* * * * *
Now, to be honest, Captain Biggs and Special Agent Biggs were identical twins! Yet, the light-hearted way in which the former had referred to the latter as his "little" brother, made it fairly easy to deduce that they had probably come into the world just minutes apart.
It was at this point that I was hit by a much harder realization.
"Not to sound ungrateful, gentlemen. But, your well-armed arrival, in the nick of time, indicates you had a pretty good idea what you might find when you got here!"
Sir Anthony smiled: "Elementary, my dear Peter. The American military have known about the existence of the Melissae for the last nine years!"
I snapped my fingers: "Of course! The survivors of the 'Mother Carey's Chicken.' "
Sir Anthony nodded.
In 1913 (after one year of quarantine at Fort Jay, New York*), those poor shrunken souls had been secretly transferred to the American Medical Museum of the Walter Reed Hospital in Washington, D.C. There, they were extensively studied and examined by the finest minds from the Harvard Medical School, in Massachusetts; the Columbia University Faculty of Medicine, in Manhattan; and the Medical College of Virginia. With some of the Harvard alumni having been ex-naval doctors who'd seen action in Cuba, China, and the Phillipines!
Unfortunately, for them, this unique line of research was soon interrupted by both the World War and the Spanish flu pandemic. So, naturally, their progress reports had ground to a halt.
That still didn't explain Harry Houdini's presence, however. And, I said as much out loud.
"I thought you and the FBI were trying to prove the existence of a Russian super-zeppelin," I added.
"A semi-facetious cover story," replied Captain Biggs: "Inspired by Uncle Sam's own work on the XZR-1 dirigible. Which, incidentally, is where that MB-3 returned to!"
"As for my involvement?" said Houdini: "Well, two months ago, I was working with an NYPD bunco squad detective to get the goods on a Coney Island 'medium' who called herself 'Madame Chulu.' Calling himself 'Chris Denton,' the detective pretended that he wanted to get in touch with his father (a doughboy killed in the Argonne Offensive). When it came time for the 'dearly departed' to make his appearance, however, I barged in with an electric lantern and a newspaper photographer!"
"That was when it happened. As soon as the detective identified himself, and told Madame Chulu that she and her henchman were under arrest, she...transformed!"
"Transformed, as in shape-shifted?" inquired Sir Anthony.
Houdini nodded: "Except for being eight feet tall, at most, she could have been a twin sister of this ill-fated wench!"
He pointed to the late, unlamented Pamela Plaisantine (who was slowly resuming a more bipedal humanoid shape).
"Before you can say 'Abracadabra,' both the photographer and the detective were dead!! And, I might have been next, if not for the fortuitous intervention of a Chinatown tong hatchet man. Or, rather, somebody dressed like one. Somebody who concealed his face beneath a tiger-striped mask...of comedy!"
"The hatchets he threw hit their target with unerring accuracy. And, after Madame Chulu's death-throes had ceased, my mysterious benefactor removed them. Revealing the axe heads to be made of pure silver."
"And, is it safe to assume that this heroic individual never identified himself?" I rhetorically asked.
"Yes and no," Houdini replied: "When I _insisted_ he tell me his name, so I could at least make a proper report to the authorities, he said I should contact the FBI and ask for Special Agent Biggs. Telling him that... Oishi had sent me!"
tbc
Giantess World
Author's Chapter Notes:
In which new players are met, and notes are compared.
Chapter End Notes:
*Fort Jay: see chapter 4 of MORE THAN ONE CAN CHEW...
Bunco squad: what the Fraud Divisions of American police departments used to be called. Initially a popular 19th-century parlor game, involving three dice, bunco had become a so-called "game of chance" in the back rooms of speak-easies by Prohibition. Hence, it soon became a generic synonym for all criminal fraud.
Bunco squad: what the Fraud Divisions of American police departments used to be called. Initially a popular 19th-century parlor game, involving three dice, bunco had become a so-called "game of chance" in the back rooms of speak-easies by Prohibition. Hence, it soon became a generic synonym for all criminal fraud.