THE SPIDER-City of Doom (21 page)

Suddenly, without warning, Ram Singh reeled backward, his head knocked back between his shoulders. Briggs snatched his leather portfolio and sprang past Nita against the wall.

"If one of you moves," he cried sharply, "the ship sinks!" He held the portfolio raised above his head, a gun in the other hand.

"Nonsense, Briggs," Kirkpatrick growled. "That bag couldn't possibly hold enough gas to sink this ship."

Briggs laughed shrilly. "It holds enough to release the big tank of gas I have hidden aboard the ship. The ventilation system of the ship will carry this to it. Your guns are useless. I released gas into the room when I first entered, just a little, but enough to make your guns explode if you fire them. My own weapon is impervious to the gas."

Anse Collins was crouched with his fists clenched, his eyes glaring. Nancy Collins had shrunk back from Briggs and Nita picked herself up slowly from the floor where Briggs had hurled her. She dropped the wig from her hands with a shudder of distaste.

"Give up, Briggs," Kirkpatrick snarled at him. "You can't escape . . . ."

Briggs' gun came up slowly. "Oh, yes, I can," he said. "I can kill you-all—my southern accent again—take your plane and release the gas. Yes, I think I should escape."

"The
Spider
has your daughter captive," Wentworth said quietly.

Briggs glared at him. "I shall make you tell where she is, Wentworth," he said curtly. "Talk, or your Nita shall suffer terribly before she dies. A bullet through her white belly . . . . There's no use in pretending you're not the
Spider.
I know you are. This stuff about getting that story from Bee Ross—That's all hokum!"

"My gun also is impervious to the gas," Wentworth put in quietly. His weapon was leveled at the little man's stomach.

"A bluff," snarled Briggs, "a bluff that will get you nowhere!"

Abruptly he sprang sideways, flung his arms about Nita van Sloan so that he held the pistol in front of her—the pistol and the portfolio.

"Grab his bag!" Wentworth snapped.

Nita snaked her arms from out of his grip, seized the portfolio with both hands. Briggs snarled, raked at her head with his automatic and she reeled forward, but she still clutched at the bag, doubled her body forward to protect it. Wentworth sprang sideways, his automatic jerking up, but Briggs was too swift for him. The small man bounded like a rubber ball, went out through the suite's door into the hall and banged the barrier shut behind him. He blasted lead through the panel and Collins dropped to the floor, his left leg shattered by a bullet. He cursed violently. Nancy flung down on her knees beside him, shielding him with her body from more lead.

"Oh, Anse," she moaned. "God, don't let him die!"

Briggs shouted outside the door.

"The first man to open the door dies," Briggs bellowed. "Remember your guns are useless."

Wentworth charged the door and wrenched it open, hurling himself aside. More lead streamed through the opening, hammering the wall. Kirkpatrick, who had rushed forward, stopped with a grunt, sat down heavily with both arms locked across his belly. He staggered to his feet and pulled a shattered gun from his belt. Briggs' bullet had struck there. He reeled a moment, sank weakly down to the floor. He wasn't injured badly but the blow had paralyzed his muscles.

"
Sahib
," Ram Singh's voice was sharp but low at Wentworth's elbow. "I could climb out through the porthole."

"Say it loudly," Wentworth whispered, and the Hindu repeated, as if he were calling from across the room.

"
Sahib,
if I could get past the door, I could climb out the porthole."

"I'll knock out the light," Wentworth called back. He did that, then thrust his gun into his belt, sprang for the door and caught the lintel with both hands. He swung with his feet doubled up and landed softly on all fours in the hallway. No shot welcomed him and his lips skinned back from his teeth in a tight, fierce grin. His ruse had worked, had drawn Briggs away from his guard in fear that he might be flanked.

Darting soft-footed along the hall, Wentworth swiftly figured out the geography of the ship, where the ventilation system would shoot the fumes that Briggs had planned to release in the stateroom. He frowned as he ran, shook his head. It was nonsense. The ventilators did not blow out of the rooms. They blew fresh air into them. He should have grasped that at once. The whole thing had been a bluff. Briggs had come into the suite without any suspicion that he might be exposed and had cleverly seized on a ruse to stall off capture.

A picture flashed into Wentworth's mind. Eddie Blanton telling of the destruction of the pirate yacht. A tank on the deck, he had said. Wentworth recalled abruptly that he had seen a cylindrical tank in the forward deck-well, lashed to the deck. He threw caution to the winds and sprinted.

Wentworth plunged into the opening from which the man had issued, found a narrow companionway winding upward.

He grabbed the rails and yanked himself up the steps, reached the deck above and spun out into the open.

Wentworth streaked forward along the deck, sprang to the railing. The well was in shadow, but he made out the cylindrical form of the tank, made out a man hunched above it.

"Get away from that tank, Briggs," he roared, "or by heaven I'll shoot the heart out of you."

Mocking laughter floated up to him and the cover clanged against metal as Briggs wrenched it from the tank. Good God! What was Briggs yelling?

"Too late,
Spider
," he jeered from the darkness. "You're too late. You can't reach me in time to stop the gas. You can't shoot because your gun will blow up . . . ."

Wentworth sent his wild laughter into the night. "I can shoot, Briggs!" he shouted. "I had a gun plated with gold for just this emergency . . ." He plucked an oiled rag that protected the inside of the barrel from the muzzle, threw a half dozen shots at that huddled figure on top the tank.

He sprang to the rail, balanced for an instant, then sprang out into the darkness toward the steel deck of the well.

Briggs' scream came again, nearly inarticulate words. "You . . . damned . . . ." It mingled pain and startled surprise, then changed to a piercing shriek of absolute terror.

Wentworth's feet banged on the deck and he sprawled on hands and knees, his gun flying from his hand. He fought to his feet, lunged toward the bulk of the tank. He could no longer see Briggs, but in his nostrils was an acrid burning odor. It strangled him, bit at his eyes. He knew what that was. The steel-eater had escaped, but had enough of it got out to soften the
Britannia
's plates?

With a sob, he flung himself on the tank, groping with nails that grated painfully on its sides for the lid that Briggs had removed. He heard the Master screaming, heard him beg for mercy, and the sounds were hollow. They were accompanied by a muffled clangor of leather beating steel.

As Wentworth's groping hands found the lid, he realized what had happened. His bullets sprayed into the darkness had struck Briggs and bowled him into the opening of the tank of gas! Remembering what had happened to that other man who had been caught in a concentrated fog of the steel-eater, Wentworth felt a horror stab into his soul. Briggs was being eaten alive by the gas!

But there could be no hesitancy. Moments were precious. Already enough of the gas might have escaped to sink the
Britannia.
If he paused to haul Briggs from his torture chamber, more of the vicious steel-eater would leak out. The ship would certainly be doomed. Wentworth's shoulders swelled. He seized the round metal lid of the tank's manhole and with a heave slapped it into place. Its clang was hollow and cracked and Briggs' rising scream was muted.

"Soap!" Wentworth yelled at the bridge. "Get soap and swab down the decks and plates! Fast, man!"

Behind him, he heard Kirkpatrick catch up the cry. The Commissioner had recovered from that bullet blow against his stomach, realized what he was doing, realized that soap would counteract the acid effect of the steel-eater.

The ship was safe and Wentworth's head wrenched back between his shoulders as the fearful grim laughter bubbled from his lips. He was laughing with fierce pleasure, the laughter that comes from the gods when a human monster's own works turn upon him and destroy him. And he was echoing, too, the shout of triumph with which the world hails cosmic retribution. Thinking of the tens of thousands that had died, the tens of thousands more that would go through life as cripples because this man had longed for gold, Wentworth reached for the turnbuckles that would secure the lid of the tank and seal Briggs in his cell of acid gas—gas that concentrated as it was here, would eat through living, human flesh.

And as Briggs' muffled screams of agony, his beating upon the walls that imprisoned him grew weaker, Wentworth leaned against the tank and his hands shook. Finally the sounds ceased within and the
Spider
lifted a drawn face toward the stars that shed dim light down upon the
Britannia,
upon the two thousand souls he had saved. And the
Spider
shuddered.

"It was horrible," he said hoarsely. "But it was necessary and it was just. God knows it was just!"

THE lounge corridor that led to the terrace garden of the Hesperides Club was deserted. Inside, warm lights cast a subdued glow; the thumping rhythms of a swing band fought against the wolf whine of the November winds. At the end of the corridor, the French doors were tightly sealed. No patron of the club would wish to brave that terrace, open to the arctic breath from the nearby river. Yet now, someone was outside. The knob of the door turned slowly. And against the lighted panes of glass, there was a queerly distorted shadow, as if a man with curiously hunched shoulders crouched there, working on the lock!

Muted shouts and a muffled shot from outside slapped across the musical murmur that sifted into the corridor from the huge dining-room, but these sounds were swallowed in the universal thump of the orchestra. There was a brittle snap of breaking metal . . . and the door thrust open! A few, hard fine snowflakes whirled in through the opening and the curtains shivered in the cold. Then a figure whipped into the corridor, the door clapped shut and a man whirled to send his piercing blue-grey gaze stabbing through the dim reaches of the club.

The shouts outside were louder, but there were no more shots . . . yet!

The man's lipless mouth twisted in a thinly bitter smile, and long silent bounds carried him along the carpeted hallway. A broad-brimmed black hat was drawn low over his brows, and as he ran a long, black cape whipped and bellied from his shoulders. A handkerchief was bound about his right hand, and the white cloth was stained with sinister red!

A dozen feet ahead, the door of a private dining-room opened quietly, and a waiter stepped into the corridor. His head was bent, and there was a knowing smile on his lips, slyness in his eyes. He straightened, and saw the racing figure, and the smile grew lop-sided on his lips; his mouth strained with the beginning of a scream that could not drag itself free of his lips.

"My God! The
Spider!
"

The
Spider's
leap was as fierce as the charge of a tiger! His left fist cut a crisp arc to the waiter's chin! He eased the man to the floor and, with a swift glance behind him, sped on! He whipped around the corner toward the great arch that was the main entrance to the dining-room!

An instant later, the terrace doors burst open and four men spilled into the corridor. They were hatless, without overcoats, faces burnished by the wind. Guns were in their fists and their eyes were hot and eager. Their leader pointed a hand toward the prostrate waiter, and the hand trembled.

"He came this way!" the man said, and there was a tremor in his voice, too, like the whine of a dog when the scent is hot. "Rex, stay here! Watch those doors! Mac is bringing the other boys around the front, and I'll get Duncan. By God!" He lifted a clenched fist on which the knuckles shone, white as bone. "By God,
we've got the Spider!
"

Three of his men raced on. The man called Rex stood beside the closed terrace doors. His eyes searched the doorways, the corridor. They even flicked to the ceiling. It was all right for Butch to leave him here to watch for the
Spider
, but God in heaven, what chance did one man stand against the
Spider
? That guy just wasn't
human.
Let a guy step outside the law, and try to grab himself a little easy money—and down upon him came the
Spider!
You could bribe cops, and judges; a smart mouthpiece could wriggle you through most any scrape, but from the
Spider
, there was no chance of protection at all!

Rex clutched his gun until his forearm ached. Behind him, the wind rattled the door . . . and he jumped two yards away from it, whipped about with a shaking gun-hand.

"Geez!" he whispered. "I wish the gang would come back!"

Just short of the arched entrance to the main dining-room of the Hesperides Club, the gunmen had gathered in a tight knot. Their wary eyes skimmed over the laughing guests inside the doorway. They were in a side alcove off the main lobby. Telephone booths lined one wall and no one heeded them. The man called Butch stood tautly, with his lips folded in against each other. His breath made rasping sounds in his nostrils.

A compact broad-shouldered man, smoothly plastered head thrust forward aggressively, swung around the corner and confronted.

"What the hell is this, Butch?"

Butch faced him. His words pushed but like bits of metal between clamping teeth. "The
Spider!
He came in here! Duncan, we've got him!"

Duncan's cold gambler's eyes narrowed. "By God, if we can get him, I'd almost be willing to wreck the club! You boys spread out. Doors plugged? Good! Mac, stay here. The rest of you . . . .
Come on!
"

The man called Mac had a sly, pointed face. His eyes were wide, round and palely shallow, the eyes of the killer. "The dining-room, Duncan," he said softly, the words almost lisped.