The Adventures of Fan Lee

“This letter was written by a woman, in 1893. Nowhere on this page does she give her name, so in my mind I have been calling her Fan Lee. She is writing this letter from her prison cell, and she expects to die there. My theory is that she is writing to her daughter, a daughter she must have abandoned years before. She also dates the story, which begins in San Francisco in the spring of 1888 and she has been in prison for most of the intervening 5 years.”

“In April, 1888, Miss Fan took passage on a ship headed for the Orient. She was in disguise and fleeing the police, though she doesn’t say why. When she reached the ship she felt she was safe, as the police declined to board the ship. She was a paying customer, and the crew had no allegiance to the San Francisco police. As long as she was leaving town, she became someone else’s problem. But what happened to her next was worse than being captured by the police.”

“A few hours after they left San Francisco they spotted the lighthouse on South Farallon Island, identifiable by the flashing beacon, once every 15 seconds. The weather was rapidly worsening, and quickly developed into a typhoon which drove the ship onto the rocks on the north shore of that island. Miss Fan was knocked unconscious in the wreck, and thrown onto a small beach by the storm. At that, she was very lucky; she never after heard of anyone else surviving.”

Tammi couldn’t contain herself. “The treasure, ‘Ling, the treasure?!” Alex was looking at her in shocked disapproval, and Liling was smiling.

Alex started to scold her. “Tam, her name is…” and Liling interrupted.

“Thank you, child, it has been years since anyone has called me by that name, and I find I miss it. Sometimes custom and tradition can be so stifling.”

“Hear, hear!” Tammi almost yelled. She felt very strongly the same way, and was astonished to realize that she and Liling might be more alike than she’d realized. It was also one of the traits she shared with Alex.

“As before, have patience, young one. The castaway didn’t find the treasure right away and my story will not find the treasure right away. It will come when the time is right.” Tammi nodded reluctantly and Liling continued her tale.

“When she awakened, she found herself surrounded by birds of many types – literally tens of thousands of birds, packed so closely that they often failed to get out of her path when she moved. This was fortunate; as long as she remained trapped, she was able to survive on eggs and the occasional roasted fowl – and rum. Almost every day, flotsam from her ship and other nearby older wrecks washed onto the beach, and she discovered several intact casks of rum, a godsend as she had no source of fresh water.”

“HEY! Who says I’m a child?” Tammi interrupted petulantly.

“Ah, Miss Paige, when one reaches my age, all young people look like children.” She paused for a second of thought, then…”though not all of them act that way.” Before Tammi could decide whether to be offended, Liling went back to the story.

“The small beach was at the end of a long, narrow fissure in the rock cliff of the island. She never knew how deeply it extended under water, but the walls above the water were perhaps a hundred feet high, and unclimbable. Even on a calm day, the water was a churning cauldron, so turbulent she couldn’t swim out or float out on a raft, but she never ceased her preparations for escape or rescue. Therefore she was ready when one day, her means of escape was revealed to her, as an unusually low tide, which she referred to as a crescent moon tide, revealed the top of the mouth of a cave that was normally submerged. She pushed off on her makeshift raft and paddled over and into that cave. It led south and sloped toward the surface. When she reached the inside waterline, she realized that if she went forward, she might never return. She made a decision she says she might not have made if her diet had included less rum, lit the makeshift torch she had brought with her, and pushed deeper into the cave, which continued to rise. Her description actually sounds more like a tunnel or a tube than a cave, though a tunnel lined with crystals, which her torch turned into fiery jewels!”

“I’ll bet it was a volcanic fumarole, exposed by whatever catastrophic geologic event cracked open that crevice!” Tammi interrupted again. Both her friends looked at her in disbelief. “What, because I’m fantastically beautiful I have to be a dunce? I spent the afternoon at the library. A volcanic event pushed the Farallon Islands above the water, and there are at least 2 ancient volcanic throats on the one we’re talking about.”

There was silence for a short while as Alex and Liling digested Tammi’s not-so-subtle rebuke, and then Liling took up her story again.

“Long story shorter, she made her way through this this fumarole.” At this point, she nodded her head at the ‘beautiful dunce’, acknowledging her contribution. “If it had been more rugged, she may not have made it. Eventually the passage opened to the surface on the top of the broad, high plateau on the east end of the island. She struggled to climb to the surface, and then had to struggle again to climb down from the plateau. Eventually, she made contact with the people who lived and worked on the island – employees of several companies that ‘harvested’ millions of bird eggs and sold them in San Francisco. Not long after that, Miss Fan returned to San Francisco, and that’s where the story on this page ends.”

“Um, Miss Kam, didn’t you miss something?” Tammi asked mildly. “Where’s the treasure?!” That was much louder.

“Oh, my, I did miss the treasure, didn’t I, dear?” Leling replied innocently. “I’m ever so sorry. As old as I am, sometimes my mind wanders. Let me see… Miss Fan found evidence that others had visited her cove before, many years previously, and had spent considerable time there: old fire pits drifted over with sand, piles of shattered glass from liquor bottles, some rotted canvas that had probably been a tent. And there was a short cave at the very end of the fissure, in which she found an old wooden chest, bound with iron straps. She battered it open with a rock, and she was stunned and thrilled to discover a pirate treasure! It had gold and silver coins, jewelry, and stuff you don’t think of as part of a pirate treasure - an astrolabe, an elaborate compass with a shattered glass, some bags of iron shot, rusted solid, a magnifying glass, thimbles and needles, among other things. She laments that she was never able to return – she ends the page by encouraging she to whom the letter was addressed to return prepared to wait near the fumarole for the crescent moon tide for her chance to reach the cove.”

“Wow, Miss Kam, you are really smart to figure all that out, and overnight at that!” Tammi congratulated her older friend. “But… we either have to swim or float through a churning cauldron of turbulent ocean, no doubt crisscrossed by treacherous currents, or explore a dank, dark, volcanic fumarole which is probably a foot deep in bird crap, and then either swim underwater through a hundred yards of even darker, wetter, cave or wait until a crescent moon tide and race through that same hundred yards of dark wet cave and probably get trapped on the other side when the tide comes in? And what the heck is a crescent moon tide, anyway? And we don’t even know if the treasure is still there? Phooey, who needs it?”

“A succinct evaluation, my young friend,” Liling agreed. “Whoever originally hid the treasure there chose an excellently safe location.”

Alex broke out laughing. “You two forget, we’ve got a flying car. We’ll just fly into the fissure well above the churning cauldron of treacherous, turbulent water, and avoid the dank dark cave of crap. And we ain’t waitin for no crescent moon, either!”

“I’m sorry, my young adventurous friends, but I have had more than my share of flying recently, with and without airplanes, and I dread the thought of a flying car. You must go without me.”

“We don’t need to pack,” Alex announced enthusiastically. “We can be there and back in an hour. Let’s go!”

Tammi unleashed her patented battle cry, which she normally used to sonicly batter her opponents into submission without even a fight. “YAHOOO! Gangway! Comin’ THROUGH!!”

At Last, the Treasure

Alex, acting as an agent of the Super Squad, had temporarily retained a small hanger at Crissy Field for storage of the air car. It only took a few minutes on Alex’s bike to reach the field, and within a half an hour, AVantGuard was on the way to South Farallon Island. Tammy was ‘at the wheel’, as their Super Squad training had shown her to be the better pilot. Alex was grudgingly, barely, willing to admit this.

“Say, Stretch, the Squad has a few of these babies in the hanger. Why don’t we ask them to let us have this one full time? It would make getting to meetings in New York a LOT easier.

“They’re afraid you’d wreck it, of course. Remember, they trained us, so they know how you fly,” Alex responded dryly. “In fact, I’m kind of surprised that you haven’t nearly wrecked us a dozen times already. No Immelmanns or split s turns,” she continued, maybe a little sarcastically. “No loop-de-loops, not even a barrel roll?”

Tammi glanced at her partner and noted that she had her seat belt on. “If you insist!” she replied cheerfully. “Hold on to your stomach!” She performed some magic with the controls, and suddenly the car spun around its long axis in a perfect barrel roll, and settled down into straight flight again. “Say, thanks, Alex! That was fun and it didn’t even slow us down. How about another…”

Alex interrupted quickly before Tammi could actually start the next maneuver. “No, no, no, let’s concentrate on our mission!” She actually laughed at herself – she’d asked for it, and Tammy was just getting a little playful payback.

“What if there never was a treasure?” Tammi asked worriedly. “What if English gets there before we do? What if the roof of the small cave has collapsed, or the fissure slammed shut in one of the big earthquakes since then, or it opened wider and the small cave is now underwater or…”

“We’ll know in ten minutes, Tuneful Titan,” Alex interrupted with a sigh. “Don’t get all worked up about it!”

Ten minutes later they were hovering over the ocean on the north side of the island, while Alex used her zoom-in vision to inspect the shoreline. Much of it was a sheer cliff. It would be impossible to safely land a boat, no matter how small or large, anywhere along that coast. She could see jagged peaks and giant boulders and piles of rubble from rock slides sticking out of the water, tearing the incoming waves into a frothing tumult of decimation.

“I can see why she couldn’t swim out.” Alex was astounded watching the majesty of powerful waves disintegrate into to spume as they crashed into the rubble and the violence of the resulting white water. She’d gone through the Tunnel of Winds under Niagara Falls on a vacation trip with her parents years ago, and she still remembered the thunder which vibrated deep in her chest. In a way this felt similar, as she was once again reminded of the sheer power of moving water. She was becoming distracted, almost hypnotized, watching this ever changing, never changing spectacle of nature when Tammi called her back to reality.

“Hey! Stretch! It’s not there, is it?” Tammi demanded. “I knew it! I knew the whole thing was…”

“That has to be it!” Alex almost yelled with glee. “Tams, start moving the way I’m pointing but go real slow – and no stunts!”

They drifted slowly toward the maelstrom of waves and rocks and the powerful roar of millions of violent impacts became audible – to Alex, as Tammi had easily heard it from miles away. Pretty soon it would become so loud as to make spoken communication impossible, but they had long ago worked out methods of private communication utilizing their powers.

“I’m glad we’re up here!” Tammi’s voice spoke directly into Alex’s ear. “Can you imagine being tossed into THAT? Of course her shipmates died! I don’t believe she actually lived through it?!” The playfulness of voice and too-often obnoxious wisecracks and antics of her normal behavior were noticeably absent. But it WAS Tammi… “Boy, when I add these sounds to my arsenal, are the bad guys ever gonna be sorry!”

Alex spoke in her normal tone, confident that Tammi’s hearing powers would allow her to distinguish Alex’s words, even through the still-increasing roar of the surf. “Maybe a one in a million chance of survival, do you think? She was incredibly lucky!”

“That luck helped her live long enough to spend the rest of her life in prison,” Tammi retorted. “I guess that’s better than dead,” but her voice sounded dubious.

“Let’s go in about 20 feet up,” Alex suggested. Tammi had been planning ten feet, but there were a lot of breakers that would have at least rocked the car violently, and she didn't even argue. Following Alex’s directions, she carefully edged the air car into a crack in the face of the cliff that resembled the one in the story – shaped sort of like a funnel, perhaps 30’ wide at the cliff face and narrowing as it thrust inward through the rocks. As they floated past a slight bend, a small beach at the end of the crevice became visible. And there were birds everywhere!

“This has to be it!” Tammi exulted. “You know, an hour ago, I wouldn’t have believed there were this many birds in the entire world!”

As they approached a particularly narrow stretch, she brought the car to a halt and then lifted until they were above the cliff, drifted forward until they were past the bottleneck, and then slowly dropped back down, almost to water level. The bottleneck acted as a breakwater, and this cove was much less violent than the maelstrom outside.

“Just outside that narrow place is where she said the fumarole was, down about 8 feet.” Tammi recalled. “It’s deadly out there. No wonder she never found it until her ‘crescent moon tide’,” She shuddered at the mere thought of trying to brave that thundering white water.

By now, both heroines could see a small crack in the rock at the very end of the fissure, deep enough at least to be called a cave. Tammi hurried until they were floating above the beach.

“I was hoping we might see footprints in the sand if English got here before us, but all those birds would trample over and wipe out any prints almost faster than he made them," Alex commented. "In fact, he could be in there already. Although I can’t see him in the cave."

“Nope – no human heartbeats around,” Tammi was starting to sound cheerful again. “If he’s been here, he’s gone, but I don’t see how he could be. No way he could come in on the water, and this crack’s too narrow for a helicopter. We beat him to the treasure!”

Alex was going to point out that he could have come in through the fumarole, but she recalled the aquatic violence at the presumed cave mouth, another glance at the still frothing waters and decided otherwise. There hadn’t been any exceptionally low tides recently. “Go ahead and land, Tammeroo, but give the birds time to get out of the way.”

“I’m just gonna keep it floating, boss,” Tammi disagreed. “There are probably a lot of nests right underneath us, and the baby birds won’t be able to get away. Be careful where you put your feet!”

The two women cautiously climbed from the hovering air car and moved into the cave. Alex already knew what they would find but it took Tammi a few seconds for her vision to adjust to the lower light level.

“Well, that pretty much proves that English hasn’t been here,” the younger woman said brightly, trying to conceal her disappointment. There WAS a chest here, but it was open, empty, and partially filled with sand. There were several undisturbed nests with eggs or hatchlings, proving that the chest had been undisturbed by humans for many years. “But there’s no treasure here either. Oh, Pooters! I wanted to find a treasure!” She turned to her partner. “Partly so we could say we’d done it, and partly because I hoped it would help us catch English, but mostly I wanted to help out Woody and his mother. I’m sure glad we didn’t tell them anything about some stupid old treasure!”

“Little one, I understand your feelings,” Alex agreed sadly. “After all, we did get into this business to help people.”

Even when she was sad, Tammi was always Tammi. “Well, you did, anyway. I joined up because I can wear skin tight outfits and flaunt my body and show off and be famous!” She paused for a second, and then added, “And of course, I like helping people too.”

She turned back to her piloting, and didn’t notice the thoughtful expression that flitted across Alex’s face.

***~~~***

Tammi flew back to the city relatively slowly, and they discussed what English would probably do next, and how to catch him when he tried to reach South Farallon Island.

"He's either got to use a boat or a helicopter," Tammi pointed out. "Unless he can swim like Lorelei, that mermaid friend of Mary Marvel's that we met at one of the Super Squad meetings. But the pictures of him didn't show a tail."

"He couldn't sneak in with a helicopter," she continued confidently. "You'd spot him 20 miles away, and I'd hear him not too long after that."

"He might sneak in on one of the fishing boats or even the skin diving boats, and we might not spot him," Alex mused. "So, how do we make sure we catch him when he shows up?"

"Let's park the air car on the top of the cliff, somewhere that we can hide the car, and then camp out until he shows up. Even if he finds a way in to the beach without us spotting him, once he's there, both of us will know it. We can sleep in the car, and if we need anything, I can get to town and back in only a few minutes. It will be a LOT of fun to open this thing up to top speed! GANGWAY! Comin' THROUGH!"

It was dark by the time they finally reached home, and they hit the hay, exhausted more from the disappointment than their efforts of the day.

As usual, Tammi was up early the next morning. It wasn’t usual when Alex got up at the same time, and they watched the early news together. The leading story was the capture of the murderer Max English, who had killed the presumed double murderer Gilbert Wilington.

“Well, I guess that almost wraps up the Murder in the Afternoon case,” Alex sighed. “Mark up another for Ironside and the SFPD! Those guys are very good.”

“Hey, what’s that make us?!” Tammi almost shouted. She held up her fingers and began ticking off points. “One, two people were murdered because of us, and we didn’t stop the murders. Two, we searched all night, twice, and didn’t find that murderer. Three, another murder, and we didn’t stop that one, either. Four, we didn’t find the treasure. Five, we didn’t even catch the second murderer. Six, without the treasure or a reward, there’s not even some way for us to help Woody and his mother. Seven… I don’t know what seven is, but there has to be a seven.” She tilted her head as if she were thinking, and then her face brightened as if a flashbulb had exploded in her head. “I know! That makes us… LOSERS!”

“Don’t be so sure that the Murder in the Afternoon case is closed,” Alex smiled mysteriously. “I’ve got an errand to run. I’ll be back in a couple of hours.” She staunchly refused to let her partner accompany her.

Tammy was too depressed to argue. “And I’ll still be here, and still a loser,” Tammi barked back. “I don’t see what you have to smile about?!”

Who knows what Tammi did in those hours? Whatever, she survived, and managed a wan smile at her housemate when Alex returned. The taller partner was trying hard not to show her emotions, but Tammi sensed something almost right away. “Hey! You look like the cat that ate the canary. What’s up?”

“Patience, Tammi, patience,” Alex soothed her friend. “AVantGuard is needed urgently downtown. Get your costume on! We've got yet another chance to run around in skin tight outfits and flaunt our bodies!”

Nothing that Tammi said was able to dislodge Alex’s secret. They stopped in the downtown Diamond District, in front of a small store. “Better brace yourself, Tuneful Titan. This might not be easy.” Tammi screwed up her face in determination. Whatever it was, if Alex could take it, she would face it bravely, although she didn’t feel very brave right now.

“What the heck does “Philatelist” mean?” She stopped when she saw the sign over the door. “Is this another one of those kinky new age beatnik coffee and bookstore?” She hung back a little, then surged forward. “That was a fun place, wasn’t it?”

The interior of the store was dim, and even more cluttered than Far Eastern Treasures. And everywhere she looked, all Tammi could see were stamps! Stamps on the wall, mounted behind glass. Locked glass counters housing lots of colorful stamp albums, all complete. Boxes marked “seconds”. And just coming into the store behind them were her new acquaintance Woody Jurgins and a woman who must be his mother. They looked as baffled as she felt.

A small man, not much taller than Tammi, bustled out from behind a counter. “Ah, Miss Palette, right on time, very punctual. You know I abhor people who are consistently tardy, absolutely abhor them!”

Tammi could believe it. The man was neatly dressed and looked like an English businessman, with sharp creases in his dark, striped trousers, white shirt and bow tie, with a silver chain and fob hanging from the small watch pocket on his vest. ‘He’s a man who values neatness and punctuality,’ she thought to herself with a little amusement. ‘He wouldn’t last 5 minutes in a carny.’

The neat little man was still talking effusively, now to the Jurgins. “You must be Mrs. Jurgins and this your son, young Mr. Jurgins. I’m Pooley. I’m prepared to make you a substantial offer, yes, most substantial, if I must say so myself.”

“An offer?” Mrs. Jurgins had no idea what he was talking about. But before she could say more, he continued…

“I’ll give you eighty thousand dollars for the lot, yes, eighty thousand.”

“Eighty thousand dollars?!” Woody shot back in disbelief. He didn’t get to ask his next question, as the proprietor continued talking, totally misunderstanding Woody’s exclamation.

“Well, yes, I can see that you’re a very discerning young man, very discerning, yes. I can go to 95, but no higher, no, no higher.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Mrs Jurgins practically shouted. She turned to Palette. “This isn’t funny, Miss Superduper. To bring us here, knowing about our money problems, and then have someone offer us lots of money for what? We've got nothing worth 80 grand. Not funny at all.”

“Oh dear me!” Pooley was wringing his hands. He turned to Palette. “You didn’t tell them? I say, I must agree, Miss Palette, that this doesn’t seem to be a very funny joke, no, not funny at all.”

Alex was pretending to be contrite. “I guess you’re right. Not funny anymore.” Tammy could see that Alex was barely holding back a peal of laughter. “OK, I’ll tell.”

She turned to Woody. “You probably didn’t know that there was a real, honest-to-goodness pirate treasure map in all those old letters you sold Tammi at the flea market. We went on a treasure hunt, intending to give it to you, and we found the treasure chest, and the treasure was long gone. But you sold Tammi the real treasure. And she gave it to me, and now I’m giving it back to you." She handed Woody a large envelope. "It has all of your envelopes in it - but the real treasure is the stamps."

“Indeed, they are a treasure indeed,” Pooley spoke up eagerly. “The stamps on the envelopes are in practically perfect condition, practically perfect, and there is almost a whole set of the 1893 Columbian issue, published to commemorate the Chicago World’s Fair in that year. Almost a whole set. I have collectors who will absolutely fight over them, yes indeed!”

Tammi was finally recovering from the shocks Alex had arranged for her, and she couldn’t keep out of the conversation. “So, Pooley, why shouldn’t we go straight to the collectors? I’ll bet we could have an auction and get a lot more than you’re offering.” Tammi was an excellent negotiator, never intimidated and always with a keen eye on her profit. "I'm going to make sure they get a better deal!" her voice whispered in her partner's ear, and Alex nodded.

Pooley was distressed. “Let’s discuss this together, all of us. I’m sure we can come to a reasonable price that will satisfy everyone, yes, satisfy us all. I will save you the time and effort required to locate just the right collector. Please join me for tea and we can continue our discussion, yes, over tea.” He led the Jurgins toward the back of the shop.

“Thank you, partner!” Tammi jumped and wrapped her arms around Alex’s neck for a hug. “I can hear them haggling already. I'll check on them in a little while, but Mrs. Jurgins sounds like she'll do fine by herself. I guess our work here is done.” She dropped back to the floor. “It sure feels nice to help somebody.”

“And get to wear skin-tight costumes and flaunt," Alex agreed, “And now I think we can close the book on the Murder in the Afternoon case.”