Tales of the Red Panda: The Mind Master

by Gregg Taylor

  “No, I haven’t talked to him, but–”

  “Then maybe he doesn’t need it so much then, Mister Big Shot.”

  “And maybe he does.” Parker looked at Papas, sitting awkwardly, his great arms folded before him in a desperate attempt to be casual. “What is it, Spiro? What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing is wrong,” Spiro protested. “They have not sent for the reports, is all.”

  “For how long?” Parker said, his brow furrowed.

  Spiro shrugged. “Few days. Spiro does not report to you!”

  “Spiro, I can’t help if I don’t understand what’s wrong,” Parker said calmly. “How often do they usually call for the reports?”

  “What usually? They call when they call.”

  “Is it normally a few days between?”

  “Normally, no. Not so much normally as never.” The big man looked away for a moment, and Parker could tell that he was worried. Spiro shook it off. “Look, Parker… you are go-getter. You like to impress. Maybe you like to impress the Chief, maybe you like to impress the Squirrel.”

  Parker’s ears turned bright red and his jaw set more determined. Spiro knew at once that he had struck a nerve, and he smiled to himself.

  “When the Chief makes contact, I will tell him Andy Parker has report to make. Okay?”

  “Fair enough,” said Parker with an attempt at a smile. But he was now as worried about their mysterious leader and his fearless partner as Spiro was. Maybe even more, as he knew one thing that Spiro didn’t. Two nights earlier an old, abandoned warehouse had exploded, for no reason that the police could determine. The owner of the building was being held on suspicion of arson, but Parker had never heard of high explosives being used in simple insurance fraud. To the ears of a trusted agent like himself, it sounded like a trap set to destroy the city’s masked protectors. And worse still, it just might have succeeded!

  Eight

  Kit Baxter opened her eyes and stared for a moment at the dingy, unfamiliar tiles on the ceiling above her. She felt the hard, lumpy cot beneath her digging into her back and suddenly remembered where she was. She settled back into the cot with a contented sigh that few could have matched in her surroundings.

  She was in a small room in a windowless basement. A hidden apartment with sparse furnishings but ample emergency medical equipment – one of their many safe houses. The Red Panda had established most of them before taking her on as a partner, and they were all utilitarian to a fault. This one, on the border of the warehouse district south of the Parkdale neighborhood, was only a few blocks away from the site of the explosion the other night.

  Kit frowned at the thought. She knew she had taken a knock to the head as they had escaped through the window seconds ahead of a wall of fire, but just how long ago that was she couldn’t even begin to say. She had been in and out of consciousness four or five times since then, never for very long.

  She turned her head to meet the movement she heard coming from down the hall. She smiled as the Red Panda peeked around the corner hesitantly, as if careful not to disturb her.

  “I thought I heard something,” he grinned.

  She blinked up at him. “Why is it the only time we get to play house is when one of us is out cold?”

  He frowned a little. “I don’t think I understand the question,” he admitted.

  She sighed, just a little. “I didn’t guess that you would. What time is it?”

  “Tuesday,” he said, handing her a glass of water.

  “That’s all I get?” she frowned. “You weren’t worried sick? You didn’t hold my hand as I hovered near death’s door?”

  “Would any of those things incline you to get out of bed?” he teased right back. “Nurse Kerwin didn’t seem to think you were at death’s door exactly.”

  “Nurse Kerwin was here?” Kit said, throwing aside the blanket and sitting up. “And we haven’t had the maid in for ages. Why are all of our safe houses such complete dumps, anyway?”

  “We’re in a hidden chamber behind a furnace room,” he said. “I don’t think some curtains and a throw rug are going to do much good. Are you hungry?”

  “Famished,” she said, standing too quickly and wobbling a little. “You can buy me some eggs if anything’s open.”

  Kit looked down, and realized for the first time that she was wearing a vastly oversized pair of men’s silk pyjamas, rolled up dramatically at the legs, but her hands were swimming in the long sleeves. Her heart jumped involuntarily.

  “How exactly did you get me into these pyjamas?” she asked without thinking.

  He turned slightly red around the edges and stammered, “I had nothing to do with it. It was Nurse Kerwin.” He beat a hasty retreat back down the narrow hall.

  “Oh,” she said, disappointed in spite of herself. She sat back down on the edge of the cot for a moment. She looked down at the oversized silk sleeves and smiled. “How come I don’t have my own pyjamas here?”

  “What?” He was on his way back into the room with her Squirrel Suit.

  “We could keep them in the same drawer an’ everything.” She batted her eyelashes, taking the costume from him.

  “We have thirty-six safe houses,” he deadpanned. “How many sets of pyjamas do you have?”

  “It’s a fair point,” she admitted. “Just so I know, what paper-thin excuse have we concocted to explain away our scandalously unchaperoned two-day absence?”

  “You drove me to Montreal on business. Quite suddenly, I might add.”

  She smiled. The elaborate lengths the Boss went to to protect Kit’s reputation were very sweet, even if the gossips in her neighbourhood never quite accepted them.

  “Did I remember to write my mother before I left?” Kit asked gravely.

  He smiled. “And you complained when I made you write all of those letters.”

  “Did I bring her back a souvenir ashtray?”

  “A souv– Does she smoke?”

  “No,” Kit smiled up at him.

  “Then she’ll get over it,” he said. “Get changed, I’m going to grab a few things. I’ve got the car parked in the hidden garage out back. Do you feel well enough to drive?”

  “I’m fine,” she called as he stepped into the next room. “How’s the car?”

  “I was very careful,” he called back.

  “So I should be able to repair the damage in…”

  There was a moment of silence as he wrestled with the truth. “A few hours, tops.”

  “Do we know what happened back there?” she said, stepping out of his pyjamas with a wistful smile.

  “It was a garbage can,” he called.

  Her brow furrowed for just a moment. “Not the car, the warehouse,” she called.

  “Well,” he said seriously, “I suppose it goes without saying that it was a trap.”

  “Ya think?” she called back as she pulled on her costume.

  “We expected that, of course. Though we expected something a little less…”

  “Apocalyptic?”

  “Ah! Le mot juste.”

  “I’m decent,” she called back.

  The Red Panda stuck his head around the corner, hesitantly at first, as though she might be toying with him. Kit smiled. He had his mask on now and cut quite a figure as the looming spectre of justice. Which made his occasional awkward moments with her even funnier.

  “So all we know for sure,” she began, “is that whoever pulled the Empire Bank caper wanted to make sure that we didn’t try to catch up with him again.”

  He shook his head. “There are more questions than I’m comfortable with. Like how they found the tracker so quickly.”

  “They must’ve been looking for it,” she mused.

  “But what made them check so closely? There was nothing in that safety deposit box that could have tied the contents to August Fenwick, but it still gives one pause.”

  “If we could detect the radio beacon, so could someone else,” she said, pulling on her gloves.

 
“Granted.”

  “And it wouldn’t take them long to figure that someone would follow that lead, and that whoever it was would be somebody they wouldn’t want to have to deal with.”

  “So they blew up a city block?”

  “It does feel like overkill, doesn’t it?” she grimaced.

  He smiled grimly. “My principle trouble with that theory is that it is, in any number of ways, a best-case scenario.”

  “And it still ain’t that good.”

  “That’s my other problem with it.” He handed her her cowl and goggles. “If someone thought they would need that much firepower, they were almost certainly gunning for us. And if they wanted us gone that badly, the odds are that the Empire Bank was just the beginning.”

  “And now it’s two days later, the trail is cold and we’re still nowhere near the game.” She stood at the ready, fully clad as the Flying Squirrel, and looking good as new.

  “So much for shortcuts,” the Red Panda smiled.

  Nine

  “Ladies and Gentlemen,” a plumy voice announced to the assembled group of diners, “it gives me great pleasure to present Mister Ajay Shah.”

  The tall form of Shah stepped forward into the brightly lit dining hall of Wallace Blake’s home and was greeted as if by one voice by Blake’s dozen dinner guests. Ajay Shah cut an impressive figure, attired as he was in the height of fashion, if a trifle somber for some tastes. He glanced around the handsomely appointed dining room, full of smiles and refined company. The men around the table represented some of the cream of the city’s high society, and a good deal of old money to boot. It was a perfect place to begin.

  Shah smiled to himself, amazed at the efficiency of his new ally, Joshua Cain. Less than a day after Shah forced their acquaintance, he found himself installed in tasteful surroundings at one of the city’s finest hotels, complete with wardrobe, backstory and papers.

  “You’re the son of a wealthy importer,” Cain had begun. “He owns a dozen very desirable business concerns, none of which would be very easy to check up on. Complete fiction, of course, but as long as you don’t try and pull any phony business deals, I doubt very much that anyone will question it.” He had thrust official-looking documents into Shah’s hands. “I’m sorry about the name,” Cain had shrugged. “But if I tried for a hundred years I couldn’t come up with a more exotic-sounding one than Ajay Shah.”

  Shah had raised an eyebrow. “I should have thought the objective was not to appear exotic, Mister Cain,” Shah had purred. “Or did I not make myself clear?”

  “Listen, Shah,” Cain had insisted, “the worst thing you can do is try and blend in with your surroundings. You’re far too… distinctive for that in a place like Toronto, particularly in the circles you want to travel in.”

  “So you would have me make a… curiosity of myself?” Ajay Shah had said, freezing Cain with his hawk-like stare.

  “I would have you be a cause célèbre,” Cain had smiled in spite of the menace of that gaze. “To be invited into the finest homes. A most extraordinary gentleman. Very reputable. Very safe. With an ethnicity that is pleasingly non-specific but still mysterious. Just wait and see,” he had promised.

  And so it had proved. His host, Blake, gestured towards an open seat. The assembled guests were clearly intrigued by the newcomer in their midst. They smiled over their cocktails as Blake explained.

  “I have some dealings with several concerns in the Orient with which Mister Shah’s family are also involved. Mining, importing… that sort of thing.” Blake waved his hand dismissively, as if business were not the sort of thing that he wished to discuss over dinner. “And when I heard that he was staying in town…” Blake seemed to lose his lines, just for a moment.

  Ajay Shah smiled and picked up the lost thread. “Mister Blake was kind enough to invite me to join you this evening.”

  “Whereabouts is your family from, Shah?” a friendly voice from down the table asked as the servants brought in the soup.

  “We have traveled a great deal in the cause of business, sir.” Shah smiled, casting his eyes downward just for a moment. “All of the East has been my home at one time.”

  Blake burst in a little nervously, “I had always heard your father was descended from a local Rajah, Shah?”

  Ajay Shah smiled. “Long ago, on my grandmother’s side, that may be true, Blake,” he demurred. “But my father’s father was an Englishman.”

  There was a very slight sigh that passed through the assembly. It was a simple trick Shah had learned when traveling through any of the former colonies of the British Empire. Any connection with royalty impressed them, and nothing soothed them like a connection with the “mother country,” which most of them had never seen.

  “What brings you to Canada, Mister Shah?” a leathery face near the head of the table inquired.

  “With the passing of my father last year, I became the head of our business empire. It seemed prudent to see as many of our holdings around the world as possible.” Shah smiled gracefully at the table. “And of course, to travel. To see the far-away and exotic North America.”

  A ripple of delighted laughter spread throughout the room. Shah protested, “But I am quite sincere.” He declared, “The Orient is an exotic destination to you, and simply home to me. I wish to see the wonders of the world just as any man might.”

  “And now that you have seen some of Canada,” a woman near him asked, “what do you think of it?”

  Ajay Shah looked at her. She was middle-aged. A little plump, perhaps, as most of their too well-fed faces were. He smiled at her adoringly and lowered his eyes in his most non-threatening manner. “Madam,” he said, “I find it beautiful.”

  A hum of good-natured laughter burbled forth from Blake’s guests. Shah smiled to himself. Cain had been right. It was just the part to play. He would listen to their stories, tell his own when asked and speak no longer than any man might find entertaining. It was a simple game. It seemed quite beneath him, but it was a perfect beginning.

  There would be further invitations after tonight, more dinners and parties with more and more flies for his web. He was amongst them now, and nothing could stop him. He glanced around the table and studied their faces. If he was disappointed by what he found he had the skill not to show it.

  By the time that dessert was brought and cigars were lit, even his host had begun to relax. Wallace Blake had been charmed enough by his mysterious guest that he had almost forgotten he had never known Shah’s father, never had any dealings with anything so profitable as Oriental mining and importing concerns.

  Shah watched his host from the corner of his eye. He wondered what sort of a man would allow such a pretender into his home. Cain had obviously bought him, but how? Shah’s first thoughts were of blackmail. What hold could Cain possibly have on Blake? Would it be enough to keep him in line when Shah began to play his hand?

  The conversation drifted to the far end of the table. The party was beginning to break up, some guests were moving into the sitting room. Ajay Shah found stillness within himself, and reached out with the tendrils of his mind.

  Slowly, like creeping darkness, his mind entered that of the suddenly still Wallace Blake, the supposed millionaire who had welcomed a stranger into the company of his friends at the behest of a shady character like Joshua Cain. Blake’s defenses fell away like a rush of leaves. His mind, his secrets, his very soul were Ajay Shah’s to know.

  No one would ever have suspected, from the quiet, peaceful expression on the face of the charming dinner guest, that he was pulling his host’s mind apart at the seams. But to Ajay Shah, master of the mind, all was revealed.

  He knew in a moment that Wallace Blake had inherited great wealth. This home, the place in society, the trappings of his family’s great success – all had been his at birth. He had inherited a profligate power to spend, but no talent to earn. And when hard times had hit, his family’s fortune had been ravaged as so many had before. Wallace Blake had spent al
most five years keeping up appearances, frittering away what little was left while digging a grave of debts from which he could never hope to escape.

  He was a man easily bought. Easily sold. But Shah could feel deep within the mind of Wallace Blake that he had grave misgivings about the deal with Cain. About Shah himself. And when the cream of society began to feel the sting of Ajay Shah, Wallace Blake could not be trusted to keep his peace.

  Shah’s mind retreated, leaving Blake’s behind with a cold caress. There would yet be a reckoning. But for the moment, Blake felt a great and comforting peace wash over him.

  Ten

  Constable Andy Parker sat bolt upright in bed and froze, staring into the pitch darkness of his empty apartment. He fumbled by the side of the bed for the light switch, and with the sudden click of the lamp, some of the shadows fell away. He felt for the clock and struggled to force his eyes to comprehend what he saw.

  Two-fifteen. He fell back on the bed and stared at the ceiling for a few moments. His heart was racing. He supposed that even in his dreams he was unable to stop worrying about his mysterious Chief and the remarkable young woman who followed him into danger with such joy.

  “They’ve never needed you to worry about them before, Parker,” he told himself yet again, to no avail. He stared at the ceiling for another minute, becoming more and more awake with each passing moment. He sighed and pulled himself up. Maybe some milk would help him sleep. He wobbled to his feet and pulled his robe on as he padded to the door. He felt for the light in the narrow hallway and, not finding it, carried on as best he could into the kitchen. He clicked the light switch over the sink as he rubbed his eyes and peered into the icebox. Puzzled at what he found, or rather what he didn’t, he stuck his head in further.

  “I finished it,” said a voice behind him, rolling quietly in like a far-off peal of thunder. It was all that Andy Parker could do not to jump and crack his head on the door of the icebox. He turned and peered over his shoulder. A tall figure in a long, grey coat clung to the shadows in the corner, a red mask upon his face and a glass of milk in his hand.