Wings of the Black Death/Chapter 18

RANSOM PLANE TO FLY AT DAWN

In New York city, miles from where Nita van Sloan struggled in terror against her bonds, thousands read the headlines and sighed with relief. It meant that the city had been forced by the threat of the Black Death to borrow a billion dollars from the banks, to place that money in a plane and start it off along the line the Black Death had charted.

If any other plane took the air, the Plague Master proclaimed, he would loose death upon the city.

So at Floyd Bennett field, out on what had been barren filled land beyond Brooklyn, men who moved like stooped gnomes in the weird, searchlight-cast shadows, fueled a black plane with silver wings. Suddenly the men whirled, staring off toward the long straight road that stretched to the city.

Sirens were purring there. One-eyed motorcycles droned, and behind them came swiftly a long line of armored cars. Troops patrolled the field, bayonets gleaming on rifles aslant their shoulders. One by one the armored cars rolled up to the black plane with its silver wings. The doors clanged open, and while men stood with drawn pistols, bundles of currency were transferred to the plane.

A billion dollars that would fly into the dawn sky to ransom a city from man-inflicted plague! The false dawn already showed in the east. In an hour would come the take-off.

And back in the cavern where the plague pigeons kept up their everlasting murmur, Nita van Sloan, who alone knew the secret of the cave, struggled futilely with her bonds.

Masked in shrubbery, on a field not far from the entrance to that dread cavern, waited another plane, a ship that, mockingly, was painted all black, the plane the Black Death would fly. It was fueled and ready, a few moments of warming up, and it would bear the monster into the sky.

A billion dollars ransom...

In the close, murmurous darkness, Nita was suddenly still, straining listening ears. Was she overwrought from long waiting in the blackness, or was that a furtive footfall in the shadows? She scarcely dared to breathe. It would not be death that crept upon her. Death she could face, but those men....

More frantically than ever she sawed upon her bonds, tugging and straining. On came the footsteps. They had entered the main chamber of the cavern where she lay now and still they came on, softly and steadily. If the walls had not caught up and magnified the sound, if her ears had not become accustomed to the pigeons, learned to hear through their cooing, she would not have detected.

But, hearing it, there was nothing she could do but lie helplessly and wait. The footsteps were quite near now, almost beside her. In a few moments she would know. A scream rose in her throat, but she choked it down. A foot struck her leg.

Abruptly white light slapped her in the face. Her eyes flinched shut from the glare. From above came a gasp, and—

“Nita, Nita darling!”

The girl caught her breath. That voice. It couldn't be! It was!

“Dick! Oh, Dick!” she sobbed.

Strong arms caught her up in the dark, a kiss brushed her lips, competent, swift fingers worked on the ropes that bound her. Loosed were her wrists, her feet.

“Dick,” babbled the girl. '`A light, I must have a light. Let me see you.”

In the darkness Richard Wentworth laughed softly, and a match flared. A candle took slow flame and he crossed back to where she still huddled on the floor.

“I'm sorry, darling,” he murmured into her hair, holding her close against him. “I'm sorry, but there was no other way. I was afraid, was sure the police would be watching you in case they were not convinced of my death. Even the newspapers did not prove anything. Kirkpatrick might have told the reporters he knew I was dead so that he could capture me again.”

Nita was sobbing unrestrainedly now. She had no words but his name.

“Shh! Stop now, dear,” he soothed her. “You must get out of here at once.”

Slowly she stifled her tears of happiness, smiled at him tremulously with wet eyes. She got up on numb feet, rubbing her rope-chafed wrists.

“I'm ready,” she said. “Come on.”

The Spider's smile was still on his face, but it fled from his eyes. “I can't go, dearest. There's work to do.” He touched a black valise that stood beside his feet, which she had not noticed before. “But you must. Hurry, now. The Black Death and his men will be here any minute.”

Slowly the girl crossed to him. She put a hand upon each of his shoulders.

“Dick,” she said, “I'll never leave your side again until this Black Death is beaten, or until—until we die together.”

Wentworth peered deeply into her blue eyes. There was no fear there, only a great love and a vast determination. He did not argue with her longer for he knew it would be useless.

“Very well then,” he said. “Help me turn loose these pigeons.”

He strode toward the nearest coop. Nita hung onto his arm.

“But the Black Death!” she gasped.

Wentworth turned and stared at her, then laughed softly.

“They haven't been given the germs yet,” he told her swiftly. “The plague acts on them much more quickly than on humans. They will be infected only just before they are freed.”

The pigeons were stirring restively in the light of the candle. Outside, the night was still pitch black. But already, distantly, a rooster was crowing, and there was a sleepy first twittering of birds. Wentworth picked up a coop, shouldered it and carried it out of the circle of light to the open, tore off the door and hurried back. Nita, at his side, told him how she had happened to be captured.

Wentworth nodded. “That explains the rifle shot I heard in the woods this afternoon,” he said. “I couldn't figure what the man was firing at. But I followed him and found this place. I went back home to get this valise...”

“We must have passed in the woods!” Nita cried.

Wentworth stopped on his way back for the third coop of pigeons, placed his hands on her shoulders.

“Darling, won't you go?” he pleaded. “Believe me there is more danger here than there was when I sent the car diving off Brooklyn Bridge, hung on to the wheel and let it drag me down.”

Nita smiled at him, made a little moue. “You know damned well I won't,” she said quietly.

Wentworth shook his head, still smiling, but there was grave fear in his eyes. He knew that at any moment the super-criminal would come, and he must remain. He turned and strode into the cave again, Nita beside him.

“How far did you swim under water?” she demanded. “That was terribly dangerous, Dick.”

“Dangerous?” A thin smile twisted his lips. “Yes, of course. Well, the current helped, dear. But if Kirkpatrick or his men had thought to investigate a crate that was floating down stream about fifty yards from them, they'd have found the Spider's head on the other side. I was lucky, Nita.”

As he lifted another coop of pigeons, a grating laugh broke out behind them. It echoed horribly in the cave, and Wentworth, dropping the coop before him as a guard, whirled, but he saw at once that the shield was useless, for the masked man held a high-powered rifle that would drill through that frail covering like a sword through cheesecloth.

The man was high-shouldered, and a black hat drooped over his forehead. When he spoke it was with the evil, taunting politeness of the Black Death.

“You used the right tense, Wentworth—or do you prefer to be called the Spider?—I refer to your last sentence. You were lucky, but that—” he laughed horribly—“that is all over now.”

Wentworth let the coop slide to the floor. He straightened, with his arms hanging at his side and his right foot pressed against the side of the valise that lay on the floor. Nita saw and hoped there was a weapon there—some new device of Dick's clever friend, Professor Brownlee.

But nothing happened, nothing except that Dick, speaking sharply, in a voice Nita hardly recognized because of its harsh vehemence, snapped out:

“Why do you continue to hide behind that mask? Do you think I am a complete fool? Can you imagine that the Spider doesn't know that the name of his enemy is—” Wentworth paused, laughed shortly,—“is MacDonald Pugh?”

The man snarled behind his mask.

“That knowledge will do you no good, Mr. Spider. I do not intend to leave any witnesses to accuse me of the Black Death.”

Slowly he raised his left hand and took off his black hat, ripped off the mask. Nita expected Dick to fling himself forward then, during the instant the man's eyes were covered. But Wentworth made no move, only stood with his gleaming eyes fixed on the face of his erstwhile friend.

Wentworth smiled calmly.

“I know all about you, Pugh,” he said in his harsh, accusing voice. “Know how you framed that girl, Virginia Doeg. Know how you involved young Jim Handley. Know why you—”

“Brilliant, positively,” sneered the man behind his rifle, and his usually pleasant face was twisted into a mask of hate. “You astound me, Spider. You've learned much since we met in Harper's office.”

Wentworth laughed tauntingly. “And I fooled you there. Have you figured yet how I called the police and escaped?”

Pugh flung back his laughter at him. The sound was abnormally loud in the enclosed space. “Have you figured yet, how I managed to get away after putting your ridiculous Spider seal on the foreheads of those police?”

Nita stared from one of the men to the other. Why in heaven's name was Dick standing here bandying words with this criminal? Was he playing for time? Was help on the way? She felt a small thrill of hope.

Wentworth's revelation that Pugh was the Black Death had startled her, but now she saw the entire trail plainly. The forgery had been committed in Pugh's office. The earlier conflicts had centered about the girl, Virginia Doeg. And when the Spider finally had wrested her from the super criminal, there had been another trail from the same spot, the trail of Jimmy Handley...

“... Jimmy Handley,” Wentworth was saying. “I know that you framed him lest I should suspect you when I traced Virginia Doeg. But what I don't see is how you managed to kidnap that girl from the Marlborough, killing those three policemen...”

“It is enough that I did it,” MacDonald Pugh snapped. “Enough of this talking! I have work to do.” He raised his voice. “Bill! Dan!”

The two ruffians who had overpowered Nita came in now and at Pugh's orders rapidly bound Nita and Wentworth to a huge rock. Pugh placed an empty coop in the middle of the cave, and from each of the other crates against the wall extracted two birds which he placed inside this one wired cage.

He was in high glee, chuckling as he went about his work. As soon as he had taken two birds from a coop, the men dragged it outside. It was still dark there, and the pigeons moved restively but did not take wing.

“You get the idea, don't you, Spider?” he jeered. “Surely your brilliant mind can follow me. From each flock I take two pigeons, the others I turn free. But when these two fly to join them—” he stroked the head of one of the pigeons in his hand, “they will carry with them the virus of the Black Death. What a welcome they will get!”

Finally the work was completed, and Pugh came to gloat over his two helpless captives. He smiled at them gently.

“Ah, love,” he said, and laughed like a fiend. “I want to leave you with something to occupy your minds, lest you grow weary with waiting for death. When I fly to collect the ransom money, I shall carry with me the pigeons from each flock. And when I have the billion dollars, I shall release them!

“I am afraid the city will be too busy fighting the plague to give much thought to pursuing me.” He snarled suddenly. “America, bah!” he spat out. “How I hate it. But this plague will help to humble it, and in the end, when my own land whistles, America will come to heel.”

“Your country?” Wentworth asked slowly. “And what is that?”

The man threw back his head and laughed. “America will learn,” he said.

Nita shuddered at the sound of his mirth. It was unholy.

“But surely,” she said, “Surely, you would not doom an entire city...”

Her voice trailed off. She knew he would. Pugh turned his vulture-like head toward her.

“There is another pleasant thought for you to wait with,” he snarled. “Your dog is not dead. He recovered consciousness last night, but rather than kill him I drugged him for a few hours. Any moment now, he will wake up. He will be very thirsty. But see what an humanitarian I am! I have left water for him, a full pan of it!”

Wentworth frowned up at the tall, shoulder-hunched figure. What was the madman driving at?

“Ah, but I see I puzzle you, Spider,” Pugh said, smiling terribly. “Very well, I will explain. Primer English for primer minds. When the dog wakes up the dog will be thirsty. The dog will drink the water which the man has left for him. And when he has drunk the water he will look for his master. And he will come to his master and lick the master's face. The dog will not know that the water he has drunk has in it—”

Pugh paused, gloating over the two. Wentworth's eyes widened slowly with horror. Words struggled to his throat.

“Not that,” he pleaded. “Or kill me that way if you will, but not, not—”

“Not the lady?” Pugh supplied. “Ah, but you would deprive yourself of her company for many hours. Once more I must point out to you, Spider, that you are scarcely complimentary to the young lady. The Black Death, you know, takes about twenty-four hours to kill.”

Nita cried out, “The Black Death!”

“Yes,” smiled Pugh. '`The dog will not know that the water has in it the germs of the Black Death.”

He turned and strode from the cavern, laughing, and the walls echoed with the horrid sound. It rang in the ears of the two who lay waiting for the Black Death.

Outside the paean of the birds increased. The mouth of the cavern faced the east; and Wentworth, raising his head, could see the first gray edge of the day thrusting palely above the horizon. He saw something else, too, saw the huge, hunched body of a great dog, of Apollo, reel up with drooping head.

Wentworth turned to Nita, looked at her with eyes that smiled tenderly.

“Darling,” he said, “I begged you to go. You refused, even, you said, if it meant your death.”

The girl met his gaze bravely.

“Yes, Dick.”

Wentworth's smile grew twisted.

“The time has come,” he said with slow words, “for the Spider to die. Out there Apollo has wakened. He must be drinking the germs now. You know that if I order Apollo to stay away, he will do it. And presently he will crawl off to die, and eventually you and I would go free.”

“Yes, Dick, I know that.” The girl's voice was grave. A courageous smile was on her lips.

“You know, too, dear, that if I call Apollo here, his sharp teeth will soon sever these ropes, that then you and I can get my plane, kill Pugh and save the city from the Black Plague.”

“Yes, Dick, I know that.” There was no break in Nita's words.

It was Wentworth's own voice that cracked, not for himself, but at the thought of this dear loved face dyed with the horrid blush of the Black Death.

“Darling,” said the Spider, “shall I call Apollo—or order him away?”

The girl's smile never faltered. She puckered her lips and whistled.

“Here, Apollo!” she called. “To me, Apollo.” And even the Spider, who knew and loved her, who understood her as no one else in the world, marveled at the clear courage of her voice. Her voice was as soft, as gentle, as if she called a child to her lap, instead of summoning the dread specter of the Black Death.

Wentworth, raising his head again, saw the dog throw up its head, spin drunkenly and come at a stumbling run into the cavern. He plunged toward them with lolling tongue, the tongue that so recently had lapped up the germs of the Black Death!

“Down, Apollo!” Wentworth ordered sharply. The dog stopped, stared at Dick and crouched slowly. Wentworth tugged as far away from Nita as their short bonds would permit, held out his bound hands behind him toward the dog.

“Apollo,” he called sharply. He waved his bound hands the few inches the ropes permitted.

It was a game to the dog. They had played it before against some such emergency as this. But Wentworth had never thought that those sharp fangs, gnawing at the thongs, might mean death to him as well as freedom.

The instant his hands were free, he ordered the dog sharply away, bent and untied his ankles. Then, snatching up the valise, he turned and smiled at Nita, across the width of the cave.

“Good-bye, darling,” he said.

“Dick!” the girl cried wildly. Wentworth shook his head slowly. “I have risked your dear life as much as I will,” he said. “If I unbound you, I could not keep you from coming. I will send Ram Singh to free you.”

He turned and stumbled from the cave, tears blinding him. He could not even kiss Nita goodbye, lest already the loathsome contagion was at work within his blood, lest he pass on to her the Black Death.

And then, in the entrance of the cavern he paused, staring at an upset tin pan, at sand that had soaked up water, at Apollo far down the hill lapping eagerly from a creek. Carefully Wentworth examined the ground. The sand had almost dried again. There were no dog tracks beside it as there would have been if Apollo had stopped to drink water there. But there was the heavy print of a man's shoe and scuffed sand!

One of the men in leaving the night before, either deliberately to torture the animal, or blindly in the dark, had kicked over the carefully set pan of water, and Pugh had left without noticing! Probably he had given that spot of contagion a wide berth as he had gone toward his plane to fly for the ransom money.

Wentworth leaped to his feet and raced back into the cave. Nita, sobbing, cried out to him.

“I knew you couldn't leave me. I knew you couldn't!”

Rapidly untying her bonds, Wentworth explained what had happened, that they were saved from the danger of the Black Death. Together, then they raced from the cave, down the hill, hurrying toward Wentworth's place. In the hollow there was a crude cabin. As they crashed heedlessly through underbrush, they heard a man's voice cry out and, Wentworth, hurrying forward found a young man bound hand and foot beside a small coop of pigeons.

Wentworth knew what that portended. Another fiendish trap of MacDonald Pugh. He caught the man under the arms, dragged him to the open and freed him, asking meantime who he was.

“Handley,” said the man, “James Handley.” Wentworth smiled grimly. That explained it. This was the fiancee of Virginia Doeg, the man who had been framed by Pugh to throw the trail away from himself.

As he worked on the ropes, he spoke swiftly. “When I have freed you, I'm going to run like hell. I've got to overtake Pugh before he can release pigeons and turn loose the Black Death on the city. As soon as you can move about, kill those pigeons in there and burn the shack. My home is a little over a mile due east of here. Head for that, and I'll leave word for you to be taken care of.”

As he finished speaking, he unfastened the last thong about the man's wrists, sprang up and ran off to where Nita was toiling up the hill. The man shouted thanks after him. Wentworth waved a hand and saw Nita plunge into a thicket of birches, heard the whinny of a horse and gave a great cry of hope. He had been afraid the mile of woods between the cave and his home would doom their chances of saving the city. But with the horse—

Nita already had tightened the cinches when he raced up to her. He sprang to the saddle, caught her up behind him and gave the thoroughbred his head. The animal had suffered no great discomfort except a lack of water, but there was no time to wait for that now.

Crashing through shrubbery, ducking under swooping tree branches, they raced back to Wentworth's home, the tawny form of Apollo a flash in the distance ahead of them, the black valise still clutched in Wentworth's hand.

Straight to the hangar that housed his always ready plane, Wentworth galloped the horse. He sprang to the ground and with Nita close behind him, darted to the wide, sliding doors, threw his weight against them. While Nita completed their opening, he vaulted into the cockpit, touched the starter button.

Compression whined, the propeller moved slowly, and suddenly the motor caught with a coughing roar. The girl clambered up the wing, the slipstream whipping her hair about her face, completing the ruin of her blouse. Wentworth jerked the throttle, and the ship trundled out onto the field. He whirled it into the wind and, chancing the danger of a cold engine, sent the ship racing down the runway, took the air like a bird.

It was a speedy Northrup, a special plane with an adjustable pitch propeller, and it glittered, as scarlet as one of the Spider's own seals, as it swept in a steady climb upward, banked sharply and streaked off on the trail of the Black Death.

Wentworth knew the course that the money plane was scheduled to follow, guessed that Pugh planned to attack it. Pugh had ordered all planes from the sky on pain of releasing the Black Death. And Wentworth, turning the controls over to Nita—it was a dual control plane for long flights—swept the sky with glasses.

For long moments as they raced toward the city, he could see nothing. The haze of smoke above manhattan's towers intervened. But once the scarlet streak had dipped through that and the course swung westward and north along the Hudson, he tried again with the binoculars.

The early sun was behind them, and suddenly Wentworth caught a flash of light. He focused the glasses more sharply and made out the silver wings of the ransom plane. Even as he watched, a small black plane swooped out of the clouds above it.

Wentworth's hands tensed upon his glasses. His eyes glinted. There before him was the plane of the Black Death!

Far up the river he saw the two planes slant downward together. They disappeared behind trees. The scarlet Northrup droned on. It was equipped with no machine gun, but in a compartment beside him Wentworth had a “Tommy,” a Thompson sub-machine gun that would be wonderfully effective at relatively close range.

Grimly now, as the plane swept on, he unfastened the straps that held it and drew the gun up past his chest and above the cowling. He fastened it down with another strap, then wriggled into a parachute. After which he took the controls while Nita availed herself of similar protection.

Wentworth was ready for the battle. They were near at hand now, only a mile or two from the spot where the two planes had settled. And even as he watched, the black craft of Pugh shot above the tree tops and began to climb steeply. A moment later they flashed over the field and Wentworth, peering down, made out the inert bodies of three men stretched beside the silver-winged ransom plane.

Wentworth's mouth went grim. He unstrapped the machine gun and held it ready in his hands. Only a few hundred yards separated him now from the Black Death. Suddenly the plane ahead vaulted upward in an inhuman turn and shot back to meet him, with a flicker of flame behind its propeller that he recognized with mounting anger was a double machine gun. Where in heaven's name had Pugh got a military plane?

But there was no time to speculate on that. He must destroy the man. Wentworth had been watching keenly, and he had seen no pigeons winging back toward the city. He was positive the dread harbingers of the plague were still aboard.

He raised a hand to signal Nita to give him the controls, but the girl had already thrown the ship into a twisting spiral, dodging from the line of Pugh's fire. Pugh veered to meet them, and she whipped the nose back the other way. And now the black ship was within range of Wentworth's lighter gun.

Pugh was still struggling for altitude.

Abruptly Nita let him have it. Instead of climbing, she put the Northrup into a steep dive, swishing down across the black ship's nose before Pugh could bring his guns to bear.

The killer flipped up the tail of his ship, but it was too late. The scarlet Northrup had darted under, and a stream of .45 caliber bullets ripped into the motor and underside of the black ship.

Nita zoomed, Immelmanned and flashed back upon the tail of the black plane. But there was no need of further firing. Black smoke and a burst of flame ripped from the engine of Pugh's ship. Wentworth saw the Plague Master pumping frantically with a fire extinguisher.

The flames blossomed into full flower, flicked back at Pugh. He threw up his arms. The motors drowned the sound of his shriek. He reared for an instant in the cockpit, then leaped far out, clear of the flaming black plane. His parachute whipped open.

Without an instant's hesitation, Wentworth leaped, too, dropping the gun back into the cockpit, depending on the automatic in his pocket. But instead of jerking his rip-cord immediately, Wentworth let his body hurtle downward unchecked. He shot past Pugh like a bullet and fancied he heard a strangled cry of rage from the man.

A thousand feet from the rolling farm land beneath him, Wentworth yanked the rip cord. His parachute snapped open and he drifted downward, seeming scarcely to move. He could not see Pugh now. The man was hidden by the open bell of his own parachute. But the Black Death would not escape him.

Already the plague had perished in the flames of the ship, burning fiercely in a nearby field. And Wentworth would reach the ground first. He would be free of his parachute and ready, when Pugh landed, to exact vengeance for the hundreds who had died.

The ground sprang up beneath him and, flexing his knees, Wentworth spilled down on the soft earth, tugging at the windblown parachute. In a few moments, he was free of it and peering upward, spotted Pugh. He was sideslipping his parachute, putting as much distance as possible between himself and the vengeful Spider.

But Wentworth paced him easily. He saw Pugh's automatic flame in his hand, but he still pursued, dodging the hail of bullets that spat viciously into the dust of the field. He put his hand into his pocket for his gun. It was gone!

Somewhere in that frantic tumble through the air, it had spilled from his pocket. For an instant Wentworth checked, then he ran on more swiftly than before. Counting shots on Pugh, he estimated that at the present rate the man would exhaust his bullets about fifty feet above the ground, would be unable to reload in time.

But Pugh was canny. He held one shot. His parachute was only forty feet from the ground, now thirty, now... Pugh bent his knees and took the landing perfectly, whirled with raised gun as Wentworth raced at him.

But Pugh had figured without the wind in his parachute. Even as he leveled the gun, the collapsing sail was caught by a gust.

Wentworth had crowded him too closely. He had not had time to free himself from the harness, and the tugging parachute jerked him nearly off his feet. Before he could recover his balance and fire, the Spider was upon him.

His fist struck the wrist of Pugh's gun hand, knocked the weapon fifteen feet away. And then began a grim battle for life, the Black Death and the Spider, grim-faced and bleak-eyed, in the warm bath of the morning sunshine.

“The end, Pugh! The end for you!” Wentworth cried. And there was laughter on his lips—fighting, angry laughter. “Remember the dog? Even if you overcome me, you—”

Pugh's face blanched. “Good God!” he cried in frantic terror. “You've got the Black Death!”

Wentworth laughed again tauntingly. And suddenly Pugh turned and ran.

The Spider let him run a little way, dragging the parachute, working with desperate hands on the harness. And just as Pugh was almost free, Wentworth jumped on the parachute with both feet. The man was yanked to the ground.

He scrambled up, tore off the last of the harness, and the Spider sprang upon him, seized him by the throat. Pugh struck in a frenzy of fear with his fists, but his blows were weak.

In the end, the Black Death was a coward and died a coward's death, with terror in his eyes, with the Spider's fingers crushing the life slowly out of him.

Wentworth rose from the body of the man with disgust mingling with the ferocity of his hate. He brushed his hands, reached into his trouser pocket and brought out the crude imitation of his own cigarette lighter with which Pugh had sought to incriminate him.

With it he printed upon the great bald head the vermilion death seal of the Spider.

Then abruptly he shot a glance upward, hearing the whistle of wind on a swooping plane. The scarlet Northrup glided in to a perfect landing, its wing slots cutting its terrific landing speed to a mere forty-five miles an hour. The slots were still in an experimental stage. But Wentworth had contrived to have them installed on his plane, and they worked perfectly.

Wentworth glanced once more at the man who had paid the penalty at last for his crimes, then turned and loped toward the plane. But Nita did not wait for him. She whirled the ship and taxied swiftly in his direction, pointing toward the woods a few hundred yards distant with an outflung hand.

Then Wentworth saw that Nita had maneuvered the lever which hid the plane's license number on wing and tail with a thin layer of cloth on which a fictitious number had been painted, and he sprang to the wing.

Even as his feet touched, Nita jerked open the throttle, and the ship's wheels left the ground before Wentworth was settled into the cockpit. Then, peering over the side of the swiftly rising plane, he saw the need for haste. Bluecoated policemen were rushing onto the field from the woods, and guns glinted in their hands.

The seal of the Spider, they would find, but—Wentworth threw back his head and laughed, turned and blew a kiss to Nita—the Spider was gone.