Spider

by Norvell Page

"June Calvert!" he whispered.

  The girl smiled down on him haughtily, her dark intelligent eyes half-veiled by their lids. "Who is this?" she asked imperiously.

  The Bat Man's rasping voice seemed to soften a little. "Richard Wentworth, my dear, who is either a confederate of the Spider, or the Spider himself!"

  Wentworth controlled the start that his muscles involuntarily made at those words. What, had he been discovered so early in the fight? His fists knotted and the Indians to each side, feeling his muscles harden, gripped more tightly, put their weight into their holds upon his arms.

  "One of my men," the Bat Man was explaining, "saw the Spider knock bats into a car driven by a Hindu and later the Hindu released those bats coated with radioactive paint. This man attempted to trail them from the skies. The Hindu is this man's servant. . . ."

  A remarkable change had come over June Calvert's face. It was still imperious, but it was twisted with hatred and rage. Her eyes, half-veiled, burned with living fires of anger and her hands became claws.

  "The Spider!" she whispered. "The Spider who killed my brother!" Her hand slipped to her girdle and whipped out a curved dagger. She moved toward Wentworth on slow, crouching legs like a cat.

  Wentworth smiled at her. "I am not the Spider," he said quietly, "but if I were, I could not have killed your brother. He died by the bite of the bats."

  June Calvert laughed and the sound was more like a snarl. "Yes, bats killed him. His own bats. He was a partner of the Bat Man, but you turned the bats upon him. It was you, you, you . . . !"

  "Calm yourself, my dear," Wentworth shrugged. "I'll admit that anger becomes you . . ."

  June Calvert sprang toward him with her knife uplifted. The Bat Man squeaked. It was precisely that—not words, nor articulate sound—simply a squeak of peculiar timber. An Indian sprang between Wentworth and June, offered his breast to the knife. For a moment, it seemed she would strike him down to reach the man behind him, but the Bat Man was speaking now.

  "My dear," he whispered raspingly, "I have another, juster, more delightful death in store for our friend here, be he Spider or not. As you know, the appetite for human blood of our cutely starved bats must be whetted. Sometimes when we have no prisoners, we are forced to call for volunteers from among our company, but now there is no need for that. Would you not consent, my dear, to feed him to the bats instead?"

  June Calvert stood panting, just beyond the human barrier which shielded Wentworth. Gradually the hatred and rage in her face became more subtle, gave place to a cruel joy.

  "Splendid!" she whispered. "Oh, splendid!" She turned toward the throne and bowed low. "Grant that I may watch the . . . bats feed."

  The Bat Man's laughter was squeaky, too. It ascended the scale like the grating of a saw-file until it became inaudible in the ultra-human range.

  "Yes, my dear," he whispered. "You may!"

  He lifted his left hand in a peculiar gesture and Wentworth's captors wrenched him backward and pinned him to the floor. Other Indians tore his clothing from his body. To his right, he could hear Jackson cursing and fighting futilely against similar treatment. Then, birth-naked, they were thrust across the darkened room. Behind them, came a long file of Indians, marching, chanting a harsh paean. Their joy was obvious. On the throne at the other end of the long room, the Bat Man laughed and laughed his squeaky, unearthly mirth and June Calvert stood, proud in scarlet, with a cruel smile on her lips.

  Wentworth and Jackson marched side by side now. Jackson twisted about his head. "Good God, what a woman!" he whispered. "She's mine, major. Mine! I never saw a woman who could stir me so. . . ."

  Wentworth looked curiously as this staid soldier who had fought beside him through so many life and death struggles. A steady man, reliable and unimaginative. But now his chest heaved with something more than his exertions, and there was a set, determined jaw. He did not even seem to consider what lay in store for them.

  "When we get out of this," Jackson said heavily. "I'm coming after her. I am."

  Wentworth smiled thinly. Jackson said when, not if, we get out of this. But then, Jackson was depending on the Spider who had wrested him from many a fierce and loathesome doom. Wentworth felt the grimness of his own locked jaw, but he was fighting against an overwhelming despair. To be locked in a cage, naked, with starved vampire bats, could mean only inevitable death.

  A steel grating was opened in a chamber whose walls were steel-mesh wire. Wentworth was hurled forward, Jackson behind him. They sprang to their feet as the door clanged shut, got their backs against a wall and strained their eyes into the twilight of their death-chamber. There on the floor were stretched two things that had been men. Their flesh was shrunken and folded in upon their bodies. Cheeks were sunken and shriveled lips bared locked teeth. But more than anything else, it was the pallor of the bodies that mocked Wentworth and Jackson in the cage of bats. Those bodies were . . . bloodless. . . .

  Jackson still seemed in the daze which the beauty of the woman had afflicted upon him. Wentworth slapped him violently on the cheek.

  "Later, Jackson, later," he said sharply. "Now, we must fight for our lives, unless you want to be as they are." His rigid pointing arm, indicating the bodies on the floor, snapped Jackson to attention. He paled. A shudder convulsed his shoulders.

  "Good God, major!" he whispered. "What can we do?"

  Wentworth shook his head slowly. There were Indian guards outside the cage with ready blowguns. There was no escape there. June Calvert had had a chair brought to the door and she sat there, languidly waiting for the torture to begin.

  "What in God's name can we do?" Jackson whispered again.

  Already above them in the dark upper reaches of the mesh prison, there were premonitory squeakings and fluttering. A bat winged through the air near them, circled, and swept toward Jackson. He struck savagely with his fist, then cursed and gripped his hand.

  "The devil nipped me," he growled.

  Wentworth laughed and there was a touch of wildness in the sound. The bats' teeth were not poisoned, it was apparent, since Jackson had been bitten and still lived. But how long could they survive the blood-draining battle with the bats? There were thousands of them up above, to judge from the sound. But he knew the answer. It would be a matter of time only.

  "We could make a barricade of those two bodies," Jackson said, without hope.

  They did that, crouched behind the blood-drained corpses that warned them of what the future held. They settled themselves to fight for their lives. Abruptly the air was filled with a myriad black flutterings. Jackson and Wentworth flailed the air with their arms. Utter loathing gripped the Spider. The stench of the bats was nauseous and the thought of dying to feed such beasts. . . .

  Jackson screamed with a hint of hysteria. "Take him off! Take him off!"

  Wentworth smashed a bat that had fixed on the side of Jackson's face, then he felt leathery wings touch his throat and tore a vampire from his own flesh. Black wings were beating in his eyes. His breath came short and hot in his throat and it strangled him. He fought with locked teeth, without hope, but with desperation. Good God above, what an end for a man . . . !

  Chapter Nine

  The Wooing Of Nita

  NITA WAS RELUCTANT to leave the Early Quaker with Fred Stoking and his party, knowing, as she did, the battle that impended. But there was nothing she could do to help Wentworth when the bats came, so she went at his bidding. The evening dragged at the night club to which they went and at midnight the group broke up. Newspaper boys were shouting extras when Fred Stoking helped Nita into a taxicab. The headlines screamed of the massacre at the Quaker.

  Stoking looked at Nita, sitting erect though pale in the dim rear of the cab, then leaned toward the driver and ordered him to make all possible speed to the Quaker Hotel. Nita thanked him with a glance. There could be no news of Dick there, unless . . . unless, she forced the thought, he had fallen prey to his enemies. But she must know that much with all speed. She was scarcely
conscious of the blond handsome man beside her, whose eyes were so attentively on her face. Her thoughts were all of Dick. . . .

  The Quaker was a shambles and police sought to bar Nita and her escort, but Stoking was equal to that emergency. He and his family were influential; Commissioner Harrington was a personal friend. . . . They went in, but found no news of Wentworth. Nita brightened a little. He had found a trail then, and followed it.

  Stoking led Nita into a small lounge off the main lobby and seated her there.

  "I'm sure you won't go to sleep for hours," he said.

  Nita acknowledged that with a faint smile. Did she ever sleep when the Spider was abroad? Well Wentworth knew that and he would phone her when there was opportunity. . . . She sent word to the desk where she might be found. . . . Stoking found his way to the deserted bar and brought back drinks he had mixed himself.

  "Now, Nitita," he said, "let's talk."

  There was something in his tone that pulled Nita's head toward him, that penetrated her consciousness. She often worried about her Dick, but it seemed tonight that her fears were greater than usual. It was almost as if she sensed that at this very moment, far away in New Jersey, Wentworth was being thrust into the cage of famished vampires. But she could not know that of course. She forced herself to attend to Stoking's words. . . .

  "Nitita," Stoking said again, using the name that he had given her long ago in pig-tail-pulling days. "Nitita, you are unhappy." He rushed on as she tried to protest. "It is not a secret, you know. When I came back from the Orient, you were the first person I asked for, and I heard such tales! Nitita, you have no right to be unhappy."

  Nita laughed a little unsteadily. She looked up into the handsome face bending protectively toward her. Fred Stoking had always had nice eyes. They had acquired authority and depth with the added years, and they were tender on hers now.

  Nita said, hesitantly, "Why, Fred, I believe you're making love to me!" She knew instantly that it was the wrong thing to have said. Stoking leaned closer.

  "Nitita, you'll say I'm a romantic fool, but I always have loved you. Ever since . . ."

  Nita lifted her hands in mock horror. "Not that line, Fred, please. The fiction writers have abused it so!"

  Stoking refused to banter. He reached up and touched Nita's gleaming hair with a caressing finger. "I'm very serious about this, Nitita."

  * * *

  Nita was silenced. There was an intent directness about this man that could not be turned away with jests. She looked into the depths of his eyes and believed him. Her hand went impulsively to his.

  "Don't, Fred," she said quietly. "I appreciate what you say, more than you can know. But I'm engaged to another man."

  Stoking threw back his head and laughed. There was an edgy bitterness to the sound that was not pretty. "Engaged!" he said mockingly. "For how many years, Nita, have you been engaged to Dick Wentworth?"

  Nita took her hand away and twisted her slim white fingers together in her lap. She looked at them, writhing there, and she smiled. "It's quite a while," she said quietly.

  "He has no right!" Stoking declared fiercely. "I stayed away because I know of this so-called engagement, but as it went on and on, I began to hope. Nita, I came home for you. I am going to take you back with me. No man has a right to inflict such unhappiness on any woman. . . ."

  Nita lifted her head proudly. Her hands were quiet now. There might have been a time when domineering thrilled her, but she was a woman who had . . . good God, who had killed men! These slim white hands of hers could throw a bullet with accuracy that almost rivaled the Spider's. Her muscles were hardened by the physical instruction Wentworth had insisted she undertake when, defying his own opposition and the dictates of her own longings for normal, human life, she had pledged herself to the hard road of the Spider. Why, if she wished, she could tie even this powerful man beside her into knots with jiu jitsu! No, she could not be cave-manned.

  Stoking saw his error at once. "Forgive me, dear, if I sound too excessively masculine," he said, with a touch of whimsicality, "but you can't guess how long I've eaten out my heart with longing."

  "Stop, Fred," she said softly, "you make me very unhappy!"

  Stoking laughed again, harshly. "Then I will stop. You have enough unhappiness. . . . Oh, my dear, I could give you so much. I know you do not love me, but you would, Nitita, you would! Don't tell me that you don't like the things I do, the far ends of the earth when you wish, and a fireside and children when you don't. Unhappiness!"

  Nita's full lips straightened themselves with compression. "You are talking rather foolishly," she said, for all the stab of pain he had given her. Fred Stoking could read her all right. "Very foolishly. After all, I am, as the saying goes, free, reasonably white, and considerably over twenty-one. . . ."

  "Twenty-six," Stoking said harshly. "Can you tell me anything about you I don't already know?"

  "A great deal," Nita smiled into his eyes, so directly, so steadily that his own faltered a little. "A very great deal, Fred. But what I am saying is this: I am not unhappy in my present life. If there are . . . other things I would like, you must not think that I took my present course without great thought. It may be that Dick and I shall never marry. Dick warned me of that when we found we loved each other. He was unwilling for me to face that, but I insisted. We . . . love each other. I don't know what more to say." She reached for his hand, confidently now, steadily and he gripped it hard with both of his. "Fred, I've told you a great deal more than any one else has ever heard. I tell you so you won't foolishly nurture a vain hope. . . . If after all you're not merely . . . but that was unkind. I believe you and what you say."

  Stoking held to her hand fiercely, his face drawn and lined with his struggle for control. His voice came out hoarsely. "All right. I accept what you say. But that doesn't mean I give up. Not if Wentworth said the things you indicate. And he would. I know it now. He would be the first to give me encouragement!"

  Nita gasped, her hand flinching from his grasp. Before her rose the face of the man she loved, not the gay smiling Dick who first had won her love, but the white-faced battler whom peril created. She saw the hard bitterness that wrenched his lips, the cold, gray-blue strength of his eyes, and she could hear him saying just what Stoking declared.

  "Darling, you know it is hopeless," he would say. "I love you. God knows I do. Love you enough to give you up. Seek happiness in normal living. The hell in which the Spider lives is not for a glorious woman like you. . . ."

  Nita buried her face in her clenching hands. "No!" she cried, her voice muffled. "No, no, no!"

  Stoking sat silent beside her, a little frightened at the emotion he had stirred, but his lips were grim-set. He was a fighter, too. Presently he touched Nita's arm.

  "We'll forget it for the present," he said, "but don't think I've finished. I don't give up so easily."

  There was a bleak coldness in his own blue eyes. He looked up abruptly as a movement caught his gaze. A bellboy stuck his head in at the door. "Phone call for Miss Nita van Sloan!"

  Nita sprang to her feet. "Where?"

  The boy turned and swaggered cockily across the lobby. Death nor tragedy, nor weeping women in the hotel lounge, could dim the brass that shone upon him—and not alone from his uniform buttons. Nita hurried to the telephone he indicated, aware that Stoking followed at a discreet distance. Now, Nita thought, now I'll hear Dick's voice. Dear Dick . . . !

  "Hello," she faltered, then she straightened, her hands tight on the telephone. The happiness went out of her, but something else entered, the white, tight-lipped determination that was the other woman beneath her soft and lovely beauty. She spoke in Hindustani, her voice crisp, decisive.

  "Is he in his own identity, Ram Singh, or . . . ? That helps some. Where are you? Wait there then. I'll come as quickly as possible. No, Ram Singh, there is nothing you can do now but wait."

  She turned from the phone and Stoking strode toward her. He checked a half-dozen feet away, re
cognizing the change in her. It was present even in the way she walked. Still graceful she was, but there was business and determination in her pace.

  "It's trouble," Stoking said flatly. "I've heard how you've gone to rescue Wentworth on occasion. You'll have to count me in on this."

  Nita hesitated and her appraisal of him was as swift and competent as a marine captain's. "Very well," she said. "Get the fastest car and the fastest plane in the city. Have the car at the door in five minutes; the ship ready when we reach Camden field. Dick has been captured by the Bat Man!"

  She moved swiftly to the elevators and, for a space of seconds, Stoking stood and watched her go, his eyes admiring, filled with longing, then he sprang to a telephone. . . .

  It was just four minutes later that Nita stepped from the elevator, but Stoking was ready. He caught her elbow and was conscious of the bulge of a gun beneath the smart, tailored fit of her dark-blue suit. Stoking felt distinctly out of place in his tail coat and faultless evening dress, but he made a joke of it.