"Inspection is not a pleasant job."
"What happened?"
Steve stopped short and looked at her. Lois stopped too, to face him
seriously. "Bribery?" she asked.
Steve said nothing.
Lois stamped her foot. "What kind of man is Wrightwood?" she stormed.
"You'd think we were doing this for spite instead of for his own
protection."
* * * * *
Steve nodded. "William Wrightwood is a power-hungry man," he said.
"Nothing but being an absolute dictator of the universe would satisfy
him, and that would only partially sate him because it is not so much
the wielding of power that pleases Wrightwood. It is the gaining of
more and more power."
"I hadn't considered that."
Steve nodded and turned; they started towards the mess again. "What
makes a man that way?" she asked idly.
"Frustration of one sort or another," he said.
"And what is Wrightwood's particular frustration?"
Steve snorted angrily. "Something in his psyche insists that the
inability to father a son means that the man is less than a man."
"That's ridiculous!"
"Sure it's ridiculous. But it is that sort of ridiculous thing that
has caused more war and suffering than perhaps any other single thing.
William Wrightwood lacks a son. He has--like Napoleon--married and
divorced three women because they could not give him a son. He married
the fourth because she already had a son. Then he killed her because
she could not produce a duplicate for him."
"Oh Steve--that's hard to believe!"
Steve grunted. "It was not murder--legally," he said bitterly. "But
bitterness and recrimination are just as deadly as the knife or the
bullet."
"But how about his foster son?"
"Wrightwood tried everything he could to make a real son of him."
"Well, that's an admirable trait."
"Like hell," gritted Steve. "It is all right to accept a fatherless
child and bring it up as your own. But no man should try to do the
impossible. Wrightwood tried to make a natural son out of an adopted
son. It could not work; he cramped the natural personality of the son,
forced the child to follow the footsteps of what Wrightwood thought a
son of his would follow. So instead of following, the son revolted as
soon as he could and went his own way in direct opposition. Two lives
crudded up by the overwhelming drive of one man."
"You know a lot of him."
"I should," he said simply. "I'm the son."