The Further Adventures of Batman (27 page)

Some of the secrecy about it evaporated for a favored few. Wayne grew aware of this when he realized that Jack and Queena King were taking turns leading the more privileged of the guests—identified by discreet face-card pins that had been sent along with tickets when those invited to the ball RSVP’d with a fat check made out to the charity—on guided tours of the yacht’s treasures, of which the Rembrandt was the highlight.

Bruce Wayne sported such a pin, and now found himself tapped by Jack King personally for such a tour. King patted him on the shoulder and nodded toward an elevator.

Wayne found himself matching stride with a sweaty musketeer wearing a face-card pin as they followed King to the elevator.

“Enjoying this nice little party, Commissioner Gordon?” Wayne asked.

The musketeer shot the Batman a sharp look. “Is that you, Bruce?”

Wayne nodded.

Gordon sighed almost explosively. “How I wish you were the real Batman instead of . . .”

“Instead of a useless rich idler?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“No, you bit your tongue. But no matter. What’s got you wishing for Batman’s help?”

Gordon leaned close. “Let’s keep this hush-hush—I don’t want to panic all of Gotham City. Riddler’s back in town.”

Wayne’s senses quickened at the mention of his old foe. The pointy ears of his cowl seemed to stand up on their own. “How do you know?”

Gordon drew a color photo from the pocket of his cloak. “Here’s his handiwork. An unidentified corpse found floating in the harbor. One of his damnable riddles tattooed on the body.”

Wayne took the gruesome picture and stared at a naked chest and read the rhyme printed on it. The period at the end of the rhyme was a lurid bullethole.

Art thou?

How now!

Art not

When shot.

—Yours truly, the Riddler

Wayne handed the photo back and they caught up with the small party and remained silent in the full elevator as it descended two decks.

They brightened a bit at sight of the treasures King guided them by. Few monarchs had in their lifetimes garnered so great a hoard. King’s prizes would outlast him, but while he held them he took full pride in them.

The Rembrandt drew the greatest hush. It hung in a well-lit alcove; a velvet rope kept viewers at a distance.

It was the famous
The Would-Be Bride,
sometimes called
The Coscinomancer.
The painting showed a young girl seemingly in the first awareness that her sexuality gave her power—and finding it both exhilarating and frightening. She held a pair of shears with a sieve hanging from the points of the blades, and she stood frozen hopefully, prayerfully apparently having just called the name of a suitor and now waiting to see if the turning of the sieve would tell her he was the one for her.

The viewers stood similarly frozen by the power of the painter.

SSWISSHHH-THUNNKK!

A blow dart whizzed through the open doorway and into the masterpiece, landing dead center on the robust breast. A note was impaled on the shank of the dart.

Wayne whirled with a black flutter and dashed to the doorway. Too late—a like black flutter had vanished up the companionway at the far end of the passage.

He turned back to the room. No one else seemed to have glimpsed the black-caped vandal. At least, no one spoke of having seen another Batman blow the dart and flee. Wayne breathed thankfully.

Commissioner Gordon had produced a walkie-talkie and was calling for assistance.

Wayne shot a glance at King. It seemed to him that King looked singularly unperturbed for one whose eighty-six-million-dollar prize possession had just sustained damage.

But he had no more time to ponder that. Gordon’s call had brought a plainclotheswoman who swung into action Wayne closely observed.

Plainclotheswoman! Detective Sergeant Heather Mortimer, as Gordon introduced her, wore an elegant Empire gown, and more than fulfilled her role.

She swung briskly into action. From somewhere on her person she produced plastic gloves and put them on. Carefully, she removed the dart from the painting. She had to pull hard to free the dart, and in doing so rubbed her forearm against the canvas. As her hand came away with the dart gripped firmly in it, Wayne noticed a faint smudge on her bare forearm. The smudge might have been there beforehand, but he doubted that. Forensics might find spittle on the dart and from it determine the blood type, and even the DNA pattern, of the vandal. Before putting it into an evidence bag, she slipped the note off the shank. She slid the note into a clear plastic envelope and handed the envelope to her boss.

Wayne read the note over Gordon’s shoulder.

The sage—so-called—

Of Brought-Home-the-Bacon

Will drop off to sleep

And never awaken.

—Yours unruly, the Riddler

He imprinted it in his memory.

Wayne smiled crookedly. So that had been the Riddler he had glimpsed—and wearing a Batman outfit! But villainous as the man was, the Riddler had not pinned the vandalism on Batman. The Riddler had too much ego to give credit to another for anything he himself had done.

Gordon’s detail, and King’s own security people, had sealed off all exits, but Wayne felt sure the Riddler had already made good his escape—had found some way off the yacht or some hiding place aboard it.

And so it proved.

After his own identity had been checked—and vouched for by Police Commissioner Gordon himself—Wayne descended the gangway and headed thoughtfully home. The Riddler had given him much to think about.

Alfred, the English butler, shook his head mournfully as he put the Batman costume away. He tsk-tsked and tut-tutted at its deplorable state.

“I feel dreadful about having let you go out in this, sir. I did do my best, though, on short notice.”

“Yes, I’m afraid I waited till the last minute to advise you of the ball.”

Alfred, once started, had to finish his bill of particulars. “I bespoke a dozen new outfits from our Saville Row tailors—using the safe address for delivery—but they were booked solid. Meanwhile I thought to make do locally; I tried all the costumers in the yellow pages, sir, but it seems they had rented out every one of their Batman suits.”

From the bedroom window of the penthouse suite, Bruce Wayne could make out the lights of the
Île de Joie
at its slip in the yacht basin. “Somehow I guessed that might be the case, Alfred.”

“If I may say so, sir, I’m afraid you have only your own popularity to blame for that.”

Wayne turned from the window to eye Alfred. “Alfred, let me pick your brains.”

Alfred looked alarmed. “Beg pardon, sir?”

“Tell me about Gotham.”

Alfred’s alarm increased. He looked out the penthouse window at the millions of lights. Where to begin? What to describe? How could he possibly do Gotham City justice?

Wayne followed Alfred’s glance and laughed apologetically. “I mean the English Gotham, the place our Gotham gets its name from. The Wise Men of Gotham and all that.”

“Oh,
that
Gotham, sir.” Alfred looked first relieved, then severe. “That Gotham is a village in Nottinghamshire. I’ve never been there myself.” He conveyed that he wouldn’t be caught dead there. “ ‘Wise Men’ is a misnomer, sir. A jest, as it were. The Gothamites appear to have been quite a collection of fools.” By his tone he washed his hands of them.

“Hmmm. And that’s all you know?”

“Afraid so, sir. Will there be anything else?”

“Just wake me early tomorrow.”

“As you wish, sir.”

Alfred winced as the master crunched the toast so thoughtfully that crumbs spilled all over everything.

As soon as the hour approached decency, Wayne dialed Dr. Amicia Sollis and invited her to breakfast. She accepted sleepily, seeming both pleased and puzzled.

He picked her up at Gotham City University and took her to the Skyways Building and to the restaurant atop it.

They talked of this and that as they ate—Amicia seeming as always to seek some glimpse into the true nature of Bruce Wayne, for it was clear she did not take him at face value but sensed some depth to the shallow man-about-town. At last she shoved the dessert plate aside and put hand on chin and elbow on table and looked into his eyes.

“Time for me to sing for my lunch. What’s the tune?”

So, while the restaurant revolved high above the streets of midtown Gotham City, he told the sleek, dark-haired professor of linguistics about the Riddler’s having pinned a note to the Rembrandt. He recited it to her.

“That’s scary,” she said. “What do you make of it?”

He frowned. “ ‘Brought-Home-the-Bacon’ seems an obvious play on ‘Got-ham,’ and it follows that the Riddler is threatening the lives of the Wise Men of Gotham—whoever
they
may be. I’ve heard about the Wise Men of Gotham—the Nottinghamshire Gotham, I mean—but I don’t know the story behind them. You’re the authority on folklore, so give.”

She took a moment to gather her thoughts before she answered. “Some say it goes back to King John in the 1200s. This was the tricky, greedy, cowardly king who was forced to sign the Magna Carta. The story goes that King John planned to seize some of the Gothamites’ land for a hunting ground and to cut a highway across their pastures. That would have been bad enough, but in addition the people would be expected to provide services to the court and to the flock of courtiers. The townspeople got together and plotted to change King John’s mind. They engaged in idiotic pursuits to fool the king’s messengers into thinking the local yokels would make unsuitable neighbors. Things like trying to drown an eel in a pond; burning down a forge to get rid of a wasps’ nest; hoisting a wagon to the top of a barn to shade the roof; planting a hedge around a cuckoo’s nest—or, in another version, joining hands around a thornbush—to shut in a cuckoo so it would sing all year long.”

“And it worked?”

“It worked. At least, so far as I know, there’s no royal hunting lodge at Gotham.” She smiled. “That’s the legend. But the real source of tales about the fools of Gotham may have been the absurd customary services attached to land tenure there.”

“Such as?”

She shrugged. “I can’t tell you off the top of my head. Perhaps such things as still obtain right in our own neighborhood. Do you know that in one of the suburbs of
this
Gotham, the town must come up with ‘one fatte calfe’ each year forever if the descendants of the original owners of the land demand it?”

They had finished the meal but she had given him much to chew on.

He drove her back to the campus. As he watched her walk gracefully into the gothic building he felt his face burn. His Batman preoccupations got too much in the way of Bruce Wayne’s life. Why hadn’t he thought to invite Amicia to attend the ball with him? Why had he thought of her only after the fact? Not only did she deserve better of him but it was his great loss. Next time . . .

He phoned Commissioner Gordon’s office and got through to Gordon, though the man sounded bothered and beset.

“Afraid I don’t have much time, Wayne. Another of Riddler’s notes.”