Act One, Part Three

"Well, James my boy," said Artie as the pair entered their own rooms, "I can just imagine how delightful your trip across the country must have been!"

Jim sighed and dropped into a chair. "Delightful doesn't even begin to describe it, believe me. A much better word — much, much better! — would be long."

Artie chuckled and crossed to the liquor cabinet. "I hear that!" He poured two glasses, then came back and passed one to Jim. "You know that old saying about how there can only be one queen bee in a hive?" Artie added as he settled into a chair.

Jim took a sip and rolled his eyes. "Oh, you've put your finger right on it, Artie! The Bracewell sisters certainly prove that one. You know, those two girls couldn't get along together for three minutes at a stretch the entire trip. I don't think this whole continent is big enough for the pair of them, much less the confines of two train cars."

"That bad, huh?" Artie sipped at his drink, then observed, "Still… Miss Atalanta seems charming enough. Very gracious."

"That she is," Jim agreed. "But then, she has to be; she'd never be able to…" He paused, selecting an appropriate word. "…to coexist with her sister otherwise." Setting his drink aside on the table beside his chair, Jim leaned forward and said, "What you've seen of that pair is how it went practically every hour on the hour: Atalanta would make some little remark, something completely innocuous, and Hippolyta would diligently find some reason to take offense at it anyway. She would counter with a sharp remark, then Atalanta would pout and ask what she'd done, which would only send Hippolyta off into a blind rage. In the blink of an eye she would be furiously demanding of Lana to stop it, declaring that it wasn't going to work this time. Meanwhile Atalanta would dissolve into tears, stuttering out that she didn't know what Polly meant."

"My, my! Such a pity that I missed out on all that!"

"Oh, don't worry; you've already started to get your fair share of it, and no doubt there'll be plenty more of it where that came from before this weekend is out."

Artie snickered. "And it's only Friday night! But what about their father?" he added. "Didn't he try to put a stop to all the quarreling?"

Jim shook his head. "Their father is worse than useless. I suspect he's heard them going round and round like that so many times that he doesn't even notice anymore until the argument reaches the shrieking point. He would just sit there for the longest time, perusing his scientific journals, lost in a world all his own while the bickering escalated into all-out war. And you know, even when he did intervene, it would be in the form of something utterly ineffective, generally along the lines of wringing his hands while crying out, 'Girls, girls!' " Jim shook his head. "We'd only have peace again once Hippolyta had stormed from the parlor — at which point Prof Bracewell would apologize, saying that only his dear sainted wife, God rest her soul, could ever deal with their younger daughter."

"Oof. So at the risk of making a bit of an understatement, the dear ladies don't get along with each other."

"Not in the least. But bear in mind that Hippolyta doesn't limit it to her sister; she doesn't get along with anyone."

"Ah, yes. We, ah, had a little taste of that in the lobby earlier, didn't we?"

"Right. No one in her immediate vicinity can possibly do anything right in her estimation, not even her father and certainly not her sister."

"Looks like Miss Hippolyta takes the saying of 'Nobody's perfect' to its logical extreme," Artie mused. "Well, except for her mother. Remember? 'Mother was perfect.' " His mimicry of the uncongenial Amazon was impeccable.

"Oh yes: her perfect, saintly, loving, late mother Helena Bracewell," Jim concurred. "Or at least, it would take the perfection of a saint to put up with Hippolyta, much less love her."

"Kinda wish Mama Bracewell was here to rein in her beloved daughter," Artie murmured. "At any rate, James my boy, you may expect my effusive, undying gratitude forevermore for seeing to it that I keep getting paired off with the more winsome of the sisters to escort about this conference."

"Sorry, buddy, but I already had my fill of Miss Hippolyta on the train."

"Oh, I understand. I understand completely. But the question is: what shall I do with her tomorrow? Should I provide her with a pretty, lace-bedecked gag to spare my ears, or should I just spike her drink with knock-out drops and do us all a favor?"

"That is completely up to you," Jim said as he rose from his chair to head off to bed. "But as far as I'm concerned, either one of those solutions sounds just about right."

"I bet they do," Artie grinned. He too arose, and after dropping off their used glasses at the liquor cabinet and turning out all the lights, he gave a massive yawn and wandered off to bed as well.

…

Three hours later there came a knock at the agents' door. No, make that a frantic pounding on their door, nearly an extended drum solo. "Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm coming, I'm coming!" Artie growled, throwing back his covers and hastily donning his dressing gown. He stumbled from his bedroom and headed across the main room, peripherally spotting Jim as he emerged from his own bedroom, bare-chested above his pajama bottoms. "I got it, I got it," Artie muttered, adding with sleepy grumpiness, "You're slipping, you know."

"Slipping?" asked Jim.

"Well, yeah! You showed up too soon. You should have timed your entrance for just as I laid a hand on the door knob!"

Jim chuckled as he grabbed his own dressing gown and shrugged it on. "Oh, get back to bed, Artie. I'll see who's at the door."

"Naw, naw. I'm already here." Artie finished tying the sash of his robe and opened the door — and immediately had to make a quick catch as the disturber of their rest fell right into his arms. "Miss Atalanta!" he blurted.

A second later Jim was at his side, and both men supported the girl, clad for bed in a silk peignoir richly bedecked with ribbons and laces, across the room and to the sofa. "Miss Atalanta, what's wrong?" Jim asked, seating himself at her side and taking her hand as Artie hurried to get their unexpected guest a glass of water.

"Oh, M-mr West, Mr Gordon, I don't know what's happened!" She accepted the glass that Artie pressed into her hand, took a hasty sip, then passed it back with a dimpled glance of gratitude. Lifting her large and troubled eyes toward Jim again, she exclaimed, "I awakened a few minutes ago and went to get a dr-drink of water, only to find that Father was no longer sleeping on the sofa. I checked his bedroom to make sure he was all right, but he w-wasn't there either!"

"Wasn't there?" The agents exchanged a glance, and Artie, being already on his feet, started for the door.

"N-no, he wasn't in the suite at all," said Atalanta. "And not only that, I went into P-polly's room to see if she knew where Father went, and she's missing as well!"

"What?" Artie paused in the doorway and looked back at Jim. "They're both gone?"

Jim came to his feet and strode for his bedroom. "Artie, you go on and check the suite while I get dressed."

"Right, Jim." Artie hurried away.

Just minutes later Jim, fully dressed and with his gun belt strapped around his waist, appeared again and headed for the door. "Atalanta," he said to the young woman still seated on the sofa, "you stay here and wait for us to come back. Keep that door locked and don't let anyone in who isn't me, Mr Gordon, or a member of your family."

"Y-yes, Mr West," she said submissively. "Oh, I do hope you find them quickly!" She rose to her feet and followed him to the door, taking his hand and squeezing it anxiously. "P-please, find my father and my sister!"

"We'll do our best," Jim assured her. He left, waited to hear her turn his key in the lock, then set off down the hall to join Artie.

…

It didn't take long to check the suite. In fact, Artie had already finished by the time Jim arrived, but once he was there, both men made a thorough search all over again. Sure enough, the professor and his younger daughter were gone without a trace.

Or nearly without a trace. After he finished checking the main room once again, Artie picked up the professor's blanket and draped it over his arm to take it back to the man's bedroom. And as he did...

"Hey, Artie!"

"Hmm?"

"Look at this; it fell out of the blanket."

From the floor Jim scooped up a curious object. It was a long strip of paper no more than a quarter-inch wide, and all down one side of the paper were letters, individual block capital letters written one to a line, and forming no comprehensible words whatsoever.

Artie gaped at the long curl of paper. "A scytale?"

"Maybe. Got a pencil?"

Artie patted at the pockets of his dressing gown and shook his head. "Not on me, no, but maybe... Yeah, here we go." He found a pencil lying by the base of the lamp on the side table beside the sofa, and passed the slender writing instrument over to his partner. "If it's the wrong diameter though," he commented as Jim began winding the paper around the pencil, "all you'll get is gobbledygook. That's the beauty of the scytale: it's been scrambling covert communications ever since the days of the ancient Greeks! In fact," he added, a twinkle in his eye, "you realize that whenever Julius Caesar used one, it was scytale made in Italy." Artie grinned proudly.

Jim closed his eyes as if in pain, then shot his partner a look. "You just couldn't resist that, could you?"

"What, making that delightful little rhyme? Of course not!" He leaned closer. "But I wonder who constructed this one though? And why?"

"Have a look then," said Jim. "The diameter wasn't wrong." He held out the fully wrapped pencil, and Artie read from it the message of:

IF YOU WISH TO KNOW WHAT BECAME OF THE FINAL APPLE, COME TO THE GARDENER'S SHED BEHIND THE HOTEL AT TWO AM. COME ALONE.

"And it's signed with... What is that, an H or an A?"

"Not sure. It could be either."

"Two AM. And it's…" Both men glanced at the clock.

"Nearly a quarter past. C'mon, Artie. We'd better get down to the gardener's shed."

"Yeah, I hear you! I just need to go back and get my gun and…" He waved a hand at his dressing gown over his pajamas.

Jim shot him a look. "Gun, yes; change of clothing, no. There's no telling what's going on down there, so just get the gun and meet me downstairs right away!"

"Well, sure, Jim, sure," said Artie as his partner bolted from the room and pelted off for the stairs. Artie then turned and hurried back to their room where he collected his revolver as well as a few other potentially helpful items before rushing for the stairs himself, tucking things into his pockets as he went.