Wings of the Black Death/Chapter 13

Kirkpatrick's intensity startled Wentworth for a moment, drove all thoughts of protest from him. The patent distress of his friend touched him.

He tried to smile, failed, tried again, and achieved a stiff travesty of mirth.

“And so you should, Stanley,” he said, “shoot me down if I were the Spider—and if the Spider were guilty of the Black Death.”

Krikpatrick's saturnine face did not lighten. “I think it wise that you go now,” he said dully, “and do not return.”

“But this is foolish,” Wentworth protested. And now for the first time a thin smile lifted Kirkpatrick's lips.

“The foolish part of it,” he said, “is that I do not arrest you, as my inspectors urge me to.”

An almost perceptible start jerked at Wentworth's muscles. So Kirkpatrick was not alone in his suspicion! This was a thing that he had not realized before. He had thought the whole thing a figment of Kirkpatrick's tortured imagination. This revelation increased the seriousness of the situation.

“For God's sake, go!” Kirkpatrick ground out, and the strain showed in the thinness of his voice. “Can't you understand?”

And now at last Wentworth did understand. He bowed with grave formality. “Very well,” he said, turned on his heel and stalked to the door. And even while he was closing it he heard the Commissioner's cracked voice rise madly:

“And—don't—come back!”

The uniformed clerk who stood outside the door stared at Wentworth with narrowed, suspicious eyes. But for once the glance remained unseen. Wentworth's keen senses were dulled by the enormity of the rift between him and his warmest friend.

He could see how Kirkpatrick was torn between duty and affection; between what his office urged and what his heart believed. Even the monstrous threat of the plague paled before this personal grief. It seemed like some nightmarish thing that could not actually exist.

Wentworth dazedly entered a taxi and gave his home address, hoping desperately that Nita would be there. He needed her warm understanding now, needed the consolation of her confidence and belief in him.

The taxi seemed to crawl. He was on fire to get home. He leaned forward and rapped on the glass. “Hurry, man, hurry!” he snapped. “Speed.”

Tell a taxi driver to hurry in New York and you get the wildest ride that can be achieved by human ingenuity and mechanical power. Fender-brushing, brake-slamming, tire squealing speed!

Off slammed the taxi, weaving through traffic like a rabbit running through brambles. It whirled a corner on dry-skidding tires, dodged a head-on collision by a fraction of an inch, spurted between two encroaching trucks.

Wentworth, feverish-eyed, tense-muscled, leaned forward and rapped on the glass. “Faster,” he cried, “Faster!”

The taxi driver whipped a frightened glance over his shoulder, the whites of his eyes showing, and suddenly Wentworth laughed. The man must think him utterly mad.

But the driver was trying desperately to fulfill the demand of this grim-faced passenger behind him, for when a passenger asks favors it means big tips. And even in taxi-riding New York big tips are scarce nowadays.

He locked tires and skidded the last twenty-five feet to the curb before Wentworth's apartment house, and the violence of the stop almost flung his passenger forward upon his shoulders. Wentworth dropped to the pavement, tossed the man a twenty-dollar bill and, laughing with a cracked strain in his voice, went pounding into the house.

Behind him the taxi driver looked from the twenty dollar bill to his retreating back, shook his head and muttered, “Jeez, the guy's nuts!”

Wentworth slammed into the elevator, and its express speed seemed infinitely slow. Key in the lock, he thrust open the door violently, strode into the center of the drawing room before he paused and stood stock still, staring about him. Nita wasn't there.

Wentworth's broad shoulders slumped. Jenkyns' staid old figure plodded into the room, took his master's hat and cane from listless hands. Twice he opened his mouth to speak, and twice thought better of it. Finally he turned and plodded out again, his white old head shaking.

Wentworth moved on stumbling feet into the music room beyond, his fumbling hands brought out his violin case, picked up the instrument and thumbed slowly over the resonant strings. Their notes rang sweet and true, and he tucked the violin beneath his chin, touched bow to the strings.

Dirge-like the music rolled, funereal and slow. But as he played new animation seemed to come into his drooping figure, his fingers flicked more rapidly over the strings, his bow surged—and the music's tempo changed, became furious and wild.

It was mad, that music, as if all the devils of hell leaped in those flicking fingers. Jenkyns' frightened face showed in the doorway. He knew his master's habit of playing out his moods, but never before had he heard such wild notes torn from the straining strings.

The music spoke of a mind on the verge—the verge of...

Ram Singh appeared behind him, his dark face like carven stone with eyes glittering to the pulse of the music. But Wentworth was utterly unaware of the two faithful servitors at his back. All his being was centered on the vibrating instrument beneath his chin.

Gradually the wildness died, and in its place came a slow, limpid melody. But it was two hours after he had picked up the violin that he replaced it in its case and, exhausted, weary in every fiber, turned to find Ram Singh and Jenkyns standing transfixed in the doorway.

He smiled at them quickly. “My dinner clothes, Ram Singh. Jenkyns, phone Miss Nita that I shall call for her in half an hour.”

“Yes, sir!” Jenkyns bobbed with bows, his ruddy face wreathed in smiles, and ducked away as fast as his old legs would carry him to perform his master's will...

Nita and Wentworth went forth gaily to dinner. And not until the meal was well under way did he mention, and then only casually, the afternoon scene with Kirkpatrick. He was callous about it, as if the friendship lost meant less than nothing, and Nita's quick blue eyes went to his face and searched it carefully.

She was a lovely girl, and in evening dress she was surprisingly beautiful. The low-cut gown of simple white left bare the exquisite slope of her shoulders. The gleam of her rich brown hair made a jewel-like setting for the perfect oval of her face.

The luxurious dining room was muted by the depression, its usually crowded tables half empty, but not a man who passed but felt his pulses swiften, felt the dread curse of the plague lift a little for having glimpsed her and paid the tribute of admiring eyes.

But her gaze was solely upon Wentworth. Her eyes hovered now half between puzzlement and raillery. Well as she knew her Dick, she did not quite understand this new mood.

“But this is silly, Dick,” she said.

Wentworth leaned forward across the spotless white and crystal of the table. “You have the dearest chin in the world,” he said.

“Be serious, Dick,” she urged.

“Oh, I really mean it,” he said. She placed her small white hand upon his. “Dick, you're maddening sometimes,” she said. “Tell me about this spat you had with Kirkpatrick.”

“Spat?” Wentworth's eyebrows lifted, the hint of raillery that always lurked there emphasized. He laughed. He placed his other hand upon hers and leaned forward again. “Nita,” he said, “I'm bored with the city. I think I shall go to the country for the weekend.”

The girl looked at him with a faint frown disturbing her forehead. She did not speak.

“We have an invitation,” he went on, “from MacDonald Pugh. A charming fellow, don't you think? And this constant business of the Black Death, this pursuit of shadows, grows irksome.”

“Stop fooling, Dick,” the girl pleaded, the frown deepening between her eyes. She smiled uncertainly. “What's the matter, boy?”

“I'm bored,” he repeated.

She was completely serious now. “What are you trying to do?” she asked in level tones. “This isn't like you, Dick.”

Wentworth's smile was crooked. “Can't I pick a quarrel with my only sweetheart?” he demanded.

“What are you up to, Dick?” she demanded again.

“Just this,” he said in swift undertones. “I want everyone to believe that I have left the city. I wanted you to believe it too. You are too honest, too lovely to be able to dissemble successfully. And everyone—absolutely everyone—must think that I have left.”

“And so you tried to pick a quarrel with me?” the girl asked softly, reproachfully.

Wentworth's eyes kissed her.

“It was foolish, darling,” he said, and abruptly his face went serious again. “Now, beautiful, get angry with me. Make a scene. Stand up and call me a coward. Say you don't see how I can leave the city when Kirkpatrick needs every man he has, and many more than he has, to track down the Black Death. Go on!”

“Is it really necessary?” the girl asked. Wentworth's nod was slow and completely serious.

“Very well,” she mocked him, “but remember, I am too honest, too lovely, to be able to dissemble!”

She slapped her hand upon the table and her blue eyes suddenly clouded. “I don't believe it,” she said, and her tones were loud. Dick mumbled some words in a low voice.

Nita's tones rose even higher. “You couldn't do such a thing, Dick Wentworth,” she said.

Faces turned at other tables. Startled eyes watched them. “You can't leave the city,” she said vehemently in the same loud tone. “You can't. Commissioner Kirkpatrick is your friend. You can't desert him in his greatest need.”

Wentworth leaned across the table as if urging her to speak in a lower tone of voice. Audibly he said, “For God's sake, Nita, don't make a scene.” But under his breath he whispered, “You're doing splendidly! Keep it up.”

Now the girl's voice turned pleading. “But Dick, you must stay, and help Kirkpatrick catch the man behind this dreadful plague. Surely,” she jeered at him now, “surely you are not afraid of the Black Death.”

Absolute silence fell over the dining-room Her words “the Black Death” rang out stridently. They seemed to strike the room to silent terror. Not a person stirred. The girl was on her feet now, her chair thrust back so violently that it slammed to the floor.

Wentworth was on his feet too. He moved around the table with imploring hands.

“Don't touch me, you coward!” Nita cried. She looked him contemptuously up and down. “To think that Dick Wentworth is a coward!”

She stooped and snatched her fur-edged cloak from the floor, flung it over her arm and half ran, half stumbled down the aisle among the crowded tables, among the staring faces, among the jabbering gossip, her face buried on her forearm as if she were too broken by tears to watch where she went. And as she went she heard the murmured names:

“Dick Wentworth—Nita van Sloan. Dick Wentworth—Nita van Sloan—Nita van Sloan—”

At his table, Wentworth stared like a stricken man after the girl's retreating figure, then sank into his chair, head hanging, one arm sprawled across the table.

For long minutes Wentworth sat staring fixedly at the table cloth. He too heard the excited jabbering about him, and behind his masking lids his eyes were amused. Mentally he cried, “Brava!” And I said she couldn't act, he thought. Be damned if I don't write a play for her—and he laughed at the conceit. As if Nita would ever desert her aristocratic solitude for the public spotlight of the stage!

Wentworth himself was no mean actor. When he got up from the table he was a grief-crazed man. His stumbling feet found no even path, and his head hung, and his shoulders drooped. But once in the street, away from curious eyes, his alertness returned.

He strode briskly along. Swiftly he returned to his apartment, donned the Spider's dark tweeds, drew a black fedora down over his eyes, and with tool kit beneath his arm, automatic beneath his hand in his pocket, slipped out the servant's entrance and left by the servant's automatic elevator.

The Spider had work to do...

He rode the subway to Wall Street, and the Spider was but another moving shadow among shadows as he slipped into the building where Pugh & Works had offices. The watchman nodded in his chair, and so silent was the invader's tread, so inconspicuous his passage, that even had the man been awake he scarcely would have noticed.

Swiftly then the Spider stole up the stairway, picked the lock of the office door, and fastening it behind him, hurried into the private office of the partners, smelling strongly of disinfectant, and germicides which had been spread to wipe out the threat of the Black Death in the room where Works had died.

The modern safe there resisted his skilled fingers and sensitive ear scarcely longer than had the old tin box in the pawnbroker's office. And in a few moments he had spread before him the firm's books, was skimming rapidly over double-entry bookkeeping and an auditor's report with the skilled ease of a practiced accountant.

His concentration was intense. So engrossed did he become in the frail thread that he followed, the key which involving Jimmy Handley, might bring him to the identity of the Black Death, that he did not hear the opening of the outer door, did not look up until lights flashed on in the main office.

Like a flash then he extinguished his own minute gleaming flashlight by which he had examined the work. Like a shadow he moved across the room, crouched behind a door. And now a black mask concealed his features.

Slow and ponderous footsteps crossed the floor. A hand touched the knob and the door swung open, concealing Wentworth behind it. But the door had been thrust strongly; it struck Wentworth's feet, and, shaking, bounded back. The indistinct figure in the doorway whirled suddenly in alarm. A hand darted up, and at almost point blank range a pistol spurted its spear of powder flame at the crouching Spider!

Only Wentworth's split-second coordination of mind and muscle saved him then. He had seen the jerk of the man's hand and thrown himself to the floor so nearly in timing with the gun's discharge that it seemed he had been hurled there by the bullet.

He let the breath hiss from lungs in a half moan, and the crouching figure of the man who had fired straightened slowly. Wentworth's own gun was ready to his hand, but this was no battle with the underworld. In this case he was the interloper; the other man was in the right.

And the Spider never killed an innocent person.

On the other hand, in addition to Pugh, he knew a number of other members of the firm personally, and to be discovered in his present role with a black mask over his face, would have spelled his doom.

He moaned again, his left hand pressed to his chest as if it covered a wound, and abruptly a white light glared into his masked face. The man with the gun moved cautiously nearer. Wentworth tossed on the floor as if in mortal pain, flung out his right arm convulsively.

The man came a step closer, gun ready, and Wentworth's outflung hand found his heel and jerked suddenly. The flashlight flung upward. The man cursed, fell heavily, and his gun blazed.

Glass crashed as a bullet screamed off into the darkness. Wentworth bounded from the floor, flung himself upon the man, and his right fist crashed home twice. The man jerked beneath him, straightened and went limp.

The Spider heard hoarse shouts, the first shrill blasts of a watchman's police whistle. He must make good his escape at once, or it would be too late. Already guards within the building must be rushing to the succor of the man he had knocked out.

Swiftly the Spider ripped out of his coat, flung it and his hat across the room. In them would be found no mark of identification. Swiftly he stooped over the unconscious man, tugged the coat from his body, flapped the other man's hat upon his head, and struggling into the coat, ran toward the outer door, ripping the mask from his face and thrusting it into his pocket as he sped across the room. He jerked open the door, as the first of the watchmen plunged up the stairs, gun up and ready.