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

last.
    “We are kind of in the middle of something right now,” she
said gently. “And investigatin’ as Gad-About and Trusty Driver ain’t nearly as
easy.”
    He shook his head. “Someone went to a great deal of trouble
to try and kill the Red Panda and the Flying Squirrel. I still think we should
let them think they’ve succeeded until we have something to go on.”
    “Yes, Boss,” she nodded. “That bein’ the case–”
    “That being the case, you wonder if we should really
moonlight on another crime?”
    “If it’s a crime, it’s a crime,” she shrugged. “I’m game for
anything. But it’ll still be waiting when I’ve mopped up the floor with whoever
tried to drop a building on me, won’t it?”
    He smiled a little, in spite of himself. “I’m sorry, Kit. I
made a lot of choices. I don’t regret many of them. But an unpleasant
side-effect of the life I chose is that I live an elaborate lie, hiding my true
self from people who think they know me. Martin Davies was one of those people
I’ve lied to. He thought he knew me well. He’d have told you we were old
friends. I owe him something.”
    Kit nodded a little as she drove. She understood, perhaps
more than anyone else ever could. “Right then,” she said, turning the car. “We
stop at the Club Macaw. Maybe something shakes loose.”
    He smiled and looked affectionately at the back of her head
until an instant before she looked in the rear-view mirror and saw him staring
out the side window.
    Twenty minutes later, the powerful engine of the limousine
fell silent before a fashionable gentleman’s club in the heart of the city. Kit
Baxter stepped from the front seat and gave the advancing doorman a glare that
froze him in his tracks. She stepped quickly around the length of the car and
opened the rear door herself.
    Ryan, the doorman, noted the tall, very well-dressed man who
stepped forth from the back seat. At the Club Macaw, such sights were
commonplace, as all the members were wealthy, powerful men of industry and
influence. But most of them were soft, and some downright foolish. There was
something about August Fenwick that always struck Ryan as unique. The cold
focus of his eyes, the determined set to his jaw. Even the way he moved past
his chauffeur without so much as a glance back at her. Kit Baxter was not the
sort of girl most men could help from staring at. He’d been caught more than
once himself. Her employer’s reaction, or rather the lack of one, was strange.
    “Too strange to be
believed,” the doorman thought, suppressing the smirk that came with that
notion before Fenwick could see it.
    “Good morning, sir,” he said, tugging the brim of his cap as
he opened the main door of the club. Fenwick nodded and turned back to his
driver.
    “I won’t be more than a few minutes, Kit,” he said tersely.
“There’s business to attend to yet.”
    “Yes, Boss,” the pretty redhead said with a smile, as though
she’d just been given candy. Ryan tried not to shake his head in disgust. Some
guys had all the luck.
    Fenwick brushed past Ryan and into the foyer of the club.
The thick carpets padded his footsteps as he crossed the open space and into
the club’s reading room, where he could hear a number of voices. Normally, the
room might have held three or four men at this time of day, perusing the papers
in a leisurely fashion. But today there were nearly twenty, and the room buzzed
with the sort of energy that was normally discouraged in the strongest possible
terms. News of Martin Davies’ death had obviously reached the club.
    He was greeted by the other members, even consoled by
several, which only served to sting the mystery man’s conscience still more.
There seemed to be little in their conversation to suggest foul play. Davies
had been in good health, his business interests were strong, his personal life
was above reproach. After ten minutes of conversation, Fenwick was about to
make his apologies and depart, when they