“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.”
“Yes, wouldn’t they?” said Smitty. And the two left.
But with them went the vision of Ritter’s face just before he knew there was anyone watching. The face of a fiend, inflicting torment on a helpless animal for torment’s own sake. “I wonder how many times that faithful little servant of his, the one he called Knarlie, has kept people from seeing Ritter in one of those moods?” mused Josh.
“Always, till now, I guess,” growled Smitty. “It would have come out in print if he’d been caught like that very often.”
“And he wants to be president!” Josh’s jaw set. “How would you like a man like that in the White House?”
Smitty felt like shivering.
“I could believe anything about him,” he said. “Watch him is right! We’ll take day and night shifts and never let him out of our sight. Flip you for the night watch.”
The coin came heads, so Smitty won. The giant got out of the car to take over the daylight vigil, with the politician still in the Weyland place. Josh went back to town to get some rest for the night watch over Ritter.
And both kept seeing him at his diabolical work with the wire whip.
CHAPTER IX
Death in the Sky
This time the meeting of the automotive heads was not held in any hotel. There was too much chance of publicity.
It was held at the home of one of the magnates, and everyone was there save Ainslee and Fox. Ritter was there, too.
The meeting was to discuss that price war between the two absent ones — a war that was going to mean chaos for hundreds of thousands of people. When any main industry in a nation is crippled, that nation is also put seriously out of order.
So they met to see what could be done about it, and it was lucky they weren’t in a public place. For this time not just two men fought. They all did!
Twenty-five men, dignified, reserved, representative of several billion dollars, became raving males who wanted only to hit each other as hard as possible with the first weapon at hand.
Josh, on the outside of the house with a tiny stethoscope arrangement attached to the windowpane of the room in which the men had gathered, felt that he couldn’t be hearing correctly. Middle-aged and elderly millionaires behaving like gutter urchins! Bursting with hate for each other! Blacking each other’s eyes and throwing things around!
Josh ventured to raise his head a very little, so he could see into the room. The thing he saw was the exit of Edwin Ritter.
The handsome politician was slipping from the room with a small, enigmatic smile on his face. The rest were too busy screaming and fighting to notice. Josh went to the door, hiding behind shrubbery. He got there just in time to see Ritter step out, now with a broad grin on his face.
The fight back there apparently was precisely what he wanted. And that confirmed Smitty’s hunch of earlier in the day:
Somehow, Ritter was deliberately sowing hate and discord in the vital automotive industry, so that later he could step in and make peace and be hailed as a great man for stopping the trouble. Trouble he himself had started.