Norvell Page

“ Even as you in the city read these lines, the Black Death will be among you. Oh, nothing to be alarmed about, for today I shall kill only a few hundred of your millions. Take heed, as these hundreds choke and die with the Black Death, that you do not provoke me by unnecessary delay, lest the next blow wipe out thousands.
And even as newsboys shouted the fearsome headlines the plague had lifted its evil head. Ambulances gonged their way through the streets to the Lower East Side area, where the Black Death had chosen first to strike. And people died in the streets. Thousands fled. ”

“ Its people went absolutely mad with terror. Thousands fled. Trains and roads were jammed. It was like a wartime evacuation.
Wentworth, roaming the fringes of the area where the Black Death had struck, barred from nearer approach by a double ring of police who, with surgical masks upon their faces braved the plague, found the city about him dead. The usually crowded benches of Battery Park at the tip end of Lower Manhattan were deserted. Even the birds of the air seemed to have fled the Black Death. For the flock of pigeons that usually settled before the Custom House was missing. ”

“ The screw driver touched the hidden spring and the base of the lighter came loose in Kirkpatrick's hand. Wearily, with grief in his eyes, the Commissioner looked up at Wentworth. And the seconds that their eyes met brought hope to the Spider. For he knew that each moment their eyes held the red seals were vanishing. ”