Why?
His mind flicked back to Nita, racing across the city with those gangsters on her trail. Even she had been shaken with horror at the mention of Munro's name, and she knew him only by reputation. Wentworth had met him once in battle, and the Spider had barely escaped alive from that trap! Munro was damnably shrewd, utterly ruthless, one of the great minds of the criminal world. He . . . .
A battered coupe whipped around the corner with a purring power in the motor beneath the hood that belied the ancient body. Wentworth stepped from cover and the coupe swung in, the door already open. Wentworth leaped in, and Jackson drove the accelerator to the floor. His hands were white upon the wheel, the muscles ridged out along the broad line of his jaw. More clearly than any words, his tension told how well he recognized the need for haste.
Wentworth was crouched on the floor instantly. He whipped forward the right half of the front seat, and a secret compartment was revealed behind it. No time for the full Spider make-up, but there was a steel mask that he sometimes used in such emergency. It reproduced the Spider's features exactly, but if it should slip, or Wentworth should be captured! With a grim thinning of lips, Wentworth took that risk. Wig, cape, hat . . . twin automatics.
"Nice timing, Jackson," Wentworth said quietly. "Details!"
"Gave you everything," Jackson's voice had a rasp of taut nerves. "I was at headquarters, according to the Major's instructions, keeping an eye on the commissioner. Told him the Major sent me down to check on records of forgers. Stalled along until this call came in. Headquarters was so upside down I called over Kirkpatrick's own phone!"
"Good work," Wentworth nodded. He was on the seat now, and it was no longer Richard Wentworth who rode beside Jackson, but a hunched and sinister figure, whose eyes gleamed coldly beneath the broad black brim of a slouch hat; whose hands clutched the twin butts of deadly automatics. Damnable having to lose these minutes that might make all the difference between life and death, but he had no choice save to return to Eggendorfer's room as the Spider—and he had been forced to destroy his previous disguise with a vial of acid carried for that purpose.
So far, he seemed to be ahead of the police. He had heard no distant wail of sirens . . . . His keen eyes reached ahead, narrowed as he spotted two men lounging against the front wall of the tenement building that he must enter.
"Shoot past!" he snapped at Jackson. "Then slow on the back street. Those are Duncan's men!"
Jackson twisted about his broad, honest face and there was worry in the eyes that held always a hint of idolatry when they rested on Wentworth's face.
"There'll be a lot of those hoods, Major," he growled. "Couldn't you let me . . . ."
"Just stand by, Jackson," Wentworth ordered quietly. "Usual orders. I'll signal if I need help. Eggendorfer's room is on the third floor, southeast corner."
"Stand by, sir," Jackson acknowledged with a growl, and Wentworth knew that no more was necessary. More than once Jackson had walked into what seemed certain death to serve him . . . .
The car slowed to the curb, seemed barely to hesitate, but when it passed the street light at the next corner, the seat beside Jackson was empty . . . and on that ominously dark street, a darker shadow had merged with the shadows that cringed against the wall. The Spider moved into battle!
Chapter Two
Where Death Waits
IN THE dim-lighted room where Eggendorfer lay dead with the mocking crimson seal of the Spider upon his forehead, a gangster stood on guard. In his right fist was a heavy automatic and his eyes roved ceaselessly about the room. Time and time again, he started at some slight creaking in the ancient building. The whine of the cold wind, the tapping fingers of icy snow crystals against the window made him shiver as if with cold. His tongue touched his dry lips and there was fear in the greyness of his cheeks.
He was here because the Spider might return before the police could arrive. Only the threat of death from the boss, the promise of sure support, could have forced him to keep this lone vigil. Suppose the Spider did come!
Mugsy Lugan flinched as a particularly hard gust rattled the loose window. Only the wind . . . . It had to be the wind! Mugsy took a slow step toward the window, shook his head. No, that was against orders. He couldn't even make sure whether it was the Spider. All he could do was stand here and wait . . . for the Spider. His eyes fell toward Eggendorfer's stiffening body and he flinched. Eggendorfer had waited for the Spider!
Mugsy Lugan shifted his automatic to his left hand, dragged the right palm against his trouser leg. Geez, sweating in this weather!
"Damn the Spider to hell!" he muttered.
From the window, a voice spoke softly, a mocking voice, flatly metallic and instinct with menace!
"How very inhospitable of you, Mugsy," the voice said, softly. "The Spider is simply paying you a call!"
Mugsy stiffened, and his mouth gaped with the looseness of the fear that ran like ice through all his body. He shivered, turned about laboriously. The gun dangled limply from his fingers—poised on the windowsill, the night cold and black behind him, crouched the becaped and menacing figure of the Spider! A gun glinted in each fist. His eyes seemed to bore like bullets through Mugsy's cowardly flesh. The gun trembled in Mugsy's hand, fell to the floor with a reverberating thud!
"That was wise, Mugsy," came the sibilant mockery of the Spider's voice. "That was very wise! Now pick up that lighter, Mugsy, and bring it to me. And I think it would be advisable for you to hurry!"
One of the Spider's guns lifted an inch, and Mugsy's trembling became violent. "Yes, sir," he stammered. "Oh, sure, Spider. Right away. I . . . ."
He bent for the lighter, but his hands were shaking so that his fingers could not clasp it. His face twisted about, warped with fear.
"Don't, Spider," he whispered hoarsely. "Don't shoot. I'm trying. I swear to God I'm trying!"
Wentworth swore impatiently, leaped from the sill. Seconds were flying, and he could not estimate how many more were left to him. Already, he thought he could hear the faint whimper of police sirens racing to this spot. He took a stride forward, and with a frightened squawk, Mugsy Lugan dodged aside. His hands hit the wall, and he went down on his knees. Wentworth stooped toward the lighter—and hell burst loose in that room!
As Wentworth bent forward, the three doors that opened into that barren room flung wide with whining speed. Dazzling lights converged on Wentworth from those three separate angles—and the doors were crowded with armed men!
"Start shooting!" Mugsy's voice rose, thin with terror. "For God's sake, start shooting. Kill the Spider!"
There was that moment's pause while Wentworth stood crouched in the middle of the death-trap; while the blaze of lights pinned him, helpless, against the shadows and the guns of the men in those three doors quested for and centered on his body . . . and Mugsy pleaded for his death with a frantic certainty that only the quick and deadly fire of his companions could save him from the vengeance of the Spider!
A hoarse oath sprang to Wentworth's lips as he realized the nature of the snare into which he had stepped. Those two men on guard out front had fooled him, that and the call to the police. He had been so certain that the crooks would depend on the police to do their killing for them . . . and he had walked into this trap.
Wentworth's brain raced madly, seeking a way out. Even the deadly twin automatics of the Spider could not batter a way through this ring of steel. He . . . the Spider straightened, and the thin lipless gash of the mouth parted. His eyes glared straight into those dazzling lights, and . . . the Spider laughed!
It was a mocking, bitter sound, the laughter of the Spider, an eerie sound in the room's quiet that was the quiet before death. It beat upon the eardrums of the men who faced him, guns in hand for the kill, and it stayed their trigger fingers for that brief fraction of a second. This was the man they had dreaded and feared through endless nights of terror, a superman who always dodged somehow out of their deadliest traps, who rose to kill when they th
ought him already dead. They had him helpless under their guns and the Spider must know it . . . . Yet the Spider could laugh! The sound of it rasped harshly on their eardrums with a strangely piercing quality.
It was in that heartbeat's pause that the Spider struck!
Even while he laughed, he was in motion. There was one spot in that room where, for a brief moment, he might be safe . . . and that was the spot where Mugsy crouched and wailed for the death of the Spider! Not that Wentworth believed the crooks would have any compunction about murdering a companion, if by that means they could achieve the Spider's demise! But they might hesitate . . . and Wentworth was living by those split-seconds of hesitation.
The Spider had survived a thousand battles by means of those little unheeded heartbeats of time. This second, and the next, and the next . . . and his laughter had signaled Jackson that he was trapped. He hoped that Jackson had been near enough to hear that piercing, eerie laughter! It might give him the instant he needed to grab the slender length of silk that dangled outside the window, the web by which he had climbed, and could slide to safety again!
As Wentworth took that first long leap, his guns crashed in his fists. They hurled their lances of red flame against the white glare of the flashlights . . . and two of those lights blacked out! Two men screamed out in mortal agony as the quarter-ton impact of .45 caliber lead drove the fragments of metal and batteries into their bodies!
Before Wentworth could fire again, the guns of the enemy opened up. Their crashing discharge pulsed within his brain, seemed to swell the walls to bursting! The hot lead, flying from three angles, crossed and criss-crossed the spot where the Spider had stood . . . but he was no longer there! He was a blur of black movement in a room strongly shadowed by the single torch that still blazed from the door. His cape swirled and whipped out from his shoulders until he seemed twice, three times the size of a normal man. He was everywhere at once, and nowhere at all when the bullets flew. The guns in his fists blasted and blasted again—and every bullet sped true! In those crowded doorways, no man could escape or dodge. They were stationary clay-pigeons for the unerring thunder of the Spider's guns!
Two, three seconds beat past in that death-trap, and the Spider's guns had crashed five times. There was a fury of sound, of gun-thunder and human screams, in which individual voice and shot no longer counted. The light in that room of death was red and yellow, the flicker of gun-powder lightning. Only one pair of eyes saw the small sphere that might have been an over-sized baseball lob in through the open window—and the Spider gasped his thankfulness. Every eye saw the flash that came when that sphere exploded there in the middle of the floor beside Eggendorfer's body . . . and after that they saw nothing at all!
From that burst of flame, darkness spurted across the room, coils of blackness that swallowed even the flashes of the guns; that swirled into the faces of the gunmen and clogged their vision. Wentworth flung himself prone on the floor, and his breath whined in his throat from his furious movements. His lips moved soundlessly, but what he said was, "Bless Jackson!"
His trusty comrade-at-arms had heard his signal laughter, and had hurled a smoke bomb through the window!
In the darkness, the killers were mad with fear. Their guns hammered in a frenzy. Plaster dust mingled with the chemical smoke. Wentworth could hear the thudding beat of bullets jarring across the floor, searching out the walls. Mugsy Lugan had long ago ceased to scream.
Wentworth moved cautiously. His guns were fully loaded again, and even in the welter of battle—the intense darkness which could swallow up even the bitter stab of flame from the guns—he had not lost his uncanny sense of direction. He knew that, beside him on the floor within the reach of his hand, was the corpse of Eggendorfer. Wentworth's lips moved in a faint, mocking smile behind the steel mask of the Spider . . . and he began to strip off the cape and wig, the black slouch hat, the steel mask, itself.
The shooting died away a little; men's voices shouted in fear and questioning. And there was little time. The smoke of the bomb would dissipate presently. Through that lull in the bedlam struck the keening of a police siren, shrieking nearer, nearer . . . .
"Close in!" A man's voice rasped. "Keep bullets going through that window, and close in! We'll rake this room from wall to wall. If that louse is still here . . .
And then . . . the Spider laughed.
"Come, fools!" he shouted. "Come and take me!"
From the darkness, guns roared, and the screams of lead-slashed men lifted terribly. The smoke was thinning, and the flames of the Spider's automatics gave them a target. "There!" shouted the leader. "There against the wall!"
Brilliant flashlights bored once more into the thinning mist of smoke, and the guns bellowed and roared; the walls shook, and the taste of burned powder was in the air, stranglingly thick. There were no more shots from that cape-draped figure against the wall. It shook and quivered to the impact of deadly lead, but still that sinister, changeless face peered out from beneath the hat brim; still it did not flee from their attack!
"He's dead!" the leader said hoarsely. "He's got to be dead! I put almost a whole drum of bullets through him. He . . . . Come on!"
Through the darkness they charged. Their guns kicked against their stiffened wrists, and they ignored the dying wail of sirens nearby. To hell with that, if they could kill the Spider! The leader leaped close and slammed the barrel of his sub-machine gun against the side of that lolling head. The black slouch hat tilted up and fell to the floor with a soft little plop, then . . . then the face of the Spider came loose and fell to the floor. It rang like steel, and they knew it was a mask. But they were not staring at it, they were gazing into the face of the dead man against the wall. A Spider seal gleamed eerily on the forehead.
"Eggendorfer!" the leader shouted. "Damn him to hell, he put his clothes on Eggendorfer and scrammed!"
Laughter came mockingly from behind them, laughter and a swift bail of lead! Men reeled and pitched to the floor. The leader slumped to his knees and his hands clawed at the figure of Eggendorfer, hung by his collar to a light bracket on the wall. They fell together to the floor. Men lifted futile, emptied guns toward the window, but they snapped only at emptiness, at a black rectangle through which swirled a few icy particles of wind-spun snow.
"Beware," came the Spider's voice softly. "Beware, you who would trap the Spider! Carry that warning to Munro!"
Fear nailed those who remained alive to the floor, and outside the window, Wentworth slid swiftly down the silken rope by which he had climbed, the line that was no thicker than a pencil but which had phenomenal strength, and which the police and criminals alike knew as the Spider's web!
Wentworth hit the pavement, wrapped the silken web into a swift tight ball. Police were hammering into the building now. Those criminals who had survived would not escape, but he had had to cut it terribly fine. Jackson already had gone at his orders. If Ram Singh was late by so much as a minute . . . .
The Daimler careened around the corner, and Wentworth leaped to the street, flung to the running-board as the heavy limousine slowed for an instant.
"Go ahead, Ram Singh!" Nita cried, and slammed the door behind Wentworth. "They're right behind us. Your hat, your coat . . . . Oh, thank heavens, Dick. I heard guns. I never heard so many guns . . . ."
Wentworth dropped back against the cushions and settled his silk hat more smoothly upon his head. His brows were tilted and there was a slight, grim smile on his lips. He saw in the rear-vision mirror that the gangster car had just whirled the corner behind him.
His hand touched Nita's briefly, where they rested on his arm. "I believe I, too, heard . . . some guns," he murmured. "I fancy there are those who wish . . . they had not heard them! They won't again!"
Nita's hands clung to his right arm and, left-handed, Wentworth offered a cigarette, snapped flame to the slender platinum lighter that had so nearly brought about his death. By that minute yellow flame, Nita smiled into his eyes.
"Dic
k!" she smiled. "Showing off at your age! As if I didn't know you had recovered that lighter!"
Wentworth's laughter was tender. This was when Nita showed her true courage. He knew that she had been torn by fears for his safety, but aside from that first involuntary outcry of thanksgiving, she would never admit it. She was easing his own tension now, for none knew better than she that this was only the beginning of the battle—if Munro were involved!
"Tell me, Dick," Nita said quietly. "You mentioned . . . Munro. I remember . . . awful things about him." Her shoulders, warm beneath her fur coat, shivered a little.
"No doubt," Wentworth murmured, and his forehead creased. "Munro, the Man of a Thousand Faces! I'd hoped he'd never return to this country! He is probably the greatest criminal organizer it's ever been my misfortune to encounter . . . and aside from that, a true artist at disguise, hence his name: Munro . . . . The name doesn't mean a thing. He not only can impersonate other people, but he creates a separate personality for each crime. The police hunt him, and find only the shell of the disguise! Never a clue to his real identity. It's his vanity that causes him to use that one name again, after these years. Munro . . . . The fact that he uses it is a taunt and a challenge to me!"
"And this time," Nita said slowly, "Munro's weapon is . . . arson?"
Wentworth nodded and the last traces of laughter and mockery were gone from his lips, from his eyes. "The man who paid, Eggendorfer, said his boss was Munro. And men who face the Spider in their last hour do not lie!"
"No," Nita said quietly. "I don't think he would lie, but where is the profit, Dick? It's awful to think in terms of profit when human lives are at stake. But that man does! A rattle-trap tenement, and five of those poor children . . . ."
THE SPIDER-City of Doom Page 18