Batman #10 - Story 2
February 11, 1942
"Report Card Blues"
The second story opens with a young boy named Tommy Trent who is not very good at school and has been threatened by his father not to bring home another bad report card. Upset, Tommy packs his things and runs away from home.
The scene shifts to Batman and Robin trying to thwart a planting of a bomb as persuasion for a protection racket. As they fight the thugs, the timer of the bomb ticks away and eventually explodes. The criminals escape in a bakery truck and hear the police are looking for them. They change the sign on the truck and put on butchers outfits, but there are still three of them. They see little Tommy walking along the road and offer him a lift.
They get past the police roadblock with ease and take a frightened Tommy to their boss, an owner of a florist shop named Milo. Tommy manages to leave behind a literal trail of breadcrumbs by tossing out breads from a hole in the truck.
Batman and Robin find the trail and follow it to Milo's shop as he orders his men to kill Tommy. They fight off the thugs, but Milo gets the drop on them with a gun on Tommy. The three are tied up.
Milo wants to go out and collect on those who owe him money for his protection. He takes Tommy as insurance in case the police stop them and leaves one of his thugs to guard the Dynamic Duo. The two get free by pushing a fern plant closer to the radiator. The heat from it causes the plant to ripen and have its seeds burst out, blinding the thug.
What follows is Robin and Batman, split up, stopping the shakedowns from happening. Milo hears about this and sets a trap. But Tommy fires a flaming arrow he creates from a set he finds in the department store Milo is visiting for a shakedown. Batman and Robin arrive as the flame from the arrow sets off the sprinklers.
