Act Four, Part Two

Mama! Undead Artie on the floor had quite a time not reacting to that revelation either visibly or audibly. Mama! So not only was Atalanta not the innocent little victim of Hippolyta's dire villainy that she'd made herself out to be, but the sainted Mama Bracewell wasn't all that dead either. Hmph!

"Ah, excellent!" Mama was saying. "The final Apple at last. Mr Knorr will be so pleased!" She started to drop the precious golden orb back inside its pouch.

"Mr… Mr Knorr?" Lana exclaimed. "Who's that?"

"You know him," Mama replied easily. "You've met him. Anton Knorr. You remember: he showed up at the dig shortly after we unearthed the Apples, and he tried…"

"Oh!" Lana gasped. "Yes, I do remember him! He was that ugly old man with all the money who kept pestering Papa to sell him the Apples!"

"Precisely. And when your father stubbornly insisted the Apples had to be donated to some museum, gaining us not a dime in the transaction… Well, I made a private deal of my own with Mr Knorr, you see. That's why…"

"Why you faked your death?"

"Exactly. Gave me a freer hand to spirit away the precious Apples if everyone thought I was a spirit myself." Mrs Bracewell gave a laugh, a low and throaty chuckle. "And as soon as I turn over the final Apple to Mr Knorr and he pays me the rest of the money for it — oh, Lana my dear! You and I shall be in high cotton indeed!" She turned and moved away, out of Artie's limited field of sight.

"But… but…" Lana sputtered, following after her mother. "But, Mama, the Apples are mine!" she wailed.

"Yours? Whatever are you babbling about?"

"They're mine! They have to be! I'm Atalanta, so the Golden Apples of the Sun…"

Mama's bark of incredulous laughter cut her off. "Oh, don't tell me you believe all that bilge I fed poor Polly about our names and our fates! Child, I was priming her to believe I was dying of a raging fever, that's all. You know Polly and her flights of fancy."

"But… Papa died of a wound in his heel…"

"Yes, and I arranged that too, to build up Polly's fantasies and make her look mad. Don't tell me you're falling for the same nonsense she did!"

"But… mine…" Lana whimpered.

"Oh, please! Do let us have not another word about that!" Mama snapped. "I've already delivered the first two Apples to Mr Knorr, and now that we have the third as well, we'll pass it on to him too, and then we'll get all that lovely money he has just waiting for…"

"No!" growled Lana with a stamp of her foot. "No, I see it now! Trying to tell me that our myths have nothing to do with this, when what you're really after is to have that Apple all to yourself! Helen!You think you're Helen of Troy, and that's the Apple of Discord, so it ought to be yours! Well, you're wrong! It's mine, and you're going to give it back to me right now!"

From his vantage point on the floor Artie could see neither of the women without needing to shift his head and run the risk of being discovered. He could hear just fine, however — and what he heard next was a gasp from Mrs Bracewell, followed by Miss Lana declaring tearfully, "Give me the Apple back right now, Mama, or I'll shoot you to get it. Don't think I won't!"

And that statement was accompanied by the sound of the hammer on Atalanta's handy little derringer clicking into the cocked position.

…

"I've got the key; I know I have!" Cass hissed urgently, patting at all his pockets. "Parrish made us up a dozen copies so's we could get into the Bracewells' suite any time to search it."

"Fine, fine," Jim snapped back. "That's explains a lot. But the point is that we need to get inside right now!" He grasped the doorknob of the suite in question and rattled it fruitlessly. "Beyond this door someone fired that gun a minute or two back. One of the Bracewells might have been shot!" Not to mention that his partner might well by lying on the floor in there bleeding.

"Yeah, yeah, I know! But my key's gotta be here somewhere!" Cass was turning his pockets wrong side out now as he feverishly searched for the key.

"Oh, never mind!" grunted Jim. He pushed the scar-faced man aside, yanked his lock pick from its hiding place under his lapel, and knelt before the door.

Beside him, Cass shook his head. "That won't do. It's a special lock, made especially to be pick-proof. You'll never get through it!"

"I haven't met the lock yet that I couldn't beat," Jim muttered. And if the lock pick wouldn't do it, there was always Plan B.

Act Four, Part Three

Mama Bracewell gaped at her daughter for a stunned moment, then gave a laugh. "Lana darling! You'll never shoot me!" she cooed.

"Don't push me, Mama. Give me the Apple!" She held out one hand.

On the floor, Artie gave up on his pretense of death and came to his knees, ready to jump at Miss Lana to knock her gun away. He took a deep breath, about to surge to his feet.

But Mama moved first. "Fine. Here!" she cried, and flung the golden sphere right at Lana's face. With a yelp Lana ducked.

Just then Mama slammed into her, sending the derringer flying out through the open balcony doors and over the balustrade to fall to the hard ground three stories below.

Neither woman was paying any attention to that, however, as they grappled together, flailing at each other, tearing at each other. Nor were the pair currently aware of the golden Apple, which was now in imminent danger of being trampled under foot. For that matter, neither woman had noticed the curiously resurrected Mr Gordon, who found himself in danger as well from feminine feet as he crawled after the Apple, trying to recover the vexatious objet d'art that was at the heart of all this mess.

His efforts were rewarded by a slippered foot suddenly fetching the Apple a smack that sent it skittering out of Artie's reach. He backed off quickly before the foot could give his head the same treatment, then crept around the end of the sofa to make another try, while above his head, the fight raged on.

And what a cat fight it was! Snarling, biting, kicking, hissing, along with the pulling of hair and the scratching of faces. The Bracewell ladies, mère et fille, were apparently cognizant of nothing else in all the world around them but each other. Which was fine of course with Artie — so long as neither of them wound up stomping on him.

Or on the Apple. There it was, over by the balcony now. Artie set off to collect it…

But the brawl arrived there first. Just as he got a fingertip on the golden prize a foot kicked it away again, sending it spinning back towards the sofa once more. There it smacked into the side of the unfortunate Miss Polly and glanced off, going up under the table that bore yet the remnants of that never-finished supper.

Fine. Artie headed back that way, still completely unnoticed by the distaff combatants.

Unnoticed also in the unladylike din of battle was the fact that someone was outside the door trying to bash it in. Even Artie never heard the repeated crashes against the door; he was too busy trying once more to lay hold of the Apple before either of the women could remember to scoop it up for herself. It had come to rest this time right under the table, and Artie stretched out a hand to grab it…

Smash! Over went the table as the Bracewells slammed into it, then spun away again in their grimly determined pas de deux. Artie ducked as crockery and uneaten food showered down around him, then glanced up again to spot the Apple.

There it was, by the door! Artie set out yet again, dodging the ferocious Bracewells as he made a beeline for the golden orb. "This time I have you," he muttered under his breath, his hand a mere hairsbreadth away.

Crash! The door sprang open almost in Artie's face to admit two men, one of them James West leading with his shoulder, while the other, just behind Jim, was a man Artie recognized instantly although he'd never laid eyes on him before in all his life: the man Miss Hippolyta had described, the one with that set of livid scratch marks adorning his cheek!

And as the scar-faced man stumbled in, his foot collided with the golden Apple, sending the precious orb skittering across the floor once again, this time heading straight for the open balcony.

"My Apple!" cried Atalanta, spotting it. With a determined elbow she knocked her mother aside and sprinted after the beautiful Apple, running as speedily and gracefully as a gazelle.

In her haste she failed to notice what everyone else in the room saw clearly, for immediately the voices of all four of the others rang out with variations on the theme of "Atalanta, no!" All four scrambled after her, trying to catch her, to stop her. But Lana Bracewell, with her eyes fixed only on the swiftly bowling Apple, followed it unswervingly even as it shot through the French doors, scudded across the balcony itself, and bounded out between a pair of newels into the open air. Atalanta, with a bound of her own, cried out a joyous, "Mine!" as she cleared the balustrade.

The next instant the word turned into a wail of despair, shortly to be cut off by her fatal meeting with the cold hard ground below.

"No!" screamed the remaining woman, an amazing duplicate of the now-departed Miss Lana. The older version sprang for the French doors, and it was only because James West dashed after her and yanked her back from the balustrade that she failed to tumble from the balcony herself.

Another voice also rose in horror; another body pelted for the balcony, this one to be stopped by Artie's expeditious stratagem of flinging himself under the scarred man's feet, sending him sprawling onto the floor. A trice later Artie had the man cuffed and was sitting on his back. And from there he smiled up at his partner and greeting him with, "Well, James my boy! It's high time you arrived. What kept you?"

"A few old Trojans," Jim rejoined. "And from the state of this room, I'd say you've got quite a story to tell, Artie — starting with how you got that powder-burnt hole in your shirt."

"All in good time, James, all in good time. But first, let me introduce you to the dear lady you're holding in your arms: none other than…"

"Mrs Helena Bracewell," Jim finished for him. "I guessed."

"And didn't need your other two guesses either," Artie nodded. With a grin at the shock on Mama Bracewell's face at finding the agent to be alive, he added, "This is a day for resurrections, I'd say."

"Resurrections indeed!" Mama stormed at him angrily. "How can you be so, so callous, so flippant, tossing jokes back and forth while my Lana, my lovely Lana…" She slumped against Mr West, beginning to weep.

"Oh, don't give me that, lady!" Artie fired back. "Your Lana, your lovely Lana, tried her darnedest to put a bullet through my middle, and was primed and ready to do the same for you — not to mention what she wanted me to do to her sister. So excuse me if I decline to join you in your deep mourning for the charming Miss Lana, madam!"

Mrs Bracewell's face twisted into a glare of fury at that audacious agent, only to be replaced a heartbeat later by sudden dawning hope. "Resurrections, you say!" she gasped. "Resurrections! And could you mean, could you possibly mean… Why, if you are alive and not dead, then… what of my Polly? Is she…? Is she…?"

As if on cue, there came a heavy groan from the floor by the sofa, followed by a grumble of, "Ohhh, my aching head!" which then carried on into an exclamation of, "But how strange! This doesn't look a bit like the Elysian Fields. Where am I? And where's Father?"

End of Act Four