Detective Comics #57

September 26, 1941

"Twenty-Four Hours to Live"

Here's a strange one. A millionaire named Sneed is poisoned and has only twenty-four hours to live. We don't know who did it or why, but once Sneed confirms he is going to die, it affects his mind. He has his servant gather his family to meet with him.

The family arrives, a sister and her son, a niece, his business partner and a cousin. He announces he is going to die and he knows it was one of the family members who did it. He promises them each though a gift and he proceeds to take out all his money. He buys a new car and gifts it to the cousin who finds the brakes don't work and the steering wheel comes off. He dies as the car crashes into the water.

He then moves on to hire hitmen to kill his business partner. As he is doing this, Linda and Bruce are listening to the niece tell the odd story of her meeting with her uncle. It gets Bruce's interest. He goes first to the business partner and finds he is out at an old mine with potential buyers. There, they discover Sneed's hitmen preparing to throw the partner into a furnace. They stop the murder from happening.

Meanwhile, Sneed has purchased the services of a man who can remain like a statue for up to an hour. He pays him $50,000 to pretend to be a statue of a primitive man who would then club his sister when he has the chance. Robin swings in just in time to stop the murder.

Next, the two stop the nephew from being blown up as he played golf with a trick ball. The duo wait for Sneed to come home and eventually he does. But his time is up, just as he's about to die, he proclaims it was the servant who murdered him. The servant reveals himself to be Sneed's twin brother in disguise. The brother took the fall for Sneed when Sneed killed a person in a hit and run. He did it for Sneed's wife whom he loved and didn't want to see her heart broken. But when she died, he broke out of prison and took of the guise of the servant so as to get close to his brother and administer the poison. And then the shocking ending is that he himself took the poison and was about to die.

It's a weird tale with not much in the way of Batman and Robin honestly as there's a lot of setup, but it's a fun story nonetheless. Next up, we have the 8th issue of Batman. What's in store for us? Stay tuned, Citizens!