By Ed Staskus

   The first thing the Camel did was head for the back door, being the back door man he was, until he saw Oliver and Emma guarding it. At first, he thought it was some kind of trick Mandrake the Magician had dreamed up. The do-gooder didn’t in his wildest dreams think a couple of pre-teens were going to stop him and his daughter, the Brass Monkey, from escaping the Kirtland Temple and making off with the diamond they had stolen, did he? 

   But then the Camel quickly reconsidered. Mandrake wouldn’t have stationed them there if they were just helpless kids, would he? He asked his daughter. She was puzzled, too, but finally blurted out the kids might be even more dangerous than Mandrake and Lothar. At least they knew what powers the magic man and his African sidekick had, but they didn’t know what the kids had going for them. The Camel didn’t like facing the unknown when it was in his face.

   He and the Brass Monkey ran back up to the top of the tower, When they looked down neither Mandrake nor Lothar were where they had been in front of the front door only a minute earlier. The door was wide open. The Camel realized it was only a matter of a minute before his archenemies barreled out onto the widow’s walk and when that happened there would be hell to pay. He quickly summoned his Three Stooges with special hocus-pocus. They were standing in front him in a flash.

   The Three Stooges were hard men with hard faces. The only candy they ever ate was hard candy. One of them had his teeth professionally polished. They gleamed when he smiled. The other two men never smiled. They didn’t believe in it. They believed in knocking down fairy castles. They didn’t argue their enemies to death with talk.

   No matter how many times the Camel insisted they call him the Master, they refused to do it. The goons called him the Boss and that was that. Two of them were wearing fedoras with contrasting bands. One was hatless. Two of them were carrying handguns. One of them had a .45 Colt and another one had a Colt Officers Special. He had stolen it from a policeman. The hard man wearing a black shirt and green tie was old school. He was carrying a slapper, a leather pouch filled with lead pellets. It was small enough to hide in a sap pocket but big enough to break bones with no trouble.

   Mandrake and Lothar strode up the down stairs. The stairs were worn down by time. Their minds were made up. The walls were yellow. When they burst into the open the Three Stooges went to work. The one with the slapper hit Lothar in the face with it as hard as he could, hard enough to buckle the knees of an elephant. Lothar blinked and took the slapper away from the man. He said something the man couldn’t understand. The next thing he knew Lothar was tucking the slapper back into his sap pocket, lifting him over his head, and throwing him off the widow’s walk. He hit the ground like a sack of radishes and stayed where he landed.

   When Oliver and Emma raced to the side of the church, the dust of him hitting the ground was just settling. They checked the man’s pulse. He had one, although at the moment it was going at the speed of a snail. They raced back to the rear of the church.

   “He must have had an accident, don’t you think?” Emma asked her brother.

   “Whatever happened, I don’t think it was an accident,” Oliver told his sister. The next second they heard  gunfire from the temple’s tower. “That is definitely no accident,” Oliver said. The noise was followed by silence. The next thing they knew two guns came flying downwards and thudded on the ground.

   The Two Stooges with handguns had emptied them at Mandrake and Lothar.  The African sidekick caught all the bullets with his fingers. When he had a handful of them he threw them up in the air where they turned into crows and flew away. Mandrake waved his hand and the two men were instantly hypnotized. “Go,” the magician ordered them. They jumped off the widow’s walk and joined the other hard men on the dusty ground. 

   “I didn’t expect them to do that,” Mandrake said.

   When Mandrake spotted the Camel and Brass Monkey he and Lothar gave chase. The chase led them round and round the widow’s walk. They kept their quarry in sight but couldn’t gain any ground. Everybody went round and round until Mandrake stopped and quietly raised his hand. Lothar stopped. The Camel stopped. The Brass Monkey, who had been running behind her father, ran into him.

   Mandrake gave Lothar the high sign to go one way while he went the other way. In an instant they had the wrong doers in a pickle. There was nowhere for them to go. The Camel threw smoke bombs in all directions but the devil-may-care breeze coming off Lake Erie blew the smoke away.  The Brass Monkey did a funny little jig but the crime fighters weren’t distracted. She stuck her tongue out at them.

    “Mind your manners,” Mandrake said.

   “I don’t mind that you don’t like my manners,” the Brass Monkey said. “I don’t like them myself.”

   “I’m sorry for putting you and the African to all this trouble,” the Camel said.      

   “You don’t seem sorry to me,” Mandrake said.

   “I am sorry,” the Camel said. “Sorry I got caught.”

   “First things first,” Mandrake said. “I will have that diamond.”

    “I’ve been rich and I’ve been poor. Believe me, rich is better. I am keeping the diamond.”

   Mandrake was tired of messing around. He pointed at the Camel’s vest pocket. The diamond jumped out of the pocket and flew into Mandrake’s hand. He tucked it away for safekeeping. He faced the Camel and Brass Monkey.

   “Now that we are all agree the diamond is going back to its rightful owner, the only question is what to do with the two of you.”

   “I wish I had a friend to help me,” the Camel said. “Except they’re never around when you hit the skids.”

   Lothar whispered something in Mandrake’s ear.

   “Good idea,” Mandrake said. He extended his arm and in an instant the Camel and Brass Monkey were walking down a wet dead-end street. It didn’t take them long to realize the more they walked the more they got nowhere. The dead-end was always in front of them. Their shoes got soggy. When they tried to turn around they discovered they couldn’t. It was going to be a long unhappy walk.

   Outside the church Oliver and Emma joined Mandrake and Lothar. They looked down at the Three Stooges lying in a pile near the front of the Kirtland Temple.

   “What are you going to do with them?” Emma asked.

   Lothar didn’t have sleeves but he had a few magic tricks up his sleeve. He recited a Dark Continent incantation and snapped his fingers. The Three Stooges stood to attention and transformed into Mormons. They started going door to door in the direction of Salt Lake City peddling copies of the Book of Mormon.

   “Mom isn’t going to like it if they come to our door,” Oliver said. “She’s liable to give them a good piece of her mind.”

   “More like a bad piece of her mind,” Emma said.

Previously: Mandrake on the Move

Ed Staskus posts monthly on 147 Stanley Street http://www.147stanleystreet.com, Made in Cleveland http://www.clevelandohiodaybook.com, Atlantic Canada http://www.redroadpei.com, and Lithuanian Journal http://www.lithuanianjournal.com. 

A New Thriller by Ed Staskus

“Cross Walk“

“A once upon a crime whodunit.” Barron Cannon, Adventure Books

“Captures the vibe of mid-century NYC.” Sam Winchell, Beyond Fiction

Available on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CRPSFPKP

Late summer and early autumn. New York City. A Hell’s Kitchen private eye. The 1956 World Series. President Eisenhower at the opening game. A killer in the dugout.