Overnight, a bizarre crime wave had gripped New York, turning America's First Families into criminals who, for savage lawlessness, outdid the Underworld! Society's Four Hundred had now become a ghastly, blood-thirsting set of thieves and murderers. Embezzlements and bank frauds had terrorized Manhattan and pauperized a helpless people. In this topsy-turvy world of terror, Richard Wentworth, as the Spider, set out to save a betrayed civilization-from a mystic Hindu crime-czar who had mastered the magic necessary to turn New York's moneyed class into inhuman monsters!.