The Further Adventures of Batman (40 page)

Kurtz sighed. “I was hoping you’d be honest with me. Instead you insult my intelligence with this transparent fabrication.”

“I wanted to see Alexander Kurtz, ‘master hypnotist’ in person. It’s no lie. I’ve never seen you before. I’ve never witnessed a performance.”

Kurtz eyes grew bright. “I haven’t performed publicly in years. You want me to give a demonstration of my powers?”

“Yes, Sir. That’s just what I need for my story. May I stand up now?”

“Remain where you are!” Kurtz’s finger curled around the trigger.

“Whatever you say.”

“You don’t want to get up, Dick. You want to sit in the closet. You feel more comfortable where you are, don’t you?”

“No, Sir.”

“But it’s getting more and more comfortable. Your muscles are relaxing. Actually, you’re not sitting on a wooden floor, but on a velvet carpet. Feel how thick and soft it is.”

He’s trying to hypnotize me,
Dick realized.
Don’t look into his eyes.

“Look at me Dick.”

Dick averted his eyes.

Kurtz jammed the rifle under Dick’s nose. “Look at me, Dick!”

From his position, Dick couldn’t risk knocking the rifle aside. It would explode at the slightest touch. He obeyed Kurtz’s command.

“That’s better. It’s restful sitting on a velvet carpet,” Kurtz droned. “You feel relaxed. Your tension is draining away. You’re getting sleepy.”

Dick’s eyelids felt heavy. He caught himself and sat up straight, shaking off his growing drowsiness. Struggling to break Kurtz’s grip on him, he silently recited a poem. But Kurtz’s velvet smooth voice seemed to invade Dick’s thoughts.

“You cannot fight me. Do not try to resist. You want to sleep. You feel drowsier and drowsier. Your eyelids are heavy. You cannot keep them open. Let your eyes close, Dick. You’ll feel much better.”

Kurtz’s face swam before him in a mist, his eyes two beacons of light.
No, don’t go to sleep
part of his mind whispered insistently.
Don’t listen to him. Get up! Stand up!
Dick began to rise on wobbly legs, swaying back and forth.

“Sit down!” Kurtz commanded. “You’re still fighting me. Sit down, I say!”

Dick inched forward on his feet. His hand touched something smooth and metallic. The rifle! Suddenly alert, his thoughts raced. “Get back!” he shouted, brandishing the rifle. “I don’t want to use this.”

Kurtz burst into laughter. “What a sight you make standing there with an empty gun.”

“What makes you think it’s empty?”

“Young man, it was empty when I placed it there a week ago.” He raised his own rifle level with Dick’s eyes.

“How do you know I didn’t load it? See those cartridge boxes at the back of the closet?”

Kurtz’s eyes narrowed. “You’re bluffing.”

“I had plenty of time to load the rifle while you were inspecting the other rooms.”

Kurtz glared balefully at Dick. “Even if it’s loaded, the moment you touch the trigger, I’ll blast you. You don’t have a chance against a marksman.”

“Don’t underestimate me,” Dick said. He had no desire to fire the gun if it could be avoided.

Kurtz laughed derisively.

“There’s no need for violence,” Dick said. “I’ll just walk out of the house and we’ll forget the entire incident.”

“Let you go unpunished for your brazen invasion of my house?”

“I explained my presence here, Mr. Kurtz. What more can I say?”

“You can say your prayers before you meet your maker.”

Dick lunged for Kurtz’s rifle, but felt his own slipping from his grasp.

“Ha!” Kurtz laughed triumphantly. “I’ve got you now.”

Grasping the clothing rod, Dick swung his legs out, kicking with both feet. Kurtz stumbled back, but managed to steady himself. As Dick’s fingers curled around the rod, it began to turn. To his surprise, the back wall of the closet slid to one side, creating an opening a little more than a foot wide.

A secret panel!
Dick leaped headlong through the opening, as Kurtz snatched at him. Dick discovered a catch at the side of the panel. As he pressed it, the panel slid closed with a
whoosh.
Thinking swiftly, he removed his belt and jammed it into the space where the panel slid, preventing Kurtz from opening it.

Kurtz pounded on the panel, frustrated and enraged. “You won’t get away!” he cried. “I’ll get you!”

IV

As Kurtz pounded insanely on the back of the closet, Dick proceeded down a narrow, dark passageway. He felt his way carefully along the walls. Their texture had the coarseness of rough stones. Suddenly his right foot stepped out into space and he began to topple forward. With a gasp, he flung his hands outward, grasping at air. His arms struck an overhead arch that hurled him backward. He stood suspended on the brink of an unseen abyss, struggling to regain his footing. Clinging to the walls for support, he slowly recovered his balance. Then, cautiously, an inch at a time, he drew back into the safety of the passage.

Exhaling a long breath, Dick wiped sweat from his brow. It had been a close call. He felt as if he’d just stepped back from the brink of eternity. But he couldn’t just stand there forever. He had the abyss in front of him, an armed Kurtz behind him.

Digging into his pocket for a coin, Dick tossed it into the void. It gave a
clunk
, and then a second
clunk,
as if rolling down a flight of stairs. The coin continued to echo down the abyss before it fell silent.

It must be a stairway. Dick pawed the ground with his shoe, feeling for the edge. He lowered one foot slowly and carefully. It came to rest on a step. He lowered the other foot and descended the stairs, haltingly, one at a time.

It seemed an hour before he reached the bottom. His shirt was soaked with perspiration. It felt good to plant his feet on solid ground again, but he still had no idea where he was. A dark labyrinth stretched before him, wrapped in silence and dust.

He continued forward, groping blindly through the passageway, his footsteps making a dull patter on the stone floor. As Dick turned a corner, he noticed a faint light flicker in the distance. The passage must lead to a secret chamber. Creeping catlike, on the balls of his feet, he drew steadily closer. The passage widened into a dimly lit cavern. He found himself in a large, shadowy vault lit by an oil lamp. A heavy mixture of smoke and stagnant air filled the chamber.

Suddenly, with a creeping of his flesh, he saw something that made him reel backward with horror. It was a long coffinlike box with a round opening at one end. A women’s head protruded through the opening, her hair hanging down in disarray. Dick drew a fist to his mouth. A heavy blade bisected the box in two. The woman’s body had been severed in half.

Dick advanced closer—and drew a long sign of relief. He discovered that the woman was only a plaster dummy, lifelike in every detail. Dick realized that the “coffin” was a trick box used by magicians to saw a woman in two. He gazed about the chamber, his eyes lighting on other tools of the magician’s trade. Caked with dust, they had laid unused for years. Yet Kurtz must come down occasionally, if only to replace the oil in the lamp.

As Dick crossed the chamber, it narrowed to a dark tunnel. He entered it with a sense of foreboding. He felt hemmed in, the walls closing around him. But he saw a light at the other end, and he inched his way forward. He was halfway through the tunnel when he heard a loud clang behind him. Whirling around, he saw a heavy steel grate slide down over the entrance, blocking his path of retreat. Kurtz was trying to trap him inside the tunnel. Dick raced toward the light at the other end and bounded through the opening. Gazing about, he found himself in another chamber. Behind him a grate slid down, closing the tunnel.

Kurtz let me escape from the tunnel,
Dick reasoned.
He wants me inside this chamber. He knows exactly where I am.

Dick walked around the chamber. It was completely empty. The walls were rough-hewn. Casting about for an exit, he found two ducts resembling ventilator shafts. They were identical in every respect. If he entered either one, it would mean crawling on hands and knees. The alternative was to remain buried in the chamber. But which duct?

He drew a coin from his pocket and tossed it in the air.
Heads it’s left
,
tails right
. The coin came down heads.
Left it is then,
Dick decided, crawling into the narrow opening. It was a tight squeeze and slow going. Every foot of progress was an achievement. Dick thought of Alice falling through the hole in the ground, wondering where it would end. Of one thing he was certain; he would not end up in Wonderland—though Kurtz was as mad as the Mad Hatter. Kurtz could be toying with him, offering an avenue of escape, only to trap him alive in a narrow duct. Perhaps all his exertions were propelling him toward a dead end—a blank wall. Or he might be in a circular labyrinth without an exit. He would keep going around and around like a rat in a maze.

Dick came to two branches. Again he had to make a choice: left or right. A trickle of sweat rolled down his back. Without room to flip a coin, he decided to go right. After ten yards the tunnel widened and Dick had more room to maneuver. He heard a
swish
, and before he could react, an arm sprang out of the wall. It was long and hairy with an enormous fist. The fingers opened, clawlike, stretching toward him. Dick scurried back to safety. The fist continued opening and closing spasmodically. It couldn’t be a human arm, Dick realized. It must belong to an ape. A gorilla. The arm groped back into the tunnel, reaching for Dick as he scampered away. Then, to his surprise, the arm suddenly went limp and fell to the ground, its fingers rigidly locked. Cautiously Dick inched toward it. It appeared stiff and lifeless, like the limb of a dead tree. Dick bent over it. He noticed coils where there should have been muscles and tendons. It was a mechanical arm whose coils had broken loose from its shoulder mounting.

“Nice stunt, Mr. Kurtz,” Dick said out loud, wondering if Kurtz could hear him. “If you wanted to startle me, you succeeded. What next? King Kong?”

Dick took stock of his situation. Obviously, Kurtz had constructed a Chamber of Horrors, the kind seen at amusement parks. In fact, the whole building was a house of horror, consistent with Kurtz’s bizarre personality. The hunter in Kurtz had constructed a giant trap, a maze to enmesh interlopers. He could toy with them like a spider playing with a fly.

Then again, perhaps he also had plans to revive his career as the morbid host of a creepy fun house—a kind of Vincent Price-type character. This would flatter his show biz ego. At the same time, it would bring a financial return from his investment in a Chamber of Horrors. Maybe Kurtz was giving the entire operation a trial run, with Dick as the subject.

Kurtz might be operating a panel of controls in the house above. The other possibility was that Dick had unwittingly triggered switches as he worked his way through the tunnels. If this was the case, Kurtz had no precise idea of Dick’s location. The switches went off automatically in response to pressure. It was doubtful that Kurtz had installed photoelectric cells, his setup being too crude for sophisticated electronic equipment.

Dick continued inching forward through the duct. A strong breeze wafted toward him. It picked up in velocity, growing colder and colder as he advanced. The wind nipped at him with icy teeth, driving him back. But he saw a light at the end of the duct and pressed forward. He stepped out into a long, narrow room buffeted by polar gusts.
It must be a deep freeze
, Dick thought, his teeth chattering.

He started back toward the duct. He was within arm’s length of it when a gate came down, barring his return. He rubbed his hands and hopped up and down, trying to maintain his circulation. He could see his breath in long frozen plumes. Dick began to jog, searching for an exit. Was there any way out of this room?

Without warning, he bumped into something unspeakably grotesque: a towering snow monster with icy tentacles and a cavernous mouth. Roaring and frothing, it shook up and down, tentacles whirling.

As Dick danced out of its way, it pivoted and lumbered after him with gargantuan, plodding steps. Dick ran in frantic circles, unable to find an exit. He spied a rectangular shape outlined against the farthest wall. It was no higher than his knees. As he moved toward it, the monster reared up before him, tentacles flailing. Dick ducked, sidestepped, and dove for the wall. The rectangle turned out to be a hinged door that swung open from the bottom. Scrambling through the opening, Dick plunged down a narrow chute.

He couldn’t stifle a cry of “Help!” as he slid headfirst at dizzying speed. Unable to grab the smooth surface gliding past him, his efforts to check his rate of descent were futile.

He came to a sudden stop, his head colliding with something soft but solid like a pillow. He found himself in semidarkness, entangled with a cold sheetlike material. He thrashed about, unable to free himself. After tugging and wrestling for minutes, he managed to stand erect and pull the clinging material off him. Then he realized he was standing in a laundry bin! He had been fighting with a bed sheet after sliding down an ordinary laundry chute!

A rustling movement made him start. He ducked down, peering over the edge of the bin. Something was moving along the wall. It was too dim to distinguish clearly—but its hazy silhouette appeared human. Was it Kurtz waiting to pounce? Or some other monstrosity of his?

The figure moved again, close to the floor, flitting like a shadow.

I might as well break the ice,
Dick decided. “Who is it?” he called.

The figure halted momentarily, then disappeared behind a packing crate.

I’m a stationary target inside this laundry bin,
Dick thought,
A sitting duck.
He hoisted himself over the edge and vaulted down to the floor.

“Dick?” a voice called out.

“Bruce! Is that you?”

Batman stood up behind the crate.

“Bruce!” Dick exhaled a long breath. “How did you get in here?”

Batman stepped forward. “I read your note and decided to see how your investigative reporting was coming along. Are you all right?”