Chapter Two: A Well-Lit Room
Cassandra woke up to feel someone's fingers touching her throat. Just touching—not pressing hard enough to hurt anything—so she gave the someone the benefit of the doubt and grabbed the wrist and tugged it lightly away to find out if he'd take a hint without fighting over it. As she did this, she opened her eyes and waited a moment for them to adjust to the bright light.
The man wasn't resisting. His hand had moved the way she'd pulled it and now she could see his face peering down at her, looking concerned. Curly blond hair, glasses, pale skin, lean build, probably no taller than Cassandra herself, though it was hard to tell when she was flat on her back and he was kneeling beside her. Definitely too short to be The Spook, she decided. Besides, the attitude was all wrong. He was wearing an odd-shaped hat and a sort of heavy cloak that looked like a loose coat without proper sleeves.
He cleared his throat. "Well, Miss, I wondered if you still had a good strong pulse. I guess this qualifies as a 'yes.'"
Given the total absence of threat in his body language, Cassandra felt safe in ignoring him for a bit while she twisted her head back and forth to study her surroundings. Definitely not the parking lot—The Spook must have picked her up and moved her somewhere. This wasn't the interior of a bank, either. She was stretched out on light brown carpet. Beyond her boots, she could see a wall with two paintings hanging on it, one on each side of a tall bookcase. On her left, a couch; behind it, closed drapes concealed what was presumably a large window. On her right, beyond the kneeling man, a closed wooden door. Behind her head, a piano. No sign of The Spook at the moment. No restraints on her hands or feet.
She was still bareheaded, but wearing the rest of her Batgirl costume—or was she? Cassandra sat up and peered down at her waist. The Spook had swiped her utility belt too. Oh well, except for batarangs and ropes, she almost never used that stuff anyway.
The blond man asked, "What happened to you? I don't really think you decided to take a nap on the floor when the couch was available. Did someone—"
"Wait," she said, and rose to her feet. Her legs were working okay; the gas must have completely worn off. She dropped on all fours and did ten quick push-ups while the blond man just gaped. Then she stood up and ran through a couple of kata—the blond man quickly retreated to the couch to get out of her way—and she was relieved when none of the flexing and stretching and twisting of various parts of her body set off any serious alarm bells in her nervous system. Except for a sore left wrist and some trivial bruises, everything seemed to be in decent condition.
She had needed to check that before she tried anything tricky. She had been out cold for a while—no telling how long—and there were various nasty things which an evil man might do to a girl if he had her unconscious or otherwise completely at his mercy. Cassandra rarely had to worry about such worst-case scenarios for herself—but she had interrupted enough ugly moments between human predators and their chosen victims to give her a good grasp of the basic possibilities.
It was a relief to be sure that nothing really filthy or disabling had been inflicted upon her when she was out cold. The only fresh bruises she could find matched the memory of her fall as the gas started to soak its way into her body, and that also explained why the left wrist was feeling cranky after most of her body weight had landed on it for a moment—but it was not broken, so she'd cope.
Lack of any clear physical abuse was good. Lack of sexual abuse was especially good—had it been otherwise, and had The Spook then been stupid enough to let her survive to wake up and realize what had happened, she would have broken some of Batman's rules about "excessive force" as soon as she got her hands on the perp.
After she had finished the second kata and stood motionless for about half a minute, taking inventory, the blond man finally tried to start up a conversation again. "Er, if you're done with your evening workout or whatever that was, could we talk about why we're here?"
She looked at him directly. "Yes?"
He waited . . . realized that was all she intended to contribute at the moment . . . and said, "I was hoping you could tell me. I don't know where I am. Someone pulled a bag over my head and stuck a gun in my ribs—I think it was a gun—and made me get in a van—I think it was a van. Then we got to this house and he took the bag off when we were right outside that door." He pointed to the closed door. "When he shoved me into the room and slammed the door behind me, I saw you lying on the floor. I decided I should check your pulse. If you hadn't had one, I suppose I would've had to do—" He paused, flustered, and then got it out—"CPR. Glad it didn't come to that," he added hastily.
She knew what CPR was—but why had he hesitated as if he were afraid to even mention it? That was what you were supposed to do if the other person's heart and lungs needed a sharp reminder to get back to work, wasn't it? Then it dawned on her as she saw the way his eyes flickered toward her mouth and then hastily glanced away again. CPR included putting your lips in an airtight seal over the other person's each time you exhaled into their lungs, and apparently he didn't even like mentioning to a girl that he might have ended up doing that sort of thing to her without an invitation, no matter how good the reason would have been. Too much like "kissing"? Too "suggestive" for the blond man's nerves?
Was he afraid of having her think he was a sex maniac? (Cassandra was reasonably certain she could mop the floor with him while blindfolded and with both hands tied behind her back if he did anything offensive, which she didn't think he would, so fear of being alone with him was not even remotely on her list of worries. . . .)
"Anyway," he said, obviously wanting to change the subject, "my name's Sergius. I'm a writer. What should I call you?"
Strictly speaking, she was supposed to be "Cassandra" whenever she wasn't wearing a mask, but given that she was still wearing the rest of her costume, it couldn't be hard for the blond man—Sergius—to guess she was the latest "Batgirl." Briefly the thought crossed her mind that it was Halloween and she could claim to be an ordinary girl on her way to one of those "costume parties," but The Spook already knew better and might even have taken photos of her unconscious face for all she knew, so she abandoned the "it's just a costume" idea and resigned herself in advance to telling Oracle and Batman that her "secret identity" (such as it was) had just suffered another "security breach." Most of this had already been going through her mind before he asked for a name, so she looked him in the eye and said clearly: "Batgirl."
"Thought so!" he said, almost cheerful now. "I've met Batman too—he saved my life, years ago. I guess that was before your time—back when there was a red-headed Batgirl? I saw her from a distance a couple of times, but we never spoke."
He was telling the truth. And he'd been truthful when he said he didn't know what was going on. Cassandra—no, she'd better get back into the habit of thinking of herself as Batgirl—decided it wouldn't kill her to give him a very brief summary of what little she knew. "Spook. Villain. Gassed me." She shrugged to indicate anything beyond those facts—such as the villain's motives in bringing them together—was outside of her knowledge too.
The blond man cocked his head at her; he seemed to be expecting a bit more than that.
"So nice to see the children getting acquainted!" The Spook's voice boomed from overhead. (There must be a concealed speaker in the ceiling. In or near the overhead light?) "Now remember to play by the house rules, kids! This party cost me a lot to arrange, and I do expect you to socialize with all the other guests before you leave!"
The blond man asked, "I take it you are the host? Did you really go to all this trouble just to 'invite' us to a Halloween party? There have to be easier ways to find houseguests!"
The Spook laughed what was probably meant to be a terrifyingly crazy laugh—in fact, it was reminiscent of The Joker's. Sergius certainly was perturbed by it, but Batgirl's standards for "scary" were much higher than most people's. A creepy cackling noise coming from a loudspeaker didn't come anywhere close to qualifying.
"Not just for that," The Spook said after his laughter subsided. "Let us make no bones about it; you are not here to be entertained by my hospitality; you are here to amuse me. Instead of immediately matching myself against Batman, who is such a ridiculous overachiever in every field that interests him, I prefer to start with a team who might be able to duplicate his versatility if they worked together.
"Think of yourselves as brains and brawn, my young friends. For the brawn, I wanted a young man or woman who could handle any purely physical confrontation with flying colors, but would be hopelessly out of his or her depth in a more cerebral challenge, and eventually I found the right candidate; a young lady closely tied to my old adversary, Batman, but lacking any clear sign of his deductive abilities. For brains, I wanted one of Gotham's literary lights, a spellbinding wordsmith, a virtuoso of the whodunit, a careful researcher who strives to learn everything a detective hero needs to know, instead of just faking it and hoping no one will care about inevitable blunders—but one with little training or aptitude for the really rough stuff. And I identified the best person for that role, as well—one whom Batman should remember fondly from the 'good old days,' in fact!"
The blond man beamed—and then The Spook finished sweetly: "But Kaye Daye is still on vacation on the West Coast, so I settled for Sergius."
Batgirl didn't know or care who Kaye Daye was, but the way Sergius's face fell made her feel sorry for him. It was sad to think he was so pleased with any apparent compliment, even from a villain, that it hurt him visibly to hear it turn into an insult a moment later.
After waiting a moment, presumably to let the insult sink in, The Spook resumed: "Think of it as a treasure hunt, kiddies. I am somewhere in this house. Puzzles are scattered about to make your lives easier along the way, if you can find them and interpret them and put the answers into effect. Of course, some of the other . . . guests . . . may choose to interfere with your activities at awkward moments; what can I say?"
Batgirl figured this meant other people in the house would try to kill them. That was nothing new in her life, but the problem was that Sergius was a civilian who'd been dumped on her and now she'd feel responsible for protecting him as they went along. Leaving him alone in one room to wait until she had clobbered every possible enemy singlehandedly would probably not be safe for him—Oracle had said The Spook loved using all sorts of fancy tricks and gimmicks; there was no telling what else was hidden in this room, for instance, to make sure they didn't just sit here all night. The Spook was counting on Sergius to handicap her, of course, and it looked like he would get his wish.
Sergius asked, "Suppose we don't want to play your game? What if we just try to leave the house right now?" (Batgirl could see he didn't expect it to be that easy, though.)
The Spook laughed again, briefly. "I wouldn't want to ruin all the surprises. Try, by all means, if it will make you feel better!"
As he spoke, Batgirl was tugging at the right-hand drape to see what was behind it. A window, as she'd thought—and parallel bars of steel or something similar were just beyond the glass. If she smashed the glass, she could find out how securely the bars were fastened. A club would be nice. She looked thoughtfully at the piano bench—and then The Spook said, "Thirty seconds before the door to that room unlocks itself. I suggest you prepare for the worst!"
Author's Notes: Sergius is not an original character, although I can't blame anyone who assumed he was. His first and only appearance in a comic book was in a story published in Detective Comics #487 (in 1979) titled "The Perils of Sergius." Through a comical mistake, some members of the League of Assassins reached the conclusion that he knew something about their secret plans (actually, he was just writing a novel about an action hero smashing an imaginary group of assassins) and so they hired some local hoodlums to kill him as a security precaution. Batman got involved in time to defeat a few murder attempts. It all ended happily, but Sergius simply has never been heard from again in the subsequent 29 years.
I've had that story in my collection for a long time—and when I worked out in my head approximately what sort of person I wanted Cassandra to meet when she woke up in The Spook's carefully-prepared "haunted house," I started asking myself if there was anyone in Batman's old continuity who would fit the bill. Suddenly Sergius sprang to mind. He being a writer of stories of action and suspense, it stands to reason that he'd be very brainy about all the clichés of murder mysteries and haunted houses and whatnot . . . but he never showed any sign of knowing how to take care of himself in a real fight. Cassandra, still illiterate at this early point in her career, is his exact opposite in those areas, so I decided to shove them together into the same place at the same time and see what happened. Incidentally, tonight Sergius is wearing a Sherlock Holmes outfit (which mainly means a deerstalker cap and matching cloak, suitable for hiking around in the English countryside in damp weather), but Cassandra doesn't know or care about Sherlock Holmes, so she doesn't identify the getup as a "costume" at first glance.
Kaye Daye's name was dropped in this chapter. In the Batman comics of the Pre-"Crisis on Infinite Earths" era, she was an occasional supporting character; an award-winning novelist. She was also part of a detective club known as the Mystery Analysts of Gotham City. Batman was considered a member of the group for awhile and occasionally worked with the other Analysts on actual mysteries that caught their attention. As far as I know, Kaye has not been seen or heard from in DC's comics in over a quarter of a century, but I simply assume she still exists in the modern continuity. If you never heard of her before, that's fine! You don't need to know any more about her than what I just told you; she will not appear onstage in this story!
P.S. Don't assume that whatever The Spook says about tonight's agenda, in this chapter or later ones, is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Trusting a supervillain to be frank and earnest is usually a bad idea. . . .