The crew of the rocket ship, which crash landed in the Sahara Desert, escaped just in time from the vessel as it blackened and exploded, leaving a mushroom cloud in its wake in the middle of a landscape of endless sands. Not far from the dune behind which the heroes sought shelter, a telltale trail of camel dung led Sir Heathcliffe, Dr. McGreger, Juliet, Cara and the recently awakened "Number Nine" to an oasis inhabited by an old Bedouin traveler and his sons. The heroes traded Emperor Rahl's medallion for camels and horses, and rode to Alexandria, Egypt, where they sought shelter first at Enigma House, then at the Al-Moud family residence, where Cara discovered from the dates on the newspapers that they had returned to Earth three months after they left! Cara also noticed in the papers reports of thefts in Paris during those three months that were attributed to The Crimson Wraith!
Cara informed Juliet, and, leaving "Number Nine" in the care of Sir Heathcliffe and Dr. McGreger, the two women returned to Juliet's current neighborhood of residence in downtown Paris, where Juliet's baker mentioned in passing that her "sister" had been patronizing his bakery. Juliet and Cara visited Le Brittanique, Paris' local Empire Club, where they found Interpol Agent Janosh Todescu hot on the trail of his sworn target, "The Crimson Wraith."
Meanwhile, Max Galahad was also on his way to Le Brittanique with Sammy Palermo, in Sammy's new plane, The Bellerophon III, a gift from Herr Lipshultz to ensure Max's safe passage to the sides of Cara and Juliet. That evening, at a party at Le Brittanique to celebrate the christening of the S.S. Normandy and the S.S. Queen Mary, Juliet shared a dance with the dashing Prince Ganefkhamen, the younger son of King Fuad of Egypt, and the brother of the former traveling companion of Cara and Juliet, Prince Farouk. The dance ended, however, when Max Galahad cut in. During the dance, a ruckus outside drew the attention of Juliet, Max, and Prince Ganefkhamen and they saw a crimson-cloaked figure dashing away on a horse-drawn carriage. The three pursued, and managed to leap, cling, and swing onto the carriage (respectively), but the cloaked figure escaped when she entranced Max with an hypnotic spell, and sent him after Juliet and the Prince.
When Max snapped to, he, Juliet, and Prince Ganefkhamen agreed to stake out the rooftops later that night, and, much to the surprise of Juliet and Max, the Prince showed himself to be quite capable of keeping up with them! The trio tracked the red-cloaked Crimson Wraith imposter to a building near Paris' Latin Quarter, and, there, the imposter revealed herself to be a fourteen-year-old girl who called herself "Medusa," for the myriad tatoos of snakes on her shaved head, and who was sent by the monks of Divinidon to be Juliet's replacement as the new Crimson Wraith! She hypnotized Max again and fled from the building, and Juliet and Prince Ganefkhamen tracked her down to the catacombs beneath the Paris streets, where, they discovered, she had secreted most of her loot. A bloody battle ensued in the dark labyrinths beneath the Parisian streets, and Medusa paralyzed Prince Ganefkhamen in her hypnotic thrall. All seemed lost, until Juliet found a magic staff clutched in the bony fingers of one of the many human skeletons imbedded in the catacomb walls, and dueled Medusa into submission. Just before delivering the coup de grâce, however, Juliet, in her munificent mercy, spared Medusa's life in the face of the code of her monastic order, which required her to slay the girl. Medusa fled, warning that she would return for Juliet . . .
Episode Thirty-One: . . . Will Go Wrong
Waking up in a daze in his lavish accommodations at Le Brittanique, Paris' local chapter of the Empire Club, Max Galahad inquired of Cara where she, Juliet, Heathcliffe, Dr. McGreger, and "Number Nine" had been for the past three months, and why the United States Navy has been thwarting every effort of Max's to find out. Using her telepathic powers, Cara imparted upon Max mental images of their adventures in the Nexian Empire, beyond the fringes of Earth's galaxy. Cara's mental "picture show" ended up on the cutting room floor, however, when Medusa made a mental appearance in Max's mind as well. Locked in a psychic duel, Cara and Medusa battled for control over Max's mind until Cara – possibly with some help from Wilhelm Lipshultz, although one can never be sure – parried the diabolical damsel's mental thrusts, and rescued Max from her clutches.
Across the Mediterranean, in a wind-swept desert under the night sky, a lone silhouette diligently labored, stacking ray guns in a pile and lighting them on fire. Determined not to allow this dangerous technological terror fall into the wrong hands – a mistake he once made when he gave a high-tech automatic machine gun from Grey Industries to his crazed rival Reginald Hollingsly-Smythe – Sir Heathcliffe destroyed the weaponry brought back to Earth from the Nexian Galactic Empire and vowed to himself never to speak of his journey to the stars ever again.
Meanwhile, on a United States Navy Destroyer, Commander Jack Perceval, newly promoted Petty Officer Bucky Dougherty, and a crew of combat-ready marines docked at the port at Alexandria and scoured the Sahara desert at the rocket ship's crash site for some trace of the vessel or its unwitting crew. Having found only the Bedouin nomads to whom Sir Heathcliffe traded Emperor Rahl's pendant, Commander Perceval traded his automobile for the pendant; made his way to the home of the Egyptian Embassador, where he knew Sir Heathcliffe to be staying; and inquired of the Great White Hunter what he had discovered in the Nexian Empire. Refusing to speak of the journey, Sir Heathcliffe politely escorted Commander Perceval off the premises, whereupon Perceval's band of muscle-bound marines promptly placed Sir Heathcliffe under military arrest for sabotaging United States military property . . .
Episode Thirty-Two: Poppies for Young Men
Sixteen years ago, on November 10, 1918, Corporal Dr. Gregory McGreger, of the United States Mobile Army Surgical Hospital Unit, would have been killed by the Hun soldiers who marauded his field medical tent in Mons, Belgium had it not been for the bravery of young Private Ezekiel Baker, a nineteen-year old doughboy from Yellowcreek, North Carolina, who crawled to the medical unit after his legs were blown off by a landmine, and shot the Hun soldiers who were preparing to execute Dr. McGreger. Two weeks later, when Dr. McGreger was honorably discharged from the service after the Armistice was signed in Rethondes, which ended the Great War, Dr. McGreger honored the dying request of the young man who saved his life, by traveling to Yellowcreek to personally inform Private Baker's wife of his death. Dr. McGreger arrived in Yellowcreek to find that Private Baker's wife was the daughter of a Chinese railroad worker and was giving birth to Baker's son, Chandler. Dr. McGreger assisted in the delivery, but, much to his dismay, he could not save the young woman from dying from the breech birth. Her last request was that Dr. McGreger deliver the child to her grandfather, Wook Chang, in Hong Kong.
Arriving in Hong Kong weeks later, in late November of 1918, Dr. McGreger was led by a shady shill to a seedy hideout where the doctor presented the child to the baby's great-grandfather, organized crime Tong boss Wook Chang. When Wook Chang learned that his granddaughter had died in childbirth and that Dr. McGreger was the attending physician, he ordered Dr. McGreger's immediate execution. Wook Chang relented, however, at the advice of his trusted, young advisor, "Jimmy" Sung Hsi, who suggested, rather than killing Dr. McGreger, that the doctor be taught the ways of Asian healing and serve the Tong for the rest of his days -- an agreement to which Dr. McGreger readily agreed!
Sixteen years later, in 1934, Dr. McGreger received a telegram at Lord Merryweather's Kenya mansion calling the doctor to Hong Kong to save Jimmy Sung, now Wook Chang's successor as Tong leader, from a fatal illness. Upon arriving in Hong Kong with Danny "Killer" Mak, Max Galahad, and Claire "Number Nine" Witherspoon, the group discovered that the telegram was a fake, and that Dr. McGreger was lured to Hong Kong by none other than Chandler "Tou Fu" Baker, who had grown up to become the leader of his own band of gangsters, but who sought to kill Jimmy Sung for usurping his birthright as leader of Wook Chang's Tong. Despite relentless, disfiguring torture, Dr. McGreger refused to divulge Jimmy's location. Baker's gangsters set off for Jimmy's village, however, after Ma Lou Baht ("Monkey Number Eight"), whom Baker had later captured, gave in to the torture and revealed the location of the village. Ma Lou Baht thereafter committed suicide for his betrayal of Jimmy, thus elevating young Miss Witherspoon to the position of "Number Eight" in Jimmy's Tong hierarchy.
Upon arriving at the village, Danny, Max, and Guai Giok Chart ("Shadowleg Number Seven") fought off Baker's gangsters while Dr. McGreger faced down Tou Fu Baker himself. When Dr. McGreger witnessed Tou Fu slaughter innocent villagers and murder a helpless, seven-year-old village girl before his very eyes, the doctor was forced to set aside his personal code against killing and strict adherence to the Hippocratic Oath as he disarmed Tou Fu, using his mastery of ancient Chinese martial arts, and, calling on his mystical chi powers, crushed the gangster's head in his palm with a mighty death blow . . .
Episode Thirty-Three: Maximum Altitude
Sitting in his least favorite seat on the plane back from Hong Kong -- the passenger's seat -- Max mused about the day he first took flight . . . when he was nine years old . . .
On a sunny May afternoon in Brooklyn in 1910, a nine-year-old Max Galahad and his young peers, Sammy Palermo, Phalen McCabe, and pastry bloodhound Andrew "Porkpie" Schnickelgrüber made their way to the Brooklyn Bridge to watch world-renown stunt pilot Glenn Curtiss conclude his historic flight from Albany to New York City, in his famous airplane, the "June Bug." On the bridge, Max and his friends came upon the neighborhood bullies, Rusty and "Roundhouse" Barnes, picking on a young boy who called himself "Merlin," who was toting a red wagon behind him. Roundhouse goaded Max into climbing up onto -- and getting stuck on -- some high beams of the bridge by posing to Max an irresistible dare, and then prepared to flatten the frail Merlin with his freckled fist, until a brave collie named "Galahad" tackled one bully and sent the other heading for Forest Hills. The collie belonged to a lovely, little British girl from Sheffield who introduced herself to the boys as "Amy," and, as the crowd gathered on the bridge, the five children watched Curtiss soar into view overhead.
Curtiss' flight almost ended in tragedy, however, when one of his engines leaked fuel as it passed over the bridge, but the daring pilot successfully completed the flight by cutting his engines and coasting to a landing on Governor's Island, in the Hudson Bay. As the rest of the world cheered, Max overheard two shady thugs, one in a brown suit and one in a blue suit, voice their chagrin at the pilot's successful flight, and conspire to "do him in" during the autograph signing at Coney Island. Setting off on a tack to Coney Island to "rescue" Mr. Curtiss, Max and his friends caught the attention of the two suited ne'er-do-wells, who kidnaped Merlin and Amy lest the meddling tots thwart their evil plan. At Coney Island amusement park, Max, Sammy, Phalen and Porkpie scrambled to find the suited men and rescue their friends from their clutches.
Young Max finally spotted the brown-suited man, carrying a squirming, brown sack large enough for the eight-year-old Merlin, in one of the cars in the Ferris wheel. Max climbed the Ferris wheel and the brown-suited man, whom Max suddenly recognized as Vito Amarone, a charlatan daredevil who fraudulently forged a name for himself by staging phony stunts, climbed out onto the top of the Ferris wheel car to "deal with" the meddling tot. Just as Amarone pulled a pistol from his waistcoat, Max rocked the Ferris wheel car and sent the villain plummeting to the boardwalk below, and rescued Merlin from the sack. From his high vantage point, Max spotted Mr. Curtiss and his co-pilot boarding their stuntplane, and rushed to their aid to prevent the pilots from being the victim of Amarone's deadly sabotage. On his way, the blue-suited man interposed, and drew Max's attention to an air balloon about to be loosed from its riggings, in which Amy was bound by the wrists. Rushing to her aid, Max grabbed one of the rigging ropes as Amy freed herself by burning her own bindings in the balloon's flame. Amy pulled Max into the basket as the balloon drifted toward the East River. Seeing the tots in trouble, Mr. Curtiss turned the controls over to his co-pilot, and climbed out onto the wing of the plane where he leapt and grabbed the balloon's riggings as the plane passed underneath the basket. Mr. Curtiss, grateful for Max's help in attempting to thwart the villains' evil plans, took control of the drifting balloon, and took Max and Amy on an aerial ride over Brooklyn -- a perfect ending to a perfect day.
Later that afternoon, in response to young Max Galahad's inquiry into whether he would ever see her again after she returned to England with her parents, Amy handed Max a tag from her dog's collar. On one side, the tag read "Galahad the Brave." On the back, the tag read, "Amy Johnson," and bore her address in Sheffield, England.
As his mind wandered back to 1934, Max pulled chain bearing the old, tarnished dog tag out from beneath his shirt collar, and wondered whatever became of Miss Amy Johnson. Lowering his eyes to the newspaper sitting on the airplane seat next to him, Max saw the headline reading "Amy Johnson Mollison Breaks Own Four-Day World Record In Historic Flight From England To Capetown" . . . a record Max knew he would have to beat . . .
Episode Thirty-Four: Cliffe Hanger (or The Old Men and the Sea)
Upon receiving a telegram at Le Brittanique from Sir Heathcliffe Quentin Merryweather III requesting that Cara mail to his Kenya estate his lucky White Tiger's Tooth for his safari trip with Dr. McGreger, Cara visited Sir Heathcliffe's Paris manor where she found his box of trinkets. Among the items was a tiny brass button which seemed vaguely familiar to Cara. When she touched it, her psychic powers went wild, and she blacked out, her mind awakening to a place in time twenty-two years prior . . .
On a Liverpool dock in 1912, as the Ides of April approached, Sir Heathcliffe Quentin Merryweather II, one of the six founding members of the Empire Club, brought his wife Prudence and his 19-year-old son, young Master Heathcliffe III, into the shadow of the greatest construct ever built by the hand of man, the White Star Cruise Liner The Titanic. Handing his "home body" of a son his First Class ticket to visit his cousin in New York before setting off for university in the fall, Sir Heathcliffe the elder left the lad in the charge of a still black-haired Wilhelm Lipshultz and a dashing young British soldier by the name of Captain Henry Baskerville. The two men took the sophomoric rich boy to the tavern on the Second Class deck, where they determined to "make a man out of him." There they recognized the world renown safe-cracker Emil "The Roach" Rochard, being brought back to justice from Europe under the watchful eye of Boston Police Detective Lieutenant Reginald Stanton.
Accepting Capt. Baskerville's generous invitation, Rochard, and Lt. Stanton joined the men for dinner in First Class that evening, where they overheard Italian Baron Rudolfo Ozymandius and his nephews, Victorio and Benito, discussing "Family Business" in hushed tones.
Following the young Ozymandius brothers out of the dining area, Master Heathcliffe found them again below deck, brutalizing a French, Second Class passenger who beseeched Heathcliffe to protect "her." Heathcliffe pursued the men to the upper deck, where he reported the attackers to First Officer Murdoch, which Baron Rudolfo later countered with a wave of his highborn hand. Returning to the Frenchman's cabin days later to inquire of his recovery, Master Heathcliffe met the beautiful Madame Gerreaux, caring for her injured brother and her toddler daughter. Assured of Mons. Gerreaux's steady improvement, Master Heathcliffe returned to First Class.
Much to Lt. Stanton's chagrin, Rochard was gone, and the group set out to find him. During the search, the great vessel lurched, as though it had struck some vast object, and the men found the deck strewn with ice shards. They found Rochard, who had just escaped abduction by the young Italians, and tracked Victorio and Benito to the bowels of the ship, where they discovered that they were seeking to ensure that Mme. Gerreaux go down with the sinking ship. At the point of a pistol, Victorio divulged to Master Heathcliffe that they were trying to kill her because the Baron "is afraid she will kill him someday." Setting off to fetch Mme. Gerreaux and her daughter, Master Heathcliffe led them to the lifeboats where he handed Mme. Gerreaux his First Class ticket to enable the two to board the lifeboats. At that moment, Master Heathcliffe realized that it was not Mme. Gerreaux whom the villainous Ozymandius Family feared would destroy them someday, but rather her Egyptian daughter who, as the crew lowered their lifeboat into the water, handed Master Heathcliffe her porcelain doll, donning a frilly dress with tiny brass buttons.
As a returning lifeboat filled with survivors lifted Master Heathcliffe's barely breathing body from atop some flotsam hours after the titan ship disappeared into the inky depths of the North Sea, his eyes began to open, as did those of Cara, as her mind washed back to shore in 1934, and her eyes lowered to the tiny brass button in her hand, which once belonged to her porcelain doll . . .
Episode Thirty-Five: In the Nick of Time
Using her telepathic powers, Cara, accompanied by Juliet and Prince Ganefkhamen, tracked Sir Heathcliffe to Marseilles, France, where Commander Jack Perceval and his Navy Marines had imprisoned Sir Heathcliffe in the back of a truck. In the nearby bigtop of the Baton traveling gypsy circus, Russian animal tamer Nicholai Petrolovich witnessed the ringleader, Mr. Maisie, cause the dancing bear to rampage by shooting the beast in the hide. In the ensuing confusion of the panicking audience, Maisie's gypsy band began a thieving spree, which included the hijacking of Commander Perceval's truck by a small gypsy boy. Juliet extricated Sir Heathcliffe from the truck and the two rushed to the bigtop where they knew Cara was caught in the middle of the confusion. After the rampaging bear killed a spectator, Maisie fled on horseback and Mr. Petrolovich pursued him on his own steed with his trained wolves in tow.
Mounting yet another horse, Sir Heathcliffe scooped Cara into his saddle and fled the fracas. Commander Perceval leapt onto the standing board of the automobile commandeered by his Marines, and pursued the Great White Hunter. In a high speed chase through the Marseilles streets, Sir Heathcliffe leapt from his horse onto the truck stolen by the gypsy boy, leaving Cara to ride alone. Commander Perceval followed, leaping from the commandeered automobile. When both men leapt from the truck into the street, Commander Perceval insisted he was not going to let Sir Heathcliffe get away. In the nick of time, Cara rode out of the billowing dust on her steed, scooping Sir Heathcliffe back into the saddle as Commander Perceval learned that you can't hunt the hunter.
As Cara and Heathcliffe disappeared into the winding streets, Mr. Petrolovich used his uncanny animal ken to slow Maisie's horse. Maisie fled on foot as his arriving accomplice, Zolton the Strong Man, attempted to impede Mr. Petrolovich's pursuit. Petrolovich and Zolton engaged in fisticuffs, and, just as it seemed that Zolton was besting the Russian animal tamer, Petrolovich lifted the brawny bully above his head and, literally, threw him to the wolves, who nearly tore the villain apart. Petrolovich pursued Maisie into the brush where the villain set upon him with his pistol. In the nick of time, Mr. Petrolovich disarmed the gypsy ringleader with a well placed lash of his whip and, holding the rogue at bay with his pistol, turned him over to the gendarme, where Maisie vowed that the Baton gypsies would exact their revenge on Petrolovich. Knowing full well the wrath of the Rom, Cara returned on her horse and invited Petrolovich to flee the gypsies by joining the members of The Empire Club in Prince Ganefkhamen's private plane which waited at the nearby Marseille airfield . . .