Spider (18 page)

"Not this time, Nita," said Kirkpatrick, sternly. "I know he saved your life, but he is a criminal!"

After he had spoken, there was deep silence in the cellar. There was a slow dripping of wine somewhere in the darkness, and that was all. Kirkpatrick lifted his voice.

"All right,
Spider,
" he added quietly. "This time you're trapped. Come out!"

Silence through a long moment, and then the softly mocking laughter of the
Spider
! "
Come and get me, Kirkpatrick!
"

Kirkpatrick's flashlight, like every other one in that tight cellar, was focused on the entrance to the alcove, and now Kirkpatrick moved steadily sideways. His light moved with him, and he shifted his revolver to be ready.

Nita lifted her face, her eyes closed, and her lips moved silently. It was when she opened her eyes that she started violently. Afterward, she looked down at the wine that lapped around her knees. She began to plead brokenly with Kirkpatrick.

"He's such a brave man, Stanley," she said. "You would never have caught the Iron Man without him. You know that! Let me go! You can't do this to the
Spider
!"

She threshed her legs in the wine, and the policeman grunted and tightened his hold. Kirkpatrick did not answer. He suddenly made a wide leap sideways, and his light stabbed into the alcove, his gun raked out. . . . She peered into the recess in the wall. There was a man there in a black cape and hat. His hands were stretched high above his head, as if in abject surrender. But Nita's eyes saw that a light length of line held them upward, was looped over the steam pipe.

"So you surrender,
Spider!
" Kirkpatrick's voice was full of relief. "That was wise of you!"

He moved toward the motionless figure in the recess, and suddenly the light, mocking laughter of the
Spider
filled all the basement! It seemed to come from everywhere at once, but Nita's keen eyes placed it at once. She saw Wentworth slip from the overhead steam pipe along which he had crawled while the flashlights focused beams beneath him, saw him stand upright on the steps a moment before he laughed.

"Why no, Kirkpatrick," the
Spider
called gently. "I never surrender. And don't hurt poor Frank Drexler, who was forced to don my robes for a moment. He is quite innocent!"

Finally, Kirkpatrick spotted the source of that voice. He whirled, with his gun raking out, but the light laughter sounded again. There was a flicker of movement at the head of the steps, and then the steel door clanged shut, and a lock snapped into place. Kirkpatrick fired a single shot, and it rang like a gong against the closed door. And laughter still sounded in the cellar from which the Master of Men had escaped.

But it was Nita laughing. "Isn't that too bad, Stanley," she said softly. "I do believe the
Spider
has 'disappeared' once more!"

DEATH REIGN
OF THE
VAMPIRE KING

Chapter One
The Bat Man

TWENTY MEN WITH SHOTGUNS patrolled the wide lawns of Robert Latham's mansion, crouching in the black shadows of night. Their hands were tightly clamped on their weapons and they cringed close against the walls of the house. They watched the moon-drenched sky fearfully.

From the dense shadow of a shrub a score of yards away, another man spied upon them. He was a hunched, grotesque figure and his long black cape made his body blend with the darkness. He held no weapon, but beside him was a large bird cage. On his lips was a thin, tight smile. . . .

Those guards feared different terror, but if they could have seen this lurking man, they would have fled screaming in panic behind the protecting walls of the house. Not even their ready shotguns would have reassured them. For they were men of the Underworld and he who watched preyed upon their kind. He slew and left a mocking vermilion seal upon their foreheads to show that full vengeance had been exacted by the champion of oppressed humanity—nemesis of all criminals—the
Spider
!

The smile lingered on the
Spider's
lips as he surveyed the mansion, blazing with a hundred lights, and watched the men move about furtively with their deadly guns. He was determined to enter that house, though he knew that discovery within those walls would mean certain death at the hands of these men whose fear of him was matched only by their hatred and their desire to kill him. Yes, his entrance must be secret . . . for a while.

The
Spider
rose slowly to his full, bowed height, lifted the cage at arm's length and removed its bottom. For perhaps thirty seconds, nothing happened at all; then a black form dropped from the cage, spread leathery wings and flitted off erratically into the night. Then another and another, until six bats had taken wing. The
Spider
laid the cage gently on the earth, crouched again into the shadows to wait. The lights of the mansion would attract insects and those bats fed on small, flying vermin of the night. When the bats flitted between those men and the sky, the panic of terror would reign. . . .

The
Spider
nodded. They had reason for fright, these men. Within two weeks, a dozen race-horses and four men who frequented the tracks had been killed by the bite of vampire bats!

Useless to say that vampire bats never had been known outside of the tropics; useless to state that they never killed. There could be no mistaking the type of wound, the tiny area of skin peeled away by the keen, painless teeth of the bat. But the bodies of the victims had not been drained of blood. They died instead . . . of
poison
!

The
Spider
smiled coldly in the darkness. His bats were not poisonous—not even vampires—but the men who watched the home of Robert Latham would not know that. . . .

Abruptly, one of the armed guards cried out shrilly. There was more than warning in the shout. There was panic, fear and dread. His shotgun belched flame and lead upward into the darkness; then another man also screamed and fired. A ground-floor door flung open in the mansion and the men streaked toward it, shotguns bellowing.

This was the moment for which the
Spider
had played. He wrapped his cape tightly about his body lest its flapping betray him and ran fleetly forward. When he burst into the moonlit ring about the house, he was shouting more loudly than any of the other panic-stricken men. He went in through the door with the rest, mistaken momentarily for one of their number.

Swiftly, he backed across the room in which the terrified guards were huddling. A man turned toward him:

"Geez!" he gulped, "the boss was right. Them bats—"

So much he said before he realized that this sinister, capped man with the hunched shoulders—with cold eyes gleaming beneath the wide brim of a black slouch hat—was no comrade of his. His mouth opened to cry out. His eyes stretched and terror glanced across his countenance. The
Spider
was recognized!

If this man shouted aloud the
Spider's
name, a dozen shotguns would blaze at once. These men feared him, but like cornered rats, they would shoot him down. . . .

The
Spider's
action was as swift as his thought. His left hand shot forward, the first two fingers rigidly pointed. They struck basic nerve centers in the throat. With the cry unuttered on his lips, the man collapsed. In two leaping strides, the
Spider
crossed the room, plunged through a door. The other men, staring fearfully out into the darkness, while the last of the guards still raced for cover from the threat of those harmless bats the
Spider
had loosed, saw nothing, knew nothing of the more frightful menace among them—until they turned and saw their companion on the floor. Even then they did not understand, but cried that bats—the vampire bats—had slain again!

Within the house, crouching now in the shadow of a stairway, the
Spider
heard that cry with tightened lips that knew no mirth. If the gods were good, he would find here tonight an answer to this mystery of vampire bats whose bite was fatal. Newspapers, even reputable scientists, talked of a new species of bat carrying the poisoned fangs of snakes. . . .

The
Spider,
waiting there in the darkness for the excitement to die, shook his head slowly. There had been other such foolish theories as this whenever the criminal great turned their hands to slaughter. In his many battles to protect mankind against them, the
Spider
had unearthed drugs that drove men mad, and others that made them docile as dogs; explosives which performed the impossible by absolutely disintegrating whatever they blasted; there had been a gas that destroyed steel as termites do wooden beams. . . . And now there were vampire bats which killed like snakes! No, he did not believe in such vermin. There was something far more menacing behind this nascent terror than a new species of bat.

The
Spider
was ever alert for new outbreaks of crime. It was only by constant vigilance that he had averted, a dozen times over, the desire of the Underworld to rule over the nation; the slaughter of untold thousands. . . . It had seemed to him now that perhaps some ring of race-track gamblers had conceived a new, horrible weapon and was using it, at present, to destroy personal enemies and to frame races. If that were true, it was no more than a routine job for the police; but suppose . . . suppose the criminals behind this strange new terror turned their thoughts to nation-wide conquest!

The
Spider
had seen many overwhelming reigns of terror begin thus trivially. He had learned the wisdom of striking quickly and terribly. So he had come tonight to determine what Latham knew of this strange, new, killing instrument.

The turmoil below was quieting. Soon the patrol of the grounds would begin again. The
Spider
had no fear that the man he had struck would regain consciousness and betray him. The jiu-jitsu blow would be effective for at least an hour and by that time, the
Spider's
presence would be known to them all!

A slow smile crossed the
Spider's
straight lips as he crept stealthily up the service stairway of the mansion toward the second floor sitting room, where, he knew, Latham kept his watch. There was a shotgun guard in the wide, upper hall. The
Spider
drew a length of silken line from a pocket of his cape, rope less than the diameter of a pencil which yet had a tensile strength of seven hundred pounds! The
Spider's
web, police had dubbed it. Well, he would use it now to catch a fly!

Carefully, he looped the cord, carefully tossed it. The unwary guard felt gossamer brush his throat; then he was yanked off his feet, his shotgun clattering to the floor. The
Spider
was beside him in an instant and once more he struck swiftly to render the man unconscious. He freed his line and, in two long bounds, was at the door behind which Latham lurked with his bodyguard.

That noise of clattering gun had been intentional. After its sound, all was utter, waiting silence. Then, abruptly, the door the
Spider
watched snapped open. A man with a gun held rigidly ready sprang out into the hall. He grated a curse as he saw the prostrate guard, moved toward him cautiously. The
Spider's
fist lashed out, caught him hard on the jaw. While the man still wavered on his feet, the
Spider
had yanked away his gun, was through the open door, had closed it, and the automatic was covering the room.

"Ah, Latham," said the
Spider,
his voice flat, mocking. "Let me compliment you on the efficacy of your guard!" He laughed softly, and that sound, too, was taunting, blood-chilling.

There were three men in the room and they sat—one of them half-stood—in attitudes of frozen fright. Only Latham's gun was in sight, upon a small, nearby taboret which also held whiskey and a soda siphon. He held a glass in his right hand and, the first to recover, he began presently to slosh the liquid about in it slowly. He was spare, but full-faced and distinguished with his smooth, brown hair which had whitened upon the temples.

"Damn glad you've come,
Spider,
" Latham said calmly. "Perhaps you know some way of stopping these damned bats."

"Just keep on drinking, Latham," the
Spider
said. "I wouldn't think of interrupting your pleasure."

The
Spider's
voice was gentle, but the grim, gaunt face with its lipless mouth and harsh beak of a nose was threat enough. Latham gazed at the sallow face, the hunch-backed figure in black cape that crouched behind the ready gun and his pale face became grayish. His glass moved jerkily away from the taboret and he touched tongue to his dry lips.

"Good God,
Spider,
" he said hoarsely, "I . . . I was just going to set my glass down."

"Certainly, Latham," the
Spider
agreed. "Tonight, Latham, you have no reason to fear me. I simply want to ask you some questions. . . .
Whose stable shelters the vampire bats?
"

Latham contrived a smile. "The guard I've got here tonight should prove to you that mine doesn't,
Spider,
" he said anxiously. "Hell, my men just drove away one attack . . . !"

The
Spider's
lipless mouth parted a little, but he did not explain the bats. Abruptly, tension whipped his body. He half-crouched and his gun jutted toward Latham's chest. Pounding footsteps were racing down the hall. In the darkness outside, a man screamed—a cry that choked off in mid-shout. With the suddenness of lightning, the lights clicked out and somewhere, wailing, quavering through the night, came a mourning note that was like the moan of a tortured soul in hell.

"Oh God!" screamed Latham. "It's the Bat Man!"

* * *

For fifteen seconds after the first beat of footsteps, the
Spider
had suspected a trick. Perhaps someone knew the method of quickly reviving the man he had knocked out. There was a way. . . . But the sound of Latham's voice, the inarticulate fright in the cries of the others, convinced him that their terror was genuine.