THE SPIDER-City of Doom (38 page)

A cry leaped to his lips! Ignoring the blare of that screaming horn ahead, a small car pushed out across the intersection with Ninth Avenue. Too late, the girl who was driving saw the juggernaut of the limousine, tried to turn two ways at once . . . and clapped her hands over her eyes in despair. The limousine swerved a foot, caught the small car on the right rear wheel. The coupe looped, turned over, slammed upside down into an elevated pillar. The limousine was past . . . but the coupe was not through! It bounced from the pillar, fell to its side and spun slowly around—directly into the path of the taxi!

The cab driver stood on the brakes. He was half-erect, crouched behind the wheel. He flung the cab into a twisting turn to the right, and the tires screamed, skated across the wet pavement. He countered the skid with a wrench of the wheel, caromed off an elevated pillar with a shriek of torn metal. Glass showed across the front seat from a shattered window . . . and then the cab was roaring northward along Ninth Avenue.

"Left again!" Wentworth ordered, coldly. "I'll double that bonus! That man deliberately hit the girl's coupe. Deliberately, I tell you—to stop us!"

The driver's jaw was set and he whipped to the left, fought the car out of the skid, and floored the accelerator.

"Gawd A'mighty," he said. "Gawd
a'mighty!
She wasn't even screaming. She . . . ."

Wentworth shook his head. There was a stinging in his eyes, and a fury in his heart. If he lost the trail this time . . . . Damn it, he could not lose the trail! That poor girl in her shattered coupe. He had seen her at the last moment there. Seen her with the steering-post thrust through her frail body like a brutal, blunt javelin. At least, after that first moment of fright, she had not suffered. By God, Munro should suffer!

And there was Nita.

The taxi was hammering down the last straight stretch toward West Street where the elevated highway ran. No entrance at this corner, or the one below. At any moment, he should see the limousine flash past. Wentworth weighed his gun. Not a chance of hitting it in the brief while it would be exposed. He sat tensely forward and his hands fondled the gun.

"Must have turned south!" the driver shouted.

Wentworth nodded wordlessly, braced himself. The cab hit the smooth, shining pavement in a broadside skid, writhed between two of the highway supports and straightened out. Wentworth strained his eyes ahead . . . . Dear God, the street was empty!

Somewhere in those last few blocks, Munro had twisted aside, or else . . . or else he had driven straight into one of the piers that lined the water's edge! Wentworth's gaze whipped toward the docks and then, above the high hammer of the cab's motor, he caught another sound. It was a deep-throated roar, and there was a blustering quality to that tone that he recognized! Behind the walls of those piers, a seaplane was taking off!

"That pier!" Wentworth shouted, and pointed.

The cab broad-sided and lashed across the width of West Street toward the broad doors of the pier. They had been open, but they were closing now, closing swiftly. Wentworth thrust out his body through the window and leveled the automatic. He saw a hand, white against the edge of the sliding doors, squeezed the trigger once!

The hand jerked out of sight—and the door did not close any farther!

"Straight through! Fast!" he snapped.

The cab jounced violently at the short ramp, lunged through the opening. A machine-gun chattered viciously from the darkness but it came an instant too late. The car was already inside . . . and Wentworth's gun swiveled and blasted! The pale violent flicker of the machine-gun swept upward, higher . . . higher until it pointed at the zenith. Then it stopped . . . and the driver was standing on his brakes. The cab's tires howled on the wooden floor.

"Lie down!" Wentworth threw at the driver. "Lie down flat and don't move!"

His door was already open and the
Spider
vanished with his first long leap, into the black shadows that clustered thickly against the walls. If he made any sound at all, it was swallowed in the deep bellowing of the airplane engine. There was a narrow door open to the water, and the glisten of the greyer night came through. Across that opening, a black shadow flitted . . . and then, just outside on the water's edge, Wentworth checked. He had one bullet left in that light gun in his fist. One bullet . . . and the plane was already almost completely out of range now!

There was no time to delay. Wentworth could not see the pilot, shielded behind the crash-pad in the cockpit. But he knew this type of plane, knew where its gas tank was! Wentworth squeezed off his last bullet . . . and the plane charged on, tipped up on the pontoon step, and began its rush to the final take-off. It whirled northward into the wind, and the sound of the motor dwindled, became louder as the plane lifted against the sky. Wentworth stood for a long minute and watched the flicker of the exhaust as the ship climbed steadily.

Now . . . .

Wentworth stared, and slowly a hard smile moved the lips beneath the scarf mask. Nita had signaled SOS and the password that Munro had given in the offices of No-More-Fires, Inc., had been "From my ashes, I arise again!"

Wentworth's lips parted in the harsh, mocking laughter of the
Spider.
He whipped back inside the pier, and raced for the taxi.

"Get me to a telephone," he told the driver softly, "and then get me to Pier Seventy on the East River as fast as this cab will go." He laughed again, and there was triumph in the sound. "Tonight, Munro dies!"

Death . . . .

He flung himself into the cab, but the smile was no longer on his mouth, and there was a touch of fear in his grey-blue eyes as the taxi whined in a U-curve and spurted for the doors. Tonight, Munro would die, but . . . would he die in time to save Nita? Nita . . . .

IN the tight, small room in which Nita had been imprisoned day and night since her capture by Munro, she paced with quick, controlled steps. She still wore the evening dress of ivory satin, a gown of Grecian simplicity exquisitely molded to her body. The long skirt switched from side to side behind her slim ankles and her narrow white hands were clasped rigidly before her. Her violet eyes did not see the glistening white walls about her.

An hour now had passed; an hour since she had phoned that message to Dick over the radio with a pistol held against her skull. She had been able to do so little to warn him, to tell him the hideout of Munro, but it had been all she had dared. Fortunately, Munro had not been beside her at the time, or she might not have succeeded as well as she had! If only she had dared to blurt out the truth to Dick! She shook her head, laid her wrist against her forehead, and wearily thrust up her chestnut curls. No, that would not have done either. If those men had known she was signaling Dick her whereabouts, then she would have been moved . . .

Nita checked her swift pacing to stare fixedly at the wall. "Don't be a fool, Nita," she whispered to herself. "There is no hope!"

It was not that she doubted Dick, or his strength, but Munro had taken great delight in detailing to her the trap into which Dick would walk. She did not see how even his superb mind and body could save him. When it was over, Munro had promised her, he would come back . . . and 'execute' her!

Nita's head sagged slowly forward, and she dropped to her knees on the floor. Perhaps she prayed, but certainly it was not for herself. When she spoke, it was a dear name that was on her lips, "Dick!" Time dragged on wearily, and twice Nita lifted her head, thinking that she had heard the deep approaching hum of an airplane motor. She knew that Munro was using a plane tonight. When he returned . . . Nita's breast lifted in a slow, taut breath. Why, then, there would be an end of worrying! If only she had been able to tell Dick more, she might hope. But she knew only that she was on a large yacht. No glimpse outside of her stateroom had been vouchsafed her, but she could feel the lift and swell of the sea beneath the keel, and hear the mewling of gulls, and distant sob of whistles. There was a bell-buoy somewhere near that she could hear, mournfully clanging, when the wind was right.

A feeble clue, but her SOS meant danger at sea. Dick would recognize that. Beyond that, she must depend on his keen brain—if he were still alive!

Presently, Nita heard shouts on the deck of the yacht, heard the splashing and the drumming of a motor as a launch was lowered to the water. After a while, it returned, and it was not long afterward that she heard the key turn in the lock of the door. Nita rose slowly to her feet; her chin lifted, and she stood that way when the door was flung wide.

Two men stood, either side of the door in the narrow corridor, and facing her was . . .
Munro!

As always at sight of that flame-seared face, those distorted eyes and mouth that seemed perpetually twisted in a savage leer, Nita could not repress a shudder. She saw amusement glisten in the eyes.

"You are quite right,
mamselle,
" Munro said, with a calm that was gloating. "The time has come for you to be . . . executed. Come!"

Munro stepped aside, and the eyes of the four men were upon her. Nita's head lifted, and a disdainful smile touched her lips. As calmly as if she answered an invitation to dinner, Nita stepped across the raised sill of her stateroom and turned left along the corridor behind Munro. The men fell in about her in a square and the march of their feet made a regular soft thudding to the sharp rap of her own high heels. Nita felt coldness about her heart . . . but it was despair, not fear.

If Munro returned, it meant that Dick had . . .
failed!

The corridor ended in a tight little salon and Munro turned sharply to the right, dropped into a chair that was isolated like a throne. But for the moment, Nita's eyes did not rest on him. The salon had been changed since the time, only a brief hour or two before, she had been marched through it to broadcast that warning to Dick. There was no furniture in it at all, except that lonely chair and . . . and what stood opposite it!

Nita drew in a slow, quivering breath as she saw the way she was to die, and afterward did not look at the thing at all. She did not need to. It was engraved forever in her mind. Her lips twisted a little. For her, 'forever' might be so brief a while!

A narrow tower of old stained wood had been erected against the wall. It was wedged tightly between ceiling and floor, and there was a knife between its side beams. A knife that was a triangle of glistening steel, sharpened to a razor edge and heavily weighted above. Munro had erected a guillotine!

The bulkhead behind it had been draped in canvas, and there was another strip spread beneath the guillotine itself. Nita could not repress a shudder. She knew the reason for those strips of canvas. When the knife fell . . . .

Munro chuckled. "I see you get the picture very completely, my dear," he said.

Nita's head came up and her eyes rested scornfully upon the hateful, scarred face of the man in the chair. There were other men in the room now. Nine of them lined the wall behind the chair, and there were guns in their hands. Munro, too, held a gun in his right hand . . . . Suddenly, Nita laughed!

"He escaped!" she said breathlessly. "You set your elaborate trap, and he walked into it as he said he would . . . but he escaped! And Munro, you are afraid! That is why you have guns in your hands!"

Emotion twisted the man's distorted mouth horribly, and his voice came out in a feral snarl. "Yes, the dog escaped!" he said harshly. "And he cheated me out of three-quarters of my loot for this night! He pursued me through the streets and put a lucky bullet through the gas-tank of my plane, so that it was wrecked. But I had time to call to my men by radio and have the boat lowered! He did all these things . . . and yet he shall not long enjoy even that partial triumph. Do you know why, you pretty fool?"

"Why, yes," Nita said quietly. "I know why. You intend to kill me." But the smile did not leave her lips. She even laughed a little, lightly. "Do you think you can harm me now? You did not kill him, and that is all that matters. You are doomed, you and all your men!" She shrugged her smooth round shoulders slightly. "You say I am to die. It does not matter. For I know that I shall be quickly avenged!"

Munro leaned sharply forward in his chair, and the rage was a living black fire in his eyes, but his voice came out softly. "As to that, we shall see," he said softly, "but just now I am more interested in your own brief future. My executioner will be here soon. He is arraying himself, for as you know I like things to be just so. Your executioner will wear formal clothing, my dear, and you will not mind if he wears a black hood? It pleases me to have him dress so."

Nita smiled. She no longer saw these men. Hope that would not die sang in her heart. So long as Dick was alive . . . .

"I think that is very nice of you, Munro," she said, in condescension.

Munro jerked to his feet. "I have made some other . . . nice arrangements!" he snapped. "You have already perceived that the drop of the knife will be shorter than is customary. I have compensated for that by a sharper angle of the blade, and extra weight. There is another little device which I rather like. When the plank to which you are strapped drops into place, there will be no delay. It will automatically release the knife! To compensate for the loss of those few seconds of anticipation, my dear, I have arranged for you . . . to watch the knife fall! When you are strapped to the plank, it will be face-up! But try to keep your features composed, my dear, for when you are dead, I shall deliver you back to this lover of yours! Your body will be shipped to Richard Wentworth! Your body—and of course your head!"

Nita fought the panic that spurted into her brain. She could not let herself think of the horror this man painted, lest she give him the satisfaction of showing her fear. She clung to her smile . . . and heard footsteps on the deck behind her.

"Ah, my executioner!" said Munro.

Nita turned then, stately as any Marie Antoinette facing the tumbril, and looked at the figure of the man who was to take her life. As Munro had said, he was clothed in formal evening dress, but it fitted him very badly. The black hood hung loosely about his throat, and eyes peered out at her from two slits that shadowed them darkly.