by Winston Lyon
“A unification in a container of hope? Holy Esperanto! It must mean the United World Organization.”
“Precisely what we feared they were after. And, Robin, there’s a special meeting of the Security Council today…”
“Wow! Let’s commandeer a taxi!”
“In this traffic jam?” Batman asked, indicating the crowded streets all around them. “It’ll be faster if we run there.”
They climbed out of the Batcopter, slid down the sides of the piled-up foam rubber on the truck and sprinted off. A cheer went up as the crowd thrilled to Batman and Robin in action, and the sea of people parted to let them through.
Weaving their way in and out of the crowds and the hopelessly jammed traffic, the Daring Duo raced toward the United World Building.
In the grotto beneath the United World Building, the pirate submarine now rested on the surface. Its conning tower and the deck were slightly awash.
Directly alongside the submarine was. a rocky section that constituted a natural dock. In the rear was an iron door that led into an abandoned construction elevator.
Suddenly the conning tower of the submarine flew open. The Riddler came out first, looking about warily to be sure there was no witness to the submarine’s presence there. He turned and assisted the Catwoman up onto the deck of the submarine. Hecate, her pet black cat, was perched on the Catwoman’s shoulder.
A moment later the Joker emerged, a tall, angularly lean man, who carried the Total Dehydrator equipment strapped to his back.
“Good,” the Joker said. “There’s the iron door. Just as the blueprints said it would be!”
“The door’s bolted,” the Riddler pointed out. “It may take a while to blast through.”
Catwoman turned to the black cat perched on her shoulder. “Hecate,” she commanded, “sniff out the weak spot!”
Hecate the cat arched her back, leaped down, and crossed directly to the iron door. She began to sniff about the sealed bottom of the door. Suddenly she paused and gave a low hiss. With a paw she struck at the lower right-hand section of the door.
“That’s where to plant your explosive!” Catwoman snapped her fingers, and Hecate returned and leaped nimbly back to place on her shoulder again.
The Riddler moved forward to plant a blob of explosive at the indicated place.
“Stand back,” he ordered.
The Joker and Catwoman found hiding places in a niche of the rock grotto. The Riddler lit the fuse to the plastic demolition charge and scampered swiftly to safety.
KER-BLOOOM!
The iron door fell crazily off its hinges to reveal an opening within and the wooden platform of an elevator.
“Are you sure that old elevator apparatus will work?” Catwoman asked nervously.
“Of course it will,” said the Joker. “It was in use during the construction of the United World Building.
Then they sealed it off—but never dismantled it. Get on the elevator! If the Penguin is on schedule, he should be entering the corridor of the United World Building at this very moment.”
The Penguin was on schedule.
But he was no longer wearing his Commander Redhead disguise. Instead he had donned his customary black frock coat, bow tie, and a rakish top hat. He smoked a cigarette in a jaunty cigarette holder and carried a rolled umbrella under one arm.
In this regalia, known all over the world, he entered the United World building and sauntered past the astonished guards.
“Isn’t that the…?” one guard began.
“It couldn’t be! He wouldn’t have the nerve to come here. But we’d better keep an eye on him, just the same.” The Penguin went directly down the short hallway that led to the room where the Security Council met. The door was closed and a sign was posted: SECURITY COUNCIL IN SECRET SESSION. NO ADMITTANCE.
The Penguin had almost reached the door when the two guards caught up with him.
“Hey!” one guard called. “Can’t you read? That sign says nobody can go in.”
“Isn’t it a fine day?” the Penguin asked.
The second guard put his hands on his hips. “What?”
“Or do you think it looks like rain? Egad, I do believe you may be right,” the Penguin said as he snapped open his umbrella, spun it about in his hands, and tossed it away from him.
Oddly enough the umbrella kept spinning and gave off a trail of vapor. The two guards stared at it, and without a sound, fell unconscious.
The spinning umbrella moved on, spinning through the air down the corridor and leaving a vapor trail behind.
The Penguin slipped on a small inhalator mask and followed the umbrella.
As the umbrella reached the main corridor, the vapor it gave off increased in volume. One by one, every person in the lobby toppled over, unconscious. The Penguin waddled swiftly among their fallen bodies.
He hurried down a corridor to a blank wall. Then he took out another umbrella, switched it on, and using the tip as an acetylene torch, cut through a section of wall big enough to be a door.
“All right!” he said then to the wall. “Push it out from inside!”
Obediently the wall fell outward—to collapse in crumbling plaster and dust in the corridor.
Inside the opening were the Riddler, the Catwoman, and the Joker, standing on the wooden platform of the elevator in the abandoned shaft.
The Penguin bowed. “We meet as planned.”
“Right on time, Penguin,” the Catwoman said. “I congratulate you.”
“Yo-ho-ho,” the Joker said. “Forward with our dementedly daring plan!”
The Penguin led his colleagues in crime back up the hallway.
“Hold your breath as you cross this area,” he warned. “There may still be lingering traces of my fine-filtered Penguin Knockout Gas!”
They went carefully through the main corridor, picking their way across fallen bodies of guards and spectators.
“They’ll be unconscious for hours,” the Penguin said. “None of the gas got into the Security Council room, though. That room is directly ahead of us and the members are in secret session. Are you ready with the Total Dehydrator, Joker?”
“Ready for action!” said the Joker.
At the door of the Security Council room, the Riddler took a small key from a pocket of his costume and inserted it into the lock. A quick twist, and the lock yielded to his expert manipulation.
He flung open the door.
Inside the room nine members of the Security Council were gathered about a long curving desk. They were quarreling heatedly with each other. One delegate was banging his shoe on the desk to get attention away from the speaker at the microphone. Another was haranguing a neighbor delegate, holding on to his lapel and shouting into his face. Two others were entwined in what appeared to be some sort of wrestling match. The Indian delegate, red-faced with anger under his turban, was clamoring to the chairman for attention.
All of this was taking place in nine separate languages—and the sum total was incoherence just this side of the Tower of Babel.
“Dear me,” said the Penguin, regarding the scene through his monocle. “Our poor United World…in microcosm….A mockery, is it not, my dear Joker? Do show them the humor of it.”
The Joker unstrapped the Total Dehydrator from his back and aimed the projector toward the delegates at the table.
“I’m afraid they will find our humor very, very DRY,” he said.
As the Joker pulled the trigger, the muzzle of the Total Dehydrator projector shot out concentric multicolored rings of wave energy. The rings widened as they moved swiftly across the room toward the bickering delegates at the council table.
The polylingual babble of voices rose rapidly in pitch to a sound like that of an ambulance siren, rose further still to the shrill sound of a policeman’s whistle, rose higher yet to the pipsqueak yipping of a pack of tiny poodles in a kennel.
Then abruptly ceased.
Where each delegate of the Security Council had been there no
w was a little mound of dust.
Nothing more.
CHAPTER 13
Each of the mounds was of a different size and of a different color, matching their human prototypes.
Some were yellow.
Some were black.
Some were white.
There was one reddish-brown mound, with a streak of white in it, which represented the remains of the brown-skinned Indian delegate who had been red-faced with anger and had been wearing an immaculate white turban and gown.
The Catwoman moved first. She went to the council table. From inside her bodice she produced nine small vials.
“All right, my criminal comrades,” she said. “Quickly, now. Each one in a separate vial.” The Catwoman snickered. “And, boys…let’s not anybody SNEEZE!”
Batman and Robin raced up the steps to the entrance to the United World Building.
“Holy Marathon!” gasped Robin. “I’m getting a stitch.” “Let’s hope it’s a stitch in time,” Batman answered.
“A stitch in time that will save nine…the nine members of the United World Security Council!”
They plunged in through the main entrance and up to the reception desk.
“Emergency!” Batman shouted. “Seal this building.” Robin indicated the unconscious figure of the receptionist slumped below the desk.
“We’re too late, Batman!”
Batman whirled toward the main lobby beyond the archway. He saw the slumped guards and spectators.
“It looks like the work of the Penguin.” He sniffed. “It even smells like the work of the Penguin. That’s a trace of his fine-filtered knockout gas in the air, I have no doubt.”
“What shall we do?”
“The first thing to do is turn on the ventilating system.”
Batman started for the control box that regulated the ventilation in the building. But he came to an abrupt halt. “What’s the matter?” Robin asked.
“I had another thought, Robin. If we turn on the ventilating system now, we might unwittingly cause an international catastrophe.”
“Golly, you’re right! The Security Council may have been dehydrated. In that case, the ventilation would blow their dust around. And no one could ever put them together again.”
Batman shuddered. “What a terrible thought! The Supercriminals we’re after may still be in the building, Robin. Come on! To the Security Council room!”
The Dynamic Duo erupted into the Security Council room, but the long curved desk at which the nine delegates usually sat was empty. Huge double doors at the side of the room were open.
“They must have gone through there, Robin. Hurry!”
Batman and Robin vaulted the curving table, and ran out through the open doors.
At the end of the corridor, heading to the abandoned elevator, they saw the four Supercriminals. “Surrender, you criminals!”
The four Supercriminals halted in a frozen instant of surprise as the familiar—all too familiar—voice rang out. “That does sound like Batman, doesn’t it?” the Riddler asked.
“The United Underworld is through!” Robin shouted.
“And that sounds like Robin,” said the Joker. “But it can’t be, because they’re dead.”
“By the sainted dodo,” cried the Penguin, looking around. “They’re alive!”
The Penguin swung up his umbrella but Robin knocked it flying from his hand. The Joker tried to aim the projector nozzle of his Total Dehydrator. Batman grabbed the end of it and wrapped it around the Joker’s throat.
Then he gave him an uppercut to the jaw that sent the Clown of Crime tumbling head over heels.
The Riddler caught Robin off-guard and a blow sent him careening to the floor.
“Confound you,” the Riddler said. “What does it take to kill the two of you? I saw that missile shoot you down in flames!”
The Riddler didn’t wait for an answer. He started for the elevator, but Robin caught hold of his ankle and held on.
Just long enough for Batman to catch up, drive one fist into the Riddler’s stomach and the other to the point of his jaw.
The Riddler collapsed like a rag doll.
Catwoman hissed; “I think you’d better let us go, Batman.”
“Why should I?” Batman demanded as he began to close in on her.
“Because if you don’t, Miss Kitka dies!”
Batman, in the act of striding forward, suddenly stopped. His body became rigid with indecision.
“What? You feline fiend, what are you saying?”
“Simply this, Batman! We left Miss Kitka under guard. Our instructions to the guard are that if we fail to return within the hour, Miss Kitka is to be put to death. Do you want an innocent girl’s death on your conscience, Batman?”
Batman’s corded neck muscles reflected his inner tension. Robin touched his arm.
“Batman, it’s up to you to decide…but remember…the Security Council, our only hope for the peace of the world…gone.”
Robin felt the muscles of Batman’s arm contract as he reached a terrible decision.
“You’re right, Robin,” he whispered.
Before he could move, however, the Penguin recovered consciousness. Quick as a flash, the Penguin whipped out an umbrella from his frock coat, aimed, and fired.
“Down, Robin. Quickly!” Batman yelled.
He grabbed the Boy Wonder and hurled himself and Robin across the hall. A coned white glare from the Penguin’s umbrella narrowly missed them. It struck the wall beyond. The wall glowed red, then yellow, and began to dissolve in streaming rivulets of plaster and concrete.
“Holy Fahrenheit!” Robin said. “What was that?”
“A deadly laser beam,” Batman said. “The Penguin is really playing for keeps. But that umbrella has shot its bolt. Let’s get him before he can use another!”
Batman and Robin got quickly to their feet and charged. But the delay enabled the Supercriminals to scramble into the elevator. It swiftly began to descend. “Let’s jump after them!” Robin said.
“That’s what they’re expecting, Robin! The Penguin probably has one of his deadly umbrellas aimed right at the elevator opening. Not to mention the Joker’s Total Dehydrator. And whatever weapons the Riddler and the Catwoman have ready for us. We’d be sitting ducks for the deadliest arsenal of superweapons in the entire history of crime.”
“They mustn’t escape, Batman! We can’t let them succeed with their infernally clever plan to abduct the nine members of the Security Council!”
“I don’t intend to let them succeed, Robin. But it won’t help anyone if we do battle on their terms—and lose our own lives. I have a better plan. We’ll follow them—and strike when they don’t expect us.”
“Where does this elevator go?”
“Downstairs, obviously,” Batman replied. “And to an abandoned submarine dock along the river.”
“Holy Captain Nemo,” Robin said. “The submarine! You’re right, Batman. They’ll head for the sea via Short Island Sound.”
Batman’s voice rang like cold steel. “That’s where we’ll cut them off, Robin. It’s our last chance. And heaven help the world if we fail!”
The pirate submarine glided smoothly over the sandbar at the entrance to the underwater grotto below the United World Building.
In the submarine command room, the Penguin folded up the projecting bars of the periscope.
“Down periscope,” he said. “We’re out of the grotto and into Short Island Sound. Won’t be long now before we’re safe at sea. Mr. Bluebeard…all engines full ahead!”
“Yo-ho,” Bluebeard replied. “Full ahead!”
The Penguin returned to his criminal comrades at the chart table. The Catwoman had lined up the nine little corked tubes in a rack. Each tube contained a quantity of different-colored dust.
“What a purrfectly delightful haul,” said the Catwoman.
The Penguin said, “We’ve done it, my hearties. Pulled off the biggest crime in the history of crimedom. Righ
t under the noses of Batman and Robin!”
The Joker straightened out the sharply pointed collar ends of his startlingly green shirt.
“We’ve proved that the forces of law and order—represented by Batman and Robin—are no match for the forces of lawlessness and crime, when we stick together.”
The Riddler cackled. “Nine little tubes of dust are going to make us the richest people in the world. We’ll have money enough to do anything we want, power enough to RULE THE WORLD!”
“What are we waiting for?” the Penguin asked. “Mr. Riddler, kindly prepare the nine ransom messages to be broadcast over radio.”
“Right,” said the Riddler.
As he started off, the Joker tapped his shoulder.
“And none of your stupid riddles, understand?” the Joker warned. “Make those messages plain.”
“Our terms are simple,” said the Catwoman. “One billion dollars each from each country…to be delivered to our secret island by the horde of trained carrier pigeons which we will provide.”
“Simple,” agreed the Penguin, “yet dazzlingly brilliant. The carrier pigeons are a master touch—the inspired scheme of the world’s greatest birdman…Me!”
Catwoman shook her head in amused annoyance.
The Joker repeated: “No whimsical embellishments, Riddler. Remember that. Make the message clear.”
“Spoilsport,” muttered the Riddler as he went off to complete his task.
The Catwoman sat back, and stretched the languorous length of her beautiful figure. She gave a luxurious sigh.
“It’s like a dream,” she said. “Nothing—absolutely nothing—can stop us now.”
Bluebeard, who was keeping guard at the sonar equipment, looked up suddenly.
“Sonar contact,” he announced.
The Riddler turned from the writing table.
“Where?”
“Range eight thousand, bearing one-eight-one.”
The Penguin marked the position on his map. “It’s right at the mouth of Short Island Sound, before it opens out to the sea. And it seems to be heading across the Sound in our direction.”
“Let’s get a further reading, Mr. Bluebeard,” said the Joker.
Bluebeard held the headphones tighter to his ears.