The Red Panda Chronicles

The Sinister Simeon Part 1

March 1940

The orderly shoes clipped down the hall away from his very important guests.

The two men who had arrived just moments ago were dressed in white, like everyone he worked with every day.

They carried impeccable credentials which proclaimed them to be visiting doctors,

here to study rehabilitation patterns among those assessed to be criminally insane.

Anywhere else within the city limits, that would be much too interesting to be criminally insane.

Anywhere else within the city limits, that would be much too interesting to be a good cover story.

Here at the Queen Street lunatic sanitarium for the criminally insane it made for just another day at the office,

and no one gave the visitors so much as a second glance.

No one except the orderly who bustled down the hall in his felonious errand.

He alone knew his guests were not what they pretended to be,

and he had a general idea of what he stood to profit from their visit,

as the echoes of his hurried footfalls rang through the stark white antiseptic corridors.

Back in the waiting area, a tall man glanced nervously down the hall.

"'Are you sure about this orderly?' he asked the second man without turning.

"'I am certain about nothing, Mr. Boone,' the second man replied smoothly.

"'That is what I have you for, remember?' The first man turned to his companion and adjusted his glasses, which were strictly part of his costume.

"'Forgive me, sir,' he said.

"'I just—'

When I was given this assignment, I didn't know it would be—'

...