THE SPIDER-City of Doom by Norvell W. Page Page A

framed the majesty of the Sky Building. He was remembering, too, what horror had faced Nita in his last battle with the underworld, when she had so narrowly escaped a fearful death.
    He led Nita gently to a chair and strode across to the end of the room where a mighty organ had been installed. Waiting only to toss his overcoat aside, Wentworth seated himself before the instrument, manipulated the stops and began to play. His music was extemporaneous; its chords crashed with thunder like the collapse of the Sky Building. Its theme mounted in wild wind-like fury. Nita sank back in her chair and closed her eyes. She knew that her Dick found in music a release that nothing else could afford. She knew that his mind was tortured by the sufferings of the thousands in this latest mad raid of the underworld on civilization, that he sought to calm himself so that he might think more clearly.
    On and on thundered the soaring notes, the crashing basses. Jenkyns brought in a tray upon which decanter and syphon stood, and stepped back against the wall, his ruddy old face distraught. He, too, knew the black despair which spoke through the music. Another form stepped into the doorway: Ram Singh, clad in spotless white, his head wrapped in a fresh turban that strengthened the hard, clean mold of his features, pale now with pain. His left arm was strapped to his body.
     
    They waited long. It was an hour before the mad, vaulting chords gave way to gentler strains, another half hour before they droned into the sweeping phrases of love music. And Nita knew now that Wentworth played to her. The tension that had gripped her relaxed. She let her wrists go limp upon the chair arms. Her eyes strayed over the beauty of the room, touched the Steinway concert grand, the Stradivarius violin that was Wentworth's special joy. The music of the organ died in a lingering quaver, and it was the old alert Wentworth who spun from the bench, strode energetically across the room.
    His eyes spotted Ram Singh. "Damn your fighting soul, Ram Singh," he grinned. "Why don't you stay in the hospital when you're sick?"
    Ram Singh's eyes gleamed into his master's. "Pooh. It is nothing." He slapped his wounded shoulder with his good right hand. "A mere pin prick. I knew you would need me."
    Wentworth stopped before him, standing on straddled legs. A tenseness touched his eyes. "Did you find Hackerson's headquarters?" he asked.
    Ram Singh stiffened like a soldier at attention. "I traced him to a saloon, Sahib " he reported. "There he talked with one who was bald-headed and had a cast in his left eye. Hackerson addressed him as Baldy. Baldy asked if the Sky Building had been fixed so it would collapse and Hackerson said it had. I left at once to report, but they must have seen me. I was shot down even as I began to tell you about it." He recounted then what had been said in the automobile while he was being carried to the Sky Building to die—of Baldy's words of the Master, of the anonymous "stuff" that had been put on the steel girders.
    "Describe this bald man," Wentworth asked softly, and listened with narrowed eyes while Ram Singh told how he looked. He shook his head at the end. "I never heard of such a criminal," he said. "Go to police headquarters and see if you can find him in the rogue's gallery. If you identify him, tell Sahib Kirkpatrick what you have told me." He nodded in dismissal and Ram Singh backed three paces, raised his cupped hand to his turbaned forehead in a salaam, pivoted and was gone.
    Jenkyns announced dinner, and Wentworth noted with surprise that the mad day had faded. He had not eaten since the night before. Knowing that he must battle soon, he allowed himself an hour more with Nita, during which time they ate the perfect meal Jenkyns had prepared.
    Back in the living room, Wentworth took a turn up and down, paused before Nita. "Darling, will you get in touch with Professor Brownlee and have him install an infra-red camera in the Collins