Spider (27 page)

"Something's up, sir," Jackson whispered.

Wentworth's eyes were tight and hard as he strove to accustom them to the darkness. No doubt that what Jackson said was correct. In some way, the Indians had detected his trick of sending only Ram Singh away as a decoy.

"Looks like we'll have to fight our way out," he said quietly. "Try to capture a white man. The Indians wouldn't know anything and wouldn't talk if they did. There must be a side door. . . ."

Leading the way, with Jackson just behind him, Wentworth crossed the dark hangar toward its opposite side. He found the door all right, turned the knob cautiously. That silence outside was prolonging itself suspiciously. . . .

A voice called hollowly from the main door and Wentworth wheeled that way, guns ready. No one was in sight.

"Surrender!" the voice called again, "or you will be killed instantly."

Wentworth pushed open the side door and slipped outside. Jackson was close behind him and they stood, waiting, peering into the darkness that crowded close upon them. A dozen yards away was a thick woods. Nothing moved. . . . With the abruptness of a gunshot, light bathed the entire side of the hangar, outlined the two men against it like black silhouette targets. Wentworth's gun blasted even as he flung himself to the earth. The light went out but behind him Jackson cursed raspingly.

"Got me, major. Blowgun dart. . . ." His voice faded and was punctured by a series of popping sounds there in the edge of the woods. Wentworth's guns blasted, his lips thinning back from his teeth. Jackson, good God, Jackson hit by a poisoned dart! . . . Two darts pricked his own skin, one on the throat, the other on his cheek. A dozen more thudded gently against the galvanized side of the hangar. With a shouted roar of anger, Wentworth leaped to his feet.

God! So the
Spider
had got it at last, dying not by the guns of the Underworld, but by poison on the end of a primitive arrow! His automatics blasted deafeningly. Screams beat upon his ears through the thunder of his weapons, but it was the end. No mistaking that this time. Here was no death trap, no plant he could wriggle out of, here was only death. . . .

Already a cold numbness was stealing over him. He wavered on his feet, squeezing the triggers of his automatics again. They kicked from his hands. For long seconds more he stood there, feeling again and again the prick of the darts, piercing his clothing, kissing his hands. By sheer will force, he fought down the numbness that washed up his limbs, that groped with cold fingers for his heart, his brain. . . .

A fierce, ringing cry welled up from his lips. The
Spider
fell. . . . A single glimmer of consciousness remained. He felt a great peace, a welling happiness of spirit. The battle was ended at last. Nita,
Nita. . . .

He was dead, and yet he continued to realize dimly what was going on about him. In this fumbling way, he felt that he was lifted and carried. He remembered vaguely that
curare
, the poison with which the South American blowpipe users tipped their darts, paralyzed instantly, but did not kill for almost twenty minutes. He was passing through that intermediate stage of death now. . . .

Something pricked his throat. What the devil, were they injecting more poison into his veins? But there was no need for that. He was already. . . . But was he? The numbness was receding, the blackness withdrawing from his eyes. He could not understand all that was happening, but he could not doubt it. Had these Indians then found an antidote for the poison that had no antidote?

He heard a voice as harsh and grating as the squeak of a bat ranting impatiently. Then someone systematically began to slap his face. He opened his eyes and peered up into the impassive face of an Indian. The eyes glittered like points of obsidian knives. . . . Hands gripped his shoulders and hauled him to his feet. He was in an immense black room where the light was dim and red. The grating voice came from a great bat upon a throne of skulls. . . . what, a bat? But it wasn't possible . . . !

Wentworth shook his head violently to clear it, peered again at the throne. He saw now that it was a man seated there, a man with great leathery wings stretching from his shoulders. Now and then he waved them back and forth languidly. Wentworth saw these things without actually taking them in, but presently the last of the fogginess lifted from his brain, leaving it brilliantly clear. He peered into the face of the creature on the throne and, uncontrollably, a strong shudder plucked at his muscles. Was this the Bat Man then?

The face was incredibly hideous, the nose sliced off, the whole countenance drawn up toward that wound into a striking and hideous semblance of a bat's convulted face. He had even attached huge, pointed ears to his head, and those wings. . . . Wentworth pulled himself together with a bracing of his shoulders, a lift of his chin. There was that about the man and his face that made his blood run cold, but it was trickery. It must be. . . .

He looked about him with steady eyes, saw that Jackson stood nearby with four men clinging to his unbound arms even as Wentworth realized he also stood. About them stood ranks of impassive Indians, each kirtled in brilliant red with a belt about their waists of some curious whitish leather. . . . The monstrous squeaking of the Bat Man pulled his head toward the throne sharply.

"You are wondering why you are alive," he rasped. "It is not our habit to kill such prisoners as come our way—that is, not at once. You were shot with narcotic instead of poisoned darts. You see, our bats must have food."

He said the words simply, so matter-of-factly that for a moment the meaning did not penetrate. Food for the bats. . . . But these bats were vampires. They fed on blood! Wentworth's eyes tightened against a tendency to widen. He could feel the quivering of the muscles in his temples, but Wentworth forced his stiff lips to smile.

"I have considered many ends," he admitted casually, "but supplying oral transfusions to bats was not among them!"

He was conscious of Jackson's white face, his knotted, wide-muscled jaws, but he dared not look that way lest his sternly held composure desert him. The Bat Man made no direct reply to Wentworth's jibe, but the already contorted face was made revoltingly hideous by a frown. Jackson's breath was audible to Wentworth, a hissing, strangled sound. Somewhere behind the throne, a gong lifted its singing note and the Bat Man's frown faded. He smiled and lifted his right hand. . . .

Behind the throne, a door opened, revealing hangings of golden silk and through those portieres stepped a woman with glistening black hair that fluffed out from beneath scarlet fillets. She wore a scarlet robe, but one milk-white shoulder was bare, her breasts were outlined in bands that criss-crossed over her bosom in Roman style. Wentworth's teeth locked tightly.

"June Calvert!" he whispered.

The girl smiled down on him haughtily, her dark intelligent eyes half-veiled by their lids. "Who is this?" she asked imperiously.

The Bat Man's rasping voice seemed to soften a little. "Richard Wentworth, my dear, who is either a confederate of the
Spider,
or the
Spider
himself!"

Wentworth controlled the start that his muscles involuntarily made at those words. What, had he been discovered so early in the fight? His fists knotted and the Indians to each side, feeling his muscles harden, gripped more tightly, put their weight into their holds upon his arms.

"One of my men," the Bat Man was explaining, "saw the
Spider
knock bats into a car driven by a Hindu and later the Hindu released those bats coated with radioactive paint. This man attempted to trail them from the skies. The Hindu is this man's servant. . . ."

A remarkable change had come over June Calvert's face. It was still imperious, but it was twisted with hatred and rage. Her eyes, half-veiled, burned with living fires of anger and her hands became claws.

"The
Spider
!" she whispered. "The
Spider
who killed my brother!" Her hand slipped to her girdle and whipped out a curved dagger. She moved toward Wentworth on slow, crouching legs like a cat.

Wentworth smiled at her. "I am not the
Spider,
" he said quietly, "but if I were, I could not have killed your brother. He died by the bite of the bats."

June Calvert laughed and the sound was more like a snarl. "Yes, bats killed him. His own bats. He was a partner of the Bat Man, but you turned the bats upon him. It was you, you,
you
. . . !"

"Calm yourself, my dear," Wentworth shrugged. "I'll admit that anger becomes you . . ."

June Calvert sprang toward him with her knife uplifted. The Bat Man squeaked. It was precisely that—not words, nor articulate sound—simply a squeak of peculiar timber. An Indian sprang between Wentworth and June, offered his breast to the knife. For a moment, it seemed she would strike him down to reach the man behind him, but the Bat Man was speaking now.

"My dear," he whispered raspingly, "I have another, juster, more delightful death in store for our friend here, be he
Spider
or not. As you know, the appetite for human blood of our cutely starved bats must be whetted. Sometimes when we have no prisoners, we are forced to call for volunteers from among our company, but now there is no need for that. Would you not consent, my dear, to feed him to the bats instead?"

June Calvert stood panting, just beyond the human barrier which shielded Wentworth. Gradually the hatred and rage in her face became more subtle, gave place to a cruel joy.

"Splendid!" she whispered. "Oh, splendid!" She turned toward the throne and bowed low. "Grant that I may watch the . . . bats feed."

The Bat Man's laughter was squeaky, too. It ascended the scale like the grating of a saw-file until it became inaudible in the ultra-human range.

"Yes, my dear," he whispered. "You may!"

He lifted his left hand in a peculiar gesture and Wentworth's captors wrenched him backward and pinned him to the floor. Other Indians tore his clothing from his body. To his right, he could hear Jackson cursing and fighting futilely against similar treatment. Then, birth-naked, they were thrust across the darkened room. Behind them, came a long file of Indians, marching, chanting a harsh paean. Their joy was obvious. On the throne at the other end of the long room, the Bat Man laughed and laughed his squeaky, unearthly mirth and June Calvert stood, proud in scarlet, with a cruel smile on her lips.

Wentworth and Jackson marched side by side now. Jackson twisted about his head. "Good God, what a woman!" he whispered. "She's mine, major. Mine! I never saw a woman who could stir me so. . . ."

Wentworth looked curiously as this staid soldier who had fought beside him through so many life and death struggles. A steady man, reliable and unimaginative. But now his chest heaved with something more than his exertions, and there was a set, determined jaw. He did not even seem to consider what lay in store for them.

"When we get out of this," Jackson said heavily. "I'm coming after her. I am."

Wentworth smiled thinly. Jackson said
when
, not
if
, we get out of this. But then, Jackson was depending on the
Spider
who had wrested him from many a fierce and loathesome doom. Wentworth felt the grimness of his own locked jaw, but he was fighting against an overwhelming despair. To be locked in a cage, naked, with starved vampire bats, could mean only inevitable death.

A steel grating was opened in a chamber whose walls were steel-mesh wire. Wentworth was hurled forward, Jackson behind him. They sprang to their feet as the door clanged shut, got their backs against a wall and strained their eyes into the twilight of their death-chamber. There on the floor were stretched two things that had been men. Their flesh was shrunken and folded in upon their bodies. Cheeks were sunken and shriveled lips bared locked teeth. But more than anything else, it was the
pallor
of the bodies that mocked Wentworth and Jackson in the cage of bats. Those bodies were . . . bloodless. . . .

Jackson still seemed in the daze which the beauty of the woman had afflicted upon him. Wentworth slapped him violently on the cheek.

"Later, Jackson, later," he said sharply. "Now, we must fight for our lives, unless you want to be as they are." His rigid pointing arm, indicating the bodies on the floor, snapped Jackson to attention. He paled. A shudder convulsed his shoulders.

"Good God, major!" he whispered. "What can we do?"

Wentworth shook his head slowly. There were Indian guards outside the cage with ready blowguns. There was no escape there. June Calvert had had a chair brought to the door and she sat there, languidly waiting for the torture to begin.

"What in God's name can we do?" Jackson whispered again.

Already above them in the dark upper reaches of the mesh prison, there were premonitory squeakings and fluttering. A bat winged through the air near them, circled, and swept toward Jackson. He struck savagely with his fist, then cursed and gripped his hand.

"The devil nipped me," he growled.

Wentworth laughed and there was a touch of wildness in the sound. The bats' teeth were not poisoned, it was apparent, since Jackson had been bitten and still lived. But how long could they survive the blood-draining battle with the bats? There were thousands of them up above, to judge from the sound. But he knew the answer. It would be a matter of time only.

"We could make a barricade of those two bodies," Jackson said, without hope.

They did that, crouched behind the blood-drained corpses that warned them of what the future held. They settled themselves to fight for their lives. Abruptly the air was filled with a myriad black flutterings. Jackson and Wentworth flailed the air with their arms. Utter loathing gripped the
Spider.
The stench of the bats was nauseous and the thought of dying to feed such beasts. . . .

Jackson screamed with a hint of hysteria. "Take him off! Take him off!"