The Avenger 16 - The Hate Master (13 page)

“Ritter’s at his Hudson River place,” he reported. He told grimly of the happening at the Palmer Building. Then he finished, “I just saw Morel up here, Mr. Benson.”

“Morel? You’re sure?”

“Yes, quite sure,” said Josh. “I only got one look, but it was a clear one. It’s Morel. Looks as if he is in with this mob, no matter what his daughter may say about it. I guess he wasn’t kidnaped. I think he was approached with promises of great power by this bunch of political killers and accepted their offer.”

There was silence from The Avenger’s end. And Josh could understand it perfectly. He surmised what Dick Benson was thinking.

The most dangerous person on earth is a brilliant scientist turned criminal. And here they had one of these menaces in the shape of the eminent Arthur Morel!

The newspapers had been running first-page stories of the disastrous fight in the motor industry. The price war had spread till it was no longer confined between the Fox 8, and the Ainslee Speed-Flow. All the big companies had announced ruinous prices and policies.

But this morning the headlines were different—and joyful.

Most of the headlines read:

RITTER ENDS AUTOMOTIVE WAR

And the following accounts in all the papers were almost word for word:

Edwin C. Ritter, drawn and tired from a night spent with the heads of the motor industry, announced this morning that peace had finally been made. The new prices and policies will not go into effect. Prices had been announced which would shortly have disorganized the entire industry, but Ritter after an all-night session, persuaded the industrial heads to return to the old policies. When questioned, Ritter minimized his own part in the peace making; but it was evident that he, and he alone, was responsible.

There was a long eulogy. Ritter, the man of the hour! Single-handed, he had straightened out a tangle that the bankers, the president of the United States, and the heads of the labor unions had been unable to do anything with. The one man in America able to perform such a miracle!

It was repeated that this wonderman was a presidential candidate, and all the papers did more than hint that a man capable of performing such miracles was the type of man who would look well in the White House.

“They’ve got him practically elected right now,” said Smitty disgustedly. “Wonderman, huh. Well, I will say he’s smart. We’ve never bumped up against anything like this before. But then, we’ve never seen a politically ambitious man backed by anybody like Morel before.”

Nellie tried to signal him to shut up. But she was too late. Lila had been coming in the door, and she had heard the giant. Instantly she was before him, cheeks flaming.

“My father isn’t ‘in on’ anything he shouldn’t be!” she flared. “He is a scientist. He isn’t personally ambitious at all. He lives only for science. Packer could tell you that.”

It was too late to pretend he hadn’t said anything; so Smitty shrugged and went on.

“He seems to be living for more than science right now. He was with the gang at that car barn, and he helped them get away. He was in Ritter’s Hudson River place, night before last; Josh saw him there. And he went with Ritter to a Vermont farm this morning. Josh reported in a few minutes ago, just before noon.”

“I don’t believe it,” said Lila defiantly. “Or, if he is with Ritter, he is being held forcibly.”

The Avenger had been staring out the window, pale eyes lambent and coldly flaming. He spoke without turning.

“I think we’d better see about it, right now. Cole, go with Lila to the Vermont place. If Morel is with this gang, as Josh reported, try to get him away from them. Bring him back here.”

“Right,” said Cole confidently. Wilson was always confident, and he had a right to be. Seemingly built out of steel cable and leather, almost as fast in action as The Avenger himself, Cole usually came home with what he went out to get.

“You know where the Vermont farm is?” said Dick.

Cole nodded.

“I placed it on the country map after Josh phoned.”

“All right, I’ll go with you,” said Lila. “But we won’t find my father mixed up with that bunch of killers. I know that.”

However, in the plane, she let her shoulders droop a little and became less sure. She talked more openly to Cole. Perhaps because he was very good-looking and was the kind any girl would like to talk to.

“Do you suppose it’s possible Dad
is
criminally involved?” she faltered.

“I don’t know,” said Cole slowly. “Arthur Morel’s name is a great one. It doesn’t seem that he’d go in for anything like this. And yet, to be the unseen ruler behind a president of the United States—that’s a tremendous stake to play for.”

Cole had taken an autogyro plane. He was particularly adept with the flying windmills. He could land on a roof top with one and, by jumpstarting, almost take off from as small a space.

He landed just over the Vermont line in a field that looked hardly bigger than a handkerchief, with hills fringing it on every side. The farm to which Ritter and Morel had gone was less than a mile away.

Lila and he had made it to the edge of the place through woods and over hilly country.

There was an unpainted barn and a rough-looking house and a corn crib leaning at a crazy angle. It didn’t look like the kind of place where a man like Ritter would come. But then, that was probably why he had chosen the out-of-the-way spot.

Cole saw movement at one of the first-floor windows. He looked hard for a moment, then handed his little telescope to Lila. It was the kind of instrument Josh had used, very powerful for all its size.

Lila stared through it; then Cole saw a couple of tears slide down her cheeks. She just nodded; there was no need for words. The man she had seen at the window was her father.

“We’ll get him out,” said Cole gently. “You stay here while I—”

“I’m going with you.”

“There may be trouble,” Cole argued. “You can’t—”

“I’m going with you!”

In that tone of voice, Cole knew she either went with him or he’d have to forget he was a gentleman and knock her cold to keep her in the edge of the woods.

He looked a long time and saw no sign of men. Perhaps only Morel was there, now. Cole was a little worried that there was no trace of Josh, who was supposed to be around watching. His absence hinted that Ritter had gone away from here, too, with Josh on his trail.

“All right,” said Cole.

And he went openly across the field to the door with Lila. There was no other way to approach the house, no way to get there over cleared fields in daylight without being seen.

Cole knocked, the door was opened, and Ritter’s man, Knarlie, peered out.

“Oh!”
said the man, shocked at any visitors, particularly these. He tried to shut the door. Cole shoved it open.

“Mr. Ritter isn’t here,” Knarlie babbled, trying to keep them out, trying to do his duty.

“We didn’t come to see Ritter,” said Cole. “We came to see Morel. This is his daughter, as I think you know.”

Knarlie nodded to Lila, but looked more troubled than ever.

“I don’t think you’d better try to see him,” he said. “I really would advise—”

“Where is he?” demanded Cole.

“He’s in there, isn’t he?” said Lila suddenly, pointing to a door behind which she had heard a sound.

Without waiting for an answer, she went to the door, the first on the right, and opened it.

“Dad!”

Cole leaped to her side. Together they stared through the doorway into a living room furnished better than the outside of the place would indicate and at a man sitting before a table on which were desk equipment.

“Oh, hello!” said Morel to his daughter.

He said it evenly, quietly, without seeming in the least surprised—or glad—to see Lila.

And Cole, for some reason he couldn’t quite spot, felt a shiver touch his spine.

“Dad, what are you doing here? Where have you been?”

“Why, I’m here as the guest of a friend,” said Morel, quietly.

Cole knew now why he felt that tendency to shiver. Morel’s eyes! They were flat and rather dull, with pupils not quite normal, as if he had taken dope. His hands were moving restlessly among the things on the desk top: a little blotter on a curved bit of wood like a rocking horse runner, a pair of library shears, a paper knife.

“We want you to come with us,” said Lila. Her face showed that she, too, was getting a hint of something terribly wrong.

Next instant the hint expanded into terrible fact.

Morel screamed. It was a dreadful sound—a yell of pure hate! His face was twisted demoniacally with the same lust to kill. A mask of hate! Hatred for everybody, everything.

He leaped to his feet and his hand drew back.

“Down!” yelled Cole to Lila.

With the cry, his hand caught her arm and he pulled her to the floor by main force. The shears whistled over her head so close that it seemed a lock of hair must be shorn off.

Morel had tried to kill his own daughter!

Cole gave the girl another powerful thrust as the paper knife whistled murderously after the shears. Then he reached Morel and caught his right arm in a viselike grip as Knarlie, looking scared but game, raced to get his left arm.

But Knarlie never got there. Knarlie gave a kind of bleat of fright and suddenly scuttled out a side door. Next instant, Cole knew why.

“Drop the guy’s arm,” snarled a voice at the hall door. “And stand still. You and the dame.”

Cole whirled. In the doorway were two men, each with an automatic leveled at him. Behind the two crowded more. He couldn’t see how many, but from the noise he judged there were a lot.

He and Lila had been followed here. Or else someone at Bleek Street had notified the gang of their coming. But that was unlikely because there was no one in that category, save Packer; and Cole was sure Morel’s servant was O K. No, they had been followed. The followers had closed in. Now they were neatly trapped.

“Get Morel out of here,” snapped the man who had told Cole to stand where he was.

One of the men sidled to the scientist. Morel stood with dull eyes, his blind hatred seeming to have been burned out of him by his swift murder attempt of a moment before. The man led him out of the room. Lila sobbed. Another of the men laughed.

The one who had laughed drew a bottle from his pocket, opened the cheap liquor, took a swig, then set it on a table next to an open window.

“We’ll celebrate,” he said cheerfully. “There’s a nice price on this dame’s head. And we’ll get some extra for the guy. He’s with The Avenger.” There followed a string of curses showing what the man thought of Dick Benson.

“Got any last words?” said the leader of the gang of thugs to the white-faced girl and the blazing-eyed Wilson.

Wilson was getting ready for a leap at the man. It would be a leap straight into the jaws of death. He knew that. But better to die fighting than be shot down in cold blood.

However, the leap was never made.

There was a slight
phhht
of sound. And the leader’s gun sagged down in a limp hand. For an instant he stood there, eyes dulling, looking astonished. Then he fell. And on the exact top of his skull was a shallow gash, as if he had been clubbed.

But there was no one around to club him.

Another
phhht!
Another man sank. And then Wilson got it. The Avenger!

Dick Benson had two of the world’s most curious weapons. One was a hollow-handled throwing knife which he called, with grim affection, Ike. The other was a little .22 revolver, long-barreled, so streamlined that it looked more like a slim length of blued tubing than a gun. This he called Mike. It had a specially devised silencer on it, and with it he “creased” his opponents—knocked them out by glancing a bullet off their skulls. The Avenger never took human life.

Few but Dick Benson had that eighth-inch accuracy of marksmanship; and only Mike’s silenced muzzle made that deadly little sound.

But more than Cole got the meaning of the two men on the floor with the shallow gashes on their skulls. Three of the gang stared swiftly at each other and then at the open window.

No one showed there, now. But the three, without a word, tiptoed from the room.

“Chief! They’re after you!” yelled Cole.

But the warning was too late. On its heels came the snarled command outside: “All right, you! Drop the pea shooter and come along with us!”

Cole leaped for the window and Lila screamed. The next thing Cole knew, he was opening his eyes from a prone position on the floor. He had been clubbed from behind.

The Avenger was in the room, standing nearby with Lila beside him. Dick Benson quietly bent down and helped Cole to his feet. Dick’s face was as calm as ever, and his pale and icy eyes showed no emotion. Though, with eight men lined across the room with guns in their hands like an execution squad, there was plenty of occasion for emotion.

“Well!” said Wilson. “Looks like they’ve got us.”

“Just getting wise to that, huh?” sneered the man who had set the bottle on the table. “Boy, this
is
good! Who’d of dreamed we’d get the big boy himself up here!” He glared at Dick. “We’ll have another drink on this, eh, guys?”