Wings of the Black Death/Chapter 4

A thin white scar on Wentworth's right temple, the relic of an old knife fight, turned red and began to throb. That was the only evidence of his excitement. His hands were steady; his eyes did not flinch from the stern regard of Kirkpatrick. Beside him he could feel the tightening of Nita's hand upon his arm, and knew that her blue eyes must be widened with horror.

Wentworth frowned slowly. “But that does not sound possible,” he said. “I have never known the Spider to kill anyone except a crook.”

“There is no mistake,” said Kirkpatrick sternly. “That villainous red seal was printed on the foreheads of the dead men.”

Wentworth's face stiffened with his effort at self-control. Truly this new enemy was proving a worthy antagonist. For Wentworth could not doubt that it was he who had placed the seal upon the murdered policemen. The threat of the terrible Black Death, and now this. Anger rose slowly within him like a white-hot tide. He felt his brow flush with it, and he clenched his fists. It was too powerful an emotion for him to conceal. He stared into Kirkpatrick's eyes, and his own pupils were pinpoints of rage.

“Now I swear to you, Kirkpatrick,” he said slowly, “I will help you bring to justice the murderer of your men.”

The Commissioner's face was set in harsh, commanding lines.

“Remember what you say, Wentworth!”

“So help me God,” Wentworth repeated, “I will bring to book the murderer of those policemen.”

“Will you trap the Spider?”

Wentworth's mouth went into a thin straight line. “If the Spider is the man who placed the seal upon their foreheads, the Spider shall pay.”

For long moments the men's gaze locked, and the slow languorous strains of another waltz came like music from another world, so foreign was it to the tension of the two.

Nita van Sloan laughed uncertainly beside them.

“For heaven's sake, Dick,” she said, “Don't look so grim. One might fancy you and Stanley were enemies.”

Neither man replied; nor did their eyes shift from their rigid regard of one another.

“I'll say this to you,” Kirkpatrick said presently, and there was strain in his voice, “in spite of the fact that the Spider is a criminal, I have admired him previously. Admired him because he struck down the criminals that I could not touch within the law; admired him because he was fair and just. But I tell you now that this is different. That hereafter it is war to the death between the Spider and the police. I shall order my men to shoot him on sight—if ever his true identity is disclosed to us.”

A slow smile spread over Wentworth's face. He had got a grip on himself now, and the slow red throb of the wound on his temple had subsided.

“I don't know why you tell me all of this, Stanley, but I think you are entirely right. I too shall shoot on sight when I spot the man who placed the seal upon the foreheads of those dead police.”

For a moment longer the men stood face to face. Then Kirkpatrick bowed swiftly.

“I must ask you to excuse me now; there is work to be done.” He bowed a second time to Nita van Sloan, spun on his heel and stalked off.

Wentworth looked after him with a slight smile disturbing the equanimity of his lips, and mockery returning to his brow. He turned to Nita.

“Good old Stan seems to be a bit disturbed,” he said. “Come, let's finish this dance; then we must go.”

Nita van Sloan gave herself into his arms and they whirled slowly through the dancing throng. But her heart was not in it, and although Wentworth guided her skillfully and gracefully through the measures there was no pleasure in the waltz.

They took their leave then, and Wentworth, handing her into his car, said softly:

“Will you go home with me for a while, Nita? I must talk to you.”

“Of course, Dick,” the girl said from the depths of the car, and Wentworth, nodding briefly to Ram Singh, climbed in.

For a moment, while the car tooled through the traffic, he sat silently, the girl's white hand clinging to his arm. Finally the girl could stand the stillness no longer and broke out:

“Oh Dick—that awful seal. Your seal!”

“Yes,” said Wentworth softly. “My seal. I think Nita, my dear, that I am entering the most deadly conflict of my life. This man is fiendish, utterly without heart. And he is clever.” His fist struck suddenly on his knee. “Damnably clever.”

In the darkness Wentworth's breath came short and fast, and anger rose in him again. The girl's soft voice at his elbow called him back.

“But what are you talking about, Dick? I don't understand.”

Wentworth then told her briefly what had happened that night, and that his enemy must have placed his seal on the policemen's foreheads.

“Do you know what that means, my darling? If any criminal has the courage to imitate the Spider, to try to pin his crimes on him, then that man must have an amazing and fiendish plot before him, for the underworld dreads the Spider and fears him.”

Nita laughed amusedly at his side.

“For heaven's sake, Dick, you talk as though the Spider were someone else.”

Wentworth laughed with her.

“Someone else! Child, sometimes when I get behind that mask and go out with a gun in my pocket, I feel that no such person as Richard Wentworth ever lived.” His fist clenched. “Nita, something so fearful that it will rock the world is in progress here. I know it!”

Mentally he was visioning the shadow of the Black Death just below the horizon glow of the city's lights. But why, he asked himself, would any criminal deal with such a fearful thing? What could he hope to accomplish with it?

The car halted and a resplendent doorman opened the door of the limousine. Wentworth with a smile on his lips, descended and handed Nita to the curb. Together they walked across the sidewalk and through the elaborate, tasteful lobby, a man of the world and his friend.

Who would think that here walked the Spider, and the one woman in the world who knew his identity? Who could guess that this man was on the brink of battle with the most dangerous antagonist the world of crime had ever produced?

They entered the private elevator which lifted them silently to Wentworth's fifteen-room penthouse atop one of Fifth Avenue's most fashionable buildings. The ruddy-faced Jenkyns who opened the door bowed delightedly as he took his master's cape, gloves and cane; for Jenkyns, his hair silvering with age, looked forward to the day when Nita van Sloan would be mistress over the household, when the dread pall of mystery would cease to dominate the young master he adored. His ruddy face was wrinkled with smiles as he hurried on to his pantry, to put together with his inimitable skill supper for his master and the mistress-to-be.

Richard Wentworth did not pause in the drawing room, but led Nita directly to his thick- walled study. He seated her comfortably and gestured toward Ram Singh, who had followed them.

“A phone please,” he said quietly.

Presently Ram Singh came back into the room with a portable phone and plugged it into the wall. Wentworth took it eagerly. “Have Jenkyns,” he told Ram Singh, “get Mrs. Gainsborough on the phone. Mrs. Gainsborough in Roslyn, Long Island.”

When the connection had gone through he asked quickly, “Mrs. Gainsborough? This is Richard Wentworth. Has anything unusual happened about your estate during the past week?”

As he listened to the woman's response, which grated so noisily that its rasping sound was audible to Nita van Sloan ten feet away, his hand tightened slowly about the phone, and his eyes took on an eager light.

“But Mrs. Gainsborough,” he said swiftly, “you need not be afraid. I am not connected in any way with the police. I do a little criminal investigation work sometimes myself, and I ran across your name in that connection... Yes, yes, perhaps you are right... Certainly.... I'll be out to see you tomorrow.... Yes, until then. Good-bye.”

He handed the phone back to Ram Singh and whirled on light feet toward Nita. “Darling, the battle is about to begin. I want you to call with me tomorrow on Mrs. Gainsborough. I think she holds the key that will start the fireworks.”

The next afternoon was sullen beneath lowering clouds, and the wind that stirred in their faces as Wentworth drove his swift Hispana Suiza roadster over the Long Island roads was hot and oppressive.

They swept from the climbing highway into a broad stone-gated drive and went on their way through trees up to the colossal columns that marked the home of Mrs. Gainsborough. The whole mass seemed to have been built with the idea of making a show-place, and the result was slightly ludicrous. Wentworth's upflung glance, taking in the whole facade, was mildly amused, but when he entered the house and bowed before the stout matron who received him, his manner was deferential.

The woman was absurdly overdressed, stuffed like a sausage into a too tight dress that showed too much of her pudgy arms for afternoon wear, and too much of her ample bosom. But there was no laughter in Wentworth's eyes as he looked into her pudgy face; for grief and fear were there, and Wentworth was no man to mock at human misery.

So Wentworth smiled sympathetically, and the woman smothered his strong hand in both of hers.

“Oh, thank you, thank you for coming,” she said. “I have been so afraid.” She managed a smile and sank heavily into a chair in the over-decorated and over-furnished room where she received the two.

She poured out the story in a swift gush of words, and Wentworth, standing silently before her, his eyes fixed in keen concentration on her face, listened with encouraging nods.

A letter had come, she said, demanding that she pay a million dollars to the writer lest her entire family be killed.

“A million dollars!” she exclaimed, and her hands flew in swift gestures. “A million dollars I have not got, or I would pay it willingly, to save my children.”

She raised her voice and called out. “Marie! Marie! Bring Dave and Gertrude in!” She went on talking quickly. “This letter says if I don't pay they'll kill my children with—with the Black Death.”

Wentworth started at the words. The Black Death. Then this was the answer to his fears, extortion under the threat of the Black Death! Good God! Who would not pay with that horror hanging over him? And this was only one case that had come to his attention. There must be hundreds of them. No man who could conceive using the terror of the Black Death would stop at one extortion. Wentworth felt the cold crawling touch of apprehension down his back.

Lord in heaven! If one of the victims refused and the Black Death were loosed, what would turn its fearful stride from the city? What would prevent the murder of thousands! Wentworth spoke swiftly to the woman.

“Have you the letter?” he asked.

Mrs. Gainsborough lurched to her feet, moved awkwardly across the room on broken arches to a desk and returned with a crudely printed letter. It read:

''Unless you pay us a million dollars you and your children will be killed by the Black Death. If you agree, hang something red out of the upstairs window on the front. Remember, pay, or you all die by the Black Death.''

Wentworth frowned at the thing. It was like any crank note, more than a little disappointing in its queer simplicity. But the Black Death—

A maid showed momentarily in the doorway, and two children came in. They were youngsters; the girl shy, with golden curly hair and eyes almost as blue as Nita's; the boy younger, with black hair and a chubby face that broke easily into smiles.

The woman's face softened as she turned and called them to her, and Wentworth felt a hand bite into his arm.

“Oh Dick, can't you do something for them?” Nita said softly.

Wentworth turned and smiled at her, and for a moment the alertness went from his eyes and they were very dark and tender. “I'll try, dear.”

Somewhere in the house a bell pealed and the woman shuddered as she stood with an arm about each of her children. Fear came back into her face and her lips trembled.

“Oh,” she said, “they called once before.” Wentworth's eyes were narrow and hard. “Let me talk to them!”

The maid entered with a phone, plugged it into the wall. Wentworth picked it up.

“Hello,” he said, and as he listened his eyes sparkled with anger, and his fists clenched. “You keep well informed,” he murmured. “Very well! But since you know I'm on the case, let me warn you. If you attempt to harm any member of this household, you'll pay with your life. Understand?” and abruptly he snapped the phone away from his ear, whirled to Nita.

“The same man,” he said. “It's the same man. I heard his laugh, the same fiendish chuckling laugh as if he were gloating over something horrible to come!”

He turned swiftly toward the woman. “I'd get guards here immediately. He knows in some way that I'm here, so there's no longer any use of pretense.”

He jerked up the phone again, spat a number into it, and began barking out commands to the police—commands which he knew would be instantly obeyed.

The woman sent her children from the room, and Wentworth heard her laboring feet ascend the stairs. He turned to Nita.

“I think it best,” he said, “that Ram Singh drive you back to town at once. The man who just phoned declared that he was about to loose the Black Death upon all of us!”