The Avenger 16 - The Hate Master by Kenneth Robeson Read Free Book Online Page A

baffled by anything of laboratory nature. But, he had to admit, it was the first time he had ever seen a problem of so unique a nature brought home to anyone.
    “Ritter,” said The Avenger, stopping his pacing.
    “Eh?” said Mac.
    “Ritter was at the library,” Dick explained. “He’s no scientist, as far as I know. But he is an intelligent man. I’d like to ask him what he observed about the behavior of the birds. Besides—”
    The Avenger didn’t go on with that last sentence.
    Mac said: “Ritter’s gotten to be a big figure, politically, hasn’t he?”
    “The biggest,” said Benson. “He’s quite apt to be a presidential candidate in the coming election, and there is a good chance that he’ll be our next president.”
    “D’ye think it’s possible that Ritter knows something about this?” said Mac.
    But Dick made no reply to that. He summoned Cole Wilson from the vast, top-floor room. Wilson came barging in, dark hair back on his forehead, black eyes blazing, eager for a job.
    “Do you remember Edwin Ritter, the man who was at the library when we visited it?” Dick asked Cole.
    Cole nodded.
    “I wish you’d go and have a talk with him about it,” The Avenger said. “Find out exactly what he observed about the birds. He may have seen something we missed. Also, try to find out how he happened to be there just at that time.”
    Both Wilson and Mac stared swiftly at Dick, at that. It sounded as if The Avenger were beginning to have curious doubts about Ritter. And yet, prominent as Ritter was it wasn’t possible there could be real suspicion directed against him.
    Mac helped Benson some more while Dick tackled the mystery of the mad pigeon. But there was to be no report on Ritter from Wilson.
    Each of The Avenger’s aides carried a tiny two-way radio set in a curved case at his waist. A belt set designed by Smitty. Wilson’s voice came over his small set after his signal had sounded.
    “Cole reporting, chief. Ritter isn’t in town. He left, by plane, for Detroit, earlier today. His servant, a little fellow by the name of Knarlie, says Ritter went there to attend a banquet af automobile manufacturers. The banquet’s just about beginning now. Any further orders?”
    After a minute, Benson told him that there were no further orders for the moment. Even in the fastest of planes, Cole couldn’t have reached Detroit in time to take in that banquet. And there seemed no reason why anyone should go to it anyway.
    All of which only proved that occasionally even The Avenger failed to divine the importance of some occurrence. For, as it turned out, the banquet in Detroit was to be highly important, indeed.

    The Book-Brunswick Hotel is impressive with marble and uniforms and lobbies and general richness of appearance. The Green Room, where important meetings are held, looks like something out of Versailles Gardens.
    The gentlemen in the Green Room that evening, congregated around a large oval table, were the sleekest, most polished bunch you ever saw. And the richest gathering you were ever apt to see. Each was owner of a great motor kingdom.
    There was Leslie Fox, sponsor of the Fox 8, and also manufacturer of motorboat engines. There was Horace Weyland, truck and tractor king. There was John Ainslee, white-haired old-timer who had started before the days of steering wheels with the Ainslee twin-cylinder. There were George Moppert, Alfred Vanden, Gervaise Childs, Charles Swing—
    There were twenty-nine men there, and twenty-eight of them were the heads of giant corporations bearing their names.
    The twenty-ninth was Edwin C. Ritter.
    Ritter sat at the right of the toastmaster of the evening, and Ritter wore a perpetual, pleased smile. For this banquet, announced to the public as a yearly meeting of the motor association, was not that at all. It was a banquet in his honor, at which had already been pledged the support of these influential men in his forthcoming presidential campaign.
    It was a little