by Greg Cox
“Is that so?” Percy said. He was clearly displeased by the younger man’s intrusion, but was hardly in a position to protest.
“Billy, this is…” Lydia hesitated, uncertain how to proceed.
“There’s no need to introduce your esteemed companion,” Billy said. “All of Gotham knows the illustrious artist Percy Wright.” There was a sarcastic edge to his voice. “And of course, your good wife, who is justly celebrated for her social and philanthropic pursuits. I trust she is well?”
“Quite,” Percy said tersely.
Lydia searched for some way to defuse the awkward situation, since she could hardly pose as a visiting niece.
“Have you noticed the mural on the ceiling? Percy was kind enough to escort me to the Fair tonight, so that I might have the opportunity to behold my triplets.”
Following her gesture, Billy looked up, and his eyes went wide. For a moment, he seemed lost in rapt admiration, to a degree that Lydia found somewhat discomfiting.
“Billy?”
He snapped out of his trance. His eyes narrowed suspiciously as he turned toward Percy.
“Your work, sir?”
“Precisely,” Percy replied, taking his cue from her. “It seemed only fitting to accompany Miss Doyle to her first viewing of it.”
“That was most chivalrous of you, sir.” Billy said sourly. Lydia feared he was vexed at the thought of her posing thus for Percy.
“It was the least I could do,” Percy replied. “I could hardly allow the young lady to brave this teeming sea of humanity without an escort. Heaven knows what sort of ill-intentioned jackanapes she might encounter.”
Billy scowled. “Or lascivious old men, for that matter.”
Oh dear, Lydia thought, alarmed at the direction the encounter was taking. Another woman might savor the spectacle of rival suitors vying for her favors, but she felt otherwise. This could not possibly end well for any of them.
“Excuse me, Percy, but I believe we are expected elsewhere.” Grasping his arm, she turned him toward the nearest exit. He did not resist. “It was lovely running into you, Billy, but I’m afraid we must be going. Do enjoy the rest of the Fair.” She hurried Percy away before Billy could invite himself to join them. To her relief, he was not that forward. They left him standing in the rotunda with a stricken expression on his face, and Lydia felt a twinge of pity for him.
She disliked injuring anyone’s heart.
Percy was less forgiving. “That impertinent pup. The nerve of the man.”
“It’s a shame we ran into him,” she agreed, “but I suppose this proves what they say, that all the world is attending the Exposition.”
For fear of upsetting him further, she chose not to mention her suspicions that Billy might have followed her to the Fair. Percy fumed nonetheless.
“How is it you know that cad?”
“Just a sadly persistent admirer, no more.”
“Should I be jealous?”
“Not in the slightest,” she assured him. “Alas, matters being what they are, I can hardly inform anyone that I am already spoken for.” She smiled wryly. “An unfortunate drawback to being the other woman.”
“I suppose,” Percy said, acknowledging the delicacy of her position. “Would you like me to do something about him? For better or for worse, I have some acquaintances who might be prevailed upon to… discourage… him from pestering you any further.”
Lydia assumed he was referring to hired bodyguards or detectives. A man in Percy’s position would sometimes be forced to deal with such men, but she was appalled at the notion of sending a Pinkerton around to physically intimidate Billy—or worse.
“Oh, no, you mustn’t think of that,” she said quickly. “Billy is harmless. In time, he will surely transfer his affections to some other poor showgirl or model.”
“Are you quite certain of that?”
“Absolutely.” She squeezed his arm affectionately and attempted to make light of the topic. “In any event, this is all your fault after all.”
“How so?”
“Why, by displaying my charms all over Gotham, of course,” she replied. “How could any man be expected to resist?”
“‘My muse is a muse of fire,’” Barbara read aloud, “‘a deathless inferno that consumes my soul, as it will someday consume all of Gotham.’ Percy Wright, 1925.”
Her face appeared on the Batcave’s main monitor while various text files, photos, and scans from the flash drive occupied peripheral screens and windows. Joanna had encrypted her files, but this had posed little challenge to Oracle. The data security measures available to an ordinary grad student were child’s play compared to some of the codes they’d each cracked in the past. The Riddler would have laughed at the encryption—if he wasn’t currently locked away in Arkham Asylum.
“Joanna was—is quite the researcher,” Barbara said appreciatively. “She’s pulled together an impressive amount of material from a wide variety of primary sources, many of them obscure. She’s skilled at locating stuff that fell between the cracks.”
“Too much so, perhaps,” Bruce replied, “as far as the Owls are concerned.” For all he knew, the Talon had already captured her for the Court. Not for the first time, he wondered what had sent Joanna into hiding in the first place. If Joanna had disappeared before Professor Morse’s death, how had she discovered that the Owls were targeting her?
“You’d like her,” Bruce told Barbara.
“Can wait to meet her,” Barbara said, “if—”
“When,” Bruce insisted.
“Yes, of course. I didn’t mean—”
“You were saying something about material that fell between the cracks?” The files on the drive had been fragmentary. Dozens of notes and drafts and documents ranging from antique newspaper clippings to architectural drawings and blueprints. Joanna must have been constructing her thesis when danger emerged from the shadows, so her work consisted of bits and pieces that would require considerable effort to collate and review. A jigsaw puzzle in its own right.
“Take that quote I just read you,” Barbara replied, “about ‘a muse of fire.’ Joanna found that buried in the self-published memoir of one Basil Irvine, a now-forgotten patron of the arts and, apparently, an inveterate name-dropper. In his book—which was little read then and even less so now—he recounted a reception thrown for Percy Wright several years after Lydia’s disappearance, at which the guest of honor had too much to drink. According to Irvine, the great man started rambling and was swiftly hustled away by his friends and family, ‘lest he embarrass himself further.’ This anecdote never made it into the press of the time, or even Wright’s official biography. It only survives on a single page of Irvine’s obscure little tome. God knows how Joanna unearthed it.”
Bruce was impressed. Searching the files, he quickly located the excerpt in question, along with some of Joanna’s notes and annotations on the incident. Scattered pieces of data came together as he realized that this forgotten snippet of gossip formed one of the foundations of her thesis. What he read disturbed him.
“Not just a message,” he muttered under his breath.
Barbara peered at him over the top of her glasses. “What is it, then?”
“According to Claire Nesko, Joanna’s theory was that there was a message hidden in the figures of Lydia that Percy sculpted after her disappearance. From what I’m seeing here, however, Joanna believed it was more than a message. It was a prophecy, warning of an ‘inferno’ that would occur in Gotham’s future.”
“That seems like a leap,” Barbara said skeptically. “Sure, Wright was obsessed with her. Maybe a guilty conscience drove him to leave some sort of confession behind, but a prophecy of doom, hidden in some old statues? Sounds like a fable, not reality.”
“That’s what I thought about the Court of Owls,” Bruce reminded her. “Once upon a time.”
“Point taken.”
“Perhaps Percy knew something we don’t,” Batman said, following the thread. “S
omething from the past, that would bring about a disaster in the future.”
Barbara shrugged. “Or maybe he was just crazy.”
“That still doesn’t explain the Court’s involvement,” he said. “I doubt they would be this concerned about the feverish delusions of a long-dead artist. There has to be something more…” He stroked his chin, which needed a shave. “The Owls are always playing a long game, scheming through history. We can’t rule out the possibility that Percy was hinting at something ominous planted in Gotham’s past. Something in which he may have had a hand.”
“Now there’s a reassuring notion,” Barbara said wryly. “But speaking of ‘feverish,’ I’ve been digging through some info from early-twentieth-century Gotham, as you requested. A curious ‘coincidence’ turned up.”
“I don’t believe in coincidence,” he said.
“Then you’ll love this,” she continued. “It seems that not long after Lydia disappeared, a mysterious ‘fever’ broke out in the poorer parts of the city. According to the tabloids and yellow journalists, the victims of this plague literally burst into flames, although the authorities of the time dismissed the reports as ‘exaggerated.’ The ‘Burning Sickness’ actually drove the Lydia Doyle mystery off the front pages for a while, with the fever being blamed on everything from the ‘wrath of God’ to a secret plot by the Bolsheviks.”
“I’ve met the Wrath of God,” Bruce mused. “Killing innocents isn’t Corrigan’s style.” He studied the computer monitors as Barbara called up various tabloid articles for his inspection. As she’d said, the dates placed the outbreak in the weeks and months following Lydia Doyle’s disappearance. He recalled the coroner’s report that compared Morse’s spontaneous combustion to a fever originating in his overheated brain. “So what happened with this fever, back in Percy’s time?”
“From what I can tell,” Barbara said, “the authorities never determined the source of the outbreak, but it eventually burned out on its own, so to speak. That’s not the end of the story, though. Intrigued, I ran a search for other alleged instances of spontaneous combustion, and discovered that there have been intermittent episodes recorded throughout Gotham over the last century, ever since that first outbreak in 1918. None of the subsequent incidents claimed as many victims as the initial scare, but it appears as though the ‘Burning Sickness’ has been visiting Gotham on and off for the last hundred years.”
“Ever since Lydia vanished,” Bruce said grimly. A thread was forming here—or perhaps a smoking fuse. “Billy Draper claimed he burnt Lydia’s body after he killed her. Percy Wright allegedly planted clues warning of an ‘inferno’ awaiting Gotham. People are spontaneously combusting again, just as before, and, somehow, the Court of Owls is in the thick of it.” He tried to make sense of a pattern that was only just beginning to emerge.
They still hadn’t proved conclusively that the Owls were involved with Lydia’s disappearance back in 1918, but Bruce would have been willing to bet a good deal of his annual earnings on it. His gut told him they were on the right track.
“All those people burning alive, over all these years.” Barbara’s voice grew hushed as the implications of what they were learning sank in. “My God, Bruce, how big is this thing?”
“I don’t know… yet,” he said. “Bigger than I prefer to think about.” Like her, he was appalled to contemplate how many agonizing deaths, stretching across generations, might be laid at the feet of the Court—but that wasn’t the worst of it. What worried him now was how many more lives might go up in flames. Percy’s cryptic prophecy haunted him.
“A deathless inferno that consumes my soul, as it may someday consume all of Gotham.”
“Care for more champagne, Mister Wayne?”
“No, thank you. I’m good.”
A charity gala was underway at the historic Tilden Theater in uptown Gotham City, to raise money to preserve and restore the venerable old edifice, which was one of the oldest working stages in the city. Well-heeled men and women, dressed to impress, mingled in the theater’s elegant art deco lobby, where an open bar and tables of gourmet refreshments catered to the city’s elite. All had shelled out considerable sums for the privilege of attending the event.
Additional guests crowded the mezzanine as well as the sweeping staircase that led up to it, in anticipation of a special performance of Pygmalion that was scheduled to begin shortly. Everybody who was anybody in Gotham was present, which was just what Bruce was counting on.
Looks like I’ve come to the right place. Decked out in a tailored Italian suit, he took in the scene. His crystal champagne flute actually held ginger ale. Despite appearances, he was on the job and needed to keep his wits sharp.
Batman peered through Bruce’s eyes, intent on his mission.
A large ice sculpture dominated the refreshments table. It was modeled after the plaster bas-relief that adorned the ornate pediment about the theater’s front entrance, depicting the twin muses of Comedy and Tragedy. Melpomene, holding her frowning mask to her breast, posed beside her more light-hearted sister, Thalia, whose classically beautiful features were only partially hidden by her own grinning disguise.
The muses shared the face and form of Lydia Doyle.
A timely coincidence? he wondered, contemplating the frozen muses. Or simply more evidence of just how ubiquitous “Miss Gotham” had been in her heyday? Lydia was everywhere once you started looking for her. Was that what the Talon had meant when he’d alluded to a secret that had been hiding right in front of Batman all this time?
Small talk, punctuated by occasional laughter, filled the lobby, competing with a string quartet performing in the southwest corner of the chamber. The nouveaux riches mixed with old money, sizing each other up.
Turning away from the ice sculpture, Bruce made his way through the milling throng, skillfully deflecting greetings and invitations from the mayor, at least two members of the city council, several business contacts and would-be business contacts, a rising tech millionaire, an award-winning playwright, a theater critic, gossip columnists, and one bona fide movie sex symbol. He did so as deftly as Batman might evade a barrage of gunfire, politely brushing aside the overtures with practiced ease, while scanning the crowd for one particular face.
“Bruce! Bruce Wayne!”
Vincent Wright held court on the mezzanine, flanked by a pair of attractive young women, one blonde, the other brunette. The dapper heir to the Wright family fortune was roughly the same age as Bruce and swam in the same circles. A shaved skull served as a fashion statement, along with a neatly trimmed blond goatee. Shrewd blue eyes indicated that a life of privilege had not dulled his wits. His attire and grooming were impeccable.
“Hello, Vincent.”
The crowd parted to let Bruce join the group. Vincent came forward to greet him, flashing the whitest smile money could buy. Bruce wondered if he was aware that the ice sculpture below was inspired by his great-grandfather’s work.
If he was connected to the Court, probably.
“Great to see you, old man. How long has it been?” Vincent held out his hand. Bruce gripped it with something less than his full strength before letting go.
“Too long, I’m sure.”
“Without a doubt.” Wright placed an arm around each of his comely companions. “Have you met Judith?” he asked, indicating the blonde on his right. “And…”
His memory seemed to falter.
“Lisa,” the brunette supplied, an edge to her voice.
“Of course,” Vincent said, unabashed. “Glad you could make it, Bruce.”
“I almost skipped it,” he confessed. “What with this worrisome fever going around.”
“Fever?” If Vincent caught the reference, he gave no sign of it. His expression remained blandly affable.
“Didn’t you hear?” Bruce said. “A homeless fellow burst into flames down by the market the other day.” He made a point of applying hand sanitizer to his palms. “They say he literally burned up from the inside-out,
because of some kind of ghastly new fever.”
“Oh, right!” Judith chimed in. “That was on the news.” She shuddered at the thought. “As if this city wasn’t scary enough!”
“Tell me about it,” Lisa agreed, not to be left out. “I swear, it’s enough to give you nightmares.”
“Oh, please.” Vincent rolled his eyes. “Really, Bruce, I’m surprised at you falling for such alarmist nonsense. It’s surely just clickbait and ratings fodder. Chances are, the man was just a wino who accidentally set his booze-soaked rags on fire while trying to drink and smoke at the same time. Unfortunate, for sure, but hardly cause for a quarantine.”
His explanation elicited nervous laughter from the two women.
“I don’t know.” Bruce glanced around before lowering his voice conspiratorially. “My contacts at City Hall tell me this isn’t the only such incident that’s happened recently.” He tugged nervously at his collar. “What if we’re looking at an epidemic?” He had no intention of starting a panic so he leaned into his dilettante playboy persona. Painting Bruce Wayne as a hypochondriac was a small price to pay for trying to provoke a reaction from Wright.
“Are you serious?” Vincent scoffed. “This is Gotham. People come to bizarre ends all the time. At worst, this is merely the work of yet another flamboyant maniac like Mister Freeze or the Scarecrow. For better or for worse, a few colorful murders every now and then are the price we pay for living in one of the greatest cities in the world.”
“I wish I could believe that,” Bruce said, quite sincerely. “But an expert of my acquaintance informs me that outbreaks of spontaneous human combustion have occurred throughout Gotham’s history, for at least a century or so. They used to call it the ‘Burning Sickness,’ or so I’m told.”
“Really?” Lisa fished a small bottle of hand sanitizer from her purse. “Holy crap.”
“Here, let me have some of that.” Judith reached anxiously for the bottle.
