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| Publisher |
DC |
| Published | April 1978 |
THE CASE OF THE CRIMSON COFFIN! During a foggy night, Batman follows a suspicious boat to a pier near a deserted hotel, below which he finds a group of cultists about to sacrifice a human victim. Noting that the group of robed and masked cultists are "Carib machete assassins," he battles them and defeats them. Batman notes that their victim is drugged, and finds three other drugged victims, illegal Carib immigrants, elsewhere in the subterranean vaults. Finally, he discovers a woman who lures him into a trap, and barely escapes alive, finding the entire entourage gone when he awakens. Later, while talking about the case to Commissioner Gordon, Batman discovers that an unknown person is giving away vague clues to Gotham City concerning Batman's secret identity, with messages such as, "He is a well-known millionaire." Disregarding this for the moment, Batman learns from an informant that the cultists who fought him were smuggling in Caribbean natives to train as assassins. Gordon tells Batman that the cultists' victim has been identified as Evans Aldrich, a naturalist, but the story has been accidentally leaked to the press. Batman goes to Aldrich's studio and once again encounters the woman and her cultists, who take some of Aldrich's photos with them and escape. Batman learns from Aldrich's notes that the photos which were stolen were taken on an unidentified island. He also sees another Batman-identity clue, on a sign towed behind a plane whose owner he knows personally. He heads to the clue-master's penthouse apartment and is greeted by his antagonist, standing obscured in a nimbus of blinding light.
