Crossover Cover: Harry Dickson vs. the Spider

This story, originally published as "La Bande de l’Araignée" in Harry Dickson #86, is translated and adapted by Jean-Marc and Randy Lofficier in the anthology Harry Dickson vs. the Spider, with crossover references added. Baker Street detective Harry Dickson battles Georgette Cuvelier and her Spider Society. Georgette tells Dickson the Society’s plans wouldn’t even be limited to Earth if they had the means to leave it, like Mr. Barbicane did. Georgette tells Dickson and his young assistant Tom Wills to evade two Italian mercenaries belonging to the Black Coats. Dickson first met a money lender friend of his when he cleared the man of murder during his time as an apprentice to Sexton Blake. The Society’s headquarters is located inside an opium den; the entrance to their lair can be accessed by manipulating statuettes of the Three Madmen of Toko-Djawa, which are described in Challenger’s book on the religions of Sumatra. Impey Barbicane is the president of the Baltimore Gun Club in Jules Verne’s novels From the Earth to the Moon and Around the Moon. The Black Coats are a criminal organization appearing in novels by Paul Féval. Sexton Blake is the most famous British penny dreadful detective; G. L. Gick revealed a young Dickson served as Blake’s apprentice in his novella “The Werewolf of Rutherford Grange.” Professor George Edward Challenger is the protagonist of The Lost World and other tales by Arthur Conan Doyle. Georgette reappeared in "The Phantom Executioners," which revealed that she was the daughter of Professor Flax, who was a recurring foe of Dickson, but first appeared in Louis Forest’s Someone is Stealing Children in Paris.