“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!”
CHAPTER VIII
The Devil’s Mask
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.