THE SPIDER-City of Doom (25 page)

More plainly than any words, Duncan had said: "
This is a matter between you and me,
Spider. A little private duel we shall finish after a while. I wouldn't want the police to interfere!
"

Behind them, Kirkpatrick was issuing crisp orders to his men, and Wentworth swung about on his heel, lifted a hand in salute. "You came sooner than I had expected, Kirk," he called, "and I see you've brought extra guests. Good evening, Sergeant Reams!"

The sergeant nodded jerkily. His face was red from the burn of the winter cold, and there was frost in his blue eyes.

"Good evening, sir," he said, "and to you, Miss van Sloan!"

Kirkpatrick strode sharply up to Wentworth, and for once there was no friendliness in his saturnine face. His brilliant blue gaze held no recognition whatever.

"Duncan," he said. "I'll need your office. Bring that hood called Mac. Wentworth, kindly accompany me."

Wentworth shrugged, "I receive the most pressing invitations!" he said comically to Nita. "If you'll wait for me, dear?"

Nita laughed. "Nothing of the sort! I'm coming with you! I'm sure Stanley won't mind, will you, Stanley?"

For once, Kirkpatrick's faultless manners were in abeyance. "As you like, Miss van Sloan!"

He pounded his heels into the soft carpeting as he headed for Duncan's office. Nita's hand rested lightly on Wentworth's arm. The quizzical smile remained on Wentworth's lips, but he wished Nita were out of it. He did not know what evidence Kirkpatrick might have against him, and he could not afford to be slapped into a prison now, even though he might manage to clear himself in trial! Munro would not await his release to press his damnable arsons, for whatever foul profit he derived from it. Human lives were at stake. Beside that fact, nothing in Wentworth's life could be important!

If Kirkpatrick's evidence was strong, Wentworth would have no choice but to make a break for it!

Kirkpatrick was his closest friend, and often they had worked side by side against the bitter enemies of mankind. But Kirkpatrick had long openly suspected Wentworth of being the
Spider,
though he lacked proof to substantiate that belief. Wentworth knew that if ever his friend did obtain the evidence, he would be treated like any criminal outside the law. Kirkpatrick's allegiance was to society's code of laws—not to an individual's application of justice, however right. So stern was his service to that code that friendship would not weigh against it for an instant.

And Kirkpatrick's manner had served notice that tonight they were not friends; tonight, they were the forces of law and a man who might be a murderer!

Wentworth seated Nita suavely in Duncan's large, over-furnished office, dropped nonchalantly into a chair himself. He looked up to find Kirkpatrick standing on braced legs in the middle of the office, his face stern above the uncompromising thrust of his jaw.

"Wentworth," he said sharply, "I'll ask you to account for every minute of your evening from seven o'clock to now."

"An alibi, in fact," Wentworth smiled. "Am I to know of what you suspect me? Ah, well . . . ."

"This is serious, Wentworth!" Kirkpatrick snapped.

Wentworth's face obediently fell into serious lines. "I don't think I care for your manner, Kirk," he said quietly. "I have been here at the Hesperides Club with the exception of a brief trip to my apartment and back. I remained at the apartment between four and five minutes."

"The reason for that trip!"

Wentworth explained casually about the false report that Nita's cousin had been injured.

"It has puzzled me greatly, Kirk," he finished. "No one at all had been injured. The doorman at my apartment, who was supposed to have made the call, denied any knowledge of it. In fact, Kirk, it almost seems that some one wanted to destroy my alibi for precisely that time!"

Duncan was leaning his hips against the desk, smoking. He smiled, and interrupted. "That undoubtedly explains what I heard, Commissioner," he said. "I heard reports that Mr. Wentworth was to be held up and robbed. I didn't wish him to be annoyed, so I sent along a bodyguard in another car. Except for the few minutes when he was in his own apartment building, they did not lose sight of his car, did you, Mac?"

Mac's face was ludicrous with surprise. He swallowed, tried for his usual sly grin, missed it badly. "That's the truth, Commissioner!" he said. "We followed that Daimler all the way across town and back again, and there he was, big as life, sitting in back with the dame."

Nita's laughter was a trill. "Now, see, Dick," she said. "Why can't you call me interesting things like that? I'm a 'dame'!"

Wentworth's gaze locked with that of Duncan, and once more he was puzzled by the mocking shine of the man's masked eyes. A cold suspicion raced through Wentworth's mind, but when he rose to his feet, it was casually.

"That's very kind of you indeed, Duncan," he murmured. "I wondered at the purpose of the men who followed me. You were one, er . . . Mr. Mac? Thank you very much indeed."

Wentworth held out his hand, with the adhesive stripped across the back, and shook hands with Mac, then offered his hand to Duncan.

He saw uncertainty touch Duncan's eyes. Kirkpatrick's growl behind Wentworth held relief in its tones. Much as he despised to accept the word of those who lived on the fringes of the law, he felt that Duncan must speak the truth—at least so far as the alibi was concerned for he knew Wentworth would never enter into a bargain with such a man as this.

"I have my own doubts about the reason for your surveillance of Mr. Wentworth," Kirkpatrick said grimly to Duncan. "You'll overstep yourself some day. I hope soon!"

Duncan's eyes shot past Wentworth to Kirkpatrick, and his voice was mocking. "Mr. Commissioner, it sounds suspiciously as if you were trying to get me to commit a crime so that you could make an arrest! Surely, there are enough crimes in your city already!" As he finished speaking, he accepted Wentworth's handclasp.

Wentworth's eyes bored into the black, cool eyes of the gambler, but they told him nothing. The handclasp did! Once before tonight, he had shaken hands with Duncan, and he knew . . .
that the man whose hand he shook in this instant was not Duncan!

A clever artist in disguise might simulate another person so carefully that a casual acquaintance might not be able to detect the difference, but no man could change the bony structure, the shape and thickness of his hand! The hand he shook now was thinner, narrower, with smaller bones. There was something almost feline in the touch!

Perfection in disguise, and a boldness that met the police on equal terms, that dared even to challenge the
Spider
to a duel.

Wentworth knew, with a terrible certainty, that he was shaking the hand of the man who this night had accomplished, through Eggendorfer, the destruction of a tenement in which five innocent children had lost their lives.

He was shaking the hand of Munro!

WENTWORTH'S reaction to that recognition was instantaneous. Munro was a man who would be gone the moment his hands no longer touched him. Once let him get outside this office, and he could strip off the disguise of Duncan . . . and vanish! Yet there was nothing, absolutely nothing genuine with which to charge him! He could not say that Eggendorfer, dying, had confessed he had taken his orders from Munro. For it was the
Spider
who had killed Eggendorfer, and Wentworth could have no knowledge of what the man had said!

Wentworth's mind flashed to Nita, sitting quietly behind him, to Kirkpatrick. If he precipitated a battle now, one of them might be injured, killed. It was characteristic of Wentworth that he did not think of himself, though he was unarmed. But he could not let his fears for Nita stop him. This man was guilty of the murder of five children, and it would not stop there!

Wentworth stepped back and drew a slow breath. He knew that what he was about to say might precipitate a fighting scrape that would kill Nita, but he could not hesitate.

"Kirkpatrick," he said quietly. "This man lies. His men trailed me with intent to kill me. Duncan himself threatened me with guns tonight, and was on the point of taking me a prisoner into his office when you arrived so opportunely. I will swear out a warrant. Arrest this man!"

Duncan's smile did not waver, but something deadly and venomous flashed out of his eyes. He had a cigarette in his fingers and he tapped it gently on the case.

"I submit," he said easily, "that this is scarcely the treatment I would expect in return for an excellent alibi. But, do your duty, Commissioner!"

He held out his wrists, the cigarette still dangling from his fingers. Kirkpatrick grunted with satisfaction.

"I hope you'll stand behind that charge, Dick," he said steadily. "I've been wanting to nail this man. Sergeant Reams . . ."

Reams took a stride forward, unhooking handcuffs from his belt . . . and Wentworth uttered a cry and leaped past him. He tried to catch the cigarette that dropped from Duncan's fingers. Too late! The cigarette struck the floor, and exploded! An incredible burst of gray vapor spurted upward from the spot, and in the same moment, the lights in the office blacked out!

Wentworth recognized the gas in the same moment the cigarette exploded. Tear gas! But he did not check his vain leap. Instead, he hurled himself violently forward, his arms taut to grasp Duncan! A man reeled into him, and Wentworth grappled with him viciously. His powerful legs drove him forward, and he slammed the man hard against the wall! A fist hammered into his chest, and a voice cursed thickly.

"Take that, you rat!" gasped the voice of Sergeant Reams.

Wentworth swore, jerked free, and in the darkness, a man screamed terribly, and then began to strangle in a horrible way. Words tried to bubble through that scream, and they were meaningless, a ghastly sound in the blackness.

"Flashlight, Reams!" Wentworth snapped. "The door, Kirk. I'll take the window. Now, Nita, the lights. Switch behind you!"

An instant after Reams' flashlight snapped across the width of the office, and found nothing, the lights blazed down from the ceiling. Beside the door, Nita was twisted about tensely, her small automatic searching in her fist. Guns were in the hands of Kirkpatrick and Sergeant Reams . . . and Wentworth was spread across the window. Despite that instantaneous guard, Duncan had vanished! But he had left his mark behind.

Struggling out his life on the floor, hands tearing at the gaping wound in his throat, was the gunman, Mac!

For an instant, the sight held them frozen motionless. Then Nita uttered a gasping cry and turned her face away, buried it in her arms. Wentworth crossed the office in long bounds.

"Whistle up your men, Kirk!" he cried. "There must be some hidden exit to this room—but he'll have to leave the building to escape!"

Kirkpatrick's gun lashed the glass from the window as Wentworth lunged into the hallway. The whistle screamed into the night and Kirkpatrick's deep voice shouted orders, but Wentworth knew in that same moment that it was futile. There were a hundred, perhaps two hundred men in the building—and given ten minutes in seclusion, Munro could easily cast aside the disguise of Duncan and become one of them! He did not even have to disguise himself, for if he appeared in his true identity, no man could recognize him!

Wentworth stopped his wild dash, knowing in advance that it was futile. Could he shake hands with every man in this place, attempt by that means to identify Munro? But the man was warned now. Clever as he was, he would find some way to disguise his hands also. Moreover, before he had shaken two hundred hands, Wentworth knew that his own would be so numb that there would no longer be any certainty in his grasp. He was beaten—and once more Munro had left no trail! He had even cut the throat of his private bodyguard, so that the man could tell no secrets!

He found Nita leaning weakly against the wall in the hall, still shaken by the awful death she had witnessed. She said, faintly, "Munro?"

Wentworth nodded grimly. "No question about it." He turned toward Kirkpatrick as the commissioner came striding from the office. "It won't do any good to order Duncan picked up," he said quietly. "That wasn't Duncan. I knew it when I shook hands with him, because just a short while ago I shook Duncan's hand. Kirk, my private sources of information in France tell me that Munro has returned to America. That was Munro, in disguise as usual. I am quite sure, Kirk, that these arsonous fires that have sprung up around the city in recent weeks are his work!"

Kirkpatrick gazed keenly into Wentworth's face. "Private information again, Dick?"

Wentworth shrugged slightly, "Call it a hunch, Kirk. Nothing that would hold water in court. If you have no further use for me, I'll take Nita home. She's had . . . quite a shock."

Kirkpatrick's saturnine face was quiet and very grave. "No, I have no further use for you, Dick, now. I'm sure that Duncan, or Munro, was telling the literal truth. At any rate, the doorman at your apartment could probably confirm the times of arrival and departure. This time, Dick, there is no proof that you are the
Spider . . ."

"Ah," said Wentworth, "so that was the reason for the alibi. I'm glad the
Spider
is operating again, Kirk. Now, there is some hope of catching Munro."

Kirkpatrick shook his head. "Some day, Dick, the
Spider
will make a mistake!"

Wentworth laughed, "To err is human!"

Kirkpatrick looked at him very steadily. "You will find, Dick, when that mistake occurs, that I have no divinity to grant forgiveness. I am a man with a duty to perform."

Wentworth gripped Kirkpatrick's arm. "No man could wish for a fairer enemy . . . or a better friend, Kirk," he said quietly.

Kirkpatrick said nothing further, but strode choppily away along the hall. His pace was long, pounding, and there was an aggressive thrust to his shoulders, but there was a touch of weariness, too. He had never fully recovered from that long spell of heart trouble; he had been warned not to work too hard, not to worry. Wentworth felt Nita draw close beside him, and her violet eyes, when he turned to her, were wide and more than a little frightened.