Amateur criminologist Richard Wentworth, formerly the masked vigilante, the Spider, brings his former alter ego out of retirement for 15 action-packed chapters to help his old friend, police commissioner Kirk (Kirkpatrick in the pulp novels), battle a dangerous, power-obsessed maniac called the Gargoyle. This mysterious crime lord and his henchmen threaten the world with acts of sabotage and wholesale murder in an effort to wreck the National Security of the United States.