Books published by Steeger Books

Looting, maiming, slaughtering, El Gaucho launched his colossal plot to unite the Underworld-to make himself King of America! No torture was too cruel for him to employ; no deed too bloody; no life too precious, except his own. Richard Wentworth-the Spider, who exacts justice when the Law fails-realized he alone could save America from wanton butchery, in spite of the grim reward posted for his head-its own weight in the purest gold!

Exactly at eleven-thirty each Thursday night the Death Fiddler conducted his unholy orchestra in a symphony of murder which sounded the doom of some marked victim. A master of the grotesque, he held an entire city in the strangle-hold of a helpless terror; even the forces of the Law stood in shuddery, superstitious fear of this new destroyer. And then the Spider, Master of Men, modern knight-errant of mankind, rose up against him! But the Spider, too, was baffled; not all Richard Wentworth's efforts seemed enough to destroy this new, this ugliest of all Hydra heads rearing out of the noxious slime of the Underworld...

Never before has the Spider, Master of Men, crusader extraordinary against the Underworld, been faced with such overwhelming difficulties. A magically persuasive radio voice luring thousands of young people to crime; a scientific madman dealing germicidal death over the nation; every criminal gang in the country organized to levy toll by stark terror... How can Richard Wentworth link these facts, weave a web of retribution for the Doom Dealer? With his beloved Nita captured and waiting for a ghastly old-world torture, his one-time friend Kirkpatrick ordering police on his trail to 'Kill at Sight!', his every movement hampered not only by outlaws but by the law itself-can even the Spider find a way to free humanity from the grip of wholesale destruction being planned for it by the greatest of all Crime Masters?

Richard Wentworth was playing the most dangerous game in the world-a man-hunter outside the law; a righteous lone-wolf avenger of the weak; a scourge of the evil, the wicked and the corrupt! Loathed by the organized armies of the underworld, hunted ruthlessly by the forces of the law, he was ever between two raking cross-fires... Seldom, however, had the Spider, Master of men, faced the odds which challenged him when the man called Aronk Dong summoned all the underworld to serve him in the most ghastly campaign of rampant crime and wholesale slaughter this country had ever experienced. Armed with a weapon which struck through stone walls at victims sleeping peacefully in their beds, it was small wonder that criminals everywhere hailed the new leader-and flocked in evil glee to his dark banner!

The madness first struck at sea! As if at a signal, young and old initiated the wild bacchanal of self-destruction! Never before had a criminal of such horrible, death-dealing genius preyed upon the American people. Never before did Richard Wentworth, who was in secret the dread Spider, combat a foeman of more deadly power. And while the Spider lay gravely wounded, his beloved, Nita went forth alone to battle for her sweetheart as only a brave woman can do!

In the heart of New York's Chinatown, on his imperial throne, guarded by swordsmen and gunmen and a labyrinth of death traps, sat the Arch-Criminal of all time. Master of life and death, of disease, of horrible, crawling things-the Emperor of Vermin released destruction over city and nation. The Spider, Master of Men, champion of humanity, fought with every ounce of his cunning, against the monster who personified evil incarnate-while one faithful servant gave his life in this, the Spider's most bitter, hopeless battle, and Nita herself was faced with a doom more ghastly than any criminal mind had conceived before!

Hideous maniacal laughter shattered the dark silence of ghostly tenements. Sleepy-eyed men and women, stumbling through the dim halls of the building, found a sight that chilled their souls with terror. On a blank wall, spikes driven through her, hands and feet, blood coursing down her arms and breasts in tiny rivulets, a beautiful young woman was hanging, crucified, dying. Still another victim of the Torture Trust! And while panic spreads, while hundreds die victims of the Killers, the Spider is blinded, his faithful servants imprisoned, his friends dishonored! How can Richard Wentworth, desperate and alone, combat the powerful, well-organized Murder Syndicate whose gun hirelings hunt him down like a vicious mad dog?

In a hundred thousand homes, families sat down together at the supper table. A few hours later, those persons were dead-killed by poison in canned foods! Thousands of women used cosmetics, and acid made their faces forever hideously scarred. A master criminal, daring and clever, was ruthlessly slaughtering Americans to win immense illicit profits for himself. Only one man was powerful enough and wise enough to stop this wholesale murder-Richard Wentworth, champion of oppressed humanity, better known as the Spider. And the Spider was engaged in the bitterest battle of his career, fighting the Avenger, a false, wily crusader who was determined to destroy him!

Thousands of busy persons bent over their desks in the tallest building in the world-conducting the commerce of the nation-when suddenly the steel girders began to creak and twist, and the gigantic edifice swayed giddily in the rising wind. Never before had criminal brains devised a more cunning or a more horrible weapon to garner their ill-gotten treasures. And never before was the Spider so strenuously put to test-for the Master, the man behind the devastation and death, eluded every suspicion, foresaw every contingency, left no tell-tale clues behind him as he ravaged, slayed and pillaged... Richard Wentworth, working for once hand in hand with the organized forces of law and order, fights the grimmest battle of his long career. Can the Spider avenge the countless dead who have already fallen? Can he bring the Murder Master to the justice he so richly deserves?

A woman lighted a cigarette, puffed it a few times, and began to scream, to tear her clothes from her body. Her head twisted back between her shoulders and she died a horrible convulsive death-death from tobacco smoke! The lascivious cultist, Deacon Coslin, had seen his mad prophecy fulfilled... for already other smokers, everywhere throughout the land, were dying by tens of thousands! With Richard Wentworth's beloved Nita in the power of the enemy, facing an unspeakable death; with his faithful servants drugged and out of the battle; with the police hounding hint and the arch-criminal foreseeing every strategy, how can the Spider combat the overwhelming odds aligned against him? How can he save his compatriots from the Red Death Rain-save the land he loves from domination by an ambition-twisted brain?

In the gaunt desolation of those dark Kentucky hills, the Dixie Limited, crack flyer, stood gutted of all living passengers... The Spider, the only survivor, stood alone at that bleak scene, vowing silently, solemnly, to destroy the ambition-mad arch-criminal who had plotted this wholesale ruin. For this, and manifold like disasters, were occurring everywhere in the land-at the direction, Richard Wentworth knew, of some diabolical brain which was unleashing hordes of primitive barbarians to lay waste civilization. But later, at the very moment when the Spider should have struck his most telling blow, he was pacing a narrow cell in the death-house at Sing Sing!

Never had Richard Wentworth-he who is the scourge of the Underworld in his guise of the Spider-faced such tremendous odds or been so alone in the strife! Nita, his beloved, had tried to kill him, was hopelessly insane. His faithful servant had been tortured beyond human endurance. And the Master of Madness, chief of a powerful, fiendish syndicate, was spreading his germs of mania unchecked. Who could rescue America from screaming, murderous frenzy when the Spider, harried by Law and lawless, himself half-doubted his own skill and bravery?

Death in its ugliest form ravaged America. An ambitious, clever madman, master of a far-flung criminal empire, spread cholera germs through every rank and class of a large and totally unsuspecting populace. Numbed by terror, the citizens fled from certain death... while the police, baffled and powerless, campaigned relentlessly against the Spider, the only man able to save the stricken and bring the Plague Master to justice!

In that single, unguarded moment while he played his precious Stradivarius, the combined forces of the Mayor of Hell-the crooked Law and the vengeful Underworld-besieged Richard Wentworth, otherwise known as the Spider, nemesis of criminals! Mourned as dead, the Spider must start life anew, without friends or funds or hidden refuge, so that the Mayor of Hell's bloody-handed henchmen-who judge no deed too base, who respect neither man nor God-may find their just reward-in death!

Pitiless, astute, ambitious, yellow-skinned Wang-ba emerged from the mystic Orient to proclaim himself Emperor of America! Sight of his green face caused blood-curdling terror; his anger could be appeased only by soul-twisting agony and writhing, long-lasting death... Such was the criminal genius whom Richard Wentworth had to kill. Never before has the Spider been squeezed so tightly between the vise-jaws of the Law and the Lawless. Nor has he ever struggled so fiercely against the pleading of his own brave heart!

The Spider-who was really Richard Wentworth, a true American aristocrat-had fought a hundred battles and faced a thousand foes... But never before had a more brilliant criminal genius challenged him. For the Boss, employing a horrible, new weapon, ruled the Underworld with an iron hand, slaughtering, maddening, and loosing maniacs to ravage the nation...!

Looting, murdering bands of desperadoes roamed the streets of New York like wanton jackals who destroyed what they could not devour. An underworld Juggernaut had been unleashed upon Manhattan, turning it into a place of desolation and terror. The Thuggees of the East, those masters of murder, the cruel minions of Tang-akhmut, held the city in a state of siege. One man could save New York-Richard Wentworth, the avenging Spider, and Richard Wentworth, hunted by the police, hated by the underworld he fought, had been ordered shot on sight!

The most diabolical criminal ever to menace America, Tang-akhmut, the Egyptian, had descended like a blighting plague on Cincinnati. Tang-akhmut, leading a new and terrible army of dwarfed monsters-scourging helpless women with poisoned and barbed whips; who set about systematically to wreck the water supply of the city and then set uncontrollable conflagrations to cover his looting. Richard Wentworth, the Spider, penniless, a man outside the law, once more faces him in single-handed battle!

It is Wentworth himself-the Spider-who is first to feel the dread hand of that Master of Darkness-The Blind Man, and his satanic weapon. His best friend, Kirkpatrick, Commissioner of Police, is strangely attacked by the forces of evil; his beloved Nita van Sloan spirited away into a fearsome fate... And the Spider himself destined to a horrible life of pain and misery. Caught between the forces of evil, the Spider at last seems doomed to die in ignominy!

Richard Wentworth-whose grim, anti-crime crusades as the Spider have made him world-famous-was the first objective in the Poison Master's murder campaign. His best friend, Kirkpatrick, lay in a death-like stupor. His beloved, Nita van Sloan, was stricken with the horrible living death! And at the same time, countless thousands were felled by the same fatal venom... Caught in the crossfire between the Law and the Underworld, the Spider must battle the blind apathy of a nation ensnared in a subtle death-trap-must overcome the despair in his own brave heart...!

Richard Wentworth-who, as the swift-killing Spider, is the scourge of the Underworld-thought the Fly was dead. But once more that most formidable enemy had arisen, pillaging, slaying wantonly, armed with a ghastly new weapon, the Green Globes of Death! Ruthless and astute, heading a gigantic criminal syndicate, the Fly was butchering innocent persons only, it seemed, to see their red blood flow. It was with flagging hope and heavy heart that the Spider took up his newest battle with the preying jackals of crime!

Stripped of his wealth, cut off from his faithful helpers, Richard Wentworth, known and feared throughout the Underworld as the avenging Spider, struggles with his most powerful and wily foe-the Man who came out of the East! With Wentworth's best friend, Police Commissioner Kirkpatrick framed for murder; with the entire city capitulating before that new and cruelly cunning menace from the Orient, the Spider himself seems doomed to die on the torture racks of the Far East!

White slavery, the loathsome traffic in women's bodies-and souls-was stripping America of wives, sisters and sweethearts. Richard Wentworth, valiant champion of human rights, knew that an Oriental master criminal was captaining the slavery syndicate, guessed the unspeakable purpose behind those wholesale abductions. But with Nita hopelessly lost, with G-men harrying him relentlessly, can the Spider outwit his most formidable foeman and save America's doomed womanhood?

Never before had a shrewd criminal leader so successfully defied the Law-and the Spider's sure vengeance! A powerful Eastern murder syndicate, employing two deadly weapons, held America for ransom, spreading pain and terror and red destruction... Never had the Spider's struggle against the Underworld seemed so futile, for the name of Richard Wentworth was disgraced, his fortune was forfeit, and his beloved had betrayed him into the hands of the police-and certain death!

Never before had greedy, criminal genius loosed so loathsome and deadly a weapon! The Bat Man-leading a band of savages, releasing clouds of bloodthirsty vampire bats-planned to make himself a greater conqueror than Napoleon or Genghis Khan! One man stood in his way-Richard Wentworth, who when the Law fails, sallies forth as the dread Spider to spread red death in the Underworld. And the Spider-his beloved Nita forfeited, his loyal servants captive, his own life ever in horrible danger-must battle both the Bat Man and a broken heart!

With appalling suddenness, a new hooded monster of crime unleashed swift murder and soul-chilling madness upon Manhattan. His army of assassins struck with wanton savagery to lash terrified millions into a paralysis of fear. The Dictator held sway!-and Richard Wentworth, the avenging Spider, driven to the ambuscades of the underworld, faced the vortex of sudden peril alone.

Up from the Devil's Coast swarmed a hooded horde, rioting to lay America under The Cobra's bondage. A frenzied living Pharaoh raked Manhattan with madness and murder. Against a baffling human wall that dies but never betrays its menacing master, Richard Wentworth-feared Spider of the underworld-faces his fate alone.

Coffins and gold lay side by side in the strongroom of the liner that was sailing to its doom. And Richard Wentworth had picked that ship to carry Nita and himself to their long-delayed honeymoon in Europe! Denounced by Baron Otuna as a pirate, assailed by the green men in flaming chaos, he donned once more the Spider's dusty cloak and well-oiled guns-for an epic battle at sea with a terror that stalked in the great ship's wake and menaced a thousand lives!

Deep-hidden in evil, Satan's Suicide Club sat in council-and men died. What dreadful force drove these men, leaders of society with everything to live for, to end their lives at the behest of that sinister being who sardonically called himself Professor Mephisto? And why did men and women suffer the tortures of the damned rather than defy this mysterious being? Richard Wentworth once more assumes the cloak of the Spider to free these lost ones from a living hell and a disgraceful death-and steps into the jaws of a devil's trap that casts his life among the lives in pawn!

War gongs clanged in Chinatown-but it was no tong war that tore the great Societies with fear and suspicion and deadly hate. For deeper in evil mystery than their own dark secrets lay the hidden temple of crime that loosed the Scourge of the Yellow Fangs-the menace that erupted in the yellow men's haunts and overflowed into white men's lives and threatened white men's rule. Victims lived long enough to curse the unknown Man From Singapore-who knew the Spider and planned his quick removal from the finish fight... While in a tenuous truce with baffled police, Richard Wentworth, by night the Spider, accepted the top-heavy odds-and gave grim battle!