Tales of the Red Panda: The Android Assassins

by Gregg Taylor

  “I'm certain that we will be able to work that out, Mister Fenwick,” O'Mally said. “Thank you for this. This discovery will help us more than I can say. Now that we know what Captain Clockwork might have learned, we can begin to fight back.”

  “Indeed,” Fenwick said. “I thought it seemed important.”

  “Good heavens,” O'Mally thundered, seeing his own office flash by on the screen, “the places this fiend was able to observe! Quite incredible!”

  “It is,” Fenwick agreed. “But I had the idea that it might be just as important to learn where he couldn't see.”

  “I don't follow you, Mister Fenwick,” O'Mally sighed.

  “I thought that if you compared the unobserved locations with things that Captain Clockwork knew anyway, it might give you a clue to his true identity,” Fenwick said as if it were quite a casual notion on his part.

  “With all due respect, Mister Fenwick,” O'Mally said, “I believe that your role in this adventure has come to an end. Time to leave things to the professionals and get some rest, sir.”

  “Yes,” the Red Panda smiled. “Well, it was just a thought.”

  Twenty-Three

  The sun streamed in through the thin white curtains and settled into bright beams that might have been painted in a fresco somewhere settled on the head of some particularly beneficent saint. August Fenwick was neither, but the chairs had been arranged in this vast, airy room so that the beams would fall on his head anyway. It was the next morning, and the Red Panda had celebrated his second escape from custody with a lie-in and a slap-up breakfast, surrounded by papers that proclaimed August Fenwick Innocent! He felt he needed only one thing to make the morning complete.

  “I wish you'd sit down and have breakfast with me,” he said to the girl in the immaculate grey driver's uniform who stood at the ready, waiting for him to finish up.

  “Sure,” she drawled, “that'd go over big with the other servants.”

  “There's no one else around,” he cajoled.

  “There's no one else around until the second I sit down, that's how it would happen,” she insisted. “Besides, you think they'd notice when you ordered an extra plate of eggs?”

  “I don't see why we can't sit and eat,” he sulked.

  “You can,” she said, “and I did before I came in. Those are the rules.”

  “The rules are silly,” he said. “Sit down.”

  “No,” she said plainly.

  “I'm sorry, I didn't catch that part,” he blinked.

  “I said no. This is who we're supposed to be, and just 'cause nobody's ever given you a hard time in your life doesn't mean I get off as easy. I get enough grief from the butlers as it is.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Does the new butler need sending away already?”

  “Stop it,” she said, “you'll run out of flunkies.”

  “Never been a problem so far,” he said, taking a bite from some really excellent bacon in spite of the fact that he felt guilty doing it in front of her.

  “Just finish up, then we can talk,” she said, standing in a military at-ease posture and trying very hard not to smile.

  “We've had breakfast before,” he said.

  “We have not!” She quickly checked the doors to make sure her outburst had not drawn attention.

  “After the Sloane caper,” he said, “we had bagels on the roof of the bank and watched the sun rise over Bathurst.”

  She smiled. “That was nice,” she said grudgingly.

  “Have some coffee at least,” he said.

  “No,” she said with another look over her shoulder. “I'll follow you into a pit of flaming snakes, but I won't be made a fool of. You don't hear the things they say, and they don't say them about you, they say them about me. So stop being such a spoiled brat and eat your breakfast.”

  “Did you just call me a spoiled brat?” he said, astonished.

  “Sounds like something I'd say.”

  “No one's ever called me that before,” he said.

  “No, Boss,” she said, more gently, “everyone you've ever met has called you that. They've just never said it to your face.”

  “Fair enough,” he said rising quickly and casting his smoking jacket aside. “Let's get a move on, we can talk in the car.” He grabbed the jacket of his suit where it lay, but she raised her hand.

  “Finish your eggs, or I ain't takin' you anywhere,” she said simply.

  “You're my sidekick, not my mother,” he said sternly.

  “If I was your mother,” she said, narrowing her eyes, “you'd have been called worse than a brat. And often.”

  He stood and looked at her a moment. She really was quite a lovely thing, and given how hard he worked to avoid noticing, he wondered why it should come up just now. He laid his jacket over the seat next to him and sat down again.

  “Fine,” he said.

  “Good boy,” she said, looking over her shoulder again.

  “If it helps you to relax,” he said, “I've just cast a mental projection that will cause anyone who gets within ten feet of this room to feel an immediate compulsion to turn and walk the other way.”

  “Good,” she said, relaxing her stance slightly.

  “So you'll sit down?” he asked.

  “No,” she said. “I don't win enough arguments around here to throw them away that easy. What was the third clue?”

  “The third clue?” he said, having lost the thread slightly.

  “The one you didn't tell O'Mally,” she said.

  “I didn't really tell O'Mally any of them,” he said. “I just made certain that he had the same opportunity for discovery that I did. Anything else would seem suspicious. Besides, it isn't really my job.” He took a bite of his toast, which had a particularly nice marmalade spread liberally upon it.

  Kit ignored most of what he was saying. “You found a weak spot in the lower abdomen that makes the mechanical men vulnerable to hand-to-hand attack,” she offered.

  “Hand-to-hand by you or I,” he corrected, “or by someone else who was almost as good, and if I may be so bold, there aren't that many of those. But throw in a few exploding bullets in just the right spot, and it still plays pretty nicely.”

  “As you say,” she agreed. “And the second thing you discovered was the lousy shielding around the network of circuits that makes up their brains.”

  “I wouldn't say it was lousy,” he said with eggs in his mouth and a napkin discreetly placed, “just insufficient when faced with a particularly clever concentrated electrical attack.” He smiled and reached for his coffee.

  “You're full of beans today, I tell you that yet?”

  “What if I am?” he said, his eyes dancing over the rim of his cup.

  Kit Baxter could feel the color rising in her cheeks and refused to give in to it. He must just be giving her a taste of her own medicine with all this sass. She had no idea why, but she was determined to show that she could take it as well as she could give it out.

  “So what was the third clue?” she asked again. “The one you thought was so interesting that you've been dancing around it all morning.”

  “Have I?” he asked, spearing the last of his eggs with his fork.

  “We got no bad guy, no clever plan and for all we know there are still more tin men out there than we can shock to death in a month of Sundays, but something's got you this cheerful,” she said with a shake of her head. “Was it the tele-vision monitors?”

  He smiled. “It was.”

  “Somethin' you saw?”

  “Something I didn't see.” He indicated his fairly clean plate as if requesting permission to rise, then did so without really waiting to receive it.

  “For Aunt Fanny's sake, Boss,” she said, “you saw O'Mally's office, the Mayor's, judges, prosecutors, private offices… so what didn't you see?”

  “The room at the Club Macaw where the Committee meets,” he smiled.

  “And?” she shrugged.

  “Clockwork knew about the sec
ret test of Quincy Harrison's armored transport,” he said. “Not just that it was happening, but what steps were being taken to protect it. He knew that the James Lab's power plant was opening and exactly how much it would mean to the company. And he knew that August Fenwick had begun to do just what he had feared: prop up businesses in danger of collapse from the Viper's attacks.” He looked at her. Her eyes were wide with wonder. He felt pleased.

  “But… but, couldn't he have learned all those things some other way?” she asked.

  “One of them, maybe. Two I'd accept. But all three?” The Red Panda shook his head. “I can't believe that. Besides, he let a telling little tidbit slip. Something about my turning out just as my father had feared. A wastrel.”

  “Boss, I–,” she began.

  “He didn't like me very much, Kit. I've dealt with it. In rather spectacular fashion as fans of local superheroics might tell you if they only knew.” He smiled and picked up his coat again.

  “I know,” she said with eyes that were suddenly quite smoky.

  “Yes, you do,” he smiled, stepping closer to her than was his usual habit and wondering why he did so. “So what does that all mean?”

  She raised an eyebrow and tried very hard to think about crime-fighting. “It means that Captain Clockwork is somebody in that Committee Room!”

  “Right first try,” he said. “The ultimate robber baron.”

  “So… why exactly didn't you tell O'Mally this?” she asked.

  “Too many leaps of faith,” he said breezing out into the hall on his way to the waiting car, his trusty driver close behind. “Too much deducing for O'Mally. He suspected one wealthy man rather publicly and barely lived to tell the tale. He'd be skittish about doing so again, and he might blow the whole mess in the process.”

  “That's tough, but fair,” she said, hurrying to keep pace with his long strides. “So which one is it?”

  “No idea,” he said. “Interesting, don't you think?”

  “Too interesting, if you ask me,” she said.

  “Why is that?” he asked with a Socratic gleam in his eye.

  “The papers are full of the whole story. Including what entrance you told the cops to use when you called them,” she said.

  “Yes,” he said.

  “But the odds that it was the same entrance the robots brought you in aren't very good, are they?” she asked.

  “Based on the angle they carried me away from the Club on, I'd say it's about one chance in fifty.” He threw the front door open and trotted down the steps.

  “So Captain Clockwork knows that you got out, found another exit, then called the cops and went back and waited.”

  “Yes, he does.” He slowed down as he reached the car and she opened the door for him. “But he already knew that.”

  “How?” she practically shouted.

  “The robot double I crippled and left in my cell wasn't there when I got back,” the Red Panda smiled. “Clockwork must have found it and beetled out of there before the police arrived.”

  Kit was flabbergasted. “But… Boss! You don't think he's gonna wonder about all this? About the whys or even the hows?”

  “I'm sure he will, Kit,” Fenwick smiled before getting into the car. “It's interesting, isn't it?”

  Twenty-Four

  The great mahogany table in the Club Macaw's conference room was again surrounded by a grave assembly. As Gilbert MacKinnon brought the meeting to order, there were congratulations offered to one of their number whose recent brush with the enemy had resulted in the only setback the fiend had suffered to date, a point that seemed to be directed at Police Chief O'Mally, who squirmed slightly in his chair.

  August Fenwick brushed aside the compliments with a casual air. “Not a bit of it, MacKinnon,” he said. “The newspapers have made much of the bravery or cleverness involved in my escape. I imagine that they do so in the hopes that I will elect not to sue them as a body.” The small group chuckled at this. “I assure you, gentlemen, that only a most fortunate accident permitted me to call for help at all, and surely that was more an act of motivated self-interest than bravery. I scarcely felt a moment's courage from the time that I was taken until Chief O'Mally and his men came to the rescue.”

  O'Mally was pleased at this and chided himself again for his suspicion of August Fenwick, who was starting to seem like not such a bad fellow after all. Certainly the papers had made much of Fenwick's escape, even to the point of relegating the battle on Yonge Street to secondary status. As Fenwick suspected, it was most likely in the interests of making the most public retraction possible of their earlier accusations of villainy, but it did not displease Chief O'Mally at all. The story of Fenwick's rescue made much of the involvement of his police force, while the routing of the mechanical men who savaged downtown seemed to have been the work of an outside force, and not even the papers had much in the way of detail. MacKinnon harrumphed and moved on.

  “Of course we are, regrettably, without one of our company today,” he said, indicating the chair usually occupied by Ian James. “James' son Wentworth was, as most of you know, injured in the blast that destroyed the power plant he had designed and much of the complex it was meant to support.”

  “Is he hurt badly?” Arthur Welles asked with some concern. Welles was roughly of an age with Fenwick and the younger Mister James, though he had not known them well at school.

  MacKinnon brushed aside Welles' inquiry. “No, no,” he said, “the boy is fine. His father refuses to leave his side, is all. Given the free-fall that his company is in, it strikes me as most irresponsible.”

  August Fenwick elected not to voice his disagreement, or to mention that for the first time in his life, he felt envious of his old friend Wentworth. Ian James was not a warm man, but perhaps this accident might bring about a connection between father and son. To Fenwick's knowledge, the two had never been close, and the younger James' devotion to science and research had not impressed his father though it had certainly saved his company once already. Perhaps the young man's injury in the recent blast would touch some paternal nerve within Ian James now, before it was too late.

  Fenwick himself felt only mildly guilty that, after their meeting the other day, he had briefly toyed with the notion of Wentworth James as a possible Captain Clockwork. Certainly his old schoolmate was clever enough and arrogant enough, as few knew better than Fenwick. But now that he had met the fiend in person, disguised as Clockwork had been, he had dismissed the idea. Even if you were prepared to overlook the damage done to his father's company and Wentworth's own research, and even his own minor injuries, now that the Red Panda knew Clockwork was motivated solely by greed, it did not seem to be in Wentworth James' nature.

  Still, Fenwick thought, there might be some reason for the younger James to work against his own father. And yet Captain Clockwork had allowed the captured August Fenwick to observe his technical plans, believing him to be too great a fool to comprehend them. Whatever his former schoolmate might think of Fenwick's supposed pursuits, James knew better than that and would never have made such an error.

  But every other man in this room surely thought as little of the Red Panda's alter ego as he was intended to. If one is serious about devoting one's public life to an elaborate lie, it is a simple matter to convince people of just about anything, especially if one wishes them to hold one in slight regard. It occurred to Fenwick, as the men talked and planned around him, that one of these men was likely playing a very similar game. And however obvious a secret identity may seem once it is known, it still is a powerful shield if maintained by an intelligent man with strength of will.

  Both Byron Page and young Arthur Welles had been pushed to the brink of ruin by supposed accidents caused by Captain Clockwork as the Viper. Or had they? Such calamity would be a convenient cover for Clockwork's villainy. If either man had hidden wealth, it might not be an easy thing to discover, but the Red Panda had agents who were ideally suited to such research. He decided to set just su
ch an investigation in motion, in case a fortunate discovery might make further deduction unnecessary.

  Quincy Harrison might very well have the same sort of reserves. Indeed, drawing the attention of the committee to the tests of his armored transport could have been nothing more than engineering his own cover story. The small and mousey Harrison hardly seemed like the supervillain type, but if he had, as Fenwick had, created a public mask to hide his secrets, he could hardly have picked one better. Fenwick raised an eyebrow as he contemplated Harrison sitting in his oversize tweeds, trying to get a word in edgewise. Certainly he possessed significant technical knowledge. And while the publicly traded shares of Harrison Arms Manufacturing had plummeted in value since the accident that wrecked the transport, it was also possible that Harrison himself might be buying them up at cut rates, regaining total control over his own company in the process. If it were done cleverly, that might be a very difficult thing to prove, but the Red Panda felt sure that he had just the man for that job as well.

  Stanley Church sat with his bald head in his hands as the arguments continued. Of all of the wealthy men at the table, Church had kept the closest connection to the real work done by his company. The collapse of the Masterson Tower had been such a public humiliation for the proud Mister Church that the Red Panda found it difficult to credit that Church himself might have been the cause of it. Still, he admitted, if he found it necessary he would willingly destroy August Fenwick to keep the Red Panda's secrets and goals intact. An examination of Church's financials were also in order.

  Marcus Bennett was the only person besides Fenwick himself who had spoken with this fiend, albeit in his third identity as the Viper, when the threats had come against the New York Special. Fenwick paused. That had to be significant. The crash of Bennett's plane was still the only time that Clockwork had announced his intentions, and his claims of authorship of the other recent misfortunes had all come on that one occasion. But now that Fenwick had spoken with Captain Clockwork directly, such an announcement seemed almost counterproductive to the arch-criminal's plan. Was it pure ego that made him unable to simply take over the city's major companies without a whisper? Or did he realize his mistake afterwards, and that was the reason for the launch of the terror campaign of the mechanical men? In any case, something must have provoked that call to Marcus Bennett.