The Unlonely Obelisk

Things always look better in the morning, Amanda thought. No matter what sort of day she might have, there was nothing that a good night's rest – or the right sort of unrest – couldn't help cure. Last night had given her a satisfying mixture of both when she'd needed them badly. Today dawned bright and clear, blue skied and not too hot for a part of the country that could be sweltering when it wanted to be. A good day for hunting out rats – or devils – in the healthy, open air. A good day for seeking out whatever hidden nastiness Hell's Half-Acre might hold. After the traumatic truths of yesterday, she was positively looking forward to it.

Her parents might have rued the reality, but Amanda Madeleine Gordon West had inherited a lot more from her father than his dark brown eyes and dark, curly hair. The Gordon Gumption, as she tended to think of it, filled her too. Like her father, like her father's Great Aunt Maude of family legend (a woman she so wished she could have met), Amanda did not flee from adventure. She craved it. She sought it out. In spite of the early scare she'd gotten from Charlie – or perhaps even because of it – she'd embraced every challenge thrown at her and wrestled them all to the ground. Not for her a quiet, respectable, homebound life! Not for her an existence of doing only what society deemed suitable! Not that her mother had been any fainting daffodil or shrinking violet either. It took guts and grit to be a traveling stage actress too. But it was her father's life of daring exploits that Amanda had craved when she was little, not the fame and glamor of a thespian. Listening not just to her father's stories, but to Aunt Kate's and the Secret Service secretary Miss Collingwood's, she had dreamed of the possibilities she was now living. Tem had always known her ambitions, shared them and approved of them.

Which was why his occasional moments of hard-headedness could be so darn frustrating!

"You can't be serious!" he argued.

"I am being perfectly serious," she replied. "Right now, more than ever – especially after yesterday – we need to travel in disguise. This can be part of our disguise."

"Yes, but-"

"No one here should know about it. No one has any reason to associate us with it."

"Yes, but-"

"No more yes, buts, Mr. West!" She placed her ferociously strong index finger gently across his lips. "We need a cover. We can't just go marching onto the battlefield as ourselves and hope that our enemies don't notice! But a nice, middle-aged and owlish couple out for a sunny day picnic will suit the purpose. Conspicuously inconspicuous, that's what we'll be." She removed her finger. "Well?"

Tem rolled his gorgeous green eyes at her.

"That's your idea of inconspicuous?" He pointed at the offending object.

"I know you don't like it," she said. "But it is less conspicuous than either Diamond or Baccarat would be if our conspiracy nasties are on the lookout for them! I love Diamond, really I do, if not as much as Jimmy fusses over Daisy." They both had to chuckle a little over that. "But a dappled silver horse is not the most inconspicuous color the bureau could have chosen and you know it! And don't tell me you'll be heartbroken not to have Baccarat around! The two of you are barely even civil to one another." She saw him considering this and threw in the clincher. "I'll drive."

"Fine!" He gave in with a shrug. "But it will never replace horses."

No, the auto-mobile never would. She had to agree with her husband on that point. But the noisy, clanking, smelly and less maneuverable contraption had some advantages of its own that might prove very useful. She hadn't been facetious in worrying that Diamond's distinctive appearance – or Baccarat's, for that matter – might be recognizable to the foe that had nearly furnaced them both in Chicago, for all that Tem and Amanda had walked their way into that trap. She cursed herself for not thinking of it yesterday before riding into town not once but twice. Only Daisy might not be all that identifiable, since she was a very common color and Jimmy had barely ridden his beloved, precious beauty anywhere in the Windy City. The horseless carriage, though, would be conspicuously inconspicuous in exactly the manner Artemus Gordon would have approved of. It would attract so much attention to itself that people would be paying far more attention to the vehicle than its occupants. That suited Amanda's plan to a T.

Once Tem had agreed to something, he was usually in it for the full pound. He gave no more arguments as Amanda made them both look like the stodgy, middle-aged tourists they would pretend to be. He reflexively and aesthetically squirmed a bit as she brought the bright straw boater hat down on his head, but didn't complain out loud. Amanda thought the silly hat went perfectly with his brand new salt-and-pepper mustache and sideburns. She wished she could have asked Jimmy to take a photograph of him in the get-up, but her brother was busy getting ready for his own errand, visiting Professor Niebhausen's lab. While they searched the old battlefield, Jimmy would be seeking out the professor's explosive detection formula.

The auto-mobile itself was already loaded up with a dandy number of gadgets, as the scientists in Washington had demonstrated. The three agents had made their own additions, of course, with plans for more. Who knew what the fight against their large and resourceful foe might require? This morning they would be going to Hell's Half-Acre loaded for bear and equipped with everything from a tear gas grenade launcher concealed inside a rucksack, a spare tire pump that could dispense sleep gas if needed and a .38 caliber car jack, to say nothing of what their folding beach-or-picnic umbrella was capable of! Amanda had opted to bring her tan parasol, which could also fire bullets as well as a grapple hook and line, and was easy to accessorize. And Micah had prepared them a picnic lunch which looked exactly like a picnic lunch and which was, in fact, a picnic lunch.

Having risen early that day, all three agents were ready to leave the train by ten for their respective destinations. Amanda gave her brother and Daisy a cheery wave as they departed. She was glad he would have a potentially useful and demanding task to keep him occupied while she and Tem went off on their own riskier mission. Making him stay behind with Wanderer II while they went looking for the second hideout in Chicago had done Jimmy's nerves no good at all. But if the weapons dealers were somehow hiding out near the old battlefield, she wanted her brother as far from it as possible – and herself in on the hunt . . . .

Amanda had her own selfish reasons for wanting to take the auto-mobile to the battlegrounds. Speed. It couldn't compete with their train, or any train as far as she knew. But their horseless carriage could travel faster than any horse – a full forty miles per hour! She had driven it the most of any of them in Washington, and with the wind in her hair it had been splendid, splendid enough to let her leave her grief behind when she was at the wheel. Today would have been a perfect day for a ride, but it was also a perfect day for a drive.

Just not, alas, at forty miles per hour . . . .

"What on earth?" she muttered as they neared their destination. Perhaps their 'car' wouldn't be so conspicuously inconspicuous after all. The hallowed area where the Battle of Stones River had taken place nearly half a century earlier wasn't exactly unoccupied. The large numbers of 'fellow' tourists streaming into the area wasn't treating it as very hallowed either. She, Jimmy and Tem had gotten only a brief glimpse of the land on their way through to the Murfreesboro siding where Wanderer II was parked. The area had been at least slightly wooded during the long-ago battle itself, according to Uncle Jim. Four decades of mostly neglect had healed some of the scars on that land and left it grown over in many places. According to what relatively little advance knowledge they had, a benevolent association was trying to preserve the battlefield and get Congress – good luck with that! – to enshrine it as a national monument to the conflict. There had even been a commemorative obelisk erected somewhere here just a few years earlier. Amanda had expected to find a few other picnickers and curiosity seekers prowling about the place, enough to make their own cover plausible. But the weather today was indeed perfect for an outing, so out people had come. She was forced to slow their vehicle practically to a crawl as other auto-mobiles vied with horses, horse-drawn carriages, bicycles, walkers and even one rider of a penny-farthing competed for access to the site.

This wasn't a national monument to a great and terrible tragedy – this was a circus!

"Doesn't look much like a smuggler's evil lair, does it?" Tem whispered to her.

She could only shake her head and stare at the spectacle in shock as she looked for a spot where they could park their vehicle. How were they ever supposed to ferret out clues to the location of a secret mob in this mob?

And in spite of Hell's Half-Acre being confined to approximately one half-acre, the entire battlefield was, as they had told Jimmy, huge.

"I wonder if it's some sort of special occasion?" Amanda asked.

They didn't have to walk far from their auto-mobile to find out that it was a special occasion – special for the Nashville Railway it was. The Railway and the Stones River Park Association had declared it one in advance of the July 4th Independence Day holiday and were offering special commemorative medals to anyone who came to visit the battlefield today. The fact that the Railway and the Association were also selling refreshments to the masses at exorbitant prices struck them both as being less than coincidental. Amanda saw her husband staring down at the cheap, thin souvenir medallion someone had handed him, frowning, and she looked at it, along with today's date. She realized, with a pang, what date besides Independence Day was now less than a week away. It had snuck up on them. Uncle Jim's birthday. Only this year there would be no cake, no presents, no celebration – no Uncle Jim. She wrapped her arm around Tem's waist and gave him a hug.

"They're treating this place as if it's some kind of tourist attraction!" he whispered bitterly. "My father bled on this ground! Lost one of his childhood friends on this ground!"

"Well, we are dressed as tourists ourselves, don't forget," she whispered back. "It's bad luck on the timing, but let's find Hell's Half-Acre and search it as best we can."

Locating the section turned out to be not difficult at all – it was where a number of Civil War enthusiasts were gathering and taking photographs near a monument dedicated to Union Colonel Hazen's brigade, who had fought here so gallantly and died in such great numbers. Young Captain James West had been part of the reinforcements sent to relieve Hazen's men during a withering series of Confederate attacks that threatened a crucial section of the Union line. Now it housed not only the monument, but a cemetery surrounded by a low, gray wall and iron fencing. Especially with the crowd of gaily dressed picnic goers and souvenir and food vendors, it was difficult to picture this as a fiercely fought-over, blood-drenched military position. But that's what it had been. It was hard to imagine that the agents' current enemies would choose so unlikely a spot for their smuggling operation either.

"Maybe too much of the message got lost when it burned?" Amanda speculated as soon as she and Tem could withdraw far enough from the crowd to converse more. "Perhaps it was meant to say 'we're going every place else except Hell's Half-Acre?"

"I don't think so." Tem nodded over to the area where they'd been standing minutes before and directed her gaze with a few subtle hand gestures. "Look at the surroundings."

She did. And now she noticed what he was trying to point out. Just past the little cemetery section with its dramatic monument was a forested area, which might conceal almost anything. That wasn't all. Literally less than a stone's throw in front of the monument was one of the direct rail lines running through the site. A train could pull right up to this place at any time of day or night. While there might be crowd here today, surely there wouldn't be one every day, or after dusk either. Very few people actually wanted to hang out in cemeteries at night, and as the government had not yet declared it a national monument . . . .

"Someplace like this is the last place anyone would expect to find what we're looking for," she nodded, "but it has at least one of the transportation components, doesn't it?" Railway, roadway . . . .

"The fact that this is the last place anyone would expect to find it may be exactly what makes it perfect," he said. "Their other locations weren't exactly in the middle of the desert."

No. They'd been right in the heart of one of the most bustling, busy and progressive cities in America – concealed under everyone's nose until Uncle Jim had sniffed one out. If the weapons dealers had a modus operandi, it wasn't based on shyness.

"We need to come back here and make a more thorough search, especially of those woods, when there isn't a three-ring circus. We might be able to conceal ourselves better among so many people but this is hardly conducive to finding clues."

Amanda could only agree. Drat it all! To have come so far and to have gone to such effort, only to be foiled by a money-making promotion! Well, at least this was a legal money-making promotion, and not one likely to result in any deaths, if not exactly respectful toward the dead themselves. What would the soldiers who had fallen here for their country have thought of the vacationers and souvenir-seekers trampling on their graves?

Since she and Tem didn't want the day to be a complete waste, they made a perambulation about the battlefield and its sights to get the lay of the land as best they could for when they returned. Small wonder if Congress would not want to give this area special status in spite of its very real history. She doubted that there would be much left of the original battlefield to find beyond the graves and their commemorative markers after its exploiters finished having their way with it. The obelisk erected by the Park Association had its share of the mob too. There were other places here that, like the area behind Hell's Half-Acre, appeared more forested and wild, with trees, little streamlets and large, dramatic clusters of rock. Those would bear more careful exploration. But it almost made Amanda shiver to see children running and climbing among those rocks as their families engaged in sightseeing. No one here besides she and Tem had any inkling that this place might yet contain more than just old graves and rusted scraps of the conflict.

Tem, as usual, seemed to know just what she was thinking.

"We'll have to be doubly careful ourselves," he nodded. "No telling what could be back there."

The rocky and uneven, tree-dense area was vast enough that they could envision this place being fought over by two armies that numbered in the tens of thousands. Control of the vital Nashville Turnpike and any existing rail lines was the winner's prize and the Union, losing the war up to that point and desperate for a victory, was that winner. It would have been winter back then, not summer. So this was the notorious Slaughter Pen. For just a moment, the shouting, happy children seemed to vanish and Amanda had a vision of uniformed troops struggling and straggling through the trees over boulders and mud caked with ice and blood. She could imagine the crackle of rifle fire, the screams, the smells. Then the vision faded and was replaced once more by the current reality. They might represent desecration of a place that should remain sacred, but Amanda preferred the sight of children playing. Now that she thought about it, she bet most of the soldiers would have too.

She shivered a little, in spite of the day's heat, as she and Tem walked on to yet another section of this beautiful piece of land made infamous by man. They visited the large, established cemetery, with its row upon row of countless white stones. These were the Union's dead. In the aftermath of victory, disposal of Confederate corpses, if undertaken at all, had often been less kind. There was even been a small settlement of freedmen established here, according to a pamphlet that Amanda bought for a penny from one of the vendors, some of whose residents still lived in a section called the Cedars. Perhaps they would know something, if Tem and Amanda dared to ask in the right way. If they could risk it. Today they would not even try.

The agent couple departed in mid-afternoon, along with a goodly number of the battlefield's other visitors. To Tem's disgust, Amanda pocketed a couple of the tacky free souvenir medallions.

"For heaven's sake, why?" he'd asked.

"Well," she sighed, "if nothing else, when the bureau's expensing department complains, we can prove we've been here."

He snorted so loudly she checked to make sure his mustache was still holding.

"And when we get back to the train, don't rip off your disguise right away," she told him. "I want to see if Jimmy can take a picture of you first. You make an adorable fussbudget, Mr. West."

That earned her another snort, but she rewarded him with a smile that she used when she wanted him to agree. If he knew how to read her like a book, she knew how to read him like an annotated special edition. She allowed him to take off the silly hat, but she'd want him to put it back on for the camera.

"Think he's had any luck?" Tem asked.

"Don't know," she said, not wanting to take her hands off of the steering wheel enough to shrug. "I suppose we'll find out soon."

But Jimmy hadn't yet returned to Wanderer II when they got back. This wasn't entirely unexpected, since whenever Jimmy (or his father before him) got together with fellow scientists, chronology was seldom their most studied topic. In fact, chronology was never Jimmy Gordon's specialty. Amanda and Tem used the time to snack a bit more on the picnic lunch they'd brought with them that day but had little appetite to touch at the battlefield. As the hours stretched on more toward evening, she began to worry.

"He should have been back by now, shouldn't he?" Tem's face, even in its disguise, was tense with worry as they both looked out the train's windows and saw no sign of him.

For the first time today, she felt a prickle of genuine fear. Yes, her brother wasn't exactly the king of promptness for all that someone who loved gadgets as much as he did ought to be equipped with the very best watches. But he wouldn't have wanted her to worry. Lily Gordon had been a world class worrier and Jimmy knew that Amanda had more than a pinch of that trait herself. Plus he surely wouldn't want to ride Daisy back in the dark, even if he had a battery light, while he was alone and in relatively unfamiliar territory. It was conceivably possible that he had gotten lost, but . . . . No, she realized, he wouldn't have forgotten his way back to the train. Not with his uncanny memory.

"I think we should go look for him."

Tem nodded, obviously about to say the same thing himself.

As they refilled the auto-mobile's fuel tank, neither spoke, both listening in hope for the sound of Daisy's hooves. But hope was disappointed this time, and it was a much grimmer pair of picnickers – without hats – that set out from the Wanderer II for the professor's college campus in Murfreesboro. Amanda's hands gripped the steering wheel tight, and she was thankful for the lack of other objects or people in the roadway as she pushed the vehicle toward its maximum upper limit. She didn't glance over at her husband – she didn't want to see her own fears reflected in his eyes. Maybe nothing was wrong, she tried to tell herself. Maybe her annoying baby brother was being more annoying than usual and really did forget the time. Maybe whatever experiment or demonstration he and Professor Niebhausen were working on took too long and couldn't be interrupted without undesired results.

And maybe fish really do ride bicycles!

She still hoped desperately that they would see Jimmy and Daisy journeying back to Wanderer II as they sped toward Murfreesboro. She wished and prayed that he wasn't in any danger. But if he really wasn't in any danger, so help her, she was going to throttle him!

The campus wasn't at all hard to find, though Amanda, to her frustration, was forced to drastically slow her speed as they got into town. Murfreesboro, being the progressive city that it was, theirs was not the only motored vehicle, though horse traffic still predominated. Finding their way to the professor's lab on the campus wasn't much more difficult. Amanda remembered what the professor had scribbled down for Jimmy, and a puzzled student was all too happy to direct them. Unfortunately, when they reached their destination, it was clear that neither the professor nor Jimmy was in the laboratory or its adjoining office. The sky was beginning to darken, but there were no lights on, no sound of anyone being at home.

"Locked," Tem said.

Amanda felt an urge to blow that lock off with one shot, or perhaps kick or tear it off by its hinges. The way she felt right now, she might just have been able to do that. But realizing that a more finessed solution was the better option, she scolded herself to steady her nerves while Tem picked the lock on the door. It was a good lock, but no match for him.

There was, indeed, no one inside – and no signs of any disturbance in the Professor's office, which they entered first, the better to sneak into the larger lab space. But Amanda's heart sank as they turned on the overhead light in the empty lab. Here, there were definite signs of a struggle. Over in one corner, a couple of glass beakers lay shattered on the floor in pools of some unknown substance. A metal stand next to one of the Bunsen burners had been knocked over too, and the chair that went behind what was evidently another desk for the professor was laying on its side. Amanda saw Tem freeze in place as he walked behind the desk and spotted something on the floor. He motioned for her to stay where she was as he kneeled down to examine the something closer.

"Jimmy . . . ?" she whispered fearfully.

He shook his head, and the expression he wore didn't encourage her to stop holding her breath as she saw him reach down for something. When he stood back up, his face was graver, and she saw in his hand something that made her feel faint. Jimmy's wire-framed glasses. The ones he wore every waking moment.

"He was here," Tem said.

So, obviously, had been someone else. And now her brother and the professor were gone.

No! Oh, please, no!

Tem handed her the glasses.

"They've got him," he said quietly. "And probably Professor Niebhausen too."

She had to force her hands not to shake as she folded up the eyeglasses and put them in her handbag, had to force her words out.

"What if . . . what if he's . . . ?"

"He isn't dead," her husband said firmly. "If he were, we'd have found the body here, not just his eyeglasses. Whoever did this didn't bother to cover up the evidence very much, and there's no blood either. They may have found out about the professor's invention and decided he could be useful to them. They probably think the same thing about Jimmy. That means he's still alive."

If only that were true! Tem was right – she wasn't seeing any blood anywhere. Her brother had to be alive. He has to be . . . . But he was far from safe.

Tem came around the desk again and put his arms on her shoulders.

"We're going to find him, Amanda – I swear!"

Tem, like his father, didn't give his word lightly. She knew that. But what if . . . .

No!

For Jimmy's sake and theirs, she had to pull herself together and focus on the task at hand – rescuing Jimmy. She was going to find her brother and get him back.

And so help her, if his captors had harmed one hair on his head, she was going to make them wish their ancestors hadn't been born!