THE SPIDER-City of Doom (33 page)

Frosty was swaggering back across the room now from Sprague's table—a white-faced, white-haired killer who had never taken the rap. Wentworth knew him well and, as he looked at the man, his plan was swiftly made! Frosty would have to pass close to him . . . and with Frosty's help, the
Spider
would find Munro!

"Hey, Frosty!" he grumbled. "I got a word for you from . . . ."

He let his voice trail off and Frosty swung toward him, unsuspiciously. Wentworth held out the hand over which the wet cloth that he used on the tables was draped. He whipped that towel back , and a gun glinted in the dim light of the corner . . . and a ring gleamed on Wentworth's finger. It was a ring with a dark stone, but when he pressed on its undersurface as he did now, a red fire glowed in the heart of that stone—a red fire that held the shape of a
Spider!

There was naked flame in the eyes of the
Spider,
too, and they struck against Frosty's.

"Come close to me, Frosty—," he said coldly. "If you whisper, you die! Now, into this side room!"

A hard trembling was on Frosty's body, but Wentworth scarcely touched him. His left hand flicked to the under-arm gun, whipped it out. A twist of that hand, and the bullets thudded softly to the floor. He thrust the gun into Frosty's hand.

"Now, Frosty," he said quietly, "we will go back into the dining-room. When we are inside, you will climb on a table, and you will keep that gun in your hand or you will have a neat little red seal printed on your forehead. Get the picture, Frosty?"

Frosty quavered, "What are you going to do? Geez,
Spider,
I ain't done nothing yet!"

"No, not yet!" Wentworth told him dryly. "Only three murders that I could be sure of, Frosty. Now . . . up on that table! Now, yell to make them look at you! Say, 'Hey, you mugs!' Nothing else!"

Frosty climbed fumblingly to the tabletop, and a few startled eyes whipped his way. The gun was in his fist. He opened his lips to shout, but it was Wentworth's voice that carried across the room from where he crouched in the shadows . . .

"Munro!" came the
Spider's
flat, challenging voice. "Munro! I have come for you!
The Spider has come for you!
"

Chairs slammed backward, tables were pitched forward to the floor while men flung themselves behind those barricades! In the same instant, their guns began to speak! They roared to a swift climax of fury. Lead hammered into Frosty's twitching body.

But unseen in the shadows, Wentworth crouched warily, and his eyes swept the room. His plan was simple enough. Once the
Spider
was exposed, Munro would have no reason for concealment. He would want to take charge and make sure that the
Spider
died!

As that first dread challenge of the
Spider
ripped out, and the deluge of bullets began, Wentworth saw Sprague whip to his feet. But it was not Sprague who shouted out clear orders, who swiftly hurled guards at all the doors, and organized the blockade of the windows so that the
Spider
should not escape!

It was the trembling man known as Sniffer!

And Sniffer's finger was pointing toward the shadows where the
Spider
crouched!

"Fools!" Sniffer shouted. "You're killing one of your own friends! There's the
Spider . . . the waiter who has been serving you drinks!
"

Wentworth sprang suddenly from the shadows, and about his shoulders was the cape of the
Spider,
whipped from the darkness of that small room behind him.

His two guns spat together in his fists, and the body of Sniffer—of Munro—jerked to the impact. He was picked up and slammed backward over a chair, behind a table!

That was the moment when the lights went out . . .

In the darkness, a voice rang out clearly while Wentworth crouched low and bounded toward the spot where Munro had fallen. And Wentworth knew that voice. It was the voice of Munro, and it was clear and unshaken with pain!

"Turn on the lights, you damned fools!" it shouted. "The
Spider
wants it dark! The lights . . . ."

Wentworth flung a bullet questing toward that voice, and near him a man shrieked to the pain of the lead. Somebody had been in the way . . . . Wentworth raced, and in the middle of the floor, he caught a glimpse of a pencil of light as a trapdoor opened. He caught a glimpse of a face that was seared by flame, twisted beyond human recognition: The Faceless One!

Wentworth checked and lifted both guns deliberately . . . and a chair crashed against his shoulders.

Instantly, Wentworth was on his feet, racing toward the spot where he had seen the trapdoor. There were screams and shouts behind him, and the flicker of crazy gunfire as each man shot at the shadows about him—the shadows that might hold the
Spider!
Wentworth groped with sensitive hands upon the floor. He found the ridge of the trapdoor, but it was already bolted fast from beneath! He cursed. His two bullets had hit Munro, he knew, but his voice afterward had been clear, and unstrained. Wentworth knew what that meant! Munro had worn a bullet-proof vest!

And now the Faceless One was making good his escape while death swept its dark silent wings through this meeting-room!

Wentworth whirled and went with long leaps toward the door. He needed light to tell him where it was! Over-turned tables were in his path, and once he sprawled painfully.

"That you, Duke?" a frightened voice.

"Yeah," Wentworth's tone was the sardonic voice of Duke. "That you, Sprague?"

As he spoke, he leaped . . . and struck with the barrel of his automatic. There was the crunch of the steel hitting bone, the thud as Sprague's head was driven against the door . . . and no sound as he fell because Wentworth eased him down softly. A moment later, he wrenched open the door and ducked out.

A bar of light slashed into the darkness and for that instant, the hunched, becaped figure of the
Spider
was clearly outlined. There was a blasting of guns, a concerted rush for the revealed opening. Wentworth locked the door and flung himself down the stairs, whirled back toward the rear of the Man o' War where the trapdoor had opened. He hit a door with his shoulder and it slammed open . . . and he was gazing into an empty garage, whose doors stood ajar. Overhead, there was a counterbalanced stairway and the locked trapdoor.

This way, Munro had fled . . . but he was gone past all capture now. And the press of gunmen was hard at Wentworth's heels!

Wentworth did not worry greatly about that pursuit.

Before Munro could get his men together, Wentworth must somehow save the men who were fated to be . . . burned alive! It did not matter that Wentworth knew the names of the two who were selected. Two more could easily be chosen! There was a hard-riding anger within Wentworth as he flung himself again into the coupe beside Jackson and ordered him harshly northward.

"A telephone, Jackson," he said quietly.

It was Wentworth himself who stepped from the coupe a few minutes later, Wentworth in dark tweeds, with a loose top-coat to shelter him from the sharpness of the winter wind, and neatly gloved hands. He moved swiftly, but more because of the complete efficiency of his every movement rather than because of hurried stride. There was an empty booth in the all-night drugstore which Jackson had chosen, and no one paid any heed to the quiet, self-contained man who slid into that booth. He snapped out the phone number of the district attorney.

Finally a sleepy voice came over the wire, "Wilton Toley speaking! Who is this?"

Wentworth laughed, "The
Spider
speaking, Toley. Are you awake yet you who sleep while crime ravages the city!"

Toley stammered, "What. Who? The
Spider?
Damn your soul . . . ."

Wentworth's voice cut in crisply, "In one hour, Toley, be at your office, and I will turn over to you one of the biggest cases of your career, complete with written evidence and witnesses. The police already are taking in most of the guilty men."

"What is it, man?" snapped Toley. Wentworth eased the receiver onto its hook. He did not need to say more, for Toley knew, as everyone knew, that the word of the
Spider
was inviolate!

Wentworth reached the coupe in a few swift seconds, long before Toley could get his befuddled senses together and think to trace the call . . . . Wentworth sat easily against the cushions, though he was beginning to feel some of the strain of the long night.

"Jackson," he said quietly, "I have in my pocket a list of the garages where the white fire trucks of the No-More-Fire Company are kept; also a list of their clients. I think if we borrow one of those white trucks, we will have very little difficulty in persuading the clients to accompany us!"

It was simple to acquire one of the trucks. There was only one man in the garage, for Munro's forces had been heavily depleted by the hours of battling against the
Spider.
Jackson slipped up and struck him neatly across the temple with a blackjack . . . . Afterward, two men wearing the long white raincoats of the No-More-Fire inspection service, and the red helmets, tooled one of the heavy fire trucks through the city streets . . . .

Wentworth made the first stop at an expensive apartment house, shouldered past the insistent doorman and left Jackson to watch over him. He hammered at a door then until an irritated man of middle age swung it wide. His sleepy eyes started wide, and he flinched back from the door.

"Jeremiah Wilton," said Wentworth in a hard voice, "you will come with me."

"I've paid off," the man stammered. "I paid off for the factory and for my apartment!"

"Come with me!" Wentworth ordered inexorably.

He allowed the man to pull on an overcoat from the hall closet and herded him to the white truck; and they pushed on to the next address. It was a shade over an hour later that the truck was blundering down Lafayette Street through the darkness of early morning. Wentworth had long ago abandoned the driving of the truck to his first captive, Milton; he had dropped Jackson at the last address. Now Wentworth stood at the extreme rear of the truck while Milton drove the last long way to the district attorney's office. Ahead of him were eleven other captives—all clients of No-More-Fires.

Wentworth began to talk quietly, but his voice reached clearly to every man on that truck.

"You think you are the prisoners of the racketeers that have been victimizing you," he said quietly. "You are wrong! You are the prisoners of the
Spider!
"

A moan went up from several of the men. They twisted about, and what they saw was no longer the white fireman with his red helmet. Instead, it was the
Spider
who stood erect in the rear of the truck.

"I will tell you the reason," he went on steadily. "If you obey me, you have nothing to fear! If you refuse . . . may God have mercy on your souls—for I won't! Gentlemen, we are about to pay a
visit to the district attorney. You will tell him everything you know about No-More-Fires!"

"No," a man cried. "Oh, God, they'll kill us all!"

Wentworth said grimly, "It is not a question of that at all! It is merely a question of who kills you! Obey me, or you will find death close upon your heels. Perhaps, you have never seen the seal of the
Spider!
"

A few moments later, Wilton pulled the white truck to a halt before the district attorney's office. Instantly, a horde of police charged from the darkness. Brilliant lights played over the truck, and guns covered every inch of it!

A police lieutenant leaped to the running-board, grabbed Wilton by the collar. "Where's the
Spider,
you?" he snapped.

Wilton struggled in his grasp, twisted toward the rear. "Back there!" he said. "He was back there, and good God, the
Spider
is gone!"

The police searched, but there was no evidence that the
Spider
had ever been aboard that truck . . . . except that on its sign, there glittered the ominous red seal of the
Spider!
The police did not know that Wentworth had taken only twelve prisoners; they only noticed that thirteen men walked into the room where District Attorney Toley paced angrily up and down behind his desk. He stopped and glared toward the thirteen men.

"All right!" he snapped. "All right! You've been paying money to racketeers! The police know all about it! I'll take your names, and afterward you'll tell me the whole truth."

Complete silence followed his tirade, but one man, more completely dressed than most of the others, shuffled forward. His hair was pulled down over his forehead, and there was wildness in his straining grey-blue eyes.

"Listen," he said, in a high voice, "you can't do this to me! We're American citizens, and you can't do this to any of us!"

"What's your name?" Toley snapped.

The man backed up.

"Look!" he shouted. "Look, the
Spider!
"

He pointed toward the ceiling, and there, ghostly against the white of the ceiling, but clear despite the lights of the room . . . there danced the shadow of the
Spider!
Terror broke the voices of the men, and in the confusion, the laughter of the
Spider
sounded in the room!

Jeremiah Wilton dropped to his knees,

"I'll talk. God, yes, I'll talk—only don't let the
Spider
get me!"

In the bedlam over the
Spider's
laughter, the man who had first challenged Toley slipped from the room into an adjoining office. He ran through a series of connecting rooms then, and as he ran he adjusted his hair, stripped off the slight disguise he had worn.

In a room where Jackson had deposited them earlier, by racing ahead of the white fire truck after their last capture, he found his quiet tweeds and his topcoat and rapidly donned them. A douse of the acid he carried sufficed to set the disguise fuming. Soon they would be entirely destroyed. He glanced out to make sure that the hallway was empty, and strode toward the front door. He was just opposite the doorway of the hearing room when he saw the familiar crisp-striding figure of Kirkpatrick entering the building!