THE SPIDER-City of Doom (27 page)

Wentworth checked at the fourth floor, and peered out toward the window of Duncan's apartment. A narrow ledge ran along the building beneath the windows and, without hesitation, Wentworth stepped out upon it. His shoes dusted off a fine edging of snow. One false step and he would be hurled out into space! Only a man of perfectly controlled nerves, of whip-cord muscles would have dared that passage—yet Wentworth scarcely thought about it. His mind reached ahead to the room in which he would find Duncan—if Munro had not reached him first! So rapidly he moved, seemingly a black shadow that flitted across the face of the building, that he might have been the very personification of the creature whose name he bore!

Presently, he checked beside a window, and his fingers moved deftly over its facing. The reflected glow of the city skies, always flushed with its myriad lights, reached feebly into the room, and Wentworth nodded as his eyes took in the elaborately over-luxurious furnishings of the place. Expensive—and in wretched taste. Yes, he had been right in his location of Duncan's apartment!

From beneath his cape, Wentworth drew out a device like a doctor's stethoscope and fastened a suction disk to the window-pane. The glass acted as a huge diaphragm, picking up every sound within the room. There were muffled footsteps, but from their faintness, Wentworth knew they were in the hall beyond the door. There was another muted, regular sound, and then the jiggle of bedsprings. Wentworth's smile was grim on his lips, as he thrust the instrument away. Duncan was at home!

His hand closed on the window frame and, soundlessly, it slid upward in its grooves. The
Spider's
skill held it from vibration. Heat swirled out into his face, and the stale bite of whisky. Effortlessly, the
Spider
slid over the sill, and now he was a crouched figure of menace, looming enormous in the black cape.

There was the glint of gun-metal in his fist, and his feet made no sound as he slipped across the drawing-room toward what be knew must be the bedroom entrance. The door stood open. The sound of breathing came to him again, and once more the threshing of bed-springs. So much the better, if Duncan were awake!

Wentworth slipped a small flashlight from his pocket and, muffling it beneath his cape, he stared fixedly at it through a long moment while his eyes adjusted to the brightness. Then he stepped into Duncan's room . . . and swept on the lights.

"Good evening, Duncan!" he said quietly. "Such a polished gentleman as yourself should rise when he has a visitor!"

His eyes were burning toward the bed. He could see the figure beneath the bed-clothing, covers drawn even over the head. There was a renewed, frenzied threshing of the bed-springs. The covers jumped and surged . . . but the man did not sit up as Wentworth bade him! A sharp oath sprang to Wentworth's lips. In a single long bound, he reached the bed, whipped the covers back.

There was a man in the bed all right, a man with a bristling black beard parted by the tight white bonds of a gag. Black eyes glowered fiercely up into his.

Wentworth gasped, "
Ram Singh!
"

It was no more than a glance and a beginning of a word that he uttered, and then Wentworth did a curious thing! He hurled his entire body forward and flung himself face down across Ram Singh's body, and whipped his cape up over his own head. At the same instant, the room exploded into flame!

If Wentworth had been one instant late in his swift leap, those flames would have seared the life from his body in that first flash! As it was, he felt the hot bite of the knife-points of flame, heard the window crash out with the force of the concussion! No ordinary man would have lived through that first split-second of disaster, but Wentworth would not have this long survived his fierce battles with crime had he not been a little greater than human.

In the instant when he was whipping aside the covers, to gaze at the incredible fact that Ram Singh was a bound prisoner in Duncan's bed, Wentworth's all-seeing eyes had caught sight of another thing. He had glimpsed a wire, so fine as to be invisible except on close inspection, fastened to the bed-clothes. He had felt that wire catch and drag as he flung the covers aside. More than that had not been necessary! He was on the trail of an arsonist, and such men dealt in flame traps!

Wentworth tried to roll Ram Singh from the bed, but ropes held him prisoner. Wentworth's hand stabbed beneath his cape and brought out . . . the glass globes of the flame extinguisher! Fiercely, he hurled one where the red, leaping flames were hottest! Already, the fire was beginning to roar with the draft from the open window. The rug, walls, even the bed itself, was alive with little dancing blazes! Then the extinguisher burst!

Where it shattered against the wall, the flames leaped fiercely high . . . and went out! White fumes crawled along the floor, and where they rolled, the spots of fire pinched out like a match tossed into a basin of water. One more of the extinguisher bombs Wentworth hurled, and the last of the blazes was blackened. The room was completely dark now. Plainly, the wiring system had been involved in that touch-off; was blown out now!

Wentworth thrust himself violently from the bed, and a keen pocket-knife flicked open in his hand. He worked with furious speed, slashing loose the bonds that held Ram Singh. Even after that so short blaze, the air of the room was stifling hot. It reached with tearing hands into his lungs. The fumes of the extinguisher crawled close to the floor, but Wentworth coughed stranglingly as he worked . . . . His mind raced even faster than his deft hands.

No question that Munro had come before him, exactly figuring the
Spider's
next step; no question either that this flame-trap was only the beginning! There would be killers here whose job it would be to make sure of the
Spider's
death! At any moment, the doors might crash in—the gunmen hurl themselves to the attack! Ram Singh must be free then . . . .

These thoughts were in the forefront of Wentworth's mind, but there was a nagging agony there, too, that he would not permit to make itself felt. Ram Singh's presence here could mean only one thing: he had been overpowered by some trick while Wentworth and Nita had been inside the Hesperides Club the last time. And that meant . . . that meant the man who had driven Nita away in the Daimler was Munro!

Wentworth ripped the gag from Ram Singh's lips. "Quiet!" he warned. "There will be enemies near!"

Ram Singh heaved his broad-shouldered length from the bed, and Wentworth caught the gleam of his teeth as he spat on the floor. "
Wah,
" he rumbled softly. "Thy servant is a swollen-bellied idiot from the hills! They tricked me,
sahib!
Thy servant is unfit to live!"

Ram Singh was suddenly on his knees before Wentworth, and his powerful hands ripped open the throat of his tunic.

"Master," he growled, "they have taken my knives, else I would spare thee the task! Slay a dog who is unfit!"

Wentworth's hand dropped heavily on Ram Singh's shoulder. His own heart was lead in his chest. "If you deserve death, my warrior," he said in the harsh Punjabi that was Ram Singh's native language, "then I also deserve that fate. For I rode behind this man, clothed in thy garments! And I did not know him! I did not know him . . . and he carried off . . . the
missie sahib!
"

A growl of rage rumbled in Ram Singh's chest. He was suddenly on his feet, and his crouch was like a beast. His hands swung restlessly. "Master," he whispered, "let us, thou and I, earn the right to live! When I have found those who hold the
missie sahib . . . .
"

Wentworth's own lips were curved in a wintry smile. He heard a few frightened calls in the courtyard outside the window, but on this floor, there was complete silence. And it was a silence of waiting, and of death!

"That door leads into the hallway, Ram Singh," he said. "It is locked! And our enemies are outside!" Ram Singh crossed the room in two easy strides, and his hands clamped on the knob of the door. His shoulders, his back arched like the bow of a catapult.

"I will want one man alive," Wentworth's whisper rang.

There came a slow creaking from the door. Ram Singh's breath exploded in a curse from his lips . . . and suddenly be straightened. There was a ripping of wood, the scream of torn metal! Ram Singh wrenched the door from its hinges! A hoarse shout burst from his lips. He thrust the door before him, and lunged out into the hallway!

The enemy was waiting, men at each end of that narrow hallway with guns in their fists. They were waiting . . . but they were not ready. So swift was Ram Singh's leap that he was half-way to the nearest men before they realized their prisoners had burst from the apartment! Ram Singh whipped the door above his head, and his teeth gleamed amid the thicket of his beard. The war cry of his native hills roared joyously from his throat! A single gun spat then, wildly, and Ram Singh hurled the door, like a broad-bladed javelin, at the killers!

A man turned to run, and the door caught him in the small of the back, bent and broke him; carried him on against his fellows crowded in that narrow corridor! Three men went down, and Ram Singh shouted again and leaped through the air, with his great fists reaching before him! All that Wentworth saw as he flung through the doorway, and afterward he ignored the men at Ram Singh's end of the corridor. He had his automatics in his fist and he pivoted to the right—began shooting!

There were five men at his end of the hall. One of them, straight ahead, grasped a machine-gun. Out of doors on either side of the hallway leaned the other four, and revolvers were in their fists. In that single sweep of his eyes, Wentworth placed them all, estimated them—and his guns, hard-pressed against his hips, jerked in the first salvo of death!

His first bullet caught the crouching machine-gunner squarely in the forehead and whipped him backward out of sight through that darkened doorway. His weapon clattered to the floor and, afterward, his feet showed. They drummed the floor for a little while. But Wentworth was scarcely aware of that. The guns throbbed like living things in his fists, scoring along the walls as they skimmed toward those twin doorways from which death threatened. A gunman lurched backward against his companion, surged forward again as the other opened panicky fire on the
Spider
—and hit his own partner instead!

Another man, drilled through the shoulder, was whirled out into the middle of the hallway by the sledge-hammer of the
Spider's
lead. He pitched to his hands and knees and began to scramble frantically, crazily toward that dark doorway where the machine-gun lay. There were only two men left alive in those doorways, and they had flinched back out of sight.

Wentworth heard Ram Singh's pantherish stride behind him. "What, master," he jibed, "are there still men alive down here?"

Wentworth's smile twisted his lips. He was waiting while the crawling gangster grappled for the machine-gun. His eyes flicked to those two empty doorways.

"Throw a body down the hall," he murmured, and Ram Singh laughed harshly. His breath gusted out through his nostrils and, over Wentworth's head, sailed the limp-armed body of a man. It crashed to the floor before the doors, and flame spat out of the darkness. Wentworth squeezed each trigger once, and there was the concerted clatter of falling guns within those rooms. He had had only the gun-wrists of the men to shoot at—but he had needed no more target than that!

There were screams inside those rooms, pain and fright hoarsening the voices. And the gangster with the broken shoulder had his machine-gun.

"Drop it, fool, and live," Wentworth sent his harsh whisper sibilantly through the hallway.

The man's jaw was chattering with fear. His eyes strained wide and blind in his face. Perhaps he could not hear! His hands shook as he tried to bring the machine-gun to bear. Wentworth squeezed a trigger, and the machine-gun leaped like a living thing from the man's hand.

"Take him, Ram Singh," Wentworth whispered. "
Alive!
"

With a shout, Ram Singh bounded down the hallway. Wentworth moved forward more slowly. A glance behind him showed what fearful carnage the bare hands of the enraged Sikh had performed. There no longer were any cries from the two rooms that flanked the hall, yet there should be wounded men in them. There should be . . . .

Wentworth stiffened to gauge the screams and shouting that echoed through the building. Undoubtedly, the police already had been summoned. He couldn't have much time. But why were those two men in the dark rooms silent? Wentworth's eyes narrowed in abrupt alarm. He leaped through the nearest doorway and flung the strongly concentrated beam of his pocket-flash about the room. Empty! A bound took him across the hallway and into the opposite room. That also was empty, and ropes swung from the window!

Through a long moment, Wentworth stood there staring out into the darkness from which the snow whirled like dark specks against the sky-glow, and then a shout lifted to his lips. He wheeled out of the room.

"Bring the prisoner, Ram Singh!" he shouted.

He plunged for the steps, toward the screams and the shouting below him. No question what those escape ropes meant. They had not been left there for the killers to escape from the
Spider.
Munro had never expected the
Spider
to emerge alive from Duncan's room; nor would he have provided for his men to escape. Nor would they have needed the ropes for escape, if the fire in Duncan's apartment had spread. But if this apartment building were set for a touch-off, if the flames were meant to leap up this unguarded wooden stairway and sweep the building in one terrifying holocaust of destruction—then they would have needed those ropes, and needed them badly.

Wentworth took the stairs in great bounds. "Fire!" he shouted, as he ran. "Fire! The building is on fire! Get out! Get out fast—before it's too late! Hurry!" Voices muted beneath the lash of his voice. In the dim-lighted hallway below him, white faces turned up toward him. An old woman with a white cap upon her whiter hair smiled uncertainly with wrinkled lips, and a girl in a feathered negligee tossed her head, and smiled a little slyly. There was a man in trousers and undershirt, and he stared at Wentworth with spreading eyes. His red face drained of color.