The Sting of the Silver Manticore

by P. J. Lozito

  Wylie studied Brent silently, so he continued.

  “Bob had rescued a Negro cabbie named Evan White from a tight spot as the Silver Manticore. Turns out he’s a skilled smithy and he makes tools for us now; gas masks, lock picks, my little manticores. His buddy from the Harlem Hellfighters, Rollins, in the colored section of L.A. keeps us informed of doings out that way.”

  “I guess you know, then, Hollywood is a nest of Communists?”

  “I heard that through old Army buddies of my own I set up in the detective business.”

  “Your eyes and ears, are they?”

  “That’s it. But it was Rollins reported the murder of Mr. And Mrs. Richard Ingalese in L.A.”

  “I seem to recall rumors they were looking for an ‘oil of life,’ stated Wylie.

  “Chris Corrigan thinks Hanoi Tsin has that. Silly stuff, I know. Anyway, years before I, uh, made friends with another espionage professional. The lot of us: he, Bob, the Scotts, White, Speed, and all raided Dr. Lucifer’s various hideouts for equipment after we shut down his operation.”

  “The rest, as they say, is history,” put in Wylie.

  “Except that Luciferro’s advanced scientific approach to crime reminded me of someone I tangled with in Asia. There’s no one else like him in history.”

  “Yes, Hanoi Tsin. I’m waiting to hear from an Englishman named Sir Dennis, who has also fought him, to return my call,” stated Wylie. “That other friend you alluded to is a Japanese national, a secret agent, in this country illegally,” he continued. “You’re aware we are at war with Japan?”

  Allred bristled, “Yes, I do run a newspaper, Doc.”

  “Bako’s own people did turn against him,” conceded Wylie. “According to Corrigan.”

  “He was this close to one of their secret executions,” Allred pinched air between thumb and forefinger, peeved.

  “Calm down, Brent. I’m not here to quote the Alien Registration Act to you. The identity of ‘Bako’ is safe with me. I don’t doubt your patriotism.”

  “You bet. I saved a good man’s life when I rescued him.”

  “Outside of some of your rather merciless methods, you’ve done a lot of good,” expressed Wylie.

  “You seem to know a lot about me, Doc,” glared Allred choosing to ignore Wylie’s enforced rehabilitation of criminals: operating on the part of their brains that made them evil. It smacked too much of the vile Charles Davenport or the Nazis’ Operation T-4 “a” euthanasia program, aimed at non-Jewish Germans, to sit comfortably with him.

  “Thank Corrigan for that,” retuned Wylie.

  I shall, thought Allred. I have five little thank you notes for him, staring at his fist.

  “At any rate, Bako had been instructing me in the way of the ninja, seeing raw talent in my gung fu training. I just put it all together.”

  “‘The Invisible Ones,’” Wylie declaimed. “‘Looked for, they cannot be seen; listened for, they cannot be heard; felt for, they cannot be touched,’ ” he quoted an old Japanese saying about ninjas. “I suppose you don’t know the full history of the Silver Manticore.”

  It was a statement not a question.

  “Outside of the dime novel, no.”

  “Don’t let the name of the radio show fool you, Brent. Ignorance is not bliss.”

  Allred now looked forward to that sparring session. He was positive he could deflate this muscle-bound windbag. He pulled in a deep breath, “Why don’t you educate me, Doc?”

  “Details are sketchy. There were at least three Silver Manticores operating successively in Old California, that is, when it was part of Mexico.”

  “I am from California, Doc,” Allred managed to disguise his irritation. But this dovetailed with what Axelrod had found.

  “Of course. The superstitious country folk believe them to be the same man, despite the long span of years. One was named Guillen Lombardo, who may have been an Irishman using a Spanish name. He probably trained a native-born Mexican as a successor,” Wylie pointed out. “Or for all we know, it could have been a male relation, like his son or nephew.”

  “Maybe it was his daughter,” smiled Brent Allred.

  “I find it hard to believe a woman could ride and engage in the required whip, pistol, roughhousing and swordplay,” Wylie dismissed. “However, that person somehow met up with your uncle. His skill with lassoing argues for vaquero background, incidentally.”

  Allred shrugged in agreement, “Well, that dime novel tells of a far from likely beginning. Ambushed Texas Ranger faking his own death at Bryant’s Gap,” said Allred with a headshake.

  “Obviously, the former vaquero passed the tradition on to him,” said Wylie. “You know, before the 1850s though, the Texas Rangers were basically gunslingers, desperados.”

  “Hey, that’s slanderous stuff,” objected Allred. “I’m a proud Texan, too.”

  “I got it from my associate Chuck and he’s a lawyer. Anyway, he got it from Charlie Siringo, who was a cowboy and a Pinkerton range detective.”

  “Oh, I know that name. He’s a legend in Texas. So, Chuck knew him, huh?”

  “Chuck apprenticed with him. We’ll probably never know the truth about that ambush you mentioned. Not by using old dime novels as history texts,” conceded Wylie. “What was your uncle’s real name?”

  “John Allred. He disappeared in 1911, well after he had hung up the mask.”

  “Can we pinpoint his last location?”

  “Corrigan places him in Paris at the time. My father, Daniel, had a falling out with Uncle John’s best friend, Tom Wynn, over Bob. I know now Gov. Wynn wanted to give the mask to Bob. Dad wanted me to have it.”

  “Thomas Wynn, the governor of California who Dr. Lucifer ordered killed?”

  “That’s right, initiating this whole thing. My father realized I was better trained to carry on the fight against crime. When Bob got caught and unmasked by the gang he was pursuing, well, dad was proven right.”

  “And your father started the Examiner as a voice against lawlessness, with proceeds from a silver mine your uncle founded in Colorado?”

  “True. He used to hand out little silver manticores when masked.”

  “Unique calling card,” commented Wylie.

  “Yes, and when Uncle John didn’t come back from Europe, dad started wearing the mask. After that unfortunate unmasking down in Mexico, we faked Bob’s death and had him change his name. He took ‘Daniel,’ after my father.”

  “And the surname ‘Colt’?

  “He had a distant relative named Colt; gun-maker did some work for the feds, so he used that.”

  “So your cousin is another Siringo?” pondered Wylie. “An old cowhand, like the song?”

  “No, not really. He attended East Texas State Teachers College, spent summers on our old Bar 20 ranch. Outside of that cowboy music he makes on the guitar, he’s quite cultured.”

  “Interesting,” muttered Wylie. “Corrigan recommended I make Colt president of the Liberty Cab Co. Someone not known to be connected to us should hold that position.”

  “That’s fine, Doc,” said Allred. “Convenient, it might look hinky if I hired him out the blue at the Sentry.”

  “Yes, one of my former associates, Caesar Fox, used to pose as same before he left us for the State Department.” Wylie continued, “Anyway, there was a Silver Manticore in Europe, going back as far as the Crusades. Sir Percy, by name, we have since learned. Theory holds that he was a designated champion of the Knights Templar. He and his eleven knights alone could not have possibly been a strong enough force to protect pilgrims in the Holy Land.”

  “I didn’t know that,” admitted Allred, impressed.

  “After the Crusades, he stood up for the weak, vowing to challenge piracy,” lectured Wylie. “In those days ‘piracy’ meant all kinds of criminal activity.”

  “I did get my start as editor, Doc,” pointed out Allred.

  Wylie considered this. “I merely want to fill you in. So he was supposed to be a supernatural p
rotector. He was feared. That was a trick this caballero in Old California and his protégé took advantage of. Incidentally, those two used the Spanish translation, ‘El Mancomorion.’ In 1669, France, a man known only as ‘Philippe’ was subject to an odd punishment; he spent some thirty-four years locked in the mask. He was a Silver Manticore. Dumas fictionalized that incident,” Wylie rambled on.

  Allred knew that book, The Man in the Silver Mask. He made a mental note now to read it.

  “Depending on how you count, you or your cousin would be the eighteenth and nineteenth Silver Manticore.”

  Now that’s interesting thought Allred.

  “Weren’t the Knights Templar ordered disbanded by the pope for being too powerful?” said Allred. “I’m a Protestant, but I know that much.”

  Make that a lapsed Protestant to partake in all of those killings, thought Wylie. Instead, he said: “You are correct, Brent. They were ordered dissolved. But the country they fled to, Scotland, was at war with England at the time, and defied the order from the Vatican.”

  “On that subject, I’ve heard that Pope Sylvester II studied alchemy, which ties into this through the oil of life,” added Allred.

  “I have learned there are few coincidences,” agreed Wylie sagely.

  Brent nodded accordance with Wylie on that point.

  “To continue, I know there was a Silver Manticore during the French Revolution attempting to save members of the ruling class from the guillotine and even one in Revolutionary America,” Wylie continued tirelessly.

  Brent wondered when the three o’clock bell would free him of his unasked for studies.

  “The Englishman in the French Revolution disregarded the mask and used disguises.”

  Maybe now if Doc wouldn’t be assigning homework, I can get a word in, Brent Allred thought.

  “You know, Doc, before I left San Francisco. I called my father long distance in Texas,” began Allred.

  Wylie looked intent as Allred relayed this new information.

  “He had a startling tale,” smiled Allred. “As I say, he wore the mask for a time when he was a young man. Until he got seriously hurt, that is. Shot. My Aunt Barbara stood in for him when a gang of carpetbaggers conspired to keep Idaho from gaining statehood.”

  The pair had completed their circuit of the Norpen Lumber Co. and its craft. They re-entered Wylie’s office.

  “A woman,” he exclaimed quietly. “She must have been quite a spitfire.”

  “Anyway,” shrugged Allred, “it explains why Bob took the name ‘Daniel.”

  “Sure, he was impressed with your father’s bravery,” Wylie concluded.

  “I have to admit you impress me with your knowledge of all this,” Allred stated.

  “I merely consulted with a fellow over in New Jersey, Jacques Le Grandon,” head nodding west. “He splits his time between Huxley College in Oswego, New York and Miskatonic U., but he’s really with the Parisian police,” said Wylie. “In fact, his friend Dr. Trowbridge, apparently, is a Templar and told him this lore. Dr. Le Grandon, in turn, informed me. He’s going to meet us at the Empire State Building. He also knows quite a lot about alchemists, too.”

  “Seems like a lot of nonsense,” protested Allred. “Alchemy.”

  “Well, no volume in my library had additional information. Dr. Le Grandon and I plan a trip to the Malloch Rare Book Room of the New York Academy of Medicine on Fifth Avenue and 103rd Street...”

  At that moment, the door burst open and Chuck hurried in. “Did you say ‘Le Grandon’? He was just kidnapped leaving the Hudson Tubes on Church St. by, get this, a mechanical man.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  TRIXIE WYLIE

  Burning rubber, Levvy slammed his Liberty Cab to a halt at the curb by the Norpen Lumber Company. Chuck and the man dubbed Longjohns roared away in Doc Wylie’s bronze roadster. This afforded Allred his first glimpse of the ghostly electrical wizard. The runt’s most outstanding feature was a bulging Steinmeltz forehead. Allred didn’t know how he ever could have mistaken Wylie for Longjohns.

  “Getcha caboose in gear, Mr. Allred, sir; I wanna beat that creep Chuck to the scene o’ the crime,” prompted Levvy.

  Doc Wylie dashed after Allred to the taxi, having conferred with his two other men. Leaping for the running board, he signaled Levvy to drive, but made no attempt to climb in. Levvy piloted the machine down the two-way traffic of Twelfth Avenue; his destination was the Church St. station of the Hudson Tubes, Wylie clinging on outside.

  “Aren’t you Mr. Charalambides’ pal?” asked Allred, leaning forward.

  “Aw, his old ma pays me to keep an eye on him,” Levvy answered.

  “Levvy and Chuck are the best of friends,” called Wylie, through the open cab window. “It is merely manifested in this, oh, Jack Benny and Fred Allen manner.” He had thrown on a quiet brown suit jacket.

  “Reminds me more of Abbott and Costello,” observed Allred.

  In the mirror, Allred saw Levvy grin widely. His teeth had more gaps than a mountain pass. He jerked a thumb towards a street they passed, calling to Allred, “Name seem familiar?”

  “I feel right at home,” smiled Allred.

  “Only we say H-O-U-S-T-O-N the right way, here: ‘House-ton’ not ‘Use-ton,” stressed Levvy.

  Allred grunted at that. “Listen, Doc, Hanoi Tsin is behind this grab. It’s an attempt to draw my alter ego out into the open,” he stated.

  “Obviously,” agreed Wylie. “Corrigan informed me of the theft of the mechanical men.”

  “These are no steam-powered curiosities like Sir George Cayley’s old toys. They’re deadly, remote-controlled walking weapons,” assured Allred.

  “Yet Corrigan reports there aren’t enough parts to make even one work. More importantly, how did they know where to seize Dr. Le Grandon? My phone is secure.”

  “That’s easy, Doc,” declared Levvy. “His must’ve been tapped.”

  “If Hanoi Tsin was listening in, let’s hope he thinks you’re consulting Le Grandon in preparation of fighting, well, you-know-who,” said Allred. “After all, my other self is officially a lawbreaker.”

  “Nothing confidential was mentioned on the line, if memory serves and it does,” assured Doc Wylie.

  “Doc took a page from the book of the Army’s codetalkers,” claimed Levvy

  “Right, we conversed in Mayan.”

  “I remember that from the Great War,” commented Allred. “It was given big play in the Secret Service’s Codes and Ciphers.”

  “Yes, the Army’s 36th Division used eight Choctaws to pull it off,” agreed Wylie. “Only I, my crew, and Corrigan speak Mayan. We’ll be teaching it to you and your band of merry men. Two hours a day, for five weeks should do the trick.”

  “Oh, Corrigan’s been coaching us on it. We haven’t been idle the last few weeks,” pointed out Allred.

  “You surprise me, Brent,” conceded Wylie.

  “Well, despite the rumors that Hanoi Tsin speaks all civilized languages and some dead ones, I hope you trumped him,” Allred declared.

  “As do I. Now, you will wait in this taxi when we reach our destination. No one should see us together.”

  “Uh-uh, Doc, there’s no reason the latest newspaper publisher to hit town wouldn’t visit you. You’re news seven days a week.”

  “Nevertheless, I insist you remain in the car, Brent,” said Wylie firmly.

  “We’ll see about that. Look, these mechanical men are remotely controlled and powered by a rare element: tungite.”

  “Yeah? Longjohns can make electrons say ‘uncle,’” contributed Levvy. “He oughta be able to rig up a radio detector we can use to trace whoever is pullin’ the strings.”

  “You’re mixing metaphors but, yes, that’s quite clear. I have already instructed Longjohns to do just that,” stated Wylie.

  When Allred spied the Employment Agency Center Building, he knew they were close to their destination. On Church Street Levvy lurched to a halt by some police cars. He and Wyl
ie bounded towards them.

  Allred tried his door and found it locked. He moved to each of the others. All of the cab’s doors were locked. There was nothing to do but sit back, watching the great man at work. Allred fumed, helplessly observing Wylie consult with the police brass in charge. This was a bulldog-jawed, squinty-eyed detective named Joe Casey. Allred remembered that quote of his about how “crime does not pay.” He’d have to appropriate that, he knew.

  Casey, all business, didn’t seem like the type to allow himself to be adapted into a newspaper comic. Allred noted he accommodated the civilian Wylie like a high-ranking police official. Longjohns got a nod from Wylie and took off in the bronze roadster. While Wylie was getting briefed by Casey, Levvy and Chuck managed to stop their bickering to look around at some length. Gathering clews, Allred supposed. He didn’t need clews to convict. The only verdict he cared about came out of the ends of his guns.

  Evan White joined the group back at the Norpen Lumber Company. Like Levvy, he was dressed this day as a cab driver. Without knowing about the new crisis, he had waited patiently for the group in his Liberty Cab, reading Sam Lacy’s column in the Sentry. The men gathered in Wylie’s office.

  “Coffee break,” Levvy bellowed uncouthly. Allred heard the whirl of a Princess Royal Juice-O-mat. The chemist daintily brought Allred’s requested tea, calling it “tonsil varnish.” Levvy presented Wylie with freshly blended fruit juice who slowly sipped it; he then settled in to gulp aromatic American Ace coffee with White and Longjohns who both helped themselves. The electrician nervously pulled on an oversized ear. Chuck nipped from a flask he had unscrewed from the grip of his cane. Allred noted that the group had no qualms about sitting with a Negro. That was a good sign.

  “Moo juice, Evan?” asked Levvy, seeing no milk in his coffee.

  “No, I’m happy black,” he answered, then laughed at his unintentional joke. Levvy guffawed too loudly and ribbed Chuck overly hard.

  “Hey, Evan’s funny,” Levvy then seemed to notice the flask for the first time, “Blazes, shyster, that better not be them dang dry martinis you ‘n yer flozzie alla time drink. This ain’t the Diamond Horseshoe.”