The Black Spiders

by John Creasey

  Sitting at the side of the bed, his chair pulled up very close to it, and holding the girl’s wrist, was an elderly doctor whom Loftus had called within minutes of finding that Juanita could not speak. He had been here for half an hour, and to Murray it seemed as if he was simply wasting time. He had given the girl an injection, ten minutes ago, and now he seemed to be willing her to come round.

  Loftus muttered, for the tenth time: ‘If only Jane could have made her talk.’

  Blame Jane. Blame themselves. Blame anyone.

  Murray moved restlessly away from the bedroom door, because he could not bear to watch the girl. He could feel the effect of her nearness, even now, and wondered what he would feel if those compelling eyes, with all their seductiveness, were to open and turn towards him. He lit a cigarette, striking the match savagely, and flicking it away. It fell on a heap of the spiders which had been swept into the fireplace, and the sight of them, even though they were dead, made him shudder.

  He had learned a great deal since he had arrived.

  The Dineley Hotel, next door to this house, was a kind of hostel for Department Z agents, and sliding doors in the connecting wall—like that at the office—gave easy access to the flats at Number 5. These flats were used by agents who lived on their own when in London. These agents had known the moment the Cannas had called, and had been ready to go through the sliding doors, look after Jane and Juanita, and take the men prisoners. But for one thing, this would have worked.

  The electric current had been cut at the street mains just round the corner by ‘workmen’ who appeared to come from the Electricity Board. The secret doors, being electrically operated, had not opened. Harrison and other agents had rushed to enter the apartment house by the street door, but the spiders had been hurled at them in small glass containers which had burst before they could use their spray guns.

  ‘And all we’ve got is a dead Mikolas,’ Loftus said roughly. ‘If we could catch one of them alive. . .’

  He broke off.

  Murray supposed it mattered, but at heart he had given up hope of getting results, except through Juanita. The revolutionary leaders who worked in England were still unknown. There were dozens of their men in London—the riot had been perfectly organised, the raid on the house had been planned with great skill as well as the courage which fanatics sometimes showed. But although some ringleaders of the riot had been held by the police, none seemed to know who had really inspired it. It was known that several national groups—not only Cannans—had been worked up to a frenzy by communist agitators, that the heart of the riots had been a small group of professional agitators; but—who had put them up to it?

  There was no evidence that the troubles on Canna were Communist inspired, only that the communists were taking advantage of the situation.

  And here in London, probably within a stone’s throw, were men who meant to force revolution upon Canna.

  Suddenly, Murray caught his breath; as if he had been hurt.

  He saw Loftus look round at him, and he stared back, almost unbelieving. The idea which had flashed into his mind was almost frightening; was unbelievable and fantastic; yet once it had come, it grew stronger. In the bedroom there was quiet. While out here Loftus stared at Murray, and he felt as if something had exploded inside him.

  ‘What is it?’ Loftus asked tensely.

  ‘I can’t—be sure,’ Murray said, and he felt as if the words were choking him. ‘That cargo-boat—what was it called?’

  ‘The Fatema—if you mean the one which smuggled the arms . . .’

  ‘Yes. The Fatema, registered at Mombasa. Loftus—the Abbotts travelled on the Fatema for their Middle Eastern tour. The Abbotts and their whole company, the company that’s playing at the Glory Theatre now. And—the Abbotts owned Cliff House. They said they’d let it to unknown tenants through an advertisement in The Times, but . . .’

  Loftus was already moving towards the bedroom, but he kept looking at Murray.

  ‘Go on,’ he said roughly.

  ‘They could have done that, and still known who was going to take over Cliff House,’ Murray said. ‘And their present play is based on mixed marriages and on colour bar. They put on all their own shows, they have money to spend like water—Loftus, it could add up.’

  ‘I’ll say it could add up,’ Loftus said very softly. He spoke from the doorway, and he looked in and caught Craigie’s eye, and beckoned. ‘Gordon,’ he whispered as Craigie came up, and there was a change in Craigie’s expression, as if something in Loftus’s face gave him the thing that he, too, had lost. ‘Gordon, did you ever find the advertisement in The Times for Cliff House? The one the Abbotts said was answered by . . .’

  ‘Yes, it was in, as Abbott said. Why?’

  ‘Listen to Nigel,’ Loftus urged.

  Murray repeated everything he had said.

  ‘What time does the second house start?’ Craigie asked.

  ‘Half-past eight,’ answered Murray.

  ‘It’s a big cast, isn’t it?’

  ‘Twenty odd, yes—double that, if the stage-hands and everyone else back stage is involved?’

  ‘Mostly coloured people?’

  ‘Four or five.’

  ‘We’ll call every available man we have, we’ll get Miller to put a cordon right round the block, we’ll have every corner watched,’ Loftus said crisply. ‘We mustn’t start until nearly half-past eight; we want to make sure that the Abbotts and all the cast are there.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘It’s nearly seven, we’d better get busy. Nigel, you take it easy for an hour.’

  Murray said: ‘Isn’t there something I can do?’ ‘You’ve done plenty,’ Craigie said.

  ‘The Abbotts,’ breathed Jane Wyatt. ‘It’s—unbelievable.’

  ‘I think it’s probably true,’ Murray said. They were back in his flat now, where two doctors were with Juanita, and two agents were on the landing, on guard; no further attacks were expected yet, but there was no way of being sure. ‘Is she any better?’ Murray asked abruptly.

  ‘No, no change.’

  ‘It doesn’t seem natural.’

  ‘It’s like a trance,’ Jane said quietly, ‘the little I’ve seen of her suggests . . .’ She broke off.

  ‘Go on,’ Murray urged.

  Jane looked at him as if afraid that what she said would hurt. Murray sensed that. He also sensed the deep understanding that she had of him; in the few days they had known each other, the friendship which had grown between them had become very deep. Even now, even after all that had happened, and after that ordeal by terror, she looked calm and self-possessed, and was thinking more of him than of herself.

  ‘Juanita just isn’t normal,’ she said quietly. ‘Sometimes she looked at and through me as if she was looking into a different world, as if she was . . .’

  ‘Seeing visions.’

  ‘Yes, I think that’s it.’

  ‘Her father saw visions,’ said Murray, ‘and her mother was the sister of a visionary. But there were times when she was as human and normal as—as you are. As any girl laughing with her friends.. . She . . .’ There was no point in going on.

  Murray moved towards the cabinet, took out drinks, and poured out. He lit a cigarette. He looked at an evening newspaper which reported the grim facts with almost cruel matter-of-factness. There were reports of the day’s outrages on the island, an account of the rioting in London, the news that more troops were to be flown to the island during the night, that martial law had been proclaimed on Canna, that the Navy and the Air Force were to take part in operations to restore order on the island. At a quarter past eight the telephone bell rang. ‘We’re waiting for you downstairs,’ Loftus said.

  From the outside, the Glory Theatre looked deserted, but the lights were bright inside the foyer, and the illuminated photographs of the Abbotts seemed to smile at every passer-by. The theatre, a small one, was in a side street off Shaftesbury Avenue, and few people were about, although a few yards away there was the ceaseless flow and nois
e of traffic. Here, an occasional person walked alongside the parked cars which were bumper to bumper.

  The police gathered in shop doorways, in empty cars, wherever they were found unlocked, all waiting for the moment of the raid. In the second-floor windows of a building opposite the theatre there were more men. Small groups of police gathered unostentatiously at the corners of the street. The side as well as the front entrances were blocked, and everything was in readiness when Murray, Craigie and Loftus arrived.

  They got out of the car in front of the main entrance.

  ‘We’ll go to the stage door,’ Loftus said. ‘You’re known slightly; that might gain us a minute. At twenty to nine exactly, the men at the front are going to move in. And it’s got to be quick, because—’

  He didn’t finish.

  ‘The one thing we have to fear are spiders,’ Craigie said. ‘If they are kept inside here, and if the Abbotts want to try to escape by causing a panic so that we can’t get at them, they might let the spiders out.’

  Murray swallowed a lump in his throat.

  Not far away, Juanita still lay in that coma, and Jane Wyatt was with her; waiting.

  Murray reached the stage door, and recognised the grey- haired man with the pince-nez who had let him in on his earlier visit, and he smiled at the man brightly as he said:

  ‘Mr. Abbott’s expecting me.’

  ‘Is he?’ The man looked him up and down, almost suspiciously. ‘He didn’t say he was expecting anyone tonight.’

  ‘He must have forgotten,’ Murray said. ‘What time is the first act over?’

  ‘Nine-fifteen,’ the stage-door keeper said. ‘Didn’t you leave the theatre with him, the other night?’

  ‘Yes. I went to see him and his wife . . .’

  ‘Okay,’ the stage-door keeper said, ‘you can go in.’

  They passed him as he settled back to his newspaper. The passage leading to the dressing-rooms and backstage were narrow but very tall. Long boxes, containing props, were placed against some of the walls, and Loftus and Craigie opened each one. Murray went ahead. The others followed. At the door of Lester Abbott’s dressing-room Murray paused, and Abbott’s dresser appeared, and then backed into the room.

  ‘Is—is Mr. Abbott expecting . . .’

  ‘No,’ Loftus said. He slid his gun into his hand, and the middle-aged dresser gulped and tried to back further away. ‘We’ll announce ourselves. Look round here, Nigel, and hurry.’ Loftus waited, keeping the scared man in a corner, while Murray and Craigie searched every part of the room, under the counter in front of the mirror, in the suit-cases, in the wardrobe; and there were no traces of spiders.

  But there were the day’s newspapers, with the reports of the outrages, and inside Abbott’s wallet there was a note, reading: Mikolas—D. Hotel.

  Loftus bound and gagged the dresser, and left him sitting behind the door. Other agents were coming in now, and the stage-door keeper would know that it was a raid, but was helpless. Murray and the leading party went nearer the stage. They heard a gust of laughter from the audience. In the wings two of three actors, all coloured, were standing in a group, talking. Abbott was on stage, and there was the usual riotous slapstick, shouts, mock screams. Murray, Craigie and Loftus stood watching Abbott as he fooled; and there was little doubt that the man had genius.

  So had Lilian.

  The raiding party did not interfere with the actors, yet. Murray found himself looking at every box, every chest, every sack which might hold spiders. Hundreds, thousands could be kept in one chest, and if it were opened and upturned, then panic in the theatre was inevitable.

  The minutes ticked by.

  Craigie looked at his watch. It should be about two minutes to the moment when Abbott came off the stage, in pretended high dudgeon about something that Lilian had done. Now he was clowning with a magical touch, and the audience was near hysteria. It was possible to imagine them swaying up and down in their seats, holding their sides, gasping, coughing, crying with laughter.

  If that turned to panic, it could be utterly disastrous.

  They had found no spiders; and none had been found the other side, or they would have been told. There was the possibility that all that had been brought to England were dead, after being used in the onslaught at Dineley Street, but—would Abbott leave himself without some form of defence? He must live with the fear that he would be suspected, must be ready to act if an emergency came.

  He turned from the middle of the stage and stalked towards the wings. Murray and the others pressed back against the curtains, and Abbott did not see them at once. Lilian was posturing on the stage, and the audience was still in roars of laughter.

  Then Abbott saw Murray.

  He must have realised why he was here, on the instant. His back was to the stage itself, and the audience could see him. A dozen or more actors were still on the stage, and there was a moment’s pause, as if Abbott had somehow managed to send a warning to them.

  ‘Hallo, Lester,’ Murray said, in a hard voice. ‘I think you’d like to meet my friends here.’

  Abbott was two yards away.

  ‘Friends,’ he echoed. ‘This is outrageous, to come here in the middle of a scene, I . . .’

  He turned round and made a dash for the back of the stage, in full view of the audience. They thought that it was part of the action, and laughter reached a screaming pitch. Then the actor pressed down a switch on a wall of the set, and as he did so, a whirring came from the ceiling of the theatre.

  Murray looked up.

  Spiders were falling from the crates in the ceiling, put there to let flowers and confetti fall upon the audience.

  Spiders, in their hundreds—on to the audience and here, on to the stage.

  Murray saw a spider bite Abbott’s face, but it did not affect him.

  24. The Gold

  No one on the stage was affected at first, but there was awful tension. It was somehow worse because the audience in the packed theatre was still roaring with laughter, and holding its sides. A few in the back rows on the stalls and the gallery and circle saw men running down from the exits, and wondered what they were doing; they seemed to be spraying the theatre, as if with disinfectant, in the way that had been common a few years ago. As they ran, ‘things’ began to drop from the ceiling, on to hats, on to hair, on to laps, on to faces.

  Suddenly, there was a deathly hush.

  It lasted only for a moment, as if that moment was needed for the transition from hilarity to horror. Then a woman screamed; a man; a woman, men and women, screamed and jumped up and beat their heads and faces as the spiders landed and crawled and filled the aisles.

  There were Craigie’s men, their sprays worked like demons, but the people came tearing out of the seats and getting in their way, trying desperately to escape the creatures which brought such pain and awful death. Now the screaming was on the same high pitch of intensity as the laughter; it was as if the laughter had become maniacal.

  Then the spiders began to turn over on their backs, and the screaming slackened, while police, in their uniforms, came in from all the entrances and fought to restore order and prevent the disaster of sheer panic.

  One thing was clear now: Abbot and his wife were proof against the spiders’ poison, but the other actors were not.

  On the stage, aware of the horror in the auditorium, Murray faced Abbott, who hadn’t moved from the switch. Some of the actors had run, terrified, into the arms of waiting men; agents with the poison sprays were moving about swiftly. Loftus had seized Lilian Abbott as she had run for cover, and now Murray faced Abbott, covering him with a gun.

  A spider, close to his foot, turned over.

  ‘Do you know where Meya Kamil is?’ Murray demanded, in a harsh voice. ‘Do you know?’

  ‘If I knew, he would be dead,’ said Abbott.

  So there it was.

  Abbott was behind this terror, Abbott was its leader. The one sentence was all the admission needed, and the rest could be pieced t
ogether and proved, but—would he lie about this? Wasn’t it logical that he should want to make sure that Meya Kamil was dead?

  No one knew whether the old man was dead or alive, but Juanita believed that she might know where to find him.

  Juanita was still in a coma.

  ‘We’ve one possible chance,’ Craigie said, very quietly. It was half an hour after the raid on the theatre, and the auditorium was empty, except for police and Department Z men. The panic had been stayed, but not until over thirty people had been bitten by the spiders.

  Abbott had admitted that he and Lilian had been inoculated against the poison, but that the serum used was only just enough for the two of them; their workers had been in as much danger as the audience.

  The Abbotts were still being questioned. Every member of the cast, the stage hands, the electricians, the wardrobe mistress and the dressers, the stage manager and his assistants—everyone connected with Abbott’s company, and there were fifty in all—were under arrest, some at Cannon Row, some in other police stations. A few had talked, too, admitting what they had been doing, admitting everything that Murray and the others suspected. Abbott had discovered the gold, in vast quantities, gold enough to make him fabulously wealthy, gold to give him and those who served him everything they wanted; but to keep it they needed control of the Isle of Canna.

  It was in a part of the island never visited by the islanders, a part believed to be inaccessible, and was so near the surface and so thickly deposited that a few men could work the lode, and load the precious metal on a ship which sometimes called by night.

  Meya Kamil could have made the discovery of the gold public. But he had preferred to keep it secret, believing that it would not bring prosperity but corruption to the island. This determination to keep it from the people and so preserve his ‘paradise’ had given Abbott the chance he had needed to carry out his plot, which had been maturing for four years. There was also talk that Abbott had become a violent renegade, hating his country for some reason which no one yet knew.