The crime fighters had agreed that Batgirl should begin a circular route on her cycle around the perimeter of the DMV.
"One more question: how long did the Wizard spend behind bars?" she asked.
"Murdering his own brother was a crime too cold-blooded for even Warden Crichton to overlook," Batman recalled. "The Wizard served years of hard time without ever being offered early parole."
Batgirl rubbed her chin. "And it was the Wizard that started the altercation with the Joker. Despite being both younger and taller, the Joker chose not to respond with violence. It looks to me like the Wizard is the one we should be following around."
*****
The driving instructor gulped and strove to put on a cheerful demeanor as he greeted the Wizard. To be stuck giving a driving test to one raving lunatic was bad enough, but to get two in a row was just plain horrible luck.
He led the Wizard to a waiting car, anxious to get the driving test over with. As he and the Wizard fastened their seat belts, he heard some cackling, followed by a white knuckle tapping on his window. He rolled the window down to see what the Clown Prince of Crime wanted.
"I just wanted to thank you for all your wonderful service today," the Joker gushed, thrusting his bleached face in the window.
At the same time, the clown prince furtively unscrewed the lid of a jar he held in his hands. It was the jar that Undine had dropped off for him moments before. He shook the jar vigorously just beneath the level of the window, then pretended to notice the Wizard's presence in the car.
"Oh, hello there." He gave a friendly wave and backed away.
When he straightened up, he saw the dynamic duo eyeing him suspiciously from the other side of the street. He tried to seem nonchalant as he briskly left the scene. Batman watched the Wizard start the car up and head off on the test run.
Seconds later, there was some excited shouting from within the vehicle. The car lurched forward in an alarming burst of speed. It veered off course, ran over a series of orange rubber cones, and headed straight for the back of a VW bug that sat parked in front of a dumpster
WH-HWUNCH!
The sound was loud enough for Batgirl to hear over the sound of her bike's motor. She turned her head to see the tail of the test vehicle sticking vertically up out of the dumpster, it's wheels still spinning. She worked out that the car must have vaulted up the back of the VW bug and plummeted headfirst into the dumpster.
Snickering over by the doorway, the Joker tried to envision the Wizard's current status: crushed, in serious pain, and surrounded by garbage.
"Tsk tsk," the Clown Prince muttered. "The Wizard should have slowed down! But that's how some are! Bzzz-y Bzzz-y Bzzz-y!" He savored the scene of destruction for another moment, then scooted over to hide behind some oil drums.
The Dynamic Duo stood frozen in amazement at the pandemonium transpiring across the street.
"This must be the work of the Joker!" said Batman.
"Wait! Where'd he go?"
They bolted across the street, but came to a stop as the Jokermobile went tearing by the building at 50 miles per hour.
"There he goes! To the Batmobile!"
The two raced to the Batmobile, leaped inside without slowing, and moments later were off in hot pursuit of the villain's vehicle.
The Joker emerged from behind the oil drums as he heard the Batmobile departing. From his vantage point, he could see his cohorts speeding a block ahead of the caped crusaders. He could also see Batgirl's cycle approaching the Jokermobile, at an angle and not yet within their view.
It was hopeless for Undine and the boys, he decided. They had one Bat vehicle behind them and another in front. Deciding it was best not to stick around to see if they squealed on him, he tiptoed off in the opposite direction.
The Dynamic Duo rounded a corner and found themselves bearing down on Batgirl's cycle. She was stopped in the middle of the road, looking behind her, unaware that she was in their path. Batman swerved just in time to avoid calamity and the Batmobile came to a screeching halt next to the cycle.
"Batgirl! Which way did the Jokermobile go?" Robin yelled.
"I don't think it matters. The Joker wasn't in it. It contained some of his old gang members, though."
"No surprise there," said Batman. "As if there were any doubt of the tricky devil's connection to that vehicle."
"Gosh, Batgirl, why didn't you keep after them?" Robin asked. "Try to arrest them?"
"On what charge? The Joker wasn't inside and we don't even know that he still holds the title to the car."
"Assuming a title was ever properly procured in the first place," said Batman, trying to contain his indignation.
"But why did the Joker go to the DMV on foot if he has a car?" Batgirl pointed out. "And how could the Jokermobile have been moving so fast if it had just come from the DMV parking lot? I suspect it just came blasting by from a side street."
"A diversion!" exclaimed Batman. "It's sole purpose: to draw our attention!"
"Quick, back to the DMV!!" shouted the Boy Wonder.
Batgirl watched the Batmobile back up, then burn rubber as it turned around and sped back to the DMV entrance. She turned her heavy bike around and followed her colleagues.
*****
The unconscious Wizard and his driving instructor were being loaded into an ambulance as the Batmobile drove up.
"I don't see any sign of the Joker," said Batman, jumping from the car.
"Are these men going to be okay?" Batgirl asked the ambulance driver.
"They should be fine," said the driver. "We're only a few minutes from Gotham General. We'll get them there on the double!" The ambulance took off with its sirens blazing.
A little girl ran up to them from across the street. "Hey, Batgirl," she said. "I saw what happened to the Joker! He lay down near those orange cones and pretended he was knocked out. They put him in the ambulance along with the men who really were hurt."
Three blocks away in the back of the ambulance, the Joker could make out the little girl gesturing and pointing towards him. He watched the Terrific Trio all turn in his direction, their surprised, open mouths visible even from that distance.
"Bah! Children: nature's most cursed creation!" he grumbled. He watched the caped trio race back to the Batmobile.
"The Terrific Trio were barely gone at all – my men must have put up quite flimsy resistance! Egads, how could those nitwits get overtaken and subdued in four minutes? Well, they can ponder their inefficiency from the jail cell they're no doubt currently bound for - no great loss there. Undine, on the other hand, will be sorely missed. I wouldn't really mind losing henchmen constantly if I could just hang onto a moll once in awhile."
He paused reflectively.
"But why does this trouble me?" he wondered, exploring his feelings just as Warden Crichton had urged him to do.
"Frail femininity, while pleasing to my artistic eye, has always had its share of drawbacks. Why, I would have probably won half my battles with the Bat-folk if I'd had molls that were minimally useful." Unaware that Undine had eluded capture in the Jokermobile, the Joker rubbed his chin.
"Mmmm. That does it - no more fragile fashion-plates for me! Next time, the woman by my side will have some muscle and aggression to go with her curves!" His train of thought was interrupted by the gentle bounce of the ambulance as it pulled up into the hospital driveway.
The Batmobile rumbled into the hospital parking lot only a minute behind the Joker. After searching the parking lot in vain for their nemesis, the three crimefighters headed for the information desk located just inside the sliding main doors.
"We have reason to believe that the Joker is loose in your hospital," said Batgirl. "Do you know of anything here that would attract his criminal interest?"
The woman at the desk thought for a moment. "There are rare and valuable drugs in the pharmacy,"
"Not the Joker's style," Batman quickly decided.
"Well, there's only one major operation scheduled for this afternoon: a spleen replacement."
"Batman! Look at the name of the patient," Robin said, peering at the woman's clipboard. "It's Egbert!"
"Of course - the night watchman at the Gotham City Waterworks! He happens to bear a startling resemblance to his cousin Alfred, the butler at stately Wayne Manor."
"Isn't a spleen replacement the most delicate of surgical procedures?" said Batgirl.
"The patient was wheeled into the operating room just a few minutes ago," offered the information lady. "The procedure is being observed by visiting doctors from around the county as a test study for similar surgeries in the future."
"But Joker thinks that Egbert double-crossed him," remembered Robin. "And if he saw Egbert go by on that gurney…"
"Quickly, which way to the operating room?" asked Batman.
The caped crusaders charged into the operating room just as the surgery was about to commence. The eerily familiar figure of Alfred's cousin lay peacefully on the operating table. Rows of seated doctors watched as a figure clothed from head to toe in a green surgical gown and mask picked up a scalpel and brought it to within centimeters of the unconscious form.