by Norvell Page
A jagged curse forced itself from between Wentworth's lips. "But why? In God's name, why?"
"He intends to demand tribute of all the nations of the world," June said slowly, "in return for a promise not to loose the bats on their peoples."
"Preposterous!" Wentworth snapped. "They wouldn't pay." Then he frowned, remembering. There had been a time when nearly all the maritime nations of the world had paid tribute to the Barbary pirates of the Mediterranean, bribed them not to attack ships flying their flag. Only the United States had refused, and had sent great battleships to uphold that refusal. And that had been less than a hundred years ago. Only the United States had refused . . .
"He thought," June went on, "that the United States would refuse to pay, so he would make an example of her to the rest of the world. I think he plans to save New York for the last. His next attack. . . ."
"You know that? Good!" Wentworth began to know hope again. "Where will that be?"
"Michigan City," June replied briefly.
Wentworth uttered a sharp exclamation. Michigan City was an amusement resort at Chicago to which the city's population flocked in tens of thousands for swimming and other amusements. And in the entire place, there were not a half-dozen buildings into which the bats could not enter. In Chicago proper, it would be different. But in Michigan City, literally thousands would die. . . .
"Come," he said sharply, and hurried down the hall. He heard June's footsteps just behind him.
"Where are you going?" she demanded.
"Michigan City!"
"But you promised to save Ronald!" the girl cried.
Wentworth nodded, never slackening his pace as he pushed out into the morning that was reddening with sunrise. June Calvert caught his arm, tried to pull him about.
"You promised!" she cried.
Wentworth stopped and faced her. "Do you know where Jackson is?" he demanded.
"No."
"Do you know where the Bat Man is?"
"N-No."
"Then, June, we have to go to the only place you know of that the Bat Man will appear, don't we?"
June sobbed, pressed a clenched hand to her forehead. "Yes, yes," she whispered, "but before that, Ronald may be . . . may be . . ."
Wentworth's tanned face was drained of all color. June Calvert lifted her head slowly and looked at him. "Ah," she whispered, "I forgot. The woman you love is there, too!"
Wentworth said dully, "Yes." He turned and hurried off toward the airfield where, almost an hour ago, the Bat Man had winged into the dawn. June caught his arm.
"There are no more planes," she said. "There is nothing at all here to travel in, but there's a highway about three miles to the west."
They tramped in silence through the damp woodland, crashing over underbrush, jumping brooks, fighting thickets. Finally, they burst out in the highway and stopped, staring. There were two automobiles parked on the opposite side of the road. In one of them, two policeman sat.
Wentworth walked toward them and the man behind the wheel twisted about an angry face.
"Hey, buddy," he called. "Come here and get us loose, will you? We're all tied up."
Wentworth stopped beside the car. "How'd you get tied up?" he asked curiously.
"We was chasing them guys what's turning loose bats," the man, red-faced and angry, declared. "We has them all tied up, girl with them, too. Then one of them gets loose and pulls a knife on me and we can't do nothing."
Wentworth tackled the ropes, shooting eager questions at the policemen, but as the story unfolded, his eagerness died. It was apparent now that it was Nita the men had almost stopped. Nita and Ram Singh and Stoking. All of them were in the Bat Man's power now, food for bats. Wentworth's jaw tightened. . . . The police took him and June back to town, casting many curious glances at the girl's strange scarlet dress. When they had found the dead Indians there in the woods, they would remember this meeting, because of that similarity of dress. . . . Wentworth shook his head grimly. There was no time now to explain, even though trouble would follow later.
At Flemington, he found the plane Stoking had rented. He appropriated it and sent the ship racing into the West. At dusk, the attack would be made on Michigan City. There was ample time to reach Chicago by plane. Ample time, if there were no mishaps. . . . Persistently, Wentworth's thoughts reverted to Nita. She was in this situation, prisoner of the Bat Man, because she had striven to help him. God, this was no life for a woman! Better a thousand times, if they had never met. Better if she had married this Fred Stoking, who had been her childhood sweetheart. . . .
His bitterness came back overwhelmingly. What right did he have to wreck Nita's life this way, perhaps to bring about her death? If she had never met Dick Wentworth. . . .
Wentworth was snapped from his reverie by a spluttering motor. He glanced sharply at his instruments, but nothing was wrong there and the engine was drumming steadily again. He peered over the side. Beneath him lay the wild reaches of the Alleghanies. Good God, if he were forced down here, it would take him days to reach even a mountaineer's cabin! Days more before he could reach Chicago! The Bat Man would have struck and vanished. . . . The motor coughed and missed again!
* * *
The Spider's face became hard and rigid. No use to conjecture now. The engine was failing. It was only a question of selecting a spot to crash. A bitter curse squeezed out. He leaned over the side, staring down at the jagged, forested sides of mountains below him. He realized grimly that it was not merely a question of landing in a spot from which it might be possible to reach civilization, it was even doubtful if they would survive the landing!
There was not a fifty-foot clearing anywhere in the tangle of mountains—not a roadway, nor a fire lane. The motor was missing badly now. Even though he pulled the throttle wide, the plane was losing altitude. Not rapidly, but losing none the less. He would have to make his decision quickly.
A mountain-top glided by beneath him, its trees no more than seventy-five feet under the fuselage, and the valley beyond opened. Wentworth knew a thrill of hope, for there was clearly a break in the forest down there. He swept a rapid glance over the country. No sign of smoke, or of human habitation. He laughed sharply. Would it not be better to smash against that rocky precipice that thrust out of the opposite mountain? When finally he escaped from these mountains, Nita would be dead—and Ram Singh and Jackson. . . . Every one dear to him would have died through his failure. Resolutely, he sought to close his mind to those facts. He was, he told himself, no longer a human being, but a cause. He was the Spider! He must live to defend humanity. . . .
Time after time, he had been compelled to abandon Nita to her fate while he battled new monsters of crime. For a single instant, however, his mind broke from his rigid control, and he pictured her thrown helpless into a cage of vampires, saw her white body fall under the fluttering black hordes. . . .
He screamed curses into the air, shook his fist at the skies that arched pitilessly above. By God, it should not be! It should not! The final splutter of the motor, the whir of the dying propeller snapped him out of his bitter tirade. He had been handling the plane sub-consciously, directing it toward that clearing in the valley which alone offered hope of safe landing.
Behind him, June Calvert's high voice beat on his sound-deafened ears.
"What's the matter?"
"Motor conked out," he called back to her, then leaned over the side to stare down at the clearing. It was a lake, full of black, jagged snags. The trees grew right to its shores. Once more Wentworth laughed, hardly, bitterly. It would be better if he did die—but he must strive to live. He sent the ship down in a sharp dive. . . .
Chapter Twelve
Race With Time
AS THE PLANE SLOPED toward the lake, Wentworth's eyes swept the wooded shores hopefully. There was no beach anywhere. The retractable landing gear already had been lowered. Now Wentworth set to work to crank it back into the fuselage by hand. The hull of the plane would not resist water lon
g, but he could use it as a pontoon in landing whereas the wheels would catch and tip the ship forward on her nose. His danger, without the wheels, would be in snagging a wing in the water since they would be so close to the surface. Fortunately, the craft was a Lockhead Vega, a high-winged monoplane, so even that danger was reduced. . . .
Swiftly the plane neared the mirror-like lake. The steep, wooded mountains were reflected and white clouds made their images below. It was strangely peaceful, but Wentworth knew no peace, only bitterness and mounting rage. . . . Another hundred feet and the Vega would breast the lake. Wentworth kept the stick waggling gently from side to side, leveling off the wings. He swept in over the treetops with scarcely a dozen feet clear, put the nose down and swooped toward the surface.
Down the center of the lake, there was a space fairly clear of snags and Wentworth had picked that as the only possible landing place. Now, as the ship settled in a stall, only inches above the surface, he spotted a submerged log fairly in his path. There was no help for it. He must drive straight for the log. The stick had already gone soft in his hand. . . . The ship squatted down on the water with a heavy impact, ran twenty feet and snagged the log . . .
"Let go and dive!" Wentworth shouted.
The nose went down, the tail whipped up and over, hurling Wentworth and June Calvert like catapult missiles through the air. Wentworth struck head first in a shallow dive, whipped to the surface and peered about for the girl. She broke water a few seconds afterward, smiled at him, white-faced.
"Don't worry about me," she gasped. "I can swim."
Side by side, they struck out for the shore. The plane, on its back, already was settling deep into the water, buoyed for a while by partially emptied gasoline tanks. But the pull of the motor was rapidly overcoming that. Even as Wentworth reached the shore and stood erect in the edge of the woods, the water lapped over the last inch of canvas and the plane disappeared.
Wentworth, his face set, leaned forward to assist June Calvert to her feet and she looked despairingly into his face.
"We're beaten," she said dully. "Beaten before we fairly start!"
Wentworth's lips moved in a slight still smile. "It's ten o'clock. We have almost ten hours to reach Chicago."
June Calvert gazed into his strong face, with its locked jaw and determined eyes and her own despair lessened. "But what can we do?" she whispered.
Wentworth turned and looked up the steep slope of the mountain, toward the bare outcropping of rock near its crest. He nodded toward it.
"From its top, we may be able to spot some help," he said. He turned toward the thick alder bushes that crowded close to the water's edge, the white-stemmed birches beyond. With a curt word, he started forward, wading first through swamp that rose to his knees. Among the birches, he stopped for a few minutes, whittling on two smaller trees with his pocket knife. Presently, they went on again, each with a staff.
The thickets continued and briars snagged at his clothing, tore his hands. He stopped and gave his coat to June Calvert. She thanked him with softening eyes, but his smile was thin.
"It's not chivalry, but wisdom," he said dryly. "You can travel faster with your shoulders protected."
She laughed at him and they went on again, Wentworth crashing through ahead to break a way. There was a hard desperation in his soul. He had to fight to keep from plunging forward at a mad run that would have exhausted him within minutes. A trotting horse travels farther, he reminded himself. God alone knew how much of this tramping there might be, but if he could get hold of a fast plane within the next six or eight hours. . . .
After they left the low shores of the lake, the underbrush was thinner, but the grade was steepening. It took a half hour to reach the crest of the hill, Wentworth discovered with a despairing glance at his watch. Then twelve such hills. . . . But there were the descents and the valleys to cross. Five, six such hills and his margin would be reduced to nothing.
"We'll have to run down this hill," he said shortly. "Jog, don't race."
He set the pace, the half-trot, half-lope that the woods-runners of the Indians had used over these same trails years ago. Half way down the hill, they struck a small path and June cried out in happiness.
"See, a path!" she panted. "Someone must be near!"
"Game trail," Wentworth threw over his shoulder.
But he swung along its course. As long as it went in the direction he wished, it would be swifter traveling. Unconsciously, his pace quickened. At the bottom of the hill, he realized that there were no footsteps behind him and halted. A hundred and fifty yards back, running doggedly at the pace he first had set, was June Calvert. Her red dress had been torn off at the knee and the coat looked strange with the silk robe, but she was plugging steadily along. She looked up, saw Wentworth.
"Go on, go on!" she cried. "I'm all right."
Wentworth waited until she was near, then ran on. The game trail stopped at a small brook in the valley, but another slanted up the hill, Wentworth pushed on, no longer running, but slowly regaining his breath as he pulled the hill. He had hoped from the ridge just passed, that he might detect some signs of human habitation. The hill ahead inspired him anew, but he said nothing. . . . The next valley was empty of hope, too. Wentworth stole a glance at his watch, an hour and a quarter gone. . . .
Doggedly, he held himself back as he loped down toward the valley. The game trail was gone now, wandering off down the valley and the way was constantly impeded by shrubbery. He kept his lips locked against the urge to pant. He could hear June Calvert gasp for breath. But, damn it, there could be no stop, no resting. Within a few hours, the Bat Man would strike. If the Spider did not then take his trail, it would be too late to save Nita and those two gallant men who had thrown in their lot with him. It might even be too late to strike at the Bat Man, for if this chance failed, future contacts would depend on luck alone.
These thoughts worked maddeningly in Wentworth's brain as he loped downhill, and labored up the next grade, the third. If this one also proved an empty hope . . . But it would only mean pushing on to the next and a further reduction of the possibility of success. He scarcely dared look at his watch.
It was hot in the woods where the trees choked off all breeze. Black flies and midges danced about his perspiring face and his shirt clung damply to his body. Nor were his shoes fitted to this type of walking. The soles speedily grew slippery on leaves and the fallen needles of pines so that walking became an exhausting labor. At the top of the third hill, June was three hundred yards behind him and he himself was panting through stubbornly resisting lips. Almost he dreaded to peer into the valley beyond and search the opposite slope, but hope urged him on. He looked—it was empty . . . !
June Calvert toiled up to him, glanced and passed on, pushing herself into a labored run. She was panting, too, but there was a stubborn set to her chin. Wentworth loped after her, drew abreast.
"What time?" she gasped.
Wentworth looked reluctantly at his watch. "Half past twelve."
June said nothing and they ran on. At the bottom of the hill, a spring bubbled water into a small brook. Wentworth halted and they drank sparingly and pushed on. The three hours that followed were nightmares of exhausting action. There was no more running down hills and at the crest of each they stopped for long minutes. The heat had increased, and they dared not drink heavily lest cold water bloat them. When they struck a game trail, they followed it, but mostly there was dense underbrush that must be circled or crashed through and in the bottoms, alder bushes made almost impenetrable thickets.
Each hill had burgeoned hope of what might lie beyond, but each crest brought disappointment, so that Wentworth scarcely dared to gaze on the scenes below. The seventh hill seemed interminable, its crest was a bare ridge where rocks jostled the clouds. Twice, on the climb, Wentworth halted and June Calvert toiled to where he stood and went past him. The third time, he was just on the edge of the barren ridge that crowned the rise.
He stood th
ere, gathering strength for the last pull, for the disappointment that must meet him from its top and once more June moved up beside him. Not even glancing in his direction, she traveled on heavily. Her stockings long ago had ripped from her legs and the flesh was torn and lacerated by thorns. Her head sagged so that her black hair half-hid her face and she moved with the steadiness, the stiffness of an automaton.
Wentworth watched her mount toward the crest; then he tramped on himself, head hanging, the white birch staff helping him up the grade. He did not look again at June, but abruptly he stopped, his down-gazing eyes seeing June upon her knees, head sagging, hands clasped together before her. He lifted his eyes and saw slow, blue smoke rising from the opposite slope of the hill. Was it already too late? He said nothing, but looked wearily at his watch. It was half-past four. If he could get a plane by six . . . It would take a half hour or more to reach that smoke.