Old Faithful Plot

by Dora Benley

  "Such as what?" Dora gaped at the threatening car in the rearview mirror that was getting so close she feared it might ram into them.

  "The SA for one thing. Hitler's training troops to obey his command and his command only. It's like having a private army loyal only to him," Edward explained.

  In democratic states like England and America the army was hired by the country itself, not one upstart man.

  "And he sent them after us?" Dora asked the lead question.

  Edward nodded.

  In Trenton, New Jersey they hooked up with US 130 to Camden. They crossed the Delaware on the Delaware River Bridge into Philadelphia. They took 30 through Philadelphia to join the Lincoln Highway. They followed that out to the Main Line where they had to pass by Dora's old alma mater, Bryn Mawr College, where she had dropped out in 1915 because a saboteur hired by Hitler's predecessor, the Kaiser, was gunning for her thinking she had possession of the earliest Lawrence maps.

  They did not have time to stop at Dora's parents' other estate, Maywin, in the King of Prussia area, to pack more clothes. They were out in the country now, far away from New York City, following the Lincoln Highway. They took hairpin curves at forty miles an hour. It was difficult to see behind them for all the trees on each side of the road and the brush and bushes that practically touched the car as it tore past. But the men were keeping up. It had to be operatives sent by Hitler. Photographers employed by Michael would not have a darkened windshield.

  "Hitler is training some of them as spies. He is also trying to plant them at the Germany Embassy in London. That's what Winston tells me at least." He sounded disgusted as he took his foot off the accelerator and veered off the road at a big sign that said: Gettysburg National Military Park.

  "What are we doing here?" Dora was aghast as they pulled up to the Cyclorama Building.

  Chapter 3: Gettysburg

  Dora's question remained unanswered as Edward leaped out of the car and hurried around to her side of the vehicle. He yanked her out and did not answer as she was propelled inside the building in front of them. She found herself standing in a room with lots of postcard racks and souvenirs of Confederate and Union flags and soldier's caps. Behind a cash register stood a lady selling tickets. Edward shoved Dora right up there.

  "When is your next tour of the battlefield?" Edward pressed before the cash register attendant could even ask him.

  "The last one departed about half an hour ago." The attendant was at first taken aback by his British accent as all Americans seemed to be. Then she glanced at the clock.

  The lady after all could not guess that they were being pursued by secret foreign agents. Dora took out a twenty and handed it to the clerk. "Could you please see if you could find us a tour guide who is free to give us a tour of the battlefield? My husband was counting on it. We don't have very long before we have to leave."

  The lady was amazed at the big bill and very impressed. It was obviously much more than they usually charged. "Just a minute, miss," she excused herself.

  When she was gone Dora hissed at Edward, "We seem to have lost the thugs following us. Why are we here? I do not remember that you had an interest in American Civil War battles."

  Edward glanced back at the door through which they had just come. He looked down at his pocket watch. "I give the goons another ten minutes. I bet they show up. No doubt they have been instructed to shadow us and make us uncomfortable, maybe worse, to see if they can get us to relent and hand over the maps."

  Dora looked uneasily over her shoulder as the lady came back into the room with a guide in uniform. "Mr. Parker will show you around," the attendant informed them.

  Just as they were leaving the room with the tour guide, one set of pursuers showed up as Edward had predicted. It was obviously Hitler's agents. It could not be anyone else eying them like that and whispering to each other. The two men did everything except point.

  Edward slipped his arm around Dora's waist and whispered into her ear, "The tour guide is an employee of the United States government. Remember the War Department runs this place. And look! He is armed."

  She nodded. So that was why they had come here!

  The tour guide showed them one glass case of exhibits after another featuring antique rifles, bullets, and soldier's uniforms from the Civil War battle seventy years before. In one corner stood a real antique cannon. The tour guide seemed totally unaware at first of the two hangers on who were shadowing them at a distance inside the museum.

  "Some of these uniforms and guns were brought here by veterans, you know, who fought in America's biggest war. Those are the very same veterans who are going to get together — the few survivors who are left, that is — from July 1 to July 3 right here where you are now standing for the seventieth anniversary of the battle. They were just lads at the time. Two of them were only twelve."

  Edward was always quick to comment in his sterling British accent that took Americans aback when they first heard it. "The American Civil War is far more worth commemorating than the last war of this century that does not seem to have accomplished much of anything except to cause even more trouble."

  Edward always grumbled about the Great War that had produced Adolf Hitler, an Austrian corporal who had now risen to the head of the German state. In 1919 Hitler had been recruited by the army to help fight Communists in the streets of Munich by the chief German generals who had directed the Great War, Paul von Hindenburg and Erich Ludendorff. And Hindenburg was still supporting him! He had been good at talking, so he had been selected to espouse their militaristic cause to the people. He had joined the original National Socialist Party and had quickly risen to the head of it, beating off other rivals. There had been an unsuccessful coup in 1923. Hitler had landed in jail. But he had gotten out again only to cause more trouble. Finally the stock market crash of 1929 had given him the final momentum he needed to be elected Chancellor.

  Hitler's agents were eyeing them from across the room right now as Dora and Edward pretended to examine the antique Civil War rifles in the Cyclorama's small museum.

  "An Englishman!" The tour guide was astonished. "Sir, I welcome you here." The guide shook Edward's hand. "We always like to get a visitor now and then from Great Britain. Shame that Europe is in the bad shape it is now. Dictators!" He spat. "America tried to help. Sorry that it didn't do much good. You should consider resettling in the States, sir. Far better place than Europe these days if you ask me."

  Dora slipped her arm through Edward's. "My father tells Edward that all the time. But Edward's the old style English gentleman." She hugged him. "In the British army, too. That's why I married him."

  Dora and Edward always pretended that they were married when they were traveling together. She even had a ring that she could slip onto her finger for such special occasions so she could look authentic and no questions were asked. Edward had given it to her as an engagement ring all the way back in 1915 when they were first engaged. She called it her Crusader diamond ring set in gold. It was a Ware family heirloom that had supposedly been passed down since the Middle Ages when an ancestor of Edward's gave it to his ladylove right before riding off to the Third Crusade with King Richard the Lionhearted. That was one major reason why she liked to slip away from Pittsburgh to rendezvous with Edward in New York City. She could wear her favorite ring that otherwise had to spend time in the jewelry box or get worn on a necklace.

  But this time Dora's rendezvous with Edward had gotten way out of hand and turned into an international escapade!

  Mr. Parker showed them the famous Gettysburg Cyclorama next. The couple stepped into the room and were surrounded by the vast painting about the battle on every side.

  "This was painted by Paul Dominque Philippoteaux in 1884," the man began as the goons showed their ugly faces at the entrance to the room.

  "This is a private tour!" The guide warned the intruders off. "The next
regular tour starts tomorrow morning at nine sharp. Please return then and join it in the visitor's center main waiting room."

  The goons looked at each other and nodded.

  As soon as the intruders left the room, Edward gave Dora the eye. All he had wanted was to get rid of the German spies to begin with. He waited just long enough for them to be safely out of sight. Then he interrupted the guide. "But my wife and I are not here for long. Only an hour or two." He ostentatiously glanced down at his gold pocket watch. "The Cyclorama is nice, but maybe you should just show us the way to the battlefield. We can take a couple of photos and leave."

  Dora nodded. "Sorry, but we do have to rush out of here."

  The guide started to lead them back the way they had come.

  "No, no!" said Edward. "Isn't there another exit? Something more direct?"

  They were in luck as Mr. Parker let them go straight through the exit down the back staircase, talking all the way. They emerged into the daylight. When Mr. Parker was not looking Edward pulled her by the hand past the high point of Pickett's Charge towards where their car was still parked. He was backing up before she had even slammed the door shut. They were out of the parking lot before the spies shadowing them even realized they were gone. The spies must assume they were still cloistered with the tour guide in the Cyclorama room.

  They were back on Pennsylvania Route 30 in no time, the Lincoln Highway, speeding past the monuments to Union generals John Buford and John Reynolds and the Gettysburg auto camp.

  Who knew how long they had to lose themselves before Hitler's spies got the idea where they were? Edward pressed down on the gas pedal as they zoomed off.

  Chapter 4:

  After this the road started to become particularly hilly as they headed toward the Alleghenies and the Michaux State Forest. Tall pine trees closed in around them. Dora could hardly see any distance out of either side of the car. If it were not for the traffic signs, she would not know where they were for sure. Just past McConnellsburg they reached the Tuscarora Summit.

  "Edward," Dora objected, "where are we going?" She kept on glancing in the rearview mirror and behind her to make sure that they were not still being followed by Hitler's goons.

  "By tomorrow I think we will reach your parent's house in Pittsburgh," he said.

  "You know that is the last place we can hide!" She could not believe Edward had suggested that. He knew all about Michael. Michael had showed her a gun that he had purchased. He had sworn that he would shoot Edward if he ever caught sight of him.

  Edward sighed as he patted Dora's thigh. "I do not see how we can avoid Pittsburgh this time, darling. We have got to take on supplies," he warned her. "Call ahead. Find out when Michael will not be there. The detectives he hired, the ones who were busily snapping photos of us in the hotel room, would not think we would dare to show up there. Going there is like attacking your enemy on his home turf. A perfect defensive technique. The best defense is a good offense now and forever."

  Edward was always giving her this military logic. She supposed that was what she bargained for when she became engaged to a British lieutenant who over the years had become a British colonel. What she was really afraid of was that if Michael tried to shoot Edward, Edward would kill Michael before he got out gun out of his pocket.

  "Supplies! You make it sound as if we are equipping ourselves for an Antarctic Expedition," Dora protested. "Where is Winston sending us this time?"

  Back in the early twenties Winston Churchill had been responsible for sending them on a grand romp to Germany to intercept and retake documents that Hitler had stolen in Munich. Hitler did not know about her then. He had no idea what Mrs. Byrne looked like. She pretended to be a fan among the people of Munich crowding into the Hofbrauhaus Restaurant in the downtown area. She even disguised herself in traditional Bavarian dress and managed to grab what was needed. It did not matter if she was held up on a train afterwards as she tried to escape. It was all in the call of duty as far as Winston Churchill was concerned!

  Another time Edward was visiting her in 1929 and the stock market crashed. Hitler had reached a low point, but he immediately sensed an opportunity to consolidate his losses and push ahead with new funding. He lured the Prince of Wales to be his backer and give away a lot of the British Treasury to the Nazis. Churchill, Edward, and Dora pursued Hitler's agents across the Atlantic all the way to Munich and the damned same Hofbrauhaus once more. They had to practically snatch His Majesty from Adolf Hitler's clutches and sail back to London with him in tow.

  Edward never stopped looking distracted as he pushed the automobile to the limits. "Winston and I have not decided yet on the exact rendezvous point for exchanging maps. I have got to get rid of the maps before they are stolen. Winston said he is sending an agent to take them from me. He does not think he can get away from England himself right now. His agent is embarking today from the port of Southampton."

  "Why, that would be at least another four days before the ship can get to America!" She did the arithmetic. "And then the agent has to find us God knows where." Dora began to get the idea.

  "I would say a week," Edward said. "After all when Churchill's agent gets to New York he can board a train to wherever we find ourselves as long as we stay decently near a rail line, which should not be too difficult."'

  "Great!" Dora leaned back against the seat. "As long as we have not made our way to the Alaska territory or Hawaii by then." She sighed. "I don't think you can get there by train."

  "We have to stay in the Continental United States for sure," Edward assured her. "After all this is serious. Hitler is really intent on these Lawrence maps. There are at least two German agents that we have run into. For God's sake, there may be more for all we know! Churchill's agent has to be able to find us and get back to Britain unmolested. Churchill has got to hide those maps himself mightily quickly."

  "What a consolation! We have to stay in the continental United States." Dora could not believe it. "Unlike Western Europe which is tiny by comparison, the United States is over three thousand miles from coast to coast!"

  She could remember from sad personal experience all the complications of hiding the Lawrence maps, key to world domination. Once they had been forced to stash them in the British Museum in London near the Rosetta Stone. At other times they had been in the frames of paintings, under oriental rugs in the floorboards, in Greek buildings in the gardens of estates, in Paris at the Foreign Ministry, in a tent in the Syrian Desert, and she had even kept them in her bedroom in Oakhurst outside Pittsburgh during the Great War. It did not matter if a spy from the Kaiser had showed up in her garden shed. She had been forced to shoot him herself.

  Dora shuddered at the very memory of that impasse right now, looking down at her finely gloved hands, hoping it was never to be repeated. Still she carried a gun in her handbag. Lawrence of Arabia himself, the author of the famed military maps that taught the onlooker how to take all sorts of important places in Europe and the Middle East, and how to defend them, too, had been the very one who had urged her to use a gun to defend the works of his genius.

  "Tonight wherever we find it safe enough to stay we will bunk down. But we have to call Viola and get the news about that rat Michael. Is he ready to pounce on us or what? Then we can snatch whatever you need in Pittsburgh while I call Churchill again from your house," Edward instructed her.

  Dora remembered that her father had specially equipped the house in Oakhurst to be able to carry on long distance transatlantic phone calls for his business, Benley Tire and Rubber.

  "That is why tomorrow Churchill and I have to decide on a final destination where to meet Churchill's agent. After that we have to rely on sending cables and receiving them to keep in touch which is not convenient and exposes us more readily to others spying on us," Edward sighed.

  As Edward continued to jawbone her about his plans, they entered the town of Breezewood. I
t was getting dark out. It was obviously the end of the road for today. They had to find a place where they would not be too conspicuous and where they could hide their car, their scanty luggage, and themselves.

  "Too many tourists here," Edward complained. "We want something even more private."

  They drove a little farther into the Appalachian Mountains. They crossed the Bedford Narrows Bridge into the tiny town of Bedford on the Lincoln Highway. They needed to find a place to stay overnight where they could also eat. They had not had dinner yet. And they were getting low on gas.

  Edward had to slow down as the road narrowed into a double covered wooden bridge spanning a gap in the road. He pulled off the highway at an art deco gas station, Dunkle's Gulf, and filled up in a big hurry. Dora ran in to pay while Edward cleaned the windshield. The station walls were a creamy color of terra-cotta. Glass Coke bottles sat out on the counter for sale. She almost grabbed one, but they were in a hurry and she did not want to do anything to make herself more conspicuous in case they were still being followed.

  As they drove down the main road, establishment after establishment flaunted "no vacancy" signs out front. Dora could not imagine what they were going to do. It was getting late, and they still had not found a place to sleep.

  The road turned a tight bend. They climbed toward an overlook. Finally they pulled up to the S.S. Grand View Point Hotel hanging off the edge of a mountain. At least this looked like a bigger establishment. They would probably have a room. They were not flashing a NO VACANCY sign out front.

  As Dora and Edward gathered their possessions together and started to leave the car, Dora thought she heard voices in the darkness in the parking lot. The goons that they had last encountered in Gettysburg could not possibly be here right now, could they? They had not been following them when they left the battlefield. Had they?

  Chapter 5: Grandview Point Hotel

  Edward obviously did not want to linger in the parking lot. Dora could tell as he hustled her inside to the front desk and paid for a room on the fifth floor. The rooms did not go any higher.