The Final Gambit

by Christopher Healy

  “Why? Do you have some good dirt for me?” Edison leaned in, suddenly interested. “Because Alec Bell and I aren’t exactly secret-sharing slumber party pals. I had to press him for days and I still really only know three things: he never reached the Pole, you folks ditched him in the Caribbean, and—most importantly—Rector is stranded down there.”

  “Not anymore!” Molly said. “Rector—he’s back!”

  “And he’s here in Washington!” Emmett added. “Disguised as Agent Forrest! The real Forrest died in Antarctica!”

  “Here’s where you lose me,” Edison cautioned. “Who’s this Forrest person?”

  “Federal Agent Archibald Forrest,” Emmett said. “You know, the person heading the security detail for your rally tomorrow? He’s really Rector!”

  Edison blinked. “There’s no one named Forrest on my security team.” He squinted with suspicion. “What’s really going on here?”

  “We’re trying to warn you that the diabolical genius who almost killed you last year is about to try it again,” Molly half growled. Edison’s skepticism rankled her. “And the fake Forrest is on your team whether you realize it or not. He was quoted in the paper!”

  “There are five men on my security detail and I know them all,” Edison said. “Do you mean Foster? Agent Anderson Foster?”

  “No!” Molly snapped. But then a wave of doubt washed over her. “I—I don’t think so.”

  “It definitely said Forrest in the paper,” Emmett said.

  Edison rolled his eyes. “A typographical error, then. You’ve distracted me and put my reputation at risk over some dumb newsman’s misspelling.”

  “No, it can’t be a mistake,” Molly said. “That would be way too much of a coincidence. A reporter puts the wrong name in his article and it just happens to be the name of a federal agent who died chasing Ambrose Rector at the South Pole? And Rector would probably get some kind of giddy thrill out of using Forrest’s identity to exact his revenge too—since Forrest was a double agent who betrayed him and—”

  “Aha! The traitor!” Edison threw his hand in the air. “That’s why that name sounded familiar. Bell mentioned this Forrest fellow when he recounted his Antarctic misadventures to me. Ah, yes . . . now it all makes sense.” The inventor leaned toward the children and glared at them. “Bell put you up to this, didn’t he? He sent you here. You’re working for him.”

  “Ha!” Molly scoffed. “We dislike Bell almost as much as we dislike you! Did he tell you we have one of his automatons?”

  “Okay, I’ll give you some credit for that,” Edison said grudgingly. “But if he didn’t send you, that just means you unwittingly fell into the trap he tried to set for me. Bell’s jealous—always has been. And now that I’m winning in the presidential race, his envy has sent him over the edge. He specifically tells me about this Agent Forrest, mentions how the guy is definitely, one-hundred-percent dead, and then plants a false quote in a news article about me that makes it seem like someone has stolen Forrest’s identity. He did it to scare me! He’s hoping I’ll be so afraid, I’ll cancel my rally tomorrow. Ha! He’s trying to break the unstoppable momentum of my campaign. Well, I’ll show him! Anyway, this conversation has gone on too long. I’ve got a monument to complete and a presidency to win, which means I don’t have time for prepubescent prattlings.”

  “But what about Rector?” Molly asked. “You’re not the only one in danger, you know. You saw firsthand what he did at the World’s Fair! What if he tries the same thing here? Well, I mean, he’s not stupid enough to try the same exact thing again, but his ultimate goal at the Fair was to take over the government and here we are in the very seat of—”

  “Did Bell lie to me about Rector being stranded at the South Pole?” Edison asked bluntly.

  The children both shook their heads.

  “Then that’s where the man still is,” Edison said. “And he’s a corpsicle by now. People left alone in Antarctica with no gear, no food, and no transportation don’t just magically appear back in the United States. They die. They starve, they freeze, and they shatter into little meat cubes for hungry walruses or something. This newspaper business you’re all fired up about is nothing more than political shenanigans perpetrated by Alexander Graham Bell. I’m not going to let him get the better of me and you shouldn’t either. Now, run along and, well, keep running—you are still fugitives, aren’t you?”

  Molly grumbled. Fine, she thought. Ignore us and get what you deserve.

  “Okay, we’ll leave,” Emmett said. “But, um, can you maybe not tell anyone you saw us?”

  Edison laughed. “You think the leading presidential candidate wants anyone to know he’s been interacting with two of America’s most wanted criminals?”

  “Most-most wanted,” Molly corrected.

  A workman called for Edison from up on the scaffold. The inventor leaned down and whispered to the children. “It won’t be good for either of us if people find out I’ve been conversing with you two. Which I’m sure you knew. So, yes, I’ll keep my mouth shut for now. But understand that if I see you again, the only way I’ll be able to save my own political career is to hand you two over to the Feds. Which I will happily do. So take my advice and get out of DC. Now.”

  He strode out from behind the stone pile, shouting up to his men. “Stop loafing! That lightning rod’s not going to raise itself!”

  Molly and Emmett fumed wordlessly as they squeezed back through the gap in the fence and found Robot waiting on the other side.

  “I could not fit,” he said. “Has Mr. Edison been adequately warned of the danger?”

  “Yep, he’s been warned,” Molly grumbled.

  “Excellent,” said Robot. “I knew Dr. Stinkums would see the job performed to satisfaction.”

  “That’s right,” Emmett deadpanned. “It was all the dog.” Dr. Stinkums wriggled free of his arms and ran to steal a sausage from a nearby food vendor.

  “You deserve it, Doctor,” said Robot. “Reward yourself.”

  Dejected and defeated, Molly slumped onto a park bench and shooed away some nosy pigeons.

  “What are you doing?” Emmett said.

  “Giving up,” she droned. “Like my mother.”

  Emmett treated her to his most disapproving stare. “I don’t believe that for a second. You’re just tired and hungry, like I am. We need a break, but this isn’t the time or place.”

  “Perhaps you would like some fruit.” Robot produced handfuls of apples and pears that they dug into eagerly.

  “Where’d you get this?” Emmett asked.

  “From those fruit stands,” Robot said.

  “Did you have money?” Emmett asked, juice running down his chin.

  Robot shook his head. “Apparently, people like to give free fruit to knights.”

  “Yoo-hoo, Sir Galahad!” shouted a woman from across the lawn.

  “You have the wrong knight!” Robot returned. “But I thank you for your greeting nonetheless!”

  The children shrugged and continued enjoying their first food in hours.

  “Could we actually be wrong? About what’s going on here?” Molly asked, her apple-induced bliss unable to completely dispel her concerns. “Could Edison be right? Could this all be about two ego-mad inventors trying to out-flummox each other? I mean, Rector has pulled off some amazing tricks in the past, but how could even he escape Antarctica without a boat?”

  “Maybe Rector didn’t get home on his own,” Emmett surmised. “Maybe he had help.”

  “From who? All his allies are either dead or in jail.”

  “Except Oogie MacDougal,” Emmett said with a shiver. “He escaped from prison, remember?”

  Molly shook her head. “Oogie was safely in jail when we left for Antarctica; he wouldn’t even have known that Rector was stuck down there.”

  Emmett chuckled to himself. “Oogie’s certainly not the one who was posing as Agent Forrest. Instead of ‘I’ll be watching Mr. Edison myself,’ that quote would have been som
ething like, ‘Ach! Ah wull be peepin’ the auld muckle brain masell!’”

  Molly cracked up. “Since when do you do such a good Oogie impression?”

  Emmett smiled at his own skill. “I never tried before!”

  “Hey, buddy, which way to Camelot?” a laughing man asked as he strolled by.

  “North by northwest,” Robot helpfully replied. “Three thousand, six hundred, and sixty-two miles.”

  “Anyway,” Emmett said, chomping into his apple. “To answer your question from before: No, Edison is not right about this. It’s not just Mr. Bell trying to prank his rival. If Mr. Bell wanted to spook Edison out of having his rally, he’s too smart to have relied on something as chancy as Edison just happening to see one particular article in one particular paper and happening to recognize the name of a guy that got mentioned to him once, months ago.”

  “Yes,” said Robot. “It would make more sense if someone did that to you.”

  Molly furrowed her brow. “What do you mean, Robot?”

  “As you said, Mr. Edison did not know Agent Forrest; he had only heard the man’s name once,” Robot explained. “But you spent months with Agent Forrest, and you saw him die right in front of you. If you saw his name in the paper, you would take note of it in a way that Mr. Edison would not. In fact, you did. That is why you are here.”

  Molly gasped. “Holy flapjacks, Emmett, he’s right. That quote was meant for us to find.”

  Emmett started nodding vigorously. “There was no Agent Forrest, fake or otherwise. That quote was placed in the article by someone who knew it would set off alarm bells for us.” His breath quickened. “Someone who knew we couldn’t resist investigating the appearance of that name. Someone who wanted to draw us out of hiding.”

  “Agent Clark,” Molly said with horror. “It’s a trap.”

  They dropped their apple cores (which Dr. Stinkums quickly devoured) and leapt from the bench.

  “We need to leave Washington,” Emmett said. “Now.”

  “That’s what Edison said!” Molly panted as the group rushed across the National Mall. “He knew!”

  “Not necessarily—he could’ve . . .” Emmett didn’t bother finishing his thought. He sped up to keep pace with Molly. They walked as fast as they could risk without attracting added attention or losing Robot, who wasn’t very swift on foot. Dr. Stinkums bounded ahead, yipping, as the group entered the wooded shorelands of the park and hurried back through the trees to where they’d left the Daedalus Chariot.

  “Where is it?” Molly grunted. Getting back seemed to take hours longer than their initial walk from the landing zone. Finally, they burst into the small clearing where their fabulous flying machine sat on a bed of crisp fall leaves.

  The chariot was surrounded by men in black bowler hats and long, dark coats.

  “Unauthorized parking of a flying machine on federal land,” Agent Clark said, while writing in his notepad. “This list of offenses just keeps getting longer and longer.”

  16

  The Trap Is Sprung

  “BOTHER BEANS!” MOLLY cursed. Dry leaves crunched under her foot as she stomped in frustration. “I can’t believe we fell into Clark’s stupid trap!”

  “I wouldn’t call it a trap, exactly,” said Agent Clark, tipping back his hat to give his icy blue eyes a clear look at his quarry. “You weren’t difficult to locate. You flew a big red sled over the capital. It was hard to miss.”

  “She means the news article you used to draw us here,” Emmett said. He stood close to Molly, his every muscle tensed.

  “Yeah, so, congratulations, I guess. You win, Clark,” Molly said through clenched teeth. “I mean, I’m angry and terrified and everything, but I’ve got to admit, the article was a pretty genius move. I’m a little jealous, actually.”

  The agent raised his dimpled chin. “As much as I’d love to take credit for this ‘genius trap,’” he said, “I don’t know anything about any article.”

  Molly and Emmett whipped their heads to face each other. “If he didn’t do the article,” Emmett asked, breathless, “who did?”

  “Edison!” Molly growled. “I knew he was lying to us! Never should have trusted that backstabbing fiend!”

  Agent Clark cleared his throat. “Hey, eyes over here! I’m the one arresting you,” he said. “Now, what’s this about Thomas Edison? You spoke with him? And he hasn’t reported it? Hmm. That’s highly problematic.” He jotted something in his pad.

  Molly’s heart began to race—and not just from the jolt of satisfaction she felt by getting Edison in trouble. If Clark hadn’t set the trap for them, that meant her original theory could still be true: Rector really could be back and on the loose in DC. This was not a good time to get arrested. But they were facing down five federal agents in a tight grass clearing surrounded by a not-so-easily navigable thicket of red oaks. Running would be pointless. There was one thing that could help them, but they absolutely could not use it. “No magnet powers,” she warned Robot. Needing to break out of a federal prison was a less frightening prospect than losing her friend.

  “Good call, Miss Pepper,” Agent Clark said. “If the metallic fellow pulls another of its iron-bending tricks, I will see that it is melted to slag.”

  “I do not know what slag is,” said Robot. “But I do not believe I would enjoy being melted into anything.”

  “You didn’t say they had a knight with them, Clark,” said one of the other agents.

  “It’s not a knight,” Clark replied. “It’s a . . . machine. That makes things defy gravity. I don’t know how it does the things it does, but I don’t like it.” He reopened his pad and made another note. “I’m not sure I have jurisdiction to enforce the laws of physics, but I’m adding it to the list anyway.”

  “If you didn’t come here to catch us, why are you even in DC?” Molly asked, hoping to buy time to formulate an escape plan. “Shouldn’t you be back in New York?”

  “We determined you’d left New York months ago,” Clark replied. “You showing up in the city where I’m currently stationed? That’s just serendipity. Get cuffs on them, men.”

  “Is that necessary?” asked one of the agents. “They’re just kids.”

  “Just kids,” Clark scoffed. “This is why you’re still a junior agent, Slattery. Cuff them.”

  The men took a step toward the children.

  “Wait!” Emmett said, holding up his hands. The men paused. “Don’t you want to know why we risked everything to come to DC?”

  “I admit I’m curious,” Clark said flatly. “It was an incredibly boneheaded move. I look forward to hearing your explanation in an interrogation room back at headquarters.”

  “It’s about Rector!” Molly blurted. “He’s back from Antarctica!”

  Agent Clark scoffed. “Impossible. No one comes back from Antarctica.”

  “We did,” Molly said.

  “Nobody comes back from Antarctica alone,” Clark clarified.

  “Rector did that once already!” Molly cried.

  “Nobody comes back from Antarctica alone without a boat!”

  “Look, sir, we don’t know how Rector got back, but he did,” said Emmett. “He’s here in the city. We think he’s after Edison. We came to warn him. You can ask Edison yourself.”

  “I’ll do that,” Clark said. “Cuff them, men.”

  “No, wait!” Molly pleaded. She and Emmett inched back, pressing themselves against Robot’s steely frame, and the men halted their advance. “Think about it, Clark,” she continued. “Someone planted a fake clue in a newspaper to draw us to Washington—and if it wasn’t you, it was probably Rector. Come on, man, Rector’s gotta be the one person you want to catch even more than us.”

  “I would not argue with that assessment,” Clark said. “He, however, is in Antarctica. While you are right in front of me, ready to be arrested. Cuff them, men.”

  “We’ll show you the article,” Molly tried. “You must at least want to see our evidence, right?” The men pau
sed.

  “No, thank you,” said Clark. “Though, if you would like to tell us where your parents are, well, that might be able to help you come sentencing time.”

  “It’ll never happen,” said Emmett.

  “Suit yourself. Cuff them, men,” said Clark. “And stop pausing every time the children tell you to. They’re the criminals.”

  Sheepishly, the agents advanced, steel cuffs dangling from their closed fists. But when one man reached for Emmett, there was a sudden growling at his feet. Dr. Stinkums chomped onto the agent’s ankle and the man hopped back, howling in pain.

  “Clark!” Agent Slattery whined. “They have a magic knight and a dog? You didn’t tell us anything!”

  Without warning, Robot wrapped Molly and Emmett in a dual bear hug and lifted off the ground, holding them tight to his chest. He levitated up past the treetops, soared through the open air back toward the Mall, and set down again a half mile away in the isolated garden of what appeared to be a castle.

  The instant her feet were back on the ground, Molly pulled away from Robot and pounded her fists against his oil-barrel chest. “What are you thinking! You can’t use your powers!”

  “You said ‘no magnet powers,’” Robot replied.

  “Get down! Both of you!” Emmett urged. “Before they see us!”

  They crouched behind a tall hedge.

  “Robot just saved us,” Emmett said quietly. “He pulled a really risky move to do it, but getting tossed in jail while Rector is loose and we can’t even communicate with our parents? That would have been disastrous.”

  “Robot dying would be disastrous!” Molly didn’t care how loud she was being.

  “Of course it would!” Emmett snapped back. “Don’t make it sound like you’re the only one who cares about him.”

  “I am sorry, Molly and Emmett,” Robot interjected. “But keeping my friends safe is important to me. I am willing to take risks if your safety is at stake. I understand that you worry about me, but should I not also be allowed to worry about you?”

  Molly wiped the tears she suddenly realized were trickling down her cheeks. She couldn’t argue with Robot’s logic. Or his intentions. No matter how much she wanted to.