Batman Versus Three Villains of Doom Read online

  Batman clapped both hands to his eyes—a fraction of a second too late. He could not see anything at all.

  He staggered and reeled across the room.

  Robin reacted a split second later than Batman and was powerless to arrest his own charging motion. Unable to see, the Boy Wonder crashed into the far wall at full speed and dropped like a stone to the floor.

  The Penguin chortled. “Oh, dear, I’m so glad I remembered to bring this umbrella. It’s terribly useful whenever there’s a spell of…er…violent weather!”

  Batman moved blindly forward, trying to locate the Penguin by the sound of his voice. But his flailing arms grasped only empty air.

  “You’re quite helpless, Batman,” the Penguin said exultantly. “I have you at my mercy.”

  “There’s one way I can stop him,” thought Batman. “It’s a long shot, but I have to take it.”

  With a motion almost too quick to follow, Batman made a gigantic sideways leap. His hand shot toward the light switch. The overhead chandelier in the salon blinked out.

  The salon plunged into darkness!

  “What a pother!” cried the Penguin, with an alarm he could not conceal.

  “Now we’re even,” Batman said. “I can’t see—but you’re in the dark.”

  “I have no doubt,” replied the Penguin, “that your infernal photographic mind, which enabled you to recall the exact location of the light switch, now gives you something of an advantage. I really underestimate you at times, Batman.”

  Batman did not answer. During the Penguin’s speech, he had made a silent approach almost to within sound of the roly-poly man’s voice.

  Now he leaped forward as the Penguin completed the sentence.

  And crashed ignominiously to the floor!

  Where the Penguin should have been standing there was nothing.

  Well, not quite nothing. There was the Penguin’s trademark—a small furled umbrella. From the handle of the umbrella, as from a miniature loudspeaker, emerged the taunting tone of Batman’s criminal foe.

  “Farewell, dear Batman. I must say that there are also times when you underestimate me!”

  There was the sound of running feet on the companionway, and Batman without hesitation plunged toward it.

  The sound-trail led him out on deck.

  “Still following me, Batman?” asked the Penguin. “I admire your persistence. As you can tell from the sound of my voice I am quite beyond your reach.”

  The Penguin’s voice was fading even as Batman listened to the parting sally; the words seemed to rise straight up into the air.

  Batman halted, stymied, on deck.

  High overhead, clinging with superb nonchalance to the handle of an umbrella that had a rotary spinning propeller and small jets for propulsion, the Penguin soared away from the Ocean Venture.

  Batman’s vision began to return. He could see bulky shapes of dark and light, then as his blinded retina regained its ability to focus he made out his surroundings in detail.

  He crossed the salon to where Robin was sitting up groggily, holding his head.

  “Holy bifocals,” Robin said. “I feel as though someone clouted me with a meat cleaver.”

  “You clouted yourself,” Batman said. “You kept on going full speed into that wall. You’re lucky you didn’t fracture your skull.”

  “I still can’t see properly,” Robin said.

  “That isn’t only from the knock on the head you took. The Penguin pulled a new trick on us. A magnesium flare umbrella.”

  Robin looked about the empty salon wonderingly. “Where are the others?”

  “Gone. The Joker—the Catwoman—everybody had time to escape while we were helpless.”

  “There’s one thing I can’t understand, Batman.”

  “What’s that?”

  “If they had time to get away, they also had time to finish us off. Why didn’t they?”

  “I’ve been wondering the same thing myself, Robin. Of course, the Joker and the Catwoman would have considered it beneath their dignity to accept so easy a conquest. But the other criminals—they should have been glad to rid themselves of us once and for all. Unless…”

  “Unless what, Batman?”

  “Unless they’re practically certain that we’ll be killed anyway.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Batman did not reply directly. He said, “The Ocean Venture is registered in the name of Mr. and Mrs. Robert Yarosh. They’re real society people—not just cover-ups for underworld figures. But I haven’t seen a sign of them—or of the yacht’s regular crew—since we came aboard.”

  “You don’t think they’ve been…murdered?”

  “No, I don’t think so, Robin. I believe they’re somewhere on the yacht at this very moment!”

  “We’d better start looking for them right away.”

  Batman nodded. “Yes, Robin—we’d better. For our sakes as well as theirs!”

  Robin gave Batman a puzzled glance, but there was no time for further questions. Batman was racing out of the yacht’s salon.

  Dividing up the search, Batman and Robin quickly made a canvass of the cabins aboard the yacht, the steward’s pantry, the galley, and the library. They descended to the engine room. There was no one in sight.

  Suddenly Robin turned his head toward the bow of the ship.

  “What is it?” asked Batman.

  Robin put a warning finger to his lips. “I heard something strange up ahead. Listen…”

  As they waited, motionless, a low, moaning sound met their ears.

  “Come on,” said Batman. “It’s coming from in there.”

  In the forward hold, Batman and Robin at last found what they were looking for.

  Five men and a woman securely bound and trussed.

  As Robin removed the woman’s gag—it was her moan they had heard—Batman took the gag off the mouth of a handsome, silver-haired man of about fifty years.

  The man said, “I’m Robert Yarosh—and this is my wife, Barbara. The others are members of the yacht’s crew. Thank goodness you found us, Batman. There isn’t much time to spare.”

  “To spare for what?” Batman sliced the ropes that bound the man’s wrists behind him.

  Robert Yarosh glanced quickly at his watch.

  “There’s a bomb planted somewhere in the engine room,” he said. “Those fiends told us that it would go off when they’d gotten safely away. Explosion and fire would destroy the evidence of sabotage, and send the yacht to the bottom of the sea. In these deep waters no one would be able to find it.”

  “Did they tell you exactly when the bomb was timed to go off?” Batman asked.

  “Yes. There’s still a little time. It isn’t due to go off until midnight. And it’s only a quarter to midnight.”

  Batman’s voice was very low as he answered, “Your watch is slow, Mr. Yarosh. It’s exactly two minutes to midnight now.”

  CHAPTER 2

  All those present remained in their positions for what seemed a long interval, thinking of the doom that was approaching with every tick of the clock. Actually no more than a few seconds passed before Robert Yarosh broke the silence.

  “Two minutes! There’s no time to deactivate the bomb. We’re doomed!”

  Batman said to Robin, “Come on. We’ve got to try to find that bomb before it’s too late.”

  The engine room was a few short steps down the corridor. When they flung open the door, the hopelessness of their situation was clear. There were literally a thousand places in this room with its mighty complex metal maze of machinery where a bomb could have been hidden.

  Meanwhile precious seconds were ticking off the time before they would all be blasted into eternity!

  “What can we do, Batman?” Robin asked. “It’ll take us an hour to make a search—and we haven’t even got one full minute left!”

  Batman flipped up the catch of a small delicate instrument in his belt. This utility belt—a veritable treasure trove of miniaturized scient
ific devices—served Batman well as an aid in his career of fighting crime.

  “The chemo-detector,” Batman said. “I’m setting my dial for nitric acid. Most modern explosives are formed from nitric acid. You set your chemo-detector for mercury fulminate, Robin. That’s most often used as a detonator for explosives. If we get a reading from either of them we can pinpoint the location of the bomb.”

  Robin nodded agreement, and quickly the dials were twirled and set.

  If the experiment worked, small indicator needles would begin to vibrate in response to the indicated presence of the chemicals that had been dialed. The chemo-detector worked on the same principle as a Geiger counter which measures radioactivity. By watching the reaction of the indicator gauge Batman and Robin could tell whether they were on the right track.

  Batman said, “I’m getting some reaction. How about you, Robin?”

  Robin’s voice was tense with excitement. “So am I, Batman.”

  “Good. I’ll try this end of the room. You start at the other.”

  In the north comer of the engine room Batman’s indicator needle registered no strong impulses. But a cry from Robin summoned him:

  “This way, Batman. My needle is jumping like crazy!”

  Batman hurried over to Robin and together they closed in on the target. There could be no more than twenty seconds left.

  “There it is!” Robin cried.

  He pointed to a small black box secreted behind a coil of steam pipe. Batman snatched the lethal device and headed up the companionway from the windowless engine room.

  Ten seconds left!

  Batman cleared the staircase. Another short flight of stairs was still ahead of him. If he waited to reach the deck above and hurl the bomb, the explosion might happen in midair or too close to the yacht.

  He could not delay. With a mighty heave he hurled the black box up the stairs, to arch high up and out over the deck railing. It was a formidable throw. The box soared out over the water fully four hundred feet away from the yacht. Then it dropped. Just as the box touched the crest of the waves the detonator went off. Deadly gases decomposed swiftly to create the wall of pressure that is called an explosion. The night air was split by a horrendous wrenching noise and the yacht heeled slightly to port from the impact of the rushing air. Robin came out of the engine room as Batman started down the steps.

  “You all right, Batman?” he asked anxiously.

  Batman smiled wryly. “I’m fine. But we had rather a close call. Now suppose we get on with the job of freeing Robert Yarosh and the others before we embark for home.”

  Not long afterward, as the pontoon craft glided away from the yacht Ocean Venture, Robin, lying prone beside Batman in the hollowed-out hull, remarked:

  “It’s been an interesting evening, don’t you think? After all, we’ve never encountered the Penguin, the Joker, and the Catwoman all in one place at one time.”

  Batman said, “Each of them is quite enough to handle—one at a time.”

  “Do you still think the underworld was going to give them some sort of an Academy Award?”

  “The evidence points to it, Robin. I’ve been sure of it ever since we found that blank nominating slip at the headquarters of Red Eyes Lafferty. Of course I didn’t realize the three most dangerous villains of all time were going to be competing for the award.”

  “With the Penguin, the Joker, and the Catwoman active, the good citizens of Gotham City may be in for an exciting time.”

  “Exciting is not quite the word for it,” Batman admonished him. “Hectic, perhaps. I’d even say grim. But there is nothing exciting about a crime wave, Robin. Try to remember that.”

  “I will, Batman,” Robin promised.

  The pontoon craft bumped lightly into the piling of a pier in Gotham City Harbor.

  On Tuesday morning at eleven o’clock, Bruce Wayne and his ward Dick Grayson were in the library of Wayne Manor. Bruce was behind a desk piled high with newspapers. He was reading in a fashion that would have astonished anyone who watched. The newspapers were from every major city in America. Bruce Wayne was methodically going through each—allowing scarcely more than a minute or two even for the bulkiest editions. He seemed to turn the pages with only casual interest, yet his amazing faculty for instant visualization did not permit the smallest item to escape his attention. He could have repeated, word for word, any of the news items that appeared on any page.

  In due course he would follow the same procedure with the magazines and books that had arrived in the morning’s mail. A stupendous amount of reading material would occupy him scarcely more than two full hours, during which all of the significant content of the reading would be securely locked away in his memory for use whenever needed.

  At this moment, having finished with newspapers from around the country, Bruce Wayne began rifling through the two chief Gotham City newspapers.

  He stopped and lowered the newspaper to glance over at Dick Grayson. Dick was concentrating on creating a crossword puzzle using only Sanskrit verbs. The problem occupied Dick Grayson’s attention entirely because he had only become fluent in Sanskrit during the past few weeks.

  “Dick, there’s an item in today’s local newspaper that may interest you.”

  Dick put down the ruler and pencil with which he had been drawing additional squares for his puzzle.

  “What’s that, Bruce?” he asked.

  “The Gotham City Bird Show was robbed. The criminal escaped with all the day’s receipts. No one saw him because a tangled mass of decorative bunting happened to fall from the ceiling at the most inopportune moment.”

  “Inopportune for whom, Bruce? Certainly not for the criminal.”

  “A good point, Dick. I quite agree that the artful use of bunting as a method for confusing both the audience and the guards was clever. Is there any other comment you would care to make about this item?”

  “I suppose you’re hinting that this could be the work of the Penguin. But there’s no evidence of that outside of the fact that it was a bird show that was robbed—and birds are the Penguin’s trademark.”

  “Is that all, Dick?”

  “Well, the clever use of decorative bunting indicates that no ordinary criminal was involved.”

  “Think, now. What else strikes you as unusual about this news item?”

  “I can’t think of anything else.”

  Bruce Wayne’s head shook in disapproval. “Come now, Dick, you can do better. For instance, what is the state bird of Colorado?”

  Dick Grayson thought a moment. “Is it…the lark?”

  “To be exact, the lark bunting.”

  “Holy robin redbreast! The lark bunting! And bunting was used to commit the crime. That certainly sounds like the Penguin’s work, doesn’t it?”

  Bruce Wayne nodded. “This is undoubtedly only the first of the Penguin’s robberies. They will follow a pattern. In fact, I’m quite sure I’ve already located the site of the Penguin’s next plot!”

  Dick Grayson put aside his Sanskrit puzzle. “Then what are we waiting for?” he said.

  Bruce Wayne smiled. “Exactly. To the Batpoles!”

  Bruce and Dick went into the living room of Wayne Manor. The butler Alfred was there.

  “Is Aunt Harriet anywhere around?” Dick asked.

  “No, Master Grayson,” Alfred replied. “The coast is quite clear.”

  Bruce Wayne lifted the bald pate of a bust of William Shakespeare on a pedestal nearby. Inside there was a secret switch. This activated a panel in the wall which slid silently back to reveal the Batpoles and the twin circular openings which led down to the Batcave.

  Dick Grayson waved goodbye to Alfred as Bruce Wayne and Dick disappeared into the opening in the wall which closed behind them. Seconds later they shed their outer clothing and, attired as Batman and Robin, entered the Batcave.

  There was the Batmobile, fabulous wonder car, waiting. Soon, with jet exhausts flaring, the Batmobile was racing off, carrying the Terrific Two on a ne
w adventure.

  Meanwhile, at the Grover-Westford Auction Gallery, an item of rare exquisite beauty was being offered for sale to a select audience of a score of Gotham City’s wealthiest collectors.

  The auctioneer’s face lit with pleasure as he held up the precious objet d’art.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, his voice quivering with pardonable pride, “this is what you have come to see—and wonder at. A four-thousand-year-old emerald statuette of the ancient god Thoth. It is shaped in the form of an ibis, the sacred bird of the ancient Egyptians who revered the god Thoth. As jewelry alone, this statuette is worth a fortune—but as a rarity, as a relic of a lost culture, the statuette is almost beyond price. Only the death of its former owner has now made it available for sale. I am sure none of you will object if I insist that the bidding begin at two hundred and fifty thousand dollars.”

  The auctioneer had barely finished when someone called out, “Two hundred and eighty thousand.”

  “Three hundred thousand.”

  “Three hundred and fifty.”

  “Three seventy-five.”

  The auctioneer beamed at the spirited bidding from the group of collectors. He raised his yellow hammer to announce the latest bid.

  “I have a bid of three hundred and seventy-five thousand. Do I hear four hundred? Going—going…”

  “Four hundred!”

  “Excellent. I have four hundred. Do I hear five? Five, gentlemen? Going—going—GONE!”

  The auctioneer brought the yellow hammer down on the auction block. A surprising thing happened. The hammer broke open and a tear gas bomb planted inside it exploded on the impact.

  Choking and gasping for breath, the auctioneer reeled away from the platform. As the tear gas flowed through the room the audience of wealthy collectors tried to flee, stumbling blindly with smarting eyes and torn by convulsions of coughing.

  Amid the chaos, the round figure of the Penguin appeared. He wore a gas mask and moved calmly to the auctioneer’s block. There he picked up the emerald statuette of the birdgod Thoth and dropped it into his carry-all umbrella.

  Delicately he avoided contact with the few remaining men who were still on their feet and groping helplessly in the clouds of tear gas. Most of the others had already fallen. The Penguin stepped over the prostrate form of the auctioneer and deposited a copy of the late afternoon edition of the Gotham Daily Eagle on the auctioneer’s podium.