Tales of the Red Panda: The Mind Master by Gregg Taylor

explosion,
Parker. We face death so often, I can’t always make contingency plans. That may
sound cavalier, or reckless, but it’s nothing of the kind. It is who we are. Do
you understand?”
    Parker nodded and said nothing.
    “Good. Can you get me a complete report on that warehouse
explosion? Today?” The blank eyes of his mask seemed to burn.
    Parker nodded again. “I’ll get what there is,” he said, “but
no one’s been very interested. They’re prepared to write it off as arson,
mostly because they can’t think of another motive for setting a blast that
huge.”
    “Can you?” the Red Panda smirked.
    “I kind of imagined they were trying to kill you,” Parker
laughed and stood up from the chair. He moved to a bureau in the next room.
“And unless I miss my guess, it had something to do with the robbery at the
Empire Bank.”
    The Red Panda stood now, the white eyes in his mask focused
with ferocious intensity on his agent as Parker returned to the room, a file
folder in his hand.
    “Agent Fifty-One, reporting,” Parker said with a grin.

Eleven

 
    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