The Plague, Pestilence & Apocalypse MEGAPACK™
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so . You’re not guilty! I know you’re not guilty! You can’t be . Why,
man — ”
For moments the men’s eyes met, then abruptly Kirkpatrick
crossed to his desk and touched a button . A man sprang into the
room . Kirkpatrick looked at him as if he were some strange appari-
tion, but presently he got out words:
“Order out my car . Get a squad of men . Take charge of this pris-
oner and wait for me. If he tries to escape — kill him.”
The man saluted . Others entered the room . Obviously they had
been listening . They caught up Wentworth, dragged him from the of-
fice. Actually he had recovered most of his strength, but he feigned
weakness, let the men carry him .
He had lied to Kirkpatrick . He did not know the hiding place
of the Black Death . But a reckless smile twisted his lips . All his
money on one spin of the wheel . His life was forfeit anyway . He
must gamble the lives of these men, the life of his dearest friend, for
the salvation of the city .
Surrounded by police, he was roughed out of the building into the
Commissioner’s car . He was placed on one of the small, collapsible
seats in the tonneau with a man on either side, and two more behind .
The Commissioner climbed stiffly into the forward seat. He twisted
and stared into Wentworth’s face .
“Well?” It was a question .
Wentworth apparently was scarcely able to hold himself erect .
“Over Brooklyn Bridge,” he whispered . “And hurry . In God’s name,
hurry!”
The car sprang forward, its deep-throated motor roaring . Its siren
began to wail, and it ripped through city traffic at forty, fifty, fifty-
five miles an hour. Ahead of them police whistles skirled, traffic
cops sprang forward to block traffic, and the Commissioner’s car
slammed through, spun on to Brooklyn Bridge, and wove a rapid
way among other, slower moving cars .
Wentworth sagged forward, his arms upon the back of the seat
ahead, his head upon his arms . They raced out into the middle of the
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span . Ahead of them the roadway was clear . Suddenly Wentworth
lunged forward, both his hands grasped the right hand side of the
steering wheel and with a savage wrench he sent the car crashing
through the rail, hurtling out into space, somersaulting to the river
far below .
The top ripped off with the force of the plunge, but Wentworth
gripped the wheel and hung on .
Then the car struck and plunged beneath the surface of the East
River .
In falling they had just missed the stern of a tug . Men shouted on
its decks, ropes snaked out, and one by one the Commissioner and
all of his men were hauled to safety . They stared out over the roiled
waters of the river . Not a head bobbed in the swift current . Not a
ripple except the wash of the boat broke the surface .
Wentworth, the Spider, had vanished .
Chapter 16
Nita Cries Vengeance
SPIDER ARRESTED FOR PLAGUE.
KILLS SELF IN BRIDGE LEAP
Those black headlines screamed at Nita van Sloan when, with the
morning sun warm in her face, she walked briskly along the drive
with Apollo, joying in the fresh breezes that swept in from over the
Hudson .
“Spider Arrested!” A boy shouted . “Extra! Paper!”
With hands that trembled despite her every effort at control, Nita
bought one of the smeary papers, gasped at the headlines, skimmed
through the story . Her eyes caught on two sentences and she breathed
hope deeply through her nostrils .
Everyone else in the car was saved by the men on the tug, but the
Spider was drowned . The body has not been recovered .
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The body has not been recovered . Hope . Hope . But why in the
name of heaven had Stanley Kirkpatrick ordered the arrest of his
friend? Knowing Wentworth innocent as she did, knowing Kirkpat-
rick’s friendship for him, she could not understand how he could
have been driven to such a step .
She saw that Kirkpatrick had been plunged into the river with
Wentworth . Surely from him then, she could learn the truth . She
flagged a taxi, sat with whitely clasped hands while it twisted into
the express highway, which, elevated on stilts, shot motor traffic
down the bank of the Hudson . Once she threw back her head and
laughed . But it was as if hands closed on her throat and the laughter
stopped . Dead? Dick could not be dead . He could not be! He must
not be…
Her name won her instant admittance to the office of the Com-
missioner, and Kirkpatrick, gray-faced and sleepless, rose to greet
her . As the door clicked shut behind her, Nita van Sloan stopped in
her tracks, staring at this apparition of the man she had known as
gay, debonair, perpetually smiling .
Then she hurried forward, and suddenly her lips were tremulous .
“Tell me! Tell me!” she commanded .
The wintry smile that was Kirkpatrick’s only mirth these days
stirred his lips . But his deep-sunken eyes remained dull, without life .
“I hope,” he said slowly, “and it’s for your sake as well as his,
that he is dead .”
The girl fell back a little staggering half pace, her wrist against
her mouth smothering the cry that rose there . But suddenly in those
words, too, she found hope .
“You don’t know!” she cried at him . “You don’t know!”
He drooped into his chair . “No . I don’t know .” And a gag seemed
taken from his mouth . He began to talk as he had not spoken for
days, pouring out words . “You don’t know the evidence against him,
Nita . It was overwhelming .” And he recited the long list of circum-
stances that pointed to Wentworth as the Spider, and to the Spider
as the perpetrator of the Black Death . He seemed suddenly obsessed
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with the necessity for convincing this girl, perhaps of proving to
himself, that he had acted rightly .
“And there in the base of his lighter was a secret compartment,”
he finished. He spread his hands, palms upward. “I ordered his ar-
rest .”
“And you — you,” the girl’s scorn rang in the room, “ — you
called yourself his friend .”
“But, Nita — ”
The girl leaned across the desk and her eyes were burning in a
dead white face .
“You know that Dick Wentworth could not do the things you ac-
cused him of .”
Kirkpatrick eyed her shrewdly . “Yet you yourself quarreled with
him, and I do not believe it was for the reason that the gossip col-
umns of the newspapers reported . I believe it was because he could
not explain…”
Nita laughed wildly .
“We quarreled . Dear Lord, we quarreled! Dick said that if we
pretended to, over his leaving town, it would help convince his en-
emies that he had left . In which case he would be able to help
you
better to track down the Black Death… That was what he said!”
The girl paused, her breasts rising and falling, straining against
her dress with the quickness of her breath . She went on more slowly .
“Yes, that was what he told me, but I see now that his real reason was
to protect me . He knew that he was going into terrible danger . Yes,
Dick Wentworth did that, and you think that such a man could — ”
Kirkpatrick jerked to his feet . His voice rose and cracked .
“Don’t you suppose I know what kind of man Dick Wentworth
is? Why do you suppose — ”
He stretched out both his hands and they were trembling . “It was
the pigeons that clinched the case against him . Whether I believed
or not did not matter . I was forced to act .”
“The pigeons?”
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“Dick offered to take us to the place where the plague master was
hidden, where he had concealed the pigeons that, Dick says, bring
the plague of the Black Death to the city .”
Nita straightened slowly . Pigeons . She shook her head slowly,
and all at once she was weary . Her head throbbed . She pressed the
back of her hand to her forehead, and the Great Dane pressed against
her legs to comfort her .
“Nita — ” Kirkpatrick began, moving about the desk.
But the girl shook her head . “No! No!” she cried, and turned and
left the office in a stumbling run. And Kirkpatrick watched her go
with haunted eyes . The Great Dane turned its head and looked back
at him and its lips lifted in a soundless snarl that showed gleaming
white fangs .
Nita fled to Wentworth’s home, hoping against hope that she
might find reassurance there. But Jenkyns’ old eyes were swollen
with weeping, and Ram Singh had already left for Dick’s Long Is-
land estate, there to gather his belongings and leave for India .
Nita, still refusing to believe, went to her home, with Apollo
pressing ever close to her side . In her apartment, the girl threw her-
self down on her knees, caught the dog’s great head between her
hands and looked with brimming eyes into his face .
“But we don’t believe it, do we, Apollo? Do we, boy?”
The dog whined low in its throat, licked out its pink tongue . Nita
got slowly to her feet . She would not believe . She began feverishly
to pack a small overnight bag, stopped a moment to repair the dam-
age emotion had wrought on her face, and hurried out . She took a
taxi to a garage and wheeled out the compact but powerful Renault
that Dick had helped her select .
She sent it skimming over the roads, Apollo on the seat beside
her, thrusting his head out from behind the windshield into the push
of the wind . The swift drive over the Queensboro Bridge and out
onto Long Island roads cleared her head .
Wasn’t it possible that Wentworth had escaped? He was a su-
perb swimmer and, unless he had been stunned in the plunge, unless
he had wanted to die — Dick want to die? She laughed, and actual
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gayety crept into her voice . He would risk his life gladly in any just
cause, but it was because he loved so to live that he got pleasure in
thus defying death .
It was an hour and a half later that she swung into the drive that
twined, through trees, up to the home Dick had built on the hill,
for the day, he had explained to Nita with a twisted smile, when
some other man, stronger than himself and with an equal oneness of
purpose, could take up his battle against the forces of evil . The day
when Dick and Nita…
She choked on the thought, saw the old caretaker running toward
her, a man with a face the weather and sun had thickened like leather
and seamed with good nature .
“Is Dick here?” she called gaily .
The man came smiling up to her, a battered straw hat in his hands,
his overall knees smudged with dirt from his labors among the flow-
ers .“Ain’t seen him this month, Miss Nita,” he said . “And I’ve been
wantin’ to show him his peonies . They’re gorgeous, ma’am . And
that cross he worked out that I says wouldn’t do a thing — Miss Nita,
it’s the loveliest flower you ever saw.”
Nita’s hope died . She had hoped that Ram Singh’s coming here
meant Dick had set up a secret domicile in this place .
“Then Ram Singh isn’t here either?”
The man frowned a little in bewilderment . “If the master ain’t
here, ma’am, why would — ”
Nita nodded jerkily, her throat too choked for words . She moved
a hand in farewell, spun the wheel and shot the Renault down the
drive again with gravel-spurting tires . This place was too full of
memories .
She turned back toward town . Perhaps she might run into Ram
Singh on the road . Evidently, he had not yet had time to reach the
estate . She forced herself to drive slowly and, passing brick columns
beside the road, saw the name of MacDonald Pugh on a mail box .
On an impulse, she spun the wheel and drove in . This was where
Dick had mentioned coming for the week-end . Perhaps in this part
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of the country he expected to find some clue to the Black Death.
Perhaps she—
Grimly Nita van Sloan decided that if Dick had died, then she
would devote the rest of her life, if necessary, to clearing his name
of the smirching charge that he was the Master of the Black Death .
For his identification as the Spider she had no apologies .
Nita had been nearer collapse than she had realized . But the de-
termination strengthened her . She drew up before the house, and
MacDonald Pugh, seeing her from the porch, hurried out to greet
her. He was dressed in tennis flannels. His face and great bald head
were redly sunburned . Even his big hands, clasping hers, were red .
“I’m damned glad you came, Nita . Of course this whole business
about Dick is preposterous .”
The girl smiled bravely with lips that quivered a little in spite of
her. It was good to find someone who believed.
“Dick told me the other day you had asked us out for the week-
end,” she said . “I know he’d want me to carry on .”
“Exactly,” Pugh agreed . He caught up her grip himself and car-
ried it into the house, walking beside her with his heavy, forward-
thrust head bent attentively . “If you give way to grief, people might
think you gave some credence to those ridiculous charges . The late
papers practically refute them anyway . Have you seen them?”
Nita stopped, whirled toward him . Her lips dared not frame the
question . Pugh’s wide mouth turned down wryly .
“The newspapers got another letter signed the Black Death . Even
if the Spider is dead, the letter said, the plague will go on unless the
money is delivered . Good Lord,” Pugh growled, striding on into the
house . “As if the banks could shell out a billion dollars like so many
rol
ls of pennies and not feel it . But they’ll do it .” His face went grim .
“They’ll have to, or else…”
Nita’s shoulders sagged slightly . She had been hoping against
hope that there might be some new information about Dick .
“But they haven’t — ” she hesitated, walking into the cool dim-
ness of the hall, “they haven’t — ”
“They’ve found no trace of Dick’s body, no,” Pugh said kindly .
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A maid came then and took over Nita’s case and showed her up
winding stairs to a coolly bright room . She dismissed the servant
instantly and stood in the middle of the floor staring about her while
the Great Dane prowled around, sniffing at everything and finally
standing before Nita, peering up with lolling tongue .
Nita forced herself from the lethargy that kept dropping back
upon her, opened her case and swiftly dressed in riding clothes . The
clue she believed Dick sought might lie in the country about here,
or it might lie among the weekend guests . But the guests could wait
until night . She would have to do any exploring she was to accom-
plish at once .
A short while later, she went alertly down the stairs, wearing kha-
ki jodhpurs, a silk blouse that, open at the neck, showed the sweet
curve of her throat and, drawn down over her rebellious curls, a soft
brown felt . Pugh sprang to his feet as she came to the porch . He was
alone there .
“The others took a spin down to the town for drinks,” he said .
“Katherine said she was damned sick of rye all the time and longed
to taste some real bathtub gin again .” He made a face, and Nita saw
gratefully that he was religiously avoiding the subject of Dick, de-
liberately treating her as though tragedy had not a few hours before
sought to tear her heart in two .
“Your wife has small cause to complain of your rye, Mac .” She
smiled up at him, then glanced down at her riding clothes . “I know
it’s the wrong time of day, but I wanted to take a ramble through the
woods on one of those excellent riding horses of yours .”
Pugh nodded instantly .
“I’m only sorry I can’t accompany you,” he said, “but I’m ex-
pecting someone from town . Business,” he wrinkled his reddened
face wryly . “Otherwise Dick and I would be trolling for tuna off