Wings of the Black Death/Chapter 8

With grim amusement, the Spider read next day in the newspapers of the adventures of the policeman who had fired at him. First he had found a murdered man and an unconscious girl beneath a window from which smoke rolled.

He had carried the girl away from danger, and, returning, had found upon the brow of the murdered man the seal of the Spider! He had pursued the Spider and the man had vanished into thin air. Newspapers, putting the obvious inference on the rescue of the girl and the man's death, called the silken cord which had been found about the girl's waist a “piece of the Spider's Web.” They marveled over its strength, for in tests it had resisted a strain up to five hundred pounds.

Wentworth grinned at Ram Singh, standing silently beside him with his arm in a sling, a little pale, but refusing to be treated as an invalid. A broken arm? Wah! It was as nothing.

“That's what comes, Ram Singh,” said Wentworth, “of using old silk. That bit of my 'web', as they call it, should have tested up to seven hundred pounds.”

But there was other news in the paper that brought not even grim amusement; that narrowed Wentworth's eyes with fury; that gripped his heart with cold fingers at the knowledge of his own failures to seize the Black Death.

For the Master of the Plague had not rested content with the toll at the Gainsborough estate. Once more the loathsome, strangling fingers of disease had clutched a family, and a millionaire's child had died with its nurse and mother. White-faced, Wentworth faced the conviction that daily, even hourly, the criminal was sending out his warnings, and where they failed, sending another message that carried with it death by diabolic torture.

And the Spider's sole clue to the Black Death was now in police hands—Virginia Doeg.

The girl had finally admitted to police that the Spider had assisted her and they believed she knew much more about that mysterious avenger's identity than she had revealed. They had her under triple guard at an unnamed place.

Wentworth's gray-blue eyes glinted. That meant he would have to ask Commissioner Kirkpatrick to take him to her. He laughed shortly. Stanley would do it all right, hoping to trick the girl into some evidence of recognition. Once he had located her, Wentworth must in some way evade that triple guard, release her, and obtain the information he was sure she held which might point the way to the Black Death.

He first phoned Nita. “Darling,” he said, “be very careful. The Master of the Plague is out for me. Now his bait is in the hands of the police. He might try to abduct you for that purpose.” His voice dropped softly. “He knows, dearest, as anyone must who knows me at all, that life itself is not so dear to me as you.”

He smiled slowly as he heard the girl's eager rush of words, her fears for his safety. He warned her again, and left with a smile for the ruddy, anxious face of old Jenkyns, the butler.

The door of Kirkpatrick's office opened to him instantly A new grimness marked the Commissioner's brown, saturnine face. The pointed black mustache, neat as always, seemed incongruous, like a butterfly on the face of a corpse.

He nodded without smiling, refusing to respond to this visitor's casual cheeriness as Wentworth offered one of his private brand of cigarettes and extended the lighter, which had always been a challenge between them since the day Kirkpatrick had searched the lighter in vain for the seal of the Spider.

“You have read the papers?” Kirkpatrick asked.

Wentworth nodded with a smile.

“The Spider, it seems,” he said casually, “goes about his business as mysteriously as ever.”

Kirkpatrick shook his head jerkily. “I mean the late editions of the afternoon papers,” he explained.

More of the Black Death?” Wentworth's mouth thinned.

“Yes,” said Kirkpatrick slowly. “Old man Biltland himself has got it. Much good his millions will do him now. There are more of them every hour. Heaven only knows where this thing will end. Biltland came to me for protection after he got his letter, and now—”

“We must get this criminal, and get him quickly,” Wentworth said savagely.

Kirkpatrick laid a clenched fist on the desk, his piercing eyes curiously steady on his friend's face.

“That seems to be the opinion of the papers, too,” he said, and they offer a clue.”

Wentworth's quick question did not alter Kirkpatrick's curious stare. He spoke slowly:

They say, and with strong logic, that there is a connection between the Spider and the Black Death. They point out that the two came to the city together.”

Wentworth's small smile still lingered about his mouth. But he felt the slow beginning of a throb in that thin scar masked by the hair upon his temple.

“That sounds ridiculous,” he said calmly, “as ridiculous as newspaper theories usually do. The Spider kills only crooks, and he has never been known to do anything for the money in it.”

Kirkpatrick leaned forward and put his elbows on the desk, drumming with the fingers on one lean hand, his eyes still unwavering.

“Granted.” he said. “I, too, find it hard to believe. Yet the Spider killed two of my men.”

The smile left Wentworth's face. He too, leaned forward tensely.

“For which I have sworn vengeance,” he said sharply. “And that is why I am here. Take me to see this girl who last night saw the Spider. Perhaps I can get some useful information from her.”

Kirkpatrick's fingers ceased to drum upon the desk. He stared fixedly into the lean, intent face of his friend.

“You ask me to let you talk to that girl?” His voice was muted.

“Precisely,” said Wentworth.

For an instant the gaze of the two men continued locked. Then Kirkpatrick stood erect. A small smile twisted his mouth.

“Since you ask it,” he said. “But in your place I would not have done so.”

Wentworth's thin lips were mocking. “No, Stanley, I don't believe you would.”

They went swiftly to the Commissioner's dark, powerful car, and behind a blue-coated chauffeur whizzed through traffic. Kirkpatrick turned his head and fixed his eyes upon the imperturbable profile of his friend. “We have her at a hotel, the Marlborough.”

Wentworth raised his brows in amusement. “Rather expensive, isn't it?” he asked, “for a mere material witness.”

Kirkpatrick did not answer, and the men were silent while the car sped on, The Marlborough on South Central Park, home of the wealthy and the celebrated! The Black Death would think long before he found her there, Wentworth told himself. Yet there was an uneasiness behind his eyes as they slipped on up Seventh Avenue past a blue-coated policeman at Fifty-Seventh Street, who stopped all traffic to let them pass and saluted smartly.

There was an unchanging frown on Kirkpatrick's forehead; and abruptly, as the car whirled into Central Park South, he slid forward to the edge of his seat, bolt upright, his hand a clenched fist upon his knee.

“Good God,” he cried hoarsely, “What can be the matter?”

Parked at the curb were three radio patrol cars. Two policemen stood guard at the door and a crowd boiled about the entrance.

Wentworth jerked open the door, leaped out with Kirkpatrick at his heels and together they pounded across the pavement, ploughing through the crowd like a charge of cavalry.

“What is it?” Kirkpatrick snapped at one of the guardians of the door.

The man saluted, his face grimly concerned. “The Spider, sir!” he said. “Three of our men dead, and the girl is gone!”

For an instant the news seemed to stun the two men, Kirkpatrick and Wentworth. They stared at each other, then ran into the lobby of the hotel, sprang into an elevator and were whisked to the tenth floor.

The hall swarmed with police, but a way was opened respectfully for the striding figures of the two men—opened to show them the bodies of two policemen on the floor, shot to death! And upon their foreheads glinted the blood-red seal of the Spider.

Wentworth stared fixedly at the seal. It was a clever imitation, faithful in almost every respect except that it was a little larger than the one he used. The two back legs of the Spider were curved a little too much also, but those trivial details would escape the attention of the police and indeed, if they were noticed, it would make no difference in their opinion of the guilt of the Spider.

A white-haired sergeant was in charge. His voice was bitter with anger.

“There's another of our boys in the room, sir,” he reported. “And that makes five of them the Spider has killed. By God, sir, if ever I get my hands on him—”

Kirkpatrick nodded shortly, turned and stared for a moment fixedly into Wentworth's eyes.

He drew a hand wearily across his forehead, pushed on into the room where the girl had been held prisoner. The white-haired sergeant and Wentworth followed.

The Commissioner prowled about the room, flinching from the Spider -branded body on the floor.

“What happened?” he asked over his shoulder.

The sergeant's voice was still tight with hate. “No one seems to know exactly, sir. Nobody heard any shots. Nobody knew anything about the murders until someone rang for a bellboy and he came upstairs and found our men dead in the hall. They flashed an alarm to us and you got here almost as soon as we did.”

“Then no one knows the time of the murders, exactly,” said the Commissioner, meeting Wentworth's eyes again. “That will make an alibi rather difficult.”

Kirkpatrick took a short stride across to the window and peered out. The building dropped away for ten stories straight down. He shook his head, turned, and looked about the room.

“What I can't understand,” the Commissioner said, “is why the girl was taken away alive. Obviously this was done because, as I suspected all along, Virginia Doeg knew the identity of the Spider, and he was afraid she would betray him.”

Wentworth slowly drew a cigarette and ignited it with a minute rasp of his lighter. He knew a different answer to this atrocity. He knew the Black Death had murdered the police and left the girl alive because Virginia Doeg was bait for the Spider, bait for a death trap into which he hoped to lure the one enemy he feared.

After hours of futile investigation Wentworth took his leave of Kirkpatrick and at once set about starting a new search for the girl. She remained his one clue, his one hope of lifting the dread terror of the plague that hung over the city.

Probably the Black Death would communicate with him in some way to reveal the whereabouts of the girl. Wentworth did not wait for that, for then the trap would be set. It was better to strike before his enemy was prepared. The Spider had a clue that the criminal would not suspect; a slender thread, it was true, but it might prove fruitful.

Leaving Kirkpatrick, he first went home and got the tool kit he carried only when, as the Spider, he went forth to battle the underworld. He changed also to special high-topped shoes, light as a fencer's except that they had thick, soft rubber soles.

There was worry in Ram Singh's eyes. Time and again the fingers of his good hand touched gently his broken arm in its sling as his devoted eyes followed every move of the master he had failed in his last grave encounter with the Black Death.

Wentworth straightened from lacing his shoes, clapped Ram Singh on his shoulder and went out into the night. He took a taxi directly to the local distributors of Dimetrios cigarettes, the kind which he had noticed Virginia Doeg had smoked.

It was a brand not widely sold, and its distribution would be confined to the wealthy, for it was expensive.

From the distributor he quickly got a list of the stores which retailed the cigarette, and went systematically about the task of visiting them all. There were fourteen in all, and he visited ten without results.

It was near the closing hour when finally he strolled into a small tobacconist's shop on upper Madison Avenue, purchased a pack of Dimetrios himself and fell into casual conversation with the clerk.

“Not many people buy these, I suppose,” he said.

The young man behind the counter talked with a slight lisp. “Yeth,” he said “that'th right. We keep them for a very thelect few. But you know, a little while ago, the motht unthpeakable ruffian came in and bought five packageth ”

Excitement raced through Wentworth. Here, perhaps, was the clue he had been seeking. “Ever see the man before?” he asked.

“Never,” shuddered the wavy-haired young clerk, “and I hope he never cometh back again.”

Wentworth smiled slightly. “Tough guy, eh?”

“He wath,” said the clerk. “He didn't even wear a collar, and had a mothst unthpeakable cap on his head and hith nothe—” He shuddered again, “Hith nothe had been mathed over on hith left cheek.”

“Doubtless,” said Wentworth, “a pugilist. And how long ago was this?”

“Jutht a few minuteth,” the clerk said.

“You didn't happen to notice which way he went?”

The clerk stared at him. “Why?” he asked in a tense voice. “Ith he—are you—I mean—are you a politheman?”

Wentworth shook his head slowly. “No,” he said. “I just don't want to go in the same direction the gentleman did. From your description I wouldn't want to meet him alone on a dark street this late in the evening.”

“Oh!” cried the clerk. “Oh! Now I thall be afraid to leave at all.” He moaned miserably, then he brightened. `'Oh, but he wath in a car, that maketh it better.”

“A car, eh? What kind?” Wentworth persisted.

The clerk frowned. “I'm quite thure it wath a Buick,” he said. “But I didn't notithe the number.”

Wentworth questioned him futilely a few minutes longer, then left, but with more confidence than when he had entered.

A ruffian who bought five packs of Dimetrios cigarettes. Wentworth felt a thrill of hope. He had not miscalculated then. The vanity of the Black Death would lead him to make just such a gesture toward his prisoner, to supply the particular brand of cigarettes the prisoner liked; or perhaps—Wentworth's eyes narrowed—perhaps this was the thread with which the Master of the Plague hoped to draw the Spider into his trap.

Wentworth shook his head sharply. No, it was too slender for that. Something more obvious, more certain of detection would have been employed.

But what to do now? He was in a fashionable neighborhood. Expensive and elaborate apartment houses raised their lofty crowns on every side. Where, in this habitat of the wealthy, would the Black Death hide a prisoner? In what sort of building could the ruffian he apparently employed find free and unchallenged entrance? How to trace any one Buick car among the city's thousands?

He strolled along inspecting the facades of luxurious buildings, many of their windows darkened now, showing untenanted apartments, since depression days had cut into the higher bracket income.

And abruptly the Spider smiled. Of course, that was the answer. Some of the buildings were closed entirely, purchased by big corporations for conversion into handsome apartments. They had been stillborn by hard times. Boarded up, they awaited prosperity and meantime stood vacant—perfect hideouts for criminals.

He crossed double-laned Park Avenue with its drone of taxies and expensive motors, pushed on to Fifth Avenue, where apartments had been hardest hit.

Here in one block three such shuttered apartments stood. Wentworth had come directly from the tobacco shop to Fifth Avenue, probably the route a man searching for the cigarettes would have taken, and now, in the shadow of the wall that bounded Central Park, he stood and surveyed the looming buildings.

In front of a tenanted building next to a vacant one was parked a car that to Wentworth was vaguely familiar. He studied it and suddenly he remembered where he had seen it before. It was a Buick coupe, spotlessly new except for one rear fender that seemed to have been crumpled in a vise. That was the car that had been parked next to his Lancia the night he had killed one of the Black Death's men in the fire!

Hope warmed Wentworth. He started across the street, then caught a small gleam of light in the trade entrance of a building that was otherwise dark.

As he watched a man with a cap ducked out and, walking with the heavy rolling swagger of those who live by physical competence alone, strode toward the Buick.

Wentworth watched intently. He wanted to catch a glimpse of that man's face. If his nose was broken as the tobacco-clerk had described, if he was, in the language of that young gentleman, “a mostht unthpeakable ruffian”—a glimmer of a smile flickered across Wentworth's grim mouth—then the Spider would steal into that blackwindowed building and deliberately enter the death trap the master criminal undoubtedly had baited for him.

Luck favored Wentworth. The man across the street entered the Buick with the crumpled fender and the dash lights showed the Spider the man's face. The nose was broken, mashed over on the left cheek!

Grimly Wentworth waited until the car had turned the corner, then strolled to the basement from which the man had come.

At a door he paused an instant, donned once more the black silk mask of the Spider and deftly picked the lock.

Quickly he entered and relocked the door. It made escape more difficult, but it prevented the alarm that an unlocked door might cause.

The Spider stole into the shadows, cat-footed to the stairs and mounted with the same sure competence. He went systematically about the tedious task of finding which of the many apartments concealed the Black Death and his prisoner, who, Wentworth was sure, must be hidden somewhere in this building.

He went from floor to floor, listening at doors, searching with minute gleams of his flashlight the dusty hallways for indications of recent passage.

Not until he reached the very top floor did he discover the trace he sought. There, mingling with the stuffy unventilated air, he caught the distinct odor of tobacco.

The Spider moved more tensely now, automatic in hand, every muscle, every sense, alert. The darkness was absolute. No vagrant gleam of street light could penetrate; no ray beneath a door betrayed the hiding place of the Black Death; no sound broke the tomblike silence.

Wentworth strained his ears, but there was no mutter of voices to guide him. The vast waiting stillness seemed to crowd close as if the very air were hostile.

Yet somewhere on this floor was human presence. Here, if anywhere in this building, the jaws of the Black Death's trap gaped open.

Softly the Spider went through the search that had become routine now, listening at each door. At last his ear caught the faint sound of movement within a room, and a thin smile twisted his lips beneath the mask.

The door to the trap was beneath his hand. Wentworth turned from it and stole to stairs that led upward, unfastened a door to the roof, and searched swiftly for other ingress to the apartment below.

Once more fortune—this time a fire escape ladder—favored him. And because it did, he was suspicious. Things were too easy.

Yet there was a chance the Plague Master was not yet ready, that the hair-trigger spring of the trap did not yet await his cautious foot.

Once more a grim smile played across his mouth. Others had trapped the Spider, and found it a dangerous pastime. He descended the fire escape ladder that led down past the window of the apartment where lurked the Black Death.

Yet even in that he exercised care an ordinary man would not have thought of. He did not tread upon the rounds of the ladder but, taking his automatic between his teeth, gripped the sides of the iron stairway with knees and arms and glided down, lest an alarm had been connected with those rungs.

Wentworth's thick rubber soles made no sound on the iron grilling of the fire escape platform. He examined the windows. He could make out the shadow of heavy drapes, but no faint gleam of light escaped.

From the invaluable kit of tools beneath his arm he took out a small vial made of wax, and with a plunger attached to the stopper drew a semi-circle on the glass above the window's fastening. Hydrofluoric acid, such as etchers use. Soft wax was impervious to it, yet it ate like fire through hardened glass.

Wentworth replaced the wax bottle and took out a rubber suction cup which he fastened to the pane. When the acid had eaten through, he removed the piece of glass, soundlessly.

For long moments Wentworth listened at the opening, and presently his straining ears made out the slow deep breathing of one who slept.

Was it possible that he had taken unaware the Black Death? Blood throbbed slowly in his temples. He had moved swiftly. Within a few hours of the girl's disappearance he had tracked the man down. Probably no such swift action had been expected. It was possible that within this room the Black Death slept!

Without a sound the Spider eased open the fastening, inched up the sash until it was high enough to admit his body.

He drew his revolver, caught up the small flashlight in his left hand, and smothering the light in his palms, stared fixedly at it for a few seconds until the pupils of his eyes became accustomed to the glare, lest bursting into a lighted room would dazzle him.

Silently he eased himself through the opening, stood erect upon the inner sill within the black drapes that covered it. Then, tearing them apart, he sprang into the room.

His gun was ready, but firing, he found, would have been futile. Behind a metal closet door peering through a peephole of bullet proof glass, crouched a man, and the muzzle of his gun was trained on the Spider's breast.

Spring backward? No chance of that. The window was opened only narrowly; and before he could roll through, half a dozen steel-jacketed bullets could rip the life from his body.

Charge? The shield of the door completely protected the gunman. Swiftly the Spider's eyes flickered over the room. It was barely furnished. On a bed nearby, her clothing disheveled, lay Virginia Doeg, eyes closed, her red hair a veil over her pillow. It was her deep breathing that had deceived him.

And now the man behind the shield chuckled gloatingly. “Welcome, Spider!” he jeered, “Welcome to the death trap!”

Wentworth straightened out of his crouch, his eyes calm.

“Better drop the gun, Spider,” the criminal said softly. “I do not think that I care to deal with you while you are armed. You should not have waited so long after you opened the window. Those drapes permit no light to escape, but they are light and the slightest breath of air makes them quiver.”

Wentworth let his gun fall.

“Now back three paces,” the man ordered. And when the Spider had obeyed, the other came out from behind the metal door.

“It is not my intention,” the man sneered, “to kill you at once. I would rather leave that to my amiable friends, the police. I think that even they will be able to capture the Spider if I put a bullet say, through his lung, and tell them where to find him.

“And you needn't fear that they will be unable to identify you as the Spider. I have a cigarette lighter myself, not half so clever as your own, which will readily yield up the secret of those little red seals to the police.

“If anything further is needed I shall murder the young lady who lies on the bed there—Unfortunate that she is drugged and cannot hear us, eh?—place that ugly little Spider upon her forehead and let them assume that it was she who wounded you, and that then the Spider, in the excess of his fury, managed to strangle the life from his so beautiful betrayer.”

The man chuckled once more, gloatingly, behind his mask.

“But already we have delayed too long. The Black Death must be about his work. And you must be accounted for first.”

He lifted the pistol, leveled it at Wentworth's chest and slowly began to press the trigger.