“Harry Matheson?” Alfred inquired, spotting the words in bold isolation on an otherwise blank sheet. “Where did his name come from?”
Scowling, Batman collected the papers in a neat pile. Harry’s name disappeared. “His name popped out in the early going, before I got the search parameters refined.”
“You were looking for the Connection and Harry’s name popped up?”
Bruce raked his wilted hair off his forehead. He evaded Alfred’s raised eyebrows and took a stride toward the stairs.
“Did it?”
“I was asking the wrong questions. My own name popped up, too, as President of the Wayne Foundation. I didn’t write it down.”
“But you wrote down Harry’s name.”
With a weary, irritated sigh, Wayne confronted the only man alive who could challenge him this way. “Harry Matheson was one of my father’s closest friends. They served together overseas, and after the war they helped each other out. He sits on the board of the Wayne Foundation, for heaven’s sake. We don’t see eye to eye on many things, but I’ve known him my whole life. I might as well suspect myself as Harry.”
Blessed with a butler’s logic and a recent night’s sleep, Alfred was tempted to say that Bruce Wayne, who led a double life as Batman, was indeed a perfect suspect—and so was Harry. He resisted the temptation, however, since his goal was to get Bruce moving toward his bedroom and that goal had almost been accomplished. After he slept, Bruce would find the error in his logic without any assistance, and he would be refreshed enough to make good use of it.