CONTENTS:

·  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

"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?"

a selection from:

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.