Spider (8 page)

Wentworth met Kirkpatrick's frosty glare through a long moment, then slowly he lifted his hands. "Very well," he said grimly, "but I think you'll regret this, Kirkpatrick!"

Kirkpatrick's face was rigid as frozen earth. There was both determination and a wincing dread in his expression. "It is possible," he said heavily. "O'Holian, get on with the search!"

While the policeman made his rapidly thorough search, Wentworth allowed his eyes to stray covertly toward the sewer opening. A uniformed man was sauntering that way. If he should catch sight of that gun-butt . . . Wentworth shifted impatiently.

"It might help O'Holian, Kirk," he said shortly, "if you would tell him what he's looking for."

"A thirty-eight calibre automatic," Kirkpatrick said grimly. "A colt, with a test barrel."

"It ain't on him, sir," O'Holian reported steadily. "His gun is a forty-five, and he's got a license for it here."

Kirkpatrick's whole body seemed to relax, though his voice remained toneless. "Very well, O'Holian," he said. "That will do."

* * *

Wentworth saw that the policeman had reached the sewer. He was kicking the metal grating absently with his toe. How could he help seeing that gun butt?

"If you're through with your insults," he said stiffly. "I'm going home." His mind was very active.

Kirkpatrick nodded gravely. His frosty blue eyes were puzzled, but there was suffering in their depths. Actually, he detested these moments when he had to accuse his friend. Things would be a little smoother, now, with the searching over and done—if only . . . Wentworth turned aside and glanced once more toward the policeman. He was standing on the grating now, staring up at the front of the Smedley house. His toes were almost touching the dangling gun!

A grim smile touched Wentworth's lips. It was a time for hair-line measures! He turned excitedly toward Kirkpatrick, pointed toward the policeman.

"What is that man's name?" he demanded.

Kirkpatrick frowned. "Patrolman Kelly," he growled, "but what—"

"
Kelly!
" Wentworth called sharply. "Here at once!"

As he had calculated, the man started at the sudden summons. He executed a neat about face . . . and his toe brushed the gun, sent it spinning down into the sewer! Wentworth blew out a relieved sigh, but masked it. He peered hard into the face of the policeman. He shook his head, puzzled.

"I could have sworn, from the set of this man's shoulders," he said slowly, "that he was the driver of that coupe that got away from me tonight, but I got a glimpse of the man's face, and it wasn't Kelly. I'm sorry."

Kirkpatrick said sharply, "Do you think the police harbor assassins?"

Wentworth looked him directly in the eye. "It is peculiar," he said slowly, "that both times I've been fired on tonight, it has been after police brought me out into the open!"

Kirkpatrick started an angry answer, but cut off the words before he began them. "You are at liberty to go, Dick," he said slowly. "I . . . I bear you no ill feeling, man, but you must realize I can show no favoritism in the execution of my duty!"

Wentworth was torn. He wanted nothing more than to grip firmly the hand that Kirkpatrick half extended, but friendship with the commissioner was becoming too hampering. There was a titan's battle ahead, and he must throw off all handicaps.

Instead of taking the half-proferred hand then, Wentworth bowed stiffly, swung on his heel and strode away. There was no time for personal grief. He must hurl himself at once into the fray, where he had been forced to leave off to avoid the traps of the Iron Man's hirelings. As he stalked toward the corner bar, his eyes quested once more, and vainly, over the building from which the shots had come. There, a few minutes ago, the
Spider
had flaunted his robes at the police. Heaven grant that his substitute had not been trapped!

Wentworth cut into the bar room, angled at once toward a corner phone booth. There was only one party in the narrow dining room behind the bar, two men and women noisily jubilant over their drinks. Wentworth ignored them to shoot through a call to his home. Now, in a few minutes, he would learn the truth. If Jackson had left earlier, then it had been Nita who had worn the
Spider's
garb!

His call went through swiftly, and in a few moments, Ram Singh's harsh voice rasped over the line.

"Orders, Ram Singh," he snapped. "In my stores is a rubber diving suit with a helmet and oxygen tank. Get a fresh tank of oxygen and rush the equipment to Sutton Place. Understood?"

"
Han, sahib!
" Ram Singh echoed deeply. "Fortunate it is that thy servant obeyed his orders. That foolish braggart, Jackson, left almost as soon as thyself, and . . ."

* * *

Wentworth's face hardened at this confirmation of his guess. Jackson had gone to remove the body of the policeman from the dead-end street, and Nita . . . Nita had worn the
Spider's
robes!

"He went to risk his life for our honor, Ram Singh," Wentworth said gently. "Hurry, thou mighty warrior!"

Twice, he groped for the hook while his unseeing eyes stared straight before him. Once more, he was seeing that bravely daring figure flaunt defiance at the police, so small in the black and ominous robes of the
Spider.
God, if anything had happened to her. . . . Wentworth thrust at the door of the booth, and the fatigue of his strenuous night hit him all at once. The throbbing of his head seemed to swell. He stumbled as he moved toward the bar, and ordered a brandy. He could not search for her, not now, lest the police follow him. . . .

At his elbow, a voice spoke, "How about buying us a drink, big boy?"

Wentworth stared and whirled. "
Nita!
" he cried.

Nita was leaning her elbows on the bar beside him, and there was mockery in the gay smile that curved her lips. "So this is how you spend your spare time," she chided him. "I'm afraid, Dick, that you will be far from a model husband!"

Wentworth's hands gripped hers hard, and his eyes drank in the laughter in the violet depths of her gaze. "You come out of here, young lady," he ordered. "You and I are going to have a talk!"

Nita laughed, tucked her hand under his arm, and they were almost at the door when the barkeep returned with Wentworth's drink. The man swore, then shrugged and tossed the drink off himself.

"Quickest pickup I ever saw," he nodded confidently to himself in the mirror.

But Wentworth was not even aware he had spoken. He had no need of brandy, with Nita at his side, and he turned under her direction toward the coupe which she had parked two blocks away.

"You're taking too many chances, dear," he told Nita sternly. "Though in this instance I'll admit it was fortunate for me that you did. Nevertheless, you go home now as fast as I can ship you there!"

Nita shook her head in mock bitterness, though there was worry in her violet eyes. "That's the thanks I get for coming to you," she said. "I'm just beginning to enjoy myself!"

Wentworth smiled down on her. "You're fired," he told her grimly. His heart swelled at recognition of her bravery, for he knew that she was torn with terror for him; for the battle that lay ahead. As always, she thought not of herself, but of cheering him. Her hand clung to his now.

"Dick, surely now you can rest," she said. "Just for tonight—"

Wentworth jerked his head in negation. He said, "In this battle, every passing hour means more deaths! I'll take you to a taxi, and then—"

"And then?" Nita's question was no more than a breath.

"Why then," Wentworth said softly, "I shall hunt for robots! I have a theory about those monsters, and if I'm right it will be possible to stop them. I hope so, and—"

He broke off then as they stopped beside the coupe, for a man had suddenly darted around the nearby corner. Wentworth's hand flicked toward his automatic, but the man did not come toward them, did not even seem to see them. His breath rasped in his throat and he ran heavily, as a man would run at the extreme end of exhaustion. His shoulder struck a light post, and he reeled aside, but did not check his pace at all. He rounded another corner and was gone.

Nita said, "He looked . . . frightened!"

Wentworth whipped open the door of the coupe and thrust Nita inside and there was grim tension on his face. As he ducked in behind the wheel, he heard a woman's cry soar up desolately into the night. It was a hoarse cry, more animal than human in its intensity. Nita shuddered.

"In heaven's name, Dick" she whispered. "What can be happening?"

Wentworth said, "I hope I'm wrong. I hope to heaven I'm wrong!"

He sent the car surging forward, careened around the corner from which the man had spurted. Immediately ahead, the street was empty, but even as they sped forward, some people burst into sight from a side way. They were running desperately. The night swallowed them. The sound of their pounding feet was drowned out in a rumbling crash that spread its thunder like a tangible weight upon the air. The windshield of the coupe jarred with concussion, and afterward there were mounting, ghastly screams! The roar of mingled voices became a vast murmur of fear and horror.

Wentworth said, with difficulty, "I was right. The robots are marching!"

As if his words had brought forth the sound, a new rhythm in the paean of terror began to make itself felt, more than heard. It was even, deep as primitive drums, as if giant clubs were used to turn the earth itself into a drum. It was slow, with a heavy insistent rhythm; slow as a funeral dirge, but more ominous. It continued as Wentworth drove the coupe around another corner, and the scene burst upon his eyes.

At first, there was only the wildly terrified flight of people. They were in all stages of undress. Children screamed their fright as they ran barefooted across the freezing pavements; women raced with backward twisted faces and streaming hair, some falling, to rise and run again. A running man collided with another and lashed out at the other frenziedly. His blow fell viciously low in the body. The man he had struck did not check. He ran on, bent agonizingly forward, holding his body and still running. He did not even look at the man who had hit him.

In an instant, the street was blocked with the fleeing scores of people, and once more the
Spider
and Nita van Sloan heard the thunderous reverberation.

"Dick!" Nita gasped, and her voice was strained. "Dick, do you realize what they're doing! They're—they're pushing over buildings! Buildings in which people live! That must have been a huge tenement . . ."

The screams of the new victims were tossed up like sparks in the hot breath of a holocaust. Beside the car, a woman with a child in her arms tripped over the curb and fell! In an instant, she was buried under the rush of other people. Her cries rose weakly, but she was given no chance to regain her feet! The child wailed. . . . With an oath, Wentworth flung himself from the stalled coupe. Men collided with him as insensately as if he was a post. He had to fight furiously to divide the stampede so that he could reach the woman. She crouched miserably upon the pavement, elbows and knees on the concrete while she sheltered the child beneath her. In those few brief moments, her clothing had been torn almost from her; her left hand had been ground to a pulp.

Wentworth slammed his fists about him, knocked men aside and stooped to help the woman to her feet. His hands were gentle despite the stampede which in an instant had swept them past the coupe and into the eddy behind it. He placed the child in her arms.

The woman did not speak. Her drawn face peered once back the way she had come and then she was plunging on with the crowd, the child clasped in her arms. It was a fight to regain the side of the coupe. Wentworth flung himself to its top, stared down the dark way the people had come and, as he stared, he felt the strained pallor creep into his cheeks. The funereal rhythm was all about him, was palpable in the air. Heavy and slow and awful in its suggestion of power. For that single moment, Wentworth could see nothing . . . and then the drumbeat of fury was louder, was in the street itself. He was gazing at the glimmering steel helmets of an entire squad of robots. It was the ground-trembling impact of their steel-shod feet that he had heard!

Chapter Five
" Lock On The Helmet "

EVEN AS HE STARED, two of the robots detached themselves from the squad and pivoted to the left. Their hands reached out—and the entire front wall of a small tenement gave way before their pressure! Falling brick rained down upon their steel-clad heads; collapsing walls lapped like furious waters about their inhuman legs. When the job was done, they turned and walked out of the debris as a man would wade a brook, and behind them people screamed in discovery of fresh horror. Wentworth saw a child dangling from the broken edge of a high floor; saw that hold slip. . . .

Eight steel monsters there were, swinging in a formal squad in the midst of destruction. Those who lingered in their path, died. The careless clash of steel feet, the swing of beam-like arms brushed human beings from their paths like flies, and always there was that awful, overbearing rhythm, the dirge-like crunch of those awful feet!

Wentworth found that his automatic was in his fist and he swore at the futility of the gesture. Somehow, these things must be stopped, but more important than that right now was the safety of these scores, these hundreds who fled through the bitter night from the path of death. It was more fearsome than any slaughter these poor victims could recognize, more awful than screaming gun shells or aerial bombs. Those at least were the fiendishness of men, but for this thing they saw no explanation at all.

The robots, if such they were, moved with the cold and silent efficiency of machines. They marched on and, now and again, two of their number would wheel from ranks to push down the front wall of a building. They were as systematic as a highly trained drill team. They towered enormous and the death they dealt was contemptuous. The overcast skies were releasing their pent clouds in torrential rain. The wet steel glistened as the massive arms swung, and still they marched on, and another tenement crashed; other scores fled screaming from their path—or screamed, trapped beneath the falling debris!