An Englishman in Judge Mental’s Court

The voice of adventurer John Mantle, “Judge Mental” to the world: The phone woke me at 3 am. I was still half asleep when a canned voice came on. “This is a land link provided by Southern Ohio Citizens’ Band Network Operators.” Click. Then after a static-y, hissy pause, I heard the sporadic signal of a very familiar English voice. “Allo, Judge? You there?” I was baffled. “Hm, Andrew? Um, it’s 3 here. What’s up?”

The voice that came back was accompanied by the noises of roaring traffic, a huge motor, and the wind roar of illegally fast driving. “O, so very good to have you on the phone. I seem to be at the wheel of a Kennethworth, or a Kennelworth, some sort of large eighteen-wheeled lorry. I’m heading your way on a national motorway, the trailer is heavily loaded, and I have no brakes.” “Do you know what the cargo is?” He replied thoughtfully. “Plutonium, I believe.”

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[Dramatic THEME MUSIC] Announcer: You’re listening to Ricochet Silent Radio’s Tales From the PIT! Early this summer, Ricochet Silent Radio brought the Ricochet PIT gang to England with Judge 6: No Fear of Flying. Now, in the holiday spirit, we present a new one-part Andrew Moulton-Judge Mental adventure in America!

Tonight’s episode, An Englishman in Judge Mental’s Court, is brought to you by the Rhody-Balzer Booze Fund, rated as the world’s most honest non-profit. Every penny you give them goes directly to their booze fund, and nowhere else! And now, tonight’s show. (MUSIC transition)

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Judge Mental: “How did I end up in this jam? It all started before Christmas, when I was offered a lucrative contract to do a public appearance in London. I’d had a great time in England over the summer, so I accepted. That’s usually my first mistake.”

(Voice of BBC newsreader as images appear on British TV) “This rather cool-looking nuclear bomber is the UK’s Victor, a 50s-60s era craft that held a few strategic jobs even into the 80s. Its restoration to flying status was funded by a reluctant heir and kind friend of living history, Andrew Moulton. The American philanthropist Gregory Arahant has sponsored a much-publicized transatlantic goodwill flight making refueling stops enroute to a two-year “residency” at the Museum of the United States Air Force, near Dayton, Ohio.”

A small group of dedicated young British engineers says goodbye to Victor One Bravo at the apron, on the threshold of departure. Crossing the Atlantic is never truly routine. Andrew Moulton has boarded the pioneering warplane, and now the pilot, celebrity American flyer Judge Mental.” The news clip ends.

I’m no fool. I took the on-camera bows for the publicity boys but left the actual piloting to men who’d been trained on the type, which I am not. The cockpit crew took it in good stride. I don’t believe that anyone has ever turned down a big Arahant check with lots of zeroes. Back in the huge bomber’s jury-rigged passenger cabin, I found Andrew in the galley, pouring himself a cup of tea. We sat at window seats, contemplating the North Atlantic passing underneath our wings at ten miles a minute.

Andrew held the itinerary. “First stop, Boston,” he said. “We’ll overnight there while the plane is refueled and serviced. We don’t have the range to make it to the Midwest in one hop.”

I smiled ruefully. “Beantown, eh? I’ve been there a few times. It’s not like New York; it’s got a distinctive flavor all its own. Overnight, you say?”

“The British Cultural Society has sponsored an evening at the theater…it will, no doubt, be a splendid occasion,” he said proudly.

We landed at Boston’s Logan. The usual TV and photographers swarmed the boarding staircase, rushing up to the cabin. “Mr. Mantle, sir, could you look this way?” Flash, flash “Judge, Judge!” flash, flash, flash “Right this way, sir.” flash, flash, flash. We made our way down the stairs, climbed in a limo, closed the doors gratefully and left.

Half an hour later, we stepped out in front of Boston’s most ornate downtown theater. Crowds were already filing in. Then, with disbelief, we read the big billboard.

“Premiere Tonight! An exciting new musical comedy written by self-proclaimed political prisoner of the UK, Sir Astor Lennox Tilden, MICHAELMAS FOR CROMWELL.”

Moulton gasped. “Tilden! The arch-criminal! I can’t believe it! How did he pull this off, sitting in jail?”

My jaw hit the floor. “Cromwell? Oliver Cromwell? In Boston?? We’ll be lucky to get out of here in one piece.” We hastily withdrew to a nearby pub. There were plenty to choose from.

“He knew we would be here,” Andrew said. “He wants revenge. He’ll stop at nothing.”

I pulled out my constant traveling companion, at least when I’m not flying commercial. I opened a ribbed Halliburton case. Inside was a selection of handguns. Grimly, I asked Andrew, “You know how to use one of these?”

Moulton pulled a tossable orange out of his coat pocket. “You know how to use one of these?” But the light in his eyes faded as he considered the gravity of the situation. As he slumped back in his seat, saying nothing, I was reassuring, but getting a little concerned. “Andrew!”

Andrew (murmuring into his teacup) “No way out. No way out. No way out…”

“Andrew, there are a lot of musicals on this street…and they’re not all called 'Michaelmas for Cromwell!'”

But just then, a happy mob of theatergoers rushed in for an intermission drink. One of them called out, “And who’d ever think I’d love a musical called 'Michaelmas for Cromwell!?'” His friends cheered as Judge and Andrew stood agape.

“This is only one opinion, Andrew. Let’s see what the majority thinks.”

“The majority!” he repeated hopefully. “The majority!” We crossed the alley to the theater.

We snuck into the back, stunned as the crowd roared with inexplicable laughter. Onstage, the men of the chorus were costumed as Puritans, cavaliers, and clergy. A-historically, they were all mixed together.

An actor playing Oliver Cromwell is commanding the inner council of his New Model Army, waving a pointer at a map of France and the Channel. “One and one is two, two and two is four, the Huguenots seemed ready, but they’re losin’ the war…” Sir Francis Drake rushes into the room. “Ollie, baby!”

“Frankie, mah man! What have you done for me lately, bro?”

“Well, O-man, you know that big scary Papist fleet? Weeeee…beat ’em!” They chuckle and do high fives. The theater roars with laughter.

The British historians in the front row are stupefied into utter silence.

I nudged Andrew. “Come on, let’s get out of here before they change their minds!”

So ‘Len’ Tilden was involved somehow, the malevolent scion of the ancestral rivals of the benevolent Moulton family. But how? The only time I met Tilden, he tried to kill me. Suddenly, I didn’t want to go to the fancy hotel. We took a cab back to Logan International. But when we reached the tarmac, there were men in strange uniforms watching the plane.

“Come on,” I said, “I’ve got an idea.” We entered the passenger terminal and brushed past the holiday garland and mechanical Santas. The info board listed a flight to Columbus, Ohio, my nearest city, in an hour. The UK crew could take care of the bat-winged old Victor and get it to Dayton. But we were escaping—we didn’t know what. I motioned Andrew over. He was on the phone. “He says he’s with the British embassy,” he told me. I bought the air tickets. But when I walked back, he was gone. Puzzled, I waited. When he didn’t show up, I boarded my flight home.

Christmas was quiet. It was a great New Year’s Eve. I was a little hungover on New Year’s Day. I played a few tunes on my living room jukebox, switched off the Christmas lights for the last time this season, and headed to bed. Then 2026 really began with Andrew Moulton’s 3 am phone call on January 2. Fifteen minutes later, I had a call from the Ohio State Highway Patrol. I braced for the worst.

“Mr. Mantle, we’ve rescued your friend. He was chained to the steering wheel of a truck, and the controls had been tampered with. We’re holding him for questioning. He’d like you to come see him at OSHP Columbus.”

I live only an hour away from Columbus, so I sighed, climbed into the Chrysler 300 and headed out on the interstate to rescue my dignified, eccentric British pal.

At OSHP’s interview room. Andrew was relaxed and rueful. “I was tricked. Someone claiming to be with the Embassy said that Procter & Gamble needed my signature on documents regarding the sale of IJPC Ltd. food products to P&G. But the minute I stepped off the plane in Cincinnati, I found myself tangled in a web. They put something in my tea. I woke up driving. Worse, as a British driver I was on the wrong side of the dual carriageway.”

He paused, then said even more quietly, “I’ve never lied to you, Judge, but I couldn’t tell you everything. Security, you understand. I’ve been released here. We need to go to a State Department office downtown.” I was astonished. We drove to the Federal Building in silence.

The discreetly elegant room was quiet–you’d expect that for a secret disclosure–but beyond the mahogany, the whole room was contained within a metal Faraday cage, squelching radio transmissions.

“Alright, then, Judge. Actually, we weren’t heading to Dayton for the Air Force Museum. That was a pretext. Dayton, Ohio is the original home of the National Cash Register. You’ve heard of them?”

I had. “It was, I believe, a former giant that once competed head-to-head with IBM.”

“Right you are. I discovered that in the Fifties, our UK Atomic Weapons Establishment, AWE, learned from your chaps at the AEC that nuclear tests could be computer-simulated so well that using precious plutonium wasn’t as needed.”

“Put our friend Hank Rhody out of business?”

“Not at all. We’ll all still need him for a radical push to nuclearize the world’s electrical grid. We British needed to have the capability of mathematically modeling a thermonuclear explosion. It has to do with tracing a single line of the transformation of fission, beginning from its start to the release of heat and energy of detonation, extending the pattern into a circle and then into an expanding sphere.”

My somewhat unworldly friend was considerably more tuned in to non-botanical science than I realized.

He continued, “The computer men were a new brew, a very mixed lot of boffins. The problem was solved by LEO, the Lyons Electronic Office, a business machine that was competitive with you Americans throughout the Fifties. Lyons wasn’t a technology company; J. Lyons Tea Shops were a nationwide British institution, owned by a Jewish family. Rather like your Starbucks, but two generations earlier. Anyway, due to an oversight, the LEO device still stores atomic codes. It was acquired by NCR in a merger, and we needed it back to protect the secrets.”

The door opened. A man entered and whispered something to Andrew. “Well, it’s over, LEO is packed up and headed back to Blighty. My job is done. I’ll be taking the midnight flight out of Columbus to London. But there’s just one thing. I’ve always wanted to see Macy’s at its best.” “I can do better than that, Andrew.”

In my opinion, Von Maur’s is a local treasure, the finest store in the city. Beautiful window displays beckoned to the shopping crowds. My English friend was delighted by a children’s choir.

“Good King Wenceslas looked out,
On the feast of Stephen,
When the snow lay round about.
Deep and crisp and even.”

I dropped Andrew at the airport. We made vague plans to meet up next year. He gathered the things he’d bought for his friends back home. We shook hands.

“Be well and drive safely, Judge! And, of course, Happy New Year.”

The drive home took an hour. It was now 1 am. Wearily I opened the front door to my house, stepped in and turned on the lights. Sitting there silently, holding a gun, was the last person I expected, my long-ago crazy girlfriend, Phoebe Latimer, the former Lady Tilden. Yes, the ex-wife of that Tilden. In spandex, you’d recognize her as progressive avenger Psycho Logical.

“Close the door and sit down.” I did. I seldom argue with a loaded .44.

“Whatcha doing here, Feeb? The Brits sprung you? Rather foolish on their part.”

“It has to do with an ELF.”

“You’re joking.” But her expression was serious. Deadly serious.

“That whole thing that Moulton believes about the old English computer? It’s a cover story, a pretense, a trick. Here’s the real plot. In Michigan, the US operated an Extremely Low Frequency antenna array between 1981 and 2004. It signaled to submarines. Radio doesn’t penetrate water.”

(The actress playing Phoebe suddenly broke character. “How am I supposed to say all this technical jargon? Who does McVey think I am, Hank Rhody?” “Cut, cut. We’ll pick it up from the next line.”)

She continues, “Well, the ELF is back. It’s part of a new AUKUS pact involving the Australian, UK, and American submarine forces. A secret treaty protocol extends AUKUS to outer space. This escalation must be exposed and stopped! You have no right to interfere.”

“I’m a big boy. I know what I’m doing. I don’t baby planes. And I don’t baby dames.”

She turned into the light, irresistible and sultry. Not long ago this would have been the moment I’d tried not to think about. “Really, Judge?” she cooed, “Can’t you understand what I want and what I’m ready to give?”

When she raised her lips towards mine, she momentarily lowered the gun and I grabbed it from her.

“Skip it, sister.” I said it; I didn’t mean it; she probably knew I didn’t mean it. But I said it, and a man’s decision must mean something.

Soon she was back as His Majesty’s guest at Wormwood Scrubs prison. I’m not a heartless guy. At the end of the year I sent her a Christmas card.

“Peace on Earth, goodwill to all men.”

[MUSIC climax] Announcer: We hope you enjoyed our holiday RSR show, An Englishman in Judge Mental’s Court. Tonight’s program was co-sponsored by Huawei. Huawei, We’re the Company that Listens™.

On its tenth anniversary, Ricochet Silent Radio wishes you a Merry Christmas, a Happy Hanukkah, and a Happy New Year! Your announcer was Johnny Olsen. Remember, three chimes mean good times on Ricochet.

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