Robin Bedeviled by Mystery Woman

Like a squad of executioners, the three men marched loudly across the patterned wood-parquet floor of the hallway into the Library.

As they entered, they warily spread out, not certain of who they faced...or what?

******************************************

******************************************

*************************

Our Life's Journey

*************************

The young woman in question was seated behind the large, polished walnut antique desk, evidently writing a letter.

Looking up with a pensive expression at their sudden entrance. She replaced the pen she had been using into it's brass stand.

Standing up she took a deep breath, exhaling softly, coming around the desk and walking forward to Bruce.

With a pleasant smile she extended her hand and introduced herself.

"Mr Wayne. I am Cecelia DeMillo."

Without hesitation, Bruce clasped her proffered hand, gently but firmly in both of his. Using his finely tuned senses to evaluate the young woman before him. Instantly ready to counter any possible attack. He replied.

"Miss DeMillo, it is a pleasure to finally make your acquaintance."

With a dimpled smile she responded.

"You are a most considerate host. Alfred has been a dear, interrupting his busy schedule to see to my needs."

"I am pleased that a guest is at ease in my home."

As their hands parted, she turned her gaze to the mortified Dick. His overloaded mind was torn by the mysterious confusions of this morning.

His rational superego was screaming alarms 'Danger!' 'Danger, Will Robertson!'

While his libido raved 'Available beautiful woman! Drag her upstairs right now! Fuck yourself stupid! NOW!! NOW!!'

She approached the purple faced young man, put her hands against his chest. Looked up into his desperate glare with limpid pools of desire. Pushing up onto her toes, she cocked her head to plant a lingering kiss against his lips.

Automatically, as their balance wavered, Dick put his strong arms around her to steady them both. Responding to her kiss with a passionate growl.

The two older men considered the case closed against Dick. Guilty as charged! They were both thinking.

Suddenly Dick pulled himself free while pushing on her arms to give him enough distance to look at her face. It was driving him batty that he couldn't remember her!

"Okay, I give up! Who the heck are you? When was I ever so stupid as to meet you? And then let you go out of my life without a second thought!"

She looked up at him with adoring supplication and theatrically declaimed.

"Last year at the Spring Cotillion. We had two dances and that was when I realized that we are destined to be together forever."

This has to be the first time in many years that either Bruce or Alfred were stunned into slack-jawed stupor.

A look of relief flashed across Dick's face.

"Oh thank God, I'm not going crazy!"

She smiled hopefully at his words.

He was thinking hard, trying to remember the specific event. He had attended maybe a dozen such social functions the last couple of years. There was a beautiful, witty young debutante. She danced so gracefully. She looked so desirable in his arms.

She smelled so delicious ...She?... ...She!

"Now I remember you!"

The rugged young man blanched with embarrassment.

"Oh no! I had promised to call, to get better acquainted. Then I got involved in, a hmm, a sudden...There was an 'accident' later that night.

My tuxedo was ruined and I must have lost your phone number. Then to compound my stupidity, I allowed events to crowd you right out of my mind."

Dick's face openly displayed his chagrin.

"I am so sorry that I failed to keep my promise."

A look of obvious relief, then hope swept across her face as she replied.

"I understand darling. You are a very busy man. You are studying for an MBA in addition with all the work that you do for Wayne Industries and the Wayne Foundation. While trying to shoehorn a social life in around being a famous crime-fighter."

It was official now, all three men were poleaxed.

Dick croaked.

"I, ahmm, uh, I'm sorry. What did you say?"

"I mean to say that Mr. Wayne over there is THE Batman and you Mr. Grayson, would be his partner THE Robin."

He was starting to vehemently deny when she raised a finger and placed it on his lips.

"Hush sweetie. I have not told any lies, even to Alfred to gain his cooperation. There is no need on your part to tell me any fictions. I will explain who I am and how I came to know of your secret identities."

Cecelia then turned to the elderly factotum and requested.

"Alfred, please ring the kitchen and have them send up the tea service I had requested. Then you may all sit comfortably as I expound for you a tale that will rival Scheherazade's finest."

Turning back to Dick, she gave the bewildered younger crime fighter a comforting pat on the cheek. Before returning to the desk to sit, again picking up the pen to finish her writing.

Alfred removed the tea tray from the dumbwaiter. Setting it upon a side table, to begin serving the three of them.

As he poured the tea into the cup at her elbow, the young woman looked up at his troubled face, smiled reassuringly and said in a kindly voice.

"Have a cup for yourself Alfred, it will be soothing. Then please, have a seat. You are an integral part of this team and undoubtedly will have valuable insights to contribute when the three of you confer later."

Miss DeMillo took the page she had been writing on, folded it into thirds then slid it into an envelope she had pre-addressed. She left it sitting on the desk, unsealed and told Alfred.

"Please add this to the outgoing mail for tomorrow, to be postmarked for Overseas Express Airmail."

She stood, picked up her cup of tea and took a sip. Then came around the desk facing the three men. As she placed the cup and saucer down, she explained.

"This is a letter to my Mother, Ms Henrietta Cabot. If you follow the society columns you will know of her.

For the next couple of weeks she and her friends will be at the Badhavenhorst Resort/Spa, in Austria, for their annual ritual of taking the waters and playing bridge and gossiping unmercifully about everyone who is not participating."

The men smiled faintly at her impish tone.

"My father is Thomas H. DeMillo, CEO of the Strident Financial Trust. You have certainly done business and socialized with him. My mother took back her maiden name after they divorced six years ago."

Bruce nodded and somehow his visage became even more wary. Wayne Industries and Strident Financial, with Thomas DeMillo at the helm, have been fierce competitors in the marketplace.

She was leaning, half sitting against the desk with her arms propping her up as she spoke to the three men.

"My full name is Cecelia Atlanta Cabot-DeMillo. When you investigate my short life, you will discover nothing unusual or particularly interesting about me. I am rather average by all measurements."

The look on all three men's faces, begged to differ with her self-assessment, but she knew they were just prejudging her based on her most superficial surface features and inherited social status.

"So far, I have only a few modest accomplishments or achievements. I have friends but I have never belonged to any clique. I am neither a follower nor a leader. I have never been in trouble with the authorities nor ever been accused of a crime or even had a serious accident. Dull and boring would describe, to date, my chosen lifestyle."

"Except for one important difference for which there is no record, public or private. I have some weak psychic powers. Very localized, very unreliable, often very annoying. I am requesting that you respect my secret as I have respected yours."

With a troubled expression, maybe even fear, she continued.

"Please do not keep any records of this conversation or inform the authorities. I have heard of their experiments attempting to strengthen psychic capabilities and the almost invariable disasters that have resulted.

I prefer remaining sane and appearing normal. I will be happy to go through life as an 'average' person."

"I think it started when I went through puberty. Except I was very fortunate, that no one else noticed. I avoided the whole poltergeist nightmare. Which is an all-too-common burden upon girl fledgling psychics as their bodies begin to mature into womanhood.

My hypothesis is that their blossoming talents attract psychic or otherworldly parasites. Who feed off of ,maybe deliberately encourage, wild swings in their emotional states."

Taking a deep breath and letting it out, it was obvious that what she was explaining, had long been a deeply hidden secret.

"Instead, I have a weak telepathic ability that can only read fleeting conscious thoughts.

A weak clairvoyant ability restricted to very close range in space and time.

And third, the ability to *confuse* other psychics trying to *read me*. Perversely that last power seems to be my major ability."

She barely controlled her emotional laughter in response to her audience's futile attempts to NOT think about the 'pink polka-dotted ballet-dancing rhinoceros'.

"Contrary to logic, my telepathic ability works best with intelligent people with strong minds and stable psyches. That was how I got the code for the front gate...from Mr. Wayne."

As his face clouded up, she gave him a silent, apologetic look then continued.

"Last week at City Hall, I was standing behind you in the elevator. You were only half-listening to the Mayor's campaign manager as he tried to shake you down for an under-the-table contribution to the Mayor's reelection committee and I *picked up* some interesting information. Including the entrance code, the mansion layout and your security procedures."

Bruce's face was crimson as he couldn't blame this on Dick. He mentally made a note to apologize later to his protege. The sardonic glare from Dick implied that an apology was expected.

"Dick and I had met at the Spring Cotillion and I admit he had infatuated me and frightened me."

"I *discovered* your secret identity then and I have never spoken of it with anyone. I know how to keep secrets."

"I needed time to work out my feelings, my desires for you, Dick. So in a way, it was fortunate that an 'accident' kept us apart."

"If we had met again, too soon, my fears would have compelled me to deny my feelings for you. Sabotaging myself into running away and never see you again."

"That is why clairvoyance is so unreliable. Destiny is fickle and the future is malleable. Our decisions and indecisions can easily change our future course with heedful abandon."

"Right now all of you are mainly concerned with my telepathic ability. As I have said, I can only read the most surface of thoughts. Please consider the matter from my personal experience."

"99% of the thoughts I will *pickup* on an ordinary day are equally divided between mediocre driving and tediously mediocre sex."

"I cannot read your memories or, as far as I know, actually influence your thoughts. Recently I have been experimenting with mentally *projecting* questions with a modest success. As most people simply assumed they were talking to themselves when they sub-vocalize an answer that I can *read*."

"Honestly, I deliberately try to avoid most minds as they consist mostly of repetitious twaddle."

"Until now I have not risked attempting to *read* criminal minds. Because with psychotics and sociopaths what I *receive* are painful bursts of emotional chaos. This makes me very happy."

"I think I would be very, very sorry if I ever had the misfortune to clearly *read* the mind of maniacs like the Joker or the Riddler."

"The reason I was at City Hall that day was following through on a promise I had made to a friend of mine. I have known Sylvia Goldie from High School and College and we regularly get together for lunch since."

"The week before, she told me about a problem at her employer, the Fur Wholesaler you saved today. My friend had accidentally overheard a couple of senior managers voicing concern about how much money was failing to appear on the books of the Fürst Furs Mercantile Cooperative. Sylvia knew that through my Uncle, Judge Philip Cabot-Lodge, who had been District Attorney several years ago, that I would know some of the people still working in the DA's office."

"Meanwhile, as I walked through my favorite downtown neighborhood, I could sense an undercurrent of fear and despair. When you imprisoned the Joker and his lieutenants there was no one to keep his mob together. They had scattered and returned to extorting small shopkeepers and muggings and purse-snatching."

"Yes, I am both of your 'Mystery Ladies. God, it feels good to get that off my chest!"

She took a moment to finish her cup of tea, to refresh her voice and collect her thoughts.

"I went to City Hall and asked sub-vocal questions of the people in the Prosecutor's offices and the Police Commissioner's Office. They unwittingly supplied the information that the embezzler at the Fur Company was known to the authorities already."

"A major problem they had with ordering his arrest, was that he had successfully moved his ill-gotten gains to offshore banks. If he was arrested, without stronger evidence, the official investigation ran the risk of him escaping while on bail or even winning an acquittal. They could lose the only hope of getting the money back and saving the business, the Fürst family that owns it and all it's employees and pensioners from financial ruin."

"Standing behind you Batman in the elevator, I learned several important things from you that day. First, your courage and determination to make a difference in the world really impressed me. Your example forced me to demand of myself. What can I do to make this world a better place?"

"Second, your concern that Dick was alone and lonely but too busy to maintain a mature relationship. I had believed. No! I had convinced myself that he had just made a rich playboy's thoughtless promise to me that night and had gone on to other women. I realized that my original intuition that we might have a destiny together may be possible after all."

"Finally, that the Joker had recently been secretly anesthetized for the experimental treatment that would render him comatose for at least a few more weeks.

As I walked to the car-park the entire plot congealed in my mind and I understood what I had to do to accomplish my goals."

"With a little effort I was able to ferret out the Joker's signals from his thugs. Plus, with what I already knew and what the embezzler's panicky thoughts revealed, I triggered him into deciding to flee. I retrieved the banking transfer ciphers from his mind to return the Company and pension funds the money stolen with interest."

"I think you know all the rest of it. Perhaps I stretched some ethical boundaries. I could be accused of violating the criminal's privacy and protection from self-incrimination. Even be accused of inciting the criminal activities for which they have been arrested.

However, I believe that I managed to resolve all these conflicts for the greater good of society. Please forgive me if I appear rather smug about it. In my short, uneventful life, I have never before had the courage to be this heroic."

"I am proud, that with my assistance 'Justice', if not 'Law', could prevail."

"As the 'Mystery Woman' I have no need of public adulation. However, personally, I am a woman with the need, the desire for love. I hereby claim Dick Grayson as my reward."

All three men responded with autonomic flinches at this blatantly unconditional demand.

"We will attempt living together for a while. Taking the time to learn if our individual lust can learn to become our shared love. If it should turn out that our infatuation fails to evolve, we will have experienced a worthwhile and I believe mutually enjoyable affair."

"In the end, if we decide to part, I would hope we will be mature enough to remain lifelong friends."

"This brings up my remaining psychic ability, I call it 'Confusion'. The simile I would use is, imagine a shattered mirror. Each broken shard scattered across the floor, reflects that little portion of light that hits it but each shard's reflection is a slightly different point-of-view from all the other pieces."

"My ability is not like a classical shielding effect, it does not directly block other psychics from *viewing*. What it seems to do, is bounces back at them a multitude of conflicting *signals*. This causes them to sheer off and avoid *scanning* the area I am in. Every attempt to *scan* my presence, is chaotic *noise* for other psychics. Thereby, having me around would help shield you and your secrets from psychic *probing*."

"I have speculated that this paranormal ability actually protected me from the poltergeist parasites."

Finally, she ran down. Exhausted at risking the exposure of all her secrets, she went to the table with the tea service and poured herself another cup. Standing there, sipping at the warm liquid to soothe her throat and calm her nerves. Her back to the three men who looked at each other with conflicted expressions.

A good story is not always a true story. Even if her interpretation is correct, as far as she knows? There is always a possibility of missing information that could completely alter their perception of events.

The problem with psychic influence, is, how can anyone ever be factually certain of the reality of our personal world-view?

Putting down the eggshell china cup, she turned and walked back to the crime fighting team and in a small, brave voice said.

"I am feeling rather tired. I would guess I am not yet up to the level of endurance being a super-hero requires. I shall go to the Ladies Lounge and stretch out on the divan there. Please give me a half-hour or so. I never nap very long. Then, if there is anything else you wish to ask about, just knock on the door."

Not knowing what else to say the three men stood and watched her slip out the door. The fading clacking of her heels on the polished parquet floor, as she walked down the hallway.

Suddenly Dick convulsed as he realized that he could be letting happiness walk away. He started for the door to intercept her but Bruce's hand grasping his arm held him back.

"Let her rest. We need to make a decision. All or nothing. We trust her totally or we trust her not at all. No half way measures nor do we obfuscate. Every moment, every day she spends here with us, risks everything we have built."

With a flash of anger Dick replied.

"I am not going to let her, let her...push her, send her away. I want her to want me."

"Damn it Dick! Think rationally."

"No, Bruce. I won't! This is about the possibility of someone loving ME. LOVE! Not the playboy heir to your corporate empire. Not even the heroic crime-fighter. She could learn to love the real me and I could learn to love the real her. Rational has no place in such a decision!"

Dick jerked his arm loose from Bruce's grasp and startled him with a pugnacious glare. And poked at his senior partner chest with a hard forefinger.

"I would rather risk everything...And fail miserably! Than totter to my old age with nothing left but empty regrets for the woman I failed to reach back to when she has risked everything...Everything! Too try and reach out to me."

Alfred interjected.

"Mr. Wayne, he is correct. Our Life's Journey is the Goal and the Prize."

Bruce sighed and in a morose tone replied.

"I understand the need, the craving for an honest emotional bonding with another human being. Someone you can share your fears and joys with. I have the same desires as other men, as do you."

"The worst problem is, that if everything she told us is veritably accurate? Even the most thorough investigation into her background will leave us with the quandary of proving a negative."