The Spider: Fury in Steel (The Wild Adventures of The Spider Book 2), page 1
The Spider: Fury in Steel
by Will Murray
cover by
Gary Carbon
Copyright Information
“Fury in Steel” copyright © 2021 Argosy Communications, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Cover, frontispiece, and back cover illustrations by Gary Carbon. Copyright 2021 Argosy Communications, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
THE SPIDER is a Registered ® Trademark of Argosy Communications, Inc. Produced and published by arrangement with Argosy Communications, Inc.
Special Thanks to Argosy Communications, Inc., Elizabeth Carter Bissette, Gary A. Buckingham, Jeff Deischer, Joel Frieman, Shlomo Frieman, Robert J. Hogan, Dave McDonnell, Matthew Moring, Don Murphy, Don O’Malley, Norvell W. Page, Ray Riethmeier, Team Angry Filmworks, Inc., Emile C. Tepperman, and Harry Steeger.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from the publisher.
For Norvell Wordsworth Page of Richmond, Virginia Who wanted to be the next Edgar Allan Poe, but discovered instead a very different destiny….
Chapter 1
Marching Marauders
Donegan was what they called him. Sometimes Donegan the milkman. For that was how his customers knew him. By his trade.
Long before the crack of dawn Donegan would hitch his dray horse to the milk wagon whose tin sides read: Donegan Farms. Sweet Cream & Milk.
There was no farm as such. Not in Forest Hills, Queens. The dairy products came in by overnight truck from farms scattered throughout Long Island. Donegan personally loaded up the milk bottles and the dry ice to keep them cold. Then he climbed aboard the wooden-wheeled wagon and gave forth with a click-cluck sound that impelled the animal out of the open door of the horse barn.
In the darkness before dawn he wended his way through neighborhood streets, stopped at homes he knew by heart but had never entered, stepping out, walking softly, toting his steel-wire milk carrier so that the glass bottles would not clink too loudly. He was practiced at this stealthy art. But certain doors opened shortly after he had departed, alerted by the dull clinking of the bottles racked and packed in ice in the slow-moving wagon.
Donegan enjoyed his rounds. He took pleasure in the quiet before dawn, appreciated the first rays of morning sunlight, the beginning of birds chirping into wakefulness. It was a pleasant routine, weather notwithstanding. This morning it was cool and crisp. The day promised to be warmish. It was the first day of Spring.
Donegan appreciated the absence of traffic. An hour or two hence, these very streets would be impassable. Hardly a motorcar skimmed past his nickering horse. The old girl was growing old. And so was Donegan. Other, younger milkmen were making their morning rounds in bright new trucks. Not Donegan. Not this year. Nor any other. He would stick with his faithful horse.
Would a truck advance to the next stop without being asked? Of course not. Old Nancy did. Every damned time. This enabled him to service as many as three residences in a row with a full carrier, finally arriving at a fourth to find his wagon waiting for him, ready to replenish his carrier.
This routine went on for some forty minutes, like a slow-ticking grandfather clock. Exactly as old Donegan liked it. At one point, Donegan loaded up and stepped off his wagon and disappeared into a backyard. The women preferred to find their milk and cream on their back porches and stoops, where it was less likely to be pilfered. Donegan provided the personal touch, so he obliged.
Slipping through the backyards in his white twill uniform like a polite ghost, Donegan swiftly emptied his metal carrier. Instead of returning to the street, he passed through to the rear stoop. By now, old Nancy would have circled about to halt before a certain house, his next stop. She was wise that way….
The low rumble of a truck troubled the darkness. An unusual sound. This was a quiet neighborhood. At this thin hour, even passing taxicabs and police cars were rare.
For some reason, Donegan picked up his pace. Maybe it was the sound of the heavy motor. Or the skidding way old Nancy’s shod hooves sounded. No headlamps pierced the dark. Streetlights cast the only illumination, making still pools of overlapping light.
Reaching the sidewalk, old Donegan’s seamed face bunched up, his mouth puckering in a pause of puzzlement.
For a steel brute of a municipal sanitation truck had come to a halt, facing horse and wagon.
The street was narrow. It was a one-way passage. Cars parked on either side—few garages in this modest neighborhood—narrowed it further. There was no room for the truck to advance unless the wagon was turned around.
Thinking it highly peculiar to see a sanitation truck out this early, Donegan leapt forward to seize control of his wagon.
Something stepped out from the loading door on one side of the bulky truck. Something that gleamed and whirred and clanked as it walked…. As it passed from a zone of darkness and into a cone of light cast by a street lamp, Donegan caught a better view of it. So did old Nancy.
Contrary to her placid obedient demeanor, Nancy let out a shrill whinny and flung her aged bones about and was soon clattering back on the street, the sound of breaking bottle glass accompanying her, trailing a comet of milk in her wake.
Old Donegan stood rooted in place as the shadow of the towering thing fell over him. Angrily, he flung his empty carrier at the monster. It caught the carrier in its steel jaws and chewed the steel into a tangled mangle, which it expelled in a dry ball.
Cold hands like vises dropped on Donegan’s bony shoulders, preventing him from fleeing. He struggled, but to no avail. The brief whining of mechanism sounded. A yawning maw like the square jaws of a steam shovel enveloped the trapped milkman’s head, its blunt metal teeth meeting with the sharp snap of a bear trap closing, pulverizing his neck bones and separating scrawny neck from shoulders.
Metal fingers released their biting grip. The body dropped to the pavement… without its head!
Stepping back, the metal giant flung its head to one side like a dog worrying a bone. Out from the parting jaws of steel flew the gory mass that had been the head and uniform cap of old Donegan, who had delivered his last bottle of cream.
The metallic thing retreated to the body of the truck, which advanced down the street unchallenged, running without headlamps in the darkness….
Minutes later, the sanitation truck pulled up near a subway stop, and the side loading doors lifted, disgorging one, then another steel monster, followed by a third and fourth.
The sound of marching feet was heard. There was something mechanical in their dull tread, a lifeless cadence. City sidewalk concrete cracked under a relentless clanging of metallic-sounding feet.
Then the marauders trooped down the stairs leading to the subway station, and the rhythm of their passing was heard above-ground no more….
The long, piecing screech of steel was something motorman John Reynolds never got quite used to. It seemed to go on interminably as the flanges of the steel train wheels scored the subway tracks beneath his rocking cab.
This was the last run until the city woke up. The train pulled only four cars—plenty for the empty hour before dawn. So the screeching was mercifully short, compared with the ten-car trains that would soon be coming on the IRT line. Reynolds’ shift was ending. The relief motorman would be the one to endure the screaming of steel grating against steel when he came on.
As the 75th Avenue Station platform grew visible down the length of the tunnel, Reynolds noticed lights shifting about, lights that should not be there….
Visible through his windshield, Reynolds could see men moving about the tracks. But what men! They were amazingly tall. Easily seven feet in height, or more. They were not track men. They were not dressed in work clothes. These giants were gleaming as if they were made of steel. The same steel that made up the tracks on which they trod.
Releasing his deadman’s throttle, Reynolds reached for the emergency brake, thinking that something was terribly wrong. Giant steel men were blocking the way! He grasped the brake handle firmly, engaging it. The steel shoes took firm hold of the wheel flanges, creating a lesser screeching.
The wooden coaches lurched to a halt, and Reynolds saw the source of the lights that were moving about. The steel monsters were wearing helmets similar to those of coal miners. Calcium carbide lights were pointing wherever they turned their expressionless countenances.
Then one directed its metallic gaze in Reynolds’ direction. It had been stooping over, steely talons tugging at the rails. But now it let go of the rail, and tramped in his direction.
This monster came on like a juggernaut on two legs. Reynolds could see it more clearly now. It was a mechanical man, smooth of skin and blank of eye. As it neared, it dropped its blocky lower jaw and the resemblance to a steam shovel was marked.
Reynolds’s jaw dropped, too. Dropped in shock and awe. Without realizing it, he began to jitter and tremble. The thing was looking at him… looking at him with inhuman intensity.
Before he could fling himself out of his seat, a metallic hand came up with its articulated fingers formed into a steel anvil that then rammed into the plate glass, shattering it. John Reynolds threw his crossed arms in front of his face, protecting it from the glass. But nothing could protect him from the steel creature’s onslaught.
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Cold-blooded murder accomplished, the thing began pounding and flailing at the face of the train, punishing it with maddened blows. From time to time, it paused and employed its jaws, ripping out chunks of glass and steel and flinging them aside with expressionless contempt. The steel man performed this action relentlessly, mechanically, but with a regularized fury that could not be denied.
During this commotion, one passenger came forward to investigate. He took one look at the lead coach being wrenched apart, then fled through successive cars to the end. When he reached the last car, he dropped off on the railbed, running back to the previous stop, heedless of the lesser danger of the electrified third rail.
Back at the subway platform, the steel marauders went about their plan of destruction. They tore up the tracks, lifting them off their ties and separating them with mighty blows. Some leaned down and bit chunks off the platform, flinging them aside.
This frenzy of destruction went on for nearly twenty minutes, coming to a halt only when one of the robots, running out of track, bit down on the third rail, producing green and blue leaping sparks, and causing itself to short-circuit.
Crashing across the mangled tracks, it lay still. The electrical light in its eyes flickered and then died. Spurts of vapor came from different limb joints.
Noticing this, one of its fellow destroyers stepped over and lifted it up, throwing it across one shoulder. This machine seemed taller than the rest by nearly a foot. It was more massive and its steel cranium was not shaped like an egg, but more resembled a skull forged out of stainless steel. Carrying its burden, it tramped into the tunnel, while its compatriots in mayhem fell in line and followed it up the stairs to the subway entrance on the street above.
The sanitation truck was waiting for them, its loading door open.
The steel leader flung his short-circuited minion into the back and then crawled in afterward. The others followed suit. The door was closed, and the driver started the engine and got the machine in gear.
As the dawn of the new day turned the horizon into a smoldering red line, the lumbering truck disappeared from the neighborhood.
Chapter 2
Sabotage?
The insistent telephonic ringing did not penetrate into the soundproofed bedroom of Richard Wentworth. The hour was nearly ten a.m., but still Wentworth slept.
In the study, Wentworth’s faithful butler, Jenkyns, lifted the receiver and spoke crisply. “This is the Wentworth residence.”
A secretarial-sounding voice said, “Commissioner Kirkpatrick calling for Richard Wentworth.”
“Is it urgent?”
“Extremely so,” said the secretary.
“Very well; he will be with you directly.”
Laying down the handset, Jenkyns strode over to the double doors of the bedroom and knocked sharply.
Although asleep, Wentworth woke with a snapping in his eyes and an absence of sleep in his voice.
“What is it, Jenkyns?”
“An urgent telephone call from Commissioner Kirkpatrick. Will you speak with him?”
“Please hang up the other phone.”
Throwing off the bed covers, Wentworth reached over to the French telephone beside his pillow. He flipped the switch on the heavy base, engaging the device which would otherwise ring, and cutting it into the telephone circuit.
“Wentworth speaking,” he said.
In the other room, faithful Jenkyns dropped the phone into its cradle, severing that connection.
“One moment,” said the secretary.
Commissioner Stanley Kirkpatrick’s voice came on the line. It was charged with urgency.
“Dick! I trust you were not sleeping.”
“At this hour?” Wentworth laughed. “Whatever gave you that idea?”
“I know that you often sleep in late.” There was a pause. “And I have police reports that The Spider was abroad last night.”
Wentworth kept his tone light. “As you know, The Spider and I are social acquaintances. But whatever prowling he does, he does on his own recognizance. Are you insinuating once more that I am the terrible Spider?”
“Never mind,” said Kirkpatrick. “This call is not about The Spider. A milkman was found in Forest Hills early this morning. His head has been separated from his body.”
“Milkmen have been known to get into entanglements that have disastrous consequences,” Wentworth returned dryly. “Why are you so concerned about a mere delivery man?”
“In the same neighborhood, a subway train was found half inside the 75th Avenue Station. The front end had been torn to pieces. The motorman’s body was found lying across the tracks. His head looked as if it had been wrenched off his shoulders.”
“Do you think there is a madman loose?”
“I wish it were something so ordinary, Dick. The tracks were torn up, and chunks ripped from the platform. Something had broken the third rail. When the destruction was discovered, the station was in darkness. There was no sign of whatever had done this.”
“You suspect sabotage?”
“If this is not the work of Fifth Columnists, I cannot imagine what would be behind this outrage. The destruction is horrific.”
“It may be that a future enemy seeks to discourage us,” Wentworth mused. “I imagine the F.B.I. will be called in forthwith.”
“I do not doubt it. I am going over to the station now. I thought you might want to join me.”
“That’s very gracious of you, Kirk. But I am a criminologist, not a counterspy.”
“This case is out of the ordinary. I know such cases interest you. I am leaving now. You may join me if you wish. Thank you.”
The line went dead. Hanging up, Richard Wentworth drew on a silken dressing gown and stepped out to speak with his butler.
“Draw a bath, Jenkyns. And have Jackson bring the Daimler around.”
“Will you not be breakfasting here?”
“No. But perhaps I will be having lunch with Commissioner Kirkpatrick. That will have to suffice.”
Before long, Richard Wentworth was rolling into Queens, his broad-shouldered chauffeur, Ronald Jackson, behind the wheel of the black Daimler limousine. The dashboard radio was on. The announcer was blaring streams of overheated words describing the mayhem at the 75th Avenue subway station.
“Sounds to me like sabotage, Major.”
To Ronald Jackson, who had served under Richard Wentworth in the United States Army, he would always be his superior officer.
“Yes. Sabotage appears probable. With Europe and Asia engulfed in war, America must remain ever vigilant. I do not doubt but that we will be drawn into the conflict before terribly long. It may be that a foreign enemy is delivering a message for America to mind her own business.”
Jackson soon pulled up at the police lines. The entire block surrounding the station had been cordoned off by sawhorses and heavy ropes.
Wentworth went through the lines as easily as if he were the President of the United States. There wasn’t a patrolman in New York City who did not recognize his proud carriage or his aristocratic features. The scion of the Wentworth millions walked with an ivory-headed cane, and this he used to point toward the subway entrance, which was guarded by two officers in blue, one Kirkpatrick’s driver.
“Good morning, Sergeant Reese. Where might the Commissioner be found?”
“He’s down below, Mr. Wentworth.”
“I am expected.”
“Go on ahead. There will be no trouble about it.”
Descending the concrete stairs, Richard Wentworth pushed through a turnstile and reached the platform which had been rigged with emergency lights. Plainclothes detectives and uniformed police officers were sifting through the carnage that had been a busy train station.
The wreckage was considerable. Tracks had been ripped up and even a few were bent almost double. The massive third rail had a great gap in it. And the platform looked as if it had been chewed by giant rats.
