by Robert Reed
risking his life once more that the tentacles of crime might be kept
WINGS OF THE BLACK DEATH, by Norvell Page | 93
from the throat of the city . Because of this, Wentworth tonight again
became the Spider!
Silently as his namesake, the Spider sped on . A four foot wall of
stone blocked his path . He rested his hands lightly on it and vaulted
clear . A moment later he appeared beside a Lancia limousine parked
at the curb . The chauffeur turned a turbaned head, and white teeth
flashed in a dark face.
“Sahib,” he murmured .
“To the address that you know, Ram Singh,” Wentworth ordered
and sprang into the back .
The auto muttered smoothly away, and, drawing the curtain,
Wentworth fingered a button under the left side of the seat. The en-
tire section— cushioned back, seat and all— swung forward . The
back revolved and a neatly hung rack of clothes was disclosed by a
small shielded light .
Wentworth’s movements were deft. Off came the tail coat, stiffly
exact shirt, collar, tie . He quickly donned a dark tweed suit, set jaun-
tily on his black hair a dark fedora whose brim shadowed his eyes .
He strapped beneath his arm a compact kit of chrome steel tools . At
another touch of the button, the seat swung back into place, and the
Spider was ready .
Wentworth caught the speaking tube and spoke precisely in Hin-
dustani to Ram Singh .
“It is now,” said Wentworth, glancing at his watch, “half past ten .
At exactly ten minutes of eleven, Ram Singh, phone the police and
tell them that the jewels stolen in the Racine case are in the posses-
sion of John Harper, the pawnbroker . Tell them then that the back
door will be unlocked when they get there and that without a search
warrant they may invade his office and catch him with the stolen
goods .”
Jewels . They had led many to their doom .
But Wentworth had scant concern with them tonight . His wide
information had brought him this knowledge, that Harper had the
stolen goods . That bit of knowledge would serve to bring to justice a
WINGS OF THE BLACK DEATH, by Norvell Page | 94
smooth criminal— and to prevent pursuit when the Spider had paid
his visit .
Wentworth dropped the tube, seeing through the bullet proof
glass that separated him and the Hindu, the slow single nod of the
turbaned head. That was sufficient. Wentworth knew that Ram Singh
would perform his task with time-clock precision . He relaxed into
the cushioned luxury of the Lancia, drew out a cigarette and snapped
flame to a lighter. He smiled thinly at its gleaming platinum sides.
Who would suspect that in this expensive toy reposed the seals of
the Spider? Yet in a secret chamber in its base were those vermilion
calling cards that had given him his name, that made the underworld
cringe, and the police rage in futile anger . Well, tonight he would
need them again, would need once more to set police and criminals
on his trail, united in their hatred of this master of men who set at
naught the underworld’s shrewdest plots; who snatched the criminal
where police dared not go and left behind, to tell them he had struck,
his mocking challenge— the seal of the Spider .
Wentworth snuffed the lighter, dropped it into his vest pocket and
sat staring ahead with narrowed, burning eyes . Tonight was typical .
In a bizarre combination of events too trivial for police to notice,
the Spider had sensed the first outcreeping tentacle of a crime he
scarcely dared to name, a crime that would blight city and nation for
years to come . And because of that he went out quietly, with a smile,
to battle with death .
It was the harder since the city, after drab years of depression,
was just beginning to shrug its powdered shoulders free of the drea-
ry cloak of poverty, beginning to laugh again and to sing . That night
the police Commissioner, Stanley Kirkpatrick, had given the first re-
ally big, joyous ball of many seasons, never guessing the loathsome
black wings of death that the Spider alone detected on the horizon .
On the surface, the crime which the Spider went tonight to rectify
was a minor one . Virginia Doeg had been arrested for substituting
forged bonds for genuine in the office of MacDonald Pugh, a Wall
Street broker . She had cried out that she was innocent, that she had
been framed . The Spider’s first casual investigation motivated by
WINGS OF THE BLACK DEATH, by Norvell Page | 95
the fresh innocence of the girl’s face, which showed even through
the crude photographs of the newspapers, had convinced him this
was so .
Ordinarily, as Richard Wentworth, an amateur in criminology, he
would have gone to Stanley Kirkpatrick with his information, set
in motion the girl’s release; but— there on the horizon were those
sinister black wings which none but he had seen .
Three days before the girl’s arrest, he had noticed a small story
on the front pages of the newspapers . It stated that a dog had died of
the Black Death, the Bubonic Plague, which in years past had killed
its hundreds of thousands— killed them horribly with screams of
pain and awful strangling, and blood gushing from their throats .
And that dog had belonged to Virginia Doeg, the same girl who
now was accused of forgery!
Individually the two items meant nothing; together they might
mean— Wentworth’s hand clutched into a cold fist upon his knee.
He flashed a look ahead, leaned forward and tapped sharply on
the glass . The Lancia snubbed down its nose at the curb . Wentworth
touched the automatic that weighted his pocket, unfolded his lean
height to the sidewalk, and— the shadows swallowed the Spider .
Chapter 2
“Spider, You Must Die!”
Five minutes later a passerby might have seen a black shadow
slip into the entrance of a shabby tenement . Within the building dim
gas light scarcely dissipated the darkness through which the Spider
slipped .
Wentworth went on soundless feet through the halls and out of
a door that opened on a yard cluttered with cans and refuse . He
crossed it at an angle, muscled himself to the top of a fence and
vaulted over, then crouched, waiting .
From nearby tenements voices gabbled . A cheap radio dinned
into the blackness, and a sick infant wailed . Wentworth glanced at
WINGS OF THE BLACK DEATH, by Norvell Page | 96
the luminous dial of his watch . Five minutes had elapsed since he
had left the limousine . In twelve more Ram Singh’s voice would
summon the police . He crept forward .
Never was there rest for the Spider . He had been back from Eu-
rope but one day, but already this injustice, this hint of impending
horror called him forth .
Wentworth’s smile was slightly mocking . Yes, injustice angered
him. He flew to the protection of its victims with such anger as
a man feels when he sees a dog kicked viciously, or a dray horse
beaten senseless as
it struggles against a heavy load .
His mind flicked back to the case in hand. Forgery of bonds — well,
the Spider knew where that pointed . John Harper prospered by that
racket . And John Harper’s pawnshop lay just ahead of him, its back
windows barred and forbidding, its heavy iron door a veritable Gi-
braltar .
The thin smile that the Spider perpetually wore in battle twisted
his lips and he slipped forward across the shadow-blackened yard,
threading a soundless way among tin cans and crates .
Before the iron door he paused a second, drew from the kit of
chrome steel tools against his side a long, slender blade and ran this
rapidly around the edge of the door until his sensitive fingers felt it
contact the plates of the burglar alarm . Holding the metal grounded
against that plate and the brick side of the building, he rapidly picked
the lock and opened the door .
The Spider knew the secret of burglar alarms, knew that it was
the break in the circuit formed by the plate on the door and the plate
on the door-jamb — their separation by the doors opening — that
caused the alarm to ring . So long as the connection was completed,
grounded by that metal tool against the brick, it would not ring .
Swiftly the Spider slid into the blackness within and shut the door
silently behind him . The tools went back into the kit against his side,
and he drew from it a black silk mask that, fitting tightly across his
eyes, hung limply down from there and concealed all of his face .
His left hand now held a small but powerful flashlight; his right
the automatic .
WINGS OF THE BLACK DEATH, by Norvell Page | 97
Like his namesake, silently, the Spider drifted up old stairs that
would have creaked aloud in protest against less able feet .
Beneath a door at their top a thread of light gleamed, but the Spi-
der did not go directly to that door . Instead he moved silently along
the hall, exploring it and the rooms that opened off it, and not until
he found that they were empty did he glide back to the door where
the light showed .
The flashlight vanished in his pocket, and with the gun held in his
hand, he twisted the knob and thrust in the door .
There was a small squeak from the man who crouched behind
the velvet-topped table, a tiny gasp of alarm, then silence . And the
Spider, with the door kicked shut behind him, stood silently, his lips
bitterly thin beneath the mask, and looked at John Harper .
The only light in the room was a low-swung, green-shaded globe
that focused straight down on the black velvet top of the table be-
hind which the pawnbroker sat, shone queerly upon the man’s pre-
maturely bald head . A double handful of jewels glittered upon the
velvet, and John Harper’s fat fingers clutched them. His smooth,
pink-cheeked face showed a mingling of greed and fear .
One of his hands moved slowly, slid along the velvet to the right .
“Keep your hand away from that button, Harper,” Wentworth bit
out .Once more the quavering cry issued from the man, and he jerked
his hand away from the spot toward which it had been traveling .
Wentworth’s lip lifted in contempt . This man was a fence and a
forger, to the Spider the lowest forms of all criminal life . He stood
and stared at the man through the slits of his black silk mask . The
edge of the light fell squarely on his hand, glittered on the leveled
gun, and the two men were frozen into hostile statues .
Wentworth let the silence go on until it rang in his ears . He had
time — ten minutes, perhaps. His eyes flickered to the huge safe at
Harper’s elbow . It was closed, locked, but such a safe would take
only a few minutes for the Spider’s sensitive fingers to open.
WINGS OF THE BLACK DEATH, by Norvell Page | 98
He waited and finally Harper, gathering all his courage, squeaked
out, “What do you want? You know you can’t do this to me . I am
John Harper . When they find out about this they will make you pay!”
A short, sharp laugh came from the Spider’s concealed lips . Pay!
They had been trying to make him pay for years now, and the Spider
still lived, still nullified their cleverest plots, snatched from them
their richest loot .
Wentworth took three short steps so that he stood only a yard
from the table’s edge .
“Listen to me,” he said . “The bonds that were stolen from Mac-
Donald Pugh’s office, the ones for which you made forged copies. I
want them .”
Bewildered, embattled fear filled the fat sly face above the table.
The high bald head wrinkled as John Harper strove to solve the puz-
zle as to why a crook with a gun should ask for bonds, when jewels
sparkled beneath the bright electric light . But he dissembled swiftly .
“I don’t know what you mean,” he quavered . Wentworth’s body
crouched forward, the gun advanced an inch, and his masked face
lowered slowly into the puddle of light .
“Don’t lie to me, Harper,” he said slowly .
“But I’m not lying,” the man said rapidly . “Honest, I ain’t got
’em .”
“Don’t lie, Harper,” Wentworth repeated in the same voice .
“Don’t lie to the Spider .”
At those two words, “The Spider,” the pigjowled pawnbroker’s
eyes widened until the white showed completely around their eva-
sive blue irises . His mouth opened and he swallowed audibly . But
no sound came from his dry lips . He touched his tongue furtively to
them, swallowed again .
“My God!”
There was grim amusement in Wentworth’s voice . “Let me have
those bonds — at once.”
“But I haven’t got them, I haven’t!” the man cried .
The Spider allowed his eyes to flick to the safe, and the pawn-
broker sprang into action, with an agility surprising for one of his
WINGS OF THE BLACK DEATH, by Norvell Page | 99
weight. His fist shot into view with the ugly snout of a bulldog re-
volver . But even as he squeezed the trigger, the Spider flung himself
aside and his own gun spat spitefully .
The crash of the pawnbroker’s heavy revolver was deafening .
Lead whined past Wentworth’s ear and lodged futilely in the wall .
But the Spider’s bullet had sped true . A round blue hole gaped in the
forehead of John Harper .
For an instant he sat straight up in his chair, a surprised look upon
his face . Then he slumped forward, his head spilling blood on the
stolen jewels over which he had gloated . His life of greedy crime
was ended .
The Spider whirled swiftly to the door, jerked it open . Outside all
was deep, dark silence . No police whistles skirled in the streets; no
sirens smote his ears; no one shouted . The acrid odor of gun powder
drifted past his nostrils, and the Spider glanced swiftly at his watch .
He still had four minutes before Ram Singh would call the police .
Four minutes before a radio alarm flashed out and swift two-seated
cars sped through the crooked east side to seize John H
arper with
his stolen jewels .
A swift smile crossed the Spider’s lips . No one would ever arrest
John Harper now .
He closed the door and went swiftly to the safe, drawing on a
pair of thin gray silk gloves . Then, with ear close-pressed against the
face of the safe, he began to twirl the dial .
It took the Spider one minute to open the antiquated safe . It took
him three more to ransack the compartments .
Dozens of documents were there that the police would be eager
to see, but to the Spider they were unimportant . He skimmed rapidly
through them, swiftly restoring to its place each document as he
scanned it . He found no trace of the stolen bonds, but far down in a
compartment in the lower left-hand corner of the safe, he came upon
that which made his blood like ice in his veins . It was a glass vial
upon the tiny label of which were printed two words,
“Hopkins’ Solution .”
WINGS OF THE BLACK DEATH, by Norvell Page | 100
The vial in his fist, Wentworth stared at the corpse of John Harper
with eyes that held both fury and horror . Hopkins solution was the
only efficient antitoxin for the Black Death!
He had been right . This man was involved in the framing of Vir-
ginia Doeg . Her dog had died of the Black Death, and in this man’s
possession was the plague serum . In Heaven’s name what diabolical
crime was being hatched here?
Swiftly the Spider stooped again and reached more deeply into
the compartment . Other tubes of the stuff were there, and also there
was a card on which were two names — Virginia Doeg and that of
another woman, Mrs . Henry Gainsborough, of Roslyn, Long Island .
Rapidly Wentworth slid the card into his pocket, glanced at his
watch .
One minute left . Time for the Spider to go . Swiftly he drew out
his cigarette lighter . Swiftly he detached its bottom and pressed the
seal against the safe door, leaned over and pressed again on the arch-
ing dome of John Harper’s head . And where he had pressed, the
outline of an ugly Spider showed in rich vermilion!
The seal of the Spider, his calling card! For a moment the Spider
stared with his thin smile at the seals, then swiftly replaced the ciga-
rette lighter in his pocket . A slight sound behind him whirled him
swift as thought . A voice drawled into the tense silence of the room:
“Just keep your hands like that, Mr . Spider .” In the doorway stood