The Avenger 16 - The Hate Master (17 page)

“I happen to know about your bulletproof underwear, or whatever it is,” the man said. “Please observe that the gun is leveled at your face, not at your body.”

The man was Knarlie, the servant in Ritter’s home.

Behind Knarlie, seven men filed into the room, all with guns pointed at the two men. As The Avenger had once said, professional gunmen are a dime a dozen. A ruthless man can always go out and hire murderous stooges if he needs them.

“I expected you to show up here,” said Dick, evenly. “In fact, I planned the whole thing to get you here. But—”

“But you didn’t expect me to get here so fast, or to get in so quietly, eh?” said Knarlie. The little man looked like a figure out of hell. His brown eyes, which had seemed so benevolent and so distressed at the cruelties of his “employer,” Ritter, now glittered with ambition for power and with ruthlessness against anyone standing in his way.

The Avenger’s eyes were lambent moonstones on him. He said nothing.

“Your place,” said Knarlie, “is like most fortresses. It is designed to be impregnable from the outside. But in the design it was forgotten that, if ever any enemy did get in, the fine fortress would become a terrible prison. As this has now become your prison.”

“You seem to have studied military terms and tactics,” murmured Benson.

“Of course,” said Knarlie. “A dictator needs such knowledge. And I shall be dictator—when Ritter is in the White House. I couldn’t run for president, myself. My damned ugliness makes it impossible for me to be a public figure. But I could—and did—take promising material like Ritter to put in the limelight, while I really ran things from behind the throne. It is hard to pretend to be a servant, as I have done, when you are really the master. But that’s ended now—or will be with the next elections.”

“You’re going ahead with your plan?”

“Of course,” said Knarlie. His voice was as calm as The Avenger’s own. The most dangerous killer is he whose voice is never lifted, whose nerves never quiver.

“You are the only one who can stop me,” he said. “And you are as good as dead, right now! I said a fortress could be a terrible trap. Yours has become so. You know the thick steel doors that shut off this floor from all the rest? Those are closed and bolted now, save for one out of which we shall go. Then I’ll jam that so no one can open it. Ritter and I will get out of here quickly and speed away from the building. My men”—he nodded at the hired thugs, who nodded almost indifferently back—“will mop up your helpers, and Morel’s daughter, on the floors below. And that will be that!”

“You seem very sure,” shrugged The Avenger. “How about Ritter? You can’t keep a man, even a president, injected constantly with a drug for four years.”

“I don’t have to,” said Knarlie, smiling silkily and looking more physically hideous than ever. “Morel’s serum, used for a long period, leaves a man permanently affected. Ritter hasn’t had an injection for a long time now. He hasn’t needed one; have you, Ritter?”

“No,” said Ritter docilely.

“And you’re glad I gave you the drug, aren’t you, Ritter?”

“Yes, I’m glad,” snarled Ritter. He seemed to come alive, eyes green-glazed with hate. “It has made me more powerful than any other man in public life. Hatel That is the strongest of all emotions. Without it, men become soft. I have hate, so I am strong. Yes, Knarlie, I’m glad you gave me the serum.”

“You, Knarlie,” said The Avenger, “didn’t seem to need any of the serum.”

“Hardly,” said the ugly little man. Then his face twisted. “I’m deformed, unattractive; so from the time I was a child, the world has either pitied me or showed contempt for me. For
me!
With a brain finer than any of theirs! Well, I’ll show them now, with Ritter. We’ll see what they think of us when we rule the land in a grip of iron, eh, Ritter?”

“There will be scores to settle,” snarled Ritter. “Yes, we’ll see— Enough of this, Knarlie! Kill this man! Then, after we’ve gotten away, you men kill everybody on the floors below. Kill, kill,
kill!”

His voice rose to a shriek.

“Now, Ritter,” said Knarlie, like an indulgent parent to a spoiled child. “We’ll have to disguise our power in public, won’t we?”

Instantly Ritter’s face was transformed. It became sly, cunning. Then it was bland, kindly, the perfect picture of the kind of countenance a great executive should have.

“You needn’t worry, Knarlie,” he said. “Not till after we have won will I show my feelings.”

“And so—good-by,” said Knarlie to Benson, almost gently. The ugly little fellow faced his gunmen. “Out the door, there. Ritter, you, too. You men, give Ritter and me five minutes to get down to the street level and away from the building. Then take this man’s aides on the floors below.”

The men went back out of the room, with Ritter among them. Knarlie, at the door, smirked at The Avenger.

“Through murder you have risen high,” said Dick Benson calmly. “Through murder you will now destroy yourself. I warn you.”

Such was his calm, and such was the infallible gleam in his icy, pale eyes, that even Knarlie looked a trifle uneasy for a moment. Then he laughed, satanically, and his hand made a throwing motion.

A grenade struck the wall just behind Benson, and exploded! Knarlie slammed the door shut from the outside, and triple barred it. His dying steps sounded as he ran for the elevator, to join Ritter in escape.

The grenade poured out the last of its contents: deadliest gas known to science; a gas that lingered for hours. The Avenger had his saturated coat lapel to breathe through for a few seconds, and then his nose clip with the chemical-soaked sponge for the nostrils that would take him through a few more. Ten minutes at most.

And this gas would persist in a closed room for at least a day!

On the floor below, The Avenger’s band was jubilant over news just radioed by Rosabel, Josh Newton’s pretty wife.

Morel and Wilson were all right! They were out of the coma produced by Dick’s antidote, still weak but as sane as anyone and regaining their normal physical strength by the minute. Morel, most dosed, was the weakest.

It was at that moment that a far, far crash came very faintly to them.

“What,” said Josh after a moment, “was that?”

“I don’t know, but it had a nasty sound,” said Mac.

Then there was another sound.

A clamor of bells, outside the end door of this room and a little above them. The clamor was not loud, but it was continuous. At the same time, an orange light glowed over the door in question.

“Someone is on the stairs,” yelled Smitty. “They’re going up to tackle the chief. Come on!”

“They have already been upstairs,” came a quiet, almost weary voice. “They have already tackled me.”

They whirled.

From the center of the ceiling a strip had dropped, revealing itself as a narrow stairs, like a tall stepladder, concealed in the ceiling and floor above when not in use.

Down this was coming Dick Benson, pale eyes hooded and enigmatic. He was taking his nose clip from his nose as he descended. And they saw that he came down fast and raised the stairs to seal the ceiling again as soon as possible.

“Gas up there,” Dick said. “The type that is a shade lighter than air; so I don’t think much got down through the opening. But open all the windows.”

Nellie’s blue eyes were wide.

“That c-crash!” she stammered. “And the alarm on the stairs between this floor and the next!”

The Avenger nodded. His face was almost tired-looking, which told his aides all they needed to know. His features had that look only on one occasion: when a case had been closed and The Avenger was ready for the next battle against crime.

Mac was the one who pieced it out.

“Gas! And the private elevator has a special pin on the brake control so that when it is pulled and you push the down lever, the cage is left without support and falls. And say—you left that Justine Building address in the sedan on purpose!”

The Avenger nodded again.

“With Ritter here as prisoner, I wanted Ritter’s boss to come for him. And he did. Knarlie!”

“Knarlie?”

“Yes. I guessed the supposed servant was really the master, some time ago. But I had no proof. I still haven’t. But now proof is needless. Knarlie grabbed Ritter, threw gas in the library and locked me in it. Curious. All he could see was steel doors barring me in to death. It didn’t seem to occur to him that after all this was
my
place, and that I might have apparatus in it which was known to no one but me. Like a concealed exit from that room above. Like the elevator which was thrown out, instead of in, control when the down lever was pulled. Like the staircase with an armor-plate door at head and foot which could be snapped shut with a step on either the top or bottom stair.”

The Avenger’s pale, deadly eyes went unseeingly around the room.

“I warned him,” he almost whispered, in that dead and icy tone. “I told him he would destroy himself through murder. Why is it that a killer will never believe that his actions will eventually doom him?”

Smitty sighed and looked at his chief with something like awe.

“So it’s all over!” he rumbled.

“All over,” said The Avenger. “Ritter, poor mad dupe, and Knarlie, his supposed servant, will be found dead at the bottom of the elevator shaft. The thugs trapped in the stair well will talk, eventually, and the police and the rest of the nation will learn what happened—and the fate it narrowly escaped.”

He stopped, and there was silence. Justice, Inc., had won its spurs again. It had saved a nation, though the nation would never know.

Looking at Dick’s calm face, with its classically regular features, surmounted by the heavy, coal-black hair, Nellie sighed. This was just another day’s work to The Avenger, who looked forward coldly, calmly, to the next great service he might perform for mankind.

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