Spider Empire of Doom

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

EMPIRE OF DOOM 

By Grant Stockbridge (Norvell Page) 

This page formatted 2005 Blackmask Online.

http://www.blackmask.com

CHAPTER ONE Death in the Snow  

CHAPTER TWO The Professor's Secret  

CHAPTER THREE The Flesh Eater  

CHAPTER FOUR The Green Hand  

CHAPTER FIVE A Blow at the Spider  

CHAPTER SIX A Rugged Individualist  

CHAPTER SEVEN The Green Hand Strikes  

CHAPTER EIGHT The Green Terror Again  

CHAPTER NINE "You Are the Spider"  

CHAPTER TEN A Futile Disguise  

CHAPTER ELEVEN Madame Bantsoff  

CHAPTER TWELVE Trap For the Spider  

CHAPTER THIRTEEN The Spider Is Crippled  

CHAPTER FOURTEEN City of Horrors  

CHAPTER FIFTEEN The Death Trail  

CHAPTER SIXTEEN Death Keeps Watch  

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN On to Washington  

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN Death to the Spider  

CHAPTER NINETEEN Vapor of Hell  

CHAPTER TWENTY Jonathan the Just

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Originally published in the February, 1934 issue of The Spider

A facsimile reprint of this work, with the original illustrations, has been published by Bold Ventures Press, and is available from the Vintage Library.

America faces certain doom as its citizens fall in screaming thousands before the noxious death vapors loosed upon them by the Green Hand. How can the SPIDER, harried and threatened by a hundred new and deadly perils, check the rising power of the next Dictator- and lay bare the scheming, criminal mind which seeks to enslave the nation?

CHAPTER ONE Death in the Snow 

THE bearded fur trapper, snowshoeing through the still cold of the forest night, was muffled to his ears in a Mackinaw. He mushed out into a moon-white clearing, breath steaming from his nostrils. His pace was slow beneath the heavy pack on his back, but there was an alert watchfulness about his every movement. His feet were loose in the thongs of his snow-shoes as if he were prepared to shed them instantly. . .

From the blackness, a rifle spat. The bearded trapper jerked with the blow of the lead. He threw high his hands, pitched face down in the knee-deep snow. His feet flew up with the force of his fall, kicked clear of the shoes, flopped again. After that he did not move. In all the world nothing moved; nothing disturbed the black silence of the forest.

The snow, which had been threatening for hours, began to drift down, a few uncertain white flecks in the blackness. It thickened rapidly, made a soft hissing sound. The moon thrust a frightened face between the clouds. Its pale light glinted on metal, a rifle in the edge of the dark woods. Distantly a wolf howled.

For five minutes that was all, then came that glint of metal again, as the rifle moved. It was followed by sound- as stealthy feet whispered over the snow. A black shadow detached itself from the darker shadows of the trees and crept forward.

It was a man, a short man, with shoulders like an ape, terminating in long arms. A rifle was in the hands, half raised, ready to spit leaden death.

The man jerked to a halt. The rifle snapped to his shoulder- and the dead man in the snow moved!

He hurled sideways, rolling, and flame spat from his hand. The rifle spoke, too, and a fluff of white snow spumed into the air where a moment before the trapper had lain. The trapper jerked to his knees. His pistol barked again, lancing fire into the blackness.

The rifle seemed frozen in the gunman's hands. He stood with it pressed against his shoulder as rigidly unmoving as one of those black trunks behind him. Then stiffly he toppled, arms jerking upward. The rifle turned a slow somersault, struck muzzle down. It stood straight an instant, then settled out of sight in the snow. The rifleman lay on his face, arms thrown out in the last surrender of death.

The trapper got slowly to his feet. With his left hand he wiped the coldness of the snow from his face. Teeth gleamed amid his black beard. It was well that he had expected some such attack as this, well that he had wadded his pack with a thick pad of bullet-proof raw silk. He walked forward, automatic still ready in his fist. He moved cautiously, yet with speed. Swiftly he bent over the woodsman, rolled him, found that he was dead, a bullet between the eyes.

Then the trapper did a curious thing. He slid his hand beneath his mackinaw and pulled out a small cigarette lighter of platinum and black enamel, such as surely no trapper ever carried before. But he did not snap flame to it. A thin smile distorted his fine lips that the black beard disguised, as he detached the base of the lighter and, bending over, pressed the lighter itself to the forehead of the man he had killed.