While on patrol, Spider-Man is constantly drawn past the same mansion; checking on it he discovers Adlai Schmidt alone and eating dinner. Soon after, however, a swarm of spiders kill Schmidt. A few blocks away, Spidey discovers three thugs mugging a couple and gives them a savage beating. He regains control of his rage, and heads off. The next day, at the Bugle, J. Jonah Jameson attempts to convince Joe Robertson that the spider-related death of Schmidt implicates Spider-Man. In a bar, a mysterious man wearing thick spectacles takes payment from another man handing him a pair of earrings for his Aunt. Pete and Deb Whitman appear at the Schmidt estate auction, where antique dealer Norman Junque purchases all the French pieces in the collection. Following him, Spidey gets the same feeling he had at Schmidt’s and follows it to an apartment where he and the police find an old woman attacked by spiders. Spidey hustles her to the ER, and removes her earrings, recognizing hidden circuitry within. In a warehouse, “Specs,” the bespectacled man from the bar, an arthropod researcher who invented spider attractors, parlaying them into murder weapons, realizes that his devices are affecting Spidey as well and creates a stronger device to lure him. He disrupts the arriving wall-crawler’s spider-sense and admits selling attractors to Junque and the old woman’s nephew so they could commit murder by spider. Spidey resists the attractor, avoids Spec’s bomb, and turns him over to the police.