THE SPIDER-City of Doom (44 page)

Under his breath, Wentworth whispered to the two boys. "When I say 'rapscallion' again, you two break free, run right at Kirkpatrick, the tall man there, dodge around him, then run on. Understand?"

He did not wait for the two boys to answer. They were only a score of feet away now, and Kirkpatrick was glancing toward them with a frown.

"Mr. Police Chief," Wentworth lifted his voice, "I want permission to take these two young rapscallions . . ."

As he spoke, Bill and Monk, by one concerted twist wrenched free of Wentworth's grip and raced toward Kirkpatrick. Wentworth stumbled to one knee. He got up and stumbled after them, shouting, waving his arms.

"Stop them!" he cried. "Stop them, Mr. Police Chief! I'm going to teach them a lesson, and . . ."

Kirkpatrick made a grab for Bill, but Bill dodged the grip. Monk jostled Kirkpatrick from the other side. They dodged behind the Commissioner as Wentworth ran up, limping.

"You young rapscallions!" Wentworth shouted. "You just wait until I get my hands on you! Knocking your old grandpap down!"

Kirkpatrick said furiously, "That's enough of that! Stop it, you young fools!"

Wentworth dodged past Kirkpatrick and gave him a stiff thrust with his shoulder. Bill tripped the commissioner and Kirkpatrick went sprawling to the ground. Instantly, Bill and Monk were running frantically from Wentworth as he hobbled after them, shouting, waving his arms. Cops were hiding grins on their faces. One of them made a halfhearted grab at the fleeing boys.

Kirkpatrick was already scrambling to his feet. Wentworth, in spite of his hobble, made surprisingly good time. He was already through the cordon, hurrying toward the darkness into which the two boys had disappeared.

Kirkpatrick's voice reached out fiercely: "Stop him, men!" he cried. "Stop him, I say.
It's the Spider!
"

But even as he shouted, there was a fierce, heavy outbreak of gunfire on the roof where the
Spider's
cape and hat dangled from a silken line. His words were blotted out in the sound. Men's attention was divided. Kirkpatrick pulled out his long-barreled revolver and sent a bullet whining into the darkness where Wentworth was running. It was close, damnably close. It brought the attention of the cops back to their Commissioner.

"It's the
Spider
, I tell you!" Kirkpatrick shouted. "Damn it, we should be accustomed to his tricks by now! Stop him!"

Cops stared for an amazed moment at the shadows where the bent and hobbling old man had disappeared. When they recovered, they still didn't use their guns. They couldn't quite believe what the Commissioner shouted. They began to run . . . and Wentworth, gasping now, made the last long leap into a darkened doorway.

"This way,
Spider,
" the voice of Bill whispered. "I know the way. There's a hole in the fence, and a cellar window . . ."

Kirkpatrick's voice rang out, "Widen the cordon! Encircle the next block! Damn it, don't let the
Spider
get away!"

The police were running fiercely, but without guidance. Their eyes stared blindly at the darkness. They called to each other. They saw nothing of the hobbling old man they sought. They heard something . . . a voice that came to their ears faintly, mockingly . . . the laughter of the
Spider!

The three were huddled in the small sitting room behind the family grocery store; father, mother and daughter. The yellow light laid its yellow path between the cretonne curtains into the dimmer shop. Out front, the sign was lighted, inviting late customers . . . begging for one last late patron.

It could have been a cheerful family group there about the stove. The man's face was made for laughter with those fans of wrinkles about his eye corners, the humorous quirk to the mouth. But his eyes were haunted now as he pored over the day's receipts. The woman's eyes glanced toward him anxiously now and again, but rested most often on the brown curly head of their daughter, bent over her studies. Hard on a girl her age, not having money for nice things . . . .

The man muttered an oath under his breath. There was a jeer in his voice when he spoke. "If this keeps up," he said harshly, "we'll have almost enough money to pay protection day after tomorrow!"

The woman sighed and bent lower over the sewing in her lap. The girl's head snapped up. "Dad, why don't you go to the cops?" she demanded. "These cheap racketeers—"

The woman said, "
Sssh,
Doris!"

"Well, I don't care! It's pretty awful to just make enough to pay them! I'm tired of doing without, and everything!" She tossed her brown curls, her face was flushed.

Her father came slowly to his feet. His movements were those of an old man, though his hair was still crisp and black, his flesh still firm. "Yeah, Doris. That's right. But they said . . . they'd take you. They'd do it, too, by God! . . . There must be a way out of this. There's got to be. This is America, and . . ."

The tinkle of the shop door's bell whipped him about, and there was terror in his eyes. He started toward the cretonne curtains, but before he reached them, those curtains stirred slightly. A package of money thudded in the middle of the floor.

"Your money, Markham!" The voice spoke from the shadows, a flat monotone. "The money you gave the racketeers. You won't have to worry about them again. They're dead!"

The man had stooped unconsciously to pick up the money. He stood stroking it with shaking hands. The girl arose.

"Dead!" whispered Markham. "
Dead!
But who are you?"

He took a slow step forward, then he stopped and recoiled. He had glimpsed the twisted figure in the shadows, the figure draped in a long black cape.

"The
Spider!
" he whispered. "The . . .
Spider!
"

The girl began to dance up and down. She held a hand over her mouth to keep back the shouts of joy. A slow smile crept over her mother's face. The woman got up and put her sewing down in the chair.

"Come in, Mr.
Spider,
" she said timidly. "I . . . won't you let me fix you a cup of tea?"

Behind the drape, Wentworth's lips curved in a slow smile and his eyes were gentle. It was in an entirely different voice he spoke then.

"I'd like to, mother," he said softly, "but I have other calls to make . . . . Good night!"

The three in the room heard no sound of footsteps, but in a moment the doorbell tinkled faintly again. A twisted shadow of a man glided across the window and was gone.

In the room behind the store, Markham clutched the money fiercely in his fists. There were tears on the woman's cheeks and Doris no longer held her hands over her mouth. She danced up and down.

Markham said stiffly, "I knew there had to be a way . . . in America. God bless . . . the
Spider!
"

The door bell rang again. It was not a soft tinkle. It was a jangle of vehement entrance. Markham thrust the money hurriedly into his pocket. There was a man in the door whom he had never seen. Doris stopped her dancing, but the joy on their faces was a complete revelation. The man laughed, raspingly. He was a big man, with a hat dragged down very low over his brows. His lips had a brutal solidity.

"Celebrating, hunh?" he said softly. "Celebrating because you think somebody got the best of Big Gannuck! Nobody does, for long! You talked!"

Markham gasped, "No! As God is my witness! We didn't talk! Nobody talked!"

Gannuck laughed again, raspingly. He turned on his heel and went out. The door bell jangled again. He jerked his thumb over his shoulder as he went toward a car.

"He's been here, too," he said to the driver.

There was a truck parked at the curb.

It was not a large truck, but its sides were solid. As he spoke, a panel slid open in the side. Gannuck leaped to the front seat and slammed the door. Only then did the man who had opened the panel take action. He flung something at the shop front. The glass jangled to the street. There was a pause while a man might count three.

The front of the store blew out! Red and yellow flames streaked out their hungry tongues into the darkness. A woman screamed high above. The front of the building began to settle. From the side of the truck the ugly snout of a machine gun jutted. It began to jitter. A blue mist of flame guttered at the black mouth. Bullets lashed the debris as the dust and smoke roiled. Once, twice, three times, it swept the interior of the shop. Then the truck swept forward.

As it raced forward, the front of the tenement building in which the shop was located subsided into the street. The roof tipped slowly forward, hung like a ragged curtain. There were people in the wreckage. They tumbled over and over like children in a snow-slide. They screamed. They tumbled into the basement and the debris kept falling. It covered them over gradually. The screams stopped.

Up the street, two hundred yards, there was the blast of another bomb!

One of the fast, solid-sided trucks slewed into the street from a side alley, whipped around broadside and stopped. An instant later, a police siren yelped. It came around the corner fast. Flame leaped from the side of the truck. The ugly chatter of a machine gun filled the street. The police car whirled like a wounded man. It leaped the curb and rammed into a building. Within it, no one moved.

The truck rolled on, slowly, carefully, as if it picked its way . . . as if it were a beast of prey, searching for a victim. In sight, within a few blocks of the street, were three such trucks.

A half dozen blocks to the north, the
Spider
heard that first blast of the bomb. He twisted about behind the wheel of his car and saw the slaughter of the police, the second bombing. For an instant, even the
Spider's
swiftly co-ordinating mind was stunned. He stared at the wreckage, at those prowling trucks. Horror had its cold way with him.

Markham, his wife and daughter . . . They were in that first shop. But he had wiped out Gannuck's mob! Men had died in the street fight, and others in the Mekookum Club. Gannuck himself had been within the cordon of the aroused police no more than an hour ago!

While Wentworth groped for an explanation, one of the trucks suddenly put on a burst of speed and headed straight for his car!

The
Spider
laughed . . . and the sound of it was coldly sinister.

He reached to the dashboard and took up a microphone, tripped a switch. "Avenue A," he said into the mike. "Armored car attack. Full police alarms. Full war."

Then he slid a hand into a compartment and drew out a grenade!

Under the touch of his foot on the throttle, the coupe leaped forward like a living thing! The powerful motor beneath the dilapidated hood hurled the car like a plane from a catapult. Wentworth was thrust back against the cushions. He took the corner on screaming tires. By the time the truck reached the turn, he was already at the next corner.

But the
Spider
was not running away. So great was his speed, yet so sensitively controlled that, within seconds, he had made the circuit of the block and was rapidly overtaking the armored truck! Over the throttled roar of his engine, he could hear the multiple whine of police pursuit. Radio cars were racing into the district from all sides . . . but Wentworth winced at memory of what had happened to that first car!

He reached for the microphone again, twisted a dial until he spoke over the police wavelength. "The
Spider
calling," he said rapidly. "Warning to all police cars. The killers are in bullet-proof trucks. They attack with machine guns without warning. Proceed cautiously!"

Then all his attention turned, white-hot, on the truck ahead. The truck had spotted him. It began to swing broadside in the street! Wentworth stamped on the accelerator and once more the incredible power of the car hurled it forward. Before the truck could complete its turn, Wentworth was beside it. When the slide port in the truck's side opened, he threw the hand grenade!

Men screamed horribly in that enclosed body. There was the dull thuds of fists beating on steel . . . then the explosion let go. It was strangely muffled. Small streaks of flame shot from ports. The whole truck lifted a few inches from its wheels and slewed sideways. Then it rolled gently forward and nuzzled into a light post. The post crumpled, crashed to the street.

Wentworth left the coupe and raced toward the doors of the truck. He wrenched at one, and it resisted his grasp. The men in the front seat had been merely stunned for the moment. The heavy automatic in Wentworth's fist spoke, and the lock shattered. He wrenched again and the door came open.

In an instant, Wentworth had hurled the unconscious men aside. He reached down to strike each one across the base of the skull. Their bodies jerked once, and were still. They would be out for an hour. Wentworth wrenched at the wheel and swung the truck back toward the street where wholesale murder was being enacted. His jaw was cold and grim. Bitter fires burned in his eyes.

Ahead of him, he could hear the multiple chatter of machine guns. A bomb let go with a blast that made the air shudder. He heard the heavier explosion of a police riot gun, and the scream of a man. Then he rounded the corner.

There were four police cars in sight. A police emergency wagon had jammed across the street and men were behind it. They had donned the armor the truck carried. Sub-machine guns were blasting . . . but the killers—the killers were rolling steadily down the street! There were eight of the trucks in sight now. Two abreast, they rolled up the street. Bullets spewed from a dozen machine guns. A store was bombed. Even as Wentworth watched, he saw a long, thick spurt of flame lash out from the foremost truck . . . and heard the scream of a cannon shell!

The shell burst against the emergency wagon. There was a high flash of flame, a roiling tower of smoke. When it cleared, the emergency wagon was a mass of wreckage and mangled men screamed in the ruins!

Wentworth whipped the armored truck backward. This machine carried no cannon. It could not stand against the assault of a shell. There was a groan in Wentworth's throat that came from his soul. In God's Name, what hell had been loosed upon the city? He had started out to combat a minor racket. He thought he had destroyed its organization and its headquarters in two hours of swift work . . . and this was the answer!