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City of Flaming Shadows
Grant Stockbridge
CHAPTER ONE "Talk or Die!"
CHAPTER TWO A Man Is Hanged
CHAPTER THREE "For the Spider-!"
CHAPTER FOUR The Tarantula Strikes
CHAPTER FIVE Orders From the Tarantula
CHAPTER SIX The Altar of Duty
CHAPTER SEVEN Reardon's Son
CHAPTER EIGHT "I Know the Spider"
CHAPTER NINE Kirkpatrick Misses a Date
CHAPTER TEN Flaming Loot
CHAPTER ELEVEN Empty, Save For the Dead
CHAPTER TWELVE Beneath City Streets
CHAPTER THIRTEEN Hairy Hands
CHAPTER FOURTEEN Panic!
CHAPTER FIFTEEN The Spider Spins
CHAPTER SIXTEEN Spider Bait
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN Face to Face
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN The Pit of Bayonets
CHAPTER NINETEEN Jail for the Spider
CHAPTER TWENTY The Hanging of Nita
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE Spider to the Rescue
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO Nita's Sacrifice
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE Spider vs. Tarantula
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR The Tarantula's Yacht
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE Pandemonium!
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Originally published in the Jan. 1934 issue of The Spider
A complete replica edition of this work, including the original illustrations, is published by Girasol Collectibles and available through Vintage Library.
THE FLAMING SHADOWS fell upon the city, shrouding whole neighborhoods in a fiery gloom-wherein walked screaming death and merciless destruction.... Go with THE SPIDER as he battles, single- handedly, the Flaming Shadows-to save the very people who pray for his destruction!
CHAPTER ONE "Talk or Die!"
The road ahead was black. Trees crowded close, reached down leafless, skeleton arms. The low-hanging clouds of the night seemed to squat on their tops.
Richard Wentworth sent the rented Ford roadster bumping up a rutted hill, leaned forward and switched off engine and lights. The car, in total darkness now, sped on with its momentum, topped the rise and scooted creaking down the steep grade beyond. Wentworth watched the parting of treetops overhead that marked the direction of the road, a lighter gray streak amid the darkness.
Without warning, he wrenched the wheel violently to the right. The car's tires whined and popped on the gravel, struck a ditch violently and the Ford jounced with a rattle and crash into the woods. It battered through the underbrush, found almost miraculously a break in the thick trees and jerked to a halt.
Wentworth sat motionless, listening. That swerve from the road had not been blind. A break in the tree tops had revealed the small opening into which he had wedged the Ford. Above him a cold wind rattled leafless branches. Shrubbery creaked, springing back into place behind the Ford, concealing it from the road. Distantly a dog howled. That was all. No sound of that car which, hanging persistently at his heels for ten miles, had finally sent him crashing into hiding.
No sound? That was the answer for which Wentworth had hoped. He was pursued. Detecting that trailing car, he had spurted on past his goal, doubled back. But the car had persisted, and there was work to do. He had no more time for dodging through country roads. If they found him now, they would find the Spider.
And crooks who overtook the Spider often lived-briefly-to regret it!
Wentworth's lips were smiling thinly as he slipped from the car, a hand brushing the twin guns that nestled in the pockets of his black leather jacket. The shadows reached out and absorbed him.
A half mile away a cottage gleamed white in a small clearing. A single yellow light peeped through the denuded shrubbery that clattered hard switches against its side.
The gleam of the house was not paint. Once it had been bravely white. Now it was lopsided and loose shingles slapped in the wind. Its sides were polished by wind and rain.
A shadow detached itself from the encircling woods, drifted to a shrub where the darkness was thickest. The man's hands went to his face, and a black silk mask slipped into place.
The Spider crept toward the lonely cottage.
Months had passed since last he had donned that mask to battle with the Black Death, months in which it had seemed to him and to Nita van Sloan that at last their dreams were to be realized; that the Spider's single-handed battle against crime had wiped out the master minds of the underworld, had left only petty criminals with whom the police could cope. It had seemed that at long last he and Nita could consummate the love that had been forced to wait upon Wentworth's crusades of justice.
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