The Avenger 16 - The Hate Master (7 page)

He phoned his executives and gathered them around him.

“Our new Speed-Flow competes directly in price and type with Fox’s 8, doesn’t it?” he said.

It was more a statement than a question. The old man knew it did. One of the younger men nodded.

“The Speed-Flow and the Fox 8 are within a few dollars of each other in price, a few pounds in weight, a few miles in speed. They’re directly competitive.”

“They’re not any more!” snapped Ainslee. “Beginning at once, a new price is effective. The Speed-Flow sells for $650.”

There was a concerted gasp. Then the general superintendent exclaimed:

“We can’t sell for that! The car costs us over $600 at the factory door. We make little enough, with sales costs out, at the present price of $980.”

“The new price,” said Ainslee, “is $650. I’ll show that louse, Fox.”

“You’ll lose millions!” protested the manager.

“So will Fox,” barked Ainslee. “And I can stand it better than he can. I’m better heeled. I’ll run him out of business if it takes my last dollar.”

“The whole industry will suffer! The whole price structure of one of the nation’s greatest industries—”

“Damn the price structure,” snarled Ainslee. “And, particularly, damn Leslie Fox! Do as I said, at once, or I’ll fire the lot of you!”

The Avenger was in his laboratory. He had been there for twenty hours, working tirelessly on the mystery of the pigeons. Tirelessly? He seemed made of metal, where fatigue was concerned. He had worn out Mac and Wilson and now had Josh assisting him.

Josh thought Benson was getting places. The slight tautness of expression indicated it. But as usual the man with the deadly, colorless eyes was not revealing anything till he had something actual to reveal.

Dick was working on about the fiftieth variety of test that can be given to a minute quantity of blood. The blood had been taken from the belligerent pigeon. He had just diluted this bit with a golden liquid which instantly turned cloudy purple, on contact with the blood.

The color was intriguing, but Josh knew The Avenger scarcely noticed that. Color was incidental. What the pale, infallible eyes were studying through a low-power microscope was a queer crystalline pattern forming in the blood cells.

Smitty came in. The giant had a length of what looked like white ribbon in his hands. But it was not ribbon. It was ticker tape from The Avenger’s private news ticker in the big top-floor room.

Over that ticker constantly flowed all the world’s news. Smitty had just gathered an item and now handed it to Dick for his inspection.

Benson read it.

The item was only an account of a personal quarrel, and would have had no importance save for the vast power of the persons involved. That made it front-page news.

There had been an automobile association banquet the night before. There had been an argument between Ainslee and Fox, two titans in the industry. Fox had slugged Ainslee in the jaw.

The account was of the type that is frequently reported by waiters and bellboys in big hotels who get a fee for every tidbit of gossip turned in to the papers. But the sequence of the incident was the important thing.

Ainslee had just announced a price drop of $330 in his car, competing with the Fox 8!

“That’s split the whole motor business apart,” said Smitty.

The Avenger nodded, colorless eyes lambent, like cold moonstone.

“You said Edwin Ritter was at that banquet, Wilson?”

Cole nodded. “The banquet was really given in his honor. The Detroit motor magnates held it officially to indorse his candidacy for president.”

Dick said: “It’s queer.”

They waited for him to say what was queer.

“Lila Morel goes to call on Ritter,” said Benson slowly. “Near his house, she is trapped by thugs and almost killed. There is a crazy affair about mad pigeons at the public library. Ritter just happens to be there at that time. Now, Ritter attends an important banquet, and the men attending it have a violent quarrel that bids fair to disrupt one of the nation’s biggest industries.”

He stared at the test tube. He hadn’t completed his latest test and didn’t want to leave it.

“We haven’t one thing, definite, against Ritter,” he resumed. “But wherever he is, there seems to be a sudden blossoming of trouble. Josh, you and Smitty take one of the planes and go to Detroit. Watch Ritter and note everything he does and every place he goes.”

“We keep out of sight?” said Smitty.

“First see Ritter,” said The Avenger. “See what he has to say about the banquet. After that, trail him so he doesn’t know he is being trailed.”

He turned back to the test tube, and Josh and Smitty went out of the laboratory and then out of the building.

If Dick Benson hadn’t been so immensely rich, his car-and-plane bill alone would have ruined him. He had a dozen planes, ranging from a little bullet of a thing, all wings and motor, which would go almost four hundred miles an hour, to a giant trimotored fortress which would have made the military eyes of any foreign warring power glisten with delight. In addition, he had over a score of cars of every size, designed for every conceivable transportation function.

Josh and Smitty took a low-wing monoplane that cruised at about two-sixty and hopped for Detroit.

It was a pretty short hop in that ship.

It was easy to locate Ritter. A presidential candidate isn’t hidden under a bushel—or in a large auditorium hall, usually, for that matter. The hotel where the banquet had been held, knew his whereabouts.

He was at the Grosse Point home of Horace Weyland, the truck and tractor baron. Weyland had gone west the morning after the banquet and had turned his home over to the politician.

“It simply doesn’t seem possible that Ritter could be mixed up in anything shady,” Josh repeated, as they sped toward the Weyland estate in a rented car. “He’s too prominent.”

“Have most of the guys we’ve fought been little fellows, or have they been prominent?” Smitty pointed out.

Josh had no answer for that one.

Justice, Inc., had been formed to fight supercrime, led by men so powerful that they were beyond the reaches of ordinary police efforts. It was hence the rule, and not the exception, that the men Justice, Inc., fought and vanquished should be wealthy and prominent, beyond all normal suspicions.

“Why,” asked Josh, “would Ritter break up a banquet held in his honor, assuming he has the power to and chose to use that power?”

Smitty shrugged vast shoulders.

“He wants to be elected president, doesn’t he? So, suppose he starts an argument in the automobile trade that looks like it’s going to bring trouble affecting, directly or indirectly, everybody in the country. Then suppose he patches up that trouble, with a lot of publicity. That would make him hot stuff as a pacifier, wouldn’t it?”

Josh admitted that it would. And Josh admitted to something like awe.

“Gee, Smitty. We’ve gone after crooks who had big stakes in mind. But we’ve never tackled anybody who actually dared to try to steal the presidency of the United States before. That is, if your guess is right.”

They were at Weyland’s place, now. Smitty tooled the car up a tree-lined drive and stopped in front of a home that looked like a movie set of an English castle. The giant rang the bell, then listened intently to something sounding out in back of the house. Anyway, it seemed to come from that source. Josh heard it, too.

It was an anguished screaming. Half a yelp and half a shriek. It seemed almost human, yet not quite human.

“Something’s being tortured pretty badly,” said Josh, soberly.

Then the door opened in answer to Smitty’s ring.

The servant in the doorway gave both of them a start. He was so different from the type of figure usually found as a servant.

A small man with a malformation of the back that was felt more than actually seen. A man with a face almost hideous in its homeliness but with exceptionally intelligent, kindly brown eyes peering out at you from all the ugliness.

There were somber shadows in the eyes, now.

“Yes?” the ugly small man said.

“We’d like to see Mr. Ritter,” said Smitty. There had been silence in the back. Now, there were more of the queer screams, followed by a long moaning. The ugly little man looked as if he were about to moan, too.

“Mr. Ritter isn’t here just now,” he said.

“You’re sure?” said Smitty.

“Quite sure,” retorted the ugly one. “I am Mr. Ritter’s personal servant; so I should know.”

More shrieks. Smitty started toward the door.

“I’m sorry,” said the little man hastily, barring the way. “Terribly sorry. If you will come back in an hour—”

He was trying to bar the door, and Smitty was having none of it. The giant pushed door and servant back without effort.

Smitty had placed that shriek. He thought it was, incredibly, from a dog. And anything that put a dog in such agony that its cries of pain became almost unrecognizable was a matter of extreme importance to Smitty. He liked dogs.

Josh followed close on the heels of the big fellow, with the ugly little man, distress in his eyes, trying all the time to get in front of them and insisting that Mr. Ritter was not in the house.

The front hall led straight from the big main door back through the center of the house to a large, glassed rear door. And that door, in turn, opened onto a rear terrace.

The little servant stopped trying to block their way; he saw it was no use as they got to the rear door. He had done his best.

Smitty and Josh went onto the terrace, stopped aghast at what they saw, then hurried on with fists instinctively clenched.

There was a small terrier, tied up close to the base of an iron urn. The terrier was screaming and trying to twist away from the whistling blows of a whip that seemed made of fine, cutting, copper wire. And the wielder of the diabolical whip was a man whose face had been pictured in all the nation’s papers at one time or another.

But Edwin Ritter’s face had never been caught by a camera as Smitty and Josh saw it now.

His face was a devil’s mask. The lips were curved up in a frightful grin. The eyes were almost closed as the whip whistled down. Little muscles in the cheeks jerked with every blow. It was a face out of hell.

Just one last blow Ritter got in when he sensed the presence of others. Instantly, he whirled toward Josh and Smitty, and as instantly his face changed.

It became benevolent, regretful, pained, sorrowful—but stern.

“Gentlemen,” Ritter said, “I’m extremely sorry you should chance to come here at such a time. My poor dog. It distresses me so much to have to discipline it now and then. Yet, discipline is necessary. Not a very nice sight for visitors to see, though, is it? Knarlie!” The bland, benevolent expression still held, but cords in the man’s throat suddenly stood out in a frenzy of carefully veiled anger. “Knarlie, why did you show visitors out here?”

The ugly-looking servant opened his mouth to speak but seemed to realize there was nothing to say and only spread his hands. Then he left the terrace, looking stricken and frightened. And well he might. For the last person on earth to be caught in such a scene was a man who wanted to be president of the United States some day.

Josh saw Smitty’s big hands quivering for action. But the giant couldn’t break this man’s neck or use the dog’s whip on him as he ached to do.

“We’re from the press,” Smitty said, taking a malicious pleasure in seeing Ritter’s face go deadly white and his lips twitch in terror. “We came to check on the banquet proceedings last night.”

“I gave all the details it was seemly for me to give to others from the papers,” Ritter said, very, very, friendly.

“There seem to have been a few details omitted,” said Smitty. “For instance, have you any idea what started the fight between Ainslee and Fox?”

“None whatever,” said Ritter. He looked with a bland smile at Josh. “You represent a Negro publication?”

“The
Southern Courier,”
nodded Josh, playing up Smitty’s punishing lead.

Ritter moistened putty-colored lips, and Smitty went on with his questions but couldn’t pry out anything not already printed in the papers. Ritter herded them subtly into the house and down the hall toward the front door.

“I . . . er . . . trust you two won’t bother to report my regrettable necessity back there on the terrace,” he said, opening the door for them.

“Necessity?” said Smitty, face impassive.

“Yes, of course. When a dog disobeys orders, it must be punished. Dogs must be kept well trained or they become nuisances to others, and that would be most inconsiderate on the owner’s part. Yet, I realize that it may have looked severe to two men chancing to come at the wrong moment.”

Smitty and Josh said nothing, getting at least some small revenge from seeing him wriggle.

“I hope to be president one of these days,” Ritter said, smiling widely with pale lips. “In fact, I have every reason to believe I will become so. And two . . . er . . . journalists who happen to be close friends of a president of the United States would be in a very fortunate position indeed.”