Tales of the Red Panda: The Mind Master

by Gregg Taylor

  From time to time he had vouched for certain persons, certain business ventures, the sort of credibility that could only be lent by an upstanding citizen who was known to possess a large family fortune. He had helped Cain open doors in the past, but never before had the door led directly to men and women that he knew. Never before had he made his friends and peers vulnerable. Wallace Blake had feared the worst of Ajay Shah. Or rather, what he thought the worst might be, namely that Shah was some sort of confidence man. But this latest matter… if the sick feeling about his heart were correct… if Martin Davies was murdered…

  “Murder…”

  The word pushed every other thought from Wallace Blake’s mind. It hung in the air and seemed to spread throughout the room like a pervading gloom, darkening the corners of the study as Blake took his head in his hands once more.

  The newspapers said that Martin Davies had fallen asleep in a chair by the fire and not awakened when the fire spread. It seemed possible. But Blake knew Davies well enough to know that the younger man was restless, that he slept little and far from soundly when he did. The idea that he could sleep through such calamity in a chair until it was too late… it seemed absurd to Blake.

  He pulled his hands the length of his face and found himself staring again at the telephone. The gloom that seemed to blanket the corners a moment ago now seemed thicker around the walls, making the telephone the only point which he could see clearly. Wallace Blake did not wonder at this. The only picture in his mind was that telephone in his hand as he did the right thing at last.

  But what right thing? Even if he confessed what little he knew, his own part in betraying the interests of his peers, what good would it do? Would the police even investigate the mysterious Ajay Shah? And what if he were wrong? He would have publicly admitted his secret shame – the loss of his family fortune – and for what?

  Again Wallace Blake despaired. His whole being seemed to tremble at the thought of his humiliation. But then again he thought of Martin Davies, pictured Davies welcoming Ajay Shah at Blake’s urging. He steeled himself. He must do what was right.

  Wallace Blake took his head from his hands and straightened upright in his chair. He would do his duty, he would call the police. Blake looked about and blinked hard, twice.

  He could no longer see the telephone.

  It had been only four feet directly in front of him, but it was now obscured by pitch darkness. The entire study… all of it, now lost in the same pervading gloom that had spread from the corners. Oozed forth like a living thing until all was lost in blackness. Wallace Blake felt his chest tighten. This couldn’t be right – it was the middle of the day! Blake turned towards where the windows should have been allowing the daylight to stream into the room and suddenly he gasped in amazement. Standing there, the sole object visible to his eyes, was the tall form of Ajay Shah, as if illuminated by some inner light.

  “Hello, Blake.” A smile crept across Shah’s thin lips.

  “You!” Wallace Blake cried, rising to his feet gingerly. “How did you get in here?”

  “It hardly seems to matter, Blake. But since you asked, I didn’t.”

  “…I don’t understand,” Blake sputtered at last.

  “I am not in your study, or in your home at all. I am in your mind,” Shah smiled. “And so are you.”

  “Make sense, man!” Blake bellowed.

  “Shout all you wish, Mister Blake,” Shah continued, moving closer. “No one will hear you, because you are not speaking. Not really.”

  Somehow, Wallace Blake knew that this stranger spoke the truth – that he was disconnected from the real world… from his own body… He felt himself gasping for air that would not come. Ajay Shah smiled still broader.

  At last Wallace Blake managed to gasp, “Why have you brought me here?”

  “It is you that brought me here, Wallace. From the time of your quite charming dinner party, my mind has been in yours.”

  Wallace Blake said nothing. In horror, he realized that in his heart he knew it to be true.

  Ajay Shah continued, “Joshua Cain was certain you were desperate enough to keep discreet. I knew differently. But we mustn’t judge Mister Cain too harshly. After all, he cannot see into your thoughts, know almost your very soul, or pull you apart like a child pulls the wings off flies.”

  Blake cried out in anguish and fell to his knees, feeling a stabbing pain like knives of fire drilling through his temples. After a moment that felt like an eternity, the anguish subsided and left him sputtering, gasping for breath. As his vision cleared, he looked around and saw his situation for what it was. He was on his knees in the middle of a vast, seemingly endless expanse of darkness, before a cruel master of an unknown power. His hands trembled and he struggled not to weep.

  Shah smiled. “You were useful, Wallace Blake. I will not say that my game would have been impossible without you, but much more difficult it might have been. You opened doors, and provided me with a borrowed mantle of respectability, with which I may freely walk among the sons of your city’s richest men. It would please me to grant you mercy for this. But it cannot be.”

  “You–!” Blake sputtered. “You common thief! Murderer! You killed young Martin Davies!”

  “I do not suppose it would console you to know that I plan to kill a great many more yet?” Ajay Shah caressed Blake’s cheek with the back of his hand, as though he might turn the gentle gesture into a slap at any moment. He held his victim’s gaze for a moment, hard, and then turned away. “No,” he said. “I did not suppose that it would. But you are more right than wrong, Blake. I am a murderer. And a thief, although I think you will agree I am anything but common. And you knew as much when you welcomed me into your home. When you offered me young Davies and the rest of your brother princes of the Earth.”

  “I did not!” cried Wallace Blake in torment. “I knew nothing of the kind!”

  “Then you are a fool, or willfully blind, which is far worse. In any event, you are a coward, and apt to do anything. I cannot have you speak to the police just yet, Wallace. My work has not yet begun.”

  “Then you intend to keep this up? To keep killing and pillaging?” Blake’s fists were twisted into balls of rage, but he did nothing but tremble on his knees.

  “For a time,” Shah confessed. “Apart from being simple and profitable, I enjoy it. But that is but one move in my long game. I am looking for someone, Wallace Blake. The one man who might have the power to stop me. It is possible that I have already killed him. But I hope not.” Shah smiled again as he receded into the shadows. He appeared gaunt to Wallace Blake’s eyes, almost skeletal, as if he were death himself.

  “What will you do?” Blake screamed at the emptiness. “Will you kill me as well?”

  “No, Blake.” Shah’s voice echoed as he faded into nothingness. “But you will. My mind is in yours. I know how often you have thought of suicide since you lost your fortune. I know where you keep the rope that you have often fashioned into a noose in order to end your shame. Never had the nerve, did you, Blake?”

  Wallace Blake shook where he knelt like a man with a palsy. Like a man at war with himself. The voice echoed around the void one last time.

  “Today, Blake, you will find the courage after all.”

  And then there was only darkness.

  Sixteen

  Mike Larsen stomped through the corridors of the Don Jail as fast as his feet could carry his ample form. Larsen was a thick-necked, red-faced prison guard and made no apologies for it, or for much else. The Don was nobody’s idea of a palace, but Larsen was king of this particular castle. Not in the warden’s office maybe, not before a review board, but among the hundreds of toughs, sharpsters, gangsters and would-be master criminals that called the Don home, Mike Larsen and his guards were the law. But not today.

  Today there was a strange energy throughout the entire building. You could feel it in the yard, where most of the jail’s population whiled away another day of captivity. You could feel
it in the dining hall and in the lockdown cages. It was a strange, quiet energy, a dreadful note of preparation – full of hostility, yet based in fear. An aggressive sort of hush that a pack of jackals might settle into when they sensed the presence of a tiger.

  Mike Larsen could feel it too, and it made his job more difficult. He had no idea if the inmates had somehow sensed the Don’s most important guests, or if the prison grapevine had outdone itself again, but the silent dread that hung over the five hundred men housed within the walls of the jail made this anything but a typical day. Which made it that much more difficult to pretend that it was.

  Larsen’s boots rang out in heavy, clumsy peals as he closed in on the isolation wing. Here, prisoners were kept away from the general throng – sometimes for their own safety, sometimes for that of the assorted cutthroats and murderers that might try their luck against the worst of the worst. And it was here, on this day of all days, that his most important guests were holding court.

  Larsen fumbled with the keys on his belt. The coiled terror of the prisoners throughout the building, the eerie pretense of calm they exuded… it was all more than a little unsettling, even for Larsen, who had spent more days inside than most of his charges and feared not one of them. He slid the steel door of the isolation wing open and slipped inside. The corridor beyond was silent as the grave, and nearly as dark. Only two light bulbs burned down the length of the hallway. The rest still hung in place but had clearly been twisted from above, to bathe the corridor in shadows. Larsen cursed a little to himself. He wished his guests would remember that not everyone could climb walls.

  Larsen turned to lock the door behind him. When he turned back he nearly jumped out of his skin, finding himself face to face with a head that seemed to float in mid air. A wide, upside-down Cheshire Cat grin spread across the floating face as it pushed forward slightly into the light. Of course it was the Flying Squirrel, keeping silent vigil, hanging from the ceiling. The fact that Mike Larsen had been expecting her made it no less disconcerting.

  “You’re not supposed to be in here, Mike,” she purred.

  “Don’t start with me, Squirrel,” Larsen puffed, his cheeks growing more crimson by the second.

  “I’m startin’ nothin’, Peaches,” the girl said, as she dropped from the ceiling and spun in mid-air to land silently on the balls of her feet, cat-like. “That was the friendly warning part of our program. The Boss don’t like to be disturbed.” She drew herself up to her full height, nearly a foot shorter than the burly guard. Larsen had the good sense to be intimidated anyway.

  “What’s he doing in there?” Larsen puffed. “It’s been over an hour.”

  “Questioning the suspects, Mike. Just like we promised.”

  “Still? These guys have been grilled by every mug with a shield in the city limits. They’ve had suits come down from Ottawa, the Crown Prosecutor practically lives here–”

  “Yeah, yeah. They’re the most popular girls in school. I get it.”

  Mike Larsen looked anxiously towards the cells at the end of the hall. He licked his lips, just once, without meaning to. The Flying Squirrel cocked her head just a little, and gave him a smile that made him think twice about trying to get past her.

  “He’s gotta finish,” Larsen sputtered. “You two gotta go. Warden’s orders.”

  “Why would the Warden give us the boot?” her eyes narrowed.

  “Because he’s got O’Mally and a room full of his boys in his office and he’s running out of stalls. The Chief has some new theory.”

  The Squirrel snorted. “Theory? From O’Mally that’s a fancy word for random guesswork. The Red Panda’s using hypnosis, Mike. If there’s anything to learn, he’ll be the one that learns it.”

  “And that’s why the Warden’s been standing on his head to keep the guards from the Empire Bank job from being transferred ‘till you two bothered to show up,” Larsen fumed. “He’s run through every piece of red tape that’s in the book and a few that aren’t, all to hang on to them. He did it because he knows you’ve got the best shot to bring this one home, and he knows that outside of this place, you two don’t have any friends in official places.”

  The Squirrel pursed her lips and said nothing. She knew it was true. She and the Boss were outlaws. They had their small army of agents and informants, but few men involved in the system seemed to be able to see that they were trying to help. If Chief O’Mally ever got wise that Warden Pembrooke and his men co-operated with them from time to time, Pembrooke could easily find himself inside one of his own cages. She held Larsen’s gaze for a moment, then turned her own eyes down to the end of the hall.

  For a moment, they both stood in silence.

  “Is he on the eighth?” Larsen said at last.

  “What?” she hissed, slightly annoyed.

  “The eighth? The last guard?”

  There was a small pause.

  “Not exactly,” she said at last.

  “The seventh?” Larsen asked hopefully.

  She turned to him with a wry expression, and smacked her lips a little, just once.

  “He still with the first one, isn’t he?” Larsen deadpanned.

  “Yep.” She smiled ruefully.

  “It never takes this long,” Larsen said in frustration. “Haven’t you been curious?”

  “Curious?” the Flying Squirrel sputtered. “I’ve been going bananas. But he told me to keep watch, so I’m keepin’ watch.”

  “Look, kid,” Larsen said, opening the door behind him, “this is just a courtesy call. The Chief is coming in, so you gotta get out. The Warden’ll stall him as long as he can, but for all I know he’s on his way right now.”

  The steel door clanged behind Larsen and he was gone.

  Kit turned back to the hallway. She sighed – at least it was an excuse to see what the heck was going on. She padded silently down the darkened hallway to the cell at the very end. The small window in the door was just slightly too high for her to peer through comfortably, but he had left the door ajar.

  She opened the cell door as quietly as she could. The scene she found was not at all what she expected. The young man who had so recently been a guard at the Empire Bank was lying peacefully on his bunk, apparently asleep. The Red Panda was sitting on the edge of the cot, seemingly exhausted, his head in his hand.

  He looked up when he heard Kit’s gasp. His face was ashen and there was sweat upon his brow. The Flying Squirrel struggled to regain her composure.

  “Closing time, Boss,” she said. “How’re we doin’ in here?”

  “Well, he’s no longer catatonic,” the Red Panda smiled weakly. “So we’re fine. How are you?”

  Seventeen

  “Are you ever gonna explain yourself,” the Flying Squirrel asked at last, “or are you waitin’ to see if I burst?”

  The pair of masked heroes had slipped out of the Don Jail just moments ahead of a large delegation of bright young men in crisp blue uniforms. The route through the maze of prison corridors was well known to both of them, though not another soul living could have told you how they seemed to get in and out as they pleased.

  A short distance from the Don was a derelict garage at the end of a seldom-used laneway. The building had all the appearance of having been abandoned by its owners like so many other businesses that had collapsed under the weight of hard times. Those who passed the boarded windows and rusted doors every day would have been surprised indeed to learn that the garage was, in fact, the property of a holding company that was, in turn, owned by one of the city’s wealthiest men. What Fenwick Industries wanted with such a property one could only imagine, though few would have guessed August Fenwick himself to be aware of the building’s existence.

  At that very moment within the dimly lit garage, a bright red domino mask was removed and the mystery man known as the Red Panda assumed his own mask – that of Fenwick himself. He hurriedly stowed his mask and gauntlets in one of the many secret compartments in the rear of his limousine as he wa
ited for his partner to change. The Don Jail was hardly centrally located, and there was a dearth of buildings to swing down from; there had been a need for a secure location for their car and equipment when they paid a call. Today being a rare daylight visit, the need for secrecy had been even greater. It was fair to say that a limousine in this neighborhood would attract even more attention than the thundering black roadster the press had dubbed “The Pandamobile.”

  Kit Baxter watched her mentor as he ran his hand across his brow. She couldn’t quite tell if he was still exhausted or just trying very hard not to look as she pulled her chauffeur uniform on over her catsuit. There was nothing to see, of course, but she still always watched to see if he’d sneak a peek. She didn’t know whether to feel flattered or insulted that he never did.

  She opened the front door and slid in quickly, stowing her cowl, goggles and belt as she did. As the engine roared to life, the dilapidated-looking main doors of the garage swung open of their own accord, and the limousine rolled quickly down the laneway.

  They drove in silence for a minute or more, until Kit Baxter could stand it no longer.

  “Well?” she said at last.

  She heard a sigh from the back seat. “It was like nothing I’ve ever encountered before,” he said. “It was a minefield.”

  She pursed her lips. “I don’t understand. What was like a minefield?”

  “That man’s mind was.” His voice was grave. “You were right to think that it sounded ridiculous: eight guards, each with an utterly identical alibi. No one would invent such an absurdity for themselves.”

  “So… what then?” she said. “Wait… are you sayin’ that someone else invented it for them? That they’re not lyin’ at all?”