Nita cringed back in her chair and watched the Spider struggle against the drug, vainly, like a man trapped and drowning in deep water. Gasping sounds came from his throat, but all his movements were lethargic.
Behind him, the nurse stood motionless. The needle dangled from her fingers; her head was bowed, and there was utterly no expression in her face. She merely watched.
It was only when the Spider's powerful body stretched in final helplessness upon the floor that the nurse moved. She turned toward the door.
"Wait!" Nita gasped.
The nurse turned. "He will answer your questions now," she said in her monotonous voice. "I go so that you may question him."
Nita said urgently, "Wait! You must wait! I cannot question him like that! Help me . . . the wheel chair!"
For an instant, the nurse hesitated. Then she stepped forward to help Nita. Together they struggled with the inert body, lifting it fumblingly toward the chair. Nita's brain was numb. She was not thinking. But something told her that she must not desert this man upon the floor. Her heart was wrung with pity and with dread.
Finally, the Spider was in the chair. The nurse settled her white starched uniform and moved toward the door. And Nita did not want her to go. She could not allow her to go!
Nita took a hesitant step toward the nurse. "You must stay here," she said in a muffled voice. "I will not be left alone here."
The nurse did not answer her, but took a quicker step toward the door.
She sprang ahead of the nurse, set her shoulders against the door. "You cannot go," she said, in a fierce low voice. "Why are you so anxious to go?"
There was a pain that enveloped Nita's entire brain. It was blinding her. But she wasn't thinking at all. It was wrong for the nurse to go . . . for some reason she could not phrase.
"No," she whispered, "you can't go!"
The blonde girl stood staring at her with empty eyes. The needle still dangled from her fingers. She looked down at it, and reached into her pocket. She pulled out a handkerchief and wrapped it around the hypodermic. The handkerchief was bright red.
"Very well, Miss van Sloan," she said submissively. She held the red handkerchief in her hand . . . and moved toward the window!
Nita stared at her blankly, then she flung herself across the room. Her soft silken negligee floated backward with her speed. Her feet were in ridiculously unstable silken mules, with little tufts of maribou across the instep. Her eyes were strained wide as if she listened to some inner voice.
But her hands, clasping on the nurse's shoulders, were competent and fierce. She whirled the blonde girl away from the window before she was visible. The nurse staggered backward two long steps. Her white cap tumbled off. The mass of her blonde hair slipped.
Nita said, fiercely, "You were going to signal someone! That's why you wanted to get out. That was why you carried that red handkerchief!"
The nurse did not speak. Her eyes shuttled over the room. Wentworth was slumped in the wheel chair against the far wall . . . and Nita stood between her and the door. Nita was panting. The low silken neck of her gown strained taut across her breasts. Her face was intent, concentrated as if thought cost her a great effort. It did. Her skull ached, ached.
"You . . ." Nita whispered. "You made me trick him. You are a traitor. You drugged him and tried to make a signal. The police! That is it—you are a spy for the police!"
The nurse said, pacifyingly, "Miss van Sloan, you should not excite yourself. I am not connected with the police."
For an instant, her quiet tone soothed Nita . . . but the nurse nodded and moved toward the door. And suddenly Nita was in action again. She set her shoulders against the door, spread her arms.
"You are not going out!" she whispered.
The nurse stood still for a moment. Then she put her hand in her pocket again. When she drew it out, she gripped a small automatic.
"Step aside, Miss van Sloan!" she ordered.
Nita drew in a slow breath, and let her arms drop to her sides. Her shoulders sagged a little, too. After all, why was she making all this trouble? She had seen this man in the wheel chair commit a murder. Of that she was sure now. It was only just that the police should take him, even though they had tricked her. That was what she told herself consciously . . . but in the same moment, she knew that she was not going to let the police take him! She would not!
Nita van Sloan took a dragging step away from the door . . . and leaped!
Her hands flew at the nurse. With her left she tried to twist the automatic away. She did turn its muzzle away. Her right arm hooked beneath the nurse's chin. It was without thought that she threw the girl across her hip, sprawled her upon the floor! Nita's mind did not know, but her muscles and her reflexes had remembered that jiu-jitsu throw!
The nurse struck flat on her back. Her head jarred and the gun skated from her fist. But Nita stood, staring in amazement, down at the girl. The unwinding coils of blonde hair made a halo about her head.
Nita said, uncertainly, "I've hurt you, but you should not have tried to get out."
The nurse rolled her head, struggled laboriously to her knees. Suddenly, she leaped up and ran toward the automatic! Nita was after her. One of her mules fell from her foot, and she kicked off the other. Barefooted, she hurled herself at the nurse, just as she straightened with the automatic. Their struggling bodies braced. They reeled stiffly from side to side like drunken people. Nita's roseate robe fluttered and kited behind them. The modeling of her arm muscles stood out strongly.
"You shall not!" she whispered. "You shall not give him to the police! I will not allow it, do you hear? You may kill me, but you're not going to turn him over to the police!"
The nurse said nothing. She fought with fierceness. She struck with her knee and Nita shoved her backward off balance, suddenly took the gun wrist with both hands. She found a leverage that her muscles knew, exerted it.
The nurse gasped with pain. Her free hand clawed at Nita's back. Silk ripped. Her desperate eyes centered on a crockery vase. She threw her weight sideways and they staggered against the dresser.
"Give up the gun," Nita gasped. "I'll break your arm!"
The nurse found the vase with her groping, awkward left hand. She struck sideways at Nita's head. Nita cried out in agony. Her brain was on fire, on fire! She slumped to her knees. The nurse ran toward the door. Her hand was on the knob!
"You shall not betray him!" Nita whispered.
Her hand found one of her discarded mules. She was blind with pain, but she flung the mule. She heard a cry and staggered to her feet. She groped toward the door. A blow glanced past her temple, and the nurse's gunwrist struck her shoulder. Nita's hands clamped on that wrist.
The gun went off.
Nita's head jarred sideways under the violence of that concussion. A smothered scream rose in her throat and red agony blotted out all consciousness of action or feeling or thought. She was fighting in that hell of darkness. She twisted, heaved. Through the soaring, pounding pain in her skull, she heard a woman's gasping cry. The shock of a body falling . . . silence.
Presently, Nita heard an imperative knocking at the door. She heard herself saying calmly, "Everything is quite all right. A screen fell over. Go away, please!"
And slowly the whirling room cleared before her eyes. She was not aware that she had ever seen the room before. She stared around her in amazement. She remembered the multiple blast of guns, remembered that Dick, beside her, had leaned far forward to seize the wheel from Ram Singh and wreck the car. There had been an explosion . . . .
When had all that happened! It might have been no more than a moment ago. It might have been a week, a month . . . . Nita gripped her pounding temples and tried to remember. It was all so vague.
So lifted her head and looked around again. Across the bed, blood trickling from her temple where it had struck the metal post, lay the prostrate body of the nurse. Nita did not remember hurling her there by a jiu-jitsu throw. She did have a whirling memory of a battle, of pain in her head.
She smothered a cry. Her glance had reached beyond the hospital bed. There was the Spider!
"Dick!" Nita whispered. "Oh, Dick!"
She ran toward him, took his flaccid face between her palms, felt for his throat pulse. He was alive. That small swelling in his throat . . . a hypodermic needle had made that! Drugged! But why, and by whom?
Nita whirled like a pantheress at bay, heard the knocking at the door renewed.
"What is it?" she called quietly. "kindly go away. You are disturbing my patient! She became a little violent, that's all!"
There was a moment of silence, and then footfalls retreating slowly. Nita stood rigid and felt the violent tremors of her muscles. Yes, there had been a battle. Apparently, she had overcome the nurse. Her own clothing was in shreds. And Dick was drugged.
Nita's mind was working powerfully now. She remembered nothing of what had happened here in the hospital room, but the evidence was plain before her. Dick had been drugged . . . and she had been fighting, had overpowered the nurse! Therefore, Dick was in danger.
Nita pressed her temples to still the clamoring pain inside her brain. Yes, she must get Dick out. But how? Only a moment longer did Nita hesitate, then she set efficiently to work. And as she labored, her head rapidly cleared. She stripped off the nurse's clothing and put them on herself. She draped a sheet over Wentworth, tucked a blanket about his knees and drew it up tightly under his chin. Then she slipped to the locked door, and listened.
Moments later, she wheeled Wentworth out into the corridor. Once she was fairly away from the door of her room, locked now from the outside, she was fairly safe. She was a nurse wheeling a patient along the corridor. A floor superintendent or a doctor might challenge her, but for that, too, she had an answer. If everything else failed, there was the small automatic in the pocket of her dress!
The elevator operator made no objection, only once glancing curiously at the relaxed form beneath the robes. There was a ramp that led down to the ambulance entrance. Nita glanced carefully about. No one was in sight. Swiftly, she eased the wheeled chair down the ramp, left it there a moment while she scouted the way ahead. There was an ambulance in the courtyard. The driver was in a waiting room off to the right, frowning over a newspaper cross-word puzzle.
Nita did not hesitate. She stepped calmly into the room. "Driver," she said quietly, "help me get my patient into the ambulance."
The driver got to his feet, grumbling. "That ain't my job," he said shortly. "Geez, a guy never gets no off-time around this place . . . ." He was moving toward Nita as he talked. As he stepped past her, Nita removed the gun from her pocket, ready.
The driver stared at the limp figure in the chair, looked around. "Hey, what is this?" he said. "Where's the doc?"
Nita shoved the gun hard against his spine. "That's a gun," she said. "Carry him to the ambulance!"
The driver stood motionless, trembling. When Nita jabbed him with the gun, he stumbled forward. He seemed too weak to handle Wentworth's inert body, but he succeeded finally. He staggered to the ambulance, deposited Wentworth on the stretcher.
"Now, get behind the wheel . . . and drive!" Nita snapped.
"Yes, ma'am!"
He started toward the driver's seat, but suddenly broke away and ran toward the hospital. He shouted wildly. "Thieves! Kidnappers!" he yelled. "Help! Police!"
Nita gasped her exasperation. In a moment, she was behind the wheel of the ambulance herself. She stepped on the starter, whipped the car into gear and sent it bellowing toward the gateway. She cleared it before men came out of the hospital. The tires whined in a turn. She dodged a coupe loafing along the street, jammed down on the accelerator, and roared eastward toward the river.
Behind her, there were shouts . . . and then a dark, swift car lunged around the corner in her wake. A gun blinked its red eye of fire from around the windshield. She did not hear the bullet.
She concentrated all her attention on driving. Dick had taught her to drive, as he had taught her many things. There were few who could equal her skill. She went around a right-angle turn accelerating. She did not brake at all. She reached the next corner before pursuit was in sight, doubled northward. She dared not use the siren . . . but she had heard no siren behind her!
Nita caught her breath. It was not, then, the police who were chasing her. It was the Spider's underworld enemies!
She took another corner fast, spotted the dark recessed doorway of a warehouse, whipped the ambulance into it and doused all lights.
At the other end of her dark street, another car blared past. She caught the silhouette of men crouched forward venomously. Yes, killers from the Underworld! Two car loads . . . and how many more?
Moments dragged past without sighting any more trailing cars, and once again Nita set the ambulance under way along the dark side street. Would it be possible to get Dick to his home, where he could have proper care and protection? How well were the criminals organized? If only she could know.
Nita tooled across the north-south street without spotting anyone suspicious, and drove on into the next block. She was half way through it when a dark car whined into the far end of the street, coming the wrong way! Guns blasted from its windows!
Nita crouched lower over the wheel and drove on. The killer car whipped broadside across the narrow street. Men scattered from it, their guns blasting. Nita laughed softly, and in her own ears the sound held a faint mockery, as if . . . as if the Spider were laughing! She thought of Dick, lying so helplessly in the back of the ambulance, and there was a prayer on her lips as she drove toward the ambuscade!
She could hear the punch of bullets slamming against the metal body of the ambulance. She coaxed more power out of the engine. The ambuscading car was only a hundred feet away . . . only fifty . . . twenty-five!
Nita stood up behind the wheel and wrenched it over. The ambulance heeled wildly, but it answered the steering gear. It humped over the curb stone. A man crouched behind a fire hydrant leaped erect with a wild yell and tried to flee. The nose of the ambulance caught him. There was a dark blur before the windshield, then he was gone. She whipped the car back into the street.
When Nita could fling a glance into the rear-vision mirror, there was one gun still winking at her. The car was overturned. She was past that barricade!
Into the next avenue, Nita hurled the ambulance. She had a glimpse of cars to the north and south of her, closing in. She flicked on the radio.
She managed to whirl northward for two blocks on the next avenue, and then doubled back on her trail. Once more, she sought hiding. There was a dark, vacant lot, with a signboard. She couldn't get behind the board, but she parked close against it. At least, she was out of sight.
The radio came to life; an announcer was speaking: " . . . and anarchy seems to have broken out in the Bronx and upper Manhattan. There is a big blaze sweeping through three tenement houses, and the fire is plainly of incendiary origin.
"The firemen were hampered in reaching the locality by some of Bennington's pension marchers.
"There is a warrant out for Bennington, but so far the police have been unable to locate him!"
Nita shook her head dazedly, and turned to police signals. She wondered if this was part of the battle that Dick was fighting, but she could not see how fires and pension marchers could be part of a crime wave.
Nita gasped. This explained why there was no police concentration rushing to her assistance. They must be rushing reserves into the area of the fire. That was it . . . and it must be a decoy movement. If only Dick were able . . . Nita peered toward him, but he lay as motionless as a dead man upon the cot to which she had strapped him. Nita choked down a sob as a police signal crashed in. Detective cruisers and police cars were being rushed northward. A bank vault had been blown up.
Nita peered about her fearfully. There was a sudden burst of gunfire at the end of the street. She spotted the white top of a police radio car. But two other machines were crowding in on it. There was the heavy, fatal hammer of a sub-machine gun. Then the two cars were racing away, and the police car remained motionless in the middle of the street.
How long could she escape the net the killer had thrown about the district? It was apparent that she could expect no help from the police, even if she dared to ask for it. Nor could she count on them to create a distraction so that she could escape. She sat up suddenly very straight in her seat. A distraction!
She peered about her with more purpose now. She knew this neighborhood! Not two blocks away was a garage in which Dick had one of his coupes parked! She swung to the ground, and a voice whispered tightly from the shadows.
"Don't you move!" it ordered, shakily. "Don't you dare to move an inch!"
Nita frowned. That sounded like a young boy speaking. She turned slowly toward the voice, peered into the shadows beneath the sign board.
"I been following you!" the boy said, more firmly. "Now you get out of here. You're not going to kidnap the Spider!"
Nita almost laughed aloud. She could see the pale blur of the face now, the determined line of the jaw, the tumbled black hair. "Bill!" she said. "Bill Sanders, you blessed boy! I need your help! Don't you remember me? I was with Mr. Wentworth on the street that night when those thugs from the Mekookum Club tried to beat you up!"
The boy wriggled out from under the signboard. "Geez," he said. "Geez, I thought you was that nurse. Listen, where is the Spider? How does he feel?"
Nita said slowly, "He's unconscious, Bill. Drugged. We've got to save him, you and I. And the killers are all around us!"
Bill said eagerly, "I could get my gang here in half an hour!"
Nita shook her head. "There's no time for that! But the Spider has a car hidden two blocks from here. If you can get that car, and drive it here, we'll get him away between us!"
Bill nodded his head quickly and Nita told him how to reach the car. "Drive slowly," she ordered him. "If there's any shooting, go around it. If anybody follows you, don't come here!"
Bill ran off into the shadows without a word, and Nita climbed into the back of the ambulance where Dick lay.
Nita bent low over Dick, and laid her smooth soft cheek against his. His breathing was deep and even, his pulse strong. But his great brain was asleep . . . and the city needed the Spider this night! Nita crooned to him like a child.
"I'll save you, Dick," she whispered. "You've saved me so many times. Can I do any less?" But there was a sob in her throat as she straightened and set to work to do what she must do. When Bill came a few minutes later in the old, but powerful coupe, Nita had disappeared . . . . In her place stood a figure in the sinister habiliments of the Spider!
Bill stared at her in amazement, but Nita's face was calm, her lips firmly set. "This is the plan, Bill," she said quietly. "I'll drive out of here in the ambulance and lead the killers away. When they're gone, you drive the Spider in the coupe, to some place along the river. You'll find a boat. Take him in it, and row out on the river! It's the only place I can imagine where he'll be safe now."
"All right," Bill acknowledged grimly, "but, geez, you oughtn't to go out like that—not against them killers. They're pretty bad. You let me be the Spider and you drive him off. The won't catch me in the ambulance!"
Nita smiled and rested her hand on Bill's shoulder. "You're a fine young man, Bill," she said, "but I can drive like a demon and I'm almost as good a shot as the Spider himself. There's a chance they won't catch me. There's a big chance! You have the big job, guarding the Spider. Here's a gun . . . . Now, let's get going!"
At Nita's orders, they carried the Spider's limp body to the coupe, and Nita hesitated for an instant there. She leaned over and kissed his lax lips, and stood there for a moment.
"Take good care of him, Bill," she said, "and tell him I'll see him at his home."
Bill said, "Sure. Sure . . . . Oh, geez, let me go instead of you!"
Nita shook her head and jumped behind the wheel of the ambulance. An instant later, the motor roared and she swept it out into the street.
Behind her, Bill Sanders sat in the coupe beside the unconscious Spider and watched the ambulance. As it wheeled the corners, guns blasted out. A car spurted toward the ambulance. From the crouched figure in the cape, a heavy blast of gunfire answered. The charging car swerved and rocked aside. It went out of sight, and there was a crash of a wreck. Another car streaked past the corner in pursuit. The ambulance siren shrieked its hoarse defiance.
"Oh, damn them!" Bill whispered. "Damn them! But they couldn't get her. Not her!" He said that, but he knew he did not believe it. No siren . . . . He turned the coupe toward the river, and he had trouble seeing where he went.
The radio under the cowl rasped, " . . . wreck of ambulance on East End Avenue . . . gunfight . . . investigate . . . ."
Bill choked on a sob and was unashamed. The radio kept squawking. Another bank raid in upper Manhattan . . . .