Get Smart 9 - Max Smart and the Ghastly Ghost Affair (17 page)

They all drew back, leaving the pistol in the middle of the aisle.

“Max, what are we doing?” 99 said. “
We’re
not afraid of germs!”

By then, however, it was too late. The KAOS assassins had all drawn their own guns. And all of the guns were pointed at Max and 99.

“I suppose you’re wondering where that jerk came from,” Arbuthnot said to Max and 99. “That was my engineer.”

“He certainly is,” Max replied grumpily.

“He was practicing,” Arbuthnot went on. “Fortunately—for us—he always starts off with a jerk.”

“He certainly is,” Max said again.

Arbuthnot addressed one of the other KAOS assassins. “I’ll have a disinfected gun,” he said.

The assassin handed him a pistol.

“And now,” Arbuthnot said, speaking to all the assassins, “I will show you the one assassination method that I did not mention during the seminar. Normally, I wouldn’t be caught dead using it. It’s too crude . . . too . . . too . . . uhhhhh! But, it does have two advantages—it’s simple and it’s quick.”

“He’s talking about just walking up to the victim and shooting him between the eyes,” Max explained to the KAOS assassins. “He’s right—it’s crude. But, if done well, it can be fascinating to watch.” He turned to Arbuthnot. “You do it well, I suppose.”

“Superbly.”

“Then, watch this very carefully,” Max said to the other assassins. “It will be worth seeing.”

“Max! You sound as if you’re looking forward to it!” 99 said.

“I always enjoy watching an expert at work.”

Arbuthnot raised the pistol and pointed it at Max, sighting straight between the eyes. “On the count of three,” he said. “One . . . two . . .—”

There was a distant rambling sound.

Arbuthnot frowned, and, lowering the pistol, said, “What was that?”

“Thunder, I think,” Max said. “Gee, I hope it doesn’t rain.”

“No . . . it wasn’t thunder,” Arbuthnot said. He went to the door of the lounge car and opened it and looked out—then screamed. “Oh, no!”

The rumbling became a thundering. Then the burly girls who had been on the train earlier came stomping into the car. They set upon the KAOS agents, attacking them with fury and abandon.

Max grabbed 99 by the hand and they dived behind a lounge chair. From there, they watched as the lady wrestlers mauled the assassins. KAOS agents were everywhere, flying through the air, skidding up the aisle on their noses, necks, ears and other parts. KAOS agents crashed through windows and were hurled through doorways. KAOS agents were kicked, bitten, pinched, punched, and pulled and pummeled.

“Fortunately for us, they’re wrestlers first and ladies last,” Max said to 99.

“Max, where did they come from? Why are they so outraged?”

“I think we’ll soon find out, 99. They seem to be running out of KAOS assassins to kick, bite, pinch, punch, pull and pummel.”

The lounge car suddenly became quiet. KAOS assassins were sprawled everywhere, unconscious.

Max and 99 raised up from behind the lounge chair.

Several burly girls started after them.

“Stop!” the leader of the wrestlers commanded. “We’re in enough trouble as it is, ladies,” she said, looking suddenly worried.

“Trouble?” Max said.

“This is always happening,” the lady wrestler replied. “We get a little peeved at somebody, and we break all their arms and legs. And, it seems, in a riled up world like the world we live in today, nobody’s got any sense of humor any more. They get mad at us for breaking their arms and legs and sue us for damages and threaten to put us in jail and all like that there.”

“I think I have some rather pleasant news for you,” Max said. “You may not get many laughs out of this mayhem you committed today, but, on the other hand, you may get a medal.”

Max then explained that he and 99 were Control agents and that the men the ladies had mauled were KAOS assassins. The lady wrestlers were delighted by the news. They wanted to kick the assassins a few more times for good measure while they were unconscious. But Max felt that would be adding injury to injury, and he restrained them.

“What baffles me,” Max said, “is why you weren’t all killed when you were dropped off the train through that false door in the dining car.”

“Why, it was just a normal fall for us,” the leader of the lady wrestlers replied. “In our profession, we’re used to falls.”

“Yes . . . I can see that,” Max nodded. “How did you find us, though, here in this ghost town?”

“No problem,” the lady wrestler replied. “It’s not hard to follow a train, you know. It leaves tracks.”

“I don’t know why I didn’t think of that,” Max nodded. “Well,” he said, “that seems to wrap up the case fairly neatly. I’ll just trot up to the engine and overpower the engineer, then I’ll drive the train back to Washington, and we’ll deliver all these KAOS assassins to the proper authorities.”

“Let us!” the leader of the lady wrestlers begged.

“Let you what?”

“Overpower the engineer,” she replied. “If we’re not going to get sued for this, we can really let go. We kind of need the relaxation. We’ve been jogging for days to catch up with this train.”

“Well . . .”

“And we’ll drive the train back to Washington, too,” the leader of the burly girls said. “You probably want a rest yourself.”

“As a matter of fact—”

“Come on, Max, before they change their minds,” 99 said. She took him by the hand and drew him out of the lounge car and along the aisle toward their compartment. “We’ve worked hard,” she said. “We deserve a few hours off.”

“I suppose you’re right, 99.”

They reached the compartment and entered. Then sat down in the seats, facing each other. A few moments later, the sound of screaming came from the front of the train.

“I think we’re changing engineers,” Max commented.

99 nodded. “I feel so secure with those lady wrestlers in charge,” she said.

“Yes,” Max began, “I think from here on out, 99, it will be smooth—”

There was a sound like a puff of air. Then Max suddenly found a mule in his lap.

“99!” he shouted, shoving Madame DuBarry. “This animal got away from its keeper.”

“No, he didn’t!” the voice of the old prospector replied. “Here I am, right over here.”

“He’s on my lap, Max!” 99 reported.

“If you’re going to ride in this compartment, you’ll have to sit in the seats!” Max insisted. “What are you doing here, anyway?”

The old prospector and Madame DuBarry moved from Max’s and 99’s laps. The prospector sat alongside 99. The mule lay down on the floor between the seats. At the same moment, the train started moving.

“All ashore who’s going ashore!” Max said. “It was very nice of you to come to the train to see us off, but you better leave now. This train is on its way to Washington.”

“Yup!” the old prospector said. “Us, too. Me and Madame DuBarry.”

“Oh, no!” Max said glumly.

“Yup!” the old prospector said again. “After all these centuries—”

“Decades,” 99 corrected.

“No, it hasn’t been that long,” the old prospector said. “It’s seemed like it, though, sometimes. Anyway, as I was saying, after all these centuries of living the lonely life, searching for that long lost gold, we decided to kick up our heels and do a little livin’. So, we’re moving to the city.”

“There’ll be a lot of problems of adjustment,” Max said, trying to discourage them.

“We figure we’ll just stick by you and do what you do,” the old prospector said. “ ’Till we get the hang of it, that is.”

“And where will you stay?” Max said. “There aren’t many landladies in Washington who will rent to a ghost and a mule. Now, if you had an elephant with you— But a mule, these days, uh-huh.”

“That won’t be no problem,” the old prospector replied. “We figure we’ll just bunk with you. You got a place, haven’t you?”

“Well, yes, but—”

“Tit for tat,” the old prospector said. “We shared our long lost mine with you, so we figure you’ll be just as happy as all get-out to share your home with us. ’Cause you’re folks.”

“Well, yes, I guess we are, but—”

“Oh, Max!” 99 said. “It’s not the best way to start married life, sharing an apartment with an old prospector and a mule, both ghosts.”

“Look on the bright side, 99. It could be worse.”

“How, Max?”

“It could be a relative.”

99 tried hard not to look the way she felt.

W
ILLIAM
J
OHNSTON
(1924-2010), author of many movie and TV tie-in novels was born January 11th, 1924 and passed away October 15th, 2010.

On January 4th, 2010, The International Association of Media Tie-in Writers
www://iamtw.org
announced it was bestowing The
Faust
, its Grand Master Award for excellence, to author William Johnston, the writer of over a hundred tie-in novels and the most prolific practitioner of the craft.

(From the January/February 2010 Newsletter - IAMTW)
The Newsletter of the International Association
of Media Tie-in Writers

IAMTW’s GRAND MASTER SCRIBE AWARD,
THE
FAUST,
GOES TO THE GENRE’S MOST
PROLIFIC PRACTITIONER

By David Spencer

The inarguable preeminent author of tie-ins, with more published tie-in titles to his credit (well more than 100) than any writer in the game before or since—the legendary and until now somewhat elusive William Johnston—will be honored by the IAMTW with a Faust Award, the honor bestowed upon Grand Masters. He is currently residing in San Jose, California, and will turn 86 on January 11th, 2010—a fitting number, as it is his series of novels based on the spy sitcom
Get Smart,
about Secret Agent 86 for CONTROL, which turned his byline into a virtual tie-in “brand” and thereafter defined the nature of his tie-in (and the largest proportion of his literary) career as the industry’s comedy specialist.

Johnston’s style is paradoxically recognizable, despite seeming matter of fact and transparent, his narration employing little reliance on metaphor, idiosyncratic locution or other literary manipulation. But the ostensible simplicity is utterly deceptive: for in the “serious” books, depth of characterization sneaks up on the reader, dialogue and internalization unusually nuanced, layered and when appropriate even subtle, with a psychological perception very ahead of its time.

Johnston’s humorous novels are a textbook lesson on comic timing in prose, possibly because he had some experience as an actor (a signature of his books is writing phone conversations as play-format dialogue exchanges, woodshedding redundant “he saids” and “she saids”).

He knew the wisdom and the technique of “simply” staying out of the way, and letting the tale be carried by action, dialogue, and an impeccable sense of cadence and rhythm. Plus his own unique brand of whimsy and wordplay.

Johnston’s career started in 1960 with the release of a hardcover comic murder mystery,
The Marriage Cage
(Lyle Stuart, reissued in paperback by Dell), which earned him a Best First Novel Edgar Award nomination from the Mystery Writers of America. Curiously, this did not lead immediately to more mystery novels (though he would write mystery tie-ins later in his career), but rather to a number of early 60s pulp titles for Monarch Books, which ranged from light comedy
(The Power of Positive Loving)
to medical romance (the
Doctor Starr
trilogy) to soft core racy
(Save Her for Loving, Teen Age Tramp, Girls on the Wing
).

The medical novels in particular either dovetailed with, or led to, his first tie-in commissions, which were for original novels based on medical dramas, such as
The Nurses
(Bantam),
Doctor Kildare
(Lancer and Whitman) and
Ben Casey.
These books, published between 1962 and 1964, were so successful that a cover variant on
The Nurses
includes a “2nd Big Printing” starburst; and his next (and it would seem last) original medical romance,
Two Loves Has Nurse Powell
(Neva Paperbacks) trumpets “From the author of
Ben Casey. ”

It’s likely that among these books, the
Doctor Kildare
title written for Whitman’s young audience line was a significant pivot point, because in 1965, Tempo Books (the Young Audience paperback imprint of Grosset & Dunlop) commissioned Johnston to write
Get Smart,
an original novel based on the spy satire sitcom starring Don Adams, Barbara Feldon, and Edward Platt, created by Mel Brooks and Buck Henry. The first
Get Smart
book proved so staggeringly popular, going through multiple printings, that follow ups were immediately commissioned, leading to what would become a series of nine books over the course of the show’s five-season history.

That doesn’t sound like much in new millennium terms, but in the 60s it amounted to a single-author original tie-in grand slam, outdistanced only by the
Dark Shadows
series authored by Dan (as “Marilyn”) Ross. Indeed, it was the third place holder for TV tie-in series originals in general, with only the 23-book
Man from U.N.C.L.E.
series—by multiple authors—between it and
Dark Shadows.
(James Blish’s 12 book
Star Trek
series for Bantam, which continued into the 70s, did not feature original tales, but was rather comprised exclusively of short stories adapting the show’s teleplays.)