Batman #204

Issue Details

Synopsis

OPERATION: BLINDFORLD! A blind man is murdered by the cohorts of the master-criminal known as The Schemer. The Gotham City Police Department, tipped off by an anonymous call, find the corpse beside a wall bearing a message scrawled with his cane-tip: "COMMISSIONER GORDON...THEY FOUND OUT I'M BATMAN." Gordon tries to contact Batman and Robin through the hot-line, but the duo are cleaning up on the Wharf Rats waterfront gang and are unaware of the call. When they do learn of the killing and turn up at the murder site, Gordon, who has since heard from several impostor "Batmen", is skeptical of their being the real Dynamic Duo. The Schemer's men, meanwhile, are keeping tabs on the situation, disguised as blind men from the "U.S. Sightless Society", reporting back in through microphones concealed in their cane-handles. Batman demonstrates that the dead man was not the one who scrawled the message, since he is truly blind and could not see to write. The objective was to immobilize Batman and Robin while the real murderers carried out another caper. Gordon, unconvinced, orders Batman and Robin taken in. Batman allows Robin to break free to trail the blind men, while he palms a hearing-aid he saw on the corpse and Gordon takes the cane as evidence. Batman, trying on the hearing-aid, picks up instructions from the Schemer and grabs the cane-microphone to call him "a kook". The Schemer is shaken, but, when he hears that Robin is free, orders the Boy Wonder to be taken out dead or alive. Robin, in the meantime, has learned of the "blind" men's real target, an armored car full of gold, on which he hitches a ride. A "blind" man fires a small missile from his cane at the truck, causing the drivers to take an alternate route. The armored car careens into the path of the prowl car holding Batman, Gordon, and two cops. The prowl car crashes into a lamppost. Batman, handcuffed and holding the cane, tumbles out and down a long flight of stairs at street level, bowling over a "blind" spotter and dazing himself. Seconds later he revives and hears the Schemer directing his men to the First Federal Bank, where they are to grab the gold and kill Robin. But pointed at his face is the hollow end of the spotter's cane, ready to blow him into eternity.