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"Stalked By the Golden Jaguar"


10/19-10/20/1943

I.

Kelly O'Connor slammed shut the dilapadated old book she had been studying, and muttered a single word more appropriate for a hardened sailor in a storm than for a pretty young reporter in the day room of the NEW YORK MESSENGER. Middle-aged Will Townsend, seated at his own desk nearby, grinned affectionately. He had been putting on weight the past year and had stealthily punched a new hole into his belt to accomodate the more substantial girth.

Watching Kelly was no hardship. She was tall and slender, with long dark red hair and bright green eyes, as well as an upturned nose and full lips. In her light yellow dress, belted around the waist, she was more appealing a sight than all the dumpy middle-aged reporters he had to face every day.

"It must be something unusual for you to stick around the office after the whistle blows, O'Connor," he remarked. "This is the first time I ever saw you here after dark. I thought you had a frantic social life, always out dancing and going to Broadway shows."

"I wish." Kelly said. "Twenty-three and already an old maid married to the newspaper business."

"You've been shoving your nose into a hundred different books here since five o'clock," asserted Townsend.

"I've been trying to get some information for a story I'm working on," answered Kelly. She gestured at the rows of wildly random volumes in the shelves that encircled the walls. "Look at all these books you guys have been bringing in for a generation. All sorts of strange and unsavory topics are covered but not one can tell me the truth about the Golden Jaguar cult practiced by a certain tribe from the jungles of Ecuador."

"A good reporter has sources," suggested Townsend. "Why not ask them?"

"I'm going to." Kelly took down a phone from its hook where it sat on the desk she shared with senior reporter Skip Leinster.

"What about Carla Colan?" suggested Townsend. "She's been to Rio. She's quite a traveler and she writes some stories for our paper."

"I don't get along with Carla. Her articles seem pretty flimsy to me. But I know a real expert! I'll try Big Jim Newton." She twirled the dial with an impeccably manicured finger. "Ring, ring, ring, pick up already. Oh. Hello!"

A slick voice with an unfamiliar accent came along the wire.

"Oh, is that you, Tomas?" asked Kelly. "I want to speak to Mr. Newton."

Polite surprise tinged the meticulous tones. "Why, Mr. Newton went out in response to your call an hour ago, Miss Kelly."

"What's that?" demanded Kelly. "Went where?"

"Why, surely you remember, Miss Kelly." A faint uneasiness seemed to edge the Ewa's voice. "At about nine o'clock you called, and I answered the phone. You said you wished to speak to Mr. Newton. After my master talked to you, he then told me to have his car brought around to the side entrance. He said that you had requested him to meet you at the cottage on Duck Lake shore."

"Stuff and nonsense!" exclaimed Kelly. "This is the first time I've phoned Big Jim Newton for weeks! You've mistaken somebody else for me."

The servant did not argue but simply replied, "As you say, miss."
Kelly replaced the phone and turned to Townsend, who was leaning forward with aroused interest.

"Something fishy here," scowled Kelly. "Tomas, Jim's Ewa servant, said I called an hour ago, and Jim went out to meet me. Townsend, you've been here all evening. Did I call up anybody? That retired headhunter has me doubting myself."

"No, you didn't," emphatically answered older reporter. "I've been sitting right here close to the phone ever since six o'clock. Nobody's used it. And you haven't left the day room during that time. I would have noticed."

"Well, say," said Kelly, uneasily, "This sounds like monkey business. I think I better drive up to Duck Lake. If this is a joke, Newton may be over there waiting for me to show up and I don't want him mad at him over a misunderstanding."

Townsend pulled his jacket on and reached for a fedora which had seen better days. "Count me in."

"Why? I'm just going to ask Big Jim a few questions. I don't need a chaperone, will."

"It's not that, O'Connor. But that fake phone call worries me. Someone's pulling shenanigans. Newton might've got mixed up with some gangland types. I still carry my old Army automatic when I go to bad parts of town."

With a sinking feeling, Kelly O'Connor realized it would be too suspicious for her to argue further. She wanted to go by herself because her instincts told her the Green Devil might be needed. In the lining of her spacious brown leather handbag was concealed a green silk bandana mask, thin gloves and a sash with some miniature tools in tiny pouches. With Townsend along, she couldn't get into her Green Devil guise if there was trouble.

"We'll use my car, the DeSoto," offered Townsend. "I'm allowed extra gas rations because I do some weekend work for the city."

"Sounds good to me," she agreed. "The tires on my roadster are getting smooth as a baby's bottom."

As the city lights fell behind them, and houses gave way to clumps of trees and bushes, velvet black in the star-light, Townsend said: "Do you think Tomas made a mistake?"

"What else could it be?" answered Kelly without seeming to give it much thought.

"Somebody might have been playing a joke, as you suggested. Why should anybody impersonate you to Newton?"

"How should I know? But I'm about the only acquaintance he'd bestir himself for, at this time of night. He's reserved, suspicious of people. I don't think he has a lot of friends but he took a liking t me."

"Something of an explorer, wasn't he?"

"You bet. He spent over a year in the worst part of Ecuador where there really are headhunters and cannibals. Came back with three servants from the Ewa tribe. His story was that they saved his life and he swore to take to care of them."

"How'd he make his money?" Townsend asked, abruptly.

"I've never asked him. But he has plenty of it."

As they headed north, patches of trees on each side of the road grew denser, and residential houses became more gradual. After an hour's drive from the city, they found the broad silver mirror called Duck Lake. The twisting road meandered along the curving shore.

"Where's Newton's lodge?" inquired Townsend.

Kelly pointed. "See that thick clump of shadows, within a few yards of the water's edge? It's the only cottage on this side of the lake. The others are three or four miles away. None of them occupied, this time of the year. There's a car drawn up in front of the cottage."

"No light in the shack," grunted Townsend, pulling up beside the long low roadster that stood before the narrow stoop. The building reared dark and silent before them, blocked against the rippling white sheen behind it.

"Hey, Jim!" called Kelly. "Big Jim Newton!"

No answer came, only a vague echo rolling down from the wooded hills.

"Devil of a place at night," muttered Townsend, peering at the dense shadows that bordered the lake. "I'm used to street lamps."

Kelly slid out of her side of the car. "Newton must be here, unless he's gone for a midnight stroll along the lake."

Their steps echoed loudly and emptily on the tiny stoop. Kelly banged on the door and shouted. Somewhere back in the woods a night bird lifted a drowsy note. There was no other answer. She grabbed the doorknob shook the door. It was locked from the inside.

"I don't like this," Townsend growled. "Car in front of the cottage, door locked on the inside but nobody answering us. Something's wrong. I'll kick the door in..."

"No need." Kelly fumbled in his pocket. "I know where he hides a key." She walked over to a nearby tree and groped around its roots until she came up with something wrapped in a piece of soft leather.

"How comes it you know where Newton keeps a key to his shack?" demanded Townsend.

"What's with that critical tone in your voice? I AM a reporter. I interviewed him a few times and once he had lost his key when we got here. Turn on your flash, will you? I can't find the lock. All right, I've got it. Hey, Jim! Are you here?"

Townsend's flash played over chairs and card tables, coming to rest on a closed door in the opposite wall. They entered and Townsend heard Kelly fumbling about with an arm elevated. A faint click followed and Kelly sighed in disappointment.

"The juice is off. There's a line running out from town to supply the cottage owners with electricity, but it must be dead. As long as we're in here, let's go through the house. Big Jim may be sleeping soundly after some brandy hit him..."

She broke off with a sharp intake of breath after opening the door that led to the bedroom. Her colleague's flashlight played on the interior, showing an overturned chair, a smashed table and a crumpled shape that lay in the midst of a dark widening pool.

"Good God, it's Newton!" Townsend's gun glinted in his hand as he played the flash around the room, sifting the shadows for any lurking shapes. The light rested on a bolted rear door and then on on an open window, the screen of which hung in tatters.

"We've got to have more light," he grunted. "Where's the switch? Maybe a fuse has blown."

"Outside, I think near that window." Stumbling, Kelly led the way out of the house and around to the window. Townsend flashed his light, grunted.

"The switch has been pulled!" He pushed it back in place, and light flooded the cottage. The light streaming through the windows seemed to emphasize the blackness of the whispering woods around them. Townsend glared into the shadows, tense and unhappy. Kelly had not spoken for what to her was a considerable time.

Back in the house they bent over the body which lay in the middle of the blood-splattered hardwood floor. Big Jim Newton had been a stocky, strongly built man of early middle age. His skin was tanned and weather-beaten, hinting of tropic suns. His features were covered with a layer of dried blood. His head lolled back, disclosing a raw gaping wound beneath his chin.

"His throat's been cut!" stammered Kelly. "Someone murdered Jim."

Townsend shook his head. "Not cut but torn right out. Good God, it looks like a big cat had ripped him."

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"Mystery of the Jupiter Man"

9/11/1943


I.

Kelly found herself in a position to get an interview with the Jupiter Man purely by chance.

She had been strolling about Times Square on her lunch break from the offices of THE MESSENGER, enjoying a sunny September afternoon. The lack of good-looking men her own age on the streets still gave her a vague melancholy. She was getting used to it. Her report about the suspicious fire on the Lower East Side had only made the second page but it did have her byline, which was always a help. War news from the Pacific had been monopolizing the front page for some time now. Her Green Devil activities had unhappily been slow for a while. Kelly was honest enough with herself to admit she missed the adrenalin as much as the chance to fight crime and espionage for altruistic reasons.

At twenty-three, Kelly O'Connor was young and zestful enough to dismiss the chance of being killed or worse in her crusade. A natural redhead with green eyes and an upturned nose, she was also tall and slim. In her new off-white dress with a faint lilac pattern, a brown leather handbag slung over one shoulder and a soft cloche hat tilted to one side, she knew she looked great and was enjoying the admiring looks she caught from men and women alike. The clacking of her heels on the pavement slowed as she realized it was time to swing around back for the office and survive another four hours in a city room filled with the pounding of battered typewriters and ten men smoking cigarettes as if they had a daily quota to use up.

Now she was on a side street between 48th and 49th. As she passed the windows of WEISSMAN JEWELERS, where she had spent more than a few wistful minutes gazing at the glitter on display, her pulse suddenly sped up. This was a one-way street. The black 1940 DeSoto rolling her way came to a stop that was way too sudden. She froze in a combination of fear and excitement. Two men with bandannas tied around their lower faces leaped from the big car and ran into the jewelry store, each gripping a 45 Colt automatic. The driver stayed in the car and revved the motor.

While everyone else either strood frozen at the sight or made quick tracks away from the scene, Kelly was annoyed that she could do nothing. Her Green Devil outfit was hidden in her apartment and she was not wearing the lighter emergency costume she sometimes had on if expecting trouble. To be frank, it was simply too uncomfortable to spend a hot day with an extra layer under her regular clothing, leaving her itchy and sweaty. Even if she had been carrying it with her, there was no place to change. By the time she got into her suit, the robbery would be over anyway. Drat the luck. She took in details of the DeSoto and noticed that the license plates had been obscured with pieces of tape that could quickly torn off after the getaway.

It was infuriating, so much so that she didn't even consider how she was placing herself in danger by staying close to an armed robbery. A second later, both gunmen came running out, each with a canvas bag of loot. No shots had been heard. One of the thugs gave Kelly a cold hostile stare but then hopped back in the car anyway. She realized glumly that with their unremarkable suits and fedoras, the kerchiefs over their faces meant she could not even give a useful description.

Then, out of the corner of her eye, she spotted movement on the roof of the five-story building.

A masked man in a dark Royal blue outfit jumped down to land in front of the car as easily as if stepping off the curb. Kelly took in impressions instantly. He was a big guy, well over six feet tall and built like a circus strongman. Like a performer also, his tights showed every well-ddefined muscle clearly. He was wearing polished black boots, a white belt and cuffs, and had on a helmet with a raised crest like something out of the science fiction pulps. On each shoulder was a white crescent of stiff leather. The Jupiter Man.

As everyone on the scene watched, Jupiter Man crouched, shoved his hands under the front bumper and straightened up to flip the heavy auto over onto its side. The crowd broke into confused conversation, with a few screams of uncertainty. Stepping toward the rear of the DeSoto, the masked man casually tore the rear door off and tossed it away to crash up the street with the tinkle of breaking glass. A gun went off without seeming to hit anything, the Jupiter Man leaned into the interior and then a few sharp thumping noises indicated what happened to the robbers.

Not quite realizing the boldness of her actions, the young redhead had been edging closer and had gotten within arm's reach of the strange man. As he swiveled in surprise toward her, only his lower face beneath the nose was left exposed by the blue helmet to show a wide jaw. He smiled at her with a flash of white teeth. On the front of his shirt was a light blue circle with a red spot off-center. Jupiter, all right.

"My name is Kelly O'Connor, I'm a reporter for THE NEW YORK MESSENGER," she said, not noticing that her voice cracked as she spoke. "Um, the public would like very much to know more about you and how you can... well, do these things."

From within the helmet, deepset brown eyes regarded her. She did not feel any uneasiness at that gaze, because the smile seemed natural and friendly. "All right, miss," he replied in a pleasant baritone with a faint accent. "Meet me here at midnight. Don't tell anyone." Then he took three running steps and leaped up back on to the roof where he had been standing. It seemed effortless, as if he could have reached much greater heights without difficulty. There was a glimpse of him hurtling over to the next building, then he was gone.

Shaking her head, feeling breathless, Kelly took off at a sprint toward the corner of 48th. She knew there was a drug store there with a phone booth. Behind her, she heard sirens but that hardly registered. She raced into the drug store, past the soda counter and dropped down on the seat in the booth. From her handbag, she snatched a handful of change and dialed a number she knew better than the one at her boarding house. "City desk. Yeah. Hi, Lemister. Of course it's Kelly. Grab your pad and start writing, get this all down. We need to make the afternoon edition. I just now saw the Jupiter Man in action, close up..."

II
( the rest of the story )

"Giving Real Gremlins a Bad Name"

5/24/1943

I.

Laura Salerno left the Triumph motorcycle near a pair of mechanics who were watching the Flying Fortress warm up. "It's from Baker Company motor pool," she shouted over all the nearby thrumming engines, taking off at a full sprint toward the giant plane that stretched more than a hundred feet long. Taken by surprise, the men stared at her fleeing figure and said nothing until it was too late to ask her any questions.

Average in height, wrapped in a white trenchcoat that reached to her ankles, Laura had long straight black hair that was tangled now by the winds of speeding that Triumph along the back roads. She ran headlong toward the B-17, seized a support handle and pulled herself up into the open doorway.

An airman who had been about to close and lock that hatch swayed back to avoid a collision. "Hey! What the hell...?"

"I'm under orders from Colonel Racicot," Laura told him, only slightly out of breath from the frantic rush to catch this plane. She pulled three folded pieces of stiff paper from inside her coat and waved them under his nose. "I need to show these to your captain."

"Albertini!" roared a bass from the cockpit. "What exactly is going on back there?"

"It's a dame, sir. Says she has orders for you to read."

"Are you kidding me? We're supposed to be in the air right now. Dammit. All right, let's hear her story."

Brought forward into the cramped cockpit, Laura handed the papers over to a short stocky man in a leather bomber jacket with a fur collar. She knew his name was Robert A Lemister. He took his time examining the documents, not glancing over them but reading them carefully. A full minute crawled by before he glared up at her.

What the Captain saw was a good-looking woman no more than a year or two over thirty, with stern clear-cut features and dark brown eyes that stared back at him fearlessly. The black hair reached down past her shoulder blades, even tangled as it was. Under the open trenchcoat, a bright canary-yellow shirt could be glimpsed with a solid bustline. The woman stood waiting, not fidgeting, not flinching from his eyes.

"I wasn't told about any of this," he snapped.

"The orders are clear, captain," Laura replied without heat.

"So they are. I still intend to radio GHQ before we get too many miles behind us. These papers only refer to you as 'this courier.' Got a name?"

"I'm using the name Jane Ralston for the moment," she said. "I'm a civilian advisor, no rank, answering directly to Colonel Racicot."

"A mystery woman! Just what a combat crew needs to foul things up. Fine. Albertini, see that she's secured and harmless. Have her strapped in back by the rear gun turret."

"She can sit on my lap if there's no room back there," offered a voice which drew several guffaws. Laura acted as if she hadn't heard and followed Airman Albertini down the fuselage walkway to a niche next to the steel and glass bubble which held on of the plane's thirteen 50mm machine gun.

There was enough room for her to squeeze in, and a long canvas strap could reach over across her chest to hold her down. Albertini fastened her in, careful not to take the opportunity to brush a hand up against her breasts. This raised her estimate of him. She had been groped a few times under similar circumstances. The fact that her bra was padded with cotton as part of her disguise comforted her with the thought that the mashers were not getting the cheap thrill they thought they were. The wig and the red lipstick and the bright yellow shirt were also ways to change her naturally rather mousy appearance.

"Thank you," she said, settling back. From the first instant she had entered the plane, Laura had been memorizing faces of the ten crew members and matching them against her briefing the night before. Everything lined up with the descriptions.

Watching from the navigation station, a young man who seemed too callow to need a shave gave a long drawn-out wolf whistle. "I'll tell the world, our new guest sure brightens up this battered old skywagon. What did you say your name was, honey, and most importantly, are you married?"

"I'm all business," she retorted, sharply enough. "You think this is only a cargo run where you won't be in harm's way, don't you? Drugs and supplies and equipment to the medics up at Eisenschoff. There's bad news in store for you."

"Hayll, that ain't what I was hoping to hear," he laughed.

Against her left thigh, Laura could feel the reassuring pressure of the Sceptre under her coat. The strange copper-colored metal of its shaft was always warm to the touch. The glimpse she got by peering down inside her unfastened coat showed the blue gem which topped the talisman was gleaming with its own lambent light.

"Every day brings bad news in this war," Albertini grumbled, strapping himself in behind the metal desk with its maps and charts and hooded lamp on a swivel. "I'm sure glad we have two Mustangs heading out with us today."

At those words, Laura Salerno bent forward to peer out the round observation window nearest to her. The nose of a P-51 could barely be seen, flying above and behind their B-17. She presumed the other Mustang would be on the other side of their bomber. That was comforting. Too many of these Flying Fortresses had not come back from missions before they had started to be escorted by smaller faster fighters.

"Attention," crackled the pilot's voice over the com. "We're in stable flight with a heading east-southeast, our ETA with the medics base is in two hours and twenty minutes. All readings are nominal. Miss Ralston?"

"Yes, captain?"

"GHQ confirms the urgency of your mission but they decline to provide any details of exactly what it is or who you are. That makes me unhappy. Do you have anything you want to spill?"

Laura kept her voice impersonal. "My assignment is on a need to know basis, sir." To herself, she prayed that the threat they faced would not force her to explain what had made eight planes crash without obvious cause in the past six weeks.

( the rest of the story )