THE SPIDER-City of Doom (30 page)

"A pity is it, you dumb flatfoot!" the woman screeched. "A pity is it? The
Spider
has saved a hundred lives this night and you talking about your guns! You worthless, no good, dumb . . . .

O'Leary cut in heavily, "All right, there now, mother!" he cried. "Lay off or I'll run you in. Sure, the boy is young yet!"

McDonald ducked away from those vengeful hands, caught up his uniformed cap. His face was hot with something more than the heat, "He's a crook!" McDonald yelled. "I'm telling you . . . ."

"Easy, McDonald!" O'Leary said sternly. "Like I said, you're young, and . . . ." He broke off, cocking an ear as a siren wailed beyond the thick crowd. He burst out strongly. "Make way there! Make way! It's the commissioner himself! I'd know the commissioner's car anywhere, and the way that lad Cassidy plays the siren. Make way! Make way!"

McDonald thrust violently into the crowd, using his strong young back and his shoulders. The woman slapped him as he went past, glowered after him . . . and O'Leary grinned dourly. The commissioner was on the spot, surely. He was taking no chances where the
Spider
was concerned!

The crowd parted reluctantly and a car jounced and rocked over the hoses. Leaning from the window, Kirkpatrick's face showed stern and strained in the fierce red glow. He jerked open the door and strode ahead as the car rolled to a final halt beyond the fire line.

"Has he been seen recently, Sergeant O'Leary?" Kirkpatrick asked crisply.

O'Leary flushed at being recognized by the chief, but Kirkpatrick was always that way. Among eighteen thousand police who worked and fought under him, there were few he could not call by name—not as a trick to gain their loyalty but because he loved his men . . . .

"That he hasn't, Commissioner," O'Leary growled. "A shadow itself couldn't squeeze through our lines. All the people who escaped are being held apart so he can't pass off as one of them, but . . . ." He stared up where the roof was a faint black smear amid the boiling greedy tongues of flame. "Sure, the devil himself couldn't live there now!"

Kirkpatrick's harried eyes lifted to that high roof and his mouth stretched into a harsh line. "No," he said, and his voice was less crisp than usual. There was pain in his tones. "No, no man could live through that!"

Even as he spoke, there was a rending crash within the building. Fresh gouts of flame gushed through the windows, and sparks flew upward like a swarm of golden birds. The roof had fallen!

Kirkpatrick whipped toward O'Leary. "Sergeant, take a squad of picked men and work this crowd, fast! Pick up every character known to headquarters, or any other suspicious persons. Bring them here. If the
Spider
has confederates, this is the time to get them!"

Sergeant O'Leary saluted and spun into the crowd, shouting for men. Sure, the commissioner never forgot anything! And he was remembering now that Sergeant O'Leary had an eye for faces. Let him set his eyes on a crook and he never forgot him! O'Leary's eyes stabbed at the faces about him, and there was an aggressive, happiness in his movements . . . . Ah, but it was bad luck the
Spider
had met this night!

Standing rigidly beside his car, Kirkpatrick could not tear his eyes away from the joyous leaping of the flames. Dick Wentworth was in there, but he had not been trapped by the flames alone. Nothing so simple as a fire could trap him. The end had come as Kirkpatrick had always known it must; trapped through his great heart, helping people to the last . . . . He shuddered a little, and his jaw's line stood out whitely.

"A hell of a way to die," he muttered. "Was you speaking, Commissioner?" Cassidy piped from the driver's seat. "Sure, and ain't that a grand fire?"

Kirkpatrick's voice ripped out sternly. "Keep your ear on that radio, Cassidy! And speak when you're spoken to!"

Cassidy turned his pale hurt eyes on the commissioner's face, and Kirkpatrick swung away. Cassidy fumbled with the radio dials. Something was working on the commissioner, surely . . . .

Kirkpatrick's eyes whipped toward an ambulance, parked inside the lines. He saw a woman, with a half-completed bandage flying from her arm. She broke away and ran toward him, and there were tears streaming down her face!

"Do something!" she screamed. "Why don't you do something!" She reached Kirkpatrick and her frail fists beat on his chest. Her face was ravaged, and her hair streamed wildly. "For God's sake, Commissioner, the
Spider's
in there. The
Spider . . . .
"

Kirkpatrick's face did not change, but his hands were gentle as he set the woman back. "Easy," he said gently. "There's nothing anyone . . . ."

"He did something!" the woman cried. "He saved my life! Mine and my man's and my baby's! He saved hundreds . . . and you stand here and let him die!"

A policeman ran up, took her by the arm roughly. "Sorry, Commissioner!" he panted. "She broke through! Come on, you!"

The woman twisted in the cop's grasp. "Cowards!" she screamed. "All of you cowards! Letting a man die that way! Damn you, oh, damn you—
you want him to die!
"

"Take her away!" Kirkpatrick snapped. "And look to your duty, man!" He turned away, and for a moment his stern face was twisted awry . . . . He was glad when O'Leary came proudly forward, shepherding a dozen stumbling sullen men.

"Come on, there!" O'Leary growled. "Pick it up, you punks. It's the commissioner himself will be looking you over!" Kirkpatrick stepped up on the running board of his car to see them better, and his experienced eye leaped over their faces. Small fry, all of them, except . . . .

"Book that man, O'Leary!" Kirkpatrick snapped. "Dapper, you were ordered to stay out of New York! You'll get a year this time!"

O'Leary thrust the man into the waiting hands of a patrolman and Kirkpatrick's eyes raced on. "The rest can go . . . . Hold on there. Jackson! Jackson, come here!"

Kirkpatrick's voice rasped and a broad-shouldered man with a strongly-muscled jaw moved toward him rigidly, like a man lost in thoughts far away. His face was expressionless, but there was suffering in his eyes.

"Where's Wentworth?" Kirkpatrick demanded harshly.

Jackson was a soldier on parade, "At home, sir, I believe. He dismissed me for the night a couple of hours ago."

Kirkpatrick snapped, "You're lying, Jackson! Wentworth never dismisses you when he's working on a case."

Jackson's cheeks burned dully. His back stiffened, "If I'm a liar, sir, then there's no need asking more questions, is it?" He turned his back and started to march away. O'Leary stepped into his path belligerently, but Kirkpatrick motioned him aside.

"Come back, Jackson," he called. "I apologize. Not for calling you a liar, which God knows you are . . . but for trying to make you talk. But you stay here with me, my man, or I'll run you in. Understand? If Wentworth is counting on your help, he won't get it!"

Jackson's tortured eyes quested toward the building, and Kirkpatrick swore as his own fascinated gaze swung back that way. The flames were yielding finally to the hammer of the water, dying a little.

"All right, O'Leary," Kirkpatrick said quietly. "Good work. Get back to your posts."

Behind Kirkpatrick, Cassidy's shrill voice popped out. "Hey, Commissioner! Hey . . .
The Spider's on the air!
"

Kirkpatrick whipped about with a violent oath. Jackson restrained a shout that gushed to his throat. He stared toward the flushed face of Kirkpatrick's driver.

"Says he'll give you thirty seconds to get to the car, Commissioner!" Cassidy was babbling. "He's got something to tell you over the radio!"

Kirkpatrick's face was curiously twisted with relief, with anger, with incredulity. He said, sharply, "Cassidy, you're hearing things! You . . ."

Cassidy twisted a dial, and a voice leaped suddenly from the radio, loud and full, mocking, curiously vibrant despite its metallic, flat tones.

"Greetings, Commissioner Kirkpatrick!
This is the Spider speaking!
"

Kirkpatrick's hands set on the side of his car, and the knuckles glistened white as bone. Rigidity crept across his face. Behind him, Jackson let a fleeting smile touch his mouth. He closed his eyes for a moment, and something squeezed from under the corner of the lid, laid a crystal line across his rough, weathered cheek. He brushed at it with a sleeve, and his face went expressionless again. Couldn't fool him on that voice! He'd know it among a million. He was a fool to think the Major could be taken in any such thing as a fire! The Major? Phooey! The Major could walk through hell and come up smiling!

"Here's the message, Kirkpatrick," the
Spider's
voice went on easily. "The fire you are witnessing—and hoping had done for me—is the work of an arson ring! There will be more such fires unless your valiant officers learn to use their heads better than they use their guns! I can give you only a little help at this time, Kirkpatrick. Things have been a bit too hot even for me!"

Kirkpatrick twisted his head about. "O'Leary! Get direction loops tuned on this message. See if you can locate the source!"

O'Leary bounded toward the fire lines, but the news had raced before him. In the way of crowds, someone had been listening to that radio; someone had heard the name of the
Spider!
There was laughter and shouting beyond the police lines. Cops' uniform caps were suddenly sailing through the air and O'Leary, trying to break through those jumbled ranks, was tossed back like a boy trying to crash a varsity football line!

"Yea!
Spider!
" a
man yelled thinly. "The
Spider's
alive!"

A hoarse and formless cheer lifted from the crowd. Beside the ambulance, a woman dropped to her knees and her head was bowed. In her arms, she clasped her children, and beside her stood a man. He lifted his face, and the red lights from the dying fire played across it, found two glistening streaks that coursed their way from his eye corners downward over his cheeks.

Kirkpatrick was aware of these things in the back of his mind, but his attention was riveted on the radio, and the
Spider
was
still speaking:

"The arson ring operates as a fire insurance company, Kirkpatrick. The lads tried to stop me in the burning building and I had to . . . remove a few. I'll send you a
Spider
seal by mail as a memento. On one of them, I found a fire insurance policy. It seems normal, but, listen Kirkpatrick, it guarantees not to repay damages from fires.
It guarantees that there will be no fires!

"Off hand, Kirkpatrick, I should call it a protection racket!"

A tall man in a silk hat and formal overcoat made his casual way through the crowd, smiling at its jubilation. There was no sternness on his face, nothing threatening . . . but he moved easily through the ranks that had hurled the police backward! Men glanced up at his touch on their shoulder, anger, jubilation, hysteria on their faces. They looked into his calming smiling eyes . . . and somehow, they made way for him, though he only murmured politely, "If you don't mind!"

He stood presently beside Jackson, and the
Spider's
voice still ran on with its undertone of mockery.

"This organization, Kirkpatrick," it said, "maintains a corps of fire inspection men clothed in white. I am convinced, Kirkpatrick, that these men actually make the racket collections. And the name of this fire insurance company, Kirkpatrick . . . are you listening. . . . . .

The man touched Kirkpatrick on the shoulder with his cane. "I really don't think, Kirk," he said easily, "that the
Spider
has much to contribute!"

Kirkpatrick whipped about at the echo of that voice. "Dick!" he cried. "Dick Wentworth. Why . . ." He twisted back toward the radio, from which the
Spider's
moving voice still sounded. "Dick . . . ."

"The
Spider
signing off. Kirkpatrick!" came the final words over the air. "When you need me, Kirk, don't bother to look for me . . . .
I'll be there!
"

There was a dying hum, and the voice was gone, but Kirkpatrick turned stiffly toward Wentworth and slowly his hand came up to knuckle the waxed ends of his mustaches, as always when he was puzzled or worried. He shook his head.

Wentworth was leaning on his cane, smiling easily, "A very minor contribution," Wentworth said dryly. "The
Spider
has only told you that the arson ring expects to profit through fires. Anyone could deduce a fire insurance company . . . .

Cassidy thrust out his carroty head. His hair stood up rigidly as wires upon his pink scalp. "The
Spider
is a right guy!" he said strenuously. "And he gave us the name of the company, too. The No-More-Fires, Inc. He said it while you was talking!"

"That will do, Cassidy," Kirkpatrick said crisply, but a smile lingered on his mouth. "Not too bright," he muttered to Wentworth, "but I've never had a better driver! Wentworth . . . . Damn it, man, I'm glad to see you!" He thrust out his hand.

Wentworth's tip-tilted brows were mocking below the line of his hat-brim. He accepted Kirkpatrick's handclasp negligently. "Why, that's kind of you, Kirk," he murmured, "but really, it's only been an hour or so since we met at the Hesperides Club. Or don't you remember?"

Kirkpatrick frowned, but let it pass. "Go along with me, Dick," he said. "I'm going to check up on that arson ring right now!"

Wentworth tapped a yawn, "Surely, No-More-Fires will wait until morning, Kirk," he said. "I confess to a touch of weariness. Afraid I'll have to beg off. Going home now, Jackson?"

Jackson faced Kirkpatrick, "Would there be anything else, sir?" he asked, and there was laughter in his eyes.

Kirkpatrick shook his head, and bewilderment was still in his eyes as he watched the crowd part once more to allow Wentworth to pass through. It occurred to him suddenly that he had not asked Wentworth how he happened to be near the scene of the fire, but . . . Kirkpatrick shrugged. It would accomplish nothing. If Wentworth were the
Spider . . .
But how in the devil could he be? The
Spider
had been speaking when Wentworth arrived!