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The Journal of Sir Mumphrey Wilton, Extract Sixteen: In which the mystery of the misplaced heads is resolved and the secret of Dr Nomodov is revealed Tuesday, 12-Oct-1999 13:49:33
The Journal of Sir Mumphrey Wilton, Extract Sixteen: In which the mystery of the misplaced heads is resolved and the secret of Dr Nomodov is revealed So we had a mysterious device called the Sempiternus Singularum, apparently retrieved twenty years ago by the late Leonard Hopkins from an alleged UFO crash site in Death Valley. Hopkins back-engineered the device and patented plans he didn’t understand shortly before being eliminated by an assassin called the Bone, who may have also taken the remaining intact component of the Singularum, the one piece which the plans don’t describe. However, whilst the plans are useless without the component, the component is of no use without the plans – which I possess (and have loaned to young Bautista of Bautista Enterprises to have a go at building the damn thing). Meanwhile the Banjooooo and spiffy detective agency are following leads to the Bone to recover the missing dooberry, with young spiffy (real name Mark Hopkins) wanting to have a bit of a word with the assassin in re his dad. And somebody else is showing an interest in the case, unless the beheading of the old prospector who knew the alleged crash site hours before we got there was a coincidence. – along with the Director of the New Tomorrow Foundation who sponsored the mysterious Dr Peter Nomodov to conduct an investigation all those years ago. Hopkins snr, by the way, was Nomonov’s assistant and appears not to have reported his find to his employer. Miss Asil Ashling (my amanuensis) and I therefore flew to Quebec where NT Foundation is headquartered to try and find more about Nomodov, despite being handicapped by the unfortunate decapitation of the chap who could tell us most about the matter. Slight contretemps at airport. Taxi driver refused to speak English, preferring heathen French. Pointed out to him that as colonial he’d jolly well better speak the Queen’s English, whereupon he made some personal remarks about Her Majesty which I felt I had to remonstrate with him about. Had to find new taxi driver whilst fellow was being woken up. Then certain degree of tediousness with RCMP resulting in being bound over to keep the peace etc. Lost temper in the end and called the Buckingham Palace protocol unit to get old Flobber Snipewell to sort it all out. Police escort with limousine to NT Foundation. Gory business, the murder. Whole series of decapitations occurred over last ten days, each characterised by the previous victim’s head being left by the body of the next poor blighter. NT Foundation Director’s body found alongside head of prospector Old Zeke. Instead Asil remain outside whilst I viewed the crime scene in private (with full co-operation of now eager-to-please RCMP – nice tunics). Walked into ambush. Colourful sticky string stuff sprayed all over me, pinned me to the wall. Enthusiastic, frenetic chap in gaudy fluorescent costume bounced from seemingly nowhere babbling strange references that made no sense whatsoever. Second fellow in deerstalker hat emerged from behind desk and called off his unusual companion. “This gentleman has recently been in the company of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, first as a prisoner and then as an honoured guest. Note the minute traces of two different blends of tea on the cuffs of his jacket, denoting the proffering of both standard cell-quality brew and the finest Darjeeling. Observe the method by which he entered, without stealth of haste suggesting a legitimate purpose. No, my friend, I fear in this case you have acted in a premature and peremptory manner.” The bounding fellow turned round to his companion and answered, “Amazing Hatty! I don’t know how you do it!” “Elementary,” the detective answered, pulling off his deerstalker and doffing a plain baseball cap with a H upon it. “I, um, I guess we’d better get this fella free, huh?” Complete change of syntax and posture as he changed his headgear. I allowed the apologetic CrazySugarFreakBoy! to untangle me from his ‘silly string’. Couldn’t help but notice bizarre similarity to my old friend EccentricEtherInvestigatorInventor!, although clearly impossible. Some descendent, perhaps? Turns out these fellows were more of these superheroes, actual teammates of Asil’s doody-head Lisa, on the trail of the head-taking murderer, a serial killer called HeadCase. Hatman (the cognomen of the chap with the hats) had fought the blighter before. Seems that Hatty (as his friends call him) has the gift of taking on the abilities of any individual by wearing their headgear. HeadCase has a similar power but must wear their head. Clearly this HeadCase was seeking out people who knew something on the Peter Nomodov trail and stealing their heads to learn what they knew. “If we could learn what he found out from this Director chappie we could anticipate his next move and bag him,” I suggested. Set Asil onto rather uncooperative secretary at New Tomorrow. Managed to find out that Nomodov was an independent contractor who did several pieces of lucrative research for NT, the last of which was a decade ago. Then he had vanished mysteriously. Relevant Rolodex entry was missing, presumably abstracted by this HeadCase blighter. Got Asil to keep CrazySugarFreakFellow! And Hatty occupied out of the Director’s office whilst I wound back time enough to see a vision of the dire deed. This was quite hard to do as thirty-sixt hours is usually about the chronometer’s limit for showing visions of the past unless they’ve left remarkably strong ripples; required a fair bit of fine tuning and a massive temporal charge. Couldn’t maintain the window long enough to track where the villain went, but was able to catch address on Rolodex card. Presented information to Hatman and CSFB! as result of Asil’s research in old files on condition that I could accompany them to the warehouse which the card had listed. Young CrazySugarEtcJohnny! was quite excited in limousine going over there. Cited references to American comic books which he rather felt that he and Hatman were recreating. Must admit some of the yarns he was recounting sounded rather enthralling. Like the sound of this Hal Jordan chappie but don’t believe he would break faith with his oath in the way he has apparently been depicted as doing. Nor does it seem likely that the Green Goblin reprobate could be behind quite so many of the unfortunate Mr Parker’s misfortunes. Sealed metal door to warehouse dealt with by Hatman donning a Rams cap and charging it. I hung back in the automobile whilst the two young fellahs peered inside. I heard CSFB! shout “Oh goody! Attack robots,” and gathered from the crunching noises that there were some kind of automated mechanical guardians on the site. Took carphone call from Asil noting that the Director’s head had turned up at the local zoo beside the corpse of a decapitated bull gorilla. By the time I had gone into the warehouse to warn the others the automated robotic defences were in shreds. “This is pretty clunky old technology,” Hatman declared wearing a NASA cap. “Yeah! From the look of this dust and stuff this place hasn’t been used for maybe ten years,” CSFB! admitted. “But those robots look kind of clunkily familiar, like Ditko versions of the old Kirby Machine Man design…” Laser beams move at the speed of light. It was therefore physically impossible for the multihued young man to avoid the one that came at him from the gallery - but he did. Hatman wasn’t as lucky, and the sweeping beam neatly seared his head right off at the neck. Overhead, the laser wielding gorilla-headed villain gibbered in delight. My pocketwatch hadn’t built up a full recharge since my time-viewing but I had to exhaust it fully or I’d never have been able to wind back events in time to push Hatman out of the way of the laser. Then while CSFB! was somehow still avoiding the slicing laser Hatman pulled out a Jets hat and rocketed onto the catwalk above to grapple with HeadCase. The gorilla-empowered enemy grabbed poor Hatty and tried to tear his head off, but by then CSFB! was near enough to distract him. Hatman pulled on a Steelers hat for protection, and the three of them went at it in fine superhero style. In the meantime I wandered off (nothing much I could contribute to all the derring and doing anyway) and found the office where the controls for the defences were. Amazing place, full of half-finished death rays and suchlike. Filing cabinets were stuffed with secret plans to take over the world, most of them crossed out or scribbled over in crayon. One drawer was entirely full of notebooks with “Muah-hah-hah-haha-haha!” written in them. Got the impression that this Nomodov fellow wasn’t the most balanced teacup in the crockery service. Also found deeds for “secret hideout” in Equadorian rainforest, which must check into later. By this time the superhero battle had got to the property damage stage, and then the heroes got clever and picked up one of the broken robot’s stunulators and zapped the baddie with it. HeadCase toppled over the balcony, falling with a huge crash. His ape’s head rolled off and spun to a halt across the room. And that was the end of that. Asil and the police arrived about the same time. I also put in a call to old Dan Drury at SPUD since it seemed a bad idea to leave all this super-villain kit just lying around. Asil looked a bit thoughtful as they were packing it all up. “A long-time supervillain who hasn’t been around for a while, who uses robots and wild plans to take over the world, and who might want to use an alias for his semi-legit work for the New Tomorrow Foundation,” she mused. Then she snapped her fingers. “Who might use an anagram of his real name to hide his identity!” she gasped. Of course, enthused CSFB! And the two of them explained who the baddie had been. “But he’s trapped in Comic-Book Limbo, so we can’t really go and ask him,” CrazyEtcLad! added. “Donar has dimension-travelling powers with that enchanted hammer of his,” Hatman pointed out. “Shall I put in a word?” Therefore planning a brief trip with this Donar fellow to talk to the exiled Nomodov or whatever his proper name is if we can get to Comic-Book Limbo and then a jaunt to Equidor to look for that hidden secret hideout. By which time young Bautista will have his prototype ready and all we need is for spiffy and Banjoooo to locate the Bane and the missing component. Damn sight more exciting than audit projections back in the office, I can tell you. Sir Mumph; dedicated to the brave but foolish Kirk Boxleitner, a.k.a. CrazySugarFreakBoy!, who profained the Archers and never even saw the combine harvester coming |
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