THE SPIDER-City of Doom (37 page)

That cape was smoldering on the surface, but even as Wentworth jerked on the brakes, and reached for the door, he saw a hand dart out from beneath the cape—and an area of flame blacked out instantaneously! White fumes swirled upward with the heat, crawled out across the floor, and Jackson wrenched out his hand again, and again, and hurled the flame extinguishers about him. Wentworth let the cab roll slowly forward into that area of blackness, and Jackson straightened, ran staggering toward Wentworth. The wig of the
Spider
was singed from his head, the makeup was striped with perspiration, and he was panting between the strangling coughs.

Wentworth hurled open the door and sprang to the pavement.

"One side!" he snapped above the roar of the flames, and the cab trundled forward in second gear, throttle yanked wide. Slowly, it gained momentum. The tires were blazing from the inflammables through which it had raced; spots of paint were flaming on its sides.

Wentworth seized Jackson by the arm and, in a half-dozen long bounds, reached an emergency exit that led upward by steel ladders to the streets above.

"We will wait here a moment," Wentworth said quietly.

Jackson nodded.

They stood there and their strangling breath filled the narrow way. The roar and heat of the flames was all about them, sweeping past the entrance to their cul-de-sac. Munro had done a thorough job of priming the walls with inflammables, so that even the stones seemed to burn. It would not last long, but it would last long enough to wipe out of existence any human being who dared it in ordinary clothing, and with any less powerful extinguisher than the ones that Jackson carried.

Wentworth listened tautly. Jackson said no word, but he had drawn himself up stiffly in his soldier's attitude. Wentworth did not speak to him, but his heart went out to Jackson. He had risked death before in the
Spider's
name, but this time he had done even more—he had risked being discharged by the master he loved better than life itself! He was waiting now for the blow to fall.

"Robe and hat," Wentworth ordered coldly. "Make-up kit? Good! Follow me!"

Wentworth swept on the robe of the
Spider,
and slowly, soundlessly, made his way up the escape ladder. When he was half-way up, he heard the crash as the taxi cab, kept straight by the close walls of the tunnel, smacked into the traffic stanchions at the far end of the passage. He heard the sharp shouts of the police, their shrill whistles; even the echo of pounding feet as they raced toward the spot.

"This will have to be fast!" Wentworth whispered to Jackson. "As soon as we are clear of this place, I'm going to expose myself to the police, and lead them away. You will then return to your post, according to orders. Understand this, Jackson?"

Jackson said, woodenly. "Yes, Major! I—"

Wentworth smiled slightly. "You will assemble four automatics, and a dozen hand grenades and await further instructions."

Jackson said eagerly, "Yes, Major!"

Wentworth thrust open the grating and slipped out—into the open air. The police guard for this exit was a half-dozen paces away, staring fixedly down the street toward where the taxi was wrecked against a lamp-post, a blazing wreck. Wentworth took two long strides, and his fist crashed against the policeman's jaw. He eased him to the ground, gazed piercingly about him. His lips smiled thinly as he saw Kirkpatrick's car, almost across the street!

In a single lithe movement, Wentworth vaulted the metal fence that girdled the Central park above the traffic tunnel. He was three-quarters of the way across the street before the driver of Kirkpatrick's car saw him, then the man stared openmouthed through a long moment before he stabbed for his gun. It was too late. Wentworth's fist lashed out again, connected with the man's jaw. Wentworth eased him out of the car, to the pavement, and slid in behind the wheel. He cut the siren loose, started the machine rolling, and executed a swift U-turn.

Police darted out into the street ahead of him, recognized the commissioner's car and hesitated. Kirkpatrick sprang out from a post at the entrance of the tunnel, and Wentworth headed straight toward him . . . swerved at the last moment.

Wentworth leaned out of the car then, and his scarf-masked face beneath the broad-brimmed black hat was secretly smiling.

"Follow me, Kirkpatrick!" he called, "and I'll lead you to Munro!"

A policeman gasped, "The
Spider!
It's the
Spider!
"

Then Wentworth drove down on the accelerator and the powerful car of the police commissioner leaped forward and took the ramp back toward upper Park Avenue. The smile that had touched his lips for an instant at sight of the complete bewilderment upon Kirkpatrick's face was gone now, and there was another, grimmer expression, God grant that he would lead the police after Munro in time! This was the swiftest way . . . for the police to pursue the
Spider!
They would not be slow to take up this chase!

Wentworth whipped the long limousine through the twisted lane of the viaduct, sent it bellowing down the slope and into Park Avenue. He wrenched the siren wide, and held it that way. His eyes burned ahead to the sedate facade of the Bonheur Hotel. It had been no more than five minutes ago that he had seen Munro, disguised as Kirkpatrick, enter those broad doors. Five minutes . . . . But a thousand men could die in that many seconds! Only, Munro had not yet released his flames upon the hotel. The blow might fall at any moment.

Wentworth swerved the powerful machine and rammed straight toward a red box, set upon a standard on the corner—a red fire alarm box! The front bumper caught it, slammed it straight down upon the pavement. The box split into fragments, bounced high . . . and Wentworth was racing on! That was one way to turn in a fire alarm, and he had no time to stop! He had killed the siren. The police behind him were getting under way. The first two radio cars dived down the chute of the viaduct with their sirens shrieking like women in pain. Wentworth clipped one more fire box, and then he swung the limousine in a whistling curve and slammed it to the curb in front of the Bonheur Hotel!

With a single long stride, he was across the sidewalk while the stupefied doorman still stared. He went up the steps in a bound, batted his way through the revolving doors . . . and bounded to the middle of the lobby!

A woman was smiling, leaning her shoulders against one of the marble columns as she looked up into the face of her escort. She frowned at the sudden cold that the
Spider's
swift entrance had brought, and turned her head. She screamed then, and pointed with a shaking hand. She screamed, "The
Spider!
"

A half dozen, then a score, then a hundred voices echoed that shout. Men and women were suddenly running from the lobby of the hotel! But Wentworth threw both arms high above his head, and his voice rang out clearly.

"Listen to me," he cried. "Listen to the
Spider,
and know that the
Spider
does not lie! This place is going to be robbed tonight, perhaps within a few minutes! The robbers will set the building on fire. The police and the fire department are on the way. Be calm . . . . Do not allow yourself to be stampeded!"

Hard-faced men wedged suddenly out of a narrow corridor to the left of the lobby, pounded toward him with hands reaching for their guns. Wentworth knew them for the squad of detectives maintained by the hotel.

"This way!" he shouted to them.

With an easy vault, Wentworth cleared the marble counter of the desk. His weight smashed against the staring clerk, carried him to the floor.

Wentworth crouched beside the terrified man. "Commissioner Kirkpatrick came in here a moment ago," he said harshly. "Where is he?"

The clerk's eyes, rolled up. "The manager!" he gasped. "The manager . . . . His office!"

His quivering hand pointed toward a door at one end of the desk alcove and Wentworth sprang toward it. A gun crashed from the lobby and he heard the deathly whisper of the lead past his head. He hit the door—and it was locked. No time for finesse now that the alarm was given! Wentworth's gun cracked twice in his hand, shattering the lock, and the drive of his shoulder hurled it quivering inward. His leap carried him two-thirds of the way across the office, and the smashing detonation of a gun greeted him; his automatic answered and a man in police blue stepped backward a half-pace. His head was punched backward so that he seemed, incredulously, to stare at the ceiling. Then his uniform hat slipped off and bounced on the floor, and his body let loose all at once. He slumped forward to the floor, a bullet hole between his eyes.

In a single all-inclusive glance, Wentworth took in the manager's office. A man in evening dress lay sprawled upon the floor with a bullet hole through the back of his skull. The safe gaped, and papers were strewn about . . . and a man was just rising with a valise stuffed full of money from before the looted strongbox. At the swift double crash of the guns, he whipped about—and Wentworth gasped!

Even when he knew the truth, when his unfaltering gun-hand was sweeping up for the final shot that would wipe Munro from the face of the earth, he felt a shock run along his nerves. In that first, curt glance, he would have sworn he was gazing into the face, and the eyes, of Commissioner Stanley Kirkpatrick!

It required a conscious effort to force his hand to close on the trigger, and Wentworth knew even as he fired, that he had missed! Great God, the
Spider,
face-to-face with a mass murderer, had missed an easy shot! His body had refused the clear order of his brain, because of the shock that Munro's resemblance to Kirkpatrick had given him. For once the
Spider's
highly trained reflexes had played him false! There was time for no second shot!

Wentworth saw mockery leap into those dark eyes that stared so fixedly into his. The valise swept across the desk, and knocked the telephone to the floor—
and the room exploded!

Wentworth felt heat strike him like a moving wall. It plucked him from the floor and hurled him backward. Somehow, he managed to whip the asbestos-lined cape before his face, but the shock, the heat, almost overpowered him. Half-dazed though he was, he drove himself to his feet, fought his way through the swirling smoke, the leaping tongues of crimson flame. The gun quested like a hound's nose for its prey, and did not find it.

Behind him, he could hear the sudden screams of people, and he knew that the touch-off of the entire hotel had been hooked up with some electrical contact connected with the telephone. Munro's sweeping valise, loaded with loot, had set off a holocaust!

Wentworth smashed two of the flame extinguishers against the walls of the office, and then he could see an open door across its width. He hesitated, not in fear of what might lie behind, but with a divided sense of duty. All his being urged him to fling himself in violent pursuit of Munro now, while he knew in what guise the man fled. But there were hundreds, thousands of people trapped in the hotel. Wentworth hesitated . . . and there came to his ears the screams and shrieks of a dozen sirens. He heard the hoarse, long drawn wail of the fire engines; the whimpering, yelping thinness of police radio cars; the deeper ululation of the ambulances.

Wentworth laughed harshly. Between their eagerness to catch the
Spider,
and his own care to summon the fire department, there would be ample help for the people of the hotel within a space of seconds.

The
Spider
was free to hunt!

With that laugh, Wentworth thunder-bolted across the room and burst out through that closed door. A gun hammered furiously from the darkness at a corridor's end, a man was emptying a gun as fast as he could pull the trigger . . . and that was no way to shoot accurately, as Wentworth could have told him. He threw a shot across his chest toward that flickering snake-tongue of powder-flame . . . and it was extinguished. The
Spider
javelined. At least, after that first moment did not even pause. He bounded toward where a gleam of street lights showed an exit, whipped to the street!

A car was spurting from the curb and Wentworth's automatic lifted with deadly perfection toward the driver, who wore still the neatly formal derby that Kirkpatrick affected in winter—and then Wentworth swore, and did not fire! He had caught the yellowish green gleam of lights across the glass of the limousine, and knew that his bullet would be wasted. Bullet proof!

There was a crowded taxi rank, and Wentworth lunged toward the nearest cab, flung into the front seat beside the driver.

"After that car!" he ordered, and the cold incisiveness of his voice snapped the man from the lethargy of waiting. He jammed in the gear while his eyes flinched from the gaunt, caped figure beside him, from the cold glint of the gun in the
Spider's
hand.

Wentworth said quietly, "Wreck that car ahead! And don't worry about your job, or this cab. I'll pay for the machine, and give you a thousand dollar bonus . . . . But wreck that car ahead!"

The taxi leaped under the spur of the
Spider's
words, but the limousine already had a block lead. Wind drummed violently against the cab, hit it at the corners like a mighty sledge. Traffic skittered aside as the horn blared for right-of-way through red lights. Wentworth's eyes burned in his head. The scarf muffled him to the nose, and his hands were calm upon the gun. He slipped out the clip, fingered the bullets. Two shots left, and one in the chamber. A weak armament with which to tackle Munro! He could not waste bullets in chance shots at this high speed. And there was too much traffic. A stray bit of lead, a ricochet . . . .

"He's got a fast car, boss," the driver gasped. He was panting, his face streaked with perspiration. His eyes darted everywhere and the cab dodged like a rabbit. The limousine ahead took no such precautions. It slammed straight through across Broadway, across Eighth, boring steadily westward!

Wentworth shook his head, thinking fiercely. In a short while, the man must turn either north or south. If he hit the west side elevated highway, he would walk away from this cab. Their chance would come on the turn. Wentworth reached out and cranked down the right-hand window. The cold struck through the opening like a knife. Wentworth tugged his hat down firmly over his temples, knotted the scarf fast about his face and leaned out. He was crouching, countering the jars of their speed with flexed knees; ready to shoot . . . .