Wings of the Black Death Page 8

  He straightened and gazed down at the still stupified Doeg girl.

  “No use working on her any more,” he said. “She can walk if she’s led.”

  He turned toward Ram Singh and found the Hindu crouched behind the metal door. He spun toward the door, but found no danger threatening there. Frowning, he puzzled over Ram Singh’s apparent fright.

  Then he realized for the first time that Ram Singh was not wearing his turban, that his close-shaved head was bald! That, to a Hindu, was shameful. The Spider found his own hat and gave it to Ram Singh, being careful to hide the laughter that lurked behind his eyes.

  “How is it,” he asked in Hindustani when Nita, leading Virginia Doeg had started toward the door, “that thou hast lost thy turban, Ram Singh?”

  The man answered with extreme dignity in the same language. “Oh Sahib, it was in thy service. I feared to enter by the door lest the noise of it should cause thy captor to shoot. So disgraced one that I am, I used my turban to lower that unclean beast whom thou callest Apollo to the fire escape so that he might avert the tragedy which threatened here. That is why it was that beast which was first to enter the room and not thy servant, Ram Singh.”

  Wentworth placed his hand upon his man’s shoulder. “Verily oh Ram Singh,” he said, “thou art a man, and through all India it shall be sung how Ram Singh bared his head that he might save his master.”

  Pride gleamed in Ram Singh’s eyes and he stood no longer ashamed.

  The sirens of police radio cars echoed in the streets now. There was need to hurry. Wentworth caught up the body of the man he had slain and, with it over his shoulder, led the way swiftly downward until they reached the first floor.

  They heard then the shouts of policemen, the battering of axes on the door below. Wentworth laid the body of the man at the head of the steps, gun in hand. Then, smiling grimly, he affixed the seal of the Spider upon his forehead.

  “That will stop them a while,” he murmured to Nita. Quickly he unlocked an apartment, and sped to a window which opened on the back.

  Suddenly Nita quit the other girl and grasped his arm.

  “The cigarette lighter, Dick, the one that man planted on you. Throw it away!”

  Wentworth laughed softly as he raised the window.

  “A souvenir of the Black Death!” he whispered. “I wouldn’t lose it for the world!”

  “But— ” the girl started to protest.

  The Spider kissed her swiftly on the lips, smothering the words, helped her over the sill and lowered her by her hands to the ground. It was a drop of only a few feet. Rapidly he lowered the others after her. Then he and the great dog sprang down themselves.

  The Spider and those with him faded into the shadows.

  The rising sun was red in the sky as Wentworth and his tired company threaded the city. But even at this early hour the streets resounded with the shouts of newsboys, crying the toll of the Black Death. A hundred killed!

  Wentworth’s jaws locked. A hundred dead! The Black Death was striking more savagely. While Wentworth battled futilely against his traps, sought frantically for some clue to the man’s identity, the black wings of the Plague were sweeping the city, as its purple flower of pain blossomed on scores of throats.

  But Wentworth had the girl, Virginia Doeg, at least. When she had thrown off the drugs, he would question her. Desperately he hoped for a clue from her.

  Later, when she had slept off the narcotic, safe in his apartment with Nita, he went to the girl.

  Though his eyes were grim with the thought of the ravages of the Black Death ever at the back of his mind, he was gentle with Virginia Doeg as he insisted upon her answering the question that he had put to her a few hours ago. A smile twisted his lips— it seemed like years.

  When last he had asked that question, fear had gleamed for a moment in her eyes. Then a man with a gun had interrupted their conversation. It was that fear which had led the Spider to believe that she might hold some clue to the identity of the Black Death.

  “Who besides yourself,” he asked again, “had the opportunity to substitute the forged bonds for the genuine?”

  And once more the girl evaded his keenly questioning gaze. Wentworth frowned. “Surely now,” he said, “you must realize the importance of answering that question. Your failure to answer it was the reason for all that has happened. Your kidnapping by that masked man.”

  “Oh,” she shuddered, “that horrible Spider.” Bewilderment clouded Wentworth’s eyes. His sharp glance flicked to Nita, and he saw a sly smile about her mouth.

  Then suddenly he understood. Nita had convinced the girl, whose drug-dazed memories were befuddled, that the man who had kidnapped her was the Spider.

  Wentworth had believed it necessary to reveal to this girl that the Spider and Wentworth were one. And now Nita cleverly had kept the secret. His eyes gave her silent thanks, as he picked up the thread of thought that the girl’s cry of revulsion had revealed.

  “Unless you want the Spider to come again,” he said sternly, “you had better answer my question at once.”

  The frightened girl looked up at him, large-eyed and pale, beneath the glowing red shower of her hair. “Oh,” she said, “he couldn’t have done it. Not my Jimmy!”

  “Jimmy?”

  The girl spoke rapidly now. “Yes, Jimmy. He could have done it, but I know he didn’t. He loves me. We are to be married. And he is not the only one. Any official of the firm could have done it.”

  “What’s Jimmy’s name?” Wentworth said softly.

  “But he isn’t guilty,” the girl protested. “I know he isn’t.”

  “Of course not,” the Spider reassured her, “but I would like to know the name of— ” he smiled— “the lucky man.”

  Virginia Doeg blushed, and dropped her eyes. “Jimmy Handley,” she said.

  “Ah, yes,” said Wentworth, remembering then MacDonald Pugh’s mention of the man. An intelligent youth, Pugh had said, one who was “going places.” Was it possible that the girl was Handley’s dupe, that he had substituted the forged bonds and given the germs to her dog, so that when the time came he could direct suspicion upon her by claiming that the bonds had been stolen to finance the start of this monstrous crime?

  Wentworth nodded swiftly to Nita, signifying that the girl could go now, and left the room hurriedly. He glanced at his watch. It was late, nearly four o’clock.

  He caught his hat and cane from Jenkyns’ ready hand, strode into the hall, and a moment later a taxi was whisking him through the late afternoon traffic to the offices of Pugh & Works, Inc. on Wall Street.

  Straight down Broadway they whirled until that famous thoroughfare became a narrow street that belied its name, until the graveyard that marked one end of Wall Street hove into view, and they whirled into the narrow canyon that was the money center of the world.

  The taxi jerked to a halt. Wentworth tossed the driver a bill and climbed out. A two-seated green Ford with P.D. printed on its side, a radio patrol car of the police, was parked ahead of him.

  The devil! Was he going to run into some new crime at every turn of the trail that the Black Death left? He told himself that he was foolish, that the police car had no connection with his errand. But when he thrust into the elaborate offices of the brokerage firm of Pugh & Works, he found the two policemen from the patrol car there before him.

  And MacDonald Pugh himself, his high shoulders stooped, his forward-leaning bald head nodding emphasis to his words, was talking to them.

  Wentworth caught the tag end of what he was saying. “There is no doubt about it,” Pugh was declaring positively. “There is a shortage in his accounts. He left the office early yesterday and he has not returned.”

  “And what’s his name, sir,” one of the officers demanded.

  MacDonald Pugh looked up with dark eyes from beneath his almost white brows, saw Wentworth and raised a hand in affable salute. “Just a minute, Dick,” he said, and turned back to the policeman.

  “The man’s name,” he said, “is James Handley.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE Wentworth Views the Plague

  James Handley, the man Virginia had said could not be guilty! The man she was to marry! There was a shortage in his accounts— and he was missing!

  Wentworth was keenly interested. But no hint of it showed in his face. He flicked ashes from his cigarette and lounged about the office, inspecting the oil paintings which hung upon its walls as if totally disinterested in the conversation between Pugh and the two policemen.

  But the name apparently had been dismissal for the two officers. “We’ll put out an alarm for him, sir,” one of them told Pugh. “And you may depend, sir, that we’ll pick him up very shortly. They can’t escape our dragnet.”

  “Fine,” said MacDonald Pugh heartily, and the policemen left.

  “Good of you to call, Dick,” Pugh said to him, and Wentworth turned smiling from the inspection of a portrait.

  “You have atrocious taste in paintings, Mac,” he said, “but you have managed to get one good piece here. Undoubtedly a Millet.”

  MacDonald Pugh smiled. “You didn’t come here, Dick, to criticize my paintings, I’m sure.”

  “No,” Wentworth told him. “I was down this way, thought of you, and recalled that promise of a fishing party some weekend. The tuna are running off Montauk, you know. A bit early, but I understand some large ones have been taken.”

  “That’s damned nice of you,” Pugh said. “But I don’t see how I could possibly get away. The stock market is doing tricks these days, what with the NRA and Mr. Roosevelt’s so-called controlled inflation.”

  Wentworth waved a hand negligently, tossing his cigarette into a smoking stand. “You business men,” he sighed. “I wish I could find something in life that
was half so interesting. Sure you can’t make it, Mac?”

  Pugh shook his bald head regretfully, smiling up from beneath those white brows. “No can do. But if you’re out at your estate over Sunday, and decide finally not to go fishing, you might drop over. Bring Nita along. When the ticker stops Saturday noon, I have until the Stock Exchange opens Monday before I— ”

  A strangled cry rang through the office. Wentworth whirled, staring with narrowed eyes past Pugh to the door of an office marked “Private.” The door swung haltingly open and a man staggered out, clutching at his throat.

  “The Black Death!” he gasped. “I’ve got it!” His hand ripped his collar open, and on the corpse-like yellowness of his throat Wentworth saw the purple flower of the dread plague!

  The man was Theodore Works, Pugh’s partner, and there could be no doubt that he was dying. His stumbling entry had thrown the room into a panic. Stenographers sprang screaming from their tasks, and pale-faced men raced in panic for the street.

  Even Pugh, with one terrified glance, joined in the pellmell rush. And only Wentworth, jaw clenched and eyes aglint, remained.

  The man collapsed into a seat, flung his arms across a desk top and leaned his chest against its edge, his breath coming hoarsely.

  “You have been blackmailed?” Wentworth demanded.

  The man stared at him unseeingly. Wentworth moved a step nearer and demanded again, “Were you blackmailed?”

  This time the man’s head nodded heavily. “Yes. And I paid.”

  His hoarse voice was scarcely human, the words mere mouthings. “I paid. And now— oh, God— I’m dying anyhow! Dying— the Black Plague— ”

  “Whom did you pay?” Wentworth snapped at him. Sympathy for the dying man touched him, but more than sympathy was at stake. Here was a man who had actually had contact with the dread master of the plague, had paid him blackmail. If he could obtain from him with his dying breath a clue that might save the countless millions of the city—

  Works’ head sagged forward. Breath rasped more harshly in his throat. He belched. Blood poured from his jaws. It tore a muffled scream of agony from him.

  “Quick, man!” Wentworth shot at him. “Do you know who the blackmailer was?”

  The sagging head raised an Inch, wobbled slowly in negation.

  “No— ” Works got out, “but— voice on wire— thought I knew it.”

  Wentworth advanced two swift strides. Here was the Black Death in all its horror. Its contagion might strike him down. But here, too, might be the one clue that the Spider must have to track the plague master.

  Suddenly Works convulsed, reared back in his chair with clutching hands digging into his throat.

  “Speak, man, speak!” Wentworth cried. The purple lips opened, suffocation blackened his face. Blood gushed out. Sound issued from that ghastly mouth. But it was sound that was translatable into no word. It was the death rattle. And Works slumped forward upon the desk, his face dyed by the loathsome blush of the Black Death.

  For an instant longer Wentworth stared at the body, his heart torn with compassion at the cruelty he had been forced to exert upon this dying man. Then he whirled and strode from the room with hard-pounding heels.

  Gone was the airy nonchalance with which he had met MacDonald Pugh; gone the smile from his lips, and in its place was grim purpose.

  From his path a man fled, running with a wobbling unaccustomed gait, a sloppy unpressed coat flapping in the wind, a dilapidated gray felt jammed down about his ears.

  For an instant Wentworth pursued. But after two swift strides he checked himself. A grim twist that was only half a smile came to his lips.

  He should know by now the earmarks of the gentlemen of the press, should know that no one but a careless, keen reporter would dare, as this man had, the curse of the Black Death for the comparatively trivial accomplishment of spreading first the news of a major story upon the front page of his paper.

  Wentworth strode on to the curb and hailed a taxi, cried sharply, “Police headquarters!” Then he settled back upon the cushions and toyed with the head of his cane, looking down at its carved ivory handle with eyes that for once were unappreciative of its artistry.

  It was time the news was spread abroad, time that the city learned that this Black Death was the work of a human agency. Then indeed would the whole world rise up to wipe out the sinister masked shadow that crouched with bloody hands over New York’s millions.

  But before his cab could traverse the mile between Wall Street and the headquarters of police, men were screaming extras on the streets, and black headlines blazoned forth the news that the Black Death was a blackmailer’s plot.

  Perhaps, Wentworth thought, that news would help bring in information from others that had been blackmailed; perhaps it would bring out a clue to the plague master himself. But though he doubted that the police would be able to find the man, there was a way in which they could help if they would. They could, in all probability, locate James Handley. If they would search in earnest for that man, putting their best men upon the case, it was at least possible that some definite lead might be uncovered.

  But Wentworth entered the office of the Commissioner with a feeling of futility. How could he convince Kirkpatrick of the necessity for that search, unless he revealed not only what Wentworth knew, but what the Spider had learned?

  Kirkpatrick’s face brought Wentworth to a stop just inside the door. It was the face of a living man who was dead, the face of a man haunted by a tragic fear, or tortured by a secret grief. He stared at Wentworth with eyes that were unblinking and utterly cold, deep-sunk beneath frowning brows. And for once, his mustache was untidy and unpointed, and his clothes, usually immaculate, were unpressed.

  “Why do you come here?” he demanded harshly.

  Wentworth stared at him without speech, and once more the Commissioner rasped:

  “Why do you come here?”

  Wentworth was unprepared for the attack. His lips moved stiffly in a smile that was without mirth. “I came to help— ”

  “I don’t want your help,” thundered Kirkpatrick. He smacked his fist on the desk and crouched over it like a man about to spring. His eyes were burning.

  “In heaven’s name, Stanley, what is the matter with you?” Wentworth demanded.

  There was a sternness in his face and his eyes did not waver before the assault of Kirkpatrick’s glare. For two full minutes the men stared so into each other’s eyes, and then Kirkpatrick straightened slowly from his tense crouch, dragged a heavy hand across his furrowed brow.

  He sank limply back into his chair, and Wentworth came forward until he stood just across the desk from the Commissioner. He was smiling easily now, and offered his cigarette case to Kirkpatrick.

  “You gave me quite a start, Stan,” he said. “You must be under a terrific strain.”

  Kirkpatrick made no move to accept the proffered cigarette. He seemed infinitely tired, sagging in his seat like a man almost without life. But his hands upon the arms of the chair were white with the tension of his gripping fingers.

  “Wentworth,” he said slowly, in a voice that was as dull and empty as his eyes. “I have long suspected that you were the Spider. I have had no proof of it. God knows I didn’t want proof of it, except as my duty drove me on. For the Spider to me was an admirable man, despite his crimes against the law. He struck down criminals that I could not touch because of the rigid regulations of that law. And he avenged the innocent. For that I revered him, respected him as I respected you.”

  Wentworth opened his mouth to speak, but Kirkpatrick’s eyes stopped him. “I say respected,” he went on, “but that is past now. And I’m warning you that any other Commissioner of Police, knowing what I know, would believe the Spider, believe you, guilty of the Black Death!”

  Kirkpatrick stopped speaking and his chin sagged upon his chest. But still his burning eyes held those of his friend. He leaned toward him across the desk.