THE SPIDER-City of Doom (3 page)

The cop on the fire-escape straightened, smashed in the window with his gun, sprang inside. But that man on the roof and those two in the alley still watched. Wentworth shrugged. It was now or never. Already the police were at the door of the bedroom.

"Open up,
Spider,
" a man commanded. "We got you dead to rights this time. You're surrounded and you can't get away."

There was jubilance in the voice, eager triumph. Wentworth's smile tightened. He whipped a length of silken cord from beneath his arm, cord that was not quite as large in diameter as a pencil, yet which had a tensile strength of seven-hundred pounds. He looped it over the steam radiator beneath the window, forked the sill and slid down the side of the building with the cord wrapped about arms and legs. He contrived to make a lot of noise doing it, kicked the window out of the room below the Collins' bedroom.

The two policemen on watch in the alley heard and shouted rapidly. They ran down the alley with their flashlights questing over the side of the building.

"Don't shoot!" Wentworth cried in terror-stricken accents. "For God's sake, don't shoot!"

He pushed his feet against the side of the house and caused himself to swing from side to side. The cops ran down the alley until they stood below him but carefully away from the wall so that he could not drop upon them. Wentworth had descended another story now. He was only two floors above the ground and directly opposite the window of another apartment.

Windows were flung open above his head and bedcapped heads thrust out. "We got him," the cops below sang out triumphantly.

Wentworth was gyrating widely on his silken line now. His feet struck the window and crashed it inward. Then, abruptly, the
Spider
vanished. He swung into the window and out of sight. Guns blazed in the alley. Men shouted excitedly.

Inside the room where Wentworth crouched, a quavering voice said, "Don't shoot me. I ain't got nothing you want."

Wentworth crossed to the door in a bound, sprang across the room beyond and jerked open the outside door, slammed it again. Silently then, he slipped back to the kitchen. This apartment had exactly the same floor plan as the Collins' rooms and he had no trouble in finding his way. In the kitchen, he went directly to the dumb-waiter shaft. The cage itself was one story below and he hauled it quietly to his level and climbed inside. He was certain the basement would be guarded. There was still only a slim chance of escaping. He raised the dumbwaiter slowly until he was once more level with the Collins apartment. He listened intently, ear to the shaft door. There was no sound in the apartment and he eased into the empty kitchen.

Then he could hear talking in the next room, Nancy Collins protesting vigorously that she knew nothing except what she had told. Wentworth peered into the room. Collins was standing with legs aggressively braced, his tousled head thrust forward. "I reckon you-all have asked enough questions now," the big man drawled quietly.

There were two police inside, one in civilian clothes, one in uniform. Wentworth's spring into the room was soundless. The first warning the two men had of his presence was the flashing light within their skulls when his pistols slapped their heads. Collins half-started forward, but suddenly he was looking into the black muzzle of an automatic.

"I don't want to slap you down, too," the
Spider
said softly.

Anse Collins grinned slowly. "Reckon I don't want you to either," he smiled.

Wentworth nodded. He stooped and snatched the uniformed man's cap, put it on and whirled back to the kitchen, clambered out on the fire-escape. The two police were still in the alley.

"He went down the dumb-waiter!" Wentworth yelled at them. "The
Spider's
in the basement!"

The two cops peered up and saw the silhouette of a police cap against the sky.

"Get down in the basement, you lugs!" Wentworth bawled. "He's down there, I tell you. I'll watch the alley."

The two cops hesitated a moment longer, then raced for the cellar entrance as Wentworth clattered down. They paused once more at the door. Wentworth dropped from the fire-escape and ran toward them. They ducked out of sight. He clapped the door shut behind them, jammed into its crack a thin piece of rasp steel from the tool kit beneath his arm. Then he raced on for the street. The cops in the basement started shouting. Their guns banged, smashing the door's lock. The man on the roof peered down uncertainly into the darkness of the alley, but it sounded to him as if
Spider
and police had joined battle in the basement.

Wentworth darted into the street, saw a line of police cars at the curb and leaped into the first. The motor was still hot and it started instantly. He took the corner on two whistling tires. Behind him, through the whine and sough of the wind roaring past the car, biting at his silk-gloved hands, he heard the popping of pistol shots, the skid of wheels, then the wail of sirens. But he had a two-block lead. It was all the
Spider
needed.

Ten minutes later, driving his own car and stripped of the disguise of the
Spider
which was carefully hidden in a secret compartment in the car's rear, Richard Wentworth parked by the Ft. Middle Hotel, where he had registered that night with Ram Singh. He had several lines of investigation open, but just now it was most important that he be here to receive a phone call from Ram Singh when the Hindu should have located the headquarters toward which Devil Hackerson had been fleeing. He had hardly reached his room when the bell tinkled and he snatched up the receiver.

"
Sahib!
" It was Ram Singh's voice, a gasp of haste.

"Shoot," Wentworth ordered.

"The Sky Building,
sahib,
" Ram Singh blurted. "They are pl—"

The sound of a shot and a groan echoed faintly over the wire. Wentworth's hands tensed about the 'phone, knuckles whitening.

"Ram Singh!" he called anxiously.

There was a soft click of disconnection. Frantically, Wentworth signaled the operator. "That call, where did it come from?"

"From New York City, sir," the telephone operator reported.

Wentworth waited five dragging minutes while she raised the New York operator, while she reported that the call came from a telephone pay-station in a Bronx drug store.

"Notify police that there was a shooting at that address," Wentworth snapped. "I heard it over the telephone."

He slammed up the receiver and flung from the hotel, sprang behind the wheel of his car and sent it sizzling along the one hundred and forty mile stretch to New York. He did not think the police would reach the spot in time to learn anything. His mouth shut with compressed lips that formed a straight bitter line. The underworld always struck at the
Spider
through his loved ones: through Nita van Sloan, the woman he loved, through his loyal Hindu. If Ram Singh had been killed, Wentworth would rip New York's underworld to pieces to find his murderer!

Meanwhile, what of Ram Singh's message? It was clear that some deviltry was afoot at the Sky Building. Were the users of the steel crusher planning a robbery there?

While Wentworth raced for New York, while police radio prowl cars sped to the spot where Ram Singh had been shot, Ram Singh himself lay unconscious on the floor of a gray sedan beneath the feet of two men. One of those was Devil Hackerson, and the frown between his eyes was increasing the satanic slant of his brows. "This is damned foolishness," he snapped. "I'm going to stick a knife into the nigger's guts and dump him in the gutter."

The other man turned his head very slowly. "If you do, the Master will cut off your supply of the stuff," he said. His voice was high; he whined slightly, but there was a tone of insolent authority.

Hackerson cursed violently. The driver echoed his anger. "This here guy we shot works for the
Spider
," the latter said. "We ought to string him up by his ears."

The third man said nothing more. He sat and stared straight ahead through the windshield at the Fifth Avenue traffic through which they were weaving a slow and laborious way. He had a high dome of a head that seemed to swell out behind the ears and dwarf the little, wizened face. One of his overly prominent eyes had a cast in it and was a pale, washed-out blue. The other was brown and kept darting about like a frightened bird. He lipped a cigarette wetly.

"Listen, Devil," he whined. "You know I ain't got nothing to do with this. All I do is get the orders over the telephone and bring 'em to you. This guy what calls himself the Master always seems to know where to find me. He may call me at a restaurant or in a saloon and sometimes at the boarding-house. I don't see no harm in doing what the Master says. We get good dough out of it and if you don't do what he says, I'll lose my job, and . . ."

Devil Hackerson pushed the other roughly in the face, but without ill nature, and the man's cap slid off. He was bald as an egg.

"Don't get excited, Baldy," he said. "We're doing what your Master wants." There was a sneer in his voice at the word "Master." "But it's not to save your job. It's because we want the stuff. Boy, with that, we could knock over the Treasury of the United States without any trouble at all."

The man called Baldy drew the cap over his bald head with nervous hands. "The Master says next time you don't use the stuff for what he tells you, you don't get any more." Baldy's voice was trembling, a little squeaky with fear at the message, but he kept on with it. "He says tell you there are other guys would be glad to get their hands on the stuff."

"Ain't it the truth?" murmured Hackerson, but the frown on his forehead was puzzled now. "I'll be damned if I can see what good it'll do to knock the Sky Building down in the streets. Still more, I can't see why we got to take this nigger up on top of it and wait until the building topples before he dies. Hell, she might fall over while we're up there since it's all fixed now."

Ram Singh heard the words with a sense of dull shock. These men talked of making the world's tallest building collapse as if it were no more than a hill of sand on the beach. Yet the Sky Building's collapse, even in the dead of night, would kill hundreds. And by day with the thousands teeming past on Fifth Avenue . . . Ram Singh shuddered involuntarily, listened while Baldy talked on.

"There's not enough wind," Baldy said. "The stone walls will hold it together until we have a good wind, and then . . ." He paused. Mere words couldn't paint for him the collapse of that mighty building, its base covering an entire city block, its tower more than a fifth of a mile above the streets. There was a gleam in his brown eye and his tongue slid out like a timid pink snake to touch his dry lips. "The Weather Bureau says the wind will keep rising until it reaches gale force about morning."

Ram Singh groaned and stirred beneath their feet. Hackerson leaned forward, grinding the muzzle of his gun into Ram Singh's neck.

"Keep quiet, blackboy," he rasped, "or I'll crack you again."

There was a drying red stain on Ram Singh's left shoulder.

"Hadn't we better get him up on the seat now, put his robe around him?" Baldy asked timidly.

Devil Hackerson jerked erect, thrust his satanic face into Baldy's cowering countenance. "Listen," he rasped, "you can bring orders from this guy that calls himself the Master, but you're not running my mob, see?"

Baldy cringed back into his corner and made placating sounds with his mouth. Hackerson chuckled. He caught Ram Singh by his wounded shoulder and yanked him to a sitting position, threw a black robe around him and hauled him up on the seat.

"You're the Yogi Mala Kalai Balu," said Hackerson, "and you're just finishing a long fast. Furthermore, you've made a pledge not to speak again in this life. If you show any inclination to forget that, I'm going to remind you with lead in your guts. Get it?"

Ram Singh was weak with his wound. His face had a gray tinge beneath its swarthy skin. "I understand," he replied slowly.

When the sedan stopped before the Sky Building, Hackerson helped the Hindu to alight with every show of deference and the car rolled away, Baldy peering back with his one good eye from the rear seat. Ram Singh could hardly stand. He leaned heavily on his captor's arm and together they went upward to the tower. There were few persons about to stare curiously at the two. Within a half hour, the tower would close. Ram Singh's eyes were on the floor. His head seemed too heavy to lift.

In his dull thoughts, he sought frantically for some way to escape. But there was none that did not involve ridding himself of this gangster at his side, and unarmed, he had not the strength for the attempt. He had managed to get two words out to the
Spider
before that bullet had crashed him to the floor of the booth—before gunmen had charged into the store and taken him out while they held clerks and customers of the drug store at pistol point. God grant that those two words had been enough!

It seemed incredible to Ram Singh that these gangsters, because of orders received through that queer spokesman, were wrecking this huge building. But the "stuff," as they called it, already had been loosed upon the mighty girders. The supports were undermined, ready to crumple into powdery fragments whenever the wind blew hard. And thousands would be crushed to pulp beneath it.

"Hurry up," snapped Hackerson. "I don't like the way the wind is moaning."

He waited his chance and shoved Ram Singh into a porter's closet where brushes and pails were stored for use at night. No one would enter it until late the next night when the cleaning got under way again and before then . . .

"Heavy wind blowing up," Hackerson gibed at Ram Singh. "You won't have long to wait, I guess."

He gagged the Hindu brutally, bound him hand and foot, lashed him to the pipes of a slop sink in the closet. Then he kicked him in the stomach. "Baldy said to knock you out," he jeered, "but I'd rather you could hear the wind rising and feel the building sway just before she topples. You ought to enjoy that."

He kicked Ram Singh again, shut the door and locked it. Ram Singh did not hear him go, but he heard something else. He heard the hollow moan of wind in the elevator shafts and the hallways. He had felt tall skyscrapers sway before this, when they were held together by the flexibility of the steel that had enabled man to rear buildings higher and higher into the skies.