by Robert Reed
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?”
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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 languor-
ous 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 re-
gard 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 differ-
ent . 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 Kirkpat-
rick 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.”
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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 mea-
sures 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 sud-
denly on his knee . “Damnably clever .”
In the darkness Wentworth’s breath came short and fast, and an-
ger 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 in amusement 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
WINGS OF THE BLACK DEATH, by Norvell Page | 111
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 him-
self, 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 .”
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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 col-
umns 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 smoth-
ered his strong hand in both of hers .
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“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 will-
ingly, 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 chil-
dren will be killed by the Black Death . If you agree, hang
something red out of the upstairs window on the front . Re-
member, pay, or you all die by the Black Death .
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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 alert-
ness 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 . Went-
worth 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 some-
thing horrible to come!”
He turned swiftly toward the woman . “I’d get guards here im-
mediately . 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 .
WINGS OF THE BLACK DEATH, by Norvell Page | 115
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!”
Chapter 5
The Black Death
Wentworth’s words seemed to hang visibly in the air . The Black
Death! It called to mind the drab, narrow streets of medieval London,
visions of direful axle-creaking carts drawn by scarecrow horses;
callous drivers who called mournfully, “Bring out your dead!” and
carried loads of corpses like s
tacked firewood to pyres that burned
like the campfires of a besieging enemy about the city; a stench of
death and decay; smoke of the corpse fires that beclouded even the
sun .Wentworth stared unseeingly with horror-widened eyes . Surely
no human being could conceive so fiendish a crime. Visions of that
terrible plague sweeping through the congested millions of New
York rose before Wentworth’s eyes . Abruptly he jerked himself out
of the preoccupation into which he had fallen .
Motors of automobiles roared outside the door and he crossed the
room with swift, long strides . A dozen police rolled from the cars
and, in charge of a gruff-voiced, waddling sergeant, straggled up to
the porch .
Wentworth conferred swiftly with their chief and found him in-
telligent and competent . Twenty-four-hour patrols about the house
were organized, and two policemen who would alternate were se-
lected to stand perpetual guard over the children . A vermin extermi-
nator was called in to destroy all rats and mice which might bring in
the disease .
No food was to enter the house without rigid inspection, nor
would any stranger pass the police cordon. Finally, satisfied with
WINGS OF THE BLACK DEATH, by Norvell Page | 116
the arrangements, Wentworth went back into the mansion to give
further warning to Mrs . Gainsborough against even a momentary
carelessness .
Had Wentworth’s thoughtfully intent eyes spotted a figure that
crouched on a distant hillside and watched him through binoculars,
as he entered the house, he might have felt some misgivings about
the adequacy of the protection he had provided Mrs . Gainsborough .
But he did not see him . And on that distant hill a large-boned,
skulking man with the brim of his black hat pulled far down over his
eyes, chuckled to himself .
Twenty feet away from the man was a small black satchel with
a screen for ventilation opening in one end; such a satchel as small
dogs and cats are carried in .
For more than an hour the man sat waiting, propped up against a
tall tree, while he watched the distant house .
Finally he saw something which made him chuckle with a gloat-
ing satisfaction that was horrible to hear . For from a side entrance
of the home a small golden-haired girl and a chubby boy came out,
gazing big-eyed at the blue-coated policeman who stalked beside