He insisted and Nita finally climbed into the car to wait. Striding down Fifth Avenue, Wentworth was conscious again of the cold wind whipping against his back, pushing him ahead. There wasn't a whole window along the street. Policeman were on guard against looters everywhere. The cordon had been drawn in since the crash until it extended only five blocks from the wrecked building, but it still barred all entrants except those on official business.
Wentworth was numb to horror now, but he frowned as he was blown on down the street. He could not fathom the motive behind such wanton mass murder. For a moment the idea of looting had brushed his mind, but it was inconceivable that any man could commit such a crime for the sake of petty loot. He would have realized in advance that police would be upon the scene before he could accomplish any sacking. Wentworth's eyes flicked over the scene as he pushed on and his face became haggard.
A stone that weighed a ton had smashed a crater in the street and in its bottom was something viscous and dark, all that was left of a human being. On every side, the Avenue was a shambles. Huddled bodies of men who had not been struck were crushed against jagged cracked walls, broken by the force of the concussion. Entire sides of buildings had been driven in. Southward, the city looked like a thrice-bombed town of Flanders. Scarcely two bricks had been left atop each ether. It spread over entire blocks. Just how far, it was hard to estimate, for it was no longer possible to make out where the cross streets had been.
In the midst of the ruins, Wentworth found Kirkpatrick and told him rapidly what he thought should be done. Kirkpatrick nodded at once and issued the orders.
"I've put out an alarm for Devil Hackerson," he said curtly. "The Collins have left their apartment in Middleton and gave no address. Their home-town down South hasn't heard from them. What other trails are there to follow?"
"I'll question Ram Singh," said Wentworth slowly. "Chemists are analyzing the broken steel, of course?"
Kirkpatrick nodded, turned aside to give some instructions to an inspector who came up hurriedly. Abruptly the three men reeled, staggered and brought up sprawling over a pile of debris. Wentworth scrambled erect and stared northward. Billows of dust were racing down the wind. The earth trembled beneath them and a roar like ten thousand Niagaras dinned in their ears.
Wentworth's keen eyes swept the skyline northward and his fists knotted at his sides. He ground out a curse that hurt his throat.
"God in heaven, Kirk!" he said, his voice scarcely more than a whisper. "Can you—can you see the Plymouth spire?"
Kirkpatrick seized his arm and the fingers ate into Wentworth's flesh like steel talons. "It isn't possible, Dick," he rasped. "They can't . . . can't . . . !"
A motorcycle rocketed down the Avenue, dodging the holes that pitted it like shell craters. The policeman yanked the machine to a halt, leaped from it and raced the last fifty yards flat-footed. He ran with his head thrown back, his face twisted by horror, his eyes staring. He pounded up and Kirkpatrick seized his shoulders. The officer opened his mouth, swallowed, finally squeezed out words.
"Plymouth building, sir," he gasped. "She . . . she . . . !"
The inadequacy of words seemed to choke the man. He raised an arm rigid over his head and swished it down, struck a gloved hand flat into another. He nodded his head.
"The Plymouth building fell," he said flatly. "Grand Central went, too . . . ."
Wentworth felt his lips skin back from his teeth, knew that he shouted hoarse meaningless sounds from his throat, felt the white flame of consuming fury rise within him. By God, when the Spider found the man behind this, he would grind him to death beneath his heels! The Plymouth building and the Grand Central station destroyed! Grand Central station where thousands poured into the city daily! More blocks of the city laid to waste, pulverized by tons of steel and masonry piling down from incredible heights.
A thousand had died in the crash of the Sky Building despite police warning and frantic efforts to clear the surrounding area. And up there in the Plymouth building, there had been no warning!
Imagination reeled beneath the shock. There would be thousands, literally thousands who would never again be heard from, whose families would never know their fate. And it would be better so. Wentworth thought of that pit in the street with its dark, viscous pool. A shudder swept him. He was trembling all over, his muscles jerking and quivering. Slowly he fought himself to calmness. Kirkpatrick had gasped a few orders that had sent police to the scene of disaster.
Slowly, a cold rage swept the horror from Wentworth's breast. He turned a graven, bitter face to Kirkpatrick.
"Better clear the whole area of skyscrapers of people," he said, and he could scarcely recognize his own voice. "Keep it clear until inspections can be finished. Better call on some expert in skyscraper mechanics to help."
Kirkpatrick nodded. "Good God in heaven," he whispered. "I hope the Spider and not myself gets these fiends. The Spider won't have to use civilized methods of punishment."
Wentworth nodded. He slowly took out his cigarette case and offered it to Kirkpatrick and the Police Commissioner's fingers shook. Wentworth's hand was like rock. He felt that his heart was like that, too, cold and hard. He lighted a cigarette.
"I think, Kirk," he said calmly, "that you can count on that."
Resolutely, Wentworth drove all shock and horror from his brain as he strode back up Fifth Avenue to where Nita waited for him, huddled in furs in her small coupe. A glance at his face told her that he knew what had happened, that he was intent on plans, and she drove southward without a word, circling to the west around the area of shattered buildings and streets. The traffic congestion stalled them for long minutes and they deserted the car for an elevated train, walked across town to Wentworth's apartment.
The private elevator to his penthouse shot them upward fifteen floors, and the door swung open as they crossed the hall. The ruddy face of old Jenkyns, the butler, was creased with smiles as he ducked his crown of white hair in a profound bow. He always greeted Nita thus. It was his fondest hope that some day his master would marry and cease these mad adventures of his—these quixotic tilts with crime.
Wentworth did not speak. He stalked past his butler, across the living room with its stone fireplace and smoky beams into the music-room beyond. Within the door, he stopped. He heard Nita behind him and turned to face her, a slow, grave smile moving his lips. Nita came close into his arms, pressed her bronze curls against his breast. In her heart was sadness, too. She knew that Wentworth had pledged himself ever to battle the underworld, ever to right the crooked wrongs that afflicted humanity. Right now, she was not sorry. This was a crusade she would not have the Spider shirk.
But there was sadness within her, too. She knew how both of them had fought their love because the Spider could never marry—how could the Spider marry and build a home, have a family, when he knew not what day the police would clap vengeful hands upon his shoulders and send him to his death as a common murderer?—but their love had proved stronger than even the Spider's grim power.
In the end, Nita, too, had taken the pledge of service with which Wentworth had bound himself. It was their only pleasure that they fought side by side through death and horror. Something of all this was flitting through Wentworth's brain as he clasped her close in his arms, smiling grimly above her head into the empty blackness beyond his windows which formerly had framed the majesty of the Sky Building. He was remembering, too, what horror had faced Nita in his last battle with the underworld, when she had so narrowly escaped a fearful death.
He led Nita gently to a chair and strode across to the end of the room where a mighty organ had been installed. Waiting only to toss his overcoat aside, Wentworth seated himself before the instrument, manipulated the stops and began to play. His music was extemporaneous; its chords crashed with thunder like the collapse of the Sky Building. Its theme mounted in wild wind-like fury. Nita sank back in her chair and closed her eyes. She knew that her Dick found in music a release that nothing e
lse could afford. She knew that his mind was tortured by the sufferings of the thousands in this latest mad raid of the underworld on civilization, that he sought to calm himself so that he might think more clearly.
On and on thundered the soaring notes, the crashing basses. Jenkyns brought in a tray upon which decanter and syphon stood, and stepped back against the wall, his ruddy old face distraught. He, too, knew the black despair which spoke through the music. Another form stepped into the doorway: Ram Singh, clad in spotless white, his head wrapped in a fresh turban that strengthened the hard, clean mold of his features, pale now with pain. His left arm was strapped to his body.
They waited long. It was an hour before the mad, vaulting chords gave way to gentler strains, another half hour before they droned into the sweeping phrases of love music. And Nita knew now that Wentworth played to her. The tension that had gripped her relaxed. She let her wrists go limp upon the chair arms. Her eyes strayed over the beauty of the room, touched the Steinway concert grand, the Stradivarius violin that was Wentworth's special joy. The music of the organ died in a lingering quaver, and it was the old alert Wentworth who spun from the bench, strode energetically across the room.
His eyes spotted Ram Singh. "Damn your fighting soul, Ram Singh," he grinned. "Why don't you stay in the hospital when you're sick?"
Ram Singh's eyes gleamed into his master's. "Pooh. It is nothing." He slapped his wounded shoulder with his good right hand. "A mere pin prick. I knew you would need me."
Wentworth stopped before him, standing on straddled legs. A tenseness touched his eyes. "Did you find Hackerson's headquarters?" he asked.
Ram Singh stiffened like a soldier at attention. "I traced him to a saloon, Sahib" he reported. "There he talked with one who was bald-headed and had a cast in his left eye. Hackerson addressed him as Baldy. Baldy asked if the Sky Building had been fixed so it would collapse and Hackerson said it had. I left at once to report, but they must have seen me. I was shot down even as I began to tell you about it." He recounted then what had been said in the automobile while he was being carried to the Sky Building to die—of Baldy's words of the Master, of the anonymous "stuff" that had been put on the steel girders.
"Describe this bald man," Wentworth asked softly, and listened with narrowed eyes while Ram Singh told how he looked. He shook his head at the end. "I never heard of such a criminal," he said. "Go to police headquarters and see if you can find him in the rogue's gallery. If you identify him, tell Sahib Kirkpatrick what you have told me." He nodded in dismissal and Ram Singh backed three paces, raised his cupped hand to his turbaned forehead in a salaam, pivoted and was gone.
Jenkyns announced dinner, and Wentworth noted with surprise that the mad day had faded. He had not eaten since the night before. Knowing that he must battle soon, he allowed himself an hour more with Nita, during which time they ate the perfect meal Jenkyns had prepared.
Back in the living room, Wentworth took a turn up and down, paused before Nita. "Darling, will you get in touch with Professor Brownlee and have him install an infra-red camera in the Collins apartment in Middleton? And, darling . . . !" He paused, smiling down at her tenderly. "Hide yourself at some hotel. I'm afraid these killers may strike at me through you."
He bent over her, a hand on each arm of her chair, brushed her gleaming hair with his lips. Nita lifted her mouth to his, pressed her soft cheek to his with closed eyes. Wentworth's arms dropped about her shoulders, tightened savagely. It was as if he would shield her with that moment's caress from all the fury of the world, the madness of criminal onslaughts. When he released her, his eyes were gentle.
"It may be some days before I see you again, dear," he said briskly. "There is much to do."
He saw rebellious protest on Nita's face and promised swiftly that he had work for her, too, but that first he must make certain investigations . . . Then he sent her away. Five minutes later he was driving away in his town sedan, the Lancia in which he had burned the roads between Middleton and New York. In a dark side street, he parked and drew the curtains, entered the tonneau. His hand dropped to a button beneath the left half of the cushion and that section slid forward and revolved soundlessly.
Its back contained clothing hung on racks and from it Wentworth unfolded a mirror and make-up tray framed with mazdas. He went to work swiftly. Beneath his skillful hands the face of Richard Wentworth became sallow and sharp, the nose lengthened and bushy black brows that were low over his eyes masked the mockery of his own smooth eyebrows. A lank, black wig, a broad-brimmed hat of black and a cape completed the transformation. He pocketed false celluloid teeth like fangs. Again Richard Wentworth had become the Spider. He climbed slowly from the tonneau, and shuffling along the walk, he was a hunchback, twisted shoulders distorting the smooth erect stride that was Wentworth's.
The Spider's face was set and hard. Tonight he was borrowing a leaf from the book of gangsterdom. It dictated that when you could not find the man you wanted, you attacked where it would hurt that man. The police would be before him, of course, watching for Hackerson to fall into their hands. But Wentworth would not wait . . . .
He turned around a corner, his cape flapping behind him in the cold whip of the wind, a somber, half-seen shadow in the swift-falling winter dusk, and saw a block ahead the apartment house where lived Beatrice Ross, Devil Hackerson's mistress. As he shuffled closer, he made out the forms of two men hidden in a facing doorway. His lips stirred slightly in mockery. The police were watching for Hackerson, waiting for him to drop into their laps. As if Hackerson, knowing that police and the Spider both were upon his trail, would walk openly into so obvious a place as his mistress' home!
Wentworth circled the block to avoid the detectives, for his hunched and caped figure was known throughout the land as the disguise of the Spider. He turned alongside the apartment house where Hackerson's girl friend lived, moved close within the shadow of the wall. A black stairway opened downward, tunneling under the next building. Wentworth drifted into it soundlessly, brought up against a steel grating. A lock pick disposed of that in seconds and he moved through into a black areaway walled in by the towering, window-pierced cliffs of apartment houses.
Two minutes later, he was moving steadily up the stairs of Beatrice Ross' house. He reached the fourth floor without challenge, paused a moment outside the door that bore the bronze figures 4C. The lock brought a small smile to his lips. Hackerson would know the best kind to use all right. A Foxx. It was a tough nut to crack. A glance showed him the fire-escape exit on his right. He reached the window in quick, quiet strides, slid outside. From the platform, it was only a long step to the sill of the woman's bathroom window. That would be the bedroom that was lighted next to it.
Without hesitation, Wentworth stepped across four stories of deep blackness to the sill, crouched there while a cold wind flapped his cloak dully behind him. The window slid up noiselessly and slipping into place his false celluloid fangs, he crept inside, stepping on a steam radiator that hissed dimly, then to the floor. Abruptly the light snapped on, smashing into his eyes. A woman stood in the doorway with an automatic in her hand. "So what do you want, baby?" she sneered. "Come out and show your ugly mug."
Evidently she had started to undress. Her long hennaed hair hung down her naked left shoulder and her clothing consisted of a magenta silken underskirt and, above the waist, nothing but a narrow brassier that compressed her ample breasts. Her undress did not appear to concern her.
"Come on, baby," she urged, mockingly. "Come out where mama can see you better."
Wentworth saw that her lips were brilliantly carmined and their sullen curve was hard as brass. He came forward two slow steps, bared those ugly, inch-long fangs, and lifted his head so that the light crept in under the broad brim of his hat. The woman gasped, retreated a step. Her gun hand began to waver, and then she seized the automatic with both hands and jerked it eye high.
"The Spider! The Spider!" she gabbled and began shooting.
Chapter Six
The Hot Trail
WENTWORTH had counted on the woman's fright. He dived in under the gun an instant before she yanked the trigger. His shoulder caught the woman's ankles and spilled her across his back. He heard the gun smash into a mirror, heard the woman's frightened shriek. Her head thudded against the edge of the wash bowl. Wentworth scrambled up, and the woman crouched on hands and knees, head hanging, swaying from side to side like an injured animal. The rest of her hair had come down and its dyed and lifeless ends swept the floor.
Wentworth seized her shoulders, dragged her erect and pinned her against the wall. Her mouth was sagging open, her eyes barely showed the irises. She was half out, but a dashing of water from the bowl jerked her back to full consciousness. He thrust his face, the sallow, menacing face of the Spider, close to hers; his lips snarled back from pointed fangs.
"You're going with me," he snapped, "and you're going fast—or you're going out feet first. Which will it be?"
The woman's over-red mouth gagged. She shook her head in bewilderment.
"Police are at the door," Wentworth said, emphasizing his words with a violent shake of her shoulders. "Either come with me or I drop you right here." He dragged out his gun and stabbed its muzzle against her abdomen.
"I—I'll go," she whimpered.
Wentworth led her into the next room, snatched a coat from a closet and threw it at her, and she got into it with fumbling hands. He listened at the door, then hurried her through it to the hall beyond. They went down the fire-escape while police were coming up in the elevator, dived through the passageway that a steel grating closed and moments later reached Wentworth's car. The woman huddled in the opposite corner. The winter night bit through her and her lips beneath the carmine were purple with cold. She watched the Spider with cringing eyes.
Wentworth apparently paid her no attention. The woman hugged herself for warmth. "Where—where are you taking me?" she asked.
THE SPIDER-City of Doom Page 5