Norvell Page

“ From the man's left wrist dangled a blackjack.
“You filthy animal,” the Spider rasped. “Why was that necessary?”
“Face the wall!” snarled the man, and the gun inched forward like the head of a poisonous viper.
The Spider hesitated. But once more he controlled himself, his muscles taut with anger. He longed to crush this beast, as he knew he could any moment he chose. But it was more important that he obtain a definite clue to the Black Death than that the injury to this girl be immediately avenged. He was convinced now that this man was not the arch criminal himself. ”

“ He knew sudden fury at the thought that this man, or his master, was responsible for the death of that curly haired boy he had snatched too late from his play with a plague-infested puppy. But the Spider forced himself to calmness, studied the girl narrowly.
She was standing tensely beside the bed, her hands clasped before her, shoulders hunched. Her red hair seemed to have drained all the color from her face. If she was actually in league with the Black Death and had deliberately betrayed Wentworth so that this man might trap him, she was as clever an actress as ever tricked a man. ”

“ Mothers glanced with worried faces at their children; and men went about their work with drawn lips and haggard eyes.
For the dread Black Death that had swept England, that had wiped out whole cities, had laid its horrid skeleton hand upon New York. It was fortunate the panic-stricken multitudes did not know, as Wentworth did, that the deaths were of human agency, perpetrated by a monster whose fiendishness was almost beyond belief.
The Bubonic plague had appeared in modern times before ”