BATMAN: CRIME, CRIME EVERYWHERE
By Bruce Wayne
DISCLAIMER: Most of the characters portrayed in this story are copyright by DC Comics, an AOL/Time/Warner company. They are used without permission for entertainment without profit by the author.
CHAPTER 12 - THE MAN WHO KNEW
Criminals heard the shots from the stairway. They came like echoes after the barrage that had riddled Ape Bundy. While some of the gunmen were starting to see how many dead men lay beyond the living-room curtains, others turned toward the stairs.
The Riddler was still on the landing, staring at his revolver, then glancing blankly at the bottom of the steps. Twice, he thought, he had clipped his black-cloaked foe, each time with two bullets. First, before that figure had dived and again, after it had landed.
It didn't dawn on him that Batman had gone ahead of those shots by split seconds, any more than the Riddler could understand what had become of the crimefighter who, by simple logic, should have been the ugly-faced marauder, Ape Bundy.
Again gazing below, the Riddler saw crooks facing him. They looked at him wondering what to do. "Look for Batman," ordered the criminal mastermind. The crooks started to do as they were ordered when a strange sound stopped some of them in their tracks. It came from some untraceable depths, the throbbing quiver of a high-pitched sinister laugh that they knew too well. It was more than a taunt. The mirth carried challenge. The laugh of the Riddler!
The thug crew had only thought in terms of one Batman, the wrong one, Ape Bundy. That made the Caped Crusader's presence all the more impossible, but there was no disputing the fact that he was here.
They stared at the stairway, wondering if Batman had somehow melted into the shadows of darkness that lay there. They turned toward the living room, where they could hear the gleeful calls of crooks.
"We got The Batman! Take a look, you guys --"
The crooks in the hall didn't want to take a look. They were making for the front door, when their pals overtook them and dragged them to the tattered curtains. There, the astonished thugs saw the bullet-riddled figure of a caped crimefighter, and stared, more amazed than ever.
Again, the laugh throbbed. Its quiver rose to a shivery pitch, then banished itself with ghoulish echoes. Batman was lying dead and the Riddler was laughing at his apparent triumph.
It didn't make sense, until a thug tugged at the cowl that was clamped tight to the dead man's head. Ape Bundy's hideous face came into the glow of a flashlight that a crook supplied. Realizing that two Batmen had been on the ground, and that one -- their real foe -- still remained, the whole crew sprang out into the hall.
Thinking that he might actually be still alive, the crooks moved between the front door and the stairway, to hold rapid council.
Had any of that tribe seen Batman escape the Riddler's fire, they might have guessed the Masked Manhunter's present whereabouts. The floor hadn't swallowed Batman. The answer to his disappearance had been a sideward roll, so rapid that he had literally faded into darkness before the Riddler knew it.
The landing hadn't been a good place from which to witness that rapid twist. Batman had carried himself past the post at the bottom of the banister, then taken a straight dive into the depths of the rear hall.
Later, crooks had flashed their lights into that hallway without seeing Batman. They simply hadn't estimated the size of a short alcove that ran beneath the shelter of the stairs. Fronted by the blocky table, that space was hard to see with flashlights. It terminated at the door of the closet beneath the stairs, and the crooks had mistaken that door for a solid panel.
The Gotham Goliath was allowing two options. Both poor choices, whichever the crooks took.
They could clear out and take to their cars. Or they could prowl the rear hall, searching deeper for Batman, which would mean a surprise attack at close range.
The crew decided to prowl. Hearing their cautious moves in his direction, Batman reached for the knob of the closet door. The crooks hadn't noticed the door before. Their first detection of it would come when the Caped Crusader chose to fling it open in their faces and drive into their midst.
For the present, Batman was easing the door carefully, as he needed only a narrow space to enter.
Then came the surprise attack. sooner than Batman expected it, for the attack was not his own. It was directed against him, almost from the rear. The Dark Knight was only half turned toward the closet as the door yielded. Impelled by pressure from the other side, the door shot wide. A swooping figure came lunging forward, downward, hurling its hands ahead, straight for Batman's crouched shoulders!
Wheeling, Batman was struck by a force that almost flattened him. Fighting off arms that had the rigid feel of steel rods, he was caught in the glare of the first flashlight that the crooks supplied. They had heard the clatter from the closet and were coming to learn its cause.
Almost buried beneath his new antagonist, Batman saw the man's face and recognized it. It was the face of the henchman "Whitey." Like his name, White's face was white, except for blood that flecked his lips. His eyes were bulging, with a glassy shine that gave a beadlike sparkle to the light. White was dead, which explained the stony weight of his lunging body. He had been murdered, stowed away, his body held in place by the closed door, prior to Ape's trip up to the Riddler's study!
Those things shot home to Batman in a single flash, as he was tightening his muscles for a mighty heave. Then, his arms under White's unbending knees, the Masked Manhunter gave the needed lunge that pitched the dead henchman into a long sprawl, as realistic as his topple from the closet.
The gunner's didn't see Batman. The flashlight had not been close enough to the floor. They cut loose with their guns, and Whitey was their target.
While the crooks were loading the dead henchman with a lot of extra lead, Batman rolled over beside the wall and came up to hands and knees, bringing the table with him.
A crook yelled, as Batman swung the heavy missile. The others ducked the table as it struck. They were spreading, shooting wildly as they went.
He had put the crooks at a disadvantage and meant to make the most of it, when he was saved the trouble. Another shout came from the vestibule, where two of the scattering thugs had retreated. With the howls of the crooks, Batman heard the blast of new guns.
Detective Harvey Bullock had arrived with a tactical squad. They had stopped outside, too late to hear the sounds of the first fray. Before the shooting had been reported, the new fight had begun. Reaching the scene, Bullock and his men didn't stop to argue. They saw only thugs, so they fired everywhere.
In fact, Batman had to take another quick dive to escape the bullets of his friends, the police. By the time Detective Bullock reached the rear hall, the place was empty. Three of the crooks were flat. The rest were scudding through the living room, with detectives in pursuit.
There was a crash of a window, followed by a tumult of shots delivered from the police. Howls sounded outside the window, then died. In the sudden lull that followed, Bullock thought he heard the slam of a distant back door. Starting in that direction, he reached a lighted kitchen. There, he stopped.
The light showed Detective Harvey Bullock as a stocky man, with swarthy features that wore a poker-faced expression. A gleam came to the ace detective's dark eyes.
Bullock had very definite recollections of a certain personage known as Batman. The detective was quite sure that he knew who had gone out by the back door. It was just as well that he didn't include the detail in his report.
Commissioner Gordon, at that moment, was arriving out front in his official car. Finding no detectives about, he hesitated before going indoors.
A taxi wheeled up. Gordon stared at it suspiciously, he saw his friend Bruce Wayne alight from it. Telling the driver to wait, Bruce gave a surprised stare at Gordon, who returned it.
"Hello, Bruce," began the commissioner. "I thought you came here quite awhile ago."
"I started awhile ago," replied Bruce Wayne, calmly, "but the limousine did not prove as reliable as I expected. So I changed to a cab. Alfred is taking the limo to a service center to be looked at."
Bruce did not add that he had changed to the cab by way of the Riddler's house, and that the cab had been only a few streets away when he found it.
Conversation ended when Bullock appeared at the Riddler's front door. Accompanying the commissioner, Bruce entered the house.
Inside the door, Gordon stopped in horror when he saw a caped form that detectives had dragged from the living room. Bullock grinned.
"Don't worry, commissioner," said the detective. "This isn't Batman. The guy is phony, a crook like the rest of them. The real Batman fixed these fellows for us."
Bullock's mention of a real Batman was justified. Daley and Clendon had come downstairs. Both of them were voicing their story of two Batmen, and crediting the real one with having forestalled robbery by the false.
During that verbal outpour, two members of the police tactical squad found a bullet-riddled figure that didn't seem to belong among the criminals. They turned the man's face into the light and pointed. Seeing the victim's features, Clendon exclaimed: "It's Mr White! He must have tried to stop them. Poor White." Clendon turned to Daley. "I fancy that we misjudged him. He was loyal, after all."
While Daley nodded, Clendon simply stared at White's body. Though Daley said nothing, it was evident to the observant Bruce Wayne that Daley was picturing a part that White might have played, other than a loyal one. But Daley, it seemed, was quite willing to let the law form its own theories.
As for Bruce Wayne, he was considering another factor: the actual time of Whitey's death. Among the bullets in the henchman's body was one that had been dispatched beforehand, and it marked the end of White.
The law took it that criminals had entered by the living-room window through which they had attempted a later exit. Bruce, however, remembered the unlocked front door. If White had answered a ring of the bell, the men upstairs would also have heard it. Therefore, one answer was logical.
White was in the crooked game. He was the man who had let Ape Bundy enter. White was a man who knew the facts of crime, and someone had decided that the henchman knew too much. As a reward for services to crooks who had bribed him, White had received death.
To Bruce Wayne, the case indicated the craft of a supercriminal -- a master hand whose goal was greater than tonight's attempt. This was not the Riddler's work. It didn't match his modus operandi. There was another brain who used double-crossers like White, and then disposed of them, was the sort of antagonist who could tax Batman to the full!
Detective Bullock liked to play hunches. He had one regarding White. He wondered how the man had gotten mixed in a battle between Batman and a band of crooked raiders. As a consequence, Bullock quizzed Clendon and Daley regarding White.
Clendon mentioned his suspicions of White, and Daley added his testimony. Though they felt that White's death should clear their name from blemish, Bullock did not agree with them. The detective was reasoning along Batman's lines, but he lacked the facts to back it up.
There was one damaging point against White, he was apparently in the employ of the Riddler. The "associate," as Clendon and Daley called him, wasn't supposed to be in the house this evening. Still, they didn't know that "Mr Nigma," as Daley and Clendon identified the Riddler, hadn't actually heard the order for him to leave when giving him his night off.
Thus, the one point was debatable. As for the matter of the unlocked front door, which Batman knew about, Bullock passed over it entirely, assuming that crooks had unbarred the door after entering by the window. Lacking evidence of White's early death, Bullock was definitely handicapped, and let his hunch subside, in consequence.
Meanwhile, Bruce Wayne was debating whether or not Ape Bundy had murdered White. Considering that Ape's main job had been to get the uncut diamonds, the thing was something of a mystery. Again, Bruce had strong evidence of hidden hands at work, with Ape figuring simply as a more important tool.
In fact, Batman was forming some unusual conclusions regarding Ape's part, when his chain of thought was interrupted by the voice of Commissioner Gordon. Not only was the commissioner denouncing Bullock's hunches -- he was telling the detective to forget White entirely.
"This man is more important." Gordon was pointing to Ape's crumpled form. "This hoodlum chose to masquerade as Batman. We must find out who he is, Bullock."
Finding out wasn't very easy. Ape's face was actually uglier in death than in life. His misguided pals had blasted most of it away with their concentrated fire. Detectives were quizzing some of the wounded thugs, demanding to know who the phony Batman was. The prisoners claimed they didn't know.
How much they did know, was a question. Bullock intended to quiz them later. For the present, he saw an easier way to establish the identity of the dead masquerader.
"Have Forensics fingerprint the guy," Bullock told another detective. "Hop down to headquarters and get an identification. Whatever his mug used to look like, we'll find it in the rogues' gallery."
"His face was very ugly," declared Clendon. "I saw it when he was fighting Batman up in the study. Unfortunately, I didn't see it later when I looked downstairs."
Bullock asked, "Did you ever see his face before?"
Clendon shook his head. He repeated that the face was ugly and coarse- featured.
It was Daley who inserted a further description. "I saw a face like it once," declared Daley, blandly. "But not in Gotham City."
"Where did you see it?" demanded Bullock.
"In Capetown, South Africa," smiled Daley. "The face was on an orangutan at the zoo."
Bullock didn't appreciate the jest, until he remembered that an orangutan was a member of the monkey family. Stooping, he snatched up one of the ungloved hands that a detective was fingerprinting and observed the thickly haired wrist above it.
That, plus the dead man's blocky shoulders and stooped huddle, was enough for Bullock. He exclaimed: "This guy's the Big Baboon!"
Talk of orangutans and baboons annoyed Gordon. He thought that Bullock was carrying Daley's jest too far, and said so.
Bullock promptly explained himself. "It's a nickname," said Harvey. "He's better known as Ape Bundy. He works for Curly Regal, and that's enough for us. Whatever Ape Bundy ever did, Curly Regal was in back of it."
"Then Regal planned this robbery!"
"That's it, commissioner," nodded Bullock. "It fits, too. We've been figuring that Curly would set himself up as a big-shot, with his gambling racket gone bust. What's more, we know right where we can find Curly Regal."
Assembling his squad, Bullock started for Regal's apartment house. About to follow, Commissioner Gordon saw Bruce Wayne getting into the waiting cab, carrying a briefcase that Gordon hadn't noticed before. The commissioner called for his friend to come along with him.
Nodding through the window of the closed cab door, Bruce was rapidly stuffing black garments into the secret partition of his briefcase.
Though Gordon's invitation meant that he would have to travel solely as Bruce Wayne, Batman preferred it. He wanted a chance to see what happened at Regal's.
When they reached the apartment house, Bullock was already waiting in the entry, two detectives with him. Bullock was about to display his technique, and wanted Gordon to witness it.
Harvey's method was blunt but effective. He simply pressed the button that bore Regal's name, and when Curly's voice answered, Bullock responded in a pleased growl. "H'lo, Curly," he mouthed. "It's Ape. I got what you wanted. All okay."
Up in his apartment, Curly Regal pressed the switch that unlocked the lower entrance. Opening the door of the apartment, he left it ajar and strolled to his favorite lounging chair, to await Ape's arrival. The telephone began to ring. Curly let it continue, intending to have Ape answer it.
Then, as the ringing persisted, Curly decided to answer the telephone himself. He heard the voice of the Penguin, low but excited across the wire.
"I'm over at Ninety-nine," informed the Penguin. "The word's around that Ape Bundy tangled with the police over at the Riddler's and was polished off. They say that Harvey Bullock is on the case --"
Curly waited to hear no more. He slammed the telephone down and sprang to the table that contained the locked drawer from which he had produced Ape's guns.
Finding something that he wanted, Curly shoved it beneath his coat and started for the front door of the apartment. Before Curly could slam the door, a man sprang into sight from the hallway.
It was Harvey Bullock, ahead of the detectives. The big detective had a drawn revolver. He shoved it into the doorway, along with his foot, as the door was slamming shut.
Recoiling, Curly made a rapid dash across the living room, toward the rear exit.
Shouting for the big-shot to halt, Bullock aimed his revolver and started after him. Harvey paused, halfway through the doorway, as Curly came about, his hands half raised.
One fist, Curly's right, had come from beneath his coat. The hand in question was just out of sight. Bullock did not notice its quick jerk in his direction.
Other eyes caught the move. Bruce Wayne had arrived, along with the detectives. He couldn't see Curly's fist, but he glimpsed the betraying poke of the crook's elbow. With a double-jointed twist, Bruce's figure shot through the doorway, half beyond Bullock, and came full about in the same agile motion.
As he twisted, Bruce grabbed the doorknob. Driving shoulder first, he bowled Bullock out into the hall and carried the door shut as he went.
Gordon shouted angrily, thinking that Bruce Wayne had overstepped his bounds. But Bullock, floundering backward, had seen something that explained the action of the commissioner's friend.
Curly's fist had jerked into sight, releasing a roundish object that could only be a grenade. The "pineapple" was well on its way as Bruce Wayne whipped the door shut. Bruce's yank was a race against Curly's throw, and there wasn't much distance to spare.
For an instant, it seemed certain that the grenade would reach the diving figures in the hallway. Then the edge of the door sliced in between and blocked the murderous weapon.
The grenade struck the door as it slammed. Along with a big blast, the grenade was gone and so was most of the door. Curly Regal liked plenty of juice in his pineapples, as the result proved.
The explosion not only blew in the door, it shattered the frame of the doorway and bit big chunks from the wall. Flat on the floor of the hall, Bruce Wayne and Harvey Bullock were showered with splintered debris. Their double dive was all that saved them.
Reaching their feet, Bruce and Bullock joined the others. By then, Curly Regal was gone. The big-shot hadn't waited to witness the devastation. He was on his way, through a rear door, even before the grenade had struck.
Curly Regal, the big-shot in back of Ape Bundy, had made his escape. Crafty enough to have some hideout ready for such emergency as this, Curly probably intended to stay at large and perpetrate new crimes, whenever possible.
Such was Gordon's opinion. He expressed it, glumly, to his friend Bruce Wayne as they rode back to the Templeton Club in the official car.
After the commissioner had beefed sufficiently to soothe his ire, Bruce put a question. "It was rather odd, commissioner," came the calm-toned voice of Bruce Wayne, "that Curly Regal should have learned so suddenly that we were on the way up to his apartment, instead of Ape Bundy. I doubt that Regal is in the habit of carrying grenades in his pocket."
"Great Scott, you're right!" exclaimed Gordon. "Someone must have tipped Regal off at the last moment. I'll inquire into it."
The commissioner called Clendon's house, where he talked with Clendon, as well as with the detectives who had remained at the Riddler's house. All agreed that no one could have used the telephone. That there was no way the news of Ape's death could have leaked out.
Commissioner Gordon was deeply puzzled. He remembered the telephone calls that had come to the Templeton Club earlier, and mentioned them. First, a call to Bruce Wayne, its purpose unmentioned. Then one to Gordon, the tip- off that trouble was due at Nigma's.
The commissioner looked sharply at his friend while mentioning the second call. He was wondering again if Bruce Wayne could have been responsible for it.
But Bruce's maskish face was inscrutable. If he knew anything, he did not state it.
It happened that Batman was tracing further back. He was picturing an earlier call, one that White could have made to Curly Regal, telling the big-shot that Daley had brought the uncut diamonds to the Riddler's. Such a call would have accounted for the arrival of Ape Bundy, but it didn't explain other events.
Just how the later phone calls fitted, was still a question. They were pieces of a puzzle, and more fragments would be required to complete the whole. One thing, however, was certain. Those calls meant other factors in the game.
Curly Regal, the fugitive big-shot, had not developed his schemes alone. Someone had plotted with him, and cross purposes were at work. Tracing back along the chain might prove difficult and slow. But, in a sense, it wasn't necessary.
New links would come, along with future crime. Correctly, Batman divined that tonight's failure was but one step in the crooked game. Batman's problem belonged to the future, not to the past.
Diamonds were the objective. They offered opportunity for coming robberies on a larger scale than Ape's attempt. When such stakes were again available, criminals would strike.
Batman, too, had plans. Along with the glitter of the wealth they sought, men of crime could expect to find their nemesis in black: The Caped Crusader of Gotham City!
By Bruce Wayne
DISCLAIMER: Most of the characters portrayed in this story are copyright by DC Comics, an AOL/Time/Warner company. They are used without permission for entertainment without profit by the author.
CHAPTER 12 - THE MAN WHO KNEW
Criminals heard the shots from the stairway. They came like echoes after the barrage that had riddled Ape Bundy. While some of the gunmen were starting to see how many dead men lay beyond the living-room curtains, others turned toward the stairs.
The Riddler was still on the landing, staring at his revolver, then glancing blankly at the bottom of the steps. Twice, he thought, he had clipped his black-cloaked foe, each time with two bullets. First, before that figure had dived and again, after it had landed.
It didn't dawn on him that Batman had gone ahead of those shots by split seconds, any more than the Riddler could understand what had become of the crimefighter who, by simple logic, should have been the ugly-faced marauder, Ape Bundy.
Again gazing below, the Riddler saw crooks facing him. They looked at him wondering what to do. "Look for Batman," ordered the criminal mastermind. The crooks started to do as they were ordered when a strange sound stopped some of them in their tracks. It came from some untraceable depths, the throbbing quiver of a high-pitched sinister laugh that they knew too well. It was more than a taunt. The mirth carried challenge. The laugh of the Riddler!
The thug crew had only thought in terms of one Batman, the wrong one, Ape Bundy. That made the Caped Crusader's presence all the more impossible, but there was no disputing the fact that he was here.
They stared at the stairway, wondering if Batman had somehow melted into the shadows of darkness that lay there. They turned toward the living room, where they could hear the gleeful calls of crooks.
"We got The Batman! Take a look, you guys --"
The crooks in the hall didn't want to take a look. They were making for the front door, when their pals overtook them and dragged them to the tattered curtains. There, the astonished thugs saw the bullet-riddled figure of a caped crimefighter, and stared, more amazed than ever.
Again, the laugh throbbed. Its quiver rose to a shivery pitch, then banished itself with ghoulish echoes. Batman was lying dead and the Riddler was laughing at his apparent triumph.
It didn't make sense, until a thug tugged at the cowl that was clamped tight to the dead man's head. Ape Bundy's hideous face came into the glow of a flashlight that a crook supplied. Realizing that two Batmen had been on the ground, and that one -- their real foe -- still remained, the whole crew sprang out into the hall.
Thinking that he might actually be still alive, the crooks moved between the front door and the stairway, to hold rapid council.
Had any of that tribe seen Batman escape the Riddler's fire, they might have guessed the Masked Manhunter's present whereabouts. The floor hadn't swallowed Batman. The answer to his disappearance had been a sideward roll, so rapid that he had literally faded into darkness before the Riddler knew it.
The landing hadn't been a good place from which to witness that rapid twist. Batman had carried himself past the post at the bottom of the banister, then taken a straight dive into the depths of the rear hall.
Later, crooks had flashed their lights into that hallway without seeing Batman. They simply hadn't estimated the size of a short alcove that ran beneath the shelter of the stairs. Fronted by the blocky table, that space was hard to see with flashlights. It terminated at the door of the closet beneath the stairs, and the crooks had mistaken that door for a solid panel.
The Gotham Goliath was allowing two options. Both poor choices, whichever the crooks took.
They could clear out and take to their cars. Or they could prowl the rear hall, searching deeper for Batman, which would mean a surprise attack at close range.
The crew decided to prowl. Hearing their cautious moves in his direction, Batman reached for the knob of the closet door. The crooks hadn't noticed the door before. Their first detection of it would come when the Caped Crusader chose to fling it open in their faces and drive into their midst.
For the present, Batman was easing the door carefully, as he needed only a narrow space to enter.
Then came the surprise attack. sooner than Batman expected it, for the attack was not his own. It was directed against him, almost from the rear. The Dark Knight was only half turned toward the closet as the door yielded. Impelled by pressure from the other side, the door shot wide. A swooping figure came lunging forward, downward, hurling its hands ahead, straight for Batman's crouched shoulders!
Wheeling, Batman was struck by a force that almost flattened him. Fighting off arms that had the rigid feel of steel rods, he was caught in the glare of the first flashlight that the crooks supplied. They had heard the clatter from the closet and were coming to learn its cause.
Almost buried beneath his new antagonist, Batman saw the man's face and recognized it. It was the face of the henchman "Whitey." Like his name, White's face was white, except for blood that flecked his lips. His eyes were bulging, with a glassy shine that gave a beadlike sparkle to the light. White was dead, which explained the stony weight of his lunging body. He had been murdered, stowed away, his body held in place by the closed door, prior to Ape's trip up to the Riddler's study!
Those things shot home to Batman in a single flash, as he was tightening his muscles for a mighty heave. Then, his arms under White's unbending knees, the Masked Manhunter gave the needed lunge that pitched the dead henchman into a long sprawl, as realistic as his topple from the closet.
The gunner's didn't see Batman. The flashlight had not been close enough to the floor. They cut loose with their guns, and Whitey was their target.
While the crooks were loading the dead henchman with a lot of extra lead, Batman rolled over beside the wall and came up to hands and knees, bringing the table with him.
A crook yelled, as Batman swung the heavy missile. The others ducked the table as it struck. They were spreading, shooting wildly as they went.
He had put the crooks at a disadvantage and meant to make the most of it, when he was saved the trouble. Another shout came from the vestibule, where two of the scattering thugs had retreated. With the howls of the crooks, Batman heard the blast of new guns.
Detective Harvey Bullock had arrived with a tactical squad. They had stopped outside, too late to hear the sounds of the first fray. Before the shooting had been reported, the new fight had begun. Reaching the scene, Bullock and his men didn't stop to argue. They saw only thugs, so they fired everywhere.
In fact, Batman had to take another quick dive to escape the bullets of his friends, the police. By the time Detective Bullock reached the rear hall, the place was empty. Three of the crooks were flat. The rest were scudding through the living room, with detectives in pursuit.
There was a crash of a window, followed by a tumult of shots delivered from the police. Howls sounded outside the window, then died. In the sudden lull that followed, Bullock thought he heard the slam of a distant back door. Starting in that direction, he reached a lighted kitchen. There, he stopped.
The light showed Detective Harvey Bullock as a stocky man, with swarthy features that wore a poker-faced expression. A gleam came to the ace detective's dark eyes.
Bullock had very definite recollections of a certain personage known as Batman. The detective was quite sure that he knew who had gone out by the back door. It was just as well that he didn't include the detail in his report.
Commissioner Gordon, at that moment, was arriving out front in his official car. Finding no detectives about, he hesitated before going indoors.
A taxi wheeled up. Gordon stared at it suspiciously, he saw his friend Bruce Wayne alight from it. Telling the driver to wait, Bruce gave a surprised stare at Gordon, who returned it.
"Hello, Bruce," began the commissioner. "I thought you came here quite awhile ago."
"I started awhile ago," replied Bruce Wayne, calmly, "but the limousine did not prove as reliable as I expected. So I changed to a cab. Alfred is taking the limo to a service center to be looked at."
Bruce did not add that he had changed to the cab by way of the Riddler's house, and that the cab had been only a few streets away when he found it.
Conversation ended when Bullock appeared at the Riddler's front door. Accompanying the commissioner, Bruce entered the house.
Inside the door, Gordon stopped in horror when he saw a caped form that detectives had dragged from the living room. Bullock grinned.
"Don't worry, commissioner," said the detective. "This isn't Batman. The guy is phony, a crook like the rest of them. The real Batman fixed these fellows for us."
Bullock's mention of a real Batman was justified. Daley and Clendon had come downstairs. Both of them were voicing their story of two Batmen, and crediting the real one with having forestalled robbery by the false.
During that verbal outpour, two members of the police tactical squad found a bullet-riddled figure that didn't seem to belong among the criminals. They turned the man's face into the light and pointed. Seeing the victim's features, Clendon exclaimed: "It's Mr White! He must have tried to stop them. Poor White." Clendon turned to Daley. "I fancy that we misjudged him. He was loyal, after all."
While Daley nodded, Clendon simply stared at White's body. Though Daley said nothing, it was evident to the observant Bruce Wayne that Daley was picturing a part that White might have played, other than a loyal one. But Daley, it seemed, was quite willing to let the law form its own theories.
As for Bruce Wayne, he was considering another factor: the actual time of Whitey's death. Among the bullets in the henchman's body was one that had been dispatched beforehand, and it marked the end of White.
The law took it that criminals had entered by the living-room window through which they had attempted a later exit. Bruce, however, remembered the unlocked front door. If White had answered a ring of the bell, the men upstairs would also have heard it. Therefore, one answer was logical.
White was in the crooked game. He was the man who had let Ape Bundy enter. White was a man who knew the facts of crime, and someone had decided that the henchman knew too much. As a reward for services to crooks who had bribed him, White had received death.
To Bruce Wayne, the case indicated the craft of a supercriminal -- a master hand whose goal was greater than tonight's attempt. This was not the Riddler's work. It didn't match his modus operandi. There was another brain who used double-crossers like White, and then disposed of them, was the sort of antagonist who could tax Batman to the full!
Detective Bullock liked to play hunches. He had one regarding White. He wondered how the man had gotten mixed in a battle between Batman and a band of crooked raiders. As a consequence, Bullock quizzed Clendon and Daley regarding White.
Clendon mentioned his suspicions of White, and Daley added his testimony. Though they felt that White's death should clear their name from blemish, Bullock did not agree with them. The detective was reasoning along Batman's lines, but he lacked the facts to back it up.
There was one damaging point against White, he was apparently in the employ of the Riddler. The "associate," as Clendon and Daley called him, wasn't supposed to be in the house this evening. Still, they didn't know that "Mr Nigma," as Daley and Clendon identified the Riddler, hadn't actually heard the order for him to leave when giving him his night off.
Thus, the one point was debatable. As for the matter of the unlocked front door, which Batman knew about, Bullock passed over it entirely, assuming that crooks had unbarred the door after entering by the window. Lacking evidence of White's early death, Bullock was definitely handicapped, and let his hunch subside, in consequence.
Meanwhile, Bruce Wayne was debating whether or not Ape Bundy had murdered White. Considering that Ape's main job had been to get the uncut diamonds, the thing was something of a mystery. Again, Bruce had strong evidence of hidden hands at work, with Ape figuring simply as a more important tool.
In fact, Batman was forming some unusual conclusions regarding Ape's part, when his chain of thought was interrupted by the voice of Commissioner Gordon. Not only was the commissioner denouncing Bullock's hunches -- he was telling the detective to forget White entirely.
"This man is more important." Gordon was pointing to Ape's crumpled form. "This hoodlum chose to masquerade as Batman. We must find out who he is, Bullock."
Finding out wasn't very easy. Ape's face was actually uglier in death than in life. His misguided pals had blasted most of it away with their concentrated fire. Detectives were quizzing some of the wounded thugs, demanding to know who the phony Batman was. The prisoners claimed they didn't know.
How much they did know, was a question. Bullock intended to quiz them later. For the present, he saw an easier way to establish the identity of the dead masquerader.
"Have Forensics fingerprint the guy," Bullock told another detective. "Hop down to headquarters and get an identification. Whatever his mug used to look like, we'll find it in the rogues' gallery."
"His face was very ugly," declared Clendon. "I saw it when he was fighting Batman up in the study. Unfortunately, I didn't see it later when I looked downstairs."
Bullock asked, "Did you ever see his face before?"
Clendon shook his head. He repeated that the face was ugly and coarse- featured.
It was Daley who inserted a further description. "I saw a face like it once," declared Daley, blandly. "But not in Gotham City."
"Where did you see it?" demanded Bullock.
"In Capetown, South Africa," smiled Daley. "The face was on an orangutan at the zoo."
Bullock didn't appreciate the jest, until he remembered that an orangutan was a member of the monkey family. Stooping, he snatched up one of the ungloved hands that a detective was fingerprinting and observed the thickly haired wrist above it.
That, plus the dead man's blocky shoulders and stooped huddle, was enough for Bullock. He exclaimed: "This guy's the Big Baboon!"
Talk of orangutans and baboons annoyed Gordon. He thought that Bullock was carrying Daley's jest too far, and said so.
Bullock promptly explained himself. "It's a nickname," said Harvey. "He's better known as Ape Bundy. He works for Curly Regal, and that's enough for us. Whatever Ape Bundy ever did, Curly Regal was in back of it."
"Then Regal planned this robbery!"
"That's it, commissioner," nodded Bullock. "It fits, too. We've been figuring that Curly would set himself up as a big-shot, with his gambling racket gone bust. What's more, we know right where we can find Curly Regal."
Assembling his squad, Bullock started for Regal's apartment house. About to follow, Commissioner Gordon saw Bruce Wayne getting into the waiting cab, carrying a briefcase that Gordon hadn't noticed before. The commissioner called for his friend to come along with him.
Nodding through the window of the closed cab door, Bruce was rapidly stuffing black garments into the secret partition of his briefcase.
Though Gordon's invitation meant that he would have to travel solely as Bruce Wayne, Batman preferred it. He wanted a chance to see what happened at Regal's.
When they reached the apartment house, Bullock was already waiting in the entry, two detectives with him. Bullock was about to display his technique, and wanted Gordon to witness it.
Harvey's method was blunt but effective. He simply pressed the button that bore Regal's name, and when Curly's voice answered, Bullock responded in a pleased growl. "H'lo, Curly," he mouthed. "It's Ape. I got what you wanted. All okay."
Up in his apartment, Curly Regal pressed the switch that unlocked the lower entrance. Opening the door of the apartment, he left it ajar and strolled to his favorite lounging chair, to await Ape's arrival. The telephone began to ring. Curly let it continue, intending to have Ape answer it.
Then, as the ringing persisted, Curly decided to answer the telephone himself. He heard the voice of the Penguin, low but excited across the wire.
"I'm over at Ninety-nine," informed the Penguin. "The word's around that Ape Bundy tangled with the police over at the Riddler's and was polished off. They say that Harvey Bullock is on the case --"
Curly waited to hear no more. He slammed the telephone down and sprang to the table that contained the locked drawer from which he had produced Ape's guns.
Finding something that he wanted, Curly shoved it beneath his coat and started for the front door of the apartment. Before Curly could slam the door, a man sprang into sight from the hallway.
It was Harvey Bullock, ahead of the detectives. The big detective had a drawn revolver. He shoved it into the doorway, along with his foot, as the door was slamming shut.
Recoiling, Curly made a rapid dash across the living room, toward the rear exit.
Shouting for the big-shot to halt, Bullock aimed his revolver and started after him. Harvey paused, halfway through the doorway, as Curly came about, his hands half raised.
One fist, Curly's right, had come from beneath his coat. The hand in question was just out of sight. Bullock did not notice its quick jerk in his direction.
Other eyes caught the move. Bruce Wayne had arrived, along with the detectives. He couldn't see Curly's fist, but he glimpsed the betraying poke of the crook's elbow. With a double-jointed twist, Bruce's figure shot through the doorway, half beyond Bullock, and came full about in the same agile motion.
As he twisted, Bruce grabbed the doorknob. Driving shoulder first, he bowled Bullock out into the hall and carried the door shut as he went.
Gordon shouted angrily, thinking that Bruce Wayne had overstepped his bounds. But Bullock, floundering backward, had seen something that explained the action of the commissioner's friend.
Curly's fist had jerked into sight, releasing a roundish object that could only be a grenade. The "pineapple" was well on its way as Bruce Wayne whipped the door shut. Bruce's yank was a race against Curly's throw, and there wasn't much distance to spare.
For an instant, it seemed certain that the grenade would reach the diving figures in the hallway. Then the edge of the door sliced in between and blocked the murderous weapon.
The grenade struck the door as it slammed. Along with a big blast, the grenade was gone and so was most of the door. Curly Regal liked plenty of juice in his pineapples, as the result proved.
The explosion not only blew in the door, it shattered the frame of the doorway and bit big chunks from the wall. Flat on the floor of the hall, Bruce Wayne and Harvey Bullock were showered with splintered debris. Their double dive was all that saved them.
Reaching their feet, Bruce and Bullock joined the others. By then, Curly Regal was gone. The big-shot hadn't waited to witness the devastation. He was on his way, through a rear door, even before the grenade had struck.
Curly Regal, the big-shot in back of Ape Bundy, had made his escape. Crafty enough to have some hideout ready for such emergency as this, Curly probably intended to stay at large and perpetrate new crimes, whenever possible.
Such was Gordon's opinion. He expressed it, glumly, to his friend Bruce Wayne as they rode back to the Templeton Club in the official car.
After the commissioner had beefed sufficiently to soothe his ire, Bruce put a question. "It was rather odd, commissioner," came the calm-toned voice of Bruce Wayne, "that Curly Regal should have learned so suddenly that we were on the way up to his apartment, instead of Ape Bundy. I doubt that Regal is in the habit of carrying grenades in his pocket."
"Great Scott, you're right!" exclaimed Gordon. "Someone must have tipped Regal off at the last moment. I'll inquire into it."
The commissioner called Clendon's house, where he talked with Clendon, as well as with the detectives who had remained at the Riddler's house. All agreed that no one could have used the telephone. That there was no way the news of Ape's death could have leaked out.
Commissioner Gordon was deeply puzzled. He remembered the telephone calls that had come to the Templeton Club earlier, and mentioned them. First, a call to Bruce Wayne, its purpose unmentioned. Then one to Gordon, the tip- off that trouble was due at Nigma's.
The commissioner looked sharply at his friend while mentioning the second call. He was wondering again if Bruce Wayne could have been responsible for it.
But Bruce's maskish face was inscrutable. If he knew anything, he did not state it.
It happened that Batman was tracing further back. He was picturing an earlier call, one that White could have made to Curly Regal, telling the big-shot that Daley had brought the uncut diamonds to the Riddler's. Such a call would have accounted for the arrival of Ape Bundy, but it didn't explain other events.
Just how the later phone calls fitted, was still a question. They were pieces of a puzzle, and more fragments would be required to complete the whole. One thing, however, was certain. Those calls meant other factors in the game.
Curly Regal, the fugitive big-shot, had not developed his schemes alone. Someone had plotted with him, and cross purposes were at work. Tracing back along the chain might prove difficult and slow. But, in a sense, it wasn't necessary.
New links would come, along with future crime. Correctly, Batman divined that tonight's failure was but one step in the crooked game. Batman's problem belonged to the future, not to the past.
Diamonds were the objective. They offered opportunity for coming robberies on a larger scale than Ape's attempt. When such stakes were again available, criminals would strike.
Batman, too, had plans. Along with the glitter of the wealth they sought, men of crime could expect to find their nemesis in black: The Caped Crusader of Gotham City!