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Chapter Eight
The Spider Draws Blood

THE EVENING passed without any hostile attempt and Wentworth had Nita leave separately and shift her hotel for safety's sake. He received a report from Ram Singh, but it was negative. Beatrice Ross, arrested as a material witness in the slaying of Hackerson, was still a prisoner; her release not expected until the following day. Wentworth rode home with the shadow on his trail, and he was still being followed next morning when he left his apartment.

He gave his shadow the slip and, in a subway wash-room, rapidly changed to the disguise he had assumed on the previous day, that of the blond young cavalry officer. He found Anse Collins waiting in the lobby of the hotel, standing on braced legs and scowling out of the window.

He nodded at Wentworth and strode, big-shouldered, across to meet him, but his scowl returned the moment they entered a taxi for the railway station. Wentworth eyed him curiously, but did not comment. Presently, watching behind them, he saw that once more they had a shadow. Whether the man he had dodged had succeeded in picking up the trail again, or whether they had kept watch on Collins also, Wentworth did not know. He was puzzled by the constant trailing and it was beginning to wear on his nerves. He wondered at the purpose, but did not mention it to his companion.

Collins finally broke his silence gruffly as they alighted in front of the Pennsylvania Railway station, and strode along the wide corridor that led to the concourse. "What do you know about Briggs?" Collins growled.

Wentworth looked at him quickly, told the man's position and what his part was in the present case. Collins grunted. "He's making a play for Nancy," he said, "and he's damned near old enough to be her father."

Humor flickered in Wentworth's eyes, but he was careful not to let Collins see it. He had spotted their present shadow, a young woman, whose red hat was brave against the muggy day.

"Briggs took us to the hotel in his car last night," Collins grumbled. "Made a luncheon date with Nancy for today. He was tickled to death when I couldn't make it."

"Mrs. Collins is a very attractive woman," Wentworth said. "Going about a bit will help to take her mind off her troubles."

Collins lapsed into a sullen silence that lasted until they boarded the Middleton train. Wentworth saw that the girl in the red hat did not follow and he sat frowning out the window at the people hurrying up the platform, following red caps encumbered with suitcases and hat-boxes. Unless the gangsters knew where Wentworth and Collins were going, there should be a shadow on the train now, yet he had spotted none. Collins was sitting bunched forward, elbows on his knees and hands clasped. "I guess Briggs is all right," he was saying grudgingly, "only . . . only . . . ."

"Only you rather fancy Nancy yourself, eh?" Wentworth asked softly.

Collins colored. "Always was right fond of Nancy," he admitted slowly. "And I'm not aiming to have any damn Yankee—" he hesitated, eyeing Wentworth frankly. "I'm sorry, but that's the way I think of them. I ain't aiming to have anybody take advantage of her. And that Briggs is old enough to be her father."

Wentworth felt a slight impatience at the intrusion of this additional confusion into the situation. The whole story was plain enough. Anse Collins apparently had long planned to marry Nancy, but had given her up to his younger brother.

Now that his brother was dead, he didn't purpose to have any one else take her away from him.

 

A touch of suspicion glanced across Wentworth's mind, but he thrust it aside instantly. Anse Collins would never be implicated in his brother's death, even though the action were inspired by so lovely a girl as Nancy Collins. The thought persisted that Anse Collins' misstep had been responsible for the mishap that had precipitated that first shooting scrape with Devil Hackerson, an affray that might well have proved fatal to the Spider. But Collins had been loyal enough since then. Nevertheless, Wentworth decided that he would find out where Collins had been at the time of his younger brother's death.

The train belched out of a tunnel into the open and the release of the close-crowded roar of the rails made the train seem wrapped in silence. The pale lights inside clicked out and Wentworth settled back in his seat with the air of a man who has traveled much and knows how to take his ease. His eyes were half-closed, but he was alertly watchful. Still the shadow did not evidence himself, and that fact nagged at the back of his mind. Why had they been followed to the train, then dropped?

Abruptly, Wentworth snapped erect in his seat. "Quick, Anse," he barked, "find the conductor and bring him forward."

Collins perked up his head, puzzled, then sprang to his feet. He was alert and quick-moving for a man of his size.

"What's the matter?" he demanded.

Wentworth did not wait to explain, but hastened forward through the aisle followed by the curious stares of other passengers. To Wentworth there could be but one explanation of the failure of his shadow. A trail was no longer necessary, and that meant—danger! As he darted across steel platforms and into another coach, he flung a glance outside. They were ticking off an easy fifty miles an hour along the bank of the Hudson, the rails buttressed thirty or forty feet high with heaped-up jagged stones. A wreck at this point would kill scores and it would be a simple matter to apply some of the Master's chemical to the rails.

It would be like blowing up a mountain to chop down a tree, this wrecking a train to kill Wentworth. But the Master had not scrupled to knock over two skyscrapers and kill thousands for his own mysterious ends. Certainly he would not hesitate in this case. Another thought flashed through Wentworth's mind. This was an express train and undoubtedly would carry valuable mails. And it was evident the Master did not scorn to dig into other's pocketbooks with the help of his steel-eater.

A lurching jar threw Wentworth off his feet. He went flat down, catching himself on springing arms, then lay there as the jars continued. He did not have to see what was happening. He recognized those sounds, the concussions and lurching thump of the train. The locomotive had jumped the track and was bounding along out of control. It had dragged coaches off also. People were starting to their feet all over the car. A woman's voice rose shrilly and a baby wailed in fright.

 

With a violent sway and bump, a sickening twirl, the coach went over the embankment. The floor rose under Wentworth, pitched him against the seats on his right. He had a fragmentary glimpse through a window of jagged rock points racing toward them, then the window smashed and sent glass needles slashing through the air. A tearing jar. Wentworth clung to the side of the seat, felt his feet swing and knew that the coach had bounced and was rolling in the air. He hung on desperately.

His arms wrenched and the steel of the car clanged like a mightily struck anvil. His hands slipped from their hold. He curled his head down against his chest for protection, wrapped his arms about it and struck a cushioned back with his shoulders. He bounced, landed upon a man who grunted, then screamed, and suddenly realized that the roll of the car had ceased.

Drunkenly, he reeled to his feet, found he was standing on the ceiling of the car. Groans and frightened whimperings filled the car with a fearful symphony of pain. Off in another car, a man was screaming, over and over a single shrill note. The scream weakened and faded. Wentworth peered behind him, saw Anse Collins crumpled against a partition with a thread of blood across his temple. Beside him, the conductor pushed groggily to his feet, teetered for a moment on hands and feet and then straightened, struggling for balance.

Wentworth picked his way through broken glass and tumbled luggage to Collins' side, went hurriedly about reviving him. Abruptly, Wentworth snapped to his feet. He heard a faint sound as if some one were pounding an incredibly noisy typewriter with vehement fingers. Through the intermittent chattering, a man shrieked. Collins came to with a jerk. "A machine gun," he gasped.

"A hold-up," Wentworth snapped. "And the Master is behind it!"

He scrambled out through a broken window and raced along the embankment, a gun in each hand. The smashed cars were spilled over jumbled rocks, a sprawling, disjointed snake. Moans and screams punctuated the mechanical cackle of the gun. A group of men, carrying striped mail sacks over their shoulders, went down over the rocks with mountain-goat leaps.

Wentworth's guns blazed once, but he knew he was out of range. He charged on. It was impossible to advance in a straight line. He had to spring to right and left where flat surfaces offered secure footing, and that fact undoubtedly saved the Spider's life. A machine gun stammered from close at hand and powdered granite sprang up in dust directly in Wentworth's path. Only the fact that he had sprung sideways to better footing saved him. He jumped once more, going down on his knees between two chunks of granite. Lead buzzed past within inches of his head. He heard the deep boom of Collins' forty-four, but couldn't see the Southerner.

Cautiously, Wentworth squirmed between rocks down toward the spot where the machine gunner had hidden. He was cursing with impatience, knowing that the robbers were escaping, that it would be certain death to take up the pursuit before this machine gunner was eliminated. His trousers had been torn by that quick leap between the rocks. His scraped knees left a bloody trail. Collins' gun boomed again, and Wentworth jerked quickly into sight. He caught a glint of metal in a clump of bushes at the base of the embankment and sped ten shots in a continuous roll of fire from both guns.

Twigs flew high and the dead branches quivered and shook, then began to thrash violently. A man's hand slid into sight along the ground, gloved fingers clawing at the frozen ground. The hand and arm stiffened, then relaxed.

"Good work," Collins called, twenty feet to his right. "Man, that was good!"

* * *

Wentworth peered about. The robbers had vanished and over beyond a narrow strip of woods, automobile engines raced and dwindled into the distance. Wentworth's lips closed thinly. The bandits had escaped, but at least he had stopped one. He rock-leaped down the heap, hauled the man out of the bushes. At least six of Wentworth's bullets had hit him. Three had smashed through the side of his head.

Collins, pulling up just behind Wentworth, stared down and repeated: "Man, that was good!"

Wentworth scowled thoughtfully at the dead machine gunner. He knew that face. He was "Trigger" Skinner of Mickey McSwag's mob. Even as the Spider had guessed, his wiping out of Devil Hackerson had not hampered the Master in the least. He had had no trouble in finding other men who were willing to do his murdering for him to gain the secret of the chemical that turned vault doors into cake sugar.

Shoes rasping on rocks pulled Wentworth around and he saw two men running toward him with revolvers glinting in their fists. They were red-faced men, glowering beneath the pulled-down brims of felts. They eyed Wentworth suspiciously until they spotted "Trigger" Skinner dead on the ground, then admiration replaced the glare. "What'd you get him with, his own machine gun?" one growled.

Wentworth smiled grimly. "Automatic pistols are pretty deadly weapons, too, when properly used," he said dryly. "Did they get away with anything?"

"Only ninety grand," snarled one of the men. "Not counting those the wreck killed, there's four dead men in the express car. We was riding passenger as an extra precaution or the typewriter would of caught us, too."

His remark confirmed Wentworth's surmise that the two were railroad detectives.

"Listen," he said. "I've got some damned important business to attend to in Middleton. Suppose it would be all right for me to shove along? It wouldn't make me sore if I didn't have to hang around to tell about this." A jerk of his head indicated the corpse of the gangster.

The detectives' eyes narrowed. They asked a few questions but in the end the men's hunger for praise won them over. They agreed to take credit for the kill. Wentworth pushed off up the rocky embankment toward where a relief train and autos had stopped, a half mile down the right of way. He and Collins could do no more good here.

Wentworth's face was white beneath the lean tan and his eyes smoldered as they surveyed the white-coated doctors climbing over the wreckage, the stretchers filing past toward the hospital car. Seven coaches were sprawled over the rocks, and the locomotive was a smashed wreck in the ravine. Two white splotches beside it, sheet-covered corpses, marked the resting place of the crew.

Wentworth's eyes rose to the glinting line of the steel rails, following it backward from the spot where the shattered engine lay. A few hundred feet back there was a break. His mouth lipless with compression, he walked rapidly to that spot and stared down at the crumbled wreckage of the rail. If there had been any doubt before that the Master was behind this carnage, a single glance at the track dissolved it. He stooped and picked up a segment of gray steel, struck it with another. There was no ring, only a sodden thud and fragments crumbled off and sifted gray powder on the ground.

 

 

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Framed