Wentworth smiled at the machine gun chatter of the little man. The cigar was locked between his teeth, billowing smoke up in front of his face. There were four chewed butts on the desk. W. Johnson Briggs was one of the country's biggest consultant architects on skyscrapers. Kirkpatrick had done well to call in a man who knew his craft so thoroughly. Wentworth scrutinized him curiously. The man had an aesthetic face, wore his hair long and swept back over his ears. He chewed and puffed his cigar at the same time.
Kirkpatrick said grimly, "We've got to find a way, Mr. Briggs. Got to! We can't keep the city crippled as it is now. We've got guards to prevent anyone entering the skyscrapers and even the Mayor is howling at me about it. Inspectors are going over the buildings as fast as they can, but it's slow work."
They all three looked up quickly as a policeman opened the door, thrust in a head of carroty bristles. "Guy named Collins out here, Commissioner," he said. "Says he's got some evidence for you. Got a lady with him."
Kirkpatrick's face was interested. "That must be those people from Middleton," he told Wentworth. "Show them in at once."
Collins' face was flushed when he came through the door behind Nancy Collins. He glared at the policeman who shut the door. Wentworth hid a smile behind the lighting of a cigarette. It was hard to get through to Kirkpatrick if the police didn't know you. The big deputy strode forward purposefully.
"I'm Anse Collins, sir," he said to Kirkpatrick, half-turned as Nancy came forward. "And this is my brother's . . . . my brother's widow."
Kirkpatrick bowed gravely, came around the desk to place a chair for Mrs. Collins, and introduced Wentworth and Briggs. There was a tightness upon Nancy's pretty face that did not belong there and the smudges beneath her eyes were purple shadows. Her blue eyes rose hesitantly to Kirkpatrick's face.
"You know who we are?" she asked softly.
"You come from Middleton?" Kirkpatrick queried, and at her nod he said that he knew, then, who they were.
"The Spider saved us from some men in Middleton," Nancy said. Her voice was softened by a drawl. She was looking at her hands in her lap now, fingering a handkerchief. "The police there wouldn't believe that Jim . . . ." Her hands gripped tightly together and she went on, "that Jim was murdered. But the Spider did. Tonight he came to our hotel and told us we ought to come and tell you all we know."
"By Judas Priest!" exploded Briggs. "Listen at the calm way she says it. Just like the Spider was anybody else. He came to our hotel, she says." He shoved the cigar into his mouth and puffed vigorously.
Nancy Collins looked up at him and smiled slightly. Her lips were full, a little tremulous. "He was . . . very nice," she said gently. "And he believed me when I told him about Jim."
"He's all right, that Spider fellow," Anse Collins put in shortly. "He may be a killer, but he's the real goods. Those rats he killed tonight needed killing."
Kirkpatrick eyed him keenly. "That couldn't possibly be in the newspapers yet," he said, "So I guess it was the Spider who talked to you all right. He told you he killed Hackerson?"
Collins' eyes narrowed. "Maybe I'd better not say," he replied cautiously. "I'm not saying anything might hurt the Spider. Hell!" the word was explosive, "I shook hands with him."
Wentworth nodded his head slowly, leaned back in his chair. He knew now what he had come to learn. He had wanted to know how far he could trust this Anse Collins and the man was, as he himself had put it, the real goods. He listened without comment while Nancy Collins and her brother-in-law told about Baldy and said they could identify him. Kirkpatrick had her go into details on the description, nodding now and then as it checked with Ram Singh's word picture.
"He's new to the criminal world," Kirkpatrick said finally. "But we're hoping to hear about him soon."
Wentworth knew what that meant. Every detective in headquarters would have his stool pigeons scurrying about, seeking trace of this queer bald-headed man with a cast in one eye who brought the orders of wholesale murder from the Master. They might find out something that way, but it was Wentworth's guess the men the Master hired would be too well paid to talk and that they would shield Baldy from all impudent inquiries—with murder if necessary.
He looked up sharply at an angrily defiant note in Collins' voice.
"Nancy didn't see him, and you won't get it out of me if you keep me in jail from now to Judgment Day," he declared and his tousled head was in that defiant posture that Wentworth was coming to find familiar. "I shook hands with the Spider and I'm for him."
"Good boy!" Briggs applauded. Wentworth saw that he was standing beside Nancy Collins now. The woman was smiling up at him. "Stand by your guns!"
Kirkpatrick smiled thinly, but there was sympathy on his saturnine face. He touched his mustache with thumb and forefinger, hiding the lifting of his mouth corners.
"I suspect there are many who feel as you do right now," he said slowly. "There are times when I'd like to strike as surely and directly as the Spider does in exacting punishment on evil doers. This man he killed tonight, Hackerson, was directly responsible for the collapse of the Sky Building."
Wentworth left the commissioner's office with a warm feeling in his chest, found Nita at the hotel to which she had gone and insisted on her going to a late supper with him at the Waldorf. According to what Ram Singh had reported, the Master knew that Ram Singh was the servant of the Spider, that probably meant he knew Wentworth's identity, too. Perhaps, the Master would attack . . . .
He was warily watchful as he returned to his apartment and dressed, but nothing suspicious occurred. Jenkyns had not heard from Ram Singh, but Professor Brownlee—once Wentworth's science professor at college, now his devoted friend and helper—had reported that the infra-red camera was installed in the Collins' Middleton apartment. Wentworth was out again within ten minutes, lounging behind the competent broad shoulders of his chauffeur Jackson, who wove the Lancia through traffic with insolent ease.
Halfway to Nita's hotel, Jackson leaned to the speaking tube. "I think we're being followed, Major. That yellow taxi has been behind us the whole way and every other car has passed us."
"Quite right, Jackson," Wentworth told him, with a hard eagerness in his voice. "I had spotted it." Jackson called him Major because he had served under Wentworth in France.
He continued to lounge carelessly in his seat. This would make it necessary for Nita to change her quarters again, of course, but he might inveigle the trailers into an earlier attack. He frowned as the yellow taxi cut a corner and left them, but within the next half dozen blocks, he was equally sure that a Ford coupe was on their trail.
Nita awaited him in the lounge and more than one man turned his head as they strolled toward the street again. There was envy in their stares, perhaps wistfulness. It was so patent that these two had eyes only for each other. It was clear in the way Nita's hand rested confidently on Wentworth's arm, in the eagerness with which her bright laugh met his whispered words.
But Wentworth was not talking love words. "I'm being followed, darling," he whispered. "Let's hope we get a shot at the Master himself tonight."
And Nita's laughter was clever camouflage. "I'm getting to be a good gun moll," she told him. "I've got an automatic in my garter and another in my handbag."
They entered the Lancia and it swung smoothly into the traffic. This time it was a sedan with a man and a girl close together on the front seat that took up the pursuit. Wentworth frowned as he lit a cigarette for Nita. That didn't look like a murder tail, but the mob might be lurking in the background, waiting for its chance to strike . . . .
Chapter Eight
The Spider Draws Blood
THE EVENING passed without any hostile attempt and Wentworth had Nita leave separately and shift her hotel for safety's sake. He received a report from Ram Singh, but it was negative. Beatrice Ross, arrested as a material witness in the slaying of Hackerson, was still a prisoner; her release not expected until the following day. Wentworth rode home with the shadow on hi
s trail, and he was still being followed next morning when he left his apartment.
He gave his shadow the slip and, in a subway wash-room, rapidly changed to the disguise he had assumed on the previous day, that of the blond young cavalry officer. He found Anse Collins waiting in the lobby of the hotel, standing on braced legs and scowling out of the window.
He nodded at Wentworth and strode, big-shouldered, across to meet him, but his scowl returned the moment they entered a taxi for the railway station. Wentworth eyed him curiously, but did not comment. Presently, watching behind them, he saw that once more they had a shadow. Whether the man he had dodged had succeeded in picking up the trail again, or whether they had kept watch on Collins also, Wentworth did not know. He was puzzled by the constant trailing and it was beginning to wear on his nerves. He wondered at the purpose, but did not mention it to his companion.
Collins finally broke his silence gruffly as they alighted in front of the Pennsylvania Railway station, and strode along the wide corridor that led to the concourse. "What do you know about Briggs?" Collins growled.
Wentworth looked at him quickly, told the man's position and what his part was in the present case. Collins grunted. "He's making a play for Nancy," he said, "and he's damned near old enough to be her father."
Humor flickered in Wentworth's eyes, but he was careful not to let Collins see it. He had spotted their present shadow, a young woman, whose red hat was brave against the muggy day.
"Briggs took us to the hotel in his car last night," Collins grumbled. "Made a luncheon date with Nancy for today. He was tickled to death when I couldn't make it."
"Mrs. Collins is a very attractive woman," Wentworth said. "Going about a bit will help to take her mind off her troubles."
Collins lapsed into a sullen silence that lasted until they boarded the Middleton train. Wentworth saw that the girl in the red hat did not follow and he sat frowning out the window at the people hurrying up the platform, following red caps encumbered with suitcases and hat-boxes. Unless the gangsters knew where Wentworth and Collins were going, there should be a shadow on the train now, yet he had spotted none. Collins was sitting bunched forward, elbows on his knees and hands clasped. "I guess Briggs is all right," he was saying grudgingly, "only . . . only . . . ."
"Only you rather fancy Nancy yourself, eh?" Wentworth asked softly.
Collins colored. "Always was right fond of Nancy," he admitted slowly. "And I'm not aiming to have any damn Yankee—" he hesitated, eyeing Wentworth frankly. "I'm sorry, but that's the way I think of them. I ain't aiming to have anybody take advantage of her. And that Briggs is old enough to be her father."
Wentworth felt a slight impatience at the intrusion of this additional confusion into the situation. The whole story was plain enough. Anse Collins apparently had long planned to marry Nancy, but had given her up to his younger brother.
Now that his brother was dead, he didn't purpose to have any one else take her away from him.
A touch of suspicion glanced across Wentworth's mind, but he thrust it aside instantly. Anse Collins would never be implicated in his brother's death, even though the action were inspired by so lovely a girl as Nancy Collins. The thought persisted that Anse Collins' misstep had been responsible for the mishap that had precipitated that first shooting scrape with Devil Hackerson, an affray that might well have proved fatal to the Spider. But Collins had been loyal enough since then. Nevertheless, Wentworth decided that he would find out where Collins had been at the time of his younger brother's death.
The train belched out of a tunnel into the open and the release of the close-crowded roar of the rails made the train seem wrapped in silence. The pale lights inside clicked out and Wentworth settled back in his seat with the air of a man who has traveled much and knows how to take his ease. His eyes were half-closed, but he was alertly watchful. Still the shadow did not evidence himself, and that fact nagged at the back of his mind. Why had they been followed to the train, then dropped?
Abruptly, Wentworth snapped erect in his seat. "Quick, Anse," he barked, "find the conductor and bring him forward."
Collins perked up his head, puzzled, then sprang to his feet. He was alert and quick-moving for a man of his size.
"What's the matter?" he demanded.
Wentworth did not wait to explain, but hastened forward through the aisle followed by the curious stares of other passengers. To Wentworth there could be but one explanation of the failure of his shadow. A trail was no longer necessary, and that meant—danger! As he darted across steel platforms and into another coach, he flung a glance outside. They were ticking off an easy fifty miles an hour along the bank of the Hudson, the rails buttressed thirty or forty feet high with heaped-up jagged stones. A wreck at this point would kill scores and it would be a simple matter to apply some of the Master's chemical to the rails.
It would be like blowing up a mountain to chop down a tree, this wrecking a train to kill Wentworth. But the Master had not scrupled to knock over two skyscrapers and kill thousands for his own mysterious ends. Certainly he would not hesitate in this case. Another thought flashed through Wentworth's mind. This was an express train and undoubtedly would carry valuable mails. And it was evident the Master did not scorn to dig into other's pocketbooks with the help of his steel-eater.
A lurching jar threw Wentworth off his feet. He went flat down, catching himself on springing arms, then lay there as the jars continued. He did not have to see what was happening. He recognized those sounds, the concussions and lurching thump of the train. The locomotive had jumped the track and was bounding along out of control. It had dragged coaches off also. People were starting to their feet all over the car. A woman's voice rose shrilly and a baby wailed in fright.
With a violent sway and bump, a sickening twirl, the coach went over the embankment. The floor rose under Wentworth, pitched him against the seats on his right. He had a fragmentary glimpse through a window of jagged rock points racing toward them, then the window smashed and sent glass needles slashing through the air. A tearing jar. Wentworth clung to the side of the seat, felt his feet swing and knew that the coach had bounced and was rolling in the air. He hung on desperately.
His arms wrenched and the steel of the car clanged like a mightily struck anvil. His hands slipped from their hold. He curled his head down against his chest for protection, wrapped his arms about it and struck a cushioned back with his shoulders. He bounced, landed upon a man who grunted, then screamed, and suddenly realized that the roll of the car had ceased.
Drunkenly, he reeled to his feet, found he was standing on the ceiling of the car. Groans and frightened whimperings filled the car with a fearful symphony of pain. Off in another car, a man was screaming, over and over a single shrill note. The scream weakened and faded. Wentworth peered behind him, saw Anse Collins crumpled against a partition with a thread of blood across his temple. Beside him, the conductor pushed groggily to his feet, teetered for a moment on hands and feet and then straightened, struggling for balance.
Wentworth picked his way through broken glass and tumbled luggage to Collins' side, went hurriedly about reviving him. Abruptly, Wentworth snapped to his feet. He heard a faint sound as if some one were pounding an incredibly noisy typewriter with vehement fingers. Through the intermittent chattering, a man shrieked. Collins came to with a jerk. "A machine gun," he gasped.
"A hold-up," Wentworth snapped. "And the Master is behind it!"
He scrambled out through a broken window and raced along the embankment, a gun in each hand. The smashed cars were spilled over jumbled rocks, a sprawling, disjointed snake. Moans and screams punctuated the mechanical cackle of the gun. A group of men, carrying striped mail sacks over their shoulders, went down over the rocks with mountain-goat leaps.
Wentworth's guns blazed once, but he knew he was out of range. He charged on. It was impossible to advance in a straight line. He had to spring to right and left where flat surfaces offered secure footing, and that fact undoubtedly
saved the Spider's life. A machine gun stammered from close at hand and powdered granite sprang up in dust directly in Wentworth's path. Only the fact that he had sprung sideways to better footing saved him. He jumped once more, going down on his knees between two chunks of granite. Lead buzzed past within inches of his head. He heard the deep boom of Collins' forty-four, but couldn't see the Southerner.
Cautiously, Wentworth squirmed between rocks down toward the spot where the machine gunner had hidden. He was cursing with impatience, knowing that the robbers were escaping, that it would be certain death to take up the pursuit before this machine gunner was eliminated. His trousers had been torn by that quick leap between the rocks. His scraped knees left a bloody trail. Collins' gun boomed again, and Wentworth jerked quickly into sight. He caught a glint of metal in a clump of bushes at the base of the embankment and sped ten shots in a continuous roll of fire from both guns.
Twigs flew high and the dead branches quivered and shook, then began to thrash violently. A man's hand slid into sight along the ground, gloved fingers clawing at the frozen ground. The hand and arm stiffened, then relaxed.
"Good work," Collins called, twenty feet to his right. "Man, that was good!"
* * *
Wentworth peered about. The robbers had vanished and over beyond a narrow strip of woods, automobile engines raced and dwindled into the distance. Wentworth's lips closed thinly. The bandits had escaped, but at least he had stopped one. He rock-leaped down the heap, hauled the man out of the bushes. At least six of Wentworth's bullets had hit him. Three had smashed through the side of his head.
Collins, pulling up just behind Wentworth, stared down and repeated: "Man, that was good!"
Wentworth scowled thoughtfully at the dead machine gunner. He knew that face. He was "Trigger" Skinner of Mickey McSwag's mob. Even as the Spider had guessed, his wiping out of Devil Hackerson had not hampered the Master in the least. He had had no trouble in finding other men who were willing to do his murdering for him to gain the secret of the chemical that turned vault doors into cake sugar.
THE SPIDER-City of Doom Page 7