Justice League of America - Batman: The Stone King by Alan Grant (best english novels to read .txt) 📗

job, and so began his abrupt slide into poverty and obscurity. Crane didn't bother too much about lack of recognition, but he badly needed money for buying his life's obsession: books.

He turned to crime, adopting the sinister imagery of the Scarecrow. Birds had frightened him; scarecrows frightened birds. Now Jonathan Crane–alias the Scarecrow–would frighten everybody. Fear became his stock-in-trade.

His scientific genius allowed him to concoct a range of gases that could inflict fear, or terror, or dread, on anyone who absorbed them. As his ambitions grew, he experimented with gases that caused fear of specific things. Scarecrow loved to watch an arachnaphobe, for instance, imagining he was covered in revolting spiders. Or a claustrophobe believing he was entombed alive in his coffin.

"Scarecrow," Batman said pointedly, "I'm here for two reasons. First, to verify that you are here, and not some ringer while the real Scarecrow goes on a rampage."

"I'll have you know, sir," Scarecrow said haughtily, "that I would personally deal with any such imposter! There is but one of me."

"Relax. I've heard more than enough to know it's you." He paused, knowing how strange his next words would sound. "Secondly, I want to ask you a favor."

In the pale light Batman watched as the hood's rough-stitched mouth widened in a grin.

"And what, precisely, would you want from me?"

"A recipe," Batman said curtly. "For one of your fear gases."

Scarecrow stamped his straw-filled boot petulantly on the floor of his cell. "Oh, yes," he drawled sarcastically, "I do have a certain reputation as an altruist to maintain. I mean, I always bestow favors on lunatics who have me locked away!"

"I'll give you something in return," Batman offered.

Scarecrow didn't react.

Batman tried again. "I'll give you a book. A first edition."

The Dark Knight knew his enemy well. If there was one thing Scarecrow cared for with a passion that defied explanation, it was books. In secret stores and warehouses throughout the city, the Master of Fear had a collection of millions that he had bought or stolen over the years. It was his ambition to own every book in the world, from those written in ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs to the latest bestseller.

Beneath his grotesque hood, Scarecrow's eyes lit up. "A first edition?" he repeated, savoring each word. He drummed his fingertips lightly against his sack-covered mouth. "By whom? Shakespeare, perhaps? Marlowe? Spenser?" His voice turned disdainful. "Or are we talking Agatha Christie and Jackie Collins?"

"We're talking Universe," Batman said softly. "Scudder Klyce's Universe."

Scarecrow sneered. "A work of genius, yes. But valuable? I'm certain I can purchase a copy for only a modest fee."

"The author's personal copy?" Batman asked, "In mint condition, with handwritten margin notes, and a previously unpublished addendum?"

Suddenly, Scarecrow's hands shot up to grasp the cold metal bars. "Do you jest with me, sir?" he cried theatrically, genuine anguish in his voice. "Is this another of your fiendish schemes to torture a poor man incarcerated against his will?"

Klyce's Universe was one of the most peculiar of all American books. Published privately in the early twentieth century, it was an idiosyncratic and highly original interpretation of existence, a "verifiable solution of the Riddle of the Universe," as Klyce himself put it. Only a thousand copies had ever been printed, and most of them had disappeared from view.

But the author's own copy was a rarity of great distinction.

"I would give much to possess this book," Scarecrow said piously. "My services for, say, the coming year? Or a blank check drawn on an offshore account in the Windward Islands?"

"Nothing so expensive," Batman assured him. "A recipe will be enough. For a very special fear gas."

Scarecrow visibly swelled with pride. "Name your terror, my man!"

"Just one thing–" Batman's voice dropped an octave. His eyes were dangerous slits, and the self-styled Master of Fear had to suppress a distinct shudder at the menace the vigilante projected. "Double-cross me, and I will ensure you stay in Arkham for the rest of your life."

He paused to let the words sink in, then added, "The hospital wing."

Scarecrow raised both hands, palms facing out, in a gesture of compliance. "My word, sir," he protested, "is my bond!"

Somewhere a dog was howling at the moon, as Batman swung again into the trees and out of the asylum grounds. He vaulted down onto the grass verge and, keeping to shadows, ran toward the nearest buildings, half a mile away.

Once there, he would disappear among the rooftops. When dawn came, and it was time to retire to the Batcave, one of the many Batmobiles hidden around the city would be his transport.

Bruce Wayne had found the old book in the cavernous attic of the Manor, still wrapped in heavy, ornate paper, a Christmas gift to his great-great-grandfather, possibly from Klyce himself. But the old man had died on Christmas Eve, and there would be no celebration in the Wayne household that year. Since then the book had waited in its dusty home.

It was a high price to pay to a criminal, Batman knew. But the formula Scarecrow had given him might prove invaluable. An insurance policy against . . . he didn't know what.

He would be busy in the Batcave labs tonight.

CHAPTER 7

Witches' Night

Gotham City, October 28

Cassandra had scarcely slept for forty-eight hours.

Every time she closed her eyes, she saw the broken, lifeless body of Raymond Marcus. On its own that would have been bad enough, but looming over the dead man, a symbol of murder and destruction, was the bull-headed beast she'd seen in her tarot vision.

Real fear gnawed away at her. She knew in her bones that her vision meant something. It hadn't just been a warning for the tragic Marcus. Cassandra couldn't explain it, not rationally and logically, because card reading, palmistry, and the other fortune-telling arts she practiced weren't rational themselves. They depended on the brain's right hemisphere, the pattern seeker, the home of the unconscious.

Cassandra just knew, in a way she didn't understand and was afraid to analyze, in case picking her empathic gift to