In that outer office, men heard the laughter of the Spider and clutched their guns more fiercely. The bright red glare of the flames lifted behind the partition, threw its light out through the ground glass of the door.
"Wait!" Munro's voice said harshly. "He can't see you now, and he'll have to come out. And don't worry about the police. I'll blast a way through them!"
Abruptly, the door of the inner office whipped open. The caped, hunched outline of the Spider glided smoothly forward, and guns reached out their red lances from its sides. With a hysterical fury, the guns of the gangsters answered! They cursed and shouted in the release of their tension, hurled lead with both hands. The figure of the Spider had stopped, and there were no more shots from him.
"I got him, Frenchy!" a hoarse voice shouted. "I got three bullets in him!"
"I got five!" Frenchy yelled back.
The guns, emptied once, began to hammer again . . . and still there was no answering fire. And yet, suddenly, the Spider laughed!
The eerie sound of that mocking mirth mounted above the fury of the guns, above the crackling roar of the fire within the inner office. It stopped the shooting; it cut off the voices of men. Then, with a shriek of pure terror, one man bolted out through the doorway. Another followed.
"You can't kill him!" he shrieked. "Oh, God, you can't kill him!"
That whole office was full of sudden panic, and men fighting to escape. From a remote corner of the office, a figure lifted—minus hat and cape—and the two guns in his fists rolled rhythmically. Three men went down in that huddle at the doorway, but the others escaped. Wentworth reached them in two long leaps, whipped them over on their backs and swore raspingly. The Faceless One, Munro, was not among them!
Fiercely, Wentworth sprang toward where the figure of the Spider apparently stood. He yanked cape and hat and flung them about his own body, sprang for the door with the cape kiting from his shoulders. Where the Spider apparently had stood, there was revealed a tall desk lamp standing upon a swivel, roller bearing chair. In their hysterical fear, the killers had mistaken that draped chair, with Wentworth prone behind to push it forward, to fire his guns that one time, for the figure of the Spider!
Beside the outer door, Wentworth paused for a single moment. He stooped, and his cigarette lighter glinted in his hand . . . and when he sped on along the hallway, be left a glistening challenge for Munro, a mockery for the police who at least would not have to solve this crime . . . . The Spider had stamped his signature upon his kill—the seal of the Spider!
But Wentworth ran with fury in his blood. Once more, he had been face to face with Munro, and the man had slipped between his fingers! He recalled that flame-seared countenance and something like a shudder traced its way up Wentworth's spine. If that was the face of Munro, it was no wonder the man had become a genius at disguise!
The battle was not yet lost. The police would be on guard below, warned by the crash of shots and the lurid glare of the flames! If he could contrive to throw Munro into their hands . . . .
Wentworth raced down the fire escape stairs by which he had ascended, and suddenly heard the crackle of shots below, and a muffled detonation that was followed by the mad screams of men in awful pain! He swerved out into the first floor corridor, and saw . . . hell! Three police men were down, motionless in death, and two others ran crazily for the exit with flame streaming from their garments! Even as Wentworth saw them, their companions reached for the men and hurled them to the ground to extinguish the fires—and Wentworth heard Kirkpatrick's sharply crisp voice rap out, organizing pursuit!
Wentworth ducked back into the stairway, raced quietly for the service entrance which his lockpick had opened for him a little earlier. He could do no more out there than the police were accomplishing, for Munro had once more made good his escape! But there was something he still could do . . . . He could attend the meeting of Munro's associates. He knew the place, the time, and the pass-word!
His black-caped figure merged with the shadows against the building, to appear presently beside the parked coupe where Jackson waited feverishly. The car leaped forward under Jackson's instant touch, sped northward.
"You called Ram Singh?" Wentworth asked sharply.
Jackson nodded curtly. "No word, sir."
Wentworth knotted his fists on his knees. "Munro is still ahead of me," he said swiftly. "He was waiting for me back there . . . and he has set another trap for me. Know where the Man o' War is?"
"A tough dive on the waterfront, sir," Jackson nodded. "What do you mean—a trap?"
Wentworth smiled faintly. "Munro was in that office. He saw me come in, by means of a television rig-up. Then he picked up a phone and gave me the information as to when, where, and how to enter, a meeting he was calling! That was in case his trap there did not succeed in catching me."
Jackson said frantically, "For God's sake, Major, must you go? That place will be alive with his killers! He'll be expecting you! Must you really go?"
Wentworth's head swung toward him, and there was surprise in his eyes. "Munro will be there," he said quietly.
The room above the Man o' War was reserved for the initiated. It was crowded now by more than twenty men who sat around wet tables and tossed their drinks. Their faces were a rogue's gallery of the unconvicted murder-men of the country's mobs. At the door, an emaciated man with a caved-in chest, a knife gash purple on one cheek, kept watch. It was to him the men whispered one by one, "From my ashes, I arise again!"
His voice was a whisper, but it was a whisper from which men shrank. There was a sardonic gleam in the man's eyes, and once when he turned quickly, the skirt of his coat lifted to show the sheath of a long-bladed knife. He was the guard, the auditor.
In a corner where little light shone, Sprague sat with both elbows spread on the table. He had a reddened, belligerent face, and his fists were knotted.
"One hour I get to haul all the boys in," he rumbled. "Hell of a note!"
"Pipe down, Sprague," one of his companions whispered. He twisted his wry neck about, made a snuffling noise in his nose. "Geez, you don't never know where Munro is going to turn up, or what he'll look like." His snuffling was like weeping. "Geez!"
"That's all right for you, Sniffer," Sprague growled. "Me, I'm responsible, and I wouldn't want to have to make no excuses to Munro!"
The third man at the table moved his thin lips in a smile, and lifted his glass daintily. "I never saw the lad at the next table before—the one with the glass eye. That might be Munro!"
Sprague wrenched about in his chair. "Where, Duke?" he whispered. Sniffer made faint worried sounds in his nose.
"Oh, him!" Sprague frowned. "Naw, I ain't never seen him before. It might be Munro . . . and then again . . . it might be the Spider!"
Duke set his glass down so suddenly liquor slopped on his hand, and he did not bother to wipe it off. "My God!" he said. "So that's what we're here for!"
Sniffer pushed his chair back. "Look, Sprague," he snuffled. "You don't want me here. You don't . . . ." The man at the next table looked toward him casually, and Sniffer slumped back in his chair. Sprague watched sardonically and Duke was using a silk handkerchief on his liquor-wet hand, frowning.
Sprague said, "The Chief arranged things so the Spider would be here. The Chief will be here, too. If we spot the Spider, we burn him down without waiting for orders. If we don't . . . the Chief will point him out."
Sniffer whined, "I don't like this business of not knowing who the guy next to you is! Geez, for all we know . . . ."
"Whiskey or beer?" a voice rasped at his elbow, and Sniffer jerked in his chair. He snuffled plaintively as he looked up into the bored face of a waiter.
"Whiskey, damn you, and quit creeping up on a guy!"
The waiter swabbed the table. "Knifer says everybody's already here, Sprague. You're to start the ball rolling!"
Sprague grunted, "Me!"
The waiter smiled and walked carelessly away. He had the slouching stride of a waiter, and the bored look. He didn't look at anybody, and he saw everything. He saw Knifer with his narrow shoulders braced against the door, that thin smile perpetually on his face from the tear of the knife-gash across his cheek. He saw the tautness everywhere, and he knew the whisper had gone the rounds. The Spider was coming . . . . Munro was coming. And nobody knew how either one would appear.
The waiter smiled slightly, and filled three more glasses with whisky. From his sleeve, a thin film of a whitish powder sifted into each glass. He slapped them down on Sprague's table, just as the man reared to his feet.
He beat on the table with his big fist. "All right," he growled. "It's lucky you mugs all got here on time. The Chief ain't taking no foolishness. The Spider has been acting up!"
There had been a noisy, half-apprehensive gabble a few moments before, but it died under Sprague's words. They sat stiffly at their tables, and their necks turned slowly, rigidly. They looked out of their eye corners at their neighbors. In the silence, the waiter moved carelessly away across the room. It was fortunate that the coat he had taken from the regular waiter of the Man o' War fitted him loosely. That way, the twin guns beneath his arms did not show!
Sprague was still growling out words, but Wentworth—the waiter—was paying little heed to them. He had been here for half an hour and still he had not spotted Munro. It might be anyone of them, from Knifer or Sprague to the man behind the bar.
"We got a little job to do," Sprague was saying. "Tonight, the Spider caused us plenty of grief. He turned the police on our tail, and we got to get our customers in line to see that none of them talks. Duke, you and Frosty will take the job. I'll give you the names. Come over here, Frosty! It's a simple business. We're just going to burn a couple of guys alive. After that, there won't be nobody to talk!"
There were loud guffaws from a few of the tables, but the other men waited uneasily. This was just the preamble. The real business of the night would come when the Spider showed himself. The Spider . . . . Their eyes slid about slyly.
The waiter was in a dark corner. It was necessary just now, for there was a terrible anger in his eyes! Burn two men alive . . . . He had to finish his business here quickly and protect those men.
Frosty was swaggering back across the room now from Sprague's table—a white-faced, white-haired killer who had never taken the rap. Wentworth knew him well and, as he looked at the man, his plan was swiftly made! Frosty would have to pass close to him . . . and with Frosty's help, the Spider would find Munro!
"Hey, Frosty!" he grumbled. "I got a word for you from . . . ."
He let his voice trail off and Frosty swung toward him, unsuspiciously. Wentworth held out the hand over which the wet cloth that he used on the tables was draped. He whipped that towel back , and a gun glinted in the dim light of the corner . . . and a ring gleamed on Wentworth's finger. It was a ring with a dark stone, but when he pressed on its undersurface as he did now, a red fire glowed in the heart of that stone—a red fire that held the shape of a Spider!
There was naked flame in the eyes of the Spider, too, and they struck against Frosty's.
"Come close to me, Frosty—," he said coldly. "If you whisper, you die! Now, into this side room!"
A hard trembling was on Frosty's body, but Wentworth scarcely touched him. His left hand flicked to the under-arm gun, whipped it out. A twist of that hand, and the bullets thudded softly to the floor. He thrust the gun into Frosty's hand.
"Now, Frosty," he said quietly, "we will go back into the dining-room. When we are inside, you will climb on a table, and you will keep that gun in your hand or you will have a neat little red seal printed on your forehead. Get the picture, Frosty?"
Frosty quavered, "What are you going to do? Geez, Spider, I ain't done nothing yet!"
"No, not yet!" Wentworth told him dryly. "Only three murders that I could be sure of, Frosty. Now . . . up on that table! Now, yell to make them look at you! Say, 'Hey, you mugs!' Nothing else!"
Frosty climbed fumblingly to the tabletop, and a few startled eyes whipped his way. The gun was in his fist. He opened his lips to shout, but it was Wentworth's voice that carried across the room from where he crouched in the shadows . . .
"Munro!" came the Spider's flat, challenging voice. "Munro! I have come for you! The Spider has come for you!"
Chairs slammed backward, tables were pitched forward to the floor while men flung themselves behind those barricades! In the same instant, their guns began to speak! They roared to a swift climax of fury. Lead hammered into Frosty's twitching body.
But unseen in the shadows, Wentworth crouched warily, and his eyes swept the room. His plan was simple enough. Once the Spider was exposed, Munro would have no reason for concealment. He would want to take charge and make sure that the Spider died!
As that first dread challenge of the Spider ripped out, and the deluge of bullets began, Wentworth saw Sprague whip to his feet. But it was not Sprague who shouted out clear orders, who swiftly hurled guards at all the doors, and organized the blockade of the windows so that the Spider should not escape!
It was the trembling man known as Sniffer!
And Sniffer's finger was pointing toward the shadows where the Spider crouched!
"Fools!" Sniffer shouted. "You're killing one of your own friends! There's the Spider . . . the waiter who has been serving you drinks!"
Wentworth sprang suddenly from the shadows, and about his shoulders was the cape of the Spider, whipped from the darkness of that small room behind him.
His two guns spat together in his fists, and the body of Sniffer—of Munro—jerked to the impact. He was picked up and slammed backward over a chair, behind a table!
That was the moment when the lights went out . . .
In the darkness, a voice rang out clearly while Wentworth crouched low and bounded toward the spot where Munro had fallen. And Wentworth knew that voice. It was the voice of Munro, and it was clear and unshaken with pain!
"Turn on the lights, you damned fools!" it shouted. "The Spider wants it dark! The lights . . . ."
Wentworth flung a bullet questing toward that voice, and near him a man shrieked to the pain of the lead. Somebody had been in the way . . . . Wentworth raced, and in the middle of the floor, he caught a glimpse of a pencil of light as a trapdoor opened. He caught a glimpse of a face that was seared by flame, twisted beyond human recognition: The Faceless One!
Wentworth checked and lifted both guns deliberately . . . and a chair crashed against his shoulders.
Instantly, Wentworth was on his feet, racing toward the spot where he had seen the trapdoor. There were screams and shouts behind him, and the flicker of crazy gunfire as each man shot at the shadows about him—the shadows that might hold the Spider! Wentworth groped with sensitive hands upon the floor. He found the ridge of the trapdoor, but it was already bolted fast from beneath! He cursed. His two bullets had hit Munro, he knew, but his voice afterward had been clear, and unstrained. Wentworth knew what that meant! Munro had worn a bullet-proof vest!
And now the Faceless One was making good his escape while death swept its dark silent wings through this meeting-room!
Wentworth whirled and went with long leaps toward the door. He needed light to tell him where it was! Over-turned tables were in his path, and once he sprawled painfully.
"That you, Duke?" a frightened voice.
"Yeah," Wentworth's tone was the sardonic voice of Duke. "That you, Sprague?"
As he spoke, he leaped . . . and struck with the barrel of his automatic. There was the crunch of the steel hitting bone, the thud as Sprague's head was driven against the door . . . and no sound as he fell because Wentworth eased him down softly. A moment later, he wrenched open the door and ducked out.
A bar of light slashed into the darkness and for that instant, the hunched, becaped figure of the Spider was clearly outlined. There was a blasting of guns, a concerted rush for the revealed opening. Wentworth locked the door and flung himself down the stairs, whirled back toward the rear of the Man o' War where the trapdoor had opened. He hit a door with his shoulder and it slammed open . . . and he was gazing into an empty garage, whose doors stood ajar. Overhead, there was a counterbalanced stairway and the locked trapdoor.
This way, Munro had fled . . . but he was gone past all capture now. And the press of gunmen was hard at Wentworth's heels!
Wentworth did not worry greatly about that pursuit.
Before Munro could get his men together, Wentworth must somehow save the men who were fated to be . . . burned alive! It did not matter that Wentworth knew the names of the two who were selected. Two more could easily be chosen! There was a hard-riding anger within Wentworth as he flung himself again into the coupe beside Jackson and ordered him harshly northward.
"A telephone, Jackson," he said quietly.
It was Wentworth himself who stepped from the coupe a few minutes later, Wentworth in dark tweeds, with a loose top-coat to shelter him from the sharpness of the winter wind, and neatly gloved hands. He moved swiftly, but more because of the complete efficiency of his every movement rather than because of hurried stride. There was an empty booth in the all-night drugstore which Jackson had chosen, and no one paid any heed to the quiet, self-contained man who slid into that booth. He snapped out the phone number of the district attorney.
Finally a sleepy voice came over the wire, "Wilton Toley speaking! Who is this?"
Wentworth laughed, "The Spider speaking, Toley. Are you awake yet you who sleep while crime ravages the city!"
Toley stammered, "What. Who? The Spider? Damn your soul . . . ."
Wentworth's voice cut in crisply, "In one hour, Toley, be at your office, and I will turn over to you one of the biggest cases of your career, complete with written evidence and witnesses. The police already are taking in most of the guilty men."
"What is it, man?" snapped Toley. Wentworth eased the receiver onto its hook. He did not need to say more, for Toley knew, as everyone knew, that the word of the Spider was inviolate!
Wentworth reached the coupe in a few swift seconds, long before Toley could get his befuddled senses together and think to trace the call . . . . Wentworth sat easily against the cushions, though he was beginning to feel some of the strain of the long night.
"Jackson," he said quietly, "I have in my pocket a list of the garages where the white fire trucks of the No-More-Fire Company are kept; also a list of their clients. I think if we borrow one of those white trucks, we will have very little difficulty in persuading the clients to accompany us!"
It was simple to acquire one of the trucks. There was only one man in the garage, for Munro's forces had been heavily depleted by the hours of battling against the Spider. Jackson slipped up and struck him neatly across the temple with a blackjack . . . . Afterward, two men wearing the long white raincoats of the No-More-Fire inspection service, and the red helmets, tooled one of the heavy fire trucks through the city streets . . . .
Wentworth made the first stop at an expensive apartment house, shouldered past the insistent doorman and left Jackson to watch over him. He hammered at a door then until an irritated man of middle age swung it wide. His sleepy eyes started wide, and he flinched back from the door.
"Jeremiah Wilton," said Wentworth in a hard voice, "you will come with me."
"I've paid off," the man stammered. "I paid off for the factory and for my apartment!"
"Come with me!" Wentworth ordered inexorably.
He allowed the man to pull on an overcoat from the hall closet and herded him to the white truck; and they pushed on to the next address. It was a shade over an hour later that the truck was blundering down Lafayette Street through the darkness of early morning. Wentworth had long ago abandoned the driving of the truck to his first captive, Milton; he had dropped Jackson at the last address. Now Wentworth stood at the extreme rear of the truck while Milton drove the last long way to the district attorney's office. Ahead of him were eleven other captives—all clients of No-More-Fires.
Wentworth began to talk quietly, but his voice reached clearly to every man on that truck.
"You think you are the prisoners of the racketeers that have been victimizing you," he said quietly. "You are wrong! You are the prisoners of the Spider!"
A moan went up from several of the men. They twisted about, and what they saw was no longer the white fireman with his red helmet. Instead, it was the Spider who stood erect in the rear of the truck.
"I will tell you the reason," he went on steadily. "If you obey me, you have nothing to fear! If you refuse . . . may God have mercy on your souls—for I won't! Gentlemen, we are about to pay a visit to the district attorney. You will tell him everything you know about No-More-Fires!"
"No," a man cried. "Oh, God, they'll kill us all!"
Wentworth said grimly, "It is not a question of that at all! It is merely a question of who kills you! Obey me, or you will find death close upon your heels. Perhaps, you have never seen the seal of the Spider!"
A few moments later, Wilton pulled the white truck to a halt before the district attorney's office. Instantly, a horde of police charged from the darkness. Brilliant lights played over the truck, and guns covered every inch of it!
A police lieutenant leaped to the running-board, grabbed Wilton by the collar. "Where's the Spider, you?" he snapped.
Wilton struggled in his grasp, twisted toward the rear. "Back there!" he said. "He was back there, and good God, the Spider is gone!"
The police searched, but there was no evidence that the Spider had ever been aboard that truck . . . . except that on its sign, there glittered the ominous red seal of the Spider! The police did not know that Wentworth had taken only twelve prisoners; they only noticed that thirteen men walked into the room where District Attorney Toley paced angrily up and down behind his desk. He stopped and glared toward the thirteen men.
"All right!" he snapped. "All right! You've been paying money to racketeers! The police know all about it! I'll take your names, and afterward you'll tell me the whole truth."
Complete silence followed his tirade, but one man, more completely dressed than most of the others, shuffled forward. His hair was pulled down over his forehead, and there was wildness in his straining grey-blue eyes.
"Listen," he said, in a high voice, "you can't do this to me! We're American citizens, and you can't do this to any of us!"
"What's your name?" Toley snapped.
The man backed up.
"Look!" he shouted. "Look, the Spider!"
He pointed toward the ceiling, and there, ghostly against the white of the ceiling, but clear despite the lights of the room . . . there danced the shadow of the Spider! Terror broke the voices of the men, and in the confusion, the laughter of the Spider sounded in the room!
Jeremiah Wilton dropped to his knees,
"I'll talk. God, yes, I'll talk—only don't let the Spider get me!"
In the bedlam over the Spider's laughter, the man who had first challenged Toley slipped from the room into an adjoining office. He ran through a series of connecting rooms then, and as he ran he adjusted his hair, stripped off the slight disguise he had worn.
In a room where Jackson had deposited them earlier, by racing ahead of the white fire truck after their last capture, he found his quiet tweeds and his topcoat and rapidly donned them. A douse of the acid he carried sufficed to set the disguise fuming. Soon they would be entirely destroyed. He glanced out to make sure that the hallway was empty, and strode toward the front door. He was just opposite the doorway of the hearing room when he saw the familiar crisp-striding figure of Kirkpatrick entering the building!
Wentworth whipped toward the door and beat on it with his fist. He was still hammering, unheard in the bedlam within, when Kirkpatrick strode to his side.
"What are you doing here, Dick?" he asked wearily.
Wentworth whipped toward him. "In God's name, get me inside there, Kirk," he demanded. "There's a white fire truck outside, and there are No-More-Fire witnesses inside. Kirk, I've got to hear them, got to find out about Munro!"
"He has added two more crimes to his roster, tonight," Kirkpatrick pounded on. "We found two clients of No-More-Fires burned to death!"
Wentworth felt the shock of fear and surprise run through him. He had thought he had found them all, had them safe! Damn Munro! For all he could tell, the fiend had simply picked up any likely victim. Easy enough to make them seem clients of No-More-Fires!
"That makes my news even worse, Kirk," he said heavily. "Nita was kidnapped by Munro!"
Kirkpatrick swore raspingly, and Wentworth gave him the details of how Ram Singh had been hit over the head, and Munro had taken his place. Kirkpatrick shuddered.
"The man is uncanny!" he cried. "God alone knows in what disguise he will appear next! Dick, you go home and let me handle this business inside. Toley isn't too fond of you, you know, and I promise that if there is anything definite that will lead to Munro, anything that will help you find Nita, I'll give it to you at once!"
Wentworth let his shoulders sag, "You are right, Kirk," he said. "I was half-crazy. On my way down to see you when I saw that white fire truck, and . . . ."
A door opened across the hall, and a man in police blue thrust out his head. "Mr. Wentworth," he said, "there's a call on this phone for you!"
Wentworth stiffened to a sudden certainty that he knew the nature of that call! Kirkpatrick was striding beside him as they crossed the corridor, but Wentworth's hand was stone-steady when he caught up the phone.
"Richard Wentworth here," he said.
He saw Kirkpatrick snatching up another phone, putting a tracer on the call, and the voice of Munro was rasping in his ear!
"Done a pretty neat job tonight, haven't you, Wentworth?" said Munro slowly. "Rounded up a lot of clients and forced them to talk, wiped out dozens of my men and thrown them into the hands of the police?"
Wentworth said mockingly, "That's good news, Munro, but I'm afraid you have the wrong party. I understand the Spider has done a few things this night!"
Munro ripped out an oath, and then the cool mockery returned to his voice. "Ah, I see, not you, but the Spider. Under those circumstances, I must change my plans a little. Your Hindu lad told me where to reach you, in case you're interested. But you are interested only in my message, aren't you Wentworth. In . . . Nita?"
Wentworth said coldly, "If you harm her, Munro, you will not survive the night!"
Munro laughed quietly, "Oh, I fancy I will. You will return to your home, Wentworth, and await further instructions from me via telephone. And, oh, yes, you'd better get in touch with your friend, the Spider, in the meantime. You see, Wentworth, I intend to burn Nita alive . . . unless you can persuade the Spider to put himself on the spot for you!
"Understand, Wentworth?
"Unless you can put the Spider on the spot, at a time and a place I will give you in three hours time . . . Nita will be burned alive!"