Spider (28 page)

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, recognizing 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.

"I carry armament, too," he told her gayly, "part of which you would probably disapprove. It is a knife strapped to my left forearm."

Nita said briefly, "Knives have their uses. Ram Singh has saved my life a dozen times over with his. Is the rest of your armament a revolver? If you have no firearms, I have an extra one in my purse for you."

They were in the car by now—Stoking's own, with a respectful chauffeur at the wheel—and the machine, which was a rakish Minerva, was muttering at close to top speed through the deserted streets. Stoking lounged on the cushions beside Nita and she noted with approval that he had the same manner of facing crises that so distinguished Wentworth, a calm, bitter readiness. Nita herself was tense.

"Don't you want to tell me about it?" he suggested quietly.

"You'll have to know if you're to help," Nita conceded, as if reluctantly. She told him of Wentworth's flight, the crash, and of Ram Singh's being sent away in a stolen car. "Ram Singh knew that he was supposed to be a decoy," she went on, "and when the Bat Man's crew didn't pursue, he stopped. He heard some fast, deliberate shooting and recognized Dick's guns. Then he heard Dick cry out. . . ." Nita paused, pressing her hands tightly down on the bulging black handbag in her lap. "Ram Singh does not scare easily, but he said that it . . . it sounded like a devil's death cry."

"Dick isn't dead," Stoking said quietly. "You would have known it, if he were."

Nita's voice was very low. "Yes, you do know me, Fred. You're right, I would have known. What Ram Singh said confirms it. He saw Dick and Jackson carried into two planes and flown away. Ram Singh tried to steal the third plane, but found the propeller had been bent in landing. He just escaped the Indians and came to phone me. He's in Flemington. We're flying there. Have to make a landing in a field with magnesium flares."

"I've got a two-seater Lockhead Vega," Stoking said casually. "I'm an indifferent pilot, but I understand you can handle ships."

"I have a thousand hours—transport license," Nita replied, tight-lipped. That was Dick's doing, too, teaching her to fly. Dick had been thorough. . . .

"I want to apologize again," Stoking kept his tone light, "for trying to caveman you. It was not the right tactic—not at all!"

Nita felt her tension easing a little beneath his banter. He was doing his part well, but even he knew that the ultimate effort must be hers. Well, she had never failed Dick yet.

The Vega was fast as Nita could have wished, but it seemed scarcely to move toward Flemington. She made a safe, though rough, landing on a meadow near the town and Ram Singh raced up in a car while they still clambered from the plane. The Hindu hesitated at sight of Stoking but, at a sign from Nita, accepted him and began to spill what supplementary news he had in a virtual downpour of words.

"What were the Bat Man's planes used for?" Nita asked abruptly.

Ram Singh lifted his shoulders in token of ignorance. "Perhaps,
missie sahib,
to distribute bats. There was a cage of them in the plane left behind."

Nita laughed exultingly. "To the field quickly, Ram Singh!" she cried as she sprang into the car Ram Singh had brought. "We must have that cage of bats!"

The car was fast enough, but scarcely comfortable. Stoking and Nita jounced miserably as the intrepid Hindu streaked over dark Jersey roads. He battled curves with squealing tires and motor roaring wide open, flew through unlighted anonymous towns that were no more than sounding boards for the car's engine.