Wings of the Black Death Read online

  Kirkpatrick took a short stride across to the window and peered out. The building dropped away for ten stories straight down. He shook his head, turned, and looked about the room.

  “What I can’t understand,” the Commissioner said, “is why the girl was taken away alive. Obviously this was done because, as I suspected all along, Virginia Doeg knew the identity of the Spider, and he was afraid she would betray him.”

  Wentworth slowly drew a cigarette and ignited it with a minute rasp of his lighter. He knew a different answer to this atrocity. He knew the Black Death had murdered the police and left the girl alive because Virginia Doeg was bait for the Spider, bait for a death trap into which he hoped to lure the one enemy he feared.

  After hours of futile investigation Wentworth took his leave of Kirkpatrick and at once set about starting a new search for the girl. She remained his one clue, his one hope of lifting the dread terror of the plague that hung over the city.

  Probably the Black Death would communicate with him in some way to reveal the whereabouts of the girl. Wentworth did not wait for that, for then the trap would be set. It was better to strike before his enemy was prepared. The Spider had a clue that the criminal would not suspect; a slender thread, it was true, but it might prove fruitful.

  Leaving Kirkpatrick, he first went home and got the tool kit he carried only when, as the Spider, he went forth to battle the underworld. He changed also to special high-topped shoes, light as a fencer’s except that they had thick, soft rubber soles.

  There was worry in Ram Singh’s eyes. Time and again the fingers of his good hand touched gently his broken arm in its sling as his devoted eyes followed every move of the master he had failed in his last grave encounter with the Black Death.

  Wentworth straightened from lacing his shoes, clapped Ram Singh on his shoulder and went out into the night. He took a taxi directly to the local distributors of Dimetrios cigarettes, the kind which he had noticed Virginia Doeg had smoked.

  It was a brand not widely sold, and its distribution would be confined to the wealthy, for it was expensive.

  From the distributor he quickly got a list of the stores which retailed the cigarette, and went systematically about the task of visiting them all. There were fourteen in all, and he visited ten without results.

  It was near the closing hour when finally he strolled into a small tobacconist’s shop on upper Madison Avenue, purchased a pack of Dimetrios himself and fell into casual conversation with the clerk.

  “Not many people buy these, I suppose,” he said.

  The young man behind the counter talked with a slight lisp. “Yeth,” he said “that’th right. We keep them for a very thelect few. But you know, a little while ago, the motht unthpeakable ruffian came in and bought five packageth ”

  Excitement raced through Wentworth. Here, perhaps, was the clue he had been seeking. “Ever see the man before?” he asked.

  “Never,” shuddered the wavy-haired young clerk, “and I hope he never cometh back again.”

  Wentworth smiled slightly. “Tough guy, eh?”

  “He wath,” said the clerk. “He didn’t even wear a collar, and had a mothst unthpeakable cap on his head and hith nothe— ” He shuddered again, “Hith nothe had been mathed over on hith left cheek.”

  “Doubtless,” said Wentworth, “a pugilist. And how long ago was this?”

  “Jutht a few minuteth,” the clerk said.

  “You didn’t happen to notice which way he went?”

  The clerk stared at him. “Why?” he asked in a tense voice. “Ith he— are you— I mean— are you a politheman?”

  Wentworth shook his head slowly. “No,” he said. “I just don’t want to go in the same direction the gentleman did. From your description I wouldn’t want to meet him alone on a dark street this late in the evening.”

  “Oh!” cried the clerk. “Oh! Now I thall be afraid to leave at all.” He moaned miserably, then he brightened. `‘Oh, but he wath in a car, that maketh it better.”

  “A car, eh? What kind?” Wentworth persisted.

  The clerk frowned. “I’m quite thure it wath a Buick,” he said. “But I didn’t notithe the number.”

  Wentworth questioned him futilely a few minutes longer, then left, but with more confidence than when he had entered.

  A ruffian who bought five packs of Dimetrios cigarettes. Wentworth felt a thrill of hope. He had not miscalculated then. The vanity of the Black Death would lead him to make just such a gesture toward his prisoner, to supply the particular brand of cigarettes the prisoner liked; or perhaps— Wentworth’s eyes narrowed— perhaps this was the thread with which the Master of the Plague hoped to draw the Spider into his trap.

  Wentworth shook his head sharply. No, it was too slender for that. Something more obvious, more certain of detection would have been employed.

  But what to do now? He was in a fashionable neighborhood. Expensive and elaborate apartment houses raised their lofty crowns on every side. Where, in this habitat of the wealthy, would the Black Death hide a prisoner? In what sort of building could the ruffian he apparently employed find free and unchallenged entrance? How to trace any one Buick car among the city’s thousands?

  He strolled along inspecting the facades of luxurious buildings, many of their windows darkened now, showing untenanted apartments, since depression days had cut into the higher bracket income.

  And abruptly the Spider smiled. Of course, that was the answer. Some of the buildings were closed entirely, purchased by big corporations for conversion into handsome apartments. They had been stillborn by hard times. Boarded up, they awaited prosperity and meantime stood vacant— perfect hideouts for criminals.

  He crossed double-laned Park Avenue with its drone of taxies and expensive motors, pushed on to Fifth Avenue, where apartments had been hardest hit.

  Here in one block three such shuttered apartments stood. Wentworth had come directly from the tobacco shop to Fifth Avenue, probably the route a man searching for the cigarettes would have taken, and now, in the shadow of the wall that bounded Central Park, he stood and surveyed the looming buildings.

  In front of a tenanted building next to a vacant one was parked a car that to Wentworth was vaguely familiar. He studied it and suddenly he remembered where he had seen it before. It was a Buick coupe, spotlessly new except for one rear fender that seemed to have been crumpled in a vise. That was the car that had been parked next to his Lancia the night he had killed one of the Black Death’s men in the fire!

  Hope warmed Wentworth. He started across the street, then caught a small gleam of light in the trade entrance of a building that was otherwise dark.

  As he watched a man with a cap ducked out and, walking with the heavy rolling swagger of those who live by physical competence alone, strode toward the Buick.

  Wentworth watched intently. He wanted to catch a glimpse of that man’s face. If his nose was broken as the tobacco-clerk had described, if he was, in the language of that young gentleman, “a mostht unthpeakable ruffian”— a glimmer of a smile flickered across Wentworth’s grim mouth— then the Spider would steal into that blackwindowed building and deliberately enter the death trap the master criminal undoubtedly had baited for him.

  Luck favored Wentworth. The man across the street entered the Buick with the crumpled fender and the dash lights showed the Spider the man’s face. The nose was broken, mashed over on the left cheek!

  Grimly Wentworth waited until the car had turned the corner, then strolled to the basement from which the man had come.

  At a door he paused an instant, donned once more the black silk mask of the Spider and deftly picked the lock.

  Quickly he entered and relocked the door. It made escape more difficult, but it prevented the alarm that an unlocked door might cause.

  The Spider stole into the shadows, catfooted to the stairs and mounted with the same sure competence. He went systematically about the tedious task of finding which of the many apartments concealed the Black Death and his prisoner, who, Wentworth was sure, must be hidden somewhere in this building.

  He went from floor to floor, listening at doors, searching with minute gleams of his flashlight the dusty hallways for indications of recent passage.

  Not until he reached the very top floor did he discover the trace he sought. There, mingling with the stuffy unventilated air, he caught the distinct odor of tobacco.

  The Spider moved more tensely now, automatic in hand, every muscle, every sense, alert. The darkness was absolute. No vagrant gleam of street light could penetrate; no ray beneath a door betrayed the hiding place of the Black Death; no sound broke the tomblike silence.

  Wentworth strained his ears, but there was no mutter of voices to guide him. The vast waiting stillness seemed to crowd close as if the very air were hostile.

  Yet somewhere on this floor was human presence. Here, if anywhere in this building, the jaws of the Black Death’s trap gaped open.

  Softly the Spider went through the search that had become routine now, listening at each door. At last his ear caught the faint sound of movement within a room, and a thin smile twisted his lips beneath the mask.

  The door to the trap was beneath his hand. Wentworth turned from it and stole to stairs that led upward, unfastened a door to the roof, and searched swiftly for other ingress to the apartment below.

  Once more fortune— this time a fire escape ladder— favored him. And because it did, he was suspicious. Things were too easy.

  Yet there was a chance the Plague Master was not yet ready, that the hair-trigger spring of the trap did not yet await his cautious foot.

  Once more a grim smile played across his mouth. Others had trapped the Spider, and found it a dangerous pastime. He descended the fire escape ladder that led dow
n past the window of the apartment where lurked the Black Death.

  Yet even in that he exercised care an ordinary man would not have thought of. He did not tread upon the rounds of the ladder but, taking his automatic between his teeth, gripped the sides of the iron stairway with knees and arms and glided down, lest an alarm had been connected with those rungs.

  Wentworth’s thick rubber soles made no sound on the iron grilling of the fire escape platform. He examined the windows. He could make out the shadow of heavy drapes, but no faint gleam of light escaped.

  From the invaluable kit of tools beneath his arm he took out a small vial made of wax, and with a plunger attached to the stopper drew a semi-circle on the glass above the window’s fastening. Hydrofluoric acid, such as etchers use. Soft wax was impervious to it, yet it ate like fire through hardened glass.

  Wentworth replaced the wax bottle and took out a rubber suction cup which he fastened to the pane. When the acid had eaten through, he removed the piece of glass, soundlessly.

  For long moments Wentworth listened at the opening, and presently his straining ears made out the slow deep breathing of one who slept.

  Was it possible that he had taken unaware the Black Death? Blood throbbed slowly in his temples. He had moved swiftly. Within a few hours of the girl’s disappearance he had tracked the man down. Probably no such swift action had been expected. It was possible that within this room the Black Death slept!

  Without a sound the Spider eased open the fastening, inched up the sash until it was high enough to admit his body.

  He drew his revolver, caught up the small flashlight in his left hand, and smothering the light in his palms, stared fixedly at it for a few seconds until the pupils of his eyes became accustomed to the glare, lest bursting into a lighted room would dazzle him.

  Silently he eased himself through the opening, stood erect upon the inner sill within the black drapes that covered it. Then, tearing them apart, he sprang into the room.

  His gun was ready, but firing, he found, would have been futile. Behind a metal closet door peering through a peephole of bullet proof glass, crouched a man, and the muzzle of his gun was trained on the Spider’s breast.

  Spring backward? No chance of that. The window was opened only narrowly; and before he could roll through, half a dozen steel-jacketed bullets could rip the life from his body.

  Charge? The shield of the door completely protected the gunman. Swiftly the Spider’s eyes flickered over the room. It was barely furnished. On a bed nearby, her clothing disheveled, lay Virginia Doeg, eyes closed, her red hair a veil over her pillow. It was her deep breathing that had deceived him.

  And now the man behind the shield chuckled gloatingly. “Welcome, Spider!” he jeered, “Welcome to the death trap!”

  Wentworth straightened out of his crouch, his eyes calm.

  “Better drop the gun, Spider,” the criminal said softly. “I do not think that I care to deal with you while you are armed. You should not have waited so long after you opened the window. Those drapes permit no light to escape, but they are light and the slightest breath of air makes them quiver.”

  Wentworth let his gun fall.

  “Now back three paces,” the man ordered. And when the Spider had obeyed, the other came out from behind the metal door.

  “It is not my intention,” the man sneered, “to kill you at once. I would rather leave that to my amiable friends, the police. I think that even they will be able to capture the Spider if I put a bullet say, through his lung, and tell them where to find him.

  “And you needn’t fear that they will be unable to identify you as the Spider. I have a cigarette lighter myself, not half so clever as your own, which will readily yield up the secret of those little red seals to the police.

  “If anything further is needed I shall murder the young lady who lies on the bed there— Unfortunate that she is drugged and cannot hear us, eh?— place that ugly little Spider upon her forehead and let them assume that it was she who wounded you, and that then the Spider, in the excess of his fury, managed to strangle the life from his so beautiful betrayer.”

  The man chuckled once more, gloatingly, behind his mask.

  “But already we have delayed too long. The Black Death must be about his work. And you must be accounted for first.”

  He lifted the pistol, leveled it at Wentworth’s chest and slowly began to press the trigger.

  CHAPTER NINE The Voice on the Wire

  In her penthouse apartment, high up on Riverside Drive, overlooking the misty Hudson which she loved to paint, Nita van Sloan sat upon a window seat and stared unseeingly out into the darkness of the night.

  Far out on the bosom of the Hudson gleamed the pale yellow lights of passing boats. The black Jersey shore was shrouded in mist, a delicate problem for any artist’s brush. But Nita van Sloan saw none of that. For all the deep cushioned comfort of the window seat, she sat tensely, chin resting on her palm. It was far past midnight, but sleep would not come to the troubled girl.

  Lying beside her on the floor, the Great Dane dog that Dick Wentworth had given her as a puppy stared up at her with worshipping eyes, its nose outstretched upon its forepaws.

  Nita sighed deeply, and the dog rose with a low whine in its throat, and rested its head in the girl’s lap.

  The girl’s blue eyes were tired as she turned them upon the dog. She smiled faintly.

  “Are you worried, too, Apollo, about our Dick?” she asked.

  The dog emitted a small coughing bark. It was his invariable response to the name of the master he loved.

  The girl swung back her pajama-clad legs to the floor and strode nervously to a small table. She picked up a cigarette and ignited it. A moment later she tossed it away and moved restively about the room, changing the position of a picture, picking up a hair pin from the floor, doing a dozen things without thought.

  For she knew that Richard Wentworth never before had crossed blades with so dangerous an antagonist as the Black Death. Swiftly Nita came to a decision. Phoning would be useless. He would only laugh at her fears, cajole her into remaining— and waiting— alone. And tonight she wanted warmer solace than that. She tore off the pajamas as if they strangled her, dressed with swift speed, and snapping a leash upon Apollo’s collar, left the building.

  In the pocket of her sport-suit she carried a small but deadly gun Dick had given her. She summoned a taxi, and entering it gave in a low voice the number of Wentworth’s apartment house.

  Her touch of the bell of his penthouse had hardly sounded the buzzer before the door swung open and the haggard face of gray-haired old Jenkyns stared out.

  The smiles that usually wreathed his ruddy countenance were missing. Nita felt her heart contract.

  “Then Dick— Dick isn’t home?” she asked. Jenkyns shook his old head slowly, stepped aside for her to enter. Apollo, released, bounded ahead through the apartment, snuffing excitedly. But presently he returned and crowded close against Nita as she stood in the luxuriously furnished drawing room, looking about with vacant eyes.

  “Ram Singh?” she asked.

  Once more Jenkyns shook his head, and Nita’s hopes sank again. “They didn’t leave together, Miss Nita. Ram Singh went out a little while after the master.” Ram Singh had a broken arm, and a man couldn’t fight with his arm in splints, Nita thought. Listlessly she tugged her brown hat from her gleaming, curly head and walked slowly toward a window.

  Abruptly she was tense again, for from the hall sounded the metallic buzz of the phone. She raced to it, snatched up the receiver.

  “Richard Wentworth’s apartment,” she said, her words trembling with hope.

  The voice that came over the wire was not Dick’s. It had a soft sibilance that made Nita’s hand tighten about the receiver, that made a chill of dread race down her spine.

  “Ah, Miss van Sloan,” said the voice on the wire, “I thought I could find you there after I called your own apartment vainly. Richard Wentworth— the Spider— is my prisoner.”

  A gasp shuddered from the girl. Someone had penetrated the secret that no one save those who battled for him knew. Someone had discovered that Richard Wentworth was the Spider! And that someone— she was suddenly sure was the Black Death!

  “What do you want?” she demanded, striving to drive the fear from her tone.