Tales of the Red Panda: The Mind Master Read Free

grown up in this neighborhood – spent her
entire life here – and she knew every family, every building. From some
stoops voices called to her, hands waved as she passed. From others there were
no such greetings. But Kit Baxter knew that every gathering had a new subject
to discuss after she was gone: her. How she was never around much any more. How
her job as a chauffeur to the city’s most notorious playboy kept her out until
all hours. How she would never be able to settle down at this rate.
    Some would come to her defense, of course. They would point
out that at least she was working, and that these days people had to take what
they could get and be glad of it. It was, to be sure, a better occupation for a
pretty young thing than her old job driving a cab. Kit made a decent living and
she took care of her mother like a good girl.
    No one would deny any of that, of course. There were those
who thought that Kit spent too much time with that ne’er-do-well boss of hers
to be any good. Still others thought she might carry a torch for the rich bird.
But they wouldn’t dare voice those thoughts too loud. Even among gossips, there
was such a thing as carrying matters too far. Besides, the fact that Kit kept
her old apartment rather than moving into the servant’s quarters at his nibs’
mansion seemed to prove there was nothing unusual between them.
    It was on this last point that the gossips on the front
stoops were dead wrong. Kit smiled as she walked past, thinking how little they
could possibly dream the truth. That her millionaire playboy Boss was, in fact,
the masked man of mystery known only as the Red Panda. That far from living a
dissolute and directionless life, spoiled by his massive family fortune, he had
directed all of his energies into becoming crime’s greatest foe, and the honest
citizen’s greatest friend.
    And what the gaggle from the old neighborhood could never
possibly guess was that she, Kit Baxter, whom they had known all her life,
fought at his side as that fearless fighting female: the Flying Squirrel. That
the two of them, together, though still branded as outlaws, had done more real
good for the city and the most desperate of its people than most could ever
hope to do in a hundred lifetimes.
    Kit Baxter bit her lip a little as she thought of it.
Thought of him. The old girls on the porches were right about that much. But
she kept her feelings under wraps as much as possible, and so far her Boss
didn’t seem to have noticed. Times like this, when she had a rare evening off
and was in no danger of being close enough to him to make a slip, were the only
times she really let herself think about it.
    And that was what put the skip in Kit Baxter’s step as she
made her way home from the pictures. The situation might be completely
impossible, but they shared both a secret and a life of adventure, and she was
the only person who really knew him, not the ridiculous mask of a man that he pretended
to be. That was more than she ought to have been able to hope for and it would
have to do.
    Kit wore an oversize tweed cap, with a shock of red hair
pushed up into it without a great deal of care. She wore pants and a long coat
with her hands pushed in the pockets, but still the figure that she cut was
anything but mannish. She tried to buy an apple from a greengrocer that was
packing up for the evening, but he refused to take her money. He only smiled
and held his own cap over his heart with a pantomime sigh and a quick glance
over his shoulder to make sure that his wife hadn’t seen the gesture. Kit
laughed and pocketed the apple as she took the steps of her building two at a
time. She was almost at the front door when she heard the newsie’s voice, crying
from down the block,
    “Extra! Extra! Empire Bank Heist nets untold fortune!”
    And then another from the opposite direction,
    “ Chronicle Extra!
Police baffled by Empire Bank caper!”
    And then still more, from everywhere, their voices too