AS WENTWORTH drove on, a cold smile touched his lips. The fiery action had cooled his rage, left only the steel-like bite of avenging anger. He swerved to the curb, called police headquarters and got Ram Singh on the telephone.
"Have you had any success, Ram Singh?" he queried.
The Hindu's voice was expressionless, but there was weariness behind it. "There is not a picture in the Rogue's gallery like the man I saw."
"Very well, I have another task for thee, Ram Singh," Wentworth lapsed into staccato Hindustani, for he did not know who might be listening upon the wire. "Devil Hackerson is dead with the seal of the Spider upon his forehead. Police will bring in presently a woman known as Beatrice Ross. When she is freed, follow her and before many hours, you should meet again your friend, Baldy. When you do, drop the woman and trail the man. Report through Jenkyns."
He parked his car and speedily stripped off the disguise of the Spider, becoming then a blond young man with full cheeks and a bristling, reddish mustache. He exaggerated his customary erect stride as he entered the Kennillworth Hotel on Forty-Sixth Street. He walked with an accentuated tap of heels, a slight sway of the left hip that cavalrymen everywhere would recognize, the stride of an officer accustomed to wearing spurs and swaying the dangling sabre out of the way of his booted calves.
At the desk, his incisive question revealed that Anse Collins' room was on the eleventh floor. Wentworth crossed to a house 'phone to talk with him, and the clerk scowled after him. These army men were all like that, so used to service by others that they never had a courteous word for anyone.
"Collins," Wentworth said softly as the man answered the 'phone, "this is the man you have been expecting. I'll be right up."
"Good!" Collins snapped. "I was getting ready to go out on my own. I'm thinking that the same thing that was used to break that safe caused these buildings to fall today."
Wentworth found that Nancy Collins had a room down the hall from her brother-in-law. "If you don't mind," the deputy said, "I reckon we don't need to bother Nancy any. She's had a powerful tough time of it lately." His eyes were keenly studying Wentworth's face, skipped over the brownish tweeds he had donned. "I reckon I wouldn't know you."
A broad smile curved Wentworth's lips. "Probably not," he agreed. There were few persons in the world more adept at disguise than the Spider. It was not that he changed his face radically. It was simply that with each new identity went an entirely new personality. He spoke differently, walked with a distinct stride, carried head and shoulders as would the man whose character he had assumed. He pushed on without a pause in his conversation.
"There's work to be done, Collins, if you want to get the man who was responsible for your brother's death."
"You mean Hackerson?" The deputy's words were slow, but there was a thin white line around his compressed mouth.
Wentworth shook his head shortly. "Not Hackerson. I killed him less than a half-hour ago."
Collins' eyes jerked wide, then narrowed. "You're pretty open about it, Mr. Spider," he said slowly. "How do you know I'm not going to turn you over to the police?"
"That would be a poor way to repay a friend's help," Wentworth smiled at him quietly. "And down where you come from, men usually stick by their friends."
"That's right, by God!" Collins' voice took on a rough edge. "And we remember our enemies, too!"
Wentworth glanced down at the man's fists. They were small in proportion to his size, but they would carry the enormous powers of those shoulders, that deep chest. He took in the strong face and the rumpled brown hair. Apparently, it was always like that, tousled as if from sleeping. A comb wouldn't do much to it. A woman would love to run her fingers through it . . . .
"Here's the job," Wentworth said swiftly. "I want you to offer yourself as bait to an attack by the criminals. It's pretty clear that they think you have information about the chemicals your brother devised. We'll go to Middleton together and see if we can draw their fire. Frankly, I haven't a clue to the identities of the men behind this business. I didn't want to kill Hackerson until after he had answered some questions, but he went for his gun and I had to."
Collins nodded, frowning. "That listens good to me, but I don't like to hear you say you've got no clue. As sure as you're a foot high, that guy DeHaven Alrecht has got something to do with this."
"That's one of the reasons I'm going to Middleton," Wentworth told him. "I want to have a little private conversation with that gentlemen and also with this Bill Butterworth who worked with your brother."
"Butterworth has gone away somewhere," Collins said. His eyes were thoughtful. He pulled aside the left half of his vest and tugged out a smooth-worn forty-four.
"She's a mite short," he said, spinning the chamber, "but I find she comes out quicker like this." He shoved the gun back, patted the butt. "When do we start?"
"In the morning," Wentworth told him. "In the meantime, I'd like you to identify yourself to Police Commissioner Kirkpatrick. It's possible you might be able to help him some."
Collins snapped his fingers. "By golly, I knew there was something we had to tell you," he said. "Before you busted in at Middleton, there was another guy there. You had to leave so quickly we couldn't tell you. This guy asked some questions, then seemed to get scared when Hackerson was talking about hurting us if we didn't talk. He beat it then."
Wentworth's eyes keened. "A bald man?" he asked quickly, "with a cast in his left eye?"
Collins nodded slowly, his eyes wonderingly on Wentworth's face. "I reckon you know everything, Mr. Spider," he said slowly. "That's the guy."
"Good," Wentworth's head came up joyfully. "You and Mrs. Collins go down to the police and give them the best description you can of that man. This is the first time witnesses have been found against him. I'll come by for you in the morning and we'll go to Middleton. Maybe we'll have luck."
"Maybe," Collins agreed. He was grinning. "Say, man, I'd like to shake hands with you. You're my sort of folks, Mr. Spider."
Wentworth gripped Collins' hand firmly. "Just call me Spider" he laughed. "Your mister sounds too formal."
Collins laughed also, strode down the hall with Wentworth. The Spider didn't wait to see Nancy. He wanted to be at police headquarters when they got there and he had to rid himself of the disguise in the meantime. He had to find this man, Baldy, and make him talk. Wentworth's face set hard. He'd make the man talk, or kill him. Then, perhaps, he could force the Master to show his hand, to battle in the open. So far it had all been movements of pawns. The Master had delivered several telling strokes, but he still had not revealed the purposes behind his attack. Wentworth felt that if he could learn that motive, he might have a better chance of reaching the Master himself.
The criminal leader was undoubtedly very clever. He had not appeared at all himself—had worked only through this strange, timid mouthpiece, Baldy. He used gangs of known criminals with whom he never came in contact. From Ram Singh's account of Hackerson's conversation with Baldy, it seemed that even the mouthpiece did not know the Master. It was a damned clever organization. It meant that the man had all the underworld at his service without himself being identified with it in any way. No matter how many of his hirelings Wentworth wiped out, there would always be more on tap. The Master himself would have to be found before these wholesale slaughterings could be stopped.
It was the old alert Wentworth who strode into police headquarters, buoyant of step, a stiff, slightly arrogant poise to his shapely head, an erect athletic swing of shoulders that bespoke the muscular strength beneath the superb tailoring of his clothing. Kirkpatrick saw him at once. A small alert man sat beside his desk, smoking a big cigar that seemed incongruous with his van Dyke and imperial mustaches. He bounded to his feet, pumped Wentworth's hand energetically as Kirkpatrick introduced them.
"W. Johnson Briggs?" Wentworth inquired and the man nodded, bit out a quick assent. "Yes, yes, of course. W. Johnson Briggs. And you're Richard Wentworth, of course." He laughed, jabbed the wet end of his fuming cigar at Kirkpatrick, shoved it back in his mouth again. "This man wants to know how you can stop steel from caving in. How you can save buildings even if steel crystallizes. Damned nonsense, of course. There isn't any way."
Wentworth smiled at the machine gun chatter of the little man. The cigar was locked between his teeth, billowing smoke up in front of his face. There were four chewed butts on the desk. W. Johnson Briggs was one of the country's biggest consultant architects on skyscrapers. Kirkpatrick had done well to call in a man who knew his craft so thoroughly. Wentworth scrutinized him curiously. The man had an aesthetic face, wore his hair long and swept back over his ears. He chewed and puffed his cigar at the same time.
Kirkpatrick said grimly, "We've got to find a way, Mr. Briggs. Got to! We can't keep the city crippled as it is now. We've got guards to prevent anyone entering the skyscrapers and even the Mayor is howling at me about it. Inspectors are going over the buildings as fast as they can, but it's slow work."
They all three looked up quickly as a policeman opened the door, thrust in a head of carroty bristles. "Guy named Collins out here, Commissioner," he said. "Says he's got some evidence for you. Got a lady with him."
Kirkpatrick's face was interested. "That must be those people from Middleton," he told Wentworth. "Show them in at once."
Collins' face was flushed when he came through the door behind Nancy Collins. He glared at the policeman who shut the door. Wentworth hid a smile behind the lighting of a cigarette. It was hard to get through to Kirkpatrick if the police didn't know you. The big deputy strode forward purposefully.
"I'm Anse Collins, sir," he said to Kirkpatrick, half-turned as Nancy came forward. "And this is my brother's . . . . my brother's widow."
Kirkpatrick bowed gravely, came around the desk to place a chair for Mrs. Collins, and introduced Wentworth and Briggs. There was a tightness upon Nancy's pretty face that did not belong there and the smudges beneath her eyes were purple shadows. Her blue eyes rose hesitantly to Kirkpatrick's face.
"You know who we are?" she asked softly.
"You come from Middleton?" Kirkpatrick queried, and at her nod he said that he knew, then, who they were.
"The Spider saved us from some men in Middleton," Nancy said. Her voice was softened by a drawl. She was looking at her hands in her lap now, fingering a handkerchief. "The police there wouldn't believe that Jim . . . ." Her hands gripped tightly together and she went on, "that Jim was murdered. But the Spider did. Tonight he came to our hotel and told us we ought to come and tell you all we know."
"By Judas Priest!" exploded Briggs. "Listen at the calm way she says it. Just like the Spider was anybody else. He came to our hotel, she says." He shoved the cigar into his mouth and puffed vigorously.
Nancy Collins looked up at him and smiled slightly. Her lips were full, a little tremulous. "He was . . . very nice," she said gently. "And he believed me when I told him about Jim."
"He's all right, that Spider fellow," Anse Collins put in shortly. "He may be a killer, but he's the real goods. Those rats he killed tonight needed killing."
Kirkpatrick eyed him keenly. "That couldn't possibly be in the newspapers yet," he said, "So I guess it was the Spider who talked to you all right. He told you he killed Hackerson?"
Collins' eyes narrowed. "Maybe I'd better not say," he replied cautiously. "I'm not saying anything might hurt the Spider. Hell!" the word was explosive, "I shook hands with him."
Wentworth nodded his head slowly, leaned back in his chair. He knew now what he had come to learn. He had wanted to know how far he could trust this Anse Collins and the man was, as he himself had put it, the real goods. He listened without comment while Nancy Collins and her brother-in-law told about Baldy and said they could identify him. Kirkpatrick had her go into details on the description, nodding now and then as it checked with Ram Singh's word picture.
"He's new to the criminal world," Kirkpatrick said finally. "But we're hoping to hear about him soon."
Wentworth knew what that meant. Every detective in headquarters would have his stool pigeons scurrying about, seeking trace of this queer bald-headed man with a cast in one eye who brought the orders of wholesale murder from the Master. They might find out something that way, but it was Wentworth's guess the men the Master hired would be too well paid to talk and that they would shield Baldy from all impudent inquiries—with murder if necessary.
He looked up sharply at an angrily defiant note in Collins' voice.
"Nancy didn't see him, and you won't get it out of me if you keep me in jail from now to Judgment Day," he declared and his tousled head was in that defiant posture that Wentworth was coming to find familiar. "I shook hands with the Spider and I'm for him."
"Good boy!" Briggs applauded. Wentworth saw that he was standing beside Nancy Collins now. The woman was smiling up at him. "Stand by your guns!"
Kirkpatrick smiled thinly, but there was sympathy on his saturnine face. He touched his mustache with thumb and forefinger, hiding the lifting of his mouth corners.
"I suspect there are many who feel as you do right now," he said slowly. "There are times when I'd like to strike as surely and directly as the Spider does in exacting punishment on evil doers. This man he killed tonight, Hackerson, was directly responsible for the collapse of the Sky Building."
Wentworth left the commissioner's office with a warm feeling in his chest, found Nita at the hotel to which she had gone and insisted on her going to a late supper with him at the Waldorf. According to what Ram Singh had reported, the Master knew that Ram Singh was the servant of the Spider, that probably meant he knew Wentworth's identity, too. Perhaps, the Master would attack . . . .
He was warily watchful as he returned to his apartment and dressed, but nothing suspicious occurred. Jenkyns had not heard from Ram Singh, but Professor Brownlee—once Wentworth's science professor at college, now his devoted friend and helper—had reported that the infra-red camera was installed in the Collins' Middleton apartment. Wentworth was out again within ten minutes, lounging behind the competent broad shoulders of his chauffeur Jackson, who wove the Lancia through traffic with insolent ease.
Halfway to Nita's hotel, Jackson leaned to the speaking tube. "I think we're being followed, Major. That yellow taxi has been behind us the whole way and every other car has passed us."
"Quite right, Jackson," Wentworth told him, with a hard eagerness in his voice. "I had spotted it." Jackson called him Major because he had served under Wentworth in France.
He continued to lounge carelessly in his seat. This would make it necessary for Nita to change her quarters again, of course, but he might inveigle the trailers into an earlier attack. He frowned as the yellow taxi cut a corner and left them, but within the next half dozen blocks, he was equally sure that a Ford coupe was on their trail.
Nita awaited him in the lounge and more than one man turned his head as they strolled toward the street again. There was envy in their stares, perhaps wistfulness. It was so patent that these two had eyes only for each other. It was clear in the way Nita's hand rested confidently on Wentworth's arm, in the eagerness with which her bright laugh met his whispered words.
But Wentworth was not talking love words. "I'm being followed, darling," he whispered. "Let's hope we get a shot at the Master himself tonight."
And Nita's laughter was clever camouflage. "I'm getting to be a good gun moll," she told him. "I've got an automatic in my garter and another in my handbag."
They entered the Lancia and it swung smoothly into the traffic. This time it was a sedan with a man and a girl close together on the front seat that took up the pursuit. Wentworth frowned as he lit a cigarette for Nita. That didn't look like a murder tail, but the mob might be lurking in the background, waiting for its chance to strike . . . .