“A little delay,” was all Nellie said. Danger past was danger forgotten.
The lights of the city, and temporary safety, beckoned.
No one outside Justice, Inc., knew of the Justine Building. That is, no one knew of its connection with the man with the pale, deadly eyes and the icy calm.
It was a small office building downtown. The top three floors were kept by Benson. The rest, below, were rented carefully to tenants who never had a call to be in the place at night.
Behind normal-looking marble slabs of the corridor wall was an elevator, in addition to the regular four, that no one knew anything about. This went from the basement up to those three floors at the top. You could drive directly into the basement from the street, which Benson did.
They took Ritter from the car. Ritter was conscious, now, and the first thing he did was to yell at the top of his lungs and slug Smitty in the jaw.
Smitty didn’t mind the yell; the basement was soundproof. But the blow to the jaw, delivered with all the force a fairly athletic six-foot man could put behind it, stung him a little and hence annoyed him.
He picked Ritter up under his arm like a bale of straw and carried him there, kicking and cursing.
The elevator rose with them, and The Avenger stopped it at the top floor.
“I’ll stay up here with Ritter,” he said. “He may have something interesting to tell me. The rest of you go down to the next floor. Walk down. Don’t use the elevator— Something, Nellie?”
The diminutive blonde was looking as if she had been kicked in the ribs. And it developed there was something.
“Chief,” she gasped, “I just remembered. There was a bill for repairs in the glove compartment of the sedan. The bill was addressed to the Justine Building! And I think one of the men who caught me went through that glove compartment!”
Smitty whistled.
“How did a thing like that get in the compartment?” wondered Josh. “That gang’ll be on us like a ton of lead as soon as those guys get back to Ritter’s house with the addressed bill. It’s like sending them an engraved invitation to come to the Justine Building.”
“We’d better take Ritter out of here,” said Smitty.
“No,” said The Avenger.
“But, chief—”
“We’ll stay right here. You all wait on the floor below. And don’t use that elevator; walk down.”
It wasn’t the first time he had given an unexplained command. But never had one been more mystifying.
The top floor of the small office building was fixed up as a commodious eight-room apartment. Benson sat with Ritter in the smallest of the rooms, near the back. Ritter sat bolt upright in a straight-backed chair. The Avenger sat at ease in a padded easy-chair.
“You fool!” sneered Ritter. “You’ll burn in the chair for this. You and all your friends.”
“Possibly,” said Benson.
“You can’t get away with kidnaping a presidential candidate.”
“After tonight, you won’t be a candidate,” said Benson.
“You think you can stop me?” snarled Ritter. “Why, you haven’t any proof of anything. If you think you can put me behind bars—”
“I haven’t bars in mind at all,” said Benson. “What I have in mind is your cure!”
There was thick, throbbing silence for a moment
“Cure?” said Ritter.
“Yes. You see, I don’t believe you’re the master mind behind this crime at all.”
Ritter didn’t say anything. He looked at The Avenger with hate-gleaming eyes.
“There was the affair of the dog,” said Benson calmly.
“If you mean the time I was disciplining my dog and your men caught me at it—”
“There was no ‘discipline’ about your treatment of the dog. Beating with a wire whip isn’t discipline; it is pure torture. The result of blind hatred. Since then, I’ve been convinced you were a pawn in this game and not the king. Someone is your master, and has injected
“You’re crazy,” said Ritter.
“You bear out my theory,” nodded Benson. “If you were guilty, you would be eager enough to have me think someone else was responsible and that you were an innocent victim. As it is, the man who calls the tune for you — shall we call him the Hate Master? — has you so thoroughly in his power that you try to protect him.”
Ritter laughed. It was a hard, jarring sound.
“Who do you think your ridiculous Hate Master is? Morel?”
“No, Morel is also a victim. He was taken and held so that he could manufacture more of the stuff, and its antidote, if needed. That he is a victim was proved by the fact that he actually tried to kill his own daughter. Only a maniac would try that.”
“Then who is it?”
“I don’t know,” said The Avenger frankly. “I have my suspicions, but I can’t prove them. I hope to know before the night is over, however—”
“You will know,” came a low, harsh voice, “right now. Just before I send you to hell!”
Ritter turned with a gasp. The Avenger turned slowly, calmly, though the increased glitter in his pale, deadly eyes attested to the fact that the interruption was a complete surprise to him.
