Wings of the Black Death Read online

  “For heaven’s sake, Dick, you talk as though the Spider were someone else.”

  Wentworth laughed with her.

  “Someone else! Child, sometimes when I get behind that mask and go out with a gun in my pocket, I feel that no such person as Richard Wentworth ever lived.” His fist clenched. “Nita, something so fearful that it will rock the world is in progress here. I know it!”

  Mentally he was visioning the shadow of the Black Death just below the horizon glow of the city’s lights. But why, he asked himself, would any criminal deal with such a fearful thing? What could he hope to accomplish with it?

  The car halted and a resplendent doorman opened the door of the limousine. Wentworth with a smile on his lips, descended and handed Nita to the curb. Together they walked across the sidewalk and through the elaborate, tasteful lobby, a man of the world and his friend.

  Who would think that here walked the Spider, and the one woman in the world who knew his identity? Who could guess that this man was on the brink of battle with the most dangerous antagonist the world of crime had ever produced?

  They entered the private elevator which lifted them silently to Wentworth’s fifteen-room penthouse atop one of Fifth Avenue’s most fashionable buildings. The ruddy-faced Jenkyns who opened the door bowed delightedly as he took his master’s cape, gloves and cane; for Jenkyns, his hair silvering with age, looked forward to the day when Nita van Sloan would be mistress over the household, when the dread pall of mystery would cease to dominate the young master he adored. His ruddy face was wrinkled with smiles as he hurried on to his pantry, to put together with his inimitable skill supper for his master and the mistress-to-be.

  Richard Wentworth did not pause in the drawing room, but led Nita directly to his thick-walled study. He seated her comfortably and gestured toward Ram Singh, who had followed them.

  “A phone please,” he said quietly.

  Presently Ram Singh came back into the room with a portable phone and plugged it into the wall. Wentworth took it eagerly. “Have Jenkyns,” he told Ram Singh, “get Mrs. Gainsborough on the phone. Mrs. Gainsborough in Roslyn, Long Island.”

  When the connection had gone through he asked quickly, “Mrs. Gainsborough? This is Richard Wentworth. Has anything unusual happened about your estate during the past week?”

  As he listened to the woman’s response, which grated so noisily that its rasping sound was audible to Nita van Sloan ten feet away, his hand tightened slowly about the phone, and his eyes took on an eager light.

  “But Mrs. Gainsborough,” he said swiftly, “you need not be afraid. I am not connected in any way with the police. I do a little criminal investigation work sometimes myself, and I ran across your name in that connection… Yes, yes, perhaps you are right… Certainly…. I’ll be out to see you tomorrow…. Yes, until then. Goodbye.”

  He handed the phone back to Ram Singh and whirled on light feet toward Nita. “Darling, the battle is about to begin. I want you to call with me tomorrow on Mrs. Gainsborough. I think she holds the key that will start the fireworks.”

  The next afternoon was sullen beneath lowering clouds, and the wind that stirred in their faces as Wentworth drove his swift Hispana Suiza roadster over the Long Island roads was hot and oppressive.

  They swept from the climbing highway into a broad stone-gated drive and went on their way through trees up to the colossal columns that marked the home of Mrs. Gainsborough. The whole mass seemed to have been built with the idea of making a show-place, and the result was slightly ludicrous. Wentworth’s upflung glance, taking in the whole facade, was mildly amused, but when he entered the house and bowed before the stout matron who received him, his manner was deferential.

  The woman was absurdly overdressed, stuffed like a sausage into a too tight dress that showed too much of her pudgy arms for afternoon wear, and too much of her ample bosom. But there was no laughter in Wentworth’s eyes as he looked into her pudgy face; for grief and fear were there, and Wentworth was no man to mock at human misery.

  So Wentworth smiled sympathetically, and the woman smothered his strong hand in both of hers.

  “Oh, thank you, thank you for coming,” she said. “I have been so afraid.” She managed a smile and sank heavily into a chair in the over-decorated and over-furnished room where she received the two.

  She poured out the story in a swift gush of words, and Wentworth, standing silently before her, his eyes fixed in keen concentration on her face, listened with encouraging nods.

  A letter had come, she said, demanding that she pay a million dollars to the writer lest her entire family be killed.

  “A million dollars!” she exclaimed, and her hands flew in swift gestures. “A million dollars I have not got, or I would pay it willingly, to save my children.”

  She raised her voice and called out. “Marie! Marie! Bring Dave and Gertrude in!” She went on talking quickly. “This letter says if I don’t pay they’ll kill my children with— with the Black Death.”

  Wentworth started at the words. The Black Death. Then this was the answer to his fears, extortion under the threat of the Black Death! Good God! Who would not pay with that horror hanging over him? And this was only one case that had come to his attention. There must be hundreds of them. No man who could conceive using the terror of the Black Death would stop at one extortion. Wentworth felt the cold crawling touch of apprehension down his back.

  Lord in heaven! If one of the victims refused and the Black Death were loosed, what would turn its fearful stride from the city? What would prevent the murder of thousands! Wentworth spoke swiftly to the woman.

  “Have you the letter?” he asked.

  Mrs. Gainsborough lurched to her feet, moved awkwardly across the room on broken arches to a desk and returned with a crudely printed letter. It read:

  Unless you pay us a million dollars you and your children will be killed by the Black Death. If you agree, hang something red out of the upstairs window on the front. Remember, pay, or you all die by the Black Death.

  Wentworth frowned at the thing. It was like any crank note, more than a little disappointing in its queer simplicity. But the Black Death—

  A maid showed momentarily in the doorway, and two children came in. They were youngsters; the girl shy, with golden curly hair and eyes almost as blue as Nita’s; the boy younger, with black hair and a chubby face that broke easily into smiles.

  The woman’s face softened as she turned and called them to her, and Wentworth felt a hand bite into his arm.

  “Oh Dick, can’t you do something for them?” Nita said softly.

  Wentworth turned and smiled at her, and for a moment the alertness went from his eyes and they were very dark and tender. “I’ll try, dear.”

  Somewhere in the house a bell pealed and the woman shuddered as she stood with an arm about each of her children. Fear came back into her face and her lips trembled.

  “Oh,” she said, “they called once before.” Wentworth’s eyes were narrow and hard. “Let me talk to them!”

  The maid entered with a phone, plugged it into the wall. Wentworth picked it up.

  “Hello,” he said, and as he listened his eyes sparkled with anger, and his fists clenched. “You keep well informed,” he murmured. “Very well! But since you know I’m on the case, let me warn you. If you attempt to harm any member of this household, you’ll pay with your life. Understand?” and abruptly he snapped the phone away from his ear, whirled to Nita.

  “The same man,” he said. “It’s the same man. I heard his laugh, the same fiendish chuckling laugh as if he were gloating over something horrible to come!”

  He turned swiftly toward the woman. “I’d get guards here immediately. He knows in some way that I’m here, so there’s no longer any use of pretense.”

  He jerked up the phone again, spat a number into it, and began barking out commands to the police— commands which he knew would be instantly obeyed.

  The woman sent her children from the room, and Wentworth heard her laboring feet ascend the stairs. He turned to Nita.

  “I think it best,” he said, “that Ram Singh drive you back to town at once. The man who just phoned declared that he was about to loose the Black Death upon all of us!”

  CHAPTER FIVE The Black Death

  Wentworth’s words seemed to hang visibly in the air. The Black Death! It called to mind the drab, narrow streets of medieval London, visions of direful axle-creaking carts drawn by scarecrow horses; callous drivers who called mournfully, “Bring out your dead!” and carried loads of corpses like stacked firewood to pyres that burned like the campfires of a besieging enemy about the city; a stench of death and decay; smoke of the corpse fires that beclouded even the sun.

  Wentworth stared unseeingly with horror-widened eyes. Surely no human being could conceive so fiendish a crime. Visions of that terrible plague sweeping through the congested millions of New York rose before Wentworth’s eyes. Abruptly he jerked himself out of the preoccupation into which he had fallen.

  Motors of automobiles roared outside the door and he crossed the room with swift, long strides. A dozen police rolled from the cars and, in charge of a gruff-voiced, waddling sergeant, straggled up to the porch.

  Wentworth conferred swiftly with their chief and found him intelligent and competent. Twenty-four-hour patrols about the house were organized, and two policemen who would alternate were selected to stand perpetual guard over the children. A vermin exterminator was called in to destroy all rats and mice which might bring in the disease.

  No food was to enter the house without rigid inspection, nor would any stranger pass the police cordon. Finally, satisfied with the arrangements, Wentworth went back into the mansion to give further warning to Mrs. Gainsborough against even a momentary care
lessness.

  Had Wentworth’s thoughtfully intent eyes spotted a figure that crouched on a distant hillside and watched him through binoculars, as he entered the house, he might have felt some misgivings about the adequacy of the protection he had provided Mrs. Gainsborough.

  But he did not see him. And on that distant hill a large-boned, skulking man with the brim of his black hat pulled far down over his eyes, chuckled to himself.

  Twenty feet away from the man was a small black satchel with a screen for ventilation opening in one end; such a satchel as small dogs and cats are carried in.

  For more than an hour the man sat waiting, propped up against a tall tree, while he watched the distant house.

  Finally he saw something which made him chuckle with a gloating satisfaction that was horrible to hear. For from a side entrance of the home a small golden-haired girl and a chubby boy came out, gazing big-eyed at the bluecoated policeman who stalked beside them. They stood close-clustered for a while in animated prattle with their big guardian.

  Wentworth came out, too, gave some final swift instruction to the guard, then strode off on an inspection of police.

  The children began to romp and play upon the lawn.

  It was then that that sinister figure on the hill put the glasses into their case and stood erect. From his pocket he drew an antiseptic mask, such as surgeons wear in operating, and fastened it carefully over nostrils and mouth.

  Onto his hands he drew thin rubber gloves, which he wet thoroughly with an evil-smelling germicide. Then he cut a long switch and walked with wary eyes toward the black satchel. He picked it up and, holding it well away from him, made his cautious way down the hillside until he came near the boundary of the Gainsborough estate.

  Swiftly then he unfastened the satchel, opened it, and sprang back; and from the interior leaped a small, bright-eyed terrier. It wagged its tail furiously and, bent almost double in an ecstasy of pleasure over its escape from the confinement of the bag, flung toward the white-masked man.

  He slashed at it sharply with the switch he had cut upon the hill; two, three, four times he hit the dog savagely. It yipped, turned tail, and fled into the Gainsborough estate.

  The man turned and hurried rapidly back the way he had come, leaving the satchel, and pouring strong germicide over his hands. He dropped the gloves and the antiseptic mask into a hollow tree stump, then continued his retreat up the hill. Once he had regained his vantage point he again used the glasses on the children romping upon the lawn.

  He had not long to wait, for the dog, attracted by the happy cries of the children at play, penetrated to the lawn where they romped, and seeing them, ran eagerly forward.

  It had been stolen from a home where there were children, and the monster on the hill, chuckling with sinister satisfaction, congratulated himself upon the thoroughness with which he had planned.

  The policeman, he noticed, seemed completely unsuspicious. He patted the dog’s head and allowed it to race and play with the children. And Wentworth was a mile away, checking on the guards on the opposite side of the estate.

  The man on the hill saw this through his glasses and he laughed aloud with a rasping harshness, and, rising, vanished into the thickness of the woods.

  Wentworth, striding swiftly forward toward the Gainsborough mansion, stopped suddenly and listened. The breeze brought him the excited, happy cries of the two children. But it brought him also another sound that made the blood chill in his veins.

  Not a sound to exercise an ordinary man, but to Wentworth, in that moment, it suggested death in a most horrible form. The sound was the sharp barking of a dog.

  Wentworth broke into a pounding run, sprinting across the smooth green lawns with furious speed. Nearing the two children, who were playing with the dog and the heedless policeman, he sent his shout ahead of him:

  “Kill that dog!”

  The policeman whirled around, and stared at him with gaping mouth. Running, Wentworth had drawn his own gun. But there was no opportunity for him to fire. The children tumbled upon the ground with the dog, and only for fractions of a second was the animal’s small furry body visible.

  After seconds that seemed like hours, Wentworth darted finally across the last yards of space, pocketing his gun and pulling on rubber gloves that he had carried with him since first he had sensed the threat of the Black Death. With these he snatched the boy away from his laughing struggle with the puppy. He jerked out his automatic and fired two shots in the dog’s head, then, without pause, caught up the boy and, holding him at arm’s length, rushed back toward the mansion.

  He called back to the girl to follow and the policeman trailed in bewilderment after them.

  “In the name of all that’s holy, Mr. Wentworth, why ever did you kill the puppy?” He panted, half trotting to keep pace with Wentworth. But he got no answer.

  Wentworth increased his speed, dashed into the house and shouted for Mrs. Gainsborough. “Get the doctor here immediately. Tell him it’s life and death! Tell him to bring Hopkins Solution with him, the antitoxin for the Bubonic plague!”

  Wentworth forced Nita to leave immediately. He ordered the children put to bed, made them gargle with germicide and washed them and himself with medicated soap. And he ordered the policeman to take similar precautions. He did the same. But for the others, who had been exposed for some time to the dog, the precautions proved futile.

  Never before had Wentworth seen the dread Black Death work with such fearful swiftness. Within half an hour of the time he had shot the dog, the children’s faces had gone gaunt and yellow with the feverish touch of the plague.

  The boy tossed and moaned upon his bed in a half stupor, whimpering with pain. Upon his upper arms blue splotches appeared, the centers showing the spidery tracing of blood-red veins, that dread marking which is called the Flower of the Black Death. Beneath his armpits and thighs purplish egg-shaped swellings grew. Wentworth touched one with the tip of a gloved finger and a scream of wild agony tore from the boy’s throat.

  “It’s the Bubonic plague right enough,” the doctor muttered. But the worry on his face was greater than even that dire announcement, with its threat to countless thousands, warranted. He shook his head, as he and Wentworth stared into each other’s eyes with drawn countenances. “There is no record in history,” the doctor said, “of the Black Death working this fast. The infection must have taken place four days ago.”

  Wentworth shook his head slowly. In the silence between them, broken only by the whimperings of the children, by the thudding of the mother’s fists on the locked door, her broken pleadings that she be allowed to enter, horror raised its ugly head.

  “I’m positive,” he told the doctor, “that the dog brought the germ. This must be some new and as yet unknown form of the plague.”

  The little boy screamed out suddenly in anguish, straightened in the bed and doubled over its edge. Blood gushed from his mouth. The doctor went swiftly to work on him, and Wentworth made way for a trained nurse who had just arrived. Her skilled help would be of far greater assistance than his own. Sombrely, he left the room, having almost to fight Mrs. Gainsborough to keep her out. He went directly to a bath where he stripped and literally bathed himself with germicide, syringing out mouth and nostrils. He burned the rubber gloves and giving what small comfort he could to Mrs. Gainsborough, entered his car and drove away. There was nothing further he could do.

  He had failed, and the Black Death had struck its first, horrible blow. Wentworth’s eyes were bleak at the thought of the menace to the millions of the city; the thought of a thousand throats echoing with those screams of agony that seemed even now to ring in his own ears; of a thousand bodies tossing in beds that were racks of pain; of a city demoralized by fear.

  And over the entire city brooded that masked figure that was the Black Death— a masked figure whose hands would be red with the blood of the innocents….

  CHAPTER SIX The Spider Unmasked

  With those deaths at the home of Mrs. Gainsborough began the most amazing reign of terror the modern world had ever known. Newspaper headlines flung the ghastly news at their readers in letters two inches high. Wherever people gathered in frightened groups on street corners and public squares, they repeated over and over those three grim words: “The Black Death.” They were shouted above the clatter and roar of the subways, whispered in awed tones over the family supper table. Mothers glanced with worried faces at their children; and men went about their work with drawn lips and haggard eyes.