The Spider's Reward/Chapter 9
CHAPTER IX.
THE PORTFOLIO.
THE SPIDER looked across the room at his victim, at the man whose treason twenty years before had caused him a decade of suffering. Once more his eyes flashed with anger, and Bertram Blaine cringed.
“The day of retribution!” The Spider said. “It has been long delayed in your case, Bertram Blaine, but it is here at last. You have a few minutes left of life; make the most of them. If there is any request that I can grant A condemned man always has a last request granted, you know.”
Blaine licked his dry lips. His eyes were burning. His face was flushed now instead of white. There was something of resignation in his countenance.
“It will profit you nothing—to kill me,” he said finally, in a low voice.
“I am not doing it for profit,” The Spider said. “It is merely a matter of handing out justice.”
“And who are you to judge?”
“I am the one most interested, the wronged party,” replied the supercriminal. “I have not judged hastily, you must admit. I have waited almost twenty years before pronouncing sentence upon you, Bertram Blaine.”
The Spider turned to the men standing against the wall and clapped his hands again. Two of the men hurried out.
“They will spill oil throughout the house,” The Spider told Bertram Blaine. “It is an old house, and dry, and it will burn quickly. We will fire it in half a dozen places at once. By the time the flames are discovered and the firemen reach this spot, the entire residence will be a rearing furnace. It will be an easy death, Bertram Blaine. You will not be kept in suspense long. And so, if you have any prayers to say, attend to them now. There might not be time a little later in the night.”
“Is there—no way” Blaine stammered.
“No way out for you,” The Spider said. “Did you expect to go free? Did you think that I would forget? You must have expected punishment such as this, must have known that it would come some day.”
One of the men passed the open door. He had an oil can in his hands and appeared to be pouring oil along the hallway. Bertram Blaine looked out and saw him, and shrieked again.
“It is almost time,” The Spider said.
Once more he clapped his hands, and two of the men picked up Bertram Blaine and the chair in which he was lashed, and put it in the middle of the room. One of the men opened a window.
“We will leave windows open on the lower floor, and an excellent draft will be created,” The Spider said, chuckling horribly. “The flames will rush up the stairway and pour through this room. Mr. Blaine will know what it means to feel them licking at him, to feel their searing touch to fight to keep from breathing, when breathing means quick and terrible death.”
Bertram Blaine had ceased shrieking now, and once more there was a look of resignation in his face. He seemed to be fighting to control himself. He looked across the room and met The Spider's eyes.
“There is something—that should be done,” he gasped.
“And what is that?”
“I want to leave a message—to write a note,” Blaine went on, speaking as if with difficulty. “If you are a man you will allow me to do that. It will take only a moment.”
“What sort of note?”
“You may read it—and deliver it for me—afterward.”
“Very well,” The Spider said.
“There is a portfolio—on the table in the next room.”
The Spider motioned to Togo, who hurried into the adjoining room and returned with what Bertram Blaine required. It appeared to be an ordinary leather portfolio and writing pad. The Spider motioned again, and Togo and one of the other men unlashed Blaine's wrists and arms.
“Write what you wish, but be quick about it,” The Spider directed. “I shall give you four or five minutes, but no longer. It is within two hours of daylight.”
Bertram Blaine looked across the room at the supercriminal again.
“You won't let me off?” he asked.
“No. You must pay!”
“I feared that it would come some day,” Blaine said. “I always have feared it. You say that you have suffered, but so have I. You don't know what it is to live a score of years in fear of something. I—I am rather glad that this is the end of it. I have nothing left for which to live.”
He unfastened the clasp of the leather portfolio, looked at The Spider again, his face went white, his eyes glittered, and then seemed to glaze as he threw back the lid of the portfolio. There was a flash of flame, and a cloud of bluish vapor enveloped his head.
“Back! Out of here!” The Spider commanded hoarsely.
Warwick and Togo picked him up with his chair and hurried into the hall with him, and the other men tumbled out at his heels. Warwick glanced. back into the room. Bertram Blaine's head had fallen forward, his arms hung lifelessly at his sides. That one glance was enough to tell John Warwick that Bertram Blaine was dead.
The cloud of bluish vapor was swirling through the window one of The Spider's men had opened a few minutes before. There was a peculiar odor in the air for an instant, and then it was gone. They carried The Spider back into the room.
“So he nerved himself to commit suicide,” the supercriminal said. “It may interest you to know, John, that I had no intention of burning him up, as I said. I could not bring myself to do that. But I did mean to make him suffer from fear of a horrible death. Well, he has suffered that. I cannot regret his death. He deserved the penalty; he admitted it. If we examine that portfolio I think we shall find that it is an ingenuous thing. By opening the lid, Bertram Blaine probably caused a small bomb to explode, a bomb filled with a deadly gas, one whiff of which was enough to cause instant death. Take off those bonds and stretch him on the bed. Close the window. Turn off the lights and leave everything in the house as it should be. They will find him soon and think that he died while asleep.”
Warwick and one of the other men carried The Spider to the lower floor while the work was being done. Then they left the house, carefully locking the front door behind them. The window Warwick had cut out was the only thing to show that the house had been entered.
They carried the supercriminal to the limousine, which was on the driveway now, with all its lights extinguished. The Spider's men scattered, all except Warwick and Togo. The chauffeur sprang up behind the wheel, snapped on the lights, and started the car. They drove rapidly toward the central part of the city.
“Well, John, this is the end,” The Spider said. “I'll drop you and Togo where you say, some place near your rooms. I have two men at home who will carry me into the house.
“Come up this evening, John; come to see Silvia and me. I am The Spider no longer, you know—I'm just a crippled old man who wants to see his niece happy. I've a fortune, John, and I am going to use it in doing good. Perhaps that will be atonement in part for the life of crime I have led. Come up early, for Silvia will be waiting for you.”
Warwick and Togo got out at a certain corner, and The Spider's limousine went on down the avenue. Fifteen minutes later Warwick and Togo were safe in the suite.
“My word!” Warwick gasped. “All this, what? Poor old Bertram Blaine! done, eh? I'm a decent citizen after this, what? Poor old Bertram Blaine! But the chap had it coming to him, I suppose.”
“Yes, sar,” said Togo.
“Honorable Jap, henceforth you are a valet only. There will be no more wild adventures. I am about to become a married man, and must—er—settle down. What? Precisely! Quite so! My word!”