as restaurants, and he has already reserved something for us at some place called the Old Faithful Lodge. But we have got to make it there first."

  "You mean we are going to drive all the way to Wyoming?" she asked in horror.

  Edward nodded as he slid the map into his pocket.

  When Viola heard the verdict she rolled her eyes toward the ceiling, but hurried to finish packing the picnic basket which she had Frank hustle into the waiting automobile in the driveway for the couple's dinner on the road. Apparently there were very few stops from Pittsburgh to the Ohio border.

  Dora hurried upst
airs to the room she had slept in since the time when she had been a little girl except for the brief intermission when she had lived alone in an upstairs room in Michael's house. She remembered hiding the Lawrence maps here in the closet during the war. She wished she could hide the maps here again so Winston did not have to send an agent to pick them up in Wyoming and take them back to England.

  But during the war the maps had almost cost Dora her life. The Kaiser had sent a saboteur to hide in her shed along the driveway. If she had not killed him, he would have killed her. Hitler would have the information and would look here again, too. Edward was right. They had to get out of here.

  Dora threw a few last minute items into a suitcase. Unlike the one in New York, this time they might actually be able to pack it. She even got out a winter coat in case it snowed in June farther west. She kissed Viola good-bye and hugged Frank.

  "Am I supposed to tell your parents you were here?" Viola asked.

  Dora thought hard. She did not want her mother blabbing to Michael. She shook her head "no".

  Then she climbed into the front seat of the car next to Edward. She waved as they were making their way up the drive shadowed by Frank in the lead automobile. He had to remove the barriers he had placed at the head of the drive to prevent even Michael from entering. But as luck would have it when they got to the entrance to the drive her parents themselves were arriving back from the Duquesne Club. They had been stopped by the barrier and were honking.

  Dora thought, Oh no! and cringed.

  In an awkward moment Winthrop Benley was shouting at them in fury. He was raising his fist off the steering wheel as Frank hurriedly removed the barrier. Frank was exclaiming in Italian and throwing his arms about gesticulating as he worked. Edward averted his gaze during the whole lamentable proceeding. When Dora was driving she would urge Edward in a situation like this to dive under the seat. But this time her British lord was all too conspicuous in the driver's seat.