A quick reminder for those who may not have recently viewed the Manzeppi episodes (TNOT Eccentrics and TNOT Feathered Fury): the villainous Count Manzeppi was portrayed by Victor Buono, and the ventriloquist Villar by Richard Pryor.

Any references to another show from the 60's with another West in it — to wit, Adam West — are purely intentional.

Teaser

"You know what, Jim?"

"What's that, Artie?" The two Secret Service agents, James West and Artemus Gordon, were strolling along a street in San Francisco, dressed to the nines in their best evening clothes, tickets in their pockets as they headed for a night out, although not exactly a night on the town.

"I've been thinking about it…"

"Oh, that could be dangerous."

"Ha ha ha. No, listen, Jim. Once again we've received an invitation with free tickets included to attend a performance — or in this case, a lecture — from someone we don't know, a completely unsolicited invitation. You follow me?"

"Mm-hmm. And?"

"Well, it's just that for us to accept such invitations in the past hasn't always worked out so well."

"You're thinking of that magic show, aren't you? The one that turned out to be Col Vautrain's way of embroiling us in his time travel plot to change the outcome of the Civil War?"

"Yes, I am. And in a way, I'm also thinking of that time we began receiving newspapers printed a day in advance, and one of them led us to attend a performance of another magic act — with tragic results."

"So you think that the current set of tickets to hear this lecture by…" Jim pulled out his ticket and read from it by the light of a nearby streetlamp. "…Prof Elroy McWilliams of Yale University, noted authority on the Middle Ages — you think there's something fishy about this?"

"Well, yes. Fishy, or perhaps a bad practical joke! I mean, look at this! Could there possibly be a drier topic for a two-hour lecture than…" And now Artie consulted his own ticket. "…'The Superstitious Beliefs and Practices of Mediaeval Europe, With Practical Application to the Modern Western Hemisphere'? Great jumping balls of St Elmo's Fire, what a title!"

"Well, maybe we'll get lucky and a magic show will break out."

Artie rolled his eyes. "Oh, yeah! And with one of us to be inveigled into volunteering from the audience, only to be spirited away — poof! — in a puff of smoke!"

Jim gave a small smile. "Ah, but it might well be worth it as long as the magician has a pretty girl for his assistant, right, Artie?"

"Oh, well, that!" Artie replied. Then he nudged Jim. "Ah… what's going on up there?"

They were walking along the board sidewalk amidst a loose crowd of others out for a stroll in the evening. Ahead of them they saw one pair of pedestrians whose mode of travel was distinctly peculiar: the two men were weaving along, laughing and leaning on each other as if drunk, but the strangest thing about the pair was that they were walking backwards.

Everyone else on the sidewalk, in order to avoid the happy couple in their reverse promenade, saw fit to give the giddy duo a wide berth. Unfortunately, the person walking directly in front of the pair — which is to say, behind their backs — and with whom the drunks kept tipsily colliding, was a man wearing smoked-glass spectacles and sweeping his white cane back and forth before him.

"That's not good," murmured Artie as one of the drunks lurched into the blind man yet again, then laughed uproariously.

"No, it isn't," Jim agreed. Without actually running, he strode a bit faster to catch up with the drunks. "Look, friends," he said calmly, catching each by an arm, "you need to walk properly and stop bothering those around you."

"Bothering!" said the one, slipping his arm out of Jim's grasp. "D'… d'you hear that, son? This fellow says we're, we're bothering folks!"

"Also calls us friends, Pa," said the other, his bleary eyes narrowing. "But I ain't, ain't never seen the likes o' him before in all my days. An' if there's any, anyone bothering folks out here, it's him!" With that Drunk Junior hauled off to paste Jim one across the chops.

Jim ducked and whirled the sot around so that he was now holding the man's arm up behind his back. "Now, now, you don't want to do that," he said reasonably.

"Oh, he don't, does he?" said Drunk Senior, even as his self-identified son — who to Jim's eyes didn't look more than two years younger than his supposed father, if even that much — yelped out, "Pa!"

"Jim, watch out!" called Artie. For Senior had suddenly produced a gun.

And on that note the sidewalks emptied as all the other pedestrians found on the instant somewhere else to be, leaving behind only the two drunks along with Jim and Artie. Ah, and one other. For in the hurly-burly of the crowd scattering, someone had knocked into the blind fellow and sent him sprawling, his cane and glasses landing in the street. Artie hurried to help him up and out of the way.

"Let go o' my boy, you des, d'spicabul dastard!" slurred the drunk with the gun as he messily cocked the hammer. "Let 'im go!"

Jim eyed his unsteady opponent. Dressed in his best suit, Jim hadn't brought a gun with him, nor had Artie. Assessing what would bring the quarrel to its quickest and least dangerous solution, he released Junior who rushed instantly to his pa's side.

"All right," said Jim, holding his hands out to his side, "I've done as you asked."

"Plug 'im, Pa! Plug 'im!" crowed Junior.

Things moved swiftly from that point. Artie, helping up the blind man, started at the words "Plug 'im!" and dropped the man's cane. Jim, facing the cocked but badly leveled gun, pointed out, "I'm unarmed and there's a crowd of witnesses. You don't want a charge of murder on your head. You don't want to hang." And the blind man, waving his arms frantically, called out, "Where's my cane? Where's my…?"

"It's right here," said Artie. He bent to pick it up just as Senior, hearing the voices behind him, spun about and pulled the trigger.

BLAM!

Jim tackled the crazy sot and wrested the gun from him, then in lieu of the handcuffs which he didn't have in his best evening clothes, Jim belted the guy with an right hook, knocking him out. He slipped the gun into his waistband as he scrambled to his feet and rushed toward his partner.

"Artie?"

Artemus was on his knees by the side of the blind man, shaking his head in shock. "I was trying to retrieve his cane for him when that idiot fired his gun, and over this fellow went. But look at him! Blood everywhere, but I can't find the wound. And his pulse is strong, at least, but he seems to be out cold. I just don't understa…"

"Reach for the sky!" came another voice, followed by the ka-click of a hammer being cocked. Jim and Artie looked over to see that Junior was now pointing a gun of his own at them. "You hurt my pa!" he hollered. "And you're gonna pay!"

The two agents shared an incredulous glance, then Jim stood up, keeping his hands in plain sight, and stepped away from Artie and the fallen blind man. "Look," Jim said to the young fool with the gun, "you and your pa are in enough trouble as it is. You see that man on the ground? Your pa just shot him. That's enough blood that's been shed tonight. Don't add to it."

Sniveling, the young fellow wiped his unencumbered hand across his face. "Shut up! You're going on about how Pa shot him, but you killed Pa! Look at him! He's dead!"

Jim shook his head, still keeping his hands spread as he took a quiet step forward. "No. No, I didn't. He's all right. Knocked out, and probably in for a whopper of a hangover in the morning, but he's not dead."

"Not dead!" the young fellow glanced at his comatose companion, then lifted the gun to point it more directly at Jim. "You're lying! He ain't moving!"

"Of course not!" came Artie's voice. "That's part and parcel of being knocked out. But look at his chest. He's breathing there. Surely you're not so pickled that you can't see his chest rise and fall!"

"Huh?" Again Junior glanced at Senior. And this time, Jim leapt.

It was all over but the shouting in just moments. Again Jim wrested a gun from a drunkard, again he pasted the fellow to keep him from causing any more trouble, again he tucked the confiscated gun into his waistband.

And that's when the shouting began. For with whistles blaring, a squad of policemen now came charging down the street. Brandishing their truncheons, they hollered, "Get away from him!" and hauled Artie to his feet. Over the agent's protests that he had been tending to the wounded blind man, the lead policeman ordered his men to slap manacles onto Artie's wrists, then turned to Jim and demanded, "And you! Drop your weapons, mister! You're under arrest!"