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The ground at their feet erupted, turning to dusty powder as a ruby-red beam ripped a long, razor-thin trench across the desert floor.
“Hell and Damnation!” Emerson exclaimed, jumping to his feet, knocking over the table in the process.
But ever the “Greatest Egyptologist Who Ever Lived”—in Peabody unbiased opinion—Emerson had to pause, to stop haltingly in his tracks, his face red with anger, his ham-sized fists balled antsily at his waist as he stared at the scene before him.
Anubis stood there like a monolith; his right hand out-stretched, gripping the seemingly hollow-tube—the phaser—the business end pointed at Bruce and the Emersons. On either side of him, properly attired in costumes and masked, were Thoth, Horus, Seth and Sobek, each wielding a phaser and power pack.
“I am the Judge,” Anubis declared, “and you have all been found guilty of heresy.”
“Good Gad,” Emerson exclaimed. “Is that you, McElroy? Why the costume? This isn’t All Hallow Eve!”
“It is the end of October,” Peabody offered.
“Hmph,” was her husband’s reply as he ventured a foot forward. A sizzling swatch across the ground had him rethinking his action.
“Have you nothing better to do than act the fool, Professor?” Bruce chimed in, standing his own ground.
“I thought I might find you here,” Anubis/McElroy spat out, “since the destruction of the Heretic’s tomb failed realization. I should’ve killed you before.”
Then, a rumbling noise saturated the air. Everyone turned and saw what appeared to be a simoon, a desert sand twister, coming straight at them. Closer and faster it came… the dust dissipating… frittering away to reveal:
“That’s my Daimler,” Emerson huffed out. “And a maniac is driving it!”
The “maniac” was Alfred Pennyworth, decked out in his “touring gear,” trying his best to keep the wheels on the ground as Indiana Jones stood haphazardly on the back seat, trying to level his Welby at one—at any!—of the demigods. He quickly gave up, holstering the pistol, grabbing his bull-whip.
The recovered demi-gods swung into action, their phaser-tubes buzzing, zapping, streaming beams of lights flashing through the air like an angry Zeus, but without the accuracy of that god, coming close but missing the zig-zagging Daimler.
The Nyctalope, wearing shaded goggles, stood balanced in the passenger seat, waiting, squaring himself. Then he leapt across the span, plowing into the bodies of Thoth and Horus, crashing them all to the hard dirt in a jumbo of electronics and humanity.
Indy’s bull-whip lashed out, wrapping it around Seth’s phaser-tube, yanking it out of the hood’s hands, sparks flying, as Alfred swerved. Then, a lucky blast of energy hit, evaporating the left front tire, crashing the motorcar to a screeching, dusty halt, jettisoning a unbalanced Indy jetting into the arms of an unsuspecting Seth.
Anubis turned his attention back to his equally stunned captives just in time to see Emerson about to make a jump at him. “None of that, Emerson!”
Stepping back, Emerson snaked a comforting arm around his wife’s shoulder, holding her close, though she was itching to bash the Lord of the Underworld wannabe over the head with her parasol, but it had fallen somewhere in the shuffle. Only at a five-foot stature and her Golden Years, Amelia Peabody was a formidable foe… given the right situation and her trusty parasol. Her husband was ever more formidable, given the edge. Yet, now, the phaser-tube was pointed menacingly at them there was little they could do… but bide their time.
In the confusion, Bruce Wayne had disappeared. Anubis almost laughed. He’d always figure Young Wayne a coward at heart. All talk, all hot air. Alas, with all his money Wayne could be anything, anyone he wanted to be.
“Hey, Jackal-Head,” a voice bellowed, almost echoing.
Anubis head jerked up, to the source of the voice. High on the ledge fronting the tombs, before one stood Bruce Wayne akimbo. Anubis hissed: “Wayne… you fool… you coward! You think you can escape my wrath… your destiny! By running away?”
“If you want me, you’re going to have to come up here,” the Gothamite yelled back tauntingly.
Laughter echoed from the hollow of Anubis’ Jackal mask. “You fool! I don’t have to come up there!” Almost nonchalantly he leveled his phaser-tube at Bruce. “I failed the first time to bury you alive. Another heretic… another Criminal of Akhetaten. This time I will not fail!”
And without further fanfare the megalomaniac fired his weapon at Bruce. A razor-thin ruby-red beam of highly-intense photo-electromagnetism zapped out…
…and almost instantaneously an identical ruby-red razor-thin beam issued from the tomb, sizzling into Anubis’ phaser tube, frying, exploding in his hand. In a cry of agony the former demi-god stared at his fried hand, unbelieving, disbelieving.
“How…?” he mumbled.
Emerson answered with a right cross across McElroy’s chin, sending his former colleague to his knees; which was fortunate for McElroy because Peabody had found her parasol and had it raised about her head, ready for action.
From the tomb’s ledge, Bruce briefly scanned the scene before scrambling down and across the ancient ruins.
Saint-Clair and Indy had been backed into each other as Seth and Horus approached them from either side, their phaser-tube inching toward them. There was no room to use the bull-whip. With their backs together, the Frenchman and the American acted as if they had practiced gymnastic routines together for years as the Nyctalope hooked his elbows into those of Indy and bent forcefully forward, propelling the archeologist up and over the menacing Seth, landing flat on his feet, his whip lashing out, wrapping around the neck of the demi-god, yanking him off his feet. While Saint-Clair, from his bent position, swept a leg around, toppling Horus.
Alfred had scooped up a fallen phaser-tube, twirling it, then stepping forward toward Sobek with an: en garde! He stepped forward, lunged, his tube “sword” crashing against his foe’s equally unpowered tube with the sounding ring of metal against metal, the ting echoing through the air. Parley after parley, the butler countered his opponent and then went on the offensive, wracking Sobek across the knees, crumbling him to the ground. Alfred stepped back. Waited. As Sobek began to rise, Alfred lunged in for the “kill,” dropping to one knee, planting the end of the tube into the man’s stomach and the other in the ground, pulling backward, lifting up Anubis’ hench-god, yanking, tossing him over his shoulder, to crash into the back of Thoth, sending them both into a thud on the ground.
Bruce had rejoined the Emersons and was looking down at the defeated, pitiful McElroy, moaning in agonizing pain. A glance at the Emersons told him they were OK, though Bruce wondered why, after the haymaker punch he had delivered to McElroy’s chin, Radcliffe Emerson wasn’t tending to bruised knuckles.
“How…?” McElroy mumbled though he pain.
“Something I learned from Houdini,” Bruce grinned. “It was done with mirrors.”
“The mirrors in the tomb!” Emerson exclaimed, slamming his knee. “Good Gad, Lad! Good work! My boy, Ramses, couldn’t have done better.”
Bruce acknowledged the praise, then explained. Once McElroy had turned his back on him, he had dashed up to the tomb and swiftly arranged the two tall mirrors at the correct angle, just as if performing a physics experiment at the university. Standing back a half-meter from the left-hand mirror Bruce was reflected into the right-hand mirror, egging on McElroy, giving the illusion that that was where he was standing. When the beam had been fired at that spot, at the “illusory” Bruce, it had hit the first mirror, reflected to the other, then turned back to its original source: McElroy’s phaser tube.
Emerson yanked his horrified “colleague” to his feet, shaking him, not caring a wit about the man’s injuries, considering the harm he might have caused Amelia. At a loss for words—definitely not a common occurrence for the “Father of Curses”—Emerson shoved McElroy into the waiting hands of Leo Saint-Clair
and Indiana Jones, as Alfred finished tying-up the fallen once-but-not future demi-gods.
McElroy hissed: “You haven’t heard the last of Professor William Omaha McElroy! No! No! You will—you all will! Bow down to my royal feet! No, you have not heard the last of… King Tut!”
“Hmph,” Emerson huffed out.
“I couldn’t have said it better,” Bruce Wayne said.
“Indeed, my boy,” Emerson said, slapping the American on the back and came away with a small metallic rectangle. “What’s this?”
“Not a bat-mite, I hope.”
“Your post, Sir,” Alfred said, setting a silver tray on the desk where Bruce Wayne was trying to put together the finishing touches on the mundane details of his business, here, in Egypt; his Baedeker guide book-marked at various entries and fold-out maps. He noticed that, with the mail, was a glass of a clear liquid, ice-floating in the effervescence; he wasn’t about to ask Alfred where he obtained the ice cubes.
“What is it?” Bruce asked, picking up the glass.
“A new product, from the States, called Seven-Up.”
Bruce tasted the lemony-lime soda, liked it. “This would go well with bourbon.”
“I wouldn’t know, Sir,” Alfred said with the slightest hint of a smile at the corner of his mouth. “With the Prohibition and all.”
Bruce grinned and tried to return to his chore, but the adventures of the last three days still jabbed at him. The rush of adrenaline, the “fright, flight or fight” complex, had evaporated. He wondered if he’d ever feel that rush in just that way ever again. Probably not. Just boardrooms and meetings: migraines and ulcers. Plus such adrenaline rushes required too much night work…
Still he considered the people he had met. The Nyctalope had provided Alfred with a tracking device—the “bat-mite” which he had planted on his Master when he had “brushed-off” his shoulders before Bruce went into the Cairo street.
Professor McElroy had been turned over to the Egyptians for questioning in relation to the stolen artifacts; then the “Tut-Nut” would probably be deported to America, for “rehabilitation” at Arkham Asylum.
Dr. Henry “Indiana” Jones, Jr. had decided to leave the Saqqara dig, having received information about the location of something known as the Cross of Coronado, an artifact he has been searching for since he was a youth.
The Emersons continued their vacation at Tel el Amarna, celebrating at the place they had first meet 40 years earlier. Though Radcliffe Emerson was a tad “peeved” at Alfred and Bruce in connection to his damaged Daimler, he promised that he and Peabody would be on hand to help promote the Wayne Foundation’s “See the Pyramids Along the Nile” contest tour.
Bruce willed himself back to the task at hand, glancing through the various pieces of mail, all indicating the various subsidiaries of Wayne Enterprises were financially sound, and looking forward to a prosperous new decade.
There was a knock at the door. Alfred answered the call and then appeared before Bruce with another silver tray, a single telegram rested upon it. “A telegram from home, Sir.”
“Thank you, Alfred.” Opening the telegram he noted it was dated the day before—October 29, 1929—from his CFO. It read:
Return home, immediately. Stop. The stock market has crashed. Stop.
Bruce reread the cable, shrugged and set it aside. Probably just a minor dip in the market, a glitch. The man was constantly over-reacting, creating worse-case scenarios, horror stories out of the most mundane of Wall Street indicators.
Out of the corner of his eye, beneath the window, he saw some movement. A little gray and black mouse. The mouse stopped, seemingly startled by Bruce, then ambled away. Bruce smiled. Perhaps the mice—the meek—would inherit the Earth. But, if so, they were going to need some help… A protector…
Suddenly, his mind flashed back to the tomb, to the bats. Were not bats and mice cousins?
Bats… An omen?
Naw.
Stuart Shiffman, who penned the comical “The Milkman Cometh” in Volume 5 of Tales of the Shadowmen, offers a new and amusing take—almost a spoof—of the Nyctalope in New York, behaving like a fish out of water, interfacing with the murky world of Law & Order in the 1930s in…
Stuart Shiffman: The Nyctalope’s New York Adventure
New York, 1934
“And these questions, the unknown, the invisible,
all these problems—how interesting they are!
And the mystery—so amusing!”
Jules Claretie, L’accusateur (1897).
The commercial airship Cyclone III flew high above the dark waters of the Atlantic Ocean. It had left the aerodrome of Le Bourget outside Paris in the early misty morning after custom control as well as the Lloyd’s inspectors’ check-through. Representatives from the Compagnie Transatlantique Aérienne let out a collective breath. They appreciated passengers taking their liners rather than the German Zeppelin Company’s better known luftschiffs from Friedrichshafen. French airship companies had no problem obtaining helium from American suppliers, unlike the Germans who had to make do with the more dangerous and combustible hydrogen.
Leo Saint-Clair was not a small man found his first-class compartment confining. It was especially tiny when compared to first-class accommodations in a surface liner. His “gentleman’s gentleman” was sharing a second-class compartment with an American, and he blanched to think of what that must be like. As an antidote to the tight space, he strolled up to the fire-shielded smoking lounge.
The lounge was spacious and featured a wide bar; the whole space was decorated in the latest Art Moderne style in shades of silver, blue and black. There was a large Lucite sculpture designed by Erte and molded by Lalique that dominated the space.
“Impressive, isn’t it,” asked a man in French, coming in after him. “The expansive view of all creation and a top notch drinking station, eh?” He was tall, immaculately clad in a regimental-style tie in dark orange and blue and a charcoal-gray suit. His most noticeable characteristic was his face, his flat cheeks and aristocratic nose firmly molded and almost masklike in its composure. He was smooth-shaven and had a quiet, dignified expression. The gentleman carried a rolled-up copy of the Paris edition of the Herald Tribune under one arm. On his hand, he wore a fire opal ring known as a girasol.
“How can they have such a massive bar here?” responded Saint-Clair in wonder. “That looks to be mahogany!”
“I was told by the purser,” said the other man, who introduced himself as businessman Henry Arnaud of Chicago, “that it is, in fact, aluminum, redressed and painted to resemble stained mahogany grain. The rest of the furniture of the lounge is also built on aluminum frames.”
“Ah, I should have guessed as much,” said Saint-Clair. “I had suspected some kind of balsa laminate. My name is Leo Saint-Clair, by the way.” He held out a hand.
“I’ve heard of you, Monsieur; you’re the man they called the Nyctalope aren’t you?” asked Renaud.
They walked into the lounge and took stools, bolted in place, at the bar. Giving orders to the waiter (gin and tonic for Arnaud, tonic water for Saint-Clair), they soon found a number of points of agreement on international politics and crime—and this despite Saint-Clair’s rather conservative views. On modern art and music, the Nyctalope showed a preference for the classic form of Le Jazz Hot. Although an admirer of the talents of Josephine Baker in Paris, he was shocked by her cultivation of nudity and loose living. Arnaud was an aficionado of the new American big band swing and especially artists like Bix Beiderbecke and Benny Goodman.
“What’s taking you to New York?” finally asked Arnaud.
“Besides a large silver gas-bag?” Saint-Clair noticed that Arnaud had taken the barest sip from his cocktail. Was the businessman also trying to minimize diminution of his alertness? He slipped his cigarette case from his breast pocket and offered a gauloise to his new acquaintance.
Arnaud demurred, insisting that he preferred his own Turkish tobacco.
“Excuse me, gentlemen,” said a voice in American English of no fixed or familiar accent, coming from a large well-dressed but neckless man who had waddled up holding a whiskey and soda. His hair was barely a suggestion on top of his head. “Am I right to think that you are the French adventurer known as the Nyctalope?” He pronounced it “nicht-a-loop.”
“Certainly one of us is,” quipped Arnaud, his eyes glued to Saint-Clair. How would he handle his international celebrity?
“Yes,” Saint-Clair replied slowly. “I am sometimes known by that sobriquet.”
“Wonderful! I’m Ivor Llewellyn, head of Superba-Llewellyn Pictures in California. I’d love to sit down with you and work out a deal to put your adventures on the big silver screen! If you’re willing, we might even have you star in them yourself. That’d be a super-colossal attraction and be sure to get seats filled! Teamed with our own star, Lotus Blossom, you would be an incomparable hit. Maybe we could write in an underwater love scene!”
“I fear that you’re confusing me with the Hictaner. I doubt very much, Monsieur Llewellyn, that my name means very much to the average American.”
“Well, not as much since the talkies came in. They hurt the movie import business for French pictures, but we used to get all the silent serials based on your adventures and on those of Judex! I think that we still have the American remake rights to remake to some of them.”
“They were all unauthorized, Monsieur. You will find that there might be some legal complication were you to use such materials.” Saint-Clair had dealt severely with the French film-makers who had had the audacity to use his life as fodder for their films and, each time, his lawyers had wrung substantial settlements from them. Arnaud seemed amused at Saint-Clair’s discomfort.
“You haven’t already signed with anyone else, Mr. Nyctalope? I wouldn’t put it past those momzers, Schnellenhamer of Perfecto-Zizzbaum, F. X. Weinberg of Metropolis Pictures, or the Boy Wonder Jacques Butcher of Magna to peach you at the post!” The mogul waved his flipper with its large unlit Havana cigar to emphasize his bullet points.
The Nyctalope Steps In Page 21