Batman (17 page)

Door number five opened into a long, curving hallway, lit with the now-familiar question marks all the way to the end. There, instead of hitting a stairwell or doorway, the hall started spiraling downward in a curve that got tighter and tighter until it turned into a chute.

Robin stopped at the point where the tunnel was barely four feet wide, and the floor sloped so steeply that he had to lean against a wall and keep his center of gravity low to avoid sliding forward. He could see light coming up from below, but there was no noise. Bracing himself against both walls, he leaned out over the chute.

There was a room, warmly lit and carpeted with what looked like an expensive patterned rug. The floor underneath it was polished wood. Leaning a little further out to shift his angle of view, Robin saw a mirror hanging on a wall that was covered in fleur-de-lis wallpaper. After the concrete and steel of the past few hours, the room was mighty easy on the eyes.

Curious, he leaned back and let himself slide the rest of the way down. When he landed on the rug he dropped into a crouch, and heard clinking from nearby, simultaneous with his impact. He pulled out his bō staff and turned in a complete circle, ready for an opponent even though he didn’t think the Riddler was especially interested in seeing him fight.

Looking up through the circular hole in the ceiling, he could see the tight spiral of the chute. It hadn’t changed on his entry, and the hole hadn’t closed. That might mean that he’d have to figure out some way to climb back up there, once he had passed whatever test this room held.

Returning his attention to the room around him, he saw that the clinking had come from an oak table that took up the middle of the room, which must have shook when he’d landed. He had a sinking feeling he knew what was in store.

The table was set for tea.

Steam curled from the spout of a fine china teapot. Next to that was a loaf of fresh bread with three slices already cut. The bread knife lay on a serving plate next to the loaf. A butter dish with a spreading knife sat between the teapot and the bread, and sticking out from under the bread plate was an envelope.

Robin approached the table and looked it over. Nothing appeared out of the ordinary, within the context of a Victorian-style tea setting in a chamber carved out of the bedrock beneath Arkham City. On the envelope was a picture of a bird. He looked more closely.

It was a robin.

The envelope was made of good paper, heavy and textured in his hands. It was sealed with wax, and pressed into the wax was a question mark. Robin broke the seal and unfolded the letter within.

I wouldn’t want you to weaken too soon!

Nothing like a refreshing tea to energize and focus one’s thoughts. Shake off the chill (or no, silly me! you must have warmed up already!), have a little snack, take a moment to relax…

But not too long.

Time is of the essence!

The Riddler was offering him a snack.
Cute
, Robin thought. He could only imagine what kind of weird hallucinogens or toxins the food might contain. He was thirsty, though—he didn’t want tea, but even after nearly drowning, he craved a drink of water. Being nearly roasted had that effect on a person.

The chute spiraling down into the room made more sense now, as well—it must have been meant to evoke the rabbit hole. As much as he wanted to, however, he didn’t touch anything. More than likely, that was the first test in the room.

Eat me
, he mused.
Drink me.
Should he? Did he have to eat and drink to move through? What would happen if he did? How did this relate to what the Riddler wanted Batman to do up on the surface? The tea set seemed like an obvious nod to
Alice in Wonderland
, which in turn meant the Riddler was involved with yet another member of their criminal rogues’ gallery. Robin knew the book—Batman had made it an essential part of his training, but he didn’t have it memorized.

He could easily be missing something. Robin tried to remember the details. Alice grew at one point, shrunk at another… there was a rabbit with a clock, and the Red Queen cutting off everyone’s heads…

Damn!
He shook his head in frustration. He wasn’t seeing whatever it was he was supposed to see. Irritated with himself, he reopened the comm link to Batman.

“I’m through door number five, and if you could see this room you’d think I was time-traveling, too,” he said. “Victorian all the way, right down to the tea set and fancy wallpaper.”

“The Mad Hatter,”
Batman said without hesitation.

“Right,” Robin agreed, although he hadn’t yet seen any sign of the man. “But that’s too easy, isn’t it? It took some effort to connect the dots with Killer Croc and Mr. Freeze. This seems like a no-brainer.”

“Good point. So what else do you see? Face one wall and start describing. Give me everything. If I’m going to need to find the Mad Hatter, I need to arrive with more than a bunch of pithy quotes from the book.”

“Okay, give me a second.” Robin turned away from the table, and looked at the back wall. “There’s wallpaper—a pattern of green fleurs-de-lis on a gold background. A fancy sideboard with candlesticks and an empty serving bowl. This is the wall closest to the chute I dropped through. There’s a rectangular framed mirror on the wall, with gold leaf on the frame.” He stepped to the side. “It’s warped, like a funhouse mirror.”

“Anything else?”

“No, I’m turning now. This wall is all paneling, some kind of dark-stained wood. There’s a picture rail about eight inches from the top of the wall, and a baseboard at the bottom. The paneling looks like it might be pine, if that matters.”

“Everything might matter.”

“There’s no art or furniture on this wall except an overstuffed chair in the corner. The chair is upholstered in a dark green paisley.” Robin looked closer. “Scratch that. It’s not paisley. It’s a pattern of interlocking question marks. That’s all for this wall.”

“Turn again,”
Batman said. Robin did, so that he was looking across the table to the far wall.

“The wall is papered, with the same pattern. Fleurs-de-lis. Two sconces with lit candles in them. No art or pictures. There’s a… what do you call those couches that only have one arm?”

“A chaise longue?”

“Something like that. Close enough. A chaise longue. It matches the chair in the other corner. In the middle of the room there’s a pedestal round table, about sixty inches in diameter, with six chairs. The tablecloth is white, probably linen? There’s a teapot with hot tea on the table and a plate of fresh bread and butter next to it. There was a note for me on the table.” Robin read it to Batman and then added, “There are a lot more cups at the table than there are chairs.”

“That fits in with the story,”
Batman said.
“When Alice has tea with the Dormouse and the rest of them, doesn’t she say the table is set for more people than there are?”

“You tell me,” Robin said, even though it sounded right. “You know the book better than I do.” He turned so that he was standing with the table at his left. “Last wall. More wallpaper. A picture of a caterpillar and a butterfly—realistic, not like the illustrations in the book. Some kind of daguerreotype of a family, five people, each wearing a suit coat with question marks all over it just like the Riddler. And a grandfather clock.”

“The caterpillar is from Lewis Carroll. It smokes a hookah. Butterfly… is there a butterfly in
Alice in Wonderland
?”

“I don’t remember. But caterpillars turn into butterflies. Might be some kind of clue.”

“Hmm,”
Batman said.
“What time does the clock say?”

“Four forty-four,” Robin said. “There’s a manufacturer’s logo in place of the six on the clock face. Hroll Gem, and a serial number.”

“Hroll Gem,”
Batman repeated.
“No ‘and company’ or any other business identification?”

“Nope,” Robin said. “That’s it.”

“The answer is there somewhere,”
Batman said.
“I’ve never heard the surname Hroll, but it’s not uncommon for gem merchants and jewelers to be in the clock business. You’re the one seeing the room. How does it all fit together? If this chamber follows the pattern of the others, we’re counting down toward a threat to your life.”

“Yeah, I’m curious about when we get to that part myself,” Robin said. “And how do we use this information to find the Mad Hatter?”

“Lewis Carroll loved math puzzles…”
Batman said, and something about fours and twelve, or four times four times four being sixty-four; but Robin was distracted by a piece of paper that fluttered down from the ceiling into his field of vision. He picked it up and saw two words.

EAT ME.

Then part of the blank paneled wall recessed, with a grating sound, causing him to turn and freeze in place, still gripping the bō. The size of a doorway, the opening exposed a hidden room large enough for a block of wood, a blond woman resting her head on it, facing away… and another figure standing over her dressed in the unmistakable costume of Lewis Carroll’s Red Queen.

“Hi there!”

No.

Yes. It was Harley Quinn dressed as the Red Queen. Her normal jester’s motley was modified into a bodysuit covered in hearts—except that all of them were anatomically correct, and the costume looked like it was soaked with real blood.
So there’s the queen
, Robin thought. That left only the king, unless the Riddler was going to fill the chessboard with pawns.

“Off with her heeaaaadd!” Harley Quinn squealed, making up in volume what she lacked in gravitas. To further scramble the air of menace with her bobby-soxer schtick, she tossed her pigtails back and kicked a heel up in the air, looking much like a World War II-era pinup.

The woman with her head on the block of wood turned it toward Robin, and he recognized the reporter Vicki Vale. Her hands were bound behind her back with zip ties, and one of Harley Quinn’s feet rested across her legs just below the knees.

“Robin,”
Batman said.
“Who is that?”

“You were right. There’s more to it. Gotta go,” Robin said. “I’ll catch you up in a minute.”

He killed the comm link.

with Jack Ryder

GNN CABLE NEWS NETWORK

Batman heard the soft click as Robin ended the call. A woman had been shouting in the background, and the voice grated on him like a thousand fingernails dragging across a chalkboard—it sounded like Harley Quinn, and that couldn’t be good.