by Robert Reed
walked into the trap; for he knew of no other way to trace the man,
and find him he must.
Otherwise the dread plague would stalk the streets; would lay
its grisly hands upon man, woman and child — and the screams and
meanings of the sufferers would rise to heaven like an unanswered
prayer .
Wentworth felt the white thin scar upon his temple throbbing
angrily . He knew sudden fury at the thought that this man, or his
master, was responsible for the death of that curly haired boy he had
snatched too late from his play with a plague-infested puppy . But the
Spider forced himself to calmness, studied the girl narrowly .
She was standing tensely beside the bed, her hands clasped be-
fore her, shoulders hunched . Her red hair seemed to have drained all
the color from her face . If she was actually in league with the Black
Death and had deliberately betrayed Wentworth so that this man
might trap him, she was as clever an actress as ever tricked a man .
Wentworth turned from her to the masked man again . The other’s
movements were wary, as he came forward toward the middle of the
room now . The gun in his hand never wavered .
“Face the wall,” he ordered Wentworth, “hoist your hands .”
WINGS OF THE BLACK DEATH, by Norvell Page | 125
The Spider shrugged his shoulders slightly beneath the smooth
fit of his dark tweeds, turned slowly and elevated his arms. A sharp
cry from the girl, the sound of a blow whirled him about . But he was
helpless . He only looked once more into the black muzzle of death .
The man bit out words, “I said ‘Face the wall’!”
The girl was sprawled unconscious across the bed . From the
man’s left wrist dangled a blackjack .
“You filthy animal,” the Spider rasped . “Why was that neces-
sary?”
“Face the wall!” snarled the man, and the gun inched forward
like the head of a poisonous viper .
The Spider hesitated . But once more he controlled himself, his
muscles taut with anger . He longed to crush this beast, as he knew
he could any moment he chose . But it was more important that he
obtain a definite clue to the Black Death than that the injury to this
girl be immediately avenged . He was convinced now that this man
was not the arch criminal himself . Slowly he obeyed the order and
faced the wall .
“Put your hands behind you,” the man snapped and that, too, the
Spider did . If he was to be bound, then at least his death was not
intended now. He heard the man’s heavy feet approach, and — lights
blazed suddenly in his brain as a blow crashed against his skull . The
Spider reeled against the wall, slid along it and slipped to the floor.
The man’s knees gouged into his back . His wrists were jerked
together and ropes bit into them . Wentworth felt the pain of the
bonds . The blow had been no more than a tap behind the ear with
the blackjack . He felt dizzy and sick, but rapidly recovered . Swiftly
then he forced himself back to full control of his senses, for the man
raised a slow hand and jerked the mask from the Spider’s face!
Then jarring laughter rang in the room . “So Richard Wentworth
is the Spider!” his captor jeered .
WINGS OF THE BLACK DEATH, by Norvell Page | 126
Chapter 7
Through the Flames
Wentworth’s eyes held an ugly light . But he smiled coldly into
the slitted eyes of his captor, and his voice was silky .
“It was unfortunate that you did that,” he said gently . “Now I
must kill you .”
The man started to laugh, but his mirth choked and died . He
cursed and struck the Spider heavily in the face . A stiff smile twisted
Wentworth’s lips . His eyes did not falter .
He knew now that his suspicions were correct, that this fellow
was merely a muscle-man of the Black Death . He knew, too, that he
had been ordered not to kill the Spider, but to bring him alive before
the Master of the Plague himself . Wentworth veiled his eyes with
his lids lest they show his satisfaction . He would permit his captor
to take him to the criminal’s lair, and then — Wentworth’s eyes grew
bleak .…
Somewhere in the darkness of the halls Ram Singh lurked . He
would follow as Wentworth had ordered, and together they would
bring this Black Death to account . If Only Ram Singh did not inter-
fere too soon. Wentworth flicked a glance to the door.
The masked man took Wentworth’s gun, crossed the room and
crumpled some newspapers on the floor. He laid a chair across them,
thrust the entire mass into a wooden,
clothes-crowded closet and touched a match to the pile in a half
dozen places .
Eager flames licked the paper, wrapped around the varnished
wood of the chair; flimsy clothing in the closet caught up the sparks
hungrily . Wentworth jerked to a sitting position, his head throbbing
wildly . The man was calmly binding the girl’s hands and feet with
the obvious intention of leaving her to burn to death!
Wentworth’s mouth closed in a tight, hard line . Even if it meant
losing contact with the Black Death, he must save the girl . He got
laboriously to his feet and inched forward .
WINGS OF THE BLACK DEATH, by Norvell Page | 127
The masked man spun with a curse, the blackjack ready . The Spi-
der pretended to be dazed, wavering on his feet. The man struck — but
the Spider was not there . Wentworth kicked out, caught the man in
the abdomen and spilled him, writhing in pain, to the floor.
The Spider circled him, tugged open the door . “Ram Singh!” he
called softly into the darkness .
No answer .
Once more Wentworth called his faithful servant, raising his
voice . But his shout was absorbed into the blackness that gave forth
no reply. The lurid glare of the flames tinted the shadows, revealed
no sign of the Hindu . The masked man struggled to his knees, begin-
ning to recover from the blow Wentworth had struck . The Spider
could have run down the stairs and gained safety in flight. Instead,
he stared past the man to the girl. The hungry flames ate nearer,
towered until the electric light was dimmed, clawed at the ceiling .
Wentworth sprang toward it, launching a kick at the man’s jaw .
The muscle-man blocked it fumblingly, snatched at the Spider’s
foot . The grab missed . Wentworth skipped past him, turned his back
to the fire and thrust his bound hands into a spire of flames!
His flesh scorched but he did not falter, did not flinch from the
bite of the heat . Not until he felt the ropes give as they began to burn
did he flinch away. His shoulders bulged as he strained against his
bonds .
The masked man got laboriously to his feet, the black silk that
covered his face gleaming redly from the flames. He reeled, recov-
ered, roared an obscenity and charged . The Spider ducked under a
slashing blow, and the man let out a shout of pain as he blundered
too close to the fire and felt its singeing heat.
&
nbsp; He whirled, checked a rush at its start and began to weave in
more cautiously, wary on wide-placed feet . Outlined against the
leaping, smoke-thick flame, his hunched shoulders were like a giant
ape’s. Wentworth retreated before his advance, fighting the ropes
until they tore the flesh of his wrists.
Black smoke drifted like fog between them, blew its hot breath
in Wentworth’s face, stung his nostrils . He coughed wrackingly,
WINGS OF THE BLACK DEATH, by Norvell Page | 128
sprang backward as a blow glanced at his face . Still the ropes would
not yield . Desperately, he fumbled in his hip pocket, dragged out
a cigarette case. He dropped it to the floor, set his heel upon it and
crushed down heavily . The case shattered . Gray tear gas rose in a
little cloud, scarcely visible amid the fire glare and smoke.
The other man’s outstretched arms reached out to seize him, but
the Spider ducked them, plunged across the room toward the cleared
air near the window. An entire corner of the room was in flames now,
and despite their leaping light the place was dark, blurred by smoke .
Behind him the muscle-man coughed and choked . Suddenly he
tore off his mask and daubed at streaming eyes . But the tear gas
Wentworth had released was not in sufficient quantity to put the man
out of the fight entirely. The Spider had intended that cigarette case
for use close to a man’s face .
Shaking his head like a bedeviled dog, the other groped through
the smoke toward where Wentworth crouched . His face was heavy,
bestial, painted a lobster red by the flapping tongues of flame. Wa-
ter streamed from his eyes . He blinked, gouging at them with his
knuckles, finally spotted the Spider .
The man threw caution aside and charged, swinging the black-
jack. Wentworth strained a final time at the ropes and a hand ripped
loose with a tearing of flesh. He slashed out with his fist, burying
it to the wrist in his adversary’s stomach . It turned the blow of the
bludgeon from his head, but the weapon crashed down upon his
shoulder . Wentworth’s lips tightened with pain, and his arm dropped
limp and useless to his side!
With a lumbering charge, the man was upon Wentworth again .
The Spider smashed a fist into his face, leaped aside. With a bellow
of rage the crook whirled and lunged again .
It was a one-sided battle, and only Wentworth’s quick feet saved
him from being instantly overpowered . The other was rapidly re-
covering from the small dose of tear gas, and all Wentworth’s tricks
could not overcome the handicap of that numbed left arm and shoul-
der . He could not block blows, could not feint . Instead he must re-
treat, duck and dodge, and get in a swift blow when he could .
WINGS OF THE BLACK DEATH, by Norvell Page | 129
Dense smoke and vagrant tear gas fumes smarted in his eyes,
blurred his vision . The heat seemed to sear his lungs at every gasp-
ing breath . Good Lord! The girl! The Spider flung a quick glance
toward the bed . A corner of the coverlet already smoldered, its slow
fire creeping toward the helpless girl.
Abruptly, the muscle-man let out a shout of triumph . Wentworth’s
glance at the girl had cost him heavily . He was cornered! Fire licked
out savage tongues to one side . Behind him, and to his right, walls
hemmed him in .
Mouthing venomous curses, the man sprung forward and struck
with the blackjack . No room to dodge . The Spider dropped to his
knees . His right hand closed on something silken and hard in the
corner . Gripping it, he lunged to his feet again, dived beneath an-
other blow aimed at his head . He glanced down at the thing he had
seized . Through smoke bleared eyes he caught the gleam of crimson
silk . A woman’s parasol! Despite the shallow gasping of his breath,
the menace of the flames, and the crouching menace of the Black
Death’s hireling, Wentworth smiled — and it was a smile of triumph!
He now had a weapon . To any other man it would have been
futile; to Wentworth it was perfect . He turned half to the left and
faced his enemy along the line of his right shoulder . His feet were at
right angles, the right pointed toward the crook, and his knees were
flexed. He held the straight handle of the parasol across his palm like
a sword, the ferrule raised slightly, pointed toward his enemy’s eyes .
As the man charged in, the Spider thrust the parasol forward in
a fencer’s lunge, all his body thrown into the blow, his arm locked
straight . The ferrule slid under the crook’s chin, caught him squarely
on the throat . The parasol doubled, snapped, but the charge was
checked .
The weight of his own plunge hurled him backwards . He threw
up his hands, staggered and thumped to the floor. The Spider sprang
upon him, slammed home his fist. The head rolled limply over. Wen-
tworth’s hand went swiftly to the man’s throat . The larynx had been
crushed in, closing the windpipe and killing him instantly .
WINGS OF THE BLACK DEATH, by Norvell Page | 130
The flames’ heat was fierce now. Long tongues of it crept across
the floor. Smoke seeped up through the seams.
Wentworth sprang erect . Protecting his face with his arm, he
plunged to the girl’s side, slapped out the sparks that already had
reached her negligee . He caught her up from the smoldering bed,
put her by the window .
Back across the room he reeled, caught the dead gangster by the
collar and dragged him to the sill . He balanced the body, then al-
lowed it to topple to the ground, a cushion for the girl . From the kit
beneath his arm then, he drew a thin cord of silk . Padding this, he
knotted it about the girl’s body and, snubbing it around a bed post
to ease the strain on his one good hand, lowered her slowly to the
ground . He tossed the line after her .
Smoke streaked with flame billowed around him, but Wentworth,
instead of climbing out, groped across the room and yanked open
the door. In the street fire sirens wailed, men raised excited cries.
Somewhere an axe thudded on metal . The Spider ran through the
halls looking for Ram Singh, who, he felt sure had been overcome
on his post of duty . Dark rooms and passageways yielded no trace
of the Hindu .
Wentworth could wait no longer . At any instant now, police or
firemen might crash into the building, find upon him the marks of
battle and connect that with the man who lay dead in the yard . Kirk-
patrick was sufficiently suspicious now. The Spider would do well
not to direct the finger of guilt toward himself needlessly.
Wentworth darted to the back of the house, peered out . The girl
was gone, but the crook’s body still lay below . The Spider threw up
the window, climbed out on the sill . Flame and smoke belched from
the window directly overhead where he and the man had battled .
Feeling was slowly returning now to his left hand and arm . He
still did not have full use of it, but he could steady himself as he
reached out and caught hol
d with his right hand of a drain pipe . He
stepped across the void and, taking a desperate chance, threw all his
weight for an instant upon the grip of that one hand .
WINGS OF THE BLACK DEATH, by Norvell Page | 131
It was a terrific strain, but that hand had been strengthened by
long hours with the foils . His hold slipped an inch but held until he
could grip the pipe with his knees, then he let himself slide down,
using his knees and his one good hand alternately .
When he reached the bottom, he leaned for an instant against the
house, panting . But there was not time to rest . He crossed swiftly to
the body on the ground and printed on its forehead the red seal of the
Spider — a warning to the Black Death — and slipped away through
the night .
He climbed a fence laboriously and, straddling it, suddenly was
outlined in the bright beam of a flashlight. A gruff voice demanded,
“Where the hell do you think you’re going?”
Wentworth started to drop into the yard behind, but saw a second
policeman bending over the corpse of the crook. The officer jerked
erect, peered about . He spotted the Spider and a whistle shrilled be-
tween the man’s lips . He grabbed for his gun .
Wentworth teetered to his feet atop the fence, crouched and
sprang . Lead whistled through the air hungrily, but when it reached
the spot, the Spider was gone . He had leaped high and wide and
landed in the yard of the house next door . Another fence, running
the length of the block, cut him off from the policeman whose light
had found him .
Behind him a man’s voice cried hoarsely into the night:
“It’s the Spider! The Spider! Get him! Death to the Spider!”
Heavy hands hit the fence, boots clawed at it . Wentworth ran at
top speed . Necessity lent him new strength now . He swarmed over
another fence, raced into a lodging house . In the street beyond more
police whistles shrieked, and, “The Spider! The Spider! Death to the
Spider!” men cried .
No escape that way; no escape the way he had come . The roofs?
That was too obvious . Already blue-coated men undoubtedly were
scaling upward to snare him there . He might battle his way clear, but
the Spider would not fight the forces of the law.
He raced up the stairs, ripping off coat and vest. On the top floor