The Final Gambit Read online

  Dedication

  To Stephanie Rivera, the teacher who somehow made my daughter love history more than she already had.

  And to all the teachers.

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Part I

  1. Deception on the High Seas

  2. An Audience with the Swamp King

  3. The Wild East

  4. America’s Most Wanted

  5. Fugitives!

  6. Pickles, But No Peppers

  7. Missing Persons

  8. Up the River

  9. Inferno!

  10. The Call of the Tame

  11. A Whole New World

  12. The Simple Life

  Part II

  13. Everything Changes

  14. A Capital Idea

  15. Off to See the Wizard

  16. The Trap Is Sprung

  17. Night at the Museum

  18. Ladies and Gentlemen, the Next President of the United States!

  19. The Wizard’s Lair

  20. Return of the Investigators’ Guild

  Part III

  21. A Dastardlier Plot

  22. Traitor!

  23. An Inescapable Dilemma

  24. Dogfight

  25. At the Apex of Disaster

  26. Breaking the Cycle

  27. After the Fall

  28. And the Winner Is . . .

  Epilogue

  Afterword: What’s Real and What’s Not in ‘The Final Gambit’

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Books by Christopher Healy

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Prologue

  Hidden

  Buford’s Bend, Ohio, October 17, 1884

  MOLLY PEPPER HELD her breath and tried to ignore the spider crawling down the bridge of her nose. It’s just a spider, she told herself. I don’t care about spiders. This wasn’t technically true. Under normal circumstances, Molly loved spiders. She once tried to keep an unusually fuzzy one as a pet, an experiment that sadly ended when the creature found its way down the back of her mother’s dress. Ignoring this particular spider on her face, however, was proving more difficult by the second. The tickle of tiny legs skittering across her cheek was almost unbearable, but she dared not shake, scratch, or sneeze, because the slightest movement would disturb the sticks and branches piled on top of her and give away her hiding place. The people looking for her would find her. And then it would all be over.

  She could hear dry grass crunching beneath the feet of her pursuers just outside the firewood bin, where she lay curled beneath the kindling. But the spider had reached her top lip. Carefully as she could, Molly thrust her lower jaw forward and attempted to blow the spider off. But if there’s one thing spiders are good at, it’s sticking in place.

  “Where is she?” a frustrated voice griped nearby. “We’ve looked everywhere!”

  “Don’t worry, she’s not getting away this time,” came the reply. “Let’s check the well!”

  As the footsteps outside the bin began to recede, the spider decided to explore Molly’s nostril. The sensation was more than she could bear. Twigs scattered and clattered as she leapt from the woodbin, wiping her face and blowing vigorous puffs of air from her nose.

  “Drat!” she grumbled, expecting to see her pursuers rushing back to her along the side of the barn where she’d just emerged from the woodpile. But they were nowhere to be seen. She craned her neck to peer down the hill to the circle of stones surrounding the family well. No one. Where had they gone? There was no way they’d gotten far enough away that they wouldn’t have heard the commotion she’d just made. It was a trap. Had to be.

  She pressed herself against the barn’s bright blue wood-plank wall and tiptoed to its rear. Peeking around the corner, she saw nothing but rain barrels. And a clear shot to the house—her cute little yellow house, with its cute little porch and cute little rocking chairs. If she could make it to the house, she’d be safe.

  She took another glance behind her. They must have gone inside the barn. That was the only possibility. Her mother was in there. And Emmett. And while Molly didn’t like using them as a distraction, she knew it might keep her pursuers busy long enough for her to make a run for the porch. She took a deep breath, rose onto the balls of her feet, and took off at a full sprint.

  “Gotcha!”

  A figure leapt out from behind the rain barrels, tackling her. Molly yelped as she and her attacker both hit the ground and rolled down the hill in a tangle of arms and legs. They came to a rest by the well and Molly lay in the grass, catching her breath for a few seconds before realizing she was on top of the other girl. “You okay under there, Orla?” Molly asked, unable to stifle a giggle.

  “I win!” A small arm poked out from beneath her, raising a fist in victory. “Sometimes it hurts to win.”

  Laughing, Molly slid aside and freed her friend. Orla wiped her grass-stained hands on her gingham dress as another girl, much taller with a pointy nose and unruly hair, came running down the hill, laughing. “I tagged her, Luddie!” Orla crowed.

  Luddie snorted. “You know that ‘tagging’ is usually done just with the hands, right?”

  “Since when do I do things usual?” the petite girl said proudly.

  “We should hire you out to a rodeo show in need of a bull,” Molly said, helping her up.

  Luddie gave Molly a playful shove. “You’re it this time,” she said.

  “Okay,” said Molly. “But I would advise against hiding in the woodbin unless you don’t mind spiders in your . . .” She trailed off as she noticed a wagon coming up the road. “Captain Lee’s back from town!” Molly said, running off. “He’s gonna have the mail.”

  “Wait!” Luddie shouted. “Spiders in your what? You gotta finish that sentence!”

  “Yeah, and I wanna know about that rodeo bull thing,” Orla added. “Is that a real job? ’Cause I could see myself doing that.”

  Molly ran up and around the front of the barn, passing the open front doors and giving a cheerful wave to her mother and her best friend, who were hard at work inside. Cassandra Pepper, the unsung genius inventor, was back to doing what she did best: creating astonishingly imaginative and useful machines. And Molly’s more-brother-than-friend, Emmett Lee, was working as Cassandra’s apprentice—and looking more confident than Molly had ever seen him. Together, the two were putting the finishing touches on her mother’s Daedalus Chariot, a new flying machine to replace the one that had been stolen by their archenemy, the diabolical madman Ambrose Rector.

  Cassandra, soldering wires in grease-smeared coveralls, looked up, waved, and proudly flashed the medallion that she wore on a chain around her neck. It wasn’t really a medallion—it was the lid to a pickle jar—but Molly had etched the words “World’s Greatest Inventor” into it as a gift for her. Emmett, balanced on a stepladder to oil the chariot’s spinning overhead propeller, flashed Molly a smile as well. Seeing those two so happy, realizing their mutual dreams of being inventors, gave her warm tingles. (The good kind of tingles, not the kind caused by a spider up your nose.)

  The horse neighed as Captain Lee’s wagon pulled up to the hitching post by the little yellow house. Molly bounded onto the porch and threw herself into one of the comfy rocking chairs that Cassandra had designed to sway in smooth, silent, fluid motion. She glanced around—at the vibrant paint that she still couldn’t believe they’d talked Captain Lee into letting them use, at the adorable hummingbirds hovering around the feeder that Emmett had installed, at the window to her very own bedroom. Molly had never thought she’d be able to live this way. Coming here was something she did for the
others, she told herself—an act of self-sacrifice. But she could no longer deny that it was pretty darn nice. Even if part of her wished it wasn’t.

  Captain Wendell Lee hopped down from the wagon with a wave and a smile. Molly wondered if it was still weird for Emmett to no longer be an orphan, after believing he was for so many years. But ever since they’d rescued his father from that cavern in Antarctica the prior year, Emmett was now just a half-orphan, like Molly. Bonding over their missing parents had been one of the things that initially brought Molly and Emmett together as friends. But Molly always felt worse for Emmett, because she at least had fond memories of her father, who’d been such a big part of her life for her first nine years, but Emmett’s mother had died giving birth to him back in China; he’d never known her at all.

  Captain Lee unloaded two burlap sacks from the wagon, one filled with flour, the other with iron bolts. “Guess which of these your mother requested?” he said with a grin.

  “Did you get the mail?” Molly asked.

  Captain Lee furrowed his brow. “A hello would be nice.”

  “Hello, did you get the mail?” Molly asked.

  The captain sighed and carried his bundles inside. “It’s on the seat.”

  Molly ran to the cart, gave the old gray horse a friendly pat on the nose, and grabbed the two envelopes and a newspaper that sat on the driver’s bench. Back on the porch, she tossed the envelopes onto a small wooden table—she didn’t care about those—and began flipping through the paper, scanning, as she always did, for the name of their long-lost friend, investigative journalist Nellie Bly. Months earlier, on their mission to find Captain Lee, Nellie disappeared on the island of Barbados. She had gone to seek aid from a man named Grimsby, whom they later learned was an employee of Ambrose Rector. No one had heard from Nellie since.

  And this newspaper didn’t seem like it was going to change that situation. Molly sighed as she folded back the last page. There, she saw a name that made her breath catch in her throat. And it wasn’t Nellie Bly’s. It was the name of someone who was supposed to be dead. Someone she knew was dead. And yet, there this person was in the newspaper, talking to reporters.

  “C’mon, Molly! We’re waiting on you for the next round!” Luddie called from the lawn. “Get educated on your own time!”

  “Yeah,” added Orla. “Unless you are already playing and you’re trying to hide behind that newspaper. In which case . . . we found you.”

  Molly barely heard them. She couldn’t tear her eyes from the article.

  “Come on, Molly! You’re it!”

  “I know,” Molly muttered as she reread the sentence for the third time.

  There was only one explanation for what she was seeing: Ambrose Rector was back.

  Part I

  1

  Deception on the High Seas

  Somewhere off the Florida coast, January 17, 1884

  MOLLY AND EMMETT stood at the rail by the bow of the AquaZephyr, an experimental high-velocity ship designed by the world-famous Alexander Graham Bell—and their home since the previous September. It was on this vessel that they, along with Cassandra and their friend Nellie Bly, sought refuge after their own boat sank in the Caribbean Sea. It was also on the AquaZephyr that they and Bell were held captive by Ambrose Rector, the madman whom they’d prevented from killing thousands at the World’s Fair that spring. This was the same ship in which Rector and his henchmen dragged them all the way to Antarctica on his quest for more Ambrosium, the mysterious alien ore that he used to power his doomsday weapons. But once they were in Antarctica, Emmett and the Peppers had sought to achieve more than just thwarting Rector: they’d also hoped to uncover evidence as to the fate of Emmett’s father, who’d been marooned by Rector on those icy Antarctic shores four years earlier. What they hadn’t expected was to find the man himself, alive and well. So it was on the decks of the AquaZephyr that Emmett and Wendell Lee began the long but joyful process of getting to know each other again.

  Now they were all heading home. Well, most of them. Nellie had vanished in Barbados, Rector’s henchman Icepick and the backstabbing federal agent Archibald Forrest had both met gruesome ends during the hunt for Ambrosium, and Rector himself had been, in an ironic twist, left stranded in Antarctica. Molly was not naive enough to count him out, though. There was no logical reason to believe anyone would survive alone in the frigid Antarctic wastes, especially after a cave-in destroyed the oasis of warmth, food, and shelter that had been keeping Captain Lee alive. But this was Ambrose Rector, the man who had already found his way back from Antarctica once before, the man who’d held thousands hostage at the World’s Fair with his Mind-Melter threatening to liquefy their brains, who’d used his uncanny talent for impersonation and disguise to fool them far too many times in the past. The man who had tried to kill the Peppers a dozen times over, the man who still haunted Molly’s dreams every night. They might have left him helpless in the icy wastes, but Molly would be forever awaiting the moment when Ambrose Rector would worm his way back into their lives.

  Molly tried not to think about him, though. Or the others who were gone. She was just grateful they hadn’t lost Robot, her aluminum friend who unfortunately owed his life to Ambrosium. Robot may have started out as a clockwork automaton, created by Alexander Graham Bell to sing at the World’s Fair, but after a chunk of Ambrosium granted him a life and mind of his own, he became another full-fledged member of Molly’s patchwork family. Molly had believed she’d lost Robot along with Nellie in Barbados, but it turned out he’d flown all the way to Antarctica to find her again. Robot was a very devoted robot, and Molly was a very devoted sister to him. The only problem was that the shard of Ambrosium in his chest, which also gifted him with powers of flight and magnetism, shrank a bit every time Robot used those powers. Once that glowing orange rock in his torso was gone, so was Robot.

  But that wasn’t the only threat to her mechanical friend. There was also Alexander Graham Bell, their supposed ally, who, despite repeated promises never to do so, couldn’t seem to keep himself from constantly mentioning how much he’d like to dissect Robot and tear his heart out. He may never have used those specific words, but Molly knew that’s what Bell meant every time he suggested “experimenting” on her friend. Molly had stopped trusting Alexander Graham Bell the moment he broke his promise about changing the rules of the all-male Inventors’ Guild so that they could start admitting women (namely, Molly’s mother).

  “Gorgeous night, isn’t it?” Bell strolled up and took a spot at the rail between Molly and Emmett. The children exchanged knowing glances. Bell had taken to doing this every night for the past few weeks as they sailed back toward the United States. The inventor stroked his thick black beard and stared out at a star-filled sky over dark, swirling waters. “Believe it or not, I think that, once we’re home, I might miss being at sea.” He had a slight Scottish lilt to his speech, a remnant of his European childhood.

  “I don’t know, Mr. Bell,” said Emmett. “I’m looking forward to my stomach staying in just one part of my body again.”

  “You still get seasick after all these months, Emmett?” Molly asked.

  “The steady diet of barnacles probably hasn’t helped,” Emmett replied.

  “Don’t worry,” said Bell. “In a few days’ time, you’ll be back on solid ground.”

  Molly snorted. “You’ve ridden a wagon down those New York streets, right? They don’t feel very solid to me. My eyeglasses bounce right off my face.”

  Bell harrumphed. He had never quite taken to Molly’s sense of humor. Or humor in general. He stared out at the horizon. “Children, do you see? It might be difficult to make out in the dark, but that bit of land rising up in the distance—that’s Florida. Well, the Florida Keys most likely, but still American soil. We may be back in New York sooner than expected.”

  “Speaking of which,” Molly said, “have you given any more thought to your plan for us when we get to Manhattan?”

  “You know, with t
he government having warrants out for our arrest?” added Emmett.

  Bell patted the boy’s head. “I’ve told you before: all will be taken care of. Once I explain to the authorities that you helped me stop Ambrose Rector—”

  “But we broke federal secrecy agreements,” Emmett said. “No one was supposed to know about what happened at the World’s Fair; no one was supposed to know that Ambrose Rector even existed. But we told. And we told a journalist, of all people.”

  “Well, I did,” Molly said. “You and Mother just got roped in by being connected to me. Still feel bad about that.”

  “It doesn’t matter anymore,” Emmett said. “It happened. And somehow I don’t think the Feds are just going to forgive and forget. Especially when we don’t know where Nellie is; they’ll probably think she’s hiding out there, waiting for the right moment to blow open the whole Rector story, including the cover-up.”

  “Children, children,” Bell said. “Don’t forget that I’m the co-president of the Inventors’ Guild. I have influence. I can make things happen.”

  Like getting my mother into the Guild? Molly thought. You told us you’d make that happen too. But what she said was, “That’s right, Mr. B. I keep forgetting how lucky we are.” Behind Bell’s back, Emmett squeezed her hand. He was so good at knowing when Molly needed a little “I know how you feel” hand squeeze.

  Bell’s eyes went back to the stars. “Ah, as much as I enjoy the thrill of seafaring, I do look forward to getting back to the Guild, back to my lab, back to inventing,” he said wistfully. “Without the specter of Ambrose Rector hovering over me, I can finally focus on my work. There’s so much I long to do.”

  Here it comes, Molly thought.

  “It would be fascinating, for instance,” Bell continued, “if I could finally get a more in-depth look at our friend Robot.”

  Emmett squeezed tighter.

  “It’s really for the best that I haven’t examined him here on the ship,” Bell said. “The instruments in my workshop at the Guild Hall will allow for a much more thorough investigation—thorough, but not harmful, of course. I gave my word that Robot would never be in any danger and I meant it. In fact, now that I think about it, if anything should go wrong and you folks do end up temporarily in police custody, you can count on me to care for Robot in your absence.”