Wings of the Black Death/Chapter 14

The Spider turned his head, staring back over his shoulder at the room he had just left, shouting hoarsely, “In there! He's in there!”

“Jeez, it's you, sir!” cried the watchman. “And I nearly shot you!”

“For God's sake hurry,” gasped the Spider hoarsely, and the man plunged past him with drawn gun. Wentworth hastened down the stairs. Behind him, he heard the guard shout a warning to his companions below. “Be careful, Bill. Mr. Robertson is coming down.” And in the darkness another guard brushed past him, with a muttered, “Pardon me, sir.”

The Spider continued his dash to the front doors. But once there he cut his speed to a quiet stroll, left the building and walked briskly, but with no appearance of flight, through streets that shrieked now with the bedlam of approaching police sirens.

A subway entrance was near, and Wentworth descended unhurriedly, dropped a nickel into the clanking turnstile and walked slowly up the platform. A bum without hat or coat was stretched out sleeping heavily upon a bench. Grim humor twitched Wentworth's lips. What an evil trick he could play this derelict by the gift of a hat and coat!

He strode into the men's washroom and with powerful fingers shredded the coat he wore. With a knife blade he ripped the hat to fragments and flushed them into the sewer of the city.

After them he sent tie and collar, and slouched again out onto the platform with rumpled hair, a dissolute, half-starved bum. He smeared dirt from the platform upon his cheeks, beneath his eyes, so that they seemed sunken; rubbed his eyes violently so that they became bloodshot. And then it was that his genius for disguise became apparent.

The Spider was gone. Gone, too, was Richard Wentworth, the wealthy young clubman; and in their place, slack-jawed and slouch-shouldered, there lolled upon the bench beside that other slumbering bum, another member of the vast army of the unemployed.

But before police could come pounding, searching down the subway stairs, the rumble of a train filled the hot place. Wentworth shambled aboard and slumped into a corner seat, to all appearances a weary, homeless man.

It was with difficulty that he entered his apartment house again, finally managing to slip into the rear entrance when for a moment the watchman walked away.

And in the morning, as if to mock him, the papers blazed forth with a new horror that transcended all previous perpetrations of that monstrous criminal, the Black Death. For the man had sent letters to every newspaper in town, stating demands that the banks of the city lend a billion dollars to the city government in cash. And that huge sum was to be paid to him! The club this super blackmailer held over the cringing multitude was the threat of the plague spread wholesale through the city!

The letter said:

''If the city's millions knew me better, they would realize that I am no man of idle threats. But since it is unfortunately necessary that I conceal my identity, I shall deliver a free sample of my thoroughness. Even as you in the city read these lines, the Black Death will be among you. Oh, nothing to be alarmed about, for today I shall kill only a few hundred of your millions. Take heed, as these hundreds choke and die with the Black Death, that you do not provoke me by unnecessary delay, lest the next blow wipe out thousands.''

And even as newsboys shouted the fearsome headlines the plague had lifted its evil head. Ambulances gonged their way through the streets to the Lower East Side area, where the Black Death had chosen first to strike. And people died in the streets. Thousands fled.

The news that the Black Death had fulfilled his warning threw the city into complete panic. Its people went absolutely mad with terror. Thousands fled. Trains and roads were jammed. It was like a wartime evacuation.

Wentworth, roaming the fringes of the area where the Black Death had struck, barred from nearer approach by a double ring of police who, with surgical masks upon their faces braved the plague, found the city about him dead. The usually crowded benches of Battery Park at the tip end of Lower Manhattan were deserted. Even the birds of the air seemed to have fled the Black Death. For the flock of pigeons that usually settled before the Custom House was missing.

And Wentworth, plodding through deserted streets, past the closed doors of shops, of business offices, even of restaurants, saw their bodies in the streets. Good God, even the pigeons had fallen prey to the dread plague.

Wentworth did not approach the stilled birds, but went swiftly to a subway, and riding uptown until he reached a newspaper office went in to insert a small ad.

The place was a hive of industry. Boys darted back and forth with bundles of paper under their arms. Trucks roared off with loads of the latest editions, their headlines still wet with ink, for the thousands who, unable to leave the city, remained behind locked doors or crept furtively through the streets with backward flung glances that seemed to fear the Black Death would spring upon them in the guise of a ravening beast.

A business-like young woman took his ad crisply. It read:

''Pigeons for sale. A large number of all varieties, fancy and homing.''

And it gave an address on the upper West Side.

Wentworth made sure that the ad would appear that day, then hurried to the subway again, and sped uptown to the address he had given, where a druggist with whom he had dealt kept pigeons as a hobby.

Wentworth strode up the inner stairs to the man's house above the store, knocked, and when the bewhiskered little man with gold-rimmed glasses far down upon his nose opened the door, spoke swift.

“I want to board with you for a week. Here's fifty dollars in advance,” and he thrust out two twenties and a ten-dollar bill.

The man's fingers closed on the money automatically. But he stared from the crisp new notes to Wentworth's entirely serious face in astonishment.

“I don't understand, Mr. Wentworth—you want to take board with me?”

“That's it.”

“But I don't understand.”

The pale watery eyes were bewildered. Wentworth smiled grimly. “It is not necessary that you should. You have the money. Do you agree?”

The man stared down at the green banknotes. His head wavered slowly from side to side. “I—I guess it's all right,” he stammered. “I'll ask mother.”

Wentworth heard his voice calling his wife and knew that when the woman saw the money it would be all right.

All that day Wentworth sat in the small room that had been assigned to him, waiting. Waiting without action while the corpse fires burned on Riker's Island; while ambulances sirened through the streets; and people choked and died with the Black Death.

It was late when he let himself out of the lonely little apartment and hurried home to get a change of linen. He tarried only a few moments, then hurried back. Climbing the stairs, he heard excited voices raised within.

He knocked on the door and found the bewhiskered little druggist striding back and forth, gesticulating with stiffly waving arms. “They're gone!” he cried. “They're all gone—all my lovely pigeons.”

Wentworth's eyes narrowed. “Not stolen?” he demanded.

The little man paused in his striding, peered at him above the gold-rimmed glasses far down upon his nose, peered and blinked and suddenly shouted, “You—you stole my pigeons!”

Wentworth cursed silently. Stolen! And he had expected that the Black Death would come and buy them legitimately. “I'm a dumb fool,” he said. His hand reached into his pocket. “How much were the pigeons worth?” he asked.

At sight of the money the man ceased his jabbering. “I'm sorry, Mr. Wentworth,” he said, his voice quavering, “I was half out of my head. I know you didn't steal the pigeons.”

Wentworth said: “But I put the ad into the paper that caused them to be stolen.”

He laid a thousand dollars on the table, whirled and strode from the room. He had been gone from the house scarcely half an hour, yet in that time the Black Death had struck. Was it luck? Or was the arch criminal even now upon his trail?

Wentworth flicked a glance over his shoulder. Hell, he was becoming as frightened as the rabbit-like people of the city, terrified by the plague, who ducked in and out of their doorways like hares out of a warren.

A taxi sped him home. He strode across the room to the phone without even pausing to remove his hat. Swiftly he called every pigeon fancier he knew, and all either had sold out their complete stocks of pigeons or had been robbed.

That clinched it. He dialed police headquarters, asked for Kirkpatrick, but giving his name was told the Commissioner would not speak to him. Anger flared in Wentworth. This was no time for personal animosity. No time for foolish personal considerations. The entire city was in peril.

He left the house, and a cab sped with him to headquarters. He strode in, and policemen who would have objected stepped from his path, overawed by his blazing eyes. He stormed up to the door of the Commissioner, and there the guard stood firm until the sharp voice from within bade the man step aside and let Richard Wentworth enter.

More worn than ever, Commissioner Kirkpatrick crouched behind the desk. He did not speak until the door had closed behind Wentworth.

“I warned you,” he said then, “not to come here again.

“But damn it, man, this is important. There is no time for personal considerations,” Wentworth rapped out.

Kirkpatrick's face was grim, his lips so compressed that they showed only as a thin white line. When he spoke again, they opened and shut upon his words like slashing knives.

“I have but one question to ask you,” he said. “Why did you steal the pigeons from that man?”

Wentworth stared at him. “Are you mad?” he demanded. “Have you been shadowing me?”

Kirkpatrick smiled grimly. “You leave me no choice, Richard. Give me your cigarette lighter.”

Wentworth threw back his head and laughed. It was wild laughter.

“Stanley, in heaven's name, be sensible! I tell you I have the clue that will lead to the capture of the master of the plague.”

Kirkpatrick had not moved since Wentworth had entered the room. He still crouched behind his desk, uttering words like bullets.

“Will you hand over the lighter, or must I summon help to take it from you forcibly?”

The gaze of the two men met, and locked. And Wentworth shook his head slowly. “If I do that, will you listen to me?”

The smile that just disturbed Kirkpatrick's lips was wintry. His mouth opened a fraction of an inch.

“Perhaps,” he said.

Furiously Wentworth snatched the cigarette lighter from his pocket, the lighter that contained even now the damning seal of the Spider and flung it upon Kirkpatrick's desk. Even if it meant his death he was willing that it should be so, if by so doing he could avert the doom that hung over the city.

Kirkpatrick leaned forward. Under the strong, shaded light upon his desk he examined the lighter. But he had done that futilely before. Now he took out a screw driver and systematically took the thing apart. The white scar upon Wentworth's temple throbbed redly. Even though he was determined to sacrifice his life, if need be, to gain the hearing that was necessary to the salvation of the city, the sight of these lean, probing fingers ferreting nearer and nearer to the secret of the lighter sent the blood thrumming through his veins.

He waited tensely, and his breath came more swiftly. His eyes stared with a fearful intensity. Then abruptly, it was over.

The screw driver touched the hidden spring and the base of the lighter came loose in Kirkpatrick's hand. Wearily, with grief in his eyes, the Commissioner looked up at Wentworth. And the seconds that their eyes met brought hope to the Spider. For he knew that each moment their eyes held the red seals were vanishing.

Kirkpatrick's eyes dropped at last to the lighter. He turned it curiously over in his hand, and Wentworth caught his breath as the Commissioner held it under the light and peered into that secret chamber in its base.

Had the shrewd mechanics of the lighter functioned properly? Had the seals disappeared? With throbbing pulses Wentworth waited. Kirkpatrick's face revealed nothing. It was as if made of steel, its lines drawn so taut it seemed no emotion would ever stir them again.

Then slowly Kirkpatrick looked up.

“I am glad, Richard,” he said slowly, “that there are no seals of the Spider to add to the damning evidence my men have piled up against you. This secret chamber in the base of your lighter is enough without that.”

“Richard,” he said, “I hate to do this, but I have no choice. Any other man in my position would have arrested you days ago. I still cannot believe it, but—”

His hand moved heavily to a row of buttons at the end of his desk, pressed upon one. Behind Wentworth a door opened, and with the sudden feeling of a trapped animal he whirled and stared into the muzzles of two police pistols, held in the brawny hands of two grim-faced officers.

“Richard Wentworth,” Kirkpatrick intoned. He might have been a judge in his black robes with a black cap upon his head, pronouncing doom upon a convicted man. Almost Wentworth could imagine he heard the words, “Dead—dead—dead,” that would terminate such a sentence.

“Richard Wentworth, I arrest you on suspicion of homicide,” he said. “Take him away.”