The Night the Wizard Shook the Earth - Recap

It is a misty night and mournful foghorns sound from time to time. A constable walks his beat along the pier whistling a happy tune. Behind some crates lurk two men, an immense cloaked figure and a much smaller man in a suit and hat. The smaller man nods; the larger man moves very silently from someone his size, seizing and quickly overpowering the constable.

The smaller man is pleased with the giant’s work, although sorry the constable was cut off in the middle of the song, for it was a favorite song of the smaller man’s mother. He addresses the large man as Voltaire, asking him for a pea shooter. Voltaire produces it. The smaller man next asks for a jewel box. He marvels to Voltaire at the power of the pea sized explosive pellets contained within it. Six would destroy a city block and a bagful the entire city! He takes just one. From his own coat he produces a scope for the pea shooter. With this apparatus he cannot miss his target, the chemist Professor Neilsen.

On board the boat, James West is disguised as the professor. The secret service knows that someone wishes the professor dead, but not who. They must smoke out that would be assassin; Jim’s disguise will help him do that. Jim assigns Artie to check out the rail station while Jim collects the professor and his secretary Greta Lundquist and conducts them to a hotel. They’ll leave from there in the morning as scheduled.

Outside, Loveless waits impatiently for the professor to appear.

The real professor will act as the Butler to Jim’s fake professor. The luggage has been sent ashore. The trio leaves the boat, walking down the gangplank and into the smaller man’s crosshairs. Loveless is not fooled by Jim’s imposture! He knows who the real professor is, and when Greta carelessly drops her yard and goes to retrieve it, the man has his chance. The “butler” is left standing along. A puff of air and then a tremendous explosion shakes the pier. The real professor is dead, blown to atoms by the powerful pea.

Jim and Greta check into a room. Jim dismisses the smiling hostess with a salacious quip and a coin. Greta is distraught, and Jim doesn’t help when he points out that whoever killed the professor might want to remove her next! She’s been the professor’s secretary for five years. The assassin might think she knows too much. West tells her to lock the door and not to leave without telling him then leaves her to change while he does the same.

The giant Voltaire emerges from a closet behind the lady, creeping closer to her! He claps an enormous paw on her shoulder and... gives her flowers?!? It seems they’re acquainted! The card on the flowers reads “It is now West’s turn. Lead him.” Voltaire exits the room.

Greta knocks on the connecting door and tells Jim her stomach is still unsettled. She suggests a walk instead of a meal, so after they change, they walk. The short man is nearby in a carriage; he has a crossbow with him now.

Jim asks Greta what she’ll do now. She tells him she has nobody and nothing. He tells her she’s got him and that she should call it protective custody. She wants to know how protective that custody is. Before Jim can answer a small monkey drops onto his head! Greta disappears; the small man cocks his crossbow. Voltaire drives by. Jim sees the bow seconds before the man fires! Seizing the top of a barrel, Jim shields himself from the crossbow bolt. Artie pulls up seconds later and Jim boards his coach. Artie cautions him not to mess with the arm; the coach is specially tricked out. Artie promises to brief him later if he lives that long.

Professor Nielsen told Washington he’d discovered the world’s most powerful explosive. From the circumstances of the murder, it appears someone else has it and does not wish the secret known by others. And he’s particularly upset that Jim is nosing around. Jim tells Artie more than just his life is at stake. A man with that explosive, just one man, could bring a whole nation to its knees.

Greta Lundquist is packing to leave. She opens the door to find Jim outside it. He’s unsure why she’s leaving in such a hurry after he told her not to. After a bit of verbal fencing he tells her Professor Neilsen gave him the secret. He doesn’t want to share the papers with the government, but might share them with her friend. Otherwise he’ll shop them to the highest bidder. Greta tells him asking to see her friend is a foolish request, almost like a death wish. Her friend can be very angry, and might even be angry at her for bringing Jim to see him. Jim claims he can take care of both of them. They take Jim’s coach but use her driver, pausing for a passionate kiss first...

Greta brings Jim to a mansion. Voltaire answers the door and is upset to see Jim with Greta, but she calms the giant. It’s “the doctor’s regular hour” at the game room, but he should be about done. Greta takes Jim to the game room. There, the small man is sparring with three giants. His only advantage is his cane, but he seems able to hold his own, using the crook to trip the men and the staff to smash them when they fall.

His exercise done, the small man contemplates Jim West. Greta introduces him; he is Dr. Miguelito Loveless. Loveless tells Jim he has a loathing for unanswered questions, and that Jim’s presence gives him a brain full of the most fascinating questions. He ushers Jim and Greta to a music salon where a striking young woman named Antoinette plays the piano. There, he tells Jim that Greta is impulsive, but not stupid. And he wonders what wiles Jim worked on her to get her to bring him. Jim answers simply: he has Professor Neilsen’s secret. Loveless admires Jim’s courage in coming unarmed – suggesting that it doesn’t matter whether he’s armed or not. When Jim sees the guards walking posts just outside the windows, he understands why.

Loveless tells Jim that Neilsen was at best an adequate chemist. Neilsen took ten years to develop the powerful explosive he intended to give to the government; Loveless did it in three months. When he learned Neilsen intended selling the formula to Washington, working with them to perfect it for peaceful purposes, Loveless became irate. He can’t imagine power like that in the hands of generals, politicians. He considers such people vermin fit only for extermination.

Loveless pauses for a duet with the lovely Antoinette. After they finish, he tells Jim he likes making beautiful things. Someday perhaps he’ll show Jim some of them, if Jim lives that long. Jim claims to have Neilsen’s papers and says he’s not the idealist Neilsen was. Loveless infers that Jim has trusted the papers to a friend with orders to turn them over to the proper authorities should mischance befall him. Jim claims to be a pragmatist, spelled M...O...N...E...Y. If Loveless isn’t interested, West will peddle the papers elsewhere. Loveless is ashamed of Jim on learning he might even sell the secret overseas.

Loveless isn’t sure, but allows that Secret Service pay is poor, so perhaps Jim has decided to line his pockets a better way. He proposes a test of loyalty. He has a message for the governor, and Jim must deliver it. Jim’s stature as a secret service man might just impress on the governor the extreme importance of listening to Loveless’ message. The message concerns something Loveless has had in mind for weeks now. Pulling down a map, he shows Jim about half of California and claims it belonged to his forebears. The Spanish crown took it, and now California has it and won’t return it, a situation Loveless regards as piracy!

Loveless wants to do good. Not for himself, but for children. He wants to build a kingdom where children can grow to be strong and healthy in a world without pain. If the governor doesn’t grant him the land, then he will kill five thousand people tomorrow night. And five thousand more each week until the governor accedes. Jim’s job is to convince the governor that Loveless’ threat is serious.

Jim takes the threat to the governor, who laughs and inquires if Secret Service men normally drink on duty. Jim’s stony face sobers the governor’s attitude. Sending his lovely escorts away, he asks what Jim plans. Jim asks for twenty-five men to surround Loveless’ estate and prevent anyone from leaving to detonate the bomb. The governor writes the order and has his assistant Miss Piecemeal affix the state seal. Jim leaves, and Miss Piecemeal moves the window shade. She is a spy signaling associates outside!

A thug follows Jim almost to his coach; two more materialize from the surroundings. A cleverly concealed pistol in a bandage persuades Jim into his coach. Two men join him while the third mounts the driver’s seat. The coach rolls along as Jim inches his fingers towards Artie’s tricky armrest. One lever causes pinchers to seize the neck of the man across from Jim; another catapults his seatmate through the roof, while a third levers the driver onto the ground. Jim pulls a pistol from a concealed panel and climbs out, only to discover Voltaire and another man waiting for him.

Back at Loveless’ lab, the doctor tells Jim HE will be responsible for five thousand deaths, because he betrayed Loveless. He shows Jim a machine that can send and receive voices through the air, bread mold that is a potent medicine, a machine that will travel the roads under its own power and another that will fly. All built for a better world. Even the explosive will be used to blast channels to bring water to Loveless’ parched property. The doctor becomes so worked him he shatters the flask in his hand and does not react. He has lived with pain for so long he no longer feels it.

Whirling, he shoves a lever forward and drops Jim into a pit! Chains descend and winch a body shaped cage containing the immobilized agent back up to the lab. Loveless leaves Jim with a final taunt – by twelve o’clock five thousand people will be dead because of his betrayal of Loveless. Loveless plans to keep him alive until his suffering makes him beg for death.

Ten o’clock arrives and so does Greta with Jim’s supper. She feeds him. He seizes on her loneliness, playing it up to get her to retrieve a small pencil from his coat pocket. Even though she realizes she’s being manipulated, she retrieves the device and uses it to drill through the central rivet that secures the cage. By eleven o’clock she’s nearly through, and a good thing, for the guards enter on their rounds. Before sending her away, Jim asks her and learns that the explosive is in the clocktower near the governor’s mansion. He also learns that the stables are near the east wing of the house.

The guards arrive and begin to tease west, swinging the cage and spinning it. Suddenly Jim bursts the cage open and knocks the guards over. They recover and charge; the lever sends one of them into the pit, while the cage knocks the other down the stairs and out! Jim climbs a bench and goes out a window, then rides at top speed for town.

Arriving at the clock tower, Jim bursts through the door. Voltaire is there and he’s not happy to see Jim. Karate doesn’t phase the giant, who seizes Jim’s head and nearly crushes it before the agent can stagger away, nearly senseless. As Voltaire charges, Jim sidesteps and uses a series of moves that take advantage of his relative speed and agility, finally knocking the giant to his knees, and then out.

Racing upstairs, Jim sees Loveless on the opposite platform, near the bottles of explosive. Jim can’t shoot without setting off a blast. Loveless tells Jim he can slide out the window and down the wall, but Jim can shoot him if he gets that far away from the bottles. It seems to be a standoff – except that Loveless isn’t afraid to die. Jim tells him to remove the wires but he refuses. Jim then says they’ll wait together. Then Jim has an idea.

Grabbing the doctor’s walking stick, he hand walks along a beam and up a rafter. From that vantage he manages to jam the walking stick into the escapement, stopping the clock. Loveless is irritated, but seizes the still swaying pendulum. His extra weight is enough to restart the clock; it begins to chime. When the last chime sounds, the explosive will detonate. But Loveless has left the bottles unguarded, and Jim jumps down to them and pulls the wires with seconds to spare. Loveless bursts into tears!

Back on board the train, Jim kissing Greta when Artie arrives. Artie has escorted the strange little sensitive man into prison, clutching a strange tube. He says that given enough time, he can send pictures through the air and catch them in that tube! Artie regards the idea as preposterous. The trio sits down to eat, but Jim and Greta share another kiss; they’re not paying any attention to Artie. The train pulls away...

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