The Pendant Strikes!

part 2

by Alexandra Erin

“The Pendant Strikes!” began in issue 120.

During those not-so-rare periods of time when the master was not in residence, the massive Pitt House had three armed watchmen on duty at all times. At the moment the electric lights mysteriously died, two were separately patrolling the east and west wings, and the third was in the grand central chamber, an unusual hybrid of ballroom and exhibit of curiosities that occupied the entire width of the center of building’s center. The house’s owner loved showing off, and this three-story space, the upper stories ringed by balconies and the whole effect crowned by a prismatic skylight of crystal-cut glass, was his pride and joy, both showpiece and showroom.

The effect of the house being suddenly pitched into total darkness, followed quickly by the sound of the eight-foot-diameter central pane of the great skylight being smashed into a thousand glittery fragments brought the other guards running to that cavernous hall. They reached it at about the same time.

It was a bright night out. With huge windows extending the height of the entire second floor at the front of the room and with the open skylight overhead, the museum-cum-ballroom was better illuminated than any other room in the darkened manse, but the combination of great pools of dim light and swaths of inky blackness created an eerie effect.

No rope or line hung from the obvious point of ingress, but there was no doubt an intruder was present. Oscar, the guard who’d been in the room when the lights went out, lay unmoving on the floor, his head near the base of one of the many pedestals that supported everything from marble busts to taxidermological oddities. The glass case that had capped this particular column was as thoroughly destroyed as the skylight, and whatever it had protected was gone.

“Holy... Spread out!” one of the guards said. “We should go back and search each wing.”

“No!” the other shouted. “Anybody going either way would’ve bumped into one of us. Whoever done this is still here... There!”

He turned and pointed, as he spoke, at the movement he’d barely spotted out of the corner of his eye. A lithe figure dressed head to toe in a skintight suit of some thick, shiny black material was attempting to sneak along the perimeter of the room... a path that crossed one of the patches of light slanting in from one of the immense second-story windows.

The nimble figure promptly leapt to the side, performing a cartwheel and a one-handed handspring — the other hand clutching a purloined clay urn — to get out of the light. The sharp-witted guard managed to draw a bead on the rapidly moving target and fired. The intruder fell back, knocked by the bullet’s impact into the deeper shadows at the corner of the room, where the overhanging balcony blocked all the light coming in from above.

“You plugged him, Louie! Drilled him real good.”

“Him, nothin’!” the sharpshooting Louie said. “If that’s a him, he’s smugglin’ some awfully ripe watermelons in that crazy suit.”

“You saying a broad laid Oscar out like that? No way!”

“Check her body then, if you don’t believe me,” Louie said, gesturing with his gun to the dark corner where the mystery woman had fallen. His companion, Bernie, gulped audibly.

“Why do I have to check her body?” he asked. He would never admit it, but the museum-like home of Vernon Pitt could give him the creeps at night even with the power running. The seemingly superhuman strength and speed of this mysterious invader had set his nerves on edge.

“Because if I do it, you’ll have to cover me, and there’s no way I want your twitchy fingers pointing a gun at my back. Now quit clowning around and go!”

Apprehension wrestled with testosterone. Testosterone, with a little help from adrenaline. Bernie took the first trembling step into darkness, and then another, advancing on the corner where the masked figure had fallen. He kept his gun pointed at the floor ahead of him, in the general area he thought the intruder had fallen. He was careful to stay to the side, giving his more iron-nerved friend a clear line of sight (and fire) should anything stir. Taking it slowly gave his eyes time to adjust to the deepening gloom, or so he told himself. He advanced methodically towards the corner, deeper and deeper into the darkness... It was only when he almost bumped his nose into the wall that he realized he’d run out of floor and not found a body.

“Louie! She ain’t here! She ain’t here!” he yelled, and then turned, gasping when he realized the figure standing across the room wasn’t Louie. Rather, it was the woman... now that she was standing still, he could see that his partner had been correct, there was no doubt about that. Her outfit looked like rubber with some kind of glossy finish, and it covered her entire body except for her face, though a good portion of that was obscured by bulky goggles.

The more capable of the watchmen lay on the ground at her feet.

“Is he... dead?”

The woman shook her head.

“I’m jus’ gonna faint now, if that’s alright by you,” he said. The masked figure nodded, and Bernie suited action to word. His gun clattered to the floor, unfired, a fact that would earn him few points with his employer.

* * *

That same employer, Mr. Myron Pitt, a legitimate businessman, did not vent so much spleen on his underlings as to have none left over for the various public officials he could corner at the Governor’s Ball, held shortly thereafter.

“I’m telling you, commissioner... I want that masked maniac brought to justice or it’s going to be your head!”

“Masked maniac? Myron, don’t tell me that Pendant fellow has dealt you some kind of blow?” a voice at his side asked. “Because I was under the strong impression he only went after criminals.”

“What?” Pitt said, voice full of indignation as he turned to face the speaker. His face fell when he recognized the face of his former business partner, Peter Pendleton. The commissioner of police, sensing his chance for a graceful exit, slunk away, shooting Pendleton a grateful look as he departed. “Oh, Pendleton, it’s only you. You won’t get a rise out of me that easily. Well, for your information, it’s not the Pendant I’m talking about. My house was robbed last week while I was out of town, by a masked woman in some kind of rubber body suit. If it wasn’t for the fact that she stole an almost worthless Egyptian urn, I’d think this was some plot of yours to get back at me.”

“Come, Myron... you know I don’t bear you any grudge. You muscled me out of the business fair and square. Anyway, I always thought your house was patrolled by watchmen.”

“It is... the best your former money can buy!”

“And this woman somehow eluded them?”

“No, that’s just it... she didn’t even try to sneak in. She smashed the skylight and brought them running, then took them all down. To hear my men talk, she’s some kind of supernatural force... super fast, super strong, bulletproof...”

“And you believe that?”

“Are you off your nut, Pendleton? Of course not! It’s pure hogwash... my oh-so-capable personal guardsmen are trying to save face — and their miserable jobs — with a wild story.”

“If that’s the case,” Pendleton said, “why wouldn’t they just claim they were taken down by a man, or a squad of men? I’d say a story that improbable was too crazy to be made-up.”

“It’s amazing,” Pitt fumed, ignoring Pendleton’s conjecture. “We’ve got that left-handed gunman terrorizing the city’s criminals and some dame in a bulletproof suit taking care of the legitimate citizens. Between the two of them they’ve got the whole city sewed up!”

“Hmm, I wonder,” Peter said. “In a city like this, how would they ever know where one’s job ended and the other’s began?”

“Just what are you insinuating, Pendleton?”

“About you, Myron? Nothing. Have you got a guilty conscience?”

“Me? Don’t be ridiculous!”

“I’m sorry, you’re right,” he laughed. “You? A conscience? It is ridiculous. Excuse me, Myron, but I see somebody I absolutely must introduce myself to.”

A woman he did not recognize had just entered the room and was striding purposefully across the floor to the table holding the immense crystal punchbowls. Conversation died as she approached only to resume is hushed, conspiratorial tones in her wake. She had curly ginger hair, bobbed fashionably short. The lines of her dress were not at all unusual, resembling the boxy, no-fuss designs of Coco Chanel, but the material was sewn with black and silver sequins more befitting a nightclub singer than a lady of fashionable society. Her jewelry was similarly unconventional. Her relatively flat chest was decorated with a silver necklace that appeared to consist of five strings of silvery beads, and she wore two mismatched dangling earrings, one which resembled nothing so much as a stylized lightning bolt, the other a corkscrew.

Pendleton left the apoplectic Pitt, cutting across the floor on a path to intercept her immediately before she reached the table. In his haste, he ignored or deflected several greetings from respected but boring members of Star Harbor high society and all but trampled one elderly matron. He slowed his strides for the last few steps, gliding smoothly into the young lady’s view with no sign that he’d hurried at all. With fluid grace, he hooked the silver dipper in one hand and a goblet in another, filling the vessel while he turned just in time to hand it to her.

“J. Peter Pendleton II,” he said, smiling as she accepted the drink. “You are...?”

“Monica Bubastis. Thank you. Don’t you proper high-society types wait for an introduction to be made?”

“Those are silly old rules for silly old-money families, bored aristocrats who forget how their ancestors’ fortunes were made.”

“And how is that?”

“Through boldness, Miss Bubastis... it is Miss, I hope?”

“It is,” she said, “but if you are being bold, then you must call me Monica.”

“Very well, and you must call me Peter. Tell me, Miss... I mean, Monica... what are your thoughts on the topic of the evening?”

“What would that be? I hope you’re not going to tell me that everybody’s talking about me again... I don’t know why I keep coming to these parties. I never fit in.”

“No, no... unless you happen to be a rubber-suited cat burglar with superhuman strength, then everyone’s attention is focused safely elsewhere. That stuffy old boor Myron Pitt’s home was broken into by some She-Hercules in a crazy get-up. She knocked out the guards and stole a fairly unremarkable Egyptian urn.”

“You’re kidding!”

“No, I’m not. It’s the darnedest thing. Myron’s house is so full of valuable antiquities — not to mention money and jewelry — why would somebody go through the trouble of breaking in and tussling with the guards, all for the sake of one lousy jar?”

“That’s the crazy thing,” Monica said. “I really don’t know!”

“Do you often know the motives of masked criminals?” Peter asked, raising an eyebrow.

“That is, I don’t know why anybody would do anything so crazy without an obvious reason.”

“Indeed. Would you care for a cigarette?”

“No, thank you,” she responded. “I have to save my singing voice. Another thing that makes me a pariah... all the wrong vices.”

“It’s a bold choice... And as you may have noticed, I admire boldness.”

“Say,” Monica said, “since you’re actually talking to me, maybe you can tell me something that’s been driving me nuts... Everywhere I go in this town, it seems like people are talking about this Pendant character. When do I have to tune in to catch him?”

“Tune in?”

“To the radio show. It sounds like a real spine-tingler.”

Pendleton couldn’t help laughing when he realized Monica’s confusion. She’d overheard conversations about the exploits of the masked vigilante that men called the Pendant, and as an outsider with no friends to talk to, she’d concluded they were describing a sensational radio program of some kind. Unfortunately, Monica Bubastis couldn’t possibly guess the real source of his mirth, and she took understandable offense at his laughter.

“Well, hey, I thought you were different from these other snobs but if you’re going to laugh at me...”

“Oh, no, please! I’m not laughing at you,” he insisted. “It’s just funny... It does sound like a radio serial, when you think about it. The Pendant is a real man, or at least, a rumor of one. They say he’s an uncanny gunfighter, and a master of disguise, and that no man can lie to him because he can see the secrets in their hearts.”

“That’s quite a story... But I guess if there’s a crazy masked cat burglar running around, why not a vigilante? I wonder what the odds are that the two of them would both show up in the same town, at the same time.”

“I don’t know, Monica, but I can tell you this: as long as they’re operating in the same town, it’s only a matter of time before they run into each other. By all reports, the Pendant is the enemy of all criminals, from bootleggers to gun runners to lady cat burglars.”

“You sound quite confident speaking on this Pendant’s behalf,” Monica observed. “Do you know him personally?”

“Let’s just say I know what’s in his heart, and leave it at that.”

Continuation... pending...