The Thrill Book, Vol. 1, No. 2

# The Web of Death By Clare Douglas Stewart

This dramatic tale frames itself as a doctor's campfire narrative about a case from his student days in Bologna, Italy. The Sicilian medical student he befriended—brilliant in chemistry and medieval "Black Arts," especially poisons—later marries an American woman, Leona Willard, a delicate artist he had met in Rome. When Leona develops mysterious heart trouble at the count's remote Southern Italian villa, the doctor is summoned to attend her.

The villa itself appears sinister: medieval, isolated between brooding crags, its interiors draped entirely in black with gold tracery. Leona appears unnaturally pale and luminous in this setting. During his stay, the doctor observes the count's volatile temperament, his feudal control over peasants, and his passionate hatred of Americans—glimpsed when he mutilates a newspaper account of an American medical discovery. The doctor gradually recognizes a fiendish motive underlying Leona's illness, though the narrative breaks before its revelation.