The Wild, Wild Wests: The Day of the Winking Light
Secret Secret Service agent Artemus West was more than merely exhausted – he was bone-tired. Soaked with overexertion and fatigued all the way down to his skeleton. The August heat, merciless even here in normally pleasant Millwood Grove, wasn't making him feel any better, that was for sure. Getting up at the crack of dawn to move furniture – heavy furniture – hadn't exactly been a treat on top of a previous day also spent moving furniture. Riding Baccarat from Aunt Kate and Uncle Jeremy's apartment to the Chicago Federal Building had seemed a relative rest break by comparison. Until, that is, he got to the Federal Building, made the mistake of sneaking a peek into the new building's gymnasium and was spotted by a martial arts instructor attempting to hammer finer points home to a class of fresh-faced Federal Investigation recruits. Tem wasn't dressed for it or prepared for it, but surely the accomplished Agent West wouldn't mind assisting?
Tem did mind, but knowing that the lives of some of these future law enforcers of a brand new agency depended on what they learned here, he'd obliged. After that he barely had the energy to do the record search he'd come for and then ride Baccarat all the way back to Millwood Grove where his loving wife and her brother were waiting for him. But he shouldn't complain, Tem thought, as he sank down into the comfort of the Gordon living room's plushest chair. Amanda and Jimmy had been clearing out dangerous objects from their old family home in the name of 'Jeremy-proofing' the place so that Aunt Kate and poor, demented Uncle Jeremy could be moved in safely. This was a monumental task, and as emotionally arduous as it was physical.
Amanda, Jimmy and Tem had barely absorbed the shock of Artemus Gordon's passing from pneumonia a year earlier when the greater shock of Lily Gordon's and James West's deaths in an explosion had left them reeling. Hard to believe that terrible incident only happened a couple of months ago, so much had changed in their lives since then. Now the three orphaned survivors of the West and Gordon families called the fantastic (and classified) train Wanderer II home and soon the Pikes would be calling the Gordon residence home.
So while Tem had been working his fingers and every other part of his impressive physique to the bone, Amanda and Jimmy had been doing the same, including the potentially hazardous task of clearing out the Gordon attic. If it was hot down here, Tem could only imagine how stifling that attic was. No question that the attic would be crammed to the gills either. Tem recalled his father's chagrinned tales of how he'd kept few possessions and few changes of outfit on board the original Wanderer because Uncle Arte had taken up most of the storage space intended for both agents. Jim West had occasionally struck back at his packrat partner – they'd both enjoyed pranking each other after all. But when the two agents had chosen to live and raise their families next door to one another in Millwood Grove, those houses showed the differences of their inhabitants plainly. While the more stately West home at the top of the hill reflected the simple, neat, prairie-inspired tastes of the late Adele West, the Gordon home was a glorious clutter of objects, cozy, comfortable and crowded. It contained every relic or item Artemus and Lily Gordon had desired, including wardrobes for both that could put many clothing stores and fancy costume shops to shame.
It would be a good home for the Pikes, casual, familiar, more shielded from the weather than the West residence, and safe – once it was disarmed of the deadlier components that Artemus Gordon and yes, Jimmy too, had left scattered within. The attic was the most daunting challenge of all, and not just because it retained heat in August. Tem remembered that attic from his childhood as The Forbidden Zone. Even more Forbidden than off-limits, exotic sanctuaries such as his parents' bedroom. The Gordon attic was The Door Always Kept Locked. The Place Where No Children Were Allowed Ever. It was like Bluebeard's closet, only instead of being full of dissected wives, it was where Uncle Arte had stored some of the most dangerous mementoes from his and Jim's long and storied Secret Service careers. The biggest, most dangerous objects had been handed over to the Secret Service in Washington and elsewhere. But several smaller items that Jim and Arte hadn't necessarily wanted to trust to Washington were here in this house. And now, for Jeremy Pike's sake, those objects needed to be sorted out and moved.
Trouble is, as the younger agents had already discovered, the Gordon family had all the usual attic clutter that most families did too. Uncle Arte hadn't been any great fiend for labeling either. He'd told the kids years earlier that he'd kept a strict dividing line between 'normal stuff' and 'danger stuff,' but if so, it was a line that had existed mostly in his imagination. When the three younger agents at last pierced the dusty veil of the most outlawed place of them all using a combination of keys, lockpicks, crowbar and small amounts of explosive putty, they hadn't seen any dividing lines anywhere in the overcrowded mess. So while Tem had been doing the heavy lifting in downtown Chicago, Amanda and Jimmy had been doing a different, potentially more perilous heavy lifting here. Tem couldn't say who'd had the worst of it.
He must have looked pretty peaked, though. When he'd come in from the stable after settling Baccarat, Amanda had taken one look at him, ordered him to sit down in the living room, and had gone into the kitchen to make Tem a sandwich and a very large lemonade. Tem couldn't argue. He couldn't even focus enough to ask her what sort of day she'd had. Yes, he was definitely wiped.
As he looked over toward the dining room, Tem could see Jimmy there, fiddling with something or other. Jimmy had paid no attention at all to Tem's arrival. When Jimmy started fiddling with something he often seemed oblivious to all else. He gave Tem the smallest acknowledging dip of the head when he heard his brother-in-law groan with exhaustion and soreness though.
"Whas'sat you're working on?" Tem mumbled.
"Oh, a lamp," Jimmy explained, switching positions to show off his prize. "It's sort of gaudy, but pretty too. Must have gotten put up there when it got a little bit broken."
Tem sat up slightly to get a better look. In fact, the lamp was pretty – a stained glass confection a bit in the Tiffany style if cruder. It was gaudy as well, but that would never have gotten it exiled in this household the way it would've in Jim and Adele West's home. Nothing was too gaudy or flamboyant for Artemus and Lily Gordon. The theatre-loving couple had delighted in gaudiness whenever the mood struck them ('while ploughing over other people along the way' Tem's father had remarked once). But to Tem's weary eyes, it didn't appear broken. It didn't look like the sort of lamp that could be broken in a less-than-obvious manner.
"S'an oil lamp, right?" he mumbled again. "Not electric? How's it broken?"
"Got a couple of panels of the stained glass missing," Jimmy explained, turning the elaborate shade around so that Tem could see a piece on the bottom row was missing, and then where another similar piece on the opposite side of the shade was also out. The missing panels might have been made of clear glass, since several of their companions were. Jimmy spun the shade around rapidly, and as he did so, the hot sunlight from the window appeared to wink through the openings and odd clear panels in the shade. "And that's another thing," Jimmy complained, causing the shade to spin around faster and faster with his hand. "The finial has to be broken too. The shade just spins around loose, but I can't figure out how to get the finial to tighten. I'm not sure how it was fastened in the first place."
Tem wasn't paying attention to his brother-in-law's explanation, though. He was too tired for that. He was watching the colorful glass lampshade spin around and around and around, with the bright light winking through it.
"I'd like to fix it, though," Jimmy said. "I know it's not practical, but it's very pretty."
The younger man gave the lampshade another touch of his hand that made the shade spin even faster. Around and around. Pretty colors, pretty lights. Winking and blinking.
"Pretty," Tem agreed.
So pretty . . . .
[WWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW]
"MANDY!"
Amanda Gordon West knew that shriek of panic from her brother. This was a sound she dreaded. It was a good thing she wasn't still using the kitchen knife to cut up the sandwich she'd just made or that cry might have caused her to slice herself. Instead, she raced in from the kitchen, both hands free but ready to confront any disaster.
"Jimmy – what is it?"
She saw her brother standing white-faced near the dining room table, and her heart nearly skipped a beat as she realized what he was staring at – the chair that Tem had slumped down into several minutes before. She leaped around to the front of that chair and saw a horrible scene, her husband staring wide-eyed and sightless, motionless, jaw dropped open. No! He couldn't be d- No, wait! He was breathing! He was still breathing! Not dead! Not yet! Had he suffered a stroke? Was it his heart? What-
On the edge of instant hysteria, she saw a small glimmer of light run across Tem's face at eye level, then another glimmer. She looked behind herself to see what the source of those little beads of light were, saw the spinning lampshade and knew in an instant what had just happened.
"Jimmy! That thing is Torres' hypno-lamp! Turn it off! Turn it off!"
Jimmy gulped, looked down at the lamp on the dining room table as if seeing it for the first time, and grabbed the shade, which had already been slowing to a halt.
"But I didn't even light it!" he squeaked. Then he saw the beam of sunlight shining through the gap in the lampshade onto Tem's face and he too realized what must have happened. "Oh my god! What do we do?" He and Amanda both tried waving hands in front of Tem's unblinking, empty gaze – no result. "How do we snap him out of it?"
Snap him out of it, Amanda thought.
"That's exactly what we have to do," she said, holding out one hand just under the level of Tem's eyes while cautioning her brother to silence with the other. "Artemus West," she intoned, using a different, deeper, more commanding tone, "can you hear me?"
"Yessss . . . ." Tem rasped, still staring into space.
Amanda took a deep breath and considered her words for a moment before she spoke again.
"Artemus West," she commanded, "I am going to count to three and snap my fingers, and when you hear that snap, you will awaken from this trance with no harm done. Do you understand?"
"Yessss . . . ."
With the fingers of her other hand crossed for luck, she counted.
"One . . . . Two . . . . Three."
Snap!
The effect was instant and dramatic. Tem suddenly gasped, shook his head, and began staring around the room wildly, brain clearly working and alert once more. He seemed befuddled, no doubt wondering how his wife had managed to appear right in front of him out of nowhere.
"Wha . . . ?"
Amanda allowed herself a sigh of relief and placed a gentle hand on his shoulder.
"You were hypnotized," she told him. "Fortunately not for more than a minute." She nodded over to where the not-so-broken-after-all stained glass lamp rested on the dining room table. "Turns out we've found the Steel Killer Torres' hypnosis device and didn't know it. Jimmy, I think we'd better regard everything in that attic as suspect even if some of it does appear to be regular or familiar."
The chagrinned teenager nodded.
"But I thought it didn't work on Dad or Uncle Jim," he complained, glaring at the guilty device. "I thought they couldn't get hypnotized."
"That's because they knew what the lamp was after seeing what it had done to somebody else," she pointed out. "Dad knew Torres was trying to hypnotize him and actively resisted it." Amanda saw the blush beginning to appear on her husband's cheeks and gave his shoulder an affectionate squeeze. "You didn't know what it was or what was happening until it was too late, so of course that wasn't your fault. And I can tell you're tired enough to fall right over." She leaned down and kissed the top of Tem's head. "No arguments, love. You stay right where you are while I bring you in that sandwich and lemonade I just made. And when you are done with that, you are taking a nap until supper, understand?"
Tem nodded stiffly. Amanda knew that gesture too. He'd be sulking at himself later, no doubt, and wanting to see if he could withstand the lamp's power on a second try, not that she intended to let him have another crack at it. She might have felt hot and sweaty earlier in the day, but the chill she'd gotten when she'd seen Tem's empty face staring out from the chair and thought for that terrifying split second that he might be dead left her shivering. This was just too close a call as far as she was concerned. No wonder her father had tried so hard to keep everyone out of that attic while he was still alive. The memory panged her with his absence.
I could absolutely crown you for bringing that dratted lamp into the house, Dad, but I wish you were still here. Mom too.
Amanda did her best to stay smiling as she brought Tem the sandwich and glass of lemonade. The grief was still so raw though. She loved this house, this home of many years and all the happy memories it still held for her. But she'd be glad when they wrapped up this task and returned to Wanderer II. Until then she'd be seeing, feeling her parents' shadows everywhere in the home that they'd made, in among the possessions they'd treasured. She thought Jimmy must feel the same way, and she knew that Tem had been avoiding spending any significant amount of time at that other oh-so-familiar but forever changed house just up the hill with its massive Baldwin apple tree and the four graves of cherished parents underneath its canopy.
Not that their new life was any picnic – far from. But it definitely kept them too busy to waste their time on moping or constant mourning. It gave them a sense of purpose too. There was something grimly satisfying about being able to take action against the weapons smugglers who'd killed James West and Lily Gordon – and taking action against other deserving criminals and evildoers as well. The pay and perks weren't bad either compared to their previous salaries. Being willing to risk death on a semi-regular basis in the name of justice and democracy had its advantages.
Now what to do about that dangerous lamp . . . .
They could always smash it of course. That would be the quickest and easiest expedient. But not necessarily the wisest. Amanda frowned, glancing over at the object which Tem was now glaring at resentfully while he chewed down his sandwich. Artemus Gordon sometimes pretended to be foolish, but he'd been sharply intelligent his whole life. If he'd saved this treacherous lamp rather than destroying it, there must have been a reason. He'd used it to cure the woman Torres the Steel Man had hypnotized – what was her name? Gilbert? Perhaps he'd thought the lamp might be useful for curing other victims as well? Or for hypnotizing some miscreant as an alternative to doing something even less pleasant? Once again she wished she could have just one more conversation with her father. If only she could understand . . . .
And if wishes were horses, the shared West-Gordon stable out back would burst from trying to contain them all, she told herself wryly. It was a good thing Tem had loaned old Canasta to the Secret Service for stud duties. At least Canasta would be enjoying what he was doing now, and not competing with Baccarat for Tem's attention – or Daisy's.
But in the meantime, that left the Wests with this hypnotic artifact that they needed to do something with. But what? Couldn't leave it here. Probably wasn't safe to leave it up in the West house close enough for Uncle Jeremy to find. Send it on to Washington? The thought of politicians getting their hands on a mind-control device was enough to make her shudder. The idea had probably been enough to make her father shudder too. Then again, the decision might not be up to her. She knew she'd been right – Tem West wasn't going to be satisfied with any easy solutions.
"This isn't over," Tem growled at the inanimate stained glass object, getting up after finishing his sandwich and tapping at the old stained glass shade with a threatening finger. His desire to go mano-a-lampo could not have been more obvious. But as if that wasn't enough to worry about, Jimmy made the opposite choice, pulling the lamp out of reach and trying to get between it and her disgruntled husband.
"Wait a minute!" Jimmy complained. "This could be an important scientific invention!"
Men!
As usual, it was going to take a woman to be the voice of moderation and reason. Again.
"Boys!" she shouted, loud enough to get their attention. She waited a moment for Tem and Jimmy to back away from the lamp. "If you are quite done arguing," – and her tone made it clear that they had darn well better be done with arguing – "we are all hot, and all tired, and we have all got better things to do than let a piece of fancy furniture get between us." She used another pause and a piercing gleam of eye that even the lamp would have been hard pressed to compete with to make them stand down and stand straight like a couple of guilty schoolboys. Thank you, Mom! Amanda whispered to herself and her mother's memory for her matriculation at the Lily Gordon School of Not Taking Nonsense From Anybody. "So we will not settle it today or tonight. We will get a good cold supper and sleep on it, and in the meantime . . . ."
Before either Tem or Jimmy dared voice a word of objection, Amanda took the lamp herself, lifted the shade right off of it, finial and all, and packed it into two separate packing boxes. They watched her mutely as she taped the boxes shut, took a wax pencil and labeled the boxes 'T. M. of Steel lamp 1' and 'T. M. of Steel lamp 2,' then stood back to admire her handiwork.
"There," she said. "It shouldn't do any more harm like that. Satisfied?"
Tem and Jimmy both nodded. Being satisfied even when they weren't really satisfied was a life-saving skill to have sometimes where Gordon women were concerned.
That takes care of that – for now, Amanda reassured herself. And at least divided into two separate components and boxes, that dratted lamp couldn't cause any more trouble . . . .
[WWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW]
"But Mandy, you can't just interfere in the march of scientific progress!" Jimmy pleaded as his sister gripped him firmly and none too gently by the shirt collar.
"Try me."
Jimmy would like to present his case to a jury all right. Dam- uh, darn it! It wasn't fair! Just because Mandy was ten years older than he was, and a couple of inches taller, and probably a lot stronger come to think of it, and, okay, way more bad-tempered, did that give her any right to push him around? Apparently she seemed to think so. She was treating him as if he was a child, when in fact he was a worldly and mature man of sixteen years now. Well, maybe not worldly exactly. But he had been to faraway, exotic places like New York City and Washington D.C. and Murfreesboro, Tennessee and Hope Springs, Oklahoma. And yeah, Hope Springs wasn't exactly wild and exotic, er, bad example . . . . The point was, Jimmy was travelled now. He was, um, countryly. Plus he had the whole maturity thing down pat.
"Aw, c'mon," he begged. "Pretty please? Pretty please with sugar on top?"
"I said no."
Those cocoa-brown eyes staring back into his own were pitiless. How could she turn him down like this? Sure, Tem might be mad, but Tem was taking a nap right now and wouldn't have to know a thing about it.
"But-" The rest of his words were cut off as she held the shirt collar tight enough almost to lift him off his feet.
"The lamp stays in the boxes for now," Mandy growled, before releasing the collar suddenly enough that he had to correct his balance. "End of discussion. Do I make myself very, very clear?
"Yes, Ma'am!" Drat it, drat it, drat it . . . .
That was the trouble with older sisters – they never let you have any fun. Not that he had any other older sisters to compare her with, but he was pretty sure that if he did, they'd be a bunch of unscientific killjoys too. This was going to be just like the time a few weeks ago when she'd made him get rid of the explosives he'd been keeping in his underwear drawer back on the train. Just because he hadn't thought to warn her and Tem about them before she helpfully tried to put away his laundry for him . . . . Like she should have been going in his room without permission anyway! And it's not as if the railway trestle had suffered a lot of damage . . . . Did she really have to be such a total grouch? All Jimmy wanted to do was try one teensy weensy experiment and see if . . . .
"I can tell what you're thinking, Jimmy," she scowled. "Don't. And don't get any ideas about playing around with the other things we find up in the attic either. Not tonight. We're none of us thinking straight enough right now. It can wait."
Something in Jimmy's face must have betrayed him, because that was when she pulled out her ultimate verbal trump card.
"It's what Mom and Dad would want."
Damn it.
He knew she was right, too. At least, it was what Mom would have wanted - they both knew it. Now Jimmy had no choice but to behave himself. He couldn't betray Lily Gordon's memory – especially not here. Mandy knew that as well. She'd taken no joy in saying the words. As Jimmy saw her nod and walk away, she looked as tired as Tem, and sadder than she had a moment ago. Was that what being a grownup did to you? Or were they really all under the weather just like she said?
Suddenly Jimmy realized how tired he was too. It had been hot up in that attic, and dusty and dirty. He could do worse things than investigate washing himself off and taking a bit of a nap of his own before dinner. Yeah, okay, maybe Mandy had a point – not that he needed to let her know that. If she wanted to be the bully, the least he could do was not encourage her to be more of one. She and Tem weren't the only ones who could act sullen when they wanted to. He could do a pretty mean sullen himself, and so that's how he acted as he made his way to his own room to rest up before supper. Push him around, would they? He'd see about that!
But he did take one backwards, wistful glimpse back at the boxes labeled T. M. of Steel lamp 1 and 2 as he went up the stairs leaving Mandy downstairs to clean up in the kitchen. Such an exciting find – so many possibilities . . . .
