THE SPIDER-City of Doom

by Norvell W. Page

  While this incredible realization was flashing through her mind, she heard laughter.

  It was a hard and terrible sound, instinct with menace, flat with mockery, but Nita heard it with a joy that seemed to swell her heart to bursting. A sob lifted to her lips, for that laughter . . . it was the laughter of the Spider!

  Nita twisted her head then and saw what was happening in the room. Not a full second had passed. Those nine men had whipped about toward the door aft, where the explosion had sounded. Their guns were lifting that way. Munro had sprung from his chair, with his automatic ready in his fist. But that open doorway framed only blackness . . . and the laughter of the Spider came . . . . It came from the executioner!

  Even as Nita realized that fact, the executioner whipped off his black hood and the bold, chiseled lines of the Spider's face were exposed. There was an automatic in each fist, and the laughter poured from his lips.

  "This is the end, Munro!" he shouted.

  Munro came to his feet, but in that same instant, death reached out its hot hand for the Spider!

  Wentworth saw that Munro thrust down hard with his right foot, and guessed that he stood over some prepared trap. He tried to fling himself strenuously aside, and even the lightning-fast reflexes of the Spider were not swift enough to escape the hell that blossomed beneath him!

  Flames fanned up beneath his feet, hot with the breath of the explosion that fathered it. In the same instant, he felt something brush past his face, strike against his arms. From overhead had dropped a hangman's noose!

  But this time, Wentworth already was in motion, and triumphant laughter burst mockingly from his lips! His left hand snaked upward and clamped home about that rope, even as it snapped taut! By the sheer muscular power of that one-handed grip, Wentworth wrenched himself upward, and the rope missed his throat—but bound his gun hand to his side! And Munro was leaping toward him, the mad lust to kill glistening in his distorted eyes!

  In the bight of the rope, his gun hand still bound at his side, Wentworth flung himself into action! Deliberately, he swayed back over that blossoming hell of flame that had burst beneath him. The hot draft swept up witheringly into his face, whipped his cape bravely. But Wentworth had achieved what he wanted. He got his feet against the bulkhead, and drove himself violently toward Munro!

  An inarticulate cry burst from Munro's lips, his gun jerked up—but the Spider was too swift for him! The Spider's feet lashed out and caught Munro in chest and jaw, drove him violently away from where Nita swayed against that fateful guillotine. As Munro fell, Wentworth wrenched free his gun-arm, and began to shoot!

  His first bullet raked upward above his head—and cut the rope! Even before it fell free from about him; even before his feet struck the floor, the Spider's automatics were speaking with the crisp deliberation of gun-beats on parade. At each bark of sound, a man crumpled. The man beside Munro's throne jumped backward like a man who has stepped upon a snake, but it was not a voluntary action. Lead had plucked into his belly, and he folded as he was hammered backward through the air. He struck the bulkhead behind him and, afterward, he bent slowly forward until his knees plumped to the floor. He stayed that way, with his forehead grinding into the deck.

  A single lithe spring put Wentworth astride Munro's crumpled body.

  "Drop your guns!" the Spider ordered.

  One man defied that order. One man tried to wrench his gun about to bear upon the Spider as he crouched there. The Spider's eyes did not shift, did not appear to see him, but the gun in his left hand jerked against his wrist, and a shell clattered to the floor. The crash was single, rolling and loud. The man who tried to throw his gun on the Spider wrenched violently backward, lifted on his toes. His head struck a pane of porthole glass and shattered it, and afterward he sat down. Through perhaps twenty seconds, he sat there braced against the bulkhead, though he was already quite dead with a bullet through his head. Then he pitched sideways and moved no more. With his fall, the flare-up of rebellion died. The guns thudded to the floor, and Jackson came in steadily through the doorway, guns in his fists.

  "Tie them up," Wentworth ordered calmly. He stirred Munro with his foot, and the man's body flopped limply.

  "Can you come here, Nita?"

  Nita's voice came hesitantly. "I think so . . . . Of course!" And then he heard her scream!

  * * *

  Wentworth whipped about. His gun swung up, but the flitting figure that darted across the room moved too swiftly . . . and Nita was just beyond! Wentworth leaped to the attack, but he was a split-second too late! Munro had been shamming those last few seconds, and now he was crouched behind Nita. He had her arms vised between his hands . . . and she was pressed against the upright plank of the guillotine!

  "Don't move, you fool," Munro's voice struck strongly through the room, "or I'll throw her against this plank! The knife trigger will be sprung and Nita will be without a head!"

  Nita stood rigidly in the grasp of the man, and Wentworth swore beneath his breath. He had been criminally careless, but he had struck hard enough to crack the man's skull! Of course! Munro, the artist in disguise, had altered the shape of his skull also . . . with padding! That padding had saved him from the Spider's lethal blow!

  "Drop your guns!" Munro snapped. "Spider, if you move again, the girl dies!" he warned. "You forget there is a mirror in the ceiling!"

  Wentworth's eyes lifted and the bitterness of despair raked through him. In the mirror that formed the lower surface of a skylight, Munro's evil distorted face grinned back at him. There was triumph there, and an evil gloating.

  Wentworth's face twisted with anger. "You are the fool, Munro!" he rasped. "Two things betrayed you, and both of them were caused by your vanity. You do not credit other people with having brains!"

  "Certainly not!" Munro snarled. "For the last time, drop that gun!"

  Wentworth's lips were cold against his teeth. There was a chance, just one chance, and it would risk Nita's life; it would entail the finest shooting of a lifetime, and he could not take aim. It must be a snap-shot. There was a flat metal plate bracing the foot of the guillotine. If he could bounce a bullet off of that at precisely the right angle, it should knock Munro's legs out from under him!

  "I said you underestimated your enemies, Munro!" Wentworth rushed on. "In your office, you gave a pass-word that was sheer folly. You were laughing to yourself when you did it, weren't you, Munro. You said, 'From my ashes, I arise again!' When I figured out that the whole meeting you had called was a trap, I knew that pass-word could not have been prearranged, but sprung to your mind spontaneously. Therefore, it was connected with something that was very prominent in your mind at the time."

  "Are you almost through, Spider?" Munro asked coldly.

  "Almost," Wentworth acknowledged, "and then you allowed Nita to broadcast to me, and she broke her words into a rhythm that duplicated Morse code—she signaled SOS! From that moment, I knew she was at sea somewhere, since that is a sea-call of distress. And then I remembered your pass-word . . . . And I knew that you had given a charade for the name of your yacht!

  "'From my ashes, I arise again' obviously meant that legendary bird, the Phoenix, and it fitted in with your macabre sense of humor that, using arson as a means of crime, you should call your yacht after the fire bird, the Phoenix. That was a help, but it was that one bullet I fired which trapped you, Munro—the bullet that I fired, deliberately, through your gas tank!"

  "It was a leak that would force you down ultimately," Wentworth said quietly. "You kept your motor turning over, so there could not have been too much gas in your tanks. Consequently, you would have to call to your yacht, the Phoenix, for assistance. When you called, I was aloft in my own seaplane. I heard a call for the Phoenix, and I ran down the bearing with my radio. After that, it was simple, just as it is going to be simple to kill you, Munro, for you see Nita has had special training. She has not flinched under your hands, nor moved. In just a moment, Munro . . . ."

  Nita's
eyes flared wide, and Wentworth knew that she had caught his instruction . . . and Wentworth squeezed the trigger of the gun. It jerked against his wrist, and Wentworth hurled himself forward in the same instant. He saw the white splash as the lead glanced from the metal plate at which he had aimed. And then . . . and then, Nita wrenched her body sideways. It was a jiu-jitsu throw over the hip, the use of the special training Wentworth had given her long ago; which he had prompted her to use with his few swift words!

  Wentworth's gun was ready as Nita wrenched Munro sideways, but he did not fire again. It was not necessary! The ricocheting had batted Munro's legs out from beneath him, and Nita's throw did the rest. She staggered aside, but Munro went back first against the plank of the guillotine! It swung smoothly downward in its slot, downward beneath the knife!

  Munro screamed. He writhed, and tried to throw himself sideways from that plank, but there was no time. At the last moment, as the plank slammed down on the trigger, he flung up his arms in a frantic effort to ward off the swoop of death and that, also, was too late! The knife swooped down, the knife with its extra angle and its extra weight to make up for the shortness of the drop. A hand thudded to the floor. Munro twisted his head aside . . . and the knife slapped home into its groove, its swift drop finished. There was a thud from beyond the guillotine, and Wentworth gathered Nita protectively into his arms.

  Jackson spoke from the doorway, "Prisoners all accounted for, sir! The plane is moored to the stern, and the folding rubber boat you used is aboard. Pardon me, sir, but you'll have to hurry!"

  Wentworth set Nita from him. "The deck, dear," he murmured. He bent over the guillotine, and on the blade he affixed the glistening scarlet seal of the Spider. And he looked beyond the guillotine and his face twitched a little as he turned away. Because Munro had not been strapped to the plank, the knife had not struck in quite the right position. No one would ever know now what Munro's real face looked like . . . .

  Minutes later, the seaplane whirled into the wind and took off under the guidance of Jackson's expert hands. Rapidly, Wentworth explained about Kirkpatrick's action, and how he had escaped from the cell in Kirkpatrick's home.

  "Kirkpatrick has been violently busy ever since that time!" he said somberly. "There is just a chance that I can get back before he does. If I fail . . . I'm afraid I will have to become a fugitive!"

  Nita's hand closed tightly on his. "What do you want me to do, Dick?"

  Wentworth told her quickly, and the plane roared toward Manhattan. And presently, the ship swooped low with an idling motor and Wentworth climbed out on a wing, and pulled the rip-cord of his parachute and let the pressure of the wind pull him off into space. He could steer the parachute by spilling air from one side or another, and the blustering wind of the earlier night had stilled.

  * * *

  Nita found Kirkpatrick leaning wearily upon his desk at headquarters, and she thrust by the door guards haughtily, sailed into Kirkpatrick's inner office.

  Kirkpatrick's head snapped up. He staggered to his feet, and his smile was joyous. "Nita! Thank God! How did you get free from that devil! Thanks to the Spider, he didn't do much damage at the Bonheur. No lives lost, except that of the manager, and a couple of criminals that the Spider evidently killed."

  Nita lifted a shoulder. "The Spider set me free," she said impatiently. "I was being held prisoner on a yacht and the Spider flew out there and killed Munro and some other men, tied up the rest and flew me back to New York . . . And I want to know when you're going to turn Dick loose from that ridiculous cell of yours!"

  "If Dick is still in that cell," he said, "and Cassidy has been faithful to his trust . . ."

  Nita said, acidly, "I thought this was an escape-proof cell!"

  Kirkpatrick shook his head and said no more. He did not expect to find Wentworth in the cell. That, he knew, was the real reason why he had forgotten about Cassidy and his charge. For he had seen the Spider in action, and he had the Spider to thank that a hundred or more lives had not been snuffed out in the Bonheur fire. But, even in his life-saving, the Spider had killed two men!

  Kirkpatrick found himself feverishly impatient, so that he darted ahead of Nita into the apartment house before he thought, and his apology was perfunctory.

  From the locked cell door, Wentworth called out angrily, "Kirkpatrick, if you don't let me out of this damned cell, I'm going to sue you so fiercely you'll be kicked out of office. Damn you, can't you understand, Nita is in the hands of Munro, and . . ."

  Nita came into the room then and Wentworth broke off with a glad cry and Nita ran to his arms. He clasped her through the steel bars, and Kirkpatrick heard her telling him rapidly the same things she had told him previously. His eyes were burning into Cassidy's, but the policeman met them steadily.

  "Cassidy," he said sharply, "have you been out from behind this glass shield!"

  Cassidy sighed, "Faith, Commissioner I haven't moved, but it's hard on my feet. You didn't give me a chair!"

  Kirkpatrick frowned. "In other words, your eyes have never been off Wentworth, and he has not left that cell!"

  Cassidy frowned, too. "Never a wink have I taken, Commissioner," he said, "and Wentworth has been standing right there where he is now the whole time!"

  Kirkpatrick swung about toward Wentworth, took the keys from Cassidy. There was something that troubled him, and he could not place it. Cassidy had spoken with a straight-forward conviction, and plain sincerity. And yet . . . Damn it, he had seen the Spider! He unlocked the door of the cell.

  "It seems, Dick," he said slowly, "that I owe you more apologies than I can ever muster up the words to speak. Tonight, I have seen the Spider with my own eyes, and I know that man in action. It could not have been someone else in disguise. And I had provided you with an unbreakable alibi." He smiled suddenly, and it lighted all his weary face. "Dick, from the bottom of my heart, I am glad! Now, there can be an end of fencing and pretense between us! Will you shake hands?"

  Wentworth's heart gave him a twinge. He hated thus to deceive his friend, but his duty and his service to humanity demanded it. He clasped Kirkpatrick's hand warmly . . . and from the other room, the radio was suddenly loud.

  "Attention, Kirkpatrick!" it called sharply. "Kirkpatrick, are you listening. This is the Spider speaking!"

  Kirkpatrick smothered an oath and leaped to the doorway. Jackson was standing by the radio. He stammered, "I . . . I just wanted to see what the news was saying about the Spider," he said.

  Kirkpatrick gestured him to silence.

  "Kirkpatrick," came the flat and mocking voice of the Spider, "I have done your work for you once more. You'll find Munro dead, and his men, some dead, and some prisoners, on the yacht Phoenix anchored off the Coney Island bell buoy about a mile. Also, you will find a sonograph record of his declaration that Nita van Sloan was to die, and why. If you will check it with those I understand Wentworth had you make of certain suspects, you should have no difficulty in making sure that it was Munro speaking!

  "And you can do me a favor, Kirkpatrick. Munro seems to make the same mistake that so many of you confounded imbeciles make. He confuses me with Wentworth. Now admittedly, Wentworth is a superior mentality, but he cannot compare with me! I always . . . . beat him to the kill!

  "Do this little thing for me, Kirkpatrick, and give this sop to my vanity! Wentworth . . . phooey!"

  Wentworth said violently, "Confound his impudence! He can boast! And here I was, sealed up in a cell . . . ."

  Nita said, gently, "But he saved my life, Dick!"

  Wentworth grumbled into silence, shrugged. What he muttered sounded suspiciously like, "The conceited ass!"

  Kirkpatrick was smiling, and there seemed to be years taken from his shoulders. "I will make that clear for the Spider," he laughed, "and for you, Dick! To think of all these years, when I have been sure you were one and the same man!"

  Ram Singh was waiting in the Daimler below, and the snow was sifting down softly in large, feathery flakes. He st
ood rigidly beside the doorway.

  "It came over the air perfectly, Ram Singh," Wentworth said quietly, "have you already cleared the sound-track of the speech?"

  Ram Singh salaamed, "Han, sahib!" he growled, "but this Spider said some defaming things, master. When I get my hands upon his throat . . . Ha!" Ram Singh threw back his head and roared out his laughter on the cold night air.

  Jackson shouldered forward, "Pipe down, you heathen," he rasped, in top sergeant style. "You want to give the show away?"

  Ram Singh cut his laughter short and scowled down at Jackson. "I will have thy ears yet, for my necklace, fool!"

  Jackson snorted, "Only a weak sister like you would wear a necklace, and . . . ."

  Wentworth laughed, knowing that this was the reaction from the tension of long battle. Nita's hand was light on his arm, and the night seemed suddenly kind. The drifting snow-flakes were like a benison.

  "Jackson," he said curtly. "You disobeyed orders!"

  Jackson stiffened, and his face went suddenly rigid and pale. He faced Wentworth, standing at attention.

  "Begging your pardon, Major," he said stiffly. "Regulations say, 'When a superior officer is mentally or physically disqualified, it shall be the duty of the next ranking officer to take command, and to carry on to the best of his ability, disregarding any previous instructions if they shall interfere with what his knowledge dictates . . . !'"

  Wentworth said, dryly, "That's a bit free in quotation, Jackson, but close enough. Jackson, you're confined to quarters for thirty days . . . and there will be bonus of a thousand dollars for you when you come out!"

  Jackson saluted, and the laughter sparkled in his eyes. "Thank you, Major!" he said. His hand slapped against his thigh.

  Ram Singh's teeth flashed whitely behind his beard. "Ah, hoo!" he chuckled. "And I shall be his jailer! Thou small flea . . . ."