Tales of the Red Panda: The Mind Master (6 page)

Martin Davies stood stock-still in the centre of his
tastefully appointed drawing room and stared straight ahead with eyes that
burned with a strange fire and yet did not see. It was late, and Davies had sat
up long after the servants had retired for the night. It was often his custom
to do so, and the servants understood that their master did not wish them to
wait for him. He was a wealthy young man and kept such hours as pleased
himself, often preferring the quiet of the night. The servants would think
little of the sound of quiet footfalls upstairs. They would assume them to be
those of their restless master.

On any other night that would have been true. But on this
night, Martin Davies looked into the heart of the dying light within the
fireplace, and his gaze never faltered, his feet never wandered.

Around him there fell a darkness that the glow of the embers
could not dispel. Darkness that was more than mere shadow, but true blackness,
almost pulsing with a life of its own. The blackness wrapped the walls of
Davies’ drawing room, hid the light of the fire from any eyes but those of
Martin Davies himself, and reached like cold tendrils into the rich man’s mind.

Those icy fingers of dark thought carried the innermost
workings of the millionaire’s mind to another being, one that lurked within
that pulsing wall of shadows. Two eyes shone forth from the black with a light
that seemed most unnatural to those few that had seen it and lived. The eyes of
Ajay Shah.

Those eyes now studied the face of Martin Davies. They had
met before, in the home of Wallace Blake, over a very agreeable dinner. Davies
had been as charmed as any at that assembly by the utterly disarming Mister
Shah, and had invited the newcomer to the city to dine with him at his club.
Again Shah was introduced by his new host to many other prospects. Many more insects
for his great web. But there was something about Martin Davies… something that
Shah could not be sure of. It had been impossible to search the young man’s
mind fully within the confines of the fashionable Club Macaw, but Ajay Shah,
master of the mind, had reason enough to fear.

He drew closer to his victim. Still there was resistance.
Still there lurked a secret within that mind. Was it possible–? The
shadows that surrounded Shah seemed to quell for an instant as he reached
deeper into the mind of the frozen Martin Davies, forcing the barriers down
through strength of will, and drew forth every last scrap of truth. Shah
smiled, his fears forgotten as the last of Davies’ resistance fell away before
his mental might.

“It is
not
him,”
Ajay Shah said to himself, with some satisfaction.

“What?” said a voice at the doorway quietly.

Shah turned his head toward the door with half a hiss.
“Quiet, you lumbering fools!” he snarled at his henchmen who had returned to
the drawing room for further instructions.

“But Mister Shah–,” the lead brute protested.

“And I told you not to call me that,” he said, arching an
eyebrow. The darkness seemed to roll forward over his shoulders like a cloak
drawn closer to its wearer.

The effect on the assembly of underlings was immediate.
“Yes… Master,” the first of them sputtered, the word falling awkwardly from his
mouth. “I just thought you were talking to us.”

Ajay Shah delivered a waxen smile to his men. This crew that
Joshua Cain had procured for him was capable, to a point. And would be easily
disposed of when that point was passed. No need to crack the whip too hard.

“I understand,” he said, with as little menace as he could
manage. “Your error was natural. In fact, I spoke only to myself. I feared for
an instant that our host Mister Davies might be… toying with me.”

The thug at the door gave a puzzled look to his two
confederates. “Naw, he’s out right enough. I don’t know how you do it.”

“Indeed.” Shah smiled in spite of himself. He looked once
more at Davies. He was the right age, of the right class. His build was strong.
His mental resistance had been more than might have been expected of the true
weaklings of his social set. As for the face… well, Shah could not trust his
memory on that subject. It might have been
him
.
That could have proved awkward.

He heard the men at the door shuffle uncomfortably. He
turned back to them.

“You found the wall safe in the master bedroom?” he snapped.

“Yes, Master,” came the reply. “It was all just like you
said. We got the securities from the office, cleaned out all the cash in the
place and found the jewels in storage – we’ve got it all.”

“Not all,” Shah smiled. “There is a hidden chamber behind
the bookcase against that wall.” Shah gestured to his right as he circled the
immobile Martin Davies. “Inside it you will find a crate containing twenty
thousand dollars in gold. It seems that young Mister Davies’ father never quite
trusted the vagaries of high finance. Probably why the family fortune
survived.”

Shah smiled as his minions struggled to open the panel
behind the bookcase, and enjoyed their gasps of astonishment as they learned
that their new master was right yet again. Shah dispelled their questions with
a dismissive wave of his hand.

“It is time we were on our way,” Ajay Shah ordered quietly.

“But Master…,” one of his men protested, “how’re we gonna
fence all this loot? I mean, once this bird wakes up and calls the cops–”

“My dear fellow…,” Shah silenced his man with an icy smile.
“You worry entirely too much.” He moved his hand gracefully before the unseeing
eyes of Martin Davies, and the young millionaire slowly followed, like a fish
on a line. Shah motioned gently towards a chair before the fire and Davies sat
obligingly. “You see, the loss of these items will never be discovered.” Shah
positioned a book open on Martin Davies’ lap, as though he had fallen asleep
while reading by the fire.

Suddenly, Ajay Shah whipped his head around towards the
fireplace, and the fire within blazed to life as though fuel had been thrown
upon it. The log that had been smoldering burst forth with a great cracking
sound, raining flaming shrapnel onto the floor before the fireplace, the carpet
and the chair where Martin Davies sat.

“For you see, gentlemen,” Shah said as he breezed silently
past his astonished henchmen, “Mister Davies never will wake up.”

And with that, the master of the mind and his accomplices
faded into the night, as the flames that would consume the mansion spread. And
all the while, Martin Davies sat silently, staring into the fire with eyes that
did not see.

The wind cut across
the high peaks and whipped down into the mountain valley. August Fenwick, now
known as “Two,” staggered under the weight of his burden. Master Rashan had
dispatched him to gather fuel for the fire, no mean feat in this high country,
and Fenwick had scoured for hours to assemble the unwieldy collection of
brambles and kindling he now bore.

As he reached the
steep slope of the path that led down to the Saddhu’s kuti, the uneven footing
seemed to get the better of him. He found himself cast off balance, and he
pitched forward towards the jagged rocks that shielded the path on either side.
In an instant the skills born of his long training burst to life. The kindling
scattered as he threw his arms wide to counterbalance his fall. Acting against
the instinct of a normal man, he turned his forward pitch into a dive, pulled
into a tight somersault in mid-air and landed on the flat edge of a protruding
boulder with the agility of a monkey.

He barely had time to
complete the landing before he heard the sound of slow mocking applause from a
short distance away. His head shot around to face the source of the sound.
Seated on a ledge to his right was the Master’s other student, the man who now
insisted on being called “One.”

“Very nice,” the elder
student said. “Very deft for one so clumsy.”

August felt his ears
redden and his pulse quicken. He stepped down from his new-found perch quickly
and with as little fanfare as possible.

“You are full of
surprises, my young friend.” One smiled, though there was little change to his
hawk-like countenance.

“Just lucky,” Fenwick
grimaced, regarding the scattered pile of wood and feeling anything but.

“Nonsense,” the elder
student replied, standing. “You have skills, and I would be a fool not to
recognize them.”

The man called “Two”
froze in his tracks. There was a deeper import to the words of his fellow
student. He turned and met the impassive, predatory stare and said nothing.

One smiled. “Better
and better. You listen much and speak little. You are not like the typical
fools that find their way to the Master’s kuti, seeking Enlightenment in a
single day. And you have had training.”

August shrugged.
“Gymnastics. At school,” he said casually.

“It is better to speak
truth than to be thought modest,” One replied.

“Sometimes,” the young
man replied cryptically as he began to reassemble his burden.

“Still better, and
worse,” the elder student smiled. “But for the moment I do not speak of your
physical prowess.”

Fenwick’s brows knit,
puzzled. “I don’t understand,” he replied.

One stepped down from
his perch and moved smoothly across the uneven path towards his fellow
initiate. “I think that you do,” he said calmly. “I had occasion this morning
to recollect your arrival here yesterday. Something about you seemed… unusual.”

“Is that right?” the
young man’s ears were reddening again. There was something about One that set
his teeth on edge, and he couldn’t put his finger on it.

One smiled. “Imagine
my surprise when I found myself unable to recall your face.”

Fenwick tried to
control his response, to show nothing. “That happens to a lot of people,” he
said calmly.

One shook his head.
“You are the first person other than Master Rashan and myself to set foot in
this valley in seven months. And yet I found my memory as clouded as if I had
met a hundred men yesterday. And I say again, you have had some training.”

The pair of students
locked eyes for a moment. At last the man called “Two” shrugged a little. “I
spent some time with an American stage hypnotist. His act was good. A little
too good to be nothing more than trickery.”

One raised an eyebrow
in spite of himself. “This charlatan knew the ancient secrets of the mind?”

Fenwick shrugged
again. “He knew a little. Enough to be useful, if you’d rather not be
remembered, or to pluck a simple thought from the mind of another. An image, a
name.”

“Enough to make you
certain there was more to learn. More to know,” One said, his stare becoming
still more intense, as if he were struggling to read the young man, and meeting
only a cloud of misdirection.

“Perhaps.”

“There is much to
learn in this place, young one. I can offer you much help,” One said, relaxing
his stare, and smiling with something like warmth for the first time.

Fenwick’s eyes
narrowed with suspicion. “Such as?”

One closed his eyes
and looked for the stillness within himself. Finding it easily, he reached out
with his mind into the physical world, the tendrils of his thoughts feeling for
the scattered firewood.

August Fenwick gasped
in spite of himself as the pile of precious wood reassembled itself in mid-air
between himself and One, and hung there without visible support. One opened his
eyes and spoke without apparent concentration.

“Telekinesis,” One
said calmly. “Not my specialty, but it has many uses.”

Fenwick composed
himself quickly. “Such as tripping me up on the path in the first place?” he
smiled in spite of himself.

One’s eyes narrowed,
but he did not bother to deny it. “I think we understand one another
perfectly,” he said.

The Red Panda opened his eyes and was, for an instant,
alarmed by the pitch blackness before him. He froze, stock still in the hard
wooden chair in which he had awoken. To his left there was a soft, padding
sound approaching. And something else. A smell like burnt caramel that could
only be one thing.

“Rise an’ shine, puddin’ head,” he heard Kit sing as a cup
of her terrible coffee was set on the table before him. He was still groggy.
Still confused.

“Your face is on crooked,” she said as she took his head in
her hands and struggled as best she could with the bright red domino mask. For
an instant, she pulled the mask’s lenses in front of his eyes and he could see
her, half-seated on the edge of the worktable in their crime lab, her hair
piled carelessly on top of her head and wearing that long green coat she had
taken to for her days off. She had obviously made her way from the new section
of pneumatic tube rather than entered via the mansion, as she hadn’t bothered
with her chauffeur’s uniform. Then, as quickly as she appeared, she pulled the
mask again and the lenses shifted to the left, leaving him blind once more.

“Be careful,” he warned, his hands darting up and touching
hers for an instant before she pulled away. “You’ll trip the mask’s safety
charge and give yourself a shock.”

He removed the mask himself and rubbed his eyes. He could
just see her with her chin cupped in her hands, giving him a look like a small,
dull boy of whom she was very fond.

“If the static electrical charge was still live, the mask couldn’t
have slipped in the first place. Somebody let it run down,” she admonished
gently, taking the mask from him and heading for a piece of equipment against
the wall. “There’s coffee if you want it.”

He took the cup gratefully. Her coffee was not unlike warm
tar, but it certainly did get a fellow going after a long night. He watched her
refresh the charge generator he had built into his mask to prevent it from
being removed were he captured. After a moment, he realized he was not actually
watching any part of her that was using the equipment and he turned his head
hastily.

“Should you be here?” he said casually.

“I’m right as rain and I don’t need you to tell me
different.” She smiled, “I had a full night’s sleep for the first time in I
don’t know how long.”

“You shouldn’t rush back into action.” He stood, trying not
to grimace as he creaked to his full height. “You took a nasty knock.”

She drew herself up to her own, considerably less full
height and bristled slightly. “When I’m not here, you don’t even have the sense
to take your mask off, much less go to bed.”

He smiled, rejecting every quip that sprang to his mind. “I
had a little night-table reading,” he said over the rim of his cup.

“I gathered,” she said, picking up the file Constable Parker
had given him early that morning. “Not exactly
War and Peace
…,” she mused, her lips pursed.

“I had to make the rounds first. We were out of commission
for two days.”

“Did we miss anything?”

“Nothing definite. Hard to say. No word on any of the loot
from the Empire Bank job going through any of the usual fences. Some rumbles
about a connection that might have run them out of town. I’ve put Gregor
Sampson on it – with his underworld connections as Miles Grant, he should
pass unnoticed.”

“Any more idea of just what was taken?”

“No more than you could get in the morning
Chronicle
.”

She batted her eyelashes. “I get the paper with
Li’l Abner
.”

He nodded. “That’s tough but fair. The list is on the side
table over there. Every item that the customers who kept those boxes have
reported stolen.”

She glanced at it and gave a low whistle. “Not too shabby.”

“Yes. There’s one major problem with that list, of course,”
he said, splashing some water on his face.

“What’s that?”

“Well, at least some of it is complete fiction. The Berringers,
for example, reported a loss of nearly a hundred thousand dollars in
untraceable assets. They’ve been teetering on the brink of bankruptcy for
months now. Perhaps more.”

“An insurance scam?” She seemed to be looking for a link.

“Very likely. But a crime of opportunity at best. Jed
Berringer is hardly a master criminal. I can’t imagine he’ll even get away with
this, but I know we don’t have time to care. In any event, it makes trying to
trace the items on that list a bit of a mug’s game.”

“What about this?” she said, holding the file aloft
slightly. “This come from our Boy in Blue?”

“Parker? Yes. It makes for interesting reading.”

“It certainly kept you riveted.”

“Just read the file. I’m going to change.”

“Yes, Boss,” she said, watching him go. She sat for a
moment, trying not to think of reasons to stand outside the door of his
changing room and talk to him as he dressed. It was a bad habit, and she knew
it must be bad because of the giddy thrill it gave her. Besides, she had to
focus. She furrowed her brow and buried herself in Parker’s file.

Five minutes later he was back, disguised as ne’er-do-well
August Fenwick, looking properly disheveled in rumpled evening dress, his bow
tie hanging loose about his neck. She tried not to smile as she shook her head
at him.

“I don’t know why you do that,” she said, biting her lip.

“It’s for the benefit of the staff,” he said seriously.
“When I don’t come home they think the worst of me already. Much easier to
reinforce their expectations.”

“And I had to write a hundred notes to my mother for every
contingency.”

“That’s different,” he said gravely, and she knew it would
be pointless to argue with him. “What did you learn?”

“I don’t suppose this is a mistake?” she asked hopefully.

“It isn’t,” he replied.

“Okay,” she sighed, “but it doesn’t make a lot of sense.
There were eight guards left in the Empire Bank when the vault was breached.
The cops questioned all eight separately, and they all told the same story.”

“Not that unusual when you say it like that,” he raised an
eyebrow.

“But they all told the
exact
same story. Each of them claims to have been in the corridor to the east of the
vault on their regular rounds. They heard a cry from one of the other guards
and ran to the atrium, where they saw no one. They made their way back
downstairs and each and every one of them claims to have been the one that
discovered the open vault door, with no one else around.”

“Yes,” he nodded. “Should we go?”

She stood and followed him across the hall. “But Boss, this
doesn’t make any sense at all. Why would they each tell the same story?”

“The police certainly don’t seem bothered by the sheer
stupidity of it. They’re holding all eight of the guards and trying to build a
case for conspiracy.” He opened the door that lead into the launch bay for
their pneumatic tubes.

They strode across the room, Kit still shaking her head as
she followed behind.

“But if eight guys were trying to get their stories
straight–”

“–why wouldn’t they invent eight different
versions
of the same story?” he said with
a grin. “Eight different roles within the same felonious little pageant?”

“Well, yeah… or failing that, how about absolutely any other
plan you could possibly think of? How about that? How about anything even
slightly less moronic or suspicious than eight totally identical stories?” She
stopped short and crossed her arms. She was almost sure he knew something that
he wasn’t telling her.

It took him a second to realize she had stopped walking.
When he did, he came back to her at once, standing a little closer than he
usually did, and not nearly as close as she wished he would.

“It’s a bad lie, isn’t it?” he said gently.

“The worst,” she nodded.

“Makes no sense at all?” he asked.

“None. Less than none.”

He cocked his head to one side. “Then I suppose they must be
telling the truth,” he smiled.

“But- but that makes even less sense!” she protested.

“Less than less than none?” He was toying with her now. She
narrowed her eyes and said nothing. She hoped he didn’t realize it was because
she was biting the inside of her cheeks to keep from kissing him.

“I’ll see you in a few minutes,” he said, walking up the
steps towards the tube marked
Mansion
,
oblivious.

“You’re not just going to… appear in the library, are you?”
she called.

He paused. “It’s a good point. I’ll take the Coach House
tube and walk up the lane as if a taxi dropped me off.”

“Classy,” she smirked, stepping into the tube marked
Garage
. “I’ll have the car out front in
ten minutes,” she said.

He assumed the slightly woozy manner of a wealthy young cad
who had been out all night. “Splendid,” he said. “I’ll be down in twenty.”