The Final Gambit

by Christopher Healy

  “Mrs. Pepper?” Emmett said.

  Cassandra stopped with the lights on and joined her daughter. “I do miss our adventures,” she said.

  Edison and Captain Lee descended the ladder, while Robot, who could not quite fit through the hole, remained on the roof as lookout. Once everybody was down—and done jumping on the light switch—the group examined the bizarre chamber, which was definitely not a factory. In fact, it looked more like a café. There was a trio of restaurant-style tables and a shop counter with a paper bag sitting on it. Behind that was a wall of shelves, the highest of which was lined with porcelain teacups.

  Cassandra laughed. “Ha! Tea Works, see? I was right, after all.”

  Then they noticed that the lower shelves were stocked with pickle jars.

  “Anybody still think this might not be intended for us?” Molly said with a smirk. She got no arguments.

  “But what are we supposed to do here?” Edison asked, randomly touching tables and chairs. “More riddles? Or did these women simply plan a lunch break into our wild-goose chase?”

  Captain Lee looked inside the bag on the counter. “Empty,” he said.

  “Oh, but that’s one of Margaret’s paper bags,” Molly said.

  “You recognize a specific paper bag?” the captain asked. “They all look the same.”

  “No, I mean Margaret invented those bags,” Molly explained.

  “Oh, that is impressive,” said the captain. “These are everywhere.”

  “Yes, and that bag must be part of the puzzle,” Molly said. “Can I see it?”

  Captain Lee attempted to pick up the paper bag, but it didn’t move. “I think it’s glued down,” he said.

  “Well, tear it free,” said Edison. “Put some muscle into it, man. It’s just paper!”

  “Mr. Edison,” Cassandra warned. “You have obviously never run a pickle shop. When you have a paper bag on your counter, you fill it. With pickles!”

  Together, the Lees and Peppers began stacking as many pickle jars as they could into the bag. After the tenth jar, the weight of the pickles must have triggered another hidden switch, because the bag slowly sank into the countertop. As it vanished, a previously hidden door closed over it and a second secret panel slid open across the room, on one of the mysterious shop’s little tabletops. A full place setting rose up from inside the table—china plate and crystal drinking glass, knife to the right, spoon, fork, and folded napkin to the left—all ready for a formal meal.

  “Was I, uh, right about the lunch?” Edison asked.

  “Maybe it’s another pressure switch,” Emmett said. “Take some of the pickles out and try them here.”

  “We can’t,” said his father. “They’re in the counter.”

  “No, there’s one left!” said Cassandra. She grabbed the final pickle jar and set it on the plate. Nothing happened.

  “Empty them onto the dish,” Captain Lee suggested.

  “Or maybe sit in the chair,” Emmett added.

  “Break the plate!” said Edison.

  “How about I try eating them?” Cassandra said. “I can’t tell you how much I’ve been missing pickles. There’s not nearly enough vinegar in my diet these days.”

  Molly shook her head in disapproval. “Do none of you see it?”

  “See what?” Emmett asked.

  “The place setting is wrong,” she replied. “Believe me, I’ve heard Josephine rant about incorrect table settings enough times to know that the spoon belongs on the right with the knife.” As soon as Molly reset the spoon into its proper place, they heard a click behind the counter. A miniature spotlight was shining down onto one particular teacup.

  Cassandra rushed to the illuminated cup, snatched it down, and peeked inside. “Drat, no tea,” she said. She tipped it to show the others some writing on the inside. “There is, however, an address. Seventy-two Phipps Lane. I think we know where we’re going next.”

  A short pickle snack later, Molly popped up onto the roof again. Robot met her crouched at the opening, with one finger at his mouth to signal for quiet. Molly shushed the others ascending behind her. “What is it?” she whispered to Robot.

  “Down on the street,” Robot answered in a low tone. “The man who does not like me.”

  Molly peeked over the roof’s edge and saw Agent Clark skulking down the block, his head turning this way and that as he scanned the area. “No way!” Molly whispered.

  Emmett crawled up beside her and groaned. Their parents and Thomas Edison soon followed, all gawking with the same disbelief.

  “How is that man here?” Cassandra whispered in frustration. “How could he know?”

  “Was it Bumbles?” Molly snapped her head toward Edison. “Did Bumbles betray us?”

  “No, look,” Emmett warned. “Clark might not be after us at all.” Crouched among a thicket of weeds, visible from their high vantage point but hidden from Agent Clark, was a black-clad man with a Hephaestus mask.

  “Clark must be looking for Rector!” Molly blurted, louder than she intended. “But why is Rector here? Did he follow us or—”

  “Molly, shhh!”

  Agent Clark’s head spun up toward the roof. His sparkly blue eyes went wide upon spotting Molly and Emmett. He had clearly not been expecting to find them here.

  “Drat,” Molly cursed.

  “Stay where you are!” Clark shouted up at them. “You are under—”

  Molly assumed he was going to say “arrest,” but he never got the chance. Rector charged him from behind and jabbed him in the back with a strange metal rod. There was an electric sizzling sound as the federal agent jolted in pain and then slumped to the grass, unmoving. The masked villain then ran off toward the edge of town.

  “Did Rector just . . . save us?” Cassandra asked.

  “I don’t know if he even saw us,” said Emmett. “Clark did, but Rector never looked up this way. Maybe he thought Clark was talking to him.”

  “Who cares?” said Edison. “We’re in the clear now. Let’s scamper off while we can! You, Can-Head, lower us down!”

  “Hee hee, that is not my name,” Robot said with a sound that approximated a laugh. “You are silly, Mr. Edison.”

  Once the whole team was back on the ground—and it was determined that Rector was no longer in the vicinity—Emmett rushed to check on Agent Clark.

  “Still breathing,” he reported.

  “I suppose it was only a matter of time before Clark caught on to his schemes,” Edison said. “The old boy’s been pretty active over the past forty-eight hours or so.”

  “Okay, so maybe Clark followed Rector here, but why did Rector come to Petalsburg in the first place?” added Molly. “Has he been following us? Or did Rector have his own business here?” She gasped. “Do you think he could be tracking the MOI too?”

  “If there’s even a chance of that, we must locate your friends first, no?” said Captain Lee.

  “What about him?” Cassandra asked of Agent Clark, who was splayed out in the dirt beside the road.

  “Eh, he’ll come to eventually,” said Edison. “And I’m guessing you people don’t want to be around when he does.”

  “No,” said Molly. And the group headed off on foot in search of Phipps Lane, checking over their shoulders the whole time.

  Petalsburg was a ghost town. For the life of her, Molly couldn’t figure out what would have brought Rector here if he didn’t know about the letter from the MOI. But she didn’t have long to worry about it.

  “It’s here! Seventy-two!” Captain Lee called out just a few blocks later. The house in question was a standard colonial-style home in no better shape than the rest of the town. The brown paint was chipped, the roof tiles curled, the lawn overgrown, and the window shutters hanging askew. Molly walked up to the cracked wooden door, but stopped before grabbing the knob.

  “Um, anybody else wanna try opening this one?” she asked.

  Before anyone could answer, the door opened from within.

  “No w
orries, love,” said Hertha Marks, standing there in a glorious lavender dress with peacock feather fringe. “We’ve been watching for you ever since you triggered the alarm in our puzzle room.”

  Molly threw her arms around the woman.

  “I missed you too, Molly,” Hertha said. “Now, if everybody would come inside quickly—this is a secret hideout and we prefer not to have large crowds standing outside our door in broad daylight.”

  The rest of the group hurried in and—shuffling awkwardly because Molly’s arms were still clamped around her—Hertha locked the door. Molly finally let go when she realized how amazing the interior of the house was. The dilapidation outside was all a smoke screen. Inside, the MOI’s hideout was sparkling clean, its walls lined with all manner of tools and engineering implements. Electric lamps illuminated metallic worktables, on which were displayed the many intriguing gadgets the Mothers must have been hard at work on over the past year. Most excitingly, the rest of the team was there too.

  Molly, Emmett, and Cassandra exchanged warm greetings with everyone.

  “I knew you’d solve our puzzles,” Sarah Goode said, beaming. She wore a bright green blouse with a blue kerchief around her neck, and brown pants. Molly was happy to see that she too had discovered the benefits of wearing trousers for work. “Hertha very wisely suggested that we not put clues to our specific location in our letter to you, in case someone else intercepted it. So we came up with the factory idea—only someone who knew us would be able to solve it! Even still, we had to make the puzzles really challenging to keep away any unwanted so-and-sos. But I knew they wouldn’t stop you. I believed in you!”

  “Oh, hush, Sarah,” Mary Walton scoffed good-naturedly. “We all knew they’d figure it out.”

  “Well, okay,” said Sarah. “But I said it most.”

  “You certainly took your time getting around to it, though,” Mary added. The older woman had her wild gray hair tucked under a floral knit cap. “But, hey, better late than never. And we certainly are happy to see you all.”

  “The pickle puzzle was really clever,” Emmett said enthusiastically. “And so was ‘feet up’ to tell us to go on the roof. And the sign that said ‘Tea Works.’ And—”

  “Just please tell me one thing,” said Josephine Cochrane, buttoned up in a formal black dress, as usual. “Who figured out the table setting?”

  Molly took a bow.

  “That’s my girl,” Josephine said proudly. “But, please, dear—curtsy. You’re not a butler.”

  Just being in Josephine’s presence, Molly stood a little bit straighter. “I should’ve figured you’d still be all gussied up in frills and corsets and such,” Molly said. “Even though you’re living in hiding and literally no one is going to see you.”

  Josephine raised her chin. “It’s teatime, darling, why would I wear anything less?”

  “Yeah, I dressed up for you too.” Margaret Knight, clad in grease-spattered coveralls, chuckled as she removed her goggles. The pink rings around her eyes were the only clean parts of her face. She set down the gizmo she was building and shook hands with Cassandra. “Working on anything exciting?” Margaret asked.

  “The captain and I rode two hundred miles in a bathtub powered by carrot peelers,” Cassandra said.

  “I’d like to see that,” said Margaret.

  “It exploded,” said Cassandra.

  “Makes me even more interested,” said Margaret.

  Hertha shook hands with Emmett’s father. “This must be the mysterious captain of which you speak.”

  “Oh, yes!” Emmett said, remembering himself. “Everyone, this is my father, Captain Wendell Lee. He’s, um, back from the dead.”

  “Or, as most people call it, Antarctica,” said the captain.

  “You must have some amazing stories to tell,” said Sarah.

  “That’s what the children say,” said the captain.

  “Oh, Robot’s here too,” Margaret said, giving a hug to the metal man.

  “That is very observant of you, Miss Knight. I am indeed here,” said Robot. “Unfortunately, the most fascinating member of our party, Dr. Stinkums, is still hiding in the coach.”

  “A doctor?” Mary asked.

  “He’s a dog,” said Molly. “But that’s not important now. We need your help.”

  “We assumed,” said Hertha. “Since you finally came out of hiding to seek us out. Does it have something to do with you two burgling the Smithsonian Institution?”

  “Well, yes,” Molly continued, speaking rapidly. “We thought there might be Ambrosium in there, but there wasn’t, and Robot is running out of his, because it degrades every time he uses his powers, and we need you to figure out how to stop it and save him.”

  The women’s concern showed on their faces. “We will spare no effort to help a friend,” said Josephine. “Even one held together by bolts and screws.”

  “Oh, but that’s not all—” Molly began.

  “Very clever window design here,” said Edison, who’d been quietly examining the room. He still had the mop on his head. “Soundproof, I assume. Are they airtight as well?”

  “Of course,” said Margaret.

  “Perfect,” said Edison, running his fingers around the doorframe.

  “And, um, who is this final member of your little squad?” Hertha asked.

  “Oh, yeah—the wig! Don’t worry, that’s just Thomas Edison,” said Emmett. “Mr. Edison, you can take off your disguise now.”

  “Oh, I think I shall,” Edison replied. He began chuckling. “You know, this whole time there was a little part of me holding out hope that one of you would set me up with a perfect line like that. But I never want to get too hopeful with you mudskulls. Just leads to disappointment most of the time.”

  Everyone stared in confusion as Edison tossed his mop-wig to the floor. “But thank you, Emmett,” he continued. “Because ‘you can take off your disguise now’—I mean, wow, it’s not going to get much more perfect than that, is it?” He peeled off his fake eyebrows, plucked off his fake nose, and scraped away his fake chin. “And wow again, because—look at your faces. I have to say, I don’t know if you’re more stunned by me revealing myself or by your own stupidity, because I cannot believe you fell for this again! Same disguise! Same impersonation! At first, I said to myself, no, don’t try Edison again—that’s way too obvious. But then I was like, no, let me do the thing they’d most expect and see if it fools them. And it did!”

  “But—but—” Molly stammered.

  “Sorry, kid, no time for mumbling,” said Ambrose Rector. “Because you’ve done me the favor of getting me into a room with literally every person who has ever thwarted me in the past. Time for—”

  Hertha snapped into action. “Ladies, Plan Twelve!”

  The women each began to step off in different directions, but Rector was too quick. He whipped a small glass vial from his pocket and shattered it on the floor. A noxious scent instantly filled the room and people began collapsing. Molly grabbed her mother’s hand and started for the door. Before she could take two steps, she felt the tug of her mother dropping to the ground. Molly tried to scream, but couldn’t find her voice. The room grew blurry around her. She saw Emmett stumble into the wall. Molly tried to take another step, but her feet were too heavy to lift. And she was so, so tired. She fell, first to her knees, then onto her side. The last thing she saw was Ambrose Rector’s pasty face smirking down at her.

  “The thing I’m happiest about”—his voice sounded like it was underwater—“is that you never, ever learn. Good night, Molly Pepper.”

  Part III

  21

  A Dastardlier Plot

  Undisclosed location, October 21, 1884

  THE FIRST THING Molly saw when she opened her eyes was bars. I’m too young to have woken up in this many prison cells, she thought. She was in a freestanding cage, a cramped cubicle of iron bars with barely enough space to curl up on its cold metal floor. She gently lifted her pounding head and tried to sc
ope out her surroundings. But she could not shake the blurriness from her eyes.

  “Your spectacles, Molls,” she heard her mother say from somewhere nearby. “They’re on the floor by your knee.”

  Molly felt for her glasses and put them on. With her vision back in focus, she saw that Cassandra was in a separate cell a few feet away from hers. Captain Lee, in yet another cell beyond her mother’s, greeted her with a sad little nod.

  “Rector,” Molly muttered as she suddenly remembered what had happened. “I don’t understand. How could Rector be Edison? We saw Rector and Edison at the same time. Rector tried to kill Edison right in front of us.”

  “Rector’s got an accomplice, someone pretending to be him, while he pretended to be Edison.” The response came from Emmett, caged on the other side of whatever room they were in. “It’s the only explanation. The masked man at the rally never spoke. It could have been anyone.”

  “Bumbles,” Molly spat. “No way that guy isn’t evil.” She stood and gave her cell door a shake.

  “Save your energy, love,” said Hertha. “He’s got us all locked in tight.”

  Molly rose and looked around as her eyes adjusted to the dimness. She could see now that the large room was almost entirely filled with prison cells. There were fifteen freestanding cages just like hers, arranged in a three-by-five grid, with narrow paths in between them. Most of the cells had occupants. Emmett was locked up on the opposite side of the room, already busy checking every inch of his cell for a flaw he could exploit. Many of the cages in between him and Molly held members of the Mothers of Invention, each detained individually. Sarah waved, while Mary worriedly wrung out her knit cap and Hertha tried to find a comfortable sitting position on the floor of her cell, a feat made impossible by her big-bustled skirt. Josephine was using a handful of feathers (presumably plucked from Hertha’s dress) to dust her cell, and Margaret was patting herself down, checking the many pockets on her coveralls. “That scallywag took all my tools,” she grumbled.

  Molly’s gut churned. Everyone who could have conceivably come to her aid was locked up with her. And she didn’t even know where they were being held. Rector could have taken them anywhere while they were unconscious. The walls and floor around them were bare gray concrete, devoid of any identifying characteristics, save the metallic panel lined with toggle switches mounted next to the door. Other than that and the cells, the room contained only some shoddy wooden chairs and a table, upon which a large, lumpy something-or-other sat covered by a white sheet.