THE SPIDER-City of Doom

by Norvell W. Page

  "Dead!" whispered Markham. "Dead! But who are you?"

  He took a slow step forward, then he stopped and recoiled. He had glimpsed the twisted figure in the shadows, the figure draped in a long black cape.

  "The Spider!" he whispered. "The . . . Spider!"

  The girl began to dance up and down. She held a hand over her mouth to keep back the shouts of joy. A slow smile crept over her mother's face. The woman got up and put her sewing down in the chair.

  "Come in, Mr. Spider," she said timidly. "I . . . won't you let me fix you a cup of tea?"

  Behind the drape, Wentworth's lips curved in a slow smile and his eyes were gentle. It was in an entirely different voice he spoke then.

  "I'd like to, mother," he said softly, "but I have other calls to make . . . . Good night!"

  The three in the room heard no sound of footsteps, but in a moment the doorbell tinkled faintly again. A twisted shadow of a man glided across the window and was gone.

  In the room behind the store, Markham clutched the money fiercely in his fists. There were tears on the woman's cheeks and Doris no longer held her hands over her mouth. She danced up and down.

  Markham said stiffly, "I knew there had to be a way . . . in America. God bless . . . the Spider!"

  The door bell rang again. It was not a soft tinkle. It was a jangle of vehement entrance. Markham thrust the money hurriedly into his pocket. There was a man in the door whom he had never seen. Doris stopped her dancing, but the joy on their faces was a complete revelation. The man laughed, raspingly. He was a big man, with a hat dragged down very low over his brows. His lips had a brutal solidity.

  "Celebrating, hunh?" he said softly. "Celebrating because you think somebody got the best of Big Gannuck! Nobody does, for long! You talked!"

  Markham gasped, "No! As God is my witness! We didn't talk! Nobody talked!"

  Gannuck laughed again, raspingly. He turned on his heel and went out. The door bell jangled again. He jerked his thumb over his shoulder as he went toward a car.

  "He's been here, too," he said to the driver.

  There was a truck parked at the curb.

  It was not a large truck, but its sides were solid. As he spoke, a panel slid open in the side. Gannuck leaped to the front seat and slammed the door. Only then did the man who had opened the panel take action. He flung something at the shop front. The glass jangled to the street. There was a pause while a man might count three.

  The front of the store blew out! Red and yellow flames streaked out their hungry tongues into the darkness. A woman screamed high above. The front of the building began to settle. From the side of the truck the ugly snout of a machine gun jutted. It began to jitter. A blue mist of flame guttered at the black mouth. Bullets lashed the debris as the dust and smoke roiled. Once, twice, three times, it swept the interior of the shop. Then the truck swept forward.

  As it raced forward, the front of the tenement building in which the shop was located subsided into the street. The roof tipped slowly forward, hung like a ragged curtain. There were people in the wreckage. They tumbled over and over like children in a snow-slide. They screamed. They tumbled into the basement and the debris kept falling. It covered them over gradually. The screams stopped.

  Up the street, two hundred yards, there was the blast of another bomb!

  One of the fast, solid-sided trucks slewed into the street from a side alley, whipped around broadside and stopped. An instant later, a police siren yelped. It came around the corner fast. Flame leaped from the side of the truck. The ugly chatter of a machine gun filled the street. The police car whirled like a wounded man. It leaped the curb and rammed into a building. Within it, no one moved.

  The truck rolled on, slowly, carefully, as if it picked its way . . . as if it were a beast of prey, searching for a victim. In sight, within a few blocks of the street, were three such trucks.

  A half dozen blocks to the north, the Spider heard that first blast of the bomb. He twisted about behind the wheel of his car and saw the slaughter of the police, the second bombing. For an instant, even the Spider's swiftly co-ordinating mind was stunned. He stared at the wreckage, at those prowling trucks. Horror had its cold way with him.

  Markham, his wife and daughter . . . They were in that first shop. But he had wiped out Gannuck's mob! Men had died in the street fight, and others in the Mekookum Club. Gannuck himself had been within the cordon of the aroused police no more than an hour ago!

  While Wentworth groped for an explanation, one of the trucks suddenly put on a burst of speed and headed straight for his car!

  The Spider laughed . . . and the sound of it was coldly sinister.

  He reached to the dashboard and took up a microphone, tripped a switch. "Avenue A," he said into the mike. "Armored car attack. Full police alarms. Full war."

  Then he slid a hand into a compartment and drew out a grenade!

  Under the touch of his foot on the throttle, the coupe leaped forward like a living thing! The powerful motor beneath the dilapidated hood hurled the car like a plane from a catapult. Wentworth was thrust back against the cushions. He took the corner on screaming tires. By the time the truck reached the turn, he was already at the next corner.

  But the Spider was not running away. So great was his speed, yet so sensitively controlled that, within seconds, he had made the circuit of the block and was rapidly overtaking the armored truck! Over the throttled roar of his engine, he could hear the multiple whine of police pursuit. Radio cars were racing into the district from all sides . . . but Wentworth winced at memory of what had happened to that first car!

  He reached for the microphone again, twisted a dial until he spoke over the police wavelength. "The Spider calling," he said rapidly. "Warning to all police cars. The killers are in bullet-proof trucks. They attack with machine guns without warning. Proceed cautiously!"

  Then all his attention turned, white-hot, on the truck ahead. The truck had spotted him. It began to swing broadside in the street! Wentworth stamped on the accelerator and once more the incredible power of the car hurled it forward. Before the truck could complete its turn, Wentworth was beside it. When the slide port in the truck's side opened, he threw the hand grenade!

  Men screamed horribly in that enclosed body. There was the dull thuds of fists beating on steel . . . then the explosion let go. It was strangely muffled. Small streaks of flame shot from ports. The whole truck lifted a few inches from its wheels and slewed sideways. Then it rolled gently forward and nuzzled into a light post. The post crumpled, crashed to the street.

  Wentworth left the coupe and raced toward the doors of the truck. He wrenched at one, and it resisted his grasp. The men in the front seat had been merely stunned for the moment. The heavy automatic in Wentworth's fist spoke, and the lock shattered. He wrenched again and the door came open.

  In an instant, Wentworth had hurled the unconscious men aside. He reached down to strike each one across the base of the skull. Their bodies jerked once, and were still. They would be out for an hour. Wentworth wrenched at the wheel and swung the truck back toward the street where wholesale murder was being enacted. His jaw was cold and grim. Bitter fires burned in his eyes.

  Ahead of him, he could hear the multiple chatter of machine guns. A bomb let go with a blast that made the air shudder. He heard the heavier explosion of a police riot gun, and the scream of a man. Then he rounded the corner.

  There were four police cars in sight. A police emergency wagon had jammed across the street and men were behind it. They had donned the armor the truck carried. Sub-machine guns were blasting . . . but the killers—the killers were rolling steadily down the street! There were eight of the trucks in sight now. Two abreast, they rolled up the street. Bullets spewed from a dozen machine guns. A store was bombed. Even as Wentworth watched, he saw a long, thick spurt of flame lash out from the foremost truck . . . and heard the scream of a cannon shell!

  The shell burst against the emergency wagon. There was a high flash of flame,
a roiling tower of smoke. When it cleared, the emergency wagon was a mass of wreckage and mangled men screamed in the ruins!

  Wentworth whipped the armored truck backward. This machine carried no cannon. It could not stand against the assault of a shell. There was a groan in Wentworth's throat that came from his soul. In God's Name, what hell had been loosed upon the city? He had started out to combat a minor racket. He thought he had destroyed its organization and its headquarters in two hours of swift work . . . and this was the answer!

  These criminals were organized like an invading army!

  Wentworth laid the truck close against a building wall and waited. All about him the street was crowded with men and women who ran in shrieking terror. Buildings spewed out their inmates by dozens, by scores. But they ran away from the scene of carnage. Wentworth thought they would be safe.

  That was before the first of the trucks trundled past the intersection. As soon as it reached the corner, the machine guns opened up. Men and women fell in screaming windrows of death!

  With a harsh curse, Wentworth pumped gas into the motor of his captured truck. He laid his automatics on the seat beside him and braced himself against the wheel. He had no weapons that would penetrate those steel bodies, no weapon save one!

  With desperation, Wentworth drove straight for the side of the truck that carried a cannon!

  The driver of the truck saw him coming and tried to swerve aside. That was perfect! Laughter was on the Spider's thin lips. He drove for the cab of the swerving truck. A slide opened in its side, but the machine gun bullets bounced futilely off the armor.

  The truck seemed to leap forward as if it felt the surge of Wentworth's hatred. There was a rending crash, a slamming jar of heavy metal. The front wheels mounted the side of the truck, towered toward the heavens. For that single instant they poised . . . . Then the rammed truck pitched over on its side.

  * * *

  Wentworth's truck settled astride the fallen juggernaut. Other trucks were slamming toward him. Bullets beat a constant tattoo against the cabin. The bullet-proof glass was shattering. Wentworth reached across to the far side of the truck, and slid toward the ground. There was one weapon which these fiends in armor could not oppose, one barrier they could not pass!

  Wentworth crouched low and his automatics spat twice in his hands. From the gas tanks of the overturned and wrecked trucks fluid leaped. The stench of it was strong in the air. Wentworth's laughter rasped in his throat, the fighting laughter of the Spider!

  He flung a match into the gasoline!

  Ahead of him, the street had been swept clear of the police. Behind him was the incessant chatter of machine guns . . . but the wrecked trucks formed a barricade. Behind that shelter, Wentworth fled. His black cape streamed out behind him with the speed of his running. Yellow flames towered upward above the armored cars. Little leaping tongues of fire ran across the street. The buildings hooded the glow, beat it back upon itself. The illumination grew!

  Wentworth flung through the doorway of a house, whirled with his guns ready.

  He was just in time. As he whirled, the doors of the overturned truck were flung open and men spilled to the street. They jumped up and began to run. The illumination was excellent. The Spider's lips were cold and hard against his teeth. He lifted his automatic and let it drop into line.

  The man was running when the bullet struck his spine. He doubled backward in mid-air. His body sailed like a loose-legged doll through the air. It fell and did not rise. Wentworth's second bullet caught a man in the doorway of the truck and the quarter-ton impact of .45 calibre lead drove him back upon his fellows.

  They lost precious seconds throwing him out and Wentworth nailed a second fugitive. His bullet drove the man against a lamp-post and the killer grasped it with both arms, swung around it. His legs went limp and he groveled on the pavement.

  And the flames reached the gas tanks!

  Fire vomited toward the heavens. The trucks leaped upward and fell to earth in twisted masses. The fire settled, died for an instant, then leaped higher than ever. It danced weirdly over the wreckage of the truck. Wentworth stood for a moment with his guns ready . . . and there was no target.

  Behind the flames, the other trucks were blocked. The air was alive with the yelp and scream of sirens. But Wentworth's face was pale. They could do nothing against those trucks. He had destroyed their cannon, but they carried other terrible weapons. Swiftly, Wentworth whirled and raced through the dark hallway. Moments later, he emerged in the next street. His reinforcements should be here by now.

  He flung his eerie signal whistle into the night, and two cars spurted from a dark side street. One was his heavy limousine, and behind its wheel was Ram Singh and in the rear, Nita van Sloan was hunched forward with a sub-machine gun in her lap. The other was a coupe and the man who drove it wore a black mask over his face.

  Wentworth ran toward them, sprang into the limousine. "Get to the fire station," he yelled at the black-masked man. "Tell them to rush chemical equipment only! Ram Singh!"—he whirled to his turbaned driver—"Get me to police headquarters. Gas is the only thing that will work against these criminals. Gas and flame!"

  He ripped at his disguise. "Nita," he said fiercely, "you should not have come. This is Armageddon. I have never seen such an attack by criminals. Modern warfare methods applied to rackets! And such a petty little racket. It is like a dress rehearsal for hell!"

  Nita's face was pale. She shook her head. "I knew from your message that the danger was terrible. I wanted to be at your side."

  Her hands, gripping the sub-machine gun, were fully competent. Her smile was faint upon her lips, but there was worship in her eyes as she gazed upon Richard Wentworth. He had stripped off the disguise now. His guns were in his fists.

  Nita gasped, "Look, Dick!" she cried. "There they are!"

  Nita pointed ahead and Wentworth's head whipped that way. The trucks were streaming across the street where two gasoline filling stations threw a deluge of light. They were in full retreat, but as they went, they were destroying. A police car, rocketing toward them, was smashed with bullets and crashed wildly against a building. A bomb wobbled into a doorway and blew out the front of a tenement.

  Suddenly, Nita screamed. Out of the street, ahead of the trucks, rolled a gasoline truck!

  Even as she cried out, the trucks raced past. From the last one, two bombs were tossed. They struck the street and wobbled eccentrically over the pavement toward the gasoline truck, small, bobbling, black objects in the street. They looked like lopsided baseballs. They were horror!

  "Quick, Ram Singh!" Wentworth cried. "Turn around. Get away!"

  Ram Singh wrenched at the wheel, and Wentworth saw that it would not be in time. He reached across and seized the wheel, sent the limousine slamming, head-on, toward a broad doorway. A uniformed doorman shouted, waved his hands, and leaped aside.

  The nose of the car struck the glass door, flanked by ornate panels. It drove through. The top caught, crumpled. Wentworth had an arm around Nita. He flung her down upon the seat, protected her with his body . . . .

  Suddenly, the air was sucked from his lungs. His head expanded, all his body was expanding. Then his ears were driven inward. He was aware of being lifted, of floating, of falling. The air was crushing him, constricting every inch of his body. He tried to cry out, and there was no sound. No sound in all the world. There was only darkness. It swarmed in upon his brain and curled there. It exploded . . . .

  Chapter Five

  Disaster

  There was a weight of horror upon Wentworth's consciousness as he fought slowly back from the dark depths into which he had been plunged. He struggled upward through nightmare memories of wanton slaughter, wholesale destruction . . . . Good God! The gasoline truck!

  With that recollection, and the knowledge that it was its explosion which had blasted out his senses, Wentworth burst the last bonds of darkness . . . and once more became conscious of his surroundings. About him was a bedl
am of terror. The scorching odors of superheated masonry and metal seared his nostrils. Wentworth realized drunkenly that he lay in the wreckage of his car.

  "Nita!" he said hoarsely. He groped out blindly.

  All about him lurid light danced in waves of brilliance and shadow over the lobby of the apartment house into which he had charged his limousine in a desperate effort to escape. The fire-dance showed a white flood of faces. It glistened on terror-stretched eyes as people poured toward the wreck of the car, and over it, fighting their way from the apartment building toward the presumptive safety of the streets. But there was no sound at all. None that Wentworth could hear.

  He shook his head violently, called once more for Nita. Suddenly, he could hear . . . and wished that he could not! The night was horrid with screams, agony and fear and desperation, in a blended cacophony out of hell. There was the crackle and roar of the flames; the omnipresent wail and shriek of sirens; the shouts of men.

  "Nita!" Wentworth cried again.

  Frantically, he peered about him. Nita was not in the car!

  Desperately, Wentworth fought his way out of a shattered window of the car. Against a column, he saw the limp body of Ram Singh. A leg was doubled grotesquely, where there was no joint. Wentworth reached him in a plunge through the streaming fugitive crowd. The plucky Sikh was unconscious.

  Wentworth swung the heavy, inert body into his arms and let the pressure of the escaping people push him to the street. His eyes swept about. Nowhere in the wreckage was any sign of Nita! But where, in the name of God, had she disappeared?

  For an instant, stark terror shook Wentworth. Was it possible that the butchers who were responsible for the holocaust had carried her away? But if that were so, surely he never would have liked to know she was missing! They would not have left the Spider alive . . . . and stolen away the Spider's mate—without some special purpose!

  An ambulance racketed to a halt and Wentworth staggered toward it with Ram Singh, while horror still raced through his brain. He turned the Sikh over to the doctor, saw the man start his ministrations. He swung away then, and let his eyes quest over the horror of the street. An entire block of apartment buildings had been deluged with flame from the explosion of the gasoline truck. Flaming tatters of burning liquid had been hurled through crashed windows. A great pillar of living fire that writhed and twisted in a gargantuan dance lifted above the corner where the filling station and gas truck had been. Even as Wentworth stared, another minor blast thrust out an arm of flame toward a new building. Bricks were crumbling in the heat. The asphalt of the street had melted and was burning in thick, odorous clouds.