Spider Read online

  Wentworth accepted his coat and hat from Ram Singh, laid his gaze upon the Sikh and Jackson. "You two will remain here pending further orders," he said curtly. "Do you mind, Kirk, if I tell them to send my lawyers over to headquarters if I have not returned in a few hours?"

  Kirkpatrick said grimly, "Not at all, Dick. If you have not returned in a few hours, your lawyers will be needed!"

  The eyes of the two men met in challenge and it was only Wentworth who smiled, albeit grimly. He buttoned his coat and deliberately pulled the soft brim of his felt over his brows. He had done what he could to meet this crisis. If Nita had not heard him, there would have to be another attempt, regardless of whether it aroused Kirkpatrick's suspicions still more. He must recover that gun before it fell into the hands of the police!

  "I'm ready, Kirk," he said quietly.

  Kirkpatrick nodded, motioned to Sergeant Reams and they filed out together. Wentworth was conscious of Jackson's eyes on him appealingly, of the smoldering anger that Ram Singh barely suppressed. His two men were ready to hurl themselves upon the police at any cost. They did not know what threatened, but that he was in danger was abundantly clear—and yet he had ordered them to remain behind! But it was necessary. If Nita obeyed his suggestion, there must be no added danger to her sweet life!

  As they crossed the first floor lobby, Wentworth glanced covertly at his watch and saw that almost five minutes had elapsed since he had first spoken to Nita. It was time enough for her to reach here . . . if she had heard! At the entrance, Wentworth tucked a cigarette between his lips and, just outside, he paused to flick flame to his lighter. He had a little trouble so that Kirkpatrick and Sergeant Reams passed him, turned stiffly to keep him under constant surveillance. Wentworth got the cigarette lighted, slowly pocketed the lighter . . . and still nothing happened. Had Nita then failed to get his message?

  "Come on, Dick," Kirkpatrick urged impatiently. "I've never seen you so dilatory as tonight." He jerked open the door of the big limousine, motioned Wentworth inside. Sergeant Reams flanked the door on the other side, gun in his fist. Wentworth caught the sigh that pushed to his teeth. He would have no choice then but to make a break for it, to try and conciliate Kirkpatrick afterward. He settled the brim of his hat more firmly about his brows—and heard the squeal of skidding auto tires!

  Wentworth stiffened at the sound. Out of his eye corners he saw a battered coupe sweep around the corner from beside the apartment house. The window nearest him was down and, even as he peered that way, he caught the silhouette of a slouch hat pulled low over the driver's brows. And then gun-flame blossomed from that dark interior! Lead screamed over his head and smashed through the glass in the door behind him!

  A shout sprang to Wentworth's lips, a shout of exultation! Nita had heard him and understood! Wentworth changed the cry to surprise, to fright. He went down on one knee, and two more of Nita's bullets slammed overhead! Then he had his own automatic out and was sprinting toward the coupe! It had straightened out of the skidding turn and was darting across Fifth Avenue. Out of his eye corners, Wentworth caught sight of Sergeant Reams. He had dropped to his knee behind a fire hydrant and the light gleamed coldly on his revolver. Kirkpatrick wheeled stiffly beside the limousine and the long-barreled .38 with which he was so expert was ready in his hand. Good God! If those two marksmen opened up on Nita. . . .

  Wentworth shouted fiercely. "Come on, Kirk! They're the crooks who tried to frame me! In that coupe!" He hurled himself forward in a violent sprint—straight into the line of fire of the two officers!

  Wentworth heard Kirkpatrick cry out harshly, felt the breeze of lead streaking past his head . . . and knew that he had disconcerted the aim of the police! Wentworth's own gun was kicking in his hand, but he was throwing his lead deliberately high. Half-way across Fifth Avenue, he shouted his challenge back to Kirkpatrick.

  "Come on! I got a tire on that coupe! We'll run it down!"

  He put everything he had into a hard sprint, heard Kirkpatrick's feet thud against the pavement behind him, heard his order to Sergeant Reams to "follow with the car!" As if to put a period to his sentence, one final shot blasted from the coupe before it whipped out of sight—and there was a hissing explosion followed by the sharp curse of Sergeant Reams. Nita, bless her cool courage and intelligence, had fully grasped the situation. She had shot a tire of Kirkpatrick's car!

  Kirkpatrick was fifteen yards behind when Wentworth rounded the corner into the side street. By the end of the next block, where the coupe, wobbling as if from a punctured tire, had turned, Wentworth had increased that lead to fifty yards. He heard Kirkpatrick call out breathlessly but answered only with a shout.

  "Come on!" he cried. "We're gaining!"

  Around that corner, the coupe was motionless at the curb, the door flung wide! With a long bound, Wentworth was on the running board and instantly the coupe lurched forward. Nita's quick, excited laughter was warm.

  "How do you like me as a torpedo, Dick?" she cried, still laughing gaily.

  The coupe whipped around the next corner and streaked on into the night. Briefly, street lights shone upon the smooth oval of Nita's face, glistened on her shining eyes. The tendrils of her chestnut curls twisted out from beneath the confines of the man's hat she had tugged low over her brows. She looked like a child at an amusing prank, but Wentworth knew what fears throbbed in her breast for him. It was part of the compact between them, the oath they had sworn when Wentworth had lost his fight against their love and told her the truth of his harried existence, and the fact that they could never marry while work remained for the Spider! She would never show her fears. . . .

  Wentworth mastered his pumping lungs, and his hand was gentle upon her shoulders. "Eastward, dear, and fast," he said. "Stop near the first taxi you see. . . . Sweet, you took too much chance back there, more than was necessary."

  Nita shook her head, and there was deviltry about the tender curve of her lips. "It had to be realistic, Dick. Is anything less than that worthy of . . . the Spider's true love?"

  Wentworth laughed softly. "I think you'll have to stop the car," he said.

  Nita's face was immediately sober. She glanced to the rear and asked sharply, "Are we followed?"

  Wentworth shook his head, "No, but I doubt if even the Spider's true love can drive efficiently while being kissed!"

  It was only an instant's pause on a dark side-street, half-way between danger and despair; then the coupe once more was boring through the night while Wentworth hurriedly explained the things that had happened this night; the things that still threatened to happen.

  "Without a doubt, dear," Wentworth rushed on, "Kirkpatrick must have thrown a strong guard about those houses on Sutton Place the instant he received the tip about the murder gun being there. But he will want to make the search in person. As soon as I leave you— there's a taxi parked ahead, I'll take that—phone Jackson to get out of the building without being seen. He is to proceed at once to Sutton Place, put on the robes of the Spider and, when he sees me talking to the police guards, he will show himself long enough to draw those guards away!"

  Nita drew in a slow breath. "The peril must be very great, Dick, for you to assign risky jobs to anyone except yourself!"

  Wentworth's arm closed hard about Nita's shoulders as she eased the coupe to a halt. "Greater than anyone could realize who has not seen those robots, if that's what the thing was," he said grimly. "Heaven grant, dear, that you never come in contact with them. If you do. . . . If you do run as fast as you can! Nothing can stop them!"

  The coupe halted, and Wentworth swept Nita once more into his arms. She was so small, so soft, in his powerful embrace; so vulnerable. Those monsters in steel. . . . His arms tightened. "When you've transmitted those orders, go to my home," he said. "You should be safe with Ram Singh to guard you. And—be careful, dear!"

  Nita's lips trembled under his caress, but her voice came out clearly, even with a hint of laughter. "Certainly," she said. "It is a lesson we have le
arned from you! Always to be careful of ourselves!"

  There was time for no more of these sweets stolen from a life of perpetual peril, of feverish battles. Wentworth flung around the corner, and sprang into the taxi, tossed a Sutton Place address at the driver. When he peered back, he saw Nita's brave figure turning into the corner drug store. Within a few minutes, Jackson would be receiving his orders. . . .

  There was a grim tautness in the thrust of Wentworth's jaw as he tore his thoughts away from Nita and her peril. His ruse had succeeded against Kirkpatrick. Within a few minutes now, he would recover that stolen automatic and then he could turn his attentions to the criminals who struck such shrewd and wanton blows against him. This was a battle that must be joined and settled quickly. He could not permit such creatures as these robots to range at the will of criminals. The potentialities for awful slaughter were too great. And already, he had had proof enough that the will for slaughter existed! Those four poor devils in the homes on Sutton Place. . . .

  A block from the looted homes, Wentworth paid off the cab and sauntered into an all-night drug store where he put through a call for his own apartment house, had the operator page Kirkpatrick. Within moments, the stormy voice of the commissioner blasted over the wire!

  "Where are you, Dick?" he demanded. "By God, you ran out on me, and—"

  "I trailed the coupe in a cab," Wentworth said crisply, "but the beggar got away from me finally on the upper East Side. I'm at Sutton Place now, where I expected you'd already be. Shall I wait for you here?"

  Wentworth heard Kirkpatrick's smothered oath over the wire. "You will go at once and place yourself in the custody of the first policeman you see," Kirkpatrick ordered. "There are twenty stationed around the looted houses on Sutton Place. At once, you understand, Dick? It is now three-fourteen. You will make that surrender by three-sixteen."

  Wentworth's voice rasped angrily into the transmitter. "This one time I'm taking orders, Kirk," he snapped. "Hereafter, you will come to see me on official business only!"

  He slammed the receiver into its hook and swung out of the phone booth. His eyes were narrowed and hard. He could not blame Kirkpatrick for doing his full duty, but it seemed to him that the commissioner was too quick at accepting anonymous information against a friend. The tips could have been only anonymous. Wentworth shook his head, bowed into the bitter wind that moaned along Sutton Place.

  The sky was overcast now, and only the transient beams from the street lights relieved the shadows. He saw the policemen ringed about the three buildings where the murders had occurred, and moved steadily toward them. A dozen blocks farther along was the dead-end street where he had battled the robot. But these police must have been thrown about the houses since that time. Had the murder of the policeman been reported?

  At the memory, Wentworth stopped sharply in his tracks. Jackson had said he would remove that body and Wentworth had given no counter-manding of the determination. Jackson might well have concluded that his instructions to remain at home had been given for Kirkpatrick's ears alone. In that case, there would be no diversion created here to permit his entrance. But he could not turn back now. Kirkpatrick had given him only two minutes, and the police guard had already seen him approaching.

  Wentworth sent his sharp gaze stabbing ahead, picked out the facade of Aaron Smedley's home. That was the most logical place for the planting of his gun, since the loot left in his apartment had come from that home. He must surrender to the police, yet elude them to recover that gun—and do it in a space of minutes. Kirkpatrick would be in furious haste to arrive now that he knew Wentworth was already here.

  Wentworth walked straight up to the nearest policeman, nodded to him pleasantly. "I'm meeting Kirkpatrick here," he said quietly. "I believe he'll be here in a few minutes."

  The policeman lifted his nightstick in salute. "Yes, sir," he agreed. "A bitter night to be on duty."

  Wentworth nodded absently, and leaned his hips against the iron fence which surrounded the basement well of the Smedley house. Minutes, and then Kirkpatrick would be here. His own course was clear. He would have to absent himself, take a chance on allaying Kirkpatrick's suspicions. . . .

  "Too cold," he agreed. "When the commissioner arrives, tell him I'm waiting in the bar room over there on the corner."

  Wentworth nodded, started across the street and then an oath sprang to his lips. He muffled it, kept deliberately on his way. It was not for him to call attention to that grim silhouette on the roof of the buildings across the street, a figure of hunched shoulders, draped in a long cape—a silhouette which any of the police, and half the populace of the city would recognize instantly, and. . . .

  Wentworth whipped about as a policeman lifted a hoarse shout: "Look! Hey, get him! Look, on the roof there—the Spider!"

  There was that moment's pause while the man's frightened shout ran down the street, and then there was a concerted crash of gunfire! Even then the figure on the roof did not immediately dodge back out of sight. It stood peering down into the dark canyon of the street, the black cape sweeping out on the breath of the wind. Wentworth's teeth set fiercely. Why didn't Jackson get back out of range? He had exposed himself long enough now. He—instead of retreating, the caped figure suddenly whipped out a gun and emptied it in a swift drumroll which shattered windows in the Smedley house behind Wentworth! Then it turned and ran lightly along the front ridge of the roofs across the street!

  The police went past Wentworth in a blue flood, their voices as fierce as the bay of hounds that rush in to the kill. Wentworth hesitated, while his eyes followed that flitting figure with the cape kiting at its shoulders. This was not like Jackson, to expose himself needlessly to gun fire. What was necessary he would do, but beyond that he was too wise a man, too experienced with guns and the carnage they wrought to take useless chances. Wentworth shook his head at the sudden, frightened thought that crossed his mind. He could hear, through the hammer of furiously released police guns, the thin distant wailing of a siren. It meant that Kirkpatrick was on the way; that Wentworth had only a few moments left to seize the chance which the Spider masquerade afforded him. But fear was still there in his heart as he darted, unobserved by the preoccupied police, through the smashed windows of the Smedley house! The figure of the Spider had seemed so small! But this was madness. It could not be . . . Nita!

  Wentworth told himself that, as he quested swiftly through the lower floor of the Smedley house, but his mind was distracted. If Jackson had left on his self-appointed errand, this was exactly what Nita would do; come herself in the masquerade of the Spider! God, he had to make this fast! It would be just like Nita to continue the diversion until she saw Wentworth emerge safely from the beleaguered house! Wentworth's pocket flash eagerly probed the room, glittered on the smashed shards of art treasures which the killers had left. Wanton vandalism. Staring at the wreckage, Wentworth could see the work of the steel flails which were the arms of robots. Anger shook him. He sent the flashlight toward the window portieres . . . and it glinted on his gun! With a glad cry, he sprang toward it.

  Outside, the hammer of guns went on, and the shriek of the siren was louder. When he reappeared, the false Spider could flee. Wentworth stooped swiftly toward the gun . . . and it was only belatedly that his caution returned to him. He remembered then that his light had passed this spot once before, and that on the previous occasion the gun had not been here!

  Even as the significance of that fact flashed across his mind, he hurled himself toward the portieres while his left hand clawed for the heavy automatic that nested beneath his arm. He was too late. Before his hand could close on the gun, before he could touch the portieres, he saw a hand snake out from behind the curtain and a blackjack swung viciously toward his skull!

  Brilliant lights exploded within Wentworth's skull, and he pitched to the floor. There was agony in his brain, but all his senses were terribly acute. He tried to drive strength into his limbs, and he could not move at all. But he could hear with a c
larity that seemed to give him a new vision. Feet moved softly toward him. There was a thin snickering laughter just above his head, and then the chill touch of steel in the palm of his right hand. After that, only the clatter of guns and the mounting shriek of the siren.

  Wentworth knew what had happened all right. That was the damnable part of the thing. His brain was startlingly clear, though he could move not even a finger. The crook, perhaps the leader himself of this dread combination of horror and robbery, had hidden here to make sure that the incriminating gun was not removed before the police were at hand. Wentworth, his mind concentrated on his fears for Nita, had walked into the trap. He would lie here unconscious now, and the gun beneath his hand was a murder weapon!

  "Now," he heard that hateful voice just above him whisper. "Now, the Spider will walk no more!"

  Chapter Four

  On The Spot

  A LESSER MAN THAN THE SPIDER would have fought through brief seconds against the benumbing effects of that blow and, failing, would have been doomed. Wentworth's body was defeated, but his mind fought on; his will was a flame of naked steel. That siren dinned dimly in his ears, and the Spider commanded his body to rise.