Batman #9

"The Four Fates" While a noted mystic is appearing on a radio program,4 gangsters burst in, steal a valuable gem from his turban; and shoot him to death. The mystic's dying words curse them with THE FOUR FATES. One will be struck down by lightning. One will have the air choked from his lungs. One will have his beating heart stilled by metal. The fourth will die due to water. The public nature of the robbery quickly has all four men identified---and they are traced to a basement flat. Batman's head is creased by a bullet and three escape while he is unconscious. The fourth, Mousey Meggs, accidentally steps on t he third rail during an elevated subway chase. One fate. Slick Dandy steals a plane from a private airport. When he spots The Batplane following him, he panics and bails out. His parachute snarls on overhead wires and he strangles to death. Fate two. Nails Logan keels over dead from an apparently ordinary Batman-punch to the chest. An old bullet left in his body t hat was too dangerous to remove had shifted position due to t he punch and caused his death. Fate three. Brains Brining has fled to the Arizona desert where there is NO water----but he forgot to bring drinking water with him. Stranded in the middle of nowhere, he dies of dehydration. Fate Four. Batman's detective mind assumes there is a logical explanation for everything. But he admits puzzlement on this. "The White Whale" An enormous white whale has been sinking ships--three so far, with great loss of life. Bruce Wayne is on the Board of Directors of the Marine Insurance Company t hat has been making such high payouts the company's future is in danger. Captain Burly is a sadistic, one-eyed brute who no one will sail with---and he is obsessed with the large reward offered for the death of The White Whale. He barges into a Board of Directors meeting and "orders" them to hire him. Meek Mr.Radney, the company secretary, reminds him he'll need a crew. Burly solves that one the old fashioned way---by shanghai. Prowling the docks in disguise, Bruce/Batman finds himself one of the victims. Robin leaps aboard ship at the last second. Batman has to reveal himself to prevent the flogging of an innocent crewman, and he and Burly go at it several times. Then an ACTUAL whale(not the White one) appears, and Burly orders everyone to stop fighting and go after it. Death defying feats and Robin's near drowning follow---and while the whale is being cut up into pieces; Burly again attacks an exhausted Batman---Batman knocks him out but is too well spent to prevent The White Whale from ramming their ship. The crew sticks Batman, Robin, and Burly into a lifeboat as bait and sail off without them. Then the unexpected--machine guns stick out of hatches on the White Whale and do their best to sink t he lifeboat. Then rope ladders are lowered and the three are ordered aboard at gunpoint. "Meek" Mr.Radney is aboard---the White Whale being a disguised submarine. The insurance settlements have been split 50-50 with Radney--the owners WANTING their ships sunk for profit. Then everybody is in the same boat when The Coast Guard torpedoes The White Whale. Burly and Radney kill each other fighting over the lone diving equipment on the vessel. Batman and Robin manage to get out by firing themselves through the torpedo tube(which is luckily facing upward). The Coast Guard rescues them when they surface. "The Case of the Lucky Law-Breakers" A JOKER story that was never reprinted. Although he had been sentenced to Alcatraz Prison, the Joker stages an escape from what looks like a completely different prison. With a decoy duck he made in the prison shop, he escapes underwater with only the duck strapped to his head visible to tower guards. His latest unusual racket is based on before the invention of television, when movie theatres were the sole source of entertainment and held raffles that gave away prizes to lure customers. Joker "launders" his robbery loot by having his henchmen "win it back" at movie theatres---theatre owners have been threatened with bodily harm if they don't go along with the scheme(it is hinted that at least one has been murdered). Unable to find theatre owners brave enough to testify, The Batman tries a lure. The papers say that The Joker's mutilated body has been fished out of the river. The Joker decides it might be to his advantage to be declared legally dead and shows up in disguise to "identify himself". He is swarmed over by police and zooms off in his car by the skin of his teeth. Following in a car that is NOT their own sealed Batmobile, Batman and Robin are overcome by sleep gas pouring out the Joker's exhaust. At a construction site, Batman and Robin are thrown into a pit and a one-ton slab carefully laid over the pit. They can't lift the slab, but they manage to fashion makeshift rollers that move it to one side enough for them to escape. At the scene of The Joker's next robbery, he is apparently run over by a freight train---but after the huge train passes, there is no sign of a body. "Christmas" First of three years in a row where a Christmas themed-story appeared. Dick Grayson feels sorry for a boy named Tim in his school class, who is being taunted by classmates because his father is in prison. He asks Bruce Wayne/Batman to investigate the case and it is revealed the father(named after a famous Dickens character) WAS framed---planning to steal Christmas presents for his son, he broke into a department store and discovered ANOTHER crook murdering the night watchman. Hal Fink, the guilty party, succeeded in framing the Father for HIS crime. Batman and Robin pay Fink a visit. The crimefighters are overcome and locked in a rooftop water tank("You can't tread water forever!") and the walls are too slime-coated to climb. Batman manages to find a control that drains the tank---neighborhood tenement dwellers complain EN MASSE that they have no water; this attracts the police and rescuers. With Commissioner Gordon's assistance, an interrogation session is arranged where Fink's murder victim "comes back to life"(Batman in disguise) and Fink babbles a confession. Tim has been placed in an orphanage, and a jolly Christmas Eve reunion with his father is arranged. One of Fink's mob is ordered by Batman to dress up and play Santa Claus---OR ELSE!! The thug enjoys the experience much more than he thought he would and says he'll go straight.