The Black Widow

Issuing classic fiction from
Yesterday and Today!

Whitey was on him like a lean panther,
swinging the pistol like a club at the back of the boy’s head,
catching him a solid blow. The sentry crumpled to his hands and
knees, mewing in pain, barely conscious. As Jed kicked the outer
door shut, shooting the main bolt across, he heard the sickening
crack, like a ripe apple being trodden underfoot, as Whitey swung
his gun a second time, smashing the top of the guard’s skull to a
bloody pulp. Ignoring the body, that lay still twitching at his
feet, the albino bent and wiped blood and matted hair from the
foresight of his Colt on the fancy waistcoat, adding a macabre
layer to the decorations. “Leaves us three,” he said ...

THE BLACK WIDOW

First Published by
Corgi Books in
1977

Copyright ©
197
7 by John
J. McLaglen

This is a Piccadilly Publishing
Book

Published by Piccadilly Publishing at Smashwords: November
2012

Names,
characters and incidents in this book are fictional, and any
resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons
living or dead is purely coincidental.

This
ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may
not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to
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copy for each reader. If you’re reading the book and did not
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return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for
respecting the hard work of this author.

Published by Arrangement with the
Author.

Cover image © 2012 by
Westworld Designs

This is a Piccadilly
Publishing Book

Published by Arrangement
with
Elizabeth James.

My oh my how time does
fly. This is for John Harvey who is as good a writer as he is a
friend. Remember to keep your eyes on the Omaha Rainbow.

The spider was small. Its size quite
out of proportion to its ability to deal a swift and agonizing
death.

It squatted malevolently in the corner of
the glass box, the light from the oil lamps glittering off its
glossy black skin. It looked swollen, sitting at the center of its
own skeletal legs. As it moved, in a sudden and uncertain run to
one corner, it was possible to see the red markings on its
underbelly that identified it beyond all doubt as the black
widow.

‘
Remember me when I am gone
away,

Gone far away into the
silent land;’

The boys paused at their play, hearing
the husky voice of their mother from the withdrawing room across
the hall from them. Reading the beautiful love sonnet of Christina
Rossetti. Since the peculiar death of their father two years ago,
Ruth Stanwyck had taken more and more to reading alone in the vast
book-lined room.

Mark sniggered. An obscene little
noise that barely disturbed the air with its ripple. ‘Mama is
feeling lonely again, Luke.'

His twin brother, born just eighteen
minutes after him, also looked up, and smiled. His smile was as
pale as his clothes. As smooth as white silk. ‘Perhaps she will be
taking another of her trips to San Francisco.’

Again the giggle. ‘Good. If she does,
my dear brother, then we can go on a trip ourselves.’

Luke shook his head, poking casually
at the crouching spider. ‘Remember what happened last time. In
March.’

‘
But it was such sport. The
lonely lady near Tucson, and her friendly and hospitable neighbor.
I enjoyed them so much, Luke.’

This time it was Luke who laughed, the
sudden noise bringing a pause to his mother’s reading. He moved,
the light off his totally white clothes dazzling amid the shadows
of the vaulted room.

‘
Y
our tastes in pleasure are so close to
mine, brother, and yet so very far apart.’

Again he prodded at the spider with the
needle-sharp tip of the stiletto he always carried. Mark stood away
from the table, pouting at his brother.

‘
At least my pleasures
come from sticking things into other people and not from sticking
things into myself.’

There was the soft rustle of silk as
Luke straightened up, his eyes narrowing. ‘You always were
squeamish. About yourself. Yet I have never seen you concern
yourself with the sufferings of others.’

Their mother heard them beginning their
ceaseless circular bickering and sighed, stopping reading the
sonnet two lines short of the end. The rambling mansion that her
late husband had built for them, high in the fastness of the
Sierras, was becoming a prison. Much as she loved the house, with
its treasure-trove of antiques culled from all over Europe and
Asia, and much as she loved her twin sons, there were times when
the house, with its dozen armed guards permanently on duty, seemed
more like a jail.

Mark and Luke heard her stop reading and
paused in their argument. Although their mother was capable of
stifling affection, she was also capable of taking the riding-crop
from the wall. The whip with the handle of chased Spanish silver
and the triple-plaited thongs. Although they were only two weeks
short of their joint twenty-first birthday, Ruth would not hesitate
to take them into her ornate bedroom with its brocaded velvet
hangings cutting off the ranging views. To strip them and order
them to bend across the four-poster and lash them in a fury of
anger, until the blood flowed from their torn flanks.

And afterwards she would hold them
close and touch them where it hurt. Taking away the pain and
bringing a luxuriant, somnolent pleasure. A pleasure that both boys
found so intense that it made the punishment almost
worthwhile.

Almost, but not quite.

They waited for the sound of her
high-button boots clicking across the marble hallway towards them,
but there was silence. Luke fitfully poked again at the black widow
spider, neatly slicing off one of its legs, so that it scampered
away from the corner, dragging its body askew, then waiting,
looking up at the boys, its body swollen with venom.

‘
Cut off another, Luke.
See how long it can keep going around.’

‘
Let’s see you pick it up
out of the box and I will. Go on.’

‘
Take care, brother. Cross me
and you’ll not sleep easy for wondering what you might find between
your sheets.’

‘
Worry more about what you
might find between your ribs, Mark.’

‘
Stop that at
once!’

The voice was as keen as the east wind
that tore at the gables of the house. Involved in their perpetual
feud, the brothers had missed the sound of their mother’s approach.
With a squeal of fright as shrill as a girl’s, Mark spun round, and
his hand caught the edge of the glass box. Sending it spinning to
shatter on the floor, right at his mother’s feet. Sending its
glossy black occupant tumbling out near the edge of the Persian
carpet.

Tightly
corset
ed in
black satin, a jet necklace at her pale throat, Ruth Stanwyck
looked down at the spider with no more concern than if it had been
a botanical specimen.

Mark’s hand went to his mouth, while Luke
took a careful step backwards, brushing a small patch of dust on
the immaculate sleeve of his white suit.

‘
Take care, Mama,’ whispered
Mark, between his bitten fingers.

‘
This creature is
yours?’

Neither twin spoke. Neither Mark nor Luke
would risk crossing their mother when she was close to one of her
tempers. Both kept their eyes fixed on the intricate pattern of the
rug, not wanting to meet Ruth’s gaze. Her eyes, as heavy-lidded as
a hooded falcon, would flash with startling fire if they crossed
her.

‘
I
asked a question, did I not,
Mark?’

‘
Yes, Mama.’

‘
And I do not believe that I
heard either of you reply to it, did I, Luke?’

‘
No, Mama.’

Seemingly ignored, the spider was
painfully crawling nearer and nearer to the trailing hem of the
long black dress.

‘
Very well. Since the creature
seemingly belongs to neither of you, then I shall dispose of it.
There!’

Without even looking down, Ruth
Stanwyck lifted her foot and brought it down on the crippled
creature, squashing it into a tiny ball of poison on the polished
mahogany floor with the toe of her boot.

Mark opened his mouth to protest, then
thought better of it.

‘
Yes, Mark?’ Quick and alert as
ever, their mother had caught the slight movement of the
lips.

‘
Nothing,
Mama.’

Luke interrupted, quietly slipping his
knife back into its oiled deerskin sheath behind the right hip.
‘Mama?’

‘
Yes, Luke.’

‘
Mark was asking if it
might be possible for us to come with you next time you travel to
the coast?’

His mother didn’t answer, walking past him
to the vaulted window, with its inset panel of fourteenth century
stained glass, torn from a monastery in Bavaria. She stood with her
back to him, staring out at the gray stones of the mountains,
unblinking as the wind dashed a flurry of sleet against the
glass.

Although she was nearly forty, Ruth
Stanwyck was a fine figure of a woman, her body still ripe and
promising beneath that tight black dress. And her hair hung in a
cluster of tight blonde ringlets, framing her face and those
marvelous eyes. The only touch of color was a massive ruby set at
the center of the buckle of her belt. Beyond that touch of deep
red, she presented a frighteningly somber figure encased in
gleaming black satin.

She behaved as though she hadn’t heard the
question, turning back to look into the room, at the splash of
splintered glass by the table, and her twin sons standing each
side. Mark her first-born, nervously picking at a ragged piece of
torn skin on his knuckles. And Luke immaculate, as always, in
white. But she knew Luke well. There was already the faintest
twitching of his cheek below the right eye. She glanced at the onyx
clock on the mantelshelf. It was nearly five. She would make him
wait a while longer for his … ‘treatment’. In another hour he would
begin to sweat. By dinner he would be willing to crawl on his belly
for that precious half-spoonful of white powder that she kept
locked in the iron safe in her boudoir.