CHAPTER THIRTEEN The Spider Is Crippled

WENTWORTH stared with gray doubting eyes at the headlines which heralded this latest coup of the Green Hand. Was it possible that he had been mistaken in Delaney, that the man actually was implicated in the maneuvers of the Green Hand?

With a start, Wentworth realized that the redheaded foreman was the same build and general stature of the George Scott whom he had battled in that cabin in the Michigan woods and who had filed charges against him with the police of Loveland. True, Delaney had been in jail at the time of the phone call to the police, but some one else could have phoned for him. And Delaney wouldn't have known Crosswell's secret identification to phone Love's guards on the first occasion when his arrest had been ordered.

He might easily have done it when informed that a “Mr. Wentworth" wished to see him, since apparently he knew the Spider's identity.

In addition to all this, Delaney had been away from Loveland, Wentworth had ascertained, at the time when Scott had been in the North Woods. Wentworth frowned. He found the idea incredible, yet the facts strongly pointed that way. He went to a telephone pay station nearby and called police, asking to be put in touch with George Scott in connection with the warrant against the Spider.

The sleepy desk sergeant growled at him, “Who the hell are you?”

“Crosswell,” said Wentworth, “Secretary of Jonathan Love.”

“I'm sorry, Mr. Crosswell, I didn't recognize your voice,” the Sergeant said. “But I can't tell you a thing about Scott. He phoned that message to the Chief, said he was coming in to swear out a warrant and the Chief shot right out to your place without waiting for him. And Scott never showed up.”

“I see,” said Wentworth. “Thank you very much.”

He hung up and went slowly to the street. That then, disposed of Scott. The man might not even be in town. If Delaney and Scott were the same man, Delaney's followers might easily have phoned the police.

That wrecking of the fan, during the gas attack, for which Wentworth had falsely assumed the responsibility in an effort to free Delaney, might easily have been part of the Green Hand's build-up for Love; part of the plot to make his men believe him invincible; to build the Messiah legend throughout the country. This escape from prison with guns and gas seemed to put the final conclusive touch upon the evidence.

Wentworth walked slowly along the cold street. He dared not return to the hotel unless he altered his disguise, in which case he could not enter his room.

An all night restaurant spilled its white light across his path and he entered, realizing abruptly that he had not eaten since noon the previous day. A newsboy was talking excitedly across the counter.

“Geez,” he said, “that's three extras in an hour and a half. And this last one.... Cripes! Look at de headlines.”

“Give me one,” Wentworth said, and rang a coin on the counter. Delaney's escape was no longer the biggest story. The headlines screamed that Cleveland had been threatened by the Green Hand! The extortionists had allowed the city only twenty-four hours to raise a ransom of ten million dollars!

Wentworth read on:

LOVE'S HELP REJECTED

Offer to Rush His Fan Troops

Is Turned Down

WENTWORTH struck a clenched fist upon the paper, jerked to his feet and strode out without eating. There was no time to waste. He must reach Professor Brownlee at once, find out if his work on the neutralizer for the death gas had been perfected. If Love's troops did not defend the town with their silly fans, the hell vapor of the Green Hand would be loosed upon Cleveland's hundreds of thousands, and thousands would die horribly.

The criminal must be caught. But first Wentworth must battle to save those thousands.

A taxi sped him to the airport. He jettisoned monocle and mustache on the way. Police might be watching there for a man disguised as Reuters. However, he left on the dark coloring that had imitated Reuters' complexion and made certain other small alterations in his appearance. For police also would be watching for Wentworth!

He got by the police guards without delay, and, phoning Ram Singh to meet him there, was flying toward Professor Brownlee's laboratory near Croton-on-Hudson within twenty minutes of reading the headlines. In the plane, Wentworth speedily removed the last of the make-up and, after that, dozed until the ship nosed down on a field near the professor's home. Wentworth climbed out quickly, nodded to the pilot and strode toward the low wide-spreading cottage of Professor Brownlee. Blue-white light gleamed in a long laboratory and Wentworth went directly there. The door was locked, but Wentworth's knock brought a light tread within. A peephole cover flicked aside and suspicious eyes behind dark glasses peered out.

Chains and locks rattled then. It was two minutes before the last clank of metal permitted the door to open, slapped brilliant light into Wentworth's eyes. He smiled and held out his hand.

“How does it go, Professor?”

“Dick! Dick!” the man's tones were excited, his movements silhouetted against the dazzle, were jerky. Wentworth entered and turned his back on the glare. It grayed the professor's alertly vital face. He was a small, excitable man, with thinning gray swept straight back from a high, knotted forehead. A Van Dyke and small mustache shot with silver of years surrounded a humorous mouth, but those dark glasses hid the Professor's eyes.

“You look tired, Dick, tired,” he jabbered. A small smile lifted Wentworth's lips. “I am a little,” he said. “What's the matter with your eyes?”

“This damnable gas,” the Professor said. “I've been making spectrum analyses, and these glasses clarify the lines.”

“I see,” said Wentworth softly. He faced the Professor while he discarded his overcoat, then turned to lay it upon a chair. On the wall hung a picture, whose dark-backed glass reflected the Professor behind him. Wentworth watched. He saw the professor's hand fly beneath his coat, saw it come out with a stubby revolver. He pointed it at Wentworth's back! Red flame streaked from the muzzle!

WENTWORTH'S drop to the floor was lightning fast. His pistol flashed from his underarm holster, and its crack was almost simultaneous with the draw.

The Professor's small-mouthed face twisted with pain. His left hand gripped his right wrist and the gun fell from bleeding fingers.

Wentworth was up instantly, his own weapon jammed into the man's belly. A quick hand jerked the dark glasses from the Professor's eyes. The gaze that met Wentworth's was narrowed and pale blue. Professor Brownlee's eyes were black.

“I didn't think you were Brownlee,” said Wentworth softly. “That's the first time I ever heard of clarifying spectrum with glasses.”

He dropped the glasses, his fist flashed up, caught the man on the mouth and hurled him backward. He cried out, sharply, and bringing up against the wall, cowered there still gripping his gun wrist. Wentworth struck him again. The man slumped to the floor, moaning. No word escaped his battered lips. Wentworth bent over him.

“That was just a sample,” he said gently. “The next time I'll use the gun barrel. Now talk. Where is Professor Brownlee?”

The man was sitting on his feet. He bent his head over upon his knees. More moaning sounds came from his mouth, but no words. Wentworth's blow with the gun barrel tore his ear. A scream began in the man's throat. It was muffled.

“Oh, God!”

“Shall I strike again?” Wentworth asked. There was absolutely no expression in his voice. His eyes glinted as cold gray as Arctic ice. His mouth was small and rigid with anger. The man flung up his head. Blood ran in a slow ringlet from his torn ear. His mouth was puffed and bruised.

“No, God, no! I'll talk.”

“Where is Professor Brownlee?” “I don't know.”

Wentworth jerked up the gun. The man cowered away, throwing up his left arm.

“I don't, I don't!” he screamed. “They kidnapped him. Took him away. Left me here to get you. But I don't

know where he is. I don't!”

Wentworth still held the gun threateningly aloft.

“Where is he?” he repeated. His voice rasped.

The man began to sway from side to side, whimpering with pain. “In heaven's name, believe me,” he moaned. “They took him away somewhere. To finish work on that gas he's making. But I don't know where. I swear to Heaven I don't know.”

Wentworth stared down at him coldly. The man was obviously terrified. Wentworth was inclined to believe he was telling the truth.

“Who took him away?” he demanded. The man dropped his arm, turned his falsely bearded face up to Wentworth, his eyes flinching from the raised gun.

“If I tell you that, they'll kill me.”

Wentworth's slow smile made the man shudder. “But not as slowly as I will,” he said. “Will you talk now

or— later?”

The man's eyes grew desperate. “Listen,” he said, “I'll tell you everything I know about this. You've got me dead to rights. And I'll help you as much as I can, if you'll get me out of the country. My life won't be worth a lead slug.”

Wentworth considered. He could force the man to talk. But he disliked inflicting pain, unless it was absolutely necessary. And time was precious. He nodded his head slowly.

“That's a promise,” he said. “But if you don't keep your word, I'll kill you if I have to follow you to Africa to do it.”

THE man shuddered again. “Oh, I'll tell the truth all right.”

“Get going,” said Wentworth coldly.

“O. K.” The man lifted his right arm tenderly across his knees. His eyes winced away from the blood. “I used to be an actor,” he said. “Dope got me. And a man named George Scott got a hold over me. What it was doesn't matter.”

“What does George Scott look like?” Wentworth asked.

“Tall,” said the false professor. “Taller than you. And bigger in the shoulders. Bristling red hair. Scar twists his mouth.”

“That's enough. Go on.”

The man the actor was describing could be no one but the Scott he had fought in the woods; the man who had escaped from there, yet had continued to trail and persecute him; the man who undoubtedly was an important link in the organization of the Green Hand.

The man leaned his head back against the wall, closed his eyes. “I feel faint,” he said.

Wentworth whipped out a flask and the man drained some of it eagerly. He breathed deeply. Still leaning his head against the wall he went on talking.

“I got a letter from Loveland, Michigan. It wasn't signed, but I knew who it came from. It just told me to meet the writer here— at Croton. And you know the rest. Scott promised me that if I killed you, he'd destroy the evidence he has against me and give me fifty thousand dollars.” The man's eyes opened slowly and stared up into Wentworth's face. “That's all.”

Window glass crashed suddenly behind Wentworth. He whirled, gun in hand. But he did not fire, although a pistol was leveled at him through the window. For the man who had the weapon wore a police uniform, and Wentworth never fired on police.

“I surrender,” he shouted, throwing down his gun and flinging his hands up.

“You just saved yourself,” the cop said through the window.

He threw up the sash and held the gun while his companion clambered in, a gangling man, with eyes that seemed crowded by his high cheek bones.

“Where's your pals?” he demanded.

Wentworth shook his head slowly. “You're looking for somebody else,” he said.

The cop grinned, thick lips showing yellow teeth. He shook his head. “Nope,” he said. “We got him.”

“I'm Richard Wentworth,” Wentworth explained. “This man is not Professor Brownlee. Brownlee has been kidnapped, and this man was left behind to kill me. I shot him when he tried to put a bullet in my back. And

he's just confessed.”

The policeman peered at the man huddled on the floor. “Baloney,” he said. “I've been knowing the professor for five years.”

“If you'll jerk that beard,” said Wentworth, “you'll find out.''

The cop crossed dubiously to the man huddled on the floor.

“Help me up,” the man said weakly, “and keep your filthy hands off my face.”

The cop helped up the false professor solicitously. “Geez, professor, this guy sure did beat you up. We was fooling around town tonight and somebody said as how three strangers in town was asking the way to your place. I knew you didn't never have no visitors except a few highbrows like yourself, and what I heard of these guys made me suspicious. So I comes out here.”

Wentworth strode forward, snatched at the man's beard, but the cop threw up a hard arm before him, jabbed the long barrel of his gun into Wentworth's side.

“Look here, guy,” he said, “one more move like that and I'll pistol whip you.”

Wentworth was angry. “Damn it,” he cried. “Can't you see this man has blue eyes? Professor Brownlee's eyes were black.”

The cop looked dubiously back at the false professor, shook his head slowly. “He looks O. K. to me,” he said.

WENTWORTH forced himself to calm. Useless to argue further with these men. They were convinced that this was the real Professor Brownlee and that he himself was the criminal. Wentworth turned his head toward the broken window, listening. One of the cops prowled off, searching the house for other members of the party they had seen headed for Brownlee's place.

“This man's alone,” the actor said. “The others went away and left him to finish up the job. They are trying to get one of my scientific secrets away from me.”

The second cop's search of the place was half-hearted. Hope sprang into Wentworth's eyes as he turned from the window. He threw back his head and began to laugh. The sound was slightly hysterical. The cop whirled and stared at him.

“What's eating you?” he growled.

Wentworth did not answer him. He threw back his head and laughed again. Reeling with apparent weakness to the wall, he put his forehead up against it, then turned about and placed his shoulders there, still laughing. “Ray, rah, Fordham,” he cried. “Hold 'em, Ram, hold 'em. Ray Fordham! Hold it, Ram! Sing you sinners!”

He crouched, putting his hands on the floor. “Wait,” he said, tensely. “Not yet.” He broke into what sounded like gibberish to the police. The two cops stared at each other.

“Geez,” one said to the other. “He's gone nuts. Maybe I'd better slug 'im.”

“No,” said the gangly policeman. “I'll handle him.” He walked across toward Wentworth and spoke soothingly. “Listen, Napoleon,” he said, “it's O. K. Your team has made a touchdown now. We can go to jail.” Wentworth looked up at him from his crouch on the floor, his eyes pulled wide. He spluttered more words. “Honest,” said the cop, “Fordham won. Come on and we'll let you play football again tomorrow.” Wentworth straightened slowly. “I want to kick the ball,” he said.

“Sure,” said the cop. “Sure. You can kick it all over the place. But first we've got to get a new one. Come along with us now.”

The actor was staring at Wentworth with narrowed eyes. “There's some trick here,” he said. “I don't know what it's all about, but that guy's no more crazy than I am.”

The cop looked from the actor to Wentworth, his high cheek-boned face ludicrous with bewilderment. “Hell,” he said, “he just spilled out a lot of silly words. What trick could there be?”

The actor shook his head. “I don't know, but there's something funny. You be damn careful when we go out of here.”

Wentworth still had a silly grin on his face. He stood with arms hanging motionless. “I want to kick the ball around,” he insisted.

“Sure,” said the cop, soothingly again. “Come on, Red Grange.”

“Whee!” cried Wentworth, “I'm the galloping ghost of the gridiron.”

He went out into the blackness with the police. He was thrust into the back seat of a rattling Ford, the two cops piling in, and the Professor sitting in front with one of them.

The starter whined feebly. “I got to get that battery charged,” the cop muttered. The motor coughed, hesitated; coughed again and spluttered into a roar. The Ford jolted forward, clattered over frozen rough ground and, swinging into the highway, began to pick up speed.

An abrupt, sharp hiss of air and a tire blew out with a ripping explosion. The driver cursed and jammed on brakes.

“If the damn city doesn't buy me some new tires soon,” he grumbled, “I'm going to quit and go back to driving a truck.”

“Hurry up,'' said Wentworth, “I want to kick the ball.”

“Aw, dry up,” said the cop, climbing out laboriously.

Off to the right of the road, a gun crashed. It bellowed once, then again. The cop jerked about, snatched out his gun and dived into the shrubbery.

Wentworth, sitting beside the other cop, let him start to rise, then tripped him, and jerked up his right fist with his entire body behind it.

The cop's head snapped back, and he crumpled, out cold on the floor. Wentworth caught up his gun, struck the false professor over the head and, leaning forward, jerked off his whiskers.

“That will take care of you,” he muttered. Scrambling out, he dived into the underbrush on the opposite side of the road, vanishing into the darkness.

FIVE minutes later, he emerged on a highway paralleling that on which they had been driving. A car was parked there. A long, low limousine, three-quarters pointed hood and powerful engine, one-quarter stream-lined tonneau. A turbaned man sat at the wheel. As Wentworth emerged from the shrubbery, he turned his head and his white teeth gleamed in a dark face.

“Good work, Ram Singh,” Wentworth said. He climbed in, sank with relief into the luxurious cushions, threw back his head and laughed.

“Hold it, Ram,” he said. “Singh, you sinners,” and laughed again. “I don't blame those police for thinking I was crazy.”

The car purred smoothly on and Wentworth's laughter died. His face set in a grim mold. On to Cleveland. He must battle the Green Hand without the help of Professor Brownlee's neutralizer.

He picked up a speaking tube that dangled at his hand.

“Westchester airport,” he told Ram Singh, “near Armonk. I've changed my plans. And fast, Ram Singh.”

Speed. One hundred and fifty horsepower beneath that slim, pointed hood. A hurricane of cold air sweeping with a low hissing over the streamline of the car's specially designed body. Wentworth relaxed on the cushions and closed his eyes.

In an incredibly short time, the Lancia swung through the low wire fence about the field, and Ram Singh brought it to a halt beside the single small building. Wentworth spoke rapidly to him. “Arrange to have the car kept here. Charter a plane for Cleveland. It must be fast.”

He took a small nickeled revolver from his pocket, carefully wrapped in a silk handkerchief. “Have this sent to Stanley Kirkpatrick, commissioner of police,” he said, “and tested for fingerprints. And hurry with the plane. You go with me.”

As Ram Singh hurried about the tasks, Wentworth strode to a telephone and put through a call to the Love mansion in Loveland. It was early morning, but Nita would be awake. It was possible she had obtained some clue to the Green Hand which would assist him in the battle at Cleveland. Twelve of the twenty-four hours' time given the city had elapsed while he had sought futilely for Professor Brownlee's help in foiling the horror gas. If ten million ransom were not paid within another twelve hours, by six tonight, the Green Hand would loose his flesh- eating destroyer upon the city's helpless thousands.

THE call to Loveland went through swiftly, but the butler's suave voice informed Wentworth that Miss Van Sloan was out. Wentworth asked to speak to Crosswell, got him after a brief delay. He identified himself as an out-of-town friend of Miss van Sloan whom she had wired to get in touch with her.

Crosswell's voice showed a well-bred agitation. “I'm sorry, sir, won't you come to the house? Perhaps you can help us.”

Help them! Wentworth felt a cold needle pierce his heart. Could they mean Nita was in trouble? He forced his voice to remain calm.

“Help you? What do you mean?” he asked. “I don't like to talk about it over the phone, sir.”

“Come, come, man, let me have it,” Wentworth said. “Is Miss Van Sloan in trouble?”

“I don't know.” Crosswell's voice was slow and heavy.

“You can't mean— ” Wentworth hesitated. “Just what do you mean?”

“It's this way, sir,” Crosswell said, and to Wentworth his words seemed minutes apart. “Miss van Sloan went to the city last night, expecting to return within a few hours. She did not come back. And she has not communicated with us in any way.”

“In other words,” said Wentworth, his voice rasping, “Miss van Sloan has disappeared.”

“I hate to call it that, sir, but— ”

“Where was she going in the city?” “Just to dinner with Miss Renee, but during the meal,” Crosswell explained, “she excused herself and she didn't come back.”

Fear was tearing Wentworth's breast. If Nita had found some trail that pointed to the Green Hand, she would have left some way for him to follow, unless%unless she had fallen into the power of the master criminal himself!

“And where was this?” he asked.

“They went to dinner,” Crosswell replied, “at the Grandleigh. Frankly, sir, I'm worried.”

“Yes,” said Wentworth, “yes.” He hung up. Professor Brownlee gone, a captive of the Green Hand, his secret of the neutralizing gas gone with him. And now, the largest blow of all— Nita, whose help in obtaining a clue was vital, dear Nita of the brown clustering curls and blue eyes of mystery— Nita, too, had vanished!

The clutching brutal fingers of the Green Hand had snatched his allies, were closing in upon Wentworth. They were strangling the nation. And tonight, tonight the Green Hand would strike at Cleveland, turn loose his hellish killer upon the city's thousands!

Wentworth's face was stonily without expression, but on his temple the thin white scar showed a violent, angry red. Nita was in grave peril. Professor Brownlee's life was forfeit because of his work. A swift dash to Loveland might put Wentworth on the trail to rescue them, might snatch his loved ones from the evil menace of the Green Hand. Hours were precious— minutes might make the difference between life and death. The plane was ready. In five hours, he could be in Loveland ....

Wentworth's mouth compressed until a thin line of white ringed it. Always the battle between love and duty, between his love for Nita and the man who had been like a father to him, and the Spider’s crusade against the Green Hand. It was two lives against the thousands who would die in Cleveland if he did not race there and persuade officials. Two lives against thousands. Loveland, and save Nita, or Cleveland, and.... Wentworth strode from the building to the plane that Ram Singh was warming up on the line. He climbed

in.

“Cleveland,” he ordered.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN City of Horrors

AS Ram Singh sent the plane hurtling through the early morning toward Cleveland, Wentworth hurriedly disguised himself in the character of Rupert Barton, an inspector of Scotland Yard. The man was a complete identity and Wentworth actually carried valid credentials in that name, as a result of services to England in some notable cases. The disguise was necessary, as Wentworth was now sought on murder charges in Michigan.

He bleached his hair to golden blondeness, put small rubber-discs inside his cheeks to make them plump. Wax distended his nostrils and waterproof paint made his complexion sallow. A monocle would complete the picture. This finished to his satisfaction, he threw himself down and slept. It was noon when they reached Cleveland, delayed by a storm and head-winds.

Two soldiers with forty-fives strapped over short khaki coats strode up to him as he alighted from the plane.

“You better get right back in that plane and hop off again, sir,” one advised. “This town has been threatened by the Green Hand.”

Wentworth nodded gravely, eyes on the soldier's young face. “Has Jonathan Love been called in on it?” he asked.

The soldier shook his head. “We can do everything he can. Why should we call in a civilian.”

Wentworth nodded again, his mouth tightening. “Please direct me to your headquarters at once.”

“Can't do it, sir. You'll have to leave. Orders are no one enters the city.”

“Nonsense,” barked Wentworth. “I have credentials from Washington. I'm here to help fight the Green Hand.”

The soldier demurred, but finally yielded and Wentworth was sped to the military headquarters in the side-car of a motorcycle. He left Ram Singh behind with orders to fly immediately to Ashtabula, a nearby town, and there await further instructions.

Everywhere along Wentworth's route soldiers paced the streets with bayonets glittering, guns aslant their shoulders. Everywhere huge fans mounted on trucks stood guard in the streets, but there was nowhere any trace of Jonathan Love's green-shirted warriors.

The motorcycle squeaked brakes before the broad steps of a hotel, and Wentworth was handed over to other guards who in turn passed him into the presence of a small man with a general's stars aglint upon his shoulders.

General Sconset peered at Wentworth with small bright eyes. “You claim credentials from Washington,” he snapped. “Let's see them.”

The hand General Sconset flung out demandingly was brown and knotty. The gesture was quick as a gunman throwing his weapon. Wentworth tossed a small, gold-glittering badge upon the desk. “I am in disguise,” he said. “The Green Hand knows me and has sought several times to kill me.”

General Sconset examined the badge carefully, handed it back to Wentworth. His face had the alertness of a terrier's. Its skin was leathery, so that the creases caused by his animated grimaces seemed in danger of cracking the flesh.

“And why are you here?” he demanded. “To urge you to call on Jonathan Love to save the city.”

Hostility glared instantly in the General's small bright eves. “Boloney!” he snapped. “We have everything that faker has— fans, loyal troops, better discipline.”

Wentworth nodded shortly. “I agree with all that, but you don't have Jonathan Love, and that makes all the difference.”

General Sconset jerked to his feet. Dark blood suffused his tanned cheeks. “Is that man God,” he bellowed, “that we all have to knock our heads on the floor to him? Get out of here!”

WENTWORTH shook his head, smiling quietly. “Just a minute, general,” he said, and when the General had ceased his tirade, he added: “It is not that Love has any power at all that you don't have. It is simply this: He is being built up as a Dictator of the country. For that reason when he is defending a city with his silly

fans, non-poisonous gas is released against him. Then he is acclaimed a great man. Unless you get him here, your men and the entire city will be wiped out.”

General Sconset, with angry vehemence; fist clenched on his desk, heavily demanded: “Are you telling me that Love is in league with this Green Hand?”

“No,” said Wentworth patiently, “but he is controlled by the Green Hand through his mistress, a woman

named Olga Bantsoff.... ”

A soldier guard let out a guffaw and Wentworth and General Sconset whirled on him, staring.

The man shuffled his feet. “I beg the General's pardon,” he said. “That name sounded funny.”

Wentworth studied the man's pasty face a moment longer, then turned back to the general. “This Green Hand doesn't care about the ransom money he's asking,” he said “although he'd take it if paid. He's out to control the government of the country by having Love made Dictator by popular acclamation. He's making the people think Love is omnipotent by letting him apparently save cities threatened by the Green Hand, by wiping out every city he doesn't defend. I tell you again, the only way you can save this city from that hellish gas the Green Hand uses is by calling in Love and letting him parade again as a little tin god.”

General Sconset straightened slowly. “You are a good talker,” he said, “but consider this aspect. If we call in Love, we help the Green Hand. I'll be damned if I'll do it— though your theory sounds so damned wild I wouldn't act on it anyway.”

Wentworth strode to the desk, slammed the flat of his hand on it. “Do you think,” he demanded, “that you have any right to refuse to do anything that might save the lives of the people?”

“I'm defending this city,” Sconset snapped. “Strange as it may seem, I consider myself fully as capable as Love of defending it successfully.”

“But, damn it, man!” Wentworth ripped out. “Ability has nothing to do with it! Just consider Love a hostage against the Green Hand, and you'll have the right idea.”

General Sconset waved an irritable, violent hand. “That's all,” he said. “I'm busy.”

“Listen to reason,” Wentworth urged.

“That's all,” snapped the little man, glowering with his bright beads of eyes. “Get out!”

Wentworth straightened slowly. “The city is doomed if you don't call in Love,” he said. “I shall appeal to Washington to have you superseded.”

“Appeal and be damned!” the General howled. “But get out of here before I throw you out.”

A small smile flitted across Wentworth's face. He pivoted with as much precision as any soldier and marched from the room. The pasty-faced soldier who had laughed strode after him.

“Cripes, sir,” he said. “You shouldn't have used such a phony name for that woman, or you might have put it over.”

WENTWORTH said nothing, but as he walked steadily from the building, his eyes grew narrow and calculating. There was something about this sallow youth in soldier's uniform that was familiar. He strode out into the sunlight and blinked for a moment as if dazzled by the brilliance. Actually his eyes were sweeping the street, the facade of the twelve-story building opposite, watching the shadow on the steps cast by the soldier behind him.

He saw the shadow wave an arm in a wide circle, point to Wentworth, then dart back toward the building. Wentworth instantly leaped to one side, crouched behind a column by the door, eyes keenly scanning the opposite building. He saw something small and glittering arch through the air, heard it break tinkling on the steps.

Where it had struck, a minute puff of green- sprayed upward. It expanded instantly, like some hobgoblin out of the nightmare past. It became a greasy, crawling cloud, eight feet in diameter which rolled with the wind slowly across the steps of the hotel.

Wentworth jerked a whistle from his pocket and piped a shrill warning. Other whistles caught it up instantly, and a siren at the corner groaned out, sent its eery whine rising through the warm sunlight until its shuddering wail seemed to pierce the eardrums. Wentworth still crouched behind the pillar, gun in hand.

Once more the glittering arc of a capsule of gas sped from the building across the street. Wentworth darted toward the door. He snapped a shot upward at the spot from which the capsule had been thrown. A half dozen more miniature bombs curved through the air. Their lethal puffs swelled and joined until the steps were

blanketed in green fog.

Wentworth's gun blazed again, and high through the air, even above the shrilling sirens, a man screamed.

A black spot in a window enlarged, then abruptly plunged downward. The gas clouds moved down the steps slowly, drifting with their own weight and the small pressure of the wind. Into the midst of the cloud, the spot, revealed now as the body of a man, dived. It struck with a sickening crunch, and instantly a pillar of fresh gas shot upward above the spot.

Wentworth had slain the bomber, and his remaining bombs had burst as he fell.

Wentworth darted back into the hotel, raced toward General Sconset's office. The soldier who had followed him to the street shouted, “Halt!” His rifle was leveled.

Wentworth shrank aside, shouldering the wall as the rifle spat flame scarcely ten feet away.

The bullet ripped a jagged tear in the masonry, and Wentworth caromed from the wall, his pistol spitting lead. His bullet stopped the rifle's second shot. The soldier showed a surprised look on his pasty face, but only for an instant. Then it had no look at all. He clattered to the floor with his rifle, dead.

The door of the office flung open, and General Sconset rushed out into the hall, his face hidden by a gas mask. He strode toward the door, but at sight of Wentworth stopped dead, hand on the revolver he had strapped at his thigh.

“The gas attack is on,” Wentworth snapped out. “That soldier who laughed signaled a man in the building across the street, who then threw the bombs. The street is full of gas. I think that spots the method they're going to use. Order the whole city to take to the tall buildings. They'll be safer there because the gas is heavy. And the bombers are there. We'll have some chance of catching them.”

General Sconset ripped off his mask. “Arrest that man,” he barked. “He shot a soldier!”

WENTWORTH'S automatic instantly covered the general and his staff. “I killed a traitor!” he spat out. “Will you listen to reason now and give the orders?”

Furious anger reddened the General's face. “If you're all cowards,” he thundered, “I'll arrest him myself.” He fumbled at the gun in his hip holster.

Wentworth smiled thinly. He liked bravery, even in fools. And he could not shoot the little general. He whirled, ran down the corridor and took a shallow stairway three steps at a time. It was the work of an instant to open a window to the rear and spring to the ground. Behind he heard the hullabaloo of the chase, even above the bedlam of the streets.

Wentworth smiled bitterly. He had sprung the attack prematurely by his demand that Love be brought in. Evidently, the Green Hand did not want him to defend the city. If the dead were piled house-deep in the streets of Cleveland, it would strengthen the demand for Jonathan Love the next time a city was threatened.

Wentworth darted from an alley, out into the main street. Frightened faces showed at windows.

“Get to the roofs!” Wentworth shouted. “The roofs! That's the only safe place!”

He found a squad of hurrying soldiers. “The only safe place is the roofs!” he shouted at them. “The gas is heavy. Get the people to the roofs!”

The soldiers stared at him stupidly.

“Orders from headquarters,” Wentworth barked.

The soldiers saluted and scattered, shouting, “To the roofs!” Three such squads of soldiers, Wentworth sent out to save the people.

He swung out into a broad street, down which people were fleeing in panic-stricken mobs, running helter-skelter. Women carrying the children struggled along with sobbing breath. Men raced with heads thrown back, chests pumping. And behind, crawling, billowing, thrusting up smelly, deadly heads of plumy green, a great cloud of gas rolled. The gust from a billowing fan struck it; tore it to shreds, hurled it upward in graceful streamers.

Gas spurted along a wall past the blast, was sucked toward the back of the fan. The screams of the soldiers rose above the bedlam. One turned and ran, hands out-thrust before him as if to pull more speed from the thin air. With his mask he seemed monstrous. A tendril of gas reached after him, sped by the gust of the fan. He plunged screaming to the pavement. He writhed in horrible agony, his cries strangely muffled by the mask. Then the gas crawled over him, and the screams stopped.

Wentworth sprang to the top of a stalled truck; “To the roofs!” he shouted. “To the roofs! That's the only

safe place. The roofs!”

People gaped up at him, pale faces streaming past. A few swerved toward the buildings that lined the streets, starting upward. Doors crashed as more followed, until jams of people packed the entrances. The gas crawled on.

An auto spun a corner, charged at top speed into the crowd, the driver hurling the deadly ram of it against the barrier of humans that barred his escape. Wentworth's mouth was bitter as he fired a deliberate shot into the frantic driver's head.

A woman with a child in her arms lay sprawled in the street, half beneath the car. The gas crawled on.

Wentworth sprang from the truck, raced toward the woman. Thoughts were battling in his head. Had he the right to save this woman and child when he might be shouting the warning to hundreds of others, racing through the streets ahead of the gas until some snaking tendril embraced him in its burning, death-bearing arm?

On the other hand, had he the right not to save himself when all the future of the battle against the Green Hand rested in him? He alone knew that Professor Brownlee was in the hands of the criminals; he alone knew that Professor Brownlee knew the secret of the gas that should neutralize the green vapor.

But even as he thought these things, Wentworth scooped up the woman and child and, staggering under the double burden, raced toward the door of a tall building.

A MAN darted past. “Carry this child,” Wentworth hurled at him.

The man did not even turn his head. He pounded on. Two-other men pushed past; one jostling Wentworth with his shoulder, almost hurling him to the pavement.

“Halt!” Wentworth commanded. “Carry this woman and child!”

The men raced on, heedless. An old woman, limping feebly toward the doorway, turned a drawn, wrinkled face, hesitated. She came toward Wentworth.

“Here, I'll take the child.”

Wentworth shook his head. “Hurry, mother, hurry,” he panted at her, “or you'll be too late. I'll carry them.”

The feeble old woman hurried on. Wentworth ran with the injured woman and child to a doorway. Over it, he saw words in metal, “International Broadcasting System!”

Radio. That was the answer. By radio, he could spread the warning cry of “To the roofs!” throughout the city. Loudspeakers would blare it into the streets. All over the city, radios were tuned in to await the warning of the Green Hand.

Up steep flight after flight, Wentworth made a weary way. The race was less frantic now, and hands relieved him of the child. The woman began to regain consciousness and was able to help herself.

Wentworth hurdled steps upward, smashed into the radio offices. He found his way to a broadcasting room where a man with an excited voice was telling imaginary horrors of the gas. Wentworth's hands grasped his shoulder, hurled him aside, and instantly he was spreading far and wide over the nation, the warning which alone could save the people from the Green Hand.

“The roofs! To the roofs!”

From his place beside the microphone, Wentworth snapped orders that the broadcast be made on every wave length “Rip it wide open,” he said. “Smear it over the whole range!”

Then he put the announcer to the task of broadcasting the warning, “To the roofs!”

Wentworth darted to a window, peered down into the street. A green river of death, the flesh- eating gas of the Green Hand, flowed through the streets, washed the windows of second stories and crawled on. Torn to shreds now and then by fans, it reformed its ranks in a mad Dervish whirl, and crept on, silent and murderous. Its greasy coils hid the havoc it wrought, but distantly people still fled before its advance.

Wentworth saw a mass of people trapped between two clouds of the gas, desperately flee into houses. A man climbed a pole. As if the gas were sentient and living, it snaked a tentacle upward, plunged the man screaming downward into green cotton puffs of the gas below.

Wentworth, feeling nausea stir in his vitals, turned slowly from the window. Nothing he could accomplish by venturing now into the death below. He would be asphyxiated horribly before he even reached the street. Nothing to do but keep the warning going out over the air, and wait until the deadly gas had done its fiendish work and passed on. Then the vengeance would come!

Then the Spider would take the trail that Nita and Professor Brownlee had left somewhere— would follow it to the hiding place of the Green Hand. God only knew if they were still alive, but... Wentworth's mouth twisted in a bitter smile. Let the Green Hand beware of the Spider’s fangs! His hand went slowly to his vest pocket, caressed the lighter that nestled there, the lighter that held Death's calling card, the seal of the Spider!

CHAPTER FIFTEEN The Death Trail

IT WAS late afternoon before Wentworth, watching from his high window, saw the green gas draw its hideous cloak from over the dead it had tortured in the streets of Cleveland, saw the gas thin into air and disappear. The dead were everywhere, soldiers in uniforms and futile masks, thousands of civilians sprawled in agonized heaps, strewn upon the asphalt like spoiled fruit dumped from a huckster's wagon.

Wentworth went slowly from the building, picked his heavy, sick-hearted way amid the dead. He stopped beside a small, twisted body in a uniform with stars glittering upon the shoulders. General Sconset already had paid for his mistake.

Wentworth's face was sharp with pain and anxiety. The few hours just past had lined his countenance as might years of suffering. The Green Hand had won another battle— and thousands had died. Wentworth shut his lips tightly and strode on.

In Loveland, he would find the trail. There Nita van Sloan had disappeared. There he would find a way to trace Professor Brownlee. If they were dead— if they, too, had been sacrificed on the altar ofjustice, as Wentworth had been forced to sacrifice everything in the world he held dear— then indeed there would be vengeance. The fangs, and the seal, of the Spider!

Wentworth pushed on to the airport. His call brought Ram Singh back from Ashtabula, and they flew immediately to Loveland. There they drove to the Grandleigh Hotel, where Nita last had been seen. But their urgent inquiries revealed nothing.

Returning to his room, Wentworth found that Ram Singh had opened a secret compartment in his suitcase and had laid out a small oiled-silk package, fitted with elastic straps. Beside it he had placed a revolver. There was a pair of shoes with thick, rubber soles ready on the floor.

Wentworth's gaze rested absently on this equipment of the Spider, and slowly his eyes changed and became like gray agate. He nodded his head slowly once, divested himself of coat and shirt and permitted Ram Singh to attach the kit of chrome steel tools in its silk case beneath his arm. When his clothing settled into place again, the bulge of the kit was inconspicuous. His coat had been carefully built to conceal it. Wentworth picked up a black slouch hat that Ram Singh handed him, drew it down over his brow, turned toward the door.

As he stretched out his hand to the door knob, there was a sharp rapping on the panel.

Wentworth drew back his hand, jerked his head. Ram Singh strode silently across the room.

“Who is there?” he asked in his peculiar, slurred English.

“Telegram,” a gruff voice called.

“No,” said Wentworth softly.

It was too old a trick. The telegraph companies employed boys, not men, to deliver their messages, and that voice was that of a man, and a mature one. Besides, he had registered under the name of Rupert Barton.

He crossed swiftly to Ram Singh's side and, imitating his voice to perfection, asked “Who is it for?”

“Rupert Barton,” the voice answered.

Wentworth hesitated. It was true that no one knew what name he would register under; but it also was true that Nita knew the character of Rupert Barton and knowing that a telegram so addressed would be paged through the lobby of the hotel, might have used it to communicate with him.

Wentworth strode back across the room, twisted the shade of a bright lamp so that its dazzling rays would fall into the face of whoever was outside the door. He called Ram Singh to him.

“I think,” he said, softly, “that police are outside. If they are, we must get away swiftly. When I open the door, if a policeman is there— ”

"Han, Sahib." THE pounding on the door was peremptory now.

“The corner of Broad and Second in an hour,” Wentworth concluded.

“Hey, mister, don't you want this telegram?” the voice outside demanded.

Wentworth yanked open the door. Three police stood outside. Taken by surprise, they hesitated, blinking into the dazzling white light which shone in their faces. And in that second of their hesitation, Ram Singh

plunged into the foremost visitor, hurling him back upon the other two.

Wentworth sprang out, thrusting his foot forward and adding his weight to that of Ram Singh. Taken off balance, two of the officers staggered back and sprawled on the floor.

“Stop him!” a cop howled, “He's a murderer!” Behind him a gun crashed, but the police still were blinded by that bright light. Their shots went wild. Wentworth hand-pivoted around a corner, flung upstairs for three flights, and walking slowly then, went to an elevator.

TWO minutes later, he was sauntering calmly across the lobby of the hotel. Upstairs, bedlam reigned. In the lobby frightened guests were on their feet staring at one another.

Wentworth stopped at the desk. “What's all the rumpus?” he asked.

“It's nothing at all, sir,” the clerk said hurriedly, making soothing motions with his hands. “Someone just got frightened.”

“Oh,” said Wentworth, “is that all?” He smiled and walked out of the hotel.

DURING the hour interval before he met Ram Singh, Wentworth altered his disguise so that he became a mechanic, with grease-rimmed finger nails, and a predilection for a battered cap. He acquired a room in a lodging house, as a center of operations, then met Ram Singh and told him his plans.

“We go first,” he said, “to the residence of one Jack Delaney in Elkhorn. There probably will be police guards there. He shot his way out of prison yesterday, and they'll be looking for him. They've undoubtedly searched his house, but perhaps,” Wentworth smiled slightly, and a false scar on his face made the grimace crooked, “perhaps we'll be able to find more than they. Follow me, Ram Singh. Keep out of sight and do nothing unless I tell you to. Then act swiftly. I'll probably be able to find,” and he laughed, recalling his football trick, “some way of communicating with you.”

He slouched away, a cigarette dangling from his lips, winked deliberately at a passing girl, who jerked her head away indignantly. He climbed into a rattletrap Ford he had bought. With much complaining, but efficiently, it bore him toward Elkhorn.

He parked a block away from the apartment house in which Delaney had rooms and sauntered, with his assumed shamble, past the door. It was an apartment with an automatic elevator and no hall boy. That simplified matters, but the probability was that police would have left a plant. One or two men were most likely encamped in a neighboring apartment listening in on a hidden dictograph that would record the slightest sound in Delaney's apartment.

The venture before him, Wentworth knew, was dangerous in the extreme. Yet this was the only direct trail he had. His shambling walk took him without hesitation into the tradesman's entrance of the apartment building, and his ever- ready lockpick opened the door in a few seconds. He casually pressed the button for the automatic elevator, heard it click and whir and saw the glow beneath the button that indicated it was on its way.

Presently light dropped across the round window in the door, vertical bars contracted to the right, and he opened the door.

He knew where Delaney's rooms were, having got his address when he first had thought of the foreman's cooperation. The elevator slid upward, and Wentworth, as carelessly careful as before, slouched out into the fourth-floor corridor.

He walked directly to Delaney's apartment, picked the lock and went in. If police were there, he was merely a friend who had a key. He would be in for some questioning, but that would be all. He switched on the ray of a pencil hand torch. There was no one in the room.

Wentworth walked silently across a thick carpet until he stood in the precise middle of the floor. It took five minutes of soundless effort to locate the flat, black disc of the dictograph behind books on a shelf. A single snip of wire cutters, and it was disabled. Wentworth then went swiftly about the task of ransacking the apartment for something that might point to the hiding, place of the gang, to a possible place where Nita and Professor Brownlee might be held prisoners.

He hunted in none of the obvious places. Police would already have done that. Pictures would have been searched, stuffing of furniture canvassed thoroughly, the desk would have been sounded for secret compartments, books would have been turned leaf by leaf. Where, then, to look?

A tobacco jar on the table caught Wentworth's eye. A book end on a piano looked promising. But

Wentworth's swift search revealed nothing in either. He inspected the piano approvingly, a Krakauer. Queer instrument for a man of Delaney's means, but perhaps he was a devoted musician.

A sheaf of sheet music lying on a stand bore Delaney's scrawled name. Wentworth moved back to the piano, looked at the keys. He started. A piece of paper was wedged between two of the ivories. Carefully he drew it out. There was no address and no signature. It read: Cops have a plant in the next room. If you come here, get out fast. Headquarters in wood camp until February iZUntil February 17. Wentworth's eyes narrowed on the slip. Was it possible that this was the means the Green Hand took for communicating with Delaney? Wentworth was dubious. Since the Green Hand had sent men to free Delaney from the jail, there seemed to be no point in communicating with him by letter. The fact that the writer knew of the plant next door was sufficient proof that the note had been put there after Delaney had escaped. And surely Delaney would not be fool enough to return to his room while police were searching for him.

There was another possibility of course. The note might have been left for some other member of the gang who had access to the room, or— Wentworth smiled thinly— assuming Delaney was innocent, it might have been left to incriminate him. Or to lead him, Wentworth, astray.

Headquarters in the North Woods until February 17. And this was the 14th. A plane could take him up there and back in three or four hours. Wentworth nodded to himself, thrust the note into his pocket and turned toward the door. It flung open, and the broad white beam of a police flashlight struck him in the eyes.

“All right, punk,” a voice growled, “Keep the hands that way.”

WENTWORTH blinked into the glare. “What the hell do you mean by busting in like this?” he demanded. “Get out before I call a cop.” He glowered angrily into the beam.

“You'll call a cop!” jeered the man with the light. “You got one, punk. I'm him!”

“You're a cop?” Wentworth was amazed. “Well, what are you doing in here then?”

The light clicked on in a floor lamp and Wentworth made out, when his eyes had become adjusted, a heavy-footed dick with a red face. He held a gun in his right hand. He was pocketing the flash.

“Don't know what I'm doing here, do you, punk?” He sauntered over. “Hey, Harry,” he said conversationally, “come and see what I caught.”

Wentworth twisted his head about, stared about the room and hall, a puzzled look in his eyes. The cop guffawed. “Got you puzzled, huh? Well, there's a dictograph in here, and Harry's in the next room. Hurry up, Harry, and help me go over this guy.”

He waited, derby hat thrust back on his head, gun held carelessly at his side. He waited three, four, five minutes. Harry didn't come.

“What the hell,” fumed the cop. His eyes narrowed. “Say, I'll bet you jimmied the dictograph.”

“Who, me?” Wentworth shook his head violently. “I don't even know what a dictograph looks like.”

The cop held the gun more tensely now, its muzzle leveled. He sidled toward the bookshelf where the dictograph was hidden. He groped for it with a hand behind him, eyes still on Wentworth. He dislodged a book. Two others fell to the floor with it, thumped resoundingly. It startled the cop. He jerked his eyes away for an instant, and in that instant Wentworth acted!

His right hand caught up a book end from the piano, flung it in a sweeping arc. It struck the lamp; crashed to the floor. Darkness shut down on the room. The cop's gun blazed, but Wentworth had stepped quietly aside.

He stood between the two windows now, back to the wall, and heaved the other book end. It crashed in the hallway. The cop threw a shot there, ran forward, firing again and again.

Not until the pistol clicked emptily did Wentworth step forward. He held a well-padded blackjack in his hand, and with it he cracked the detective gently on the head. The man slumped.

Wentworth heard fists pounding on a door. He darted into the hall, out of the apartment, found Ram Singh with the elevator waiting.

Wentworth nodded, smiled. “I thought for a few moments,” he said, “that I might need your help. That other policeman seems to be having trouble in getting out of that other apartment.”

“It is possible,” Ram Singh conceded, “that someone, Sahib, tied the knob of his door to the knob of the door across the hall with very strong rope.”

“Then someone,” said Wentworth, pensively, “deserves an added bonus with his month's pay. I trust that we shall be able to locate this someone.”

The two men smiled at each other in the manner of men who understand one another and left the apartment building as Wentworth had entered, by the tradesman's entrance.

DRIVING in the Ford, Wentworth swiftly outlined plans to Ram Singh, speaking in Hindustani so that the Hindu might understand him in more detail.

“I am flying to the woods camp that you know of,” he told him. “I found a clue in Delaney's apartment which indicates that the Missie Sahib may be up there. I think it's a false clue and a trap.” He smiled thinly. “Perhaps the Spider can steal the bait from this trap.”

At the airport, Wentworth chartered a plane which he flew himself. He took off into the darkness, speeding swiftly northward. He was alone and carried magnesium flares attached to miniature parachutes with which he hoped to find a landing place. The frozen lake from which Scott had taken off would give him a landmark.

The cold was intense, but Wentworth, bundled in borrowed flying clothes, did not suffer from it. He followed railroad tracks to Wacomchic, where he had started his ten hour trek when first he had gone to investigate Professor Cather's discovery. From that point he had mushed straight north, following a compass trail. Wentworth flew now over that course and less than half an hour beyond Wacomchic spotted a lake which seemed to be that from which Scott had taken off.

There was no chance for a secret landing. If the gangsters were at the camp, Wentworth's motor must already have aroused them. If it had not, the flare, which he must use to land, would certainly give him away.

Wentworth's mouth corners lifted grimly. He would have to chance it. He kicked the release and dropped a flare. Its blue-white brilliance spilled over the ground below, scintillating from crystaline snow and Wentworth sent his plane downward in a swift spiral, and took the ice in a perfect landing before the flare had extinguished itself.

He cut the ignition and for moments sat waiting in the cockpit. The plane rested in the middle of the lake, white barren space on all sides. Wentworth, still half blinded by the brilliance of the magnesium flare, his ears singing with the constant throb of the motors, sat and waited. He waited until his eyes became accustomed to the dark, until, with a sudden pop, his hearing cleared, then he dropped to the ground.

The sudden silence of the motor emphasized the deep quiet of the night. A slight, cold wind stirred, sent icy particles scurrying with a metallic whisper across the ice. Still no indication of life from the shore, no light from the woods camp a half mile away. Wentworth was disheartened. Apparently he had been deliberately tricked into a long, useless trip, lured away from Loveland, possibly because some major enterprise impended there.

But it would be ridiculous to leave without a search. Wentworth shifted his gun to the pocket of his leather coat, and moved, sure footed, across the slippery ice, heading in a direct line for the camp a half mile away. But there was still no sound from the night, except the scurrying whisper of frozen snow upon the ice.

THE wind freshened stabbing icy points of cold into Wentworth's face. He bowed his head and strode on. Shrubbery that in summer thrust tender green fingers into the water, clattered. A bunch of dead sticks rattled in the wind. At the lake edge beeches in a frozen marsh clustered thick. Through them Wentworth battled his way. A beech sprout, an inch through, frozen solid by the cold, snapped off as he pushed by. Brittle branches rattled and cracked. Snow was knee deep.

He toiled laboriously on, climbed heavily the steep slope that ran from the lake to the lumber camp. The cabins seemed deserted. No trace of wood smoke in the air, but the wind was behind him now, would sweep away all the scent. Doggedly Wentworth went on. The first of the cabins was only fifty feet away now. Wentworth approached it slowly on soundless feet.

Then, without warning, the door of the cabin flung open. No one showed there, but light streamed out, outlining Wentworth vividly against the snow.

“Welcome, Spider,” a man's voice jeered. He strode forward with leveled gun, a tall man with wide shoulders, and lamplight glinted redly on his hair. Another approached from the opposite side.

Wentworth's hand was on the gun in his pocket. One of those men he could remove. He stood a chance to even it off with the other. But if he failed, there were Nita, and Professor Brownlee, captives. And the world would be helpless to defeat the domination of the dread Green Hand.

Wentworth doubted that even the death of the leader— assuming the red-head who now confronted him with a gun was the leader— would stay the terrible massacres of the people by this ruthless gang of

extortionists.

Wentworth did not fire. Instead he walked slowly toward the leveled guns.

“Hello, Scott,” he said. “I rather thought I'd find you here.”

The man jeered at him. “Glad to have been in your thoughts,” he said, and moved around behind Wentworth. Instantly a heavy blow crashed upon Wentworth's head, and he went down upon the icy snow with a red blaze of fire in his brain, dazzling fire that faded into the soft blackness of unconsciousness.

HE REGAINED his senses sluggishly, battling a numbing pain in his brain. He moved his hands feebly, felt the bite of ropes upon his wrists and heard hooting laughter. He forced his eyes open.

Yellow light stabbed pain into them. He squinted against the dazzle, peered upward into a face that bent over his. It was a woman's face, a face with hating green eyes, with thin pale lips that twisted with mocking words.

Wentworth forced the corners of his mouth to lift in a small smile. “Hello, Maggie;” he said. “Good to see you again.”

“Like hell it is,” the woman who called herself Olga Bantsoffjeered at him. “You won't think so when I get through with you and that doll-faced girl friend of yours.”

Wentworth turned his head wearily. “Take your face away,” he said. “I'm sick of looking at it.”

The woman snarled like an enraged cat, struck her hand into Wentworth's face. Long nails ripped his cheek.

“That'll do, Maggie,” Scott's voice boomed in the distance.

The woman's nails raked Wentworth's face again. She jerked backward sharply.

“I said, that'll do,” Scott's voice repeated quietly.

Wentworth saw that the man's heavy fingers bit into her shoulders, had yanked her back from where she crouched over him.

Wentworth was fully conscious now, though his head throbbed painfully. He stared about the small cabin in which he was imprisoned. Scott was there, with his scar-ugly face and the woman Maggie and another man he did not know, a pasty-faced chap with a gun in his hand.

“Let's get going,” said Scott. He gave Maggie a shove. “You keep your mitts off of him, see?” He crossed to Wentworth, seized him by the hair and tugged him to his feet.

Waves of hot agony swept over Wentworth; nausea prodded dully at his stomach. He reeled and would have fallen except that his shoulder lodged against the log wall and steadied him. He stood with head hanging, and Scott jabbed his back with a gun.

“Quit stalling,” he said roughly. He jerked open a door and thrust Wentworth out. The frigid air completed his recovery. And though he reeled and staggered before the prodding of the giant redhead, he was gaining strength every moment. They marched up the line of cabins.

“All right, turn in there,” Scott ordered. Wentworth reeled past, and Scott's heavy hand reached out, caught his shoulder, yanked him back and whirled him through the dark doorway. He tripped over the sill, tried to catch himself and plunged headlong to the earthen floor.

A woman cried out. A man protested vehemently. And, looking up as a lamp was lighted, Wentworth's bleared eyes beheld Professor Brownlee, slumped against the far wall, then they fastened upon Nita's lovely face with its clustering brown curls and tender eyes of blue. They held hate now as they burned up at Scott.

“You beast,” she cried out, “kicking a helpless man!”

Scott's rough laughter rang in the room. “What's the difference?” he demanded “He won't suffer long.”

He caught Wentworth by the collar, hauled him half strangling across the room and roped him to the log wall. He caught up a broken tree branch from the floor, and bending Wentworth over so that his bound arms hugged his doubled up legs, he thrust the stick under his knees so that Wentworth's arms were pinned in that position. He crossed to Professor Brownlee and secured him the same way, then turned toward Nita.

Olga burst into the cabin. “Listen,” she said, “if anybody ties up the girl, it's going to be me.”

Scott turned a broadly grinning face toward her. “I'll be gentle with her, Maggie.”

The woman snatched the branch from his hands. “I know damned well you will,” she snarled.

Scott threw back his head and laughed. And Maggie crossed to where Nita lay bound upon the floor.

“Sit up, you little tramp, or I'll yank you up by that kinky hair of yours,” she snarled.

WENTWORTH'S eyes were cold points of rage. “Remember what I told you, Maggie,” he said softly. “You harm her and I'll take back my promise to let you live.”

The woman turned a hate-distorted face. “You're in a swell fix to promise anybody anything, Mr. Spider,” she sneered. “Hell, you can't even move a finger.”

Wentworth smiled crookedly. “Nevertheless,” he said, “I tell you that if you harm her, you will not live a week.”

“Hurry up,” Scott broke in, impatiently, “or I'll tie up the dame myself. Don't waste any more time gabbing with that guy. He's so near the grave that what he says doesn't make any difference.” He barked a short laugh. “It ain't the grave exactly, but he won't know the difference.”

The woman stooped over Nita, who now had struggled to a sitting position. Maggie yanked up the skirt of Nita's dark woolen dress and jabbed a rough branch under her doubled knees. Nita's teeth bit into her lip as she choked back a cry at the pain as the branch tore her flesh.

The woman laughed at her sneeringly. “Don't like it, do you, doll face? Don't worry. It won't hurt long.” She turned and swaggered toward Scott, who was grinning at Nita, eyes feasting on her dishevelment.

“I warned you,” said Wentworth quietly. “That's your finish, Maggie Foley.”

The woman turned toward him. Her face, with its pale mocking lips, still lovely despite its hatred. She laughed, but said nothing at all, then swaggered out into the darkness.

“Call me when you get ready to go,” she told Scott. “I want to see the little toy you leave for them to play with.”

Scott grunted. “Oh, get out!” he snapped. Then from a corner he lifted a test tube plugged with wax. It was green, and the lamp light glittered on it venomously. He placed the test tube in a rack on one end of the table, then picked up a ready-made rest into which he locked a rifle, its muzzle almost against the test-tube. Next he placed two batteries, a clock and some wiring on the table.

As he worked over them, attaching clock and wires to the rifle, he looked across at Wentworth apologetically. “It's a rather elaborate set-up,” he said. “It would be much simpler just to shoot you. But I have some scores to settle with you, Spider. You killed off some of my best men. You made that fool, Jonathan Love, difficult to handle. And you hampered my work by driving Maggie here from town. So you're going to suffer a bit before you die, Spider— you and this foolish professor, and the girl friend.

“That tube has the gas in it. In precisely half an hour, this gun will go off, smash the tube and spread the gas over the room. You know what happens then, don't you, Spider?”

Scott laughed shortly, finished his adjustment of the wires and turned to look at Wentworth. His head thrust forward, and gloating came into his eyes.

Wentworth studied his face carefully. Were this man and Delaney one and the same? It was possible. The general conformation of their faces was the same, the color of the eyes and their build checked.

The alterations of the face Wentworth himself could easily have accomplished with a make-up kit. There was something palpably false about Scott. There were portions of his face which were not mobile, indicting that it was built up falsely. That mouth-distorting scar— Wentworth smiled slower.

“Do you think that you can get away with this? Do you think that I don't know your true identity or that, knowing it, I have failed to take into account the possibilities that I might be killed?”

Scott's breath hissed in sharply. “What do you mean?”

“I mean,” said Wentworth, softly, “that if there ever was a George Scott, you are not he. Your make-up is clever, but I, too, know something about the art. I know this face of yours is not the real one. That you are masquerading.”

SCOTT forced a laugh. “So what are you going to do about it?”

“Before I left Loveland,” Wentworth. said, “I wrote out a statement of all I know about the Green Hand. It will be enough to hang you. And if I don't reappear in Loveland within twelve hours that information will be given to the authorities at Washington.”

“Very clever, Spider,” said Scott, slowly, but there was a sneer in his voice; “It so happens, however, that I know you are lying. You have been under surveillance every moment you were in town, and you have not communicated with anyone or even mailed a letter. I would have killed you, but I knew you'd walk into the trap and give me an opportunity to enjoy your death. No, it won't work this time. The Green Hand will go

marching on.”

His voice grew triumphant. “Cities shall fall under my power, and the Government of the United States itself cannot stand against me.” He walked toward Wentworth, tapped his hand against his chest. “I, I shall rule,” he said. “And the great Jonathan Love shall be my puppet!”

Wentworth laughed at him, laughed long and loud. And the man crouched closer, clutching hands reaching out for his captive's throat. His eyes glared wildly. But even as his fingers closed about the helpless Spider's throat, he checked, shook his head sharply and jerked his hands away.

“No,” he said, and grinned slyly, “not that way. You must live to see your sweetheart suffer, see your friend suffer from the flesh eater. Then you yourself shall die. You will notice I have placed you farthest from the table. The gas moves slowly. It will reach you last.”

He turned, and Maggie Foley stood in the doorway, a woolen cap drawn down over the pile of blonde hair. The two looked at each other and smiled. Scott turned back to Wentworth, pointed toward the clock. The hands stood at half past ten.

“When those hands reach eleven,” he said, “the gun will explode, and the great gas will crawl across the floor.”

He threw back his head and laughed until the cabin rang with his mirth until the woman Maggie reached out and caught him by the arm with fright in her eyes.

Scott sobered suddenly. Stared at Wentworth with venomous eyes. “At eleven,” he said, “you die. I hope you enjoy your wait.”

He shut the door violently and left Wentworth to stare at the crawling hands of the clock, the clock that would bring death to Nita, to Brownlee and to himself, death in a horrible, screaming agony.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN Death Keeps Watch

WENTWORTH tore his eyes from the face of the clock that was ticking off the seconds to their doom and smiled wryly across at Nita.

“You're a little pale, darling,” he said. His words were trivial but there was a world of tenderness in his voice.

Professor Brownlee snorted. “Why wouldn't she be?” he demanded.

Nita's eyes sought Wentworth's. She tried twice to smile before she forced her mouth corners up. “You don't look so well yourself, Dick. You haven't been taking proper care of yourself while you've been away from me.”

Wentworth shook his head. “Things never go right when I'm away from you.”

Professor Brownlee threw back his head and laughed a bit wildly. There were haggard circles beneath his eyes. “Death doesn't worry you, does it, Dick? You two talk as casually as if you were in the drawing room of your penthouse. And yet death, and a damned disagreeable one, is only a few minutes away.” He looked at the clock. “Twenty-six minutes away.”

Wentworth turned his gaze on the professor. “Worried about this little device Scott rigged up to divert us?”

Brownlee nodded with exaggerated gravity, “Strange as it may seem to you, I am a bit worried. You've undoubtedly got some trick up your sleeve, but I'd feel much easier in my mind if you got busy and used it.”

Nita's smile was brave. “Is there a way out, Dick? I don't see any with your hands tied up like that. You can hardly move a finger.”

Wentworth's eyes had been casting about the room while he talked, taking in the rifle in its rest, that waiting poisonous gas, the positions of Nita and the professor. Nita was nearest that green vial. If it were smashed, its biting fumes would reach her soft white flesh first of all. And, as Nita had said, Wentworth was bound so he could scarcely move a finger.

“I have two tricks,” he said slowly, “but I'm afraid neither one will be of any help. Ram Singh followed me by plane, but he is under orders to land at a distance and come afoot. I landed close by to keep attention riveted on myself and permit him to land unobserved. I think Ram Singh will arrive too late.”

Nita's smile stiffened, but resolutely she clung to it.

Professor Brownlee let his gray-bearded chin sag forward on his chest. “Then there is no hope,” he said. “No hope for us or for the world. Without my neutralizer, without you to fight them, the gang of the Green Hand will rule the world. Professor Cather did not exaggerate the potency of this gas.” He raised his gaze to Wentworth. “I perfected that second gas, the neutralizer. But the last atom of it was taken away from me early today. If I had a small test tube of it, I could save us. The instant my gas comes in contact with that other, the two burst into flame.”

Nita laughed. There was a shrill edge to her voice. “If you had the gas,” she mocked, “and if one of us had a knife, if that rifle were empty— ” She laughed again. Her voice became brittle.

“Stop it, Nita,” Wentworth said quietly. “You're getting hysterical. Pull yourself out of it.”

Nita bit her lip. Sobs rose in her throat and forced themselves out, drily.

Professor Brownlee stared moodily at the clock. “Sixteen minutes to go,” he said.

“That will be enough,” Wentworth cried, suddenly. “I've found a way out. Even if my second trick won't work.”

“Your second trick,” Brownlee demanded. “Yes,” said Wentworth. “There's a small pistol built into the sole of one of these shoes. It gives me one shot in extremity. But its a hard thing to aim accurately, and I might very well miss. But now, it won't be necessary to trust to it.”

Nita raised her head eagerly. “What, oh what is it?”

“Just watch me'“ said Wentworth. He shot a quick glance at the clock. Fourteen minutes left, fourteen minutes before that rifle discharges and releases horrible death into the room.

Wentworth inched himself about, working so that the stick which had been jammed beneath his knees came opposite a space between two logs where the clay chinking had fallen out. He gripped the stick tightly

between his calves and thighs and whirled himself, jamming the end of the branch into the chink. Slowly, he began to tug. The branch slid an inch to one side beneath his knees before its end pulled out of the chink. But at least it had moved! There was hope!

Wentworth jammed the branch in again and repeated the process. Slowly, a fraction of an inch at a time, the stick was dislodged from beneath his knees, until straining his legs close against his body, flexing his elbows, he managed to lift one elbow over the end of the stick. It fell to the ground and though Wentworth's wrists still were bound together, he could use hands and arms as a unit. And his position was no longer cramped.

Wentworth stared at the clock. It had taken him eleven minutes to pull the stick loose. Only three remained before the rifle would discharge. No time now to saw loose the ropes as he had intended! He picked up the stick in both hands and aiming carefully, hurled it with all his force against the rifle barrel. It struck fairly, forced the rifle barrel aside, perhaps two inches.

It no longer pointed at the vial of gas. But Wentworth staring at it, felt his face grow pale, felt the thin scar on his temple throb with leaping blood. His lips closed grimly, and frantically he tore at the fastenings of a shoe. For now the rifle pointed directly at Nita, and Nita was roped to the wall so that she cold not move from the path of the bullet!

IN two minutes the gun would discharge, sending its tearing leaden pellet crashing into that lovely body. Nita's eyes widened as she stared into the black muzzle of the rifle, but now there was no hysteria in her. She looked across at Wentworth and smiled.

“At any rate,” she said, “you will go free. You can save the country from this band of murderers. That is your duty.”

Brownlee's face was haggard with fear. “Good Lord, Wentworth, do something,” he begged.

Wentworth tore off the shoe, threw up both hands and flung it with all his strength. It struck the rifle glancingly, clattered to the floor. The barrel did not move. It's muzzle still pointed at Nita's head. And the hands of the clock pointed to one minute of eleven. One minute more before the rifle would discharge!

Desperately Wentworth ripped off his other shoe. This one contained the hidden pistol.... He jerked it to the level of his eye, sighting along the sole. Fifteen seconds ticked by. Fifteen of the last forty-five. Wentworth held his breath. He must be terribly certain of his aim.

Professor Brownlee closed his eyes and lifted his face. His lips moved silently. Nita still stared into the muzzle of the rifle. After that last effort of Wentworth's she had given up. Her face was pale, but there was no panic in it.

“Good bye, Dick,” she said quietly.

A muffled explosion filled the cabin with clapping echoes!

A cry wrenched from Professor Brownlee's lips. Nita went limp in her bonds, her head sagged forward. Wentworth took the shoe down slowly from before his face. The smile on his lips was strained.

“God in Heaven,” moaned Brownlee, “why did she have to die?”

“Look at the clock,” said Wentworth, quietly. Brownlee stared at him without comprehension. “At the clock, not at me,” said Wentworth, and finally the Professor turned his head about and stared at the clock. The wire which had been fastened to it, to connect it with the battery and discharge the gun, was snapped loose and still vibrated in the air. The hands of the clock registered eleven, the hour set for their doom.

“That was not the rifle you heard, Professor, but the gun in my shoe,” said Wentworth. “I shot the wire loose at the last second.”

“But Nita,” cried Brownlee, staring at the relaxed form of the girl.

“Nita,” said Wentworth, “has fainted.”

“Nita,” called Brownlee, wildly, “Nita!” “Don't, Professor,” Wentworth said. “I want her to be free of her bonds when she comes around.”

His hands found the kit beneath his arm, extracted a steel chisel with which he rapidly severed the ropes that held him. He sprang to Nita's side, cut her bonds, removed the cruel stick that had torn her flesh and cushioned her head in his arms. Then he pressed his lips to hers.

A footstep outside the door! Wentworth sprang to the rifle on the table, caught it up and leveled it. The latch bar lifted slowly. The door swung wide, and Wentworth, the gun held rigidly, relaxed and smiled.

“Come in, Ram Singh,” he said. “You are just in time to cut Professor Brownlee free.”

WENTWORTH turned back to Nita. She came to with a little moan, stared up into his face. He smiled tenderly at her.

“It's all right, darling,” he said. “I managed to shoot the wires loose just in time.”

The girl closed her eyes, opened them again slowly, then faintly returned his smile.

“I thought, for just a minute that I was dead, and...” she broke off, struggled to sit up. Wentworth assisted her to her feet.

She let out a little cry of pain, touched the backs of her knees tenderly.

“That woman!” she exclaimed.

Wentworth's face was grim and unsmiling. “She'll pay for it, darling.”

Professor Brownlee was free now and hobbled across to Nita's side. Wentworth left her in his care, laced his shoes and picking up the vial of gas slid it into his pocket.

“Mr. Scott has very kindly given up his fingerprints,” he said grimly.

Then the four struck out for the plane Ram Singh had landed at a distance of two miles. It was a bitter cold trek. Nita and Brownlee, enfeebled by long confinement in bonds, were forced to travel slowly. But at last they made the plane and clambered in. It was a cabin ship, with a forward cockpit that had a removable, transparent cover. Wentworth punched the compression starter and set the motor roaring.

The frigid air had chilled the engine, and Wentworth shoving back the cover of the cockpit scanned the skies while he warmed up for the take-off. Abruptly, Wentworth wrenched about in his seat, stared up into the cold arc of the heavens. A small plane was diving toward them, and he could see the thin flicker of flame from machine gun muzzles behind its propeller. He jerked back the throttle, sent their own plane skimming across the snowy waste.

They were within a hundred and fifty feet of the forest. The motor was still cold and choked and spluttered as it fought to take fuel. Tracer bullets ripped past, a fiery streak in the blackness of the night. Professor Brownlee crouched tensely at Wentworth's shoulder.

“You can't make it, Dick,” he shouted. “If you do manage to take off before we hit those trees, that plane will fill us full of lead before we've climbed a hundred feet.”

But Wentworth apparently was not trying to take off. He kicked the rudder from side to side, made the plane wobble crazily. Bullets scoured the snow all about them gouging up little white piles. A few plucked through the metal and cloth of the cabin itself, but none struck a vital spot. No one was hurt.

Straight toward the trees Wentworth headed his ship. The rutted trace of a wood road writhed out of the forest, made its shallow course across the clearing where Ram Singh had set down the plane. Directly for that opening Wentworth headed.

“Get back to the rear!” he shouted. “Brownlee, Ram Singh, Nita, all of you! Get in the tail!”

With a scrambling rush, the three raced to the end of the plane, Ram Singh crawling back into the baggage compartment.

Scarcely had they taken their positions, when Wentworth sent the plane crashing between two huge trees that stood on either side of the wood road.

The wings were cut off as if cut by a gigantic knife. Fragments slammed back against the cabin of the plane, but the crash scarcely checked the speed of the ship. Held down by the weight in her tail, she did not nose over.

TREES overhead arched sheltering boughs now. Bullets could still clip through, but the trundling ship on the ground would make a difficult target on the shadow-checkered earth. Wentworth slowed the mad rush of the plane. Its heavy tires bounded over the rutted road, bounced over a ravine.

Above the throttled roar of the motor, Wentworth called back. “You can take your seats now.” And as Nita walked up behind him and placed her hand on his shoulder, he turned up his head and laughed at her.

“How do you like the new limousine?”

She smiled down at him. Her hand caressed his hair. Wentworth trundled the plane at slow speed along the road. It twisted and turned, but with some maneuvering Wentworth was able to keep the ship plunging on through the darkness. He rigged a flashlight to pick out a path for him and settled down to driving the ship to Wacomchic.

It was tedious work, but several times more rapid than walking would have been. Each time they came to a clearing they must bolt across it with motor roaring to escape the bullet-spraying dives of the ship that still circled overhead. After an hour, Wentworth leaned forward and extinguished the flashlight whose uncertain light was guiding them through the woods. Ahead, bathed in moonlight, was a wide expanse of treeless snow, a field fully half a mile across. Above it the plane with its machine guns waited.

Wentworth halted the ship and let it stand with motor idling while he pulled aside the cover of the forward cockpit and stood erect, searching the opposite woodland for the break that would mark the opening of the road. He found it at last and dropping behind the wheel, jerked the throttle wide. The plane fought the snow, finally lunged forward and, gaining speed as it skipped into the open, hacked its tail free of the ground.

Even with the stubs of wings that were left, the plane seemed ready to leap free of the ground. It struck a log and made a long bound forward.

With its tail in the air, the plane was easy to steer. It could be thrown in sharp eccentric turns. And Wentworth whirled and dodged across the open field, zigzagging, apparently without purpose, but actually heading gradually toward the opening of the road in the woods beyond.

He kept a keen watch on the plane overhead, and each time it dived, with flickering machine guns, he yanked his ship aside in time to dodge the leaden spray.

The flier overhead was working to keep Wentworth from reaching the safety of the woods. But Wentworth out-maneuvered him, sent the ship charging into the woods' road and the protection of the trees. He cut the motor, leaned forward to switch on the hand torch that served as a headlight.

CRRAAASH!!

Guns roared ahead of them, and to each side of the road, fully a half dozen of them. Lead tore through the fragile sides of the cabin. A bullet tipped off Wentworth's seat and sang off into the distance.

Wentworth jerked at the throttle, then checked sharply. A huge tree had been felled across the road, completely blocking it!

To charge into that would be fatal. To remain here meant death, too. The firing redoubled!