Herne the Hunter 3: The Black Widow

By John J. McLaglen

Whitey was on him like a lean panther, swinging the pistol like a club at the back of the boy’s head, catching him a solid blow. The sentry crumpled to his hands and knees, mewing in pain, barely conscious. As Jed kicked the outer door shut, shooting the main bolt across, he heard the sickening crack, like a ripe apple being trodden underfoot, as Whitey swung his gun a second time, smashing the top of the guard’s skull to a bloody pulp. Ignoring the body, that lay still twitching at his feet, the albino bent and wiped blood and matted hair from the foresight of his Colt on the fancy waistcoat, adding a macabre layer to the decorations. “Leaves us three,” he said ...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Piccadilly Publishing
• Release date: Nov 30, 2012
• ISBN: 9781301829439

John J. McLaglen

John J. McLaglen is the pseudonym for the writing team of Laurence James and John Harvey.

Book preview

Issuing classic fiction from Yesterday and Today!

Whitey was on him like a lean panther, swinging the pistol like a club at the back of the boy’s head, catching him a solid blow. The sentry crumpled to his hands and knees, mewing in pain, barely conscious. As Jed kicked the outer door shut, shooting the main bolt across, he heard the sickening crack, like a ripe apple being trodden underfoot, as Whitey swung his gun a second time, smashing the top of the guard’s skull to a bloody pulp. Ignoring the body, that lay still twitching at his feet, the albino bent and wiped blood and matted hair from the foresight of his Colt on the fancy waistcoat, adding a macabre layer to the decorations. Leaves us three, he said ...

THE BLACK WIDOW

First Published by Corgi Books in 1977

Copyright © 1977 by John J. McLaglen

This is a Piccadilly Publishing Book

Published by Piccadilly Publishing at Smashwords: November 2012

Names, characters and incidents in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each reader. If you’re reading the book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Published by Arrangement with the Author.

Cover image © 2012 by Westworld Designs

This is a Piccadilly Publishing Book

Published by Arrangement with Elizabeth James.

My oh my how time does fly. This is for John Harvey who is as good a writer as he is a friend. Remember to keep your eyes on the Omaha Rainbow.

Chapter One

The spider was small. Its size quite out of proportion to its ability to deal a swift and agonizing death.

It squatted malevolently in the corner of the glass box, the light from the oil lamps glittering off its glossy black skin. It looked swollen, sitting at the center of its own skeletal legs. As it moved, in a sudden and uncertain run to one corner, it was possible to see the red markings on its underbelly that identified it beyond all doubt as the black widow.

‘Remember me when I am gone away,

Gone far away into the silent land;’

The boys paused at their play, hearing the husky voice of their mother from the withdrawing room across the hall from them. Reading the beautiful love sonnet of Christina Rossetti. Since the peculiar death of their father two years ago, Ruth Stanwyck had taken more and more to reading alone in the vast book-lined room.

Mark sniggered. An obscene little noise that barely disturbed the air with its ripple. ‘Mama is feeling lonely again, Luke.'

His twin brother, born just eighteen minutes after him, also looked up, and smiled. His smile was as pale as his clothes. As smooth as white silk. ‘Perhaps she will be taking another of her trips to San Francisco.’

Again the giggle. ‘Good. If she does, my dear brother, then we can go on a trip ourselves.’

Luke shook his head, poking casually at the crouching spider. ‘Remember what happened last time. In March.’

‘But it was such sport. The lonely lady near Tucson, and her friendly and hospitable neighbor. I enjoyed them so much, Luke.’

This time it was Luke who laughed, the sudden noise bringing a pause to his mother’s reading. He moved, the light off his totally white clothes dazzling amid the shadows of the vaulted room.

‘Your tastes in pleasure are so close to mine, brother, and yet so very far apart.’

Again he prodded at the spider with the needle-sharp tip of the stiletto he always carried. Mark stood away from the table, pouting at his brother.

‘At least my pleasures come from sticking things into other people and not from sticking things into myself.’

There was the soft rustle of silk as Luke straightened up, his eyes narrowing. ‘You always were squeamish. About yourself. Yet I have never seen you concern yourself with the sufferings of others.’

Their mother heard them beginning their ceaseless circular bickering and sighed, stopping reading the sonnet two lines short of the end. The rambling mansion that her late husband had built for them, high in the fastness of the Sierras, was becoming a prison. Much as she loved the house, with its treasure-trove of antiques culled from all over Europe and Asia, and much as she loved her twin sons, there were times when the house, with its dozen armed guards permanently on duty, seemed more like a jail.

Mark and Luke heard her stop reading and paused in their argument. Although their mother was capable of stifling affection, she was also capable of taking the riding-crop from the wall. The whip with the handle of chased Spanish silver and the triple-plaited thongs. Although they were only two weeks short of their joint twenty-first birthday, Ruth would not hesitate to take them into her ornate bedroom with its brocaded velvet hangings cutting off the ranging views. To strip them and order them to bend across the four-poster and lash them in a fury of anger, until the blood flowed from their torn flanks.

And afterwards she would hold them close and touch them where it hurt. Taking away the pain and bringing a luxuriant, somnolent pleasure. A pleasure that both boys found so intense that it made the punishment almost worthwhile.

Almost, but not quite.

They waited for the sound of her high-button boots clicking across the marble hallway towards them, but there was silence. Luke fitfully poked again at the black widow spider, neatly slicing off one of its legs, so that it scampered away from the corner, dragging its body askew, then waiting, looking up at the boys, its body swollen with venom.

‘Cut off another, Luke. See how long it can keep going around.’

‘Let’s see you pick it up out of the box and I will. Go on.’

‘Take care, brother. Cross me and you’ll not sleep easy for wondering what you might find between your sheets.’

‘Worry more about what you might find between your ribs, Mark.’

‘Stop that at once!’

The voice was as keen as the east wind that tore at the gables of the house. Involved in their perpetual feud, the brothers had missed the sound of their mother’s approach. With a squeal of fright as shrill as a girl’s, Mark spun round, and his hand caught the edge of the glass box. Sending it spinning to shatter on the floor, right at his mother’s feet. Sending its glossy black occupant tumbling out near the edge of the Persian carpet.

Tightly corseted in black satin, a jet necklace at her pale throat, Ruth Stanwyck looked down at the spider with no more concern than if it had been a botanical specimen.

Mark’s hand went to his mouth, while Luke took a careful step backwards, brushing a small patch of dust on the immaculate sleeve of his white suit.

‘Take care, Mama,’ whispered Mark, between his bitten fingers.

‘This creature is yours?’

Neither twin spoke. Neither Mark nor Luke would risk crossing their mother when she was close to one of her tempers. Both kept their eyes fixed on the intricate pattern of the rug, not wanting to meet Ruth’s gaze. Her eyes, as heavy-lidded as a hooded falcon, would flash with startling fire if they crossed her.

‘I asked a question, did I not, Mark?’

‘Yes, Mama.’

‘And I do not believe that I heard either of you reply to it, did I, Luke?’

‘No, Mama.’

Seemingly ignored, the spider was painfully crawling nearer and nearer to the trailing hem of the long black dress.

‘Very well. Since the creature seemingly belongs to neither of you, then I shall dispose of it. There!’

Without even looking down, Ruth Stanwyck lifted her foot and brought it down on the crippled creature, squashing it into a tiny ball of poison on the polished mahogany floor with the toe of her boot.

Mark opened his mouth to protest, then thought better of it.

‘Yes, Mark?’ Quick and alert as ever, their mother had caught the slight movement of the lips.

‘Nothing, Mama.’

Luke interrupted, quietly slipping his knife back into its oiled deerskin sheath behind the right hip. ‘Mama?’

‘Yes, Luke.’

‘Mark was asking if it might be possible for us to come with you next time you travel to the coast?’

His mother didn’t answer, walking past him to the vaulted window, with its inset panel of fourteenth century stained glass, torn from a monastery in Bavaria. She stood with her back to him, staring out at the gray stones of the mountains, unblinking as the wind dashed a flurry of sleet against the glass.

Although she was nearly forty, Ruth Stanwyck was a fine figure of a woman, her body still ripe and promising beneath that tight black dress. And her hair hung in a cluster of tight blonde ringlets, framing her face and those marvelous eyes. The only touch of color was a massive ruby set at the center of the buckle of her belt. Beyond that touch of deep red, she presented a frighteningly somber figure encased in gleaming black satin.

She behaved as though she hadn’t heard the question, turning back to look into the room, at the splash of splintered glass by the table, and her twin sons standing each side. Mark her first-born, nervously picking at a ragged piece of torn skin on his knuckles. And Luke immaculate, as always, in white. But she knew Luke well. There was already the faintest twitching of his cheek below the right eye. She glanced at the onyx clock on the mantelshelf. It was nearly five. She would make him wait a while longer for his … ‘treatment’. In another hour he would begin to sweat. By dinner he would be willing to crawl on his belly for that precious half-spoonful of white powder that she kept locked in the iron safe in her boudoir.

Ruth smiled.

‘My dearest boys. Outside the chill of winter is settling its claws into our lovely estate. Across that blue lake, the fall will soon be frozen into a pinnacle of ice. Then the lake will freeze. The valley will be cut off for a couple of months. All this will happen within the next two or three weeks. Anyone outside the house after that date will not be able to get back. Nor will anyone within be able to get out. It has always been so and it will always be so.’

It was true. Mark and Luke had lived in the house for most of their lives, only able to taste the heady air of freedom for an occasional week at a time.

‘That alone would make a request for permission to leave for San Francisco utterly absurd, would it not?’

They both nodded. There was a knock at the door and their eyes flicked towards the hall with a flash of interest. An interest that dulled the moment they saw it was only their English butler, Jackson.

‘Yes?’

‘Mrs. Bellamy wishes to know when you require dinner serving, madam?’

‘Is it the salmon as I ordered?’

‘It is, madam.’

‘Then we will eat at eight.’ She watched Luke, finding a perverse pleasure in the look of dismay that crossed his face. ‘Don’t worry, my dearest boy. I shall ensure that you have your medicine before we eat.’ The butler turned to leave the room, as silently as he had entered. ‘Oh, Jackson?’

‘Madam?’

‘I was just talking to my sons about the approaching winter. We have in all the provisions that we need,