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! The Devil’s Candlesticks is torn from the pages of the August, 1938 issue of The Spider magazine.