The Plague, Pestilence & Apocalypse MEGAPACK™
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slope of her shoulders . The gleam of her rich brown hair made a
jewel-like setting for the perfect oval of her face .
The luxurious dining room was muted by the depression, its usu-
ally crowded tables half empty, but not a man who passed but felt
his pulse swiften, felt the dread curse of the plague lift a little for
having glimpsed her and paid the tribute of admiring eyes .
But her gaze was solely upon Wentworth . Her eyes hovered now
half between puzzlement and raillery . Well as she knew her Dick,
she did not quite understand this new mood .
“But this is silly, Dick,” she said .
Wentworth leaned forward across the spotless white and crystal
of the table . “You have the dearest chin in the world,” he said .
“Be serious, Dick,” she urged .
“Oh, I really mean it,” he said . She placed her small white hand
upon his . “Dick, you’re maddening sometimes,” she said . “Tell me
about this spat you had with Kirkpatrick .”
“Spat?” Wentworth’s eyebrows lifted, the hint of raillery that al-
ways lurked there emphasized . He laughed . He placed his other hand
upon hers and leaned forward again . “Nita,” he said, “I’m bored
with the city . I think I shall go to the country for the weekend .”
The girl looked at him with a faint frown disturbing her forehead .
She did not speak .
“We have an invitation,” he went on, “from MacDonald Pugh . A
charming fellow, don’t you think? And this constant business of the
Black Death, this pursuit of shadows, grows irksome .”
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“Stop fooling, Dick,” the girl pleaded, the frown deepening be-
tween her eyes . She smiled uncertainly . “What’s the matter, boy?”
“I’m bored,” he repeated .
She was completely serious now . “What are you trying to do?”
she asked in level tones . “This isn’t like you, Dick .”
Wentworth’s smile was crooked . “Can’t I pick a quarrel with my
only sweetheart?” he demanded .
“What are you up to, Dick?” she demanded again .
“Just this,” he said in swift undertones . “I want everyone to be-
lieve that I have left the city . I wanted you to believe it too . You
are too honest, too lovely to be able to dissemble successfully . And
everyone — absolutely everyone — must think that I have left.”
“And so you tried to pick a quarrel with me?” the girl asked
softly, reproachfully .
Wentworth’s eyes kissed her .
“It was foolish, darling,” he said, and abruptly his face went seri-
ous again . “Now, beautiful, get angry with me . Make a scene . Stand
up and call me a coward . Say you don’t see how I can leave the city
when Kirkpatrick needs every man he has, and many more than he
has, to track down the Black Death . Go on!”
“Is it really necessary?” the girl asked . Wentworth’s nod was
slow and completely serious .
“Very well,” she mocked him, “but remember, I am too honest,
too lovely, to be able to dissemble!”
She slapped her hand upon the table and her blue eyes suddenly
clouded . “I don’t believe it,” she said, and her tones were loud . Dick
mumbled some words in a low voice .
Nita’s tones rose even higher . “You couldn’t do such a thing,
Dick Wentworth,” she said .
Faces turned at other tables . Startled eyes watched them . “You
can’t leave the city,” she said vehemently in the same loud tone .
“You can’t . Commissioner Kirkpatrick is your friend . You can’t des-
ert him in his greatest need .”
Wentworth leaned across the table as if urging her to speak in a
lower tone of voice . Audibly he said, “For God’s sake, Nita, don’t
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make a scene .” But under his breath he whispered, “You’re doing
splendidly! Keep it up .”
Now the girl’s voice turned pleading . “But Dick, you must stay,
and help Kirkpatrick catch the man behind this dreadful plague .
Surely,” she jeered at him now, “surely you are not afraid of the
Black Death .”
Absolute silence fell over the dining-room Her words “the Black
Death” rang out stridently . They seemed to strike the room to silent
terror . Not a person stirred . The girl was on her feet now, her chair
thrust back so violently that it slammed to the floor.
Wentworth was on his feet too . He moved around the table with
imploring hands .
“Don’t touch me, you coward!” Nita cried . She looked him
contemptuously up and down . “To think that Dick Wentworth is a
coward!”
She stooped and snatched her fur-edged cloak from the floor,
flung it over her arm and half ran, half stumbled down the aisle
among the crowded tables, among the staring faces, among the jab-
bering gossip, her face buried on her forearm as if she were too
broken by tears to watch where she went . And as she went she heard
the murmured names:
“Dick Wentworth — Nita van Sloan. Dick Wentworth — Nita van
Sloan — Nita van Sloan — ”
At his table, Wentworth stared like a stricken man after the girl’s
retreating figure, then sank into his chair, head hanging, one arm
sprawled across the table .
For long minutes Wentworth sat staring fixedly at the table cloth.
He too heard the excited jabbering about him, and behind his mask-
ing lids his eyes were amused . Mentally he cried, “Brava!” And I
said she couldn’t act, he thought . Be damned if I don’t write a play
for her — and he laughed at the conceit. As if Nita would ever desert
her aristocratic solitude for the public spotlight of the stage!
Wentworth himself was no mean actor . When he got up from the
table he was a grief-crazed man . His stumbling feet found no even
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path, and his head hung, and his shoulders drooped . But once in the
street, away from curious eyes, his alertness returned .
He strode briskly along . Swiftly he returned to his apartment,
donned the Spider’s dark tweeds, drew a black fedora down over
his eyes, and with tool kit beneath his arm, automatic beneath his
hand in his pocket, slipped out the servant’s entrance and left by the
servant’s automatic elevator .
The Spider had work to do…
He rode the subway to Wall Street, and the Spider was but an-
other moving shadow among shadows as he slipped into the build-
ing where Pugh & Works had offices. The watchman nodded in his
chair, and so silent was the invader’s tread, so inconspicuous his
passage, that even had the man been awake he scarcely would have
noticed .
Swiftly then the Spider stole up the stairway, picked the lock of
the office door, and fastening it behind him, hurried into the private
office of the partners, smelling strongly of disinfectant, and germi-
cides which had been spread to wipe out the threat of the Black
Death in the ro
om where Works had died .
The modern safe there resisted his skilled fingers and sensitive
ear scarcely longer than had the old tin box in the pawnbroker’s
office. And in a few moments he had spread before him the firm’s
books, was skimming rapidly over double-entry bookkeeping and
an auditor’s report with the skilled ease of a practiced accountant .
His concentration was intense . So engrossed did he become in
the frail thread that he followed, the key which involving Jimmy
Handley, might bring him to the identity of the Black Death, that
he did not hear the opening of the outer door, did not look up until
lights flashed on in the main office.
Like a flash then he extinguished his own minute gleaming flash-
light by which he had examined the work . Like a shadow he moved
across the room, crouched behind a door . And now a black mask
concealed his features .
Slow and ponderous footsteps crossed the floor. A hand touched
the knob and the door swung open, concealing Wentworth behind
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it . But the door had been thrust strongly; it struck Wentworth’s feet,
and, shaking, bounded back. The indistinct figure in the doorway
whirled suddenly in alarm . A hand darted up, and at almost point
blank range a pistol spurted its spear of powder flame at the crouch-
ing Spider!
Only Wentworth’s split-second coordination of mind and muscle
saved him then . He had seen the jerk of the man’s hand and thrown
himself to the floor so nearly in timing with the gun’s discharge that
it seemed he had been hurled there by the bullet .
He let the breath hiss from lungs in a half moan, and the crouch-
ing figure of the man who had fired straightened slowly. Went-
worth’s own gun was ready to his hand, but this was no battle with
the underworld . In this case he was the interloper; the other man was
in the right .
And the Spider never killed an innocent person .
On the other hand, in addition to Pugh, he knew a number of
other members of the firm personally, and to be discovered in his
present role with a black mask over his face, would have spelled his
doom .
He moaned again, his left hand pressed to his chest as if it covered
a wound, and abruptly a white light glared into his masked face . The
man with the gun moved cautiously nearer . Wentworth tossed on the
floor as if in mortal pain, flung out his right arm convulsively.
The man came a step closer, gun ready, and Wentworth’s outflung
hand found his heel and jerked suddenly. The flashlight flung up-
ward . The man cursed, fell heavily, and his gun blazed .
Glass crashed as a bullet screamed off into the darkness . Went-
worth bounded from the floor, flung himself upon the man, and his
right fist crashed home twice. The man jerked beneath him, straight-
ened and went limp .
The Spider heard hoarse shouts, the first shrill blasts of a watch-
man’s police whistle . He must make good his escape at once, or it
would be too late . Already guards within the building must be rush-
ing to the succor of the man he had knocked out .
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Swiftly the Spider ripped out of his coat, flung it and his hat across the room. In them would be found no mark of identification.
Swiftly he stooped over the unconscious man, tugged the coat from
his body, flapped the other man’s hat upon his head, and struggling
into the coat, ran toward the outer door, ripping the mask from his
face and thrusting it into his pocket as he sped across the room . He
jerked open the door, as the first of the watchmen plunged up the
stairs, gun up and ready .
Chapter 14
Wholesale Death
The Spider turned his head, staring back over his shoulder at the
room he had just left, shouting hoarsely, “In there! He’s in there!”
“Jeez, it’s you, sir!” cried the watchman . “And I nearly shot you!”
“For God’s sake hurry,” gasped the Spider hoarsely, and the man
plunged past him with drawn gun . Wentworth hastened down the
stairs . Behind him, he heard the guard shout a warning to his com-
panions below . “Be careful, Bill . Mr . Robertson is coming down .”
And in the darkness another guard brushed past him, with a mut-
tered, “Pardon me, sir .”
The Spider continued his dash to the front doors . But once there
he cut his speed to a quiet stroll, left the building and walked briskly,
but with no appearance of flight, through streets that shrieked now
with the bedlam of approaching police sirens .
A subway entrance was near, and Wentworth descended un-
hurriedly, dropped a nickel into the clanking turnstile and walked
slowly up the platform . A bum without hat or coat was stretched out
sleeping heavily upon a bench . Grim humor twitched Wentworth’s
lips . What an evil trick he could play this derelict by the gift of a hat
and coat!
He strode into the men’s washroom and with powerful fingers
shredded the coat he wore . With a knife blade he ripped the hat to
fragments and flushed them into the sewer of the city.
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After them he sent tie and collar, and slouched again out onto
the platform with rumpled hair, a dissolute, half-starved bum . He
smeared dirt from the platform upon his cheeks, beneath his eyes,
so that they seemed sunken; rubbed his eyes violently so that they
became bloodshot . And then it was that his genius for disguise be-
came apparent .
The Spider was gone . Gone, too, was Richard Wentworth, the
wealthy young club-man; and in their place, slack-jawed and slouch-
shouldered, there lolled upon the bench beside that other slumbering
bum, another member of the vast army of the unemployed .
But before police could come pounding, searching down the
subway stairs, the rumble of a train filled the hot place. Wentworth
shambled aboard and slumped into a corner seat, to all appearances
a weary, homeless man .
It was with difficulty that he entered his apartment house again,
finally managing to slip into the rear entrance when for a moment
the watchman walked away .
And in the morning, as if to mock him, the papers blazed forth
with a new horror that transcended all previous perpetrations of that
monstrous criminal, the Black Death . For the man had sent letters
to every newspaper in town, stating demands that the banks of the
city lend a billion dollars to the city government in cash . And that
huge sum was to be paid to him! The club this super blackmailer
held over the cringing multitude was the threat of the plague spread
wholesale through the city!
The letter said:
If the city’s millions knew me better, they would realize
that I am no man of idle threats . But since it is unfortunately
necessary that I conceal my identity, I shall deliver a free
sample of my thoroughness . Even as you in the city read
these lines, the Blac
k Death will be among you . Oh, nothing
to be alarmed about, for today I shall kill only a few hundred
of your millions . Take heed, as these hundreds choke and
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die with the Black Death, that you do not provoke me by
unnecessary delay, lest the next blow wipe out thousands .
And even as newsboys shouted the fearsome headlines the plague
had lifted its evil head . Ambulances gonged their way through the
streets to the Lower East Side area, where the Black Death had cho-
sen first to strike. And people died in the streets. Thousands fled.
The news that the Black Death had fulfilled his warning threw
the city into complete panic . Its people went absolutely mad with
terror. Thousands fled. Trains and roads were jammed. It was like a
wartime evacuation .
Wentworth, roaming the fringes of the area where the Black
Death had struck, barred from nearer approach by a double ring of
police who, with surgical masks upon their faces braved the plague,
found the city about him dead . The usually crowded benches of Bat-
tery Park at the tip end of Lower Manhattan were deserted . Even the
birds of the air seemed to have fled the Black Death. For the flock of
pigeons that usually settled before the Custom House was missing .
And Wentworth, plodding through deserted streets, past the
closed doors of shops, of business offices, even of restaurants, saw
their bodies in the streets . Good God, even the pigeons had fallen
prey to the dread plague .
Wentworth did not approach the stilled birds, but went swiftly
to a subway, and riding uptown until he reached a newspaper office
went in to insert a small ad .
The place was a hive of industry . Boys darted back and forth with
bundles of paper under their arms . Trucks roared off with loads of
the latest editions, their headlines still wet with ink, for the thou-
sands who, unable to leave the city, remained behind locked doors
or crept furtively through the streets with backward flung glances
that seemed to fear the Black Death would spring upon them in the
guise of a ravening beast .
A business-like young woman took his ad crisply . It read:
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Pigeons for sale . A large number of all varieties, fancy
and homing .
And it gave an address on the upper West Side .