Wings of the Black Death Read online

  The weight of his own plunge hurled him backwards. He threw up his hands, staggered and thumped to the floor. The Spider sprang upon him, slammed home his fist. The head rolled limply over. Wentworth’s hand went swiftly to the man’s throat. The larynx had been crushed in, closing the windpipe and killing him instantly.

  The flames’ heat was fierce now. Long tongues of it crept across the floor. Smoke seeped up through the seams.

  Wentworth sprang erect. Protecting his face with his arm, he plunged to the girl’s side, slapped out the sparks that already had reached her negligee. He caught her up from the smoldering bed, put her by the window.

  Back across the room he reeled, caught the dead gangster by the collar and dragged him to the sill. He balanced the body, then allowed it to topple to the ground, a cushion for the girl. From the kit beneath his arm then, he drew a thin cord of silk. Padding this, he knotted it about the girl’s body and, snubbing it around a bed post to ease the strain on his one good hand, lowered her slowly to the ground. He tossed the line after her.

  Smoke streaked with flame billowed around him, but Wentworth, instead of climbing out, groped across the room and yanked open the door. In the street fire sirens wailed, men raised excited cries. Somewhere an axe thudded on metal. The Spider ran through the halls looking for Ram Singh, who, he felt sure had been overcome on his post of duty. Dark rooms and passageways yielded no trace of the Hindu.

  Wentworth could wait no longer. At any instant now, police or firemen might crash into the building, find upon him the marks of battle and connect that with the man who lay dead in the yard. Kirkpatrick was sufficiently suspicious now. The Spider would do well not to direct the finger of guilt toward himself needlessly.

  Wentworth darted to the back of the house, peered out. The girl was gone, but the crook’s body still lay below. The Spider threw up the window, climbed out on the sill. Flame and smoke belched from the window directly overhead where he and the man had battled.

  Feeling was slowly returning now to his left hand and arm. He still did not have full use of it, but he could steady himself as he reached out and caught hold with his right hand of a drain pipe. He stepped across the void and, taking a desperate chance, threw all his weight for an instant upon the grip of that one hand.

  It was a terrific strain, but that hand had been strengthened by long hours with the foils. His hold slipped an inch but held until he could grip the pipe with his knees, then he let himself slide down, using his knees and his one good hand alternately.

  When he reached the bottom, he leaned for an instant against the house, panting. But there was not time to rest. He crossed swiftly to the body on the ground and printed on its forehead the red seal of the Spider— a warning to the Black Death— and slipped away through the night.

  He climbed a fence laboriously and, straddling it, suddenly was outlined in the bright beam of a flashlight. A gruff voice demanded, “Where the hell do you think you’re going?”

  Wentworth started to drop into the yard behind, but saw a second policeman bending over the corpse of the crook. The officer jerked erect, peered about. He spotted the Spider and a whistle shrilled between the man’s lips. He grabbed for his gun.

  Wentworth teetered to his feet atop the fence, crouched and sprang. Lead whistled through the air hungrily, but when it reached the spot, the Spider was gone. He had leaped high and wide and landed in the yard of the house next door. Another fence, running the length of the block, cut him off from the policeman whose light had found him.

  Behind him a man’s voice cried hoarsely into the night:

  “It’s the Spider! The Spider! Get him! Death to the Spider!”

  Heavy hands hit the fence, boots clawed at it. Wentworth ran at top speed. Necessity lent him new strength now. He swarmed over another fence, raced into a lodging house. In the street beyond more police whistles shrieked, and, “The Spider! The Spider! Death to the Spider!” men cried.

  No escape that way; no escape the way he had come. The roofs? That was too obvious. Already bluecoated men undoubtedly were scaling upward to snare him there. He might battle his way clear, but the Spider would not fight the forces of the law.

  He raced up the stairs, ripping off coat and vest. On the top floor he tore collar and tie from his throat and piled all on the floor against a brick wall. He opened his lighter, spiced its highly inflammable liquid over the pile, set fire to it in a half dozen places. Flames leaped up. Smoke and the stench of burning cloth filled the hall. Small danger of it spreading against that brick wall, but it seemed real enough.

  Wentworth raced down the hall, pounded at a door. “Fire! Fire!”

  He ran to the next door, beat with his fist. “Fire!” he cried again. “Fire! Get out of here fast!”

  Voices gabbled within. A door was opened a crack and a frightened, touseled head thrust out.

  “Fire!” yelled Wentworth.

  Other voices caught it up. Down the stairs he plunged and beat on more doors. The house was in a turmoil. People had been already awakened by the screaming sirens. The dread cry in their own building tumbled them out in panic.

  Men with no coats, with trousers dragged on so hurriedly their suspender straps dangled; women in night clothes with kimonos caught across their breasts; young children laughing and shouting.

  Wentworth tousled his own hair, let his suspender straps dangle, swiftly untied his shoes. He affected a limp in one leg. His smoke-swollen eyes seemed sleepy and his mouth drooped stupidly. In the midst of a jam of fleeing people, he ran to the street.

  Police were clustered there, but the excited cry of “Fire!” broke their ranks and let the terrified mob through. Smoke was boiling out of the top floor window now. Police and firemen bounded into the building.

  Wentworth stared stupidly up at the smoke, thumbed suspender straps over his shoulders. “Damnedest thing I ever saw,” said the Spider with an atrocious accent to a man next to him. “Here I am sleeping sound and I hear the fire sirens making a fuss. ‘Jeez!’ I says to myself, ‘Suppose that’s this building.’ Then they go on by and I goes back to sleep again. Then foist t’ing you knows here’s this guy pounding on the door and yelling fire. Jeez! Was I scared!”

  The other man shook his head glumly. “Me, too,” he said, “And here I was having the first good sleep in a week.”

  Wentworth stared up at the building again, moved off grumbling. Nobody paid any attention to him and he eased into the darkened areaway of a building. The shadows absorbed him. He slipped a hand to the tool kit beneath his arm, and the iron grating yielded. It was the work of an instant then to penetrate the back yard, scale a fence and escape to the next street.

  It was the heat of summer and a man without his coat was not conspicuous. Wentworth shambled with slouched shoulders, but he moved swiftly. His car was parked where he had instructed Ram Singh to place it. Just beyond it was a Buick coupe, spotlessly new except for a rear fender that had been crumpled as if in a vise.

  The Spider’s eyes narrowed. He moved cautiously to the curb so that his own car interposed between himself and that other car. He stalked it cautiously. The Buick was empty.

  But where was Ram Singh? A worried frown furrowed Wentworth’s forehead. Never before had the faithful Hindu failed him in his need. Nothing short of injury or— Wentworth hesitated even at the thought— death could prevent him from coming to his master’s aid.

  With a dread that the prospect of death itself had not brought him, he went leaden-footed to the Lancia and tugged open its rear door. Two feet thrust out stiffly.

  “Ram Singh!” Wentworth cried out.

  No words answered him, but there was a muffled groan. The Spider’s hand was swift to the light. It revealed the Hindu prostrate on the floor, bound and gagged, a gash across his forehead, but not— thank God— dead. An arm was twisted unnaturally and when Wentworth freed him, he found it was broken.

  Wentworth sought no explanation, and Ram Singh volunteered none. Between them it was unnecessary.

  “Did you see the man’s face?” Wentworth asked.

  Ram Singh shook his head slowly. Shame was on his face, but he met the Spider’s eye directly, then began to climb slowly, with dangling arm, into the chauffeur’s seat. Wentworth laughed softly, stopped the Hindu affectionately. He made him as comfortable as possible in the rear, mounted the chauffeur’s seat himself and drove rapidly to a doctor, who was under obligations to him for a past and very secret service, and who did not mind winking at the requirement of reporting to the police every suspicious injury he treated— if the man he treated was a friend of Richard Wentworth.

  CHAPTER EIGHT The Plague Again

  With grim amusement, the Spider read next day in the newspapers of the adventures of the policeman who had fired at him. First he had found a murdered man and an unconscious girl beneath a window from which smoke rolled.

  He had carried the girl away from danger, and, returning, had found upon the brow of the murdered man the seal of the Spider! He had pursued the Spider and the man had vanished into thin air. Newspapers, putting the obvious inference on the rescue of the girl and the man’s death, called the silken cord which had been found about the girl’s waist a “piece of the Spider’s Web.” They marveled over its strength, for in tests it had resisted a strain up to five hundred pounds.

  Wentworth grinned at Ram Singh, standing silently beside him with his arm in a sling, a little pale, but refusing to be treated as an invalid. A broken arm? Wah! It was as nothing.

  “That’s what comes, Ram Singh,” said Wentworth, “of using old silk. That bit of my ‘web’, as they call it, should have tested up to seven hundred pounds.”

  But there was other news in the paper that brought not even grim amusement; that narrowed Wentworth’s e
yes with fury; that gripped his heart with cold fingers at the knowledge of his own failures to seize the Black Death.

  For the Master of the Plague had not rested content with the toll at the Gainsborough estate. Once more the loathsome, strangling fingers of disease had clutched a family, and a millionaire’s child had died with its nurse and mother. White-faced, Wentworth faced the conviction that daily, even hourly, the criminal was sending out his warnings, and where they failed, sending another message that carried with it death by diabolic torture.

  And the Spider’s sole clue to the Black Death was now in police hands— Virginia Doeg.

  The girl had finally admitted to police that the Spider had assisted her and they believed she knew much more about that mysterious avenger’s identity than she had revealed. They had her under triple guard at an unnamed place.

  Wentworth’s gray-blue eyes glinted. That meant he would have to ask Commissioner Kirkpatrick to take him to her. He laughed shortly. Stanley would do it all right, hoping to trick the girl into some evidence of recognition. Once he had located her, Wentworth must in some way evade that triple guard, release her, and obtain the information he was sure she held which might point the way to the Black Death.

  He first phoned Nita. “Darling,” he said, “be very careful. The Master of the Plague is out for me. Now his bait is in the hands of the police. He might try to abduct you for that purpose.” His voice dropped softly. “He knows, dearest, as anyone must who knows me at all, that life itself is not so dear to me as you.”

  He smiled slowly as he heard the girl’s eager rush of words, her fears for his safety. He warned her again, and left with a smile for the ruddy, anxious face of old Jenkyns, the butler.

  The door of Kirkpatrick’s office opened to him instantly A new grimness marked the Commissioner’s brown, saturnine face. The pointed black mustache, neat as always, seemed incongruous, like a butterfly on the face of a corpse.

  He nodded without smiling, refusing to respond to this visitor’s casual cheeriness as Wentworth offered one of his private brand of cigarettes and extended the lighter, which had always been a challenge between them since the day Kirkpatrick had searched the lighter in vain for the seal of the Spider.

  “You have read the papers?” Kirkpatrick asked.

  Wentworth nodded with a smile.

  “The Spider, it seems,” he said casually, “goes about his business as mysteriously as ever.”

  Kirkpatrick shook his head jerkily. “I mean the late editions of the afternoon papers,” he explained.

  More of the Black Death?” Wentworth’s mouth thinned.

  “Yes,” said Kirkpatrick slowly. “Old man Biltland himself has got it. Much good his millions will do him now. There are more of them every hour. Heaven only knows where this thing will end. Biltland came to me for protection after he got his letter, and now— ”

  “We must get this criminal, and get him quickly,” Wentworth said savagely.

  Kirkpatrick laid a clenched fist on the desk, his piercing eyes curiously steady on his friend’s face.

  “That seems to be the opinion of the papers, too,” he said, and they offer a clue.”

  Wentworth’s quick question did not alter Kirkpatrick’s curious stare. He spoke slowly:

  They say, and with strong logic, that there is a connection between the Spider and the Black Death. They point out that the two came to the city together.”

  Wentworth’s small smile still lingered about his mouth. But he felt the slow beginning of a throb in that thin scar masked by the hair upon his temple.

  “That sounds ridiculous,” he said calmly, “as ridiculous as newspaper theories usually do. The Spider kills only crooks, and he has never been known to do anything for the money in it.”

  Kirkpatrick leaned forward and put his elbows on the desk, drumming with the fingers on one lean hand, his eyes still unwavering.

  “Granted.” he said. “I, too, find it hard to believe. Yet the Spider killed two of my men.”

  The smile left Wentworth’s face. He too, leaned forward tensely.

  “For which I have sworn vengeance,” he said sharply. “And that is why I am here. Take me to see this girl who last night saw the Spider. Perhaps I can get some useful information from her.”

  Kirkpatrick’s fingers ceased to drum upon the desk. He stared fixedly into the lean, intent face of his friend.

  “You ask me to let you talk to that girl?” His voice was muted.

  “Precisely,” said Wentworth.

  For an instant the gaze of the two men continued locked. Then Kirkpatrick stood erect. A small smile twisted his mouth.

  “Since you ask it,” he said. “But in your place I would not have done so.”

  Wentworth’s thin lips were mocking. “No, Stanley, I don’t believe you would.”

  They went swiftly to the Commissioner’s dark, powerful car, and behind a bluecoated chauffeur whizzed through traffic. Kirkpatrick turned his head and fixed his eyes upon the imperturbable profile of his friend. “We have her at a hotel, the Marlborough.”

  Wentworth raised his brows in amusement. “Rather expensive, isn’t it?” he asked, “for a mere material witness.”

  Kirkpatrick did not answer, and the men were silent while the car sped on, The Marlborough on South Central Park, home of the wealthy and the celebrated! The Black Death would think long before he found her there, Wentworth told himself. Yet there was an uneasiness behind his eyes as they slipped on up Seventh Avenue past a bluecoated policeman at Fifty-Seventh Street, who stopped all traffic to let them pass and saluted smartly.

  There was an unchanging frown on Kirkpatrick’s forehead; and abruptly, as the car whirled into Central Park South, he slid forward to the edge of his seat, bolt upright, his hand a clenched fist upon his knee.

  “Good God,” he cried hoarsely, “What can be the matter?”

  Parked at the curb were three radio patrol cars. Two policemen stood guard at the door and a crowd boiled about the entrance.

  Wentworth jerked open the door, leaped out with Kirkpatrick at his heels and together they pounded across the pavement, ploughing through the crowd like a charge of cavalry.

  “What is it?” Kirkpatrick snapped at one of the guardians of the door.

  The man saluted, his face grimly concerned. “The Spider, sir!” he said. “Three of our men dead, and the girl is gone!”

  For an instant the news seemed to stun the two men, Kirkpatrick and Wentworth. They stared at each other, then ran into the lobby of the hotel, sprang into an elevator and were whisked to the tenth floor.

  The hall swarmed with police, but a way was opened respectfully for the striding figures of the two men— opened to show them the bodies of two policemen on the floor, shot to death! And upon their foreheads glinted the blood-red seal of the Spider.

  Wentworth stared fixedly at the seal. It was a clever imitation, faithful in almost every respect except that it was a little larger than the one he used. The two back legs of the Spider were curved a little too much also, but those trivial details would escape the attention of the police and indeed, if they were noticed, it would make no difference in their opinion of the guilt of the Spider.

  A white-haired sergeant was in charge. His voice was bitter with anger.

  “There’s another of our boys in the room, sir,” he reported. “And that makes five of them the Spider has killed. By God, sir, if ever I get my hands on him— ”

  Kirkpatrick nodded shortly, turned and stared for a moment fixedly into Wentworth’s eyes.

  He drew a hand wearily across his forehead, pushed on into the room where the girl had been held prisoner. The white-haired sergeant and Wentworth followed.

  The Commissioner prowled about the room, flinching from the Spider -branded body on the floor.

  “What happened?” he asked over his shoulder.

  The sergeant’s voice was still tight with hate. “No one seems to know exactly, sir. Nobody heard any shots. Nobody knew anything about the murders until someone rang for a bellboy and he came upstairs and found our men dead in the hall. They flashed an alarm to us and you got here almost as soon as we did.”

  “Then no one knows the time of the murders, exactly,” said the Commissioner, meeting Wentworth’s eyes again. “That will make an alibi rather difficult.”