Authors: J. Allan Dunn
Tags: #Detective/Hard-Boiled
There had been amber as well as hasheesh in the pipe, and now the fumes of the former gained ascendancy. From some unseen source music sounded in a barbaric strain of drums and cymbals, of pipes and stringed instruments.
The Griffin seemed to talk to the freak, with whom he could actually communicate only by signs; but the mad monster was really talking loud. Boasting to himself, loving the sound of his voice, the proclamation of his intentions.
“It was well done, Al,” he said. “It was nobly done. He leaped and fell, like one smitten by the shaft of a centaur. Though you are far from that. But it was a good play.
“It has been in my mind that there are too many new and strange faces that follow me about. Gordon Manning on the trail. The fool! Does he think to trap me again and send me to that madhouse. Ha! Forewarned is forearmed, Al. He who strikes first strikes shrewdest. So—we shall strike. Manning shall be the victim. Long ago I promised him an unusual death. And he shall have one. This very day it is perfected. And, by Ahriman and Abaddon, not all the hosts of heaven, not all the fiends of hell shall save him!”
A bronze disk supported between pillars suddenly boomed sonorously. It was the signal that Griffin had been expecting. In the wall a space was suddenly revealed, the entrance to a lift that the Griffin entered, forbidding Al to follow by a gesture. The hidden door closed, the lift descended, going to the cellars of the old manor, now enlarged and converted into laboratories where the Griffin’s evil genii worked his perverted will.
Left alone, Al sulked, then sucked at his candy. He set it aside and swung himself on his palms to the desk. He looked around, like a mischievous ape, at once curious and fearful. The booming of the gong made certain impressions upon his atrophied sense. He knew that it summoned the Griffin, that it announced events.
He balanced his torso with one arm, reached up the other hand and touched timidly the disk. Out of it there came a spurt and crackle of blue sparks and tiny lightnings. The shock of the discharge stung through the freak, bowled him over, his arms numb, his ugly face convulsed as he gave vent to a hideous, bestial cry that he sought to stifle by stuffing one sluggish hand into his mouth.
He rolled to his hassock and lay there while his flesh seemed stabbed with pins and needles. His God, the omnipotent, all seeing, ever present Griffin, had punished him for his sin. Al was cured of meddling. The more so as he had seen his Master touch and tap the plaque without harm; not knowing the Griffin had thrown a switch before he left the chamber.
Al moaned, with uncouth noises, drooling and gabbling. At last, finding himself recovered, he retrieved his sweet, and squatted once more on the hassock, educated and subdued.
Below, the Griffin stalked through cemented corridors just high enough for him to pass without bowing, and came to a central crypt. This was his theater—like the theater of a hospital. Here things were dissected, inanimate objects assembled, demonstrations made. A man awaited him, more like a robot than a human being. He wore an overall of yellow on which was painted, back and front, the numerals 67. His face was the hue of beeswax, bloodless, expressionless. His lips were without hue; the only color showed in his eyes, intensely blue, blazing behind lenses that enlarged them, made them goggle, glow with something akin to insanity.
Innumerable wrinkles radiated about his eyes and mouth. He was entirely bald. His shaggy eyebrows were white. But there was still a restrained vigor about him. Number Sixty-Seven had been a famous chemist, a toxicologist who had mixed up his subtle poisons with his own cosmos.
The Griffin had snatched him from the chaos that resulted. Here was a slave after his own evil heart. He had made a pawn of the other, rescued him from the death penalty to transfer him to a hideous servitude only mitigated by the fact that Sixty-Seven was given apparatus and allowed to use his alembics in experiments. The Griffin consulted him, and Sixty-Seven knew well enough why.
There had been a time when despair came to him, followed by a measure of resignation; of late he had been restless. This last task had pleased him, strengthened the perversion of spirit that he had gradually accumulated, as if partaking of the Griffin’s unholy nature through association.
It was the Griffin himself who had suggested the source of the present experiment. Sixty-Seven had perfected it.
There were two draped figures on narrow tables. One sheeted form was quite still, yet not entirely rigid. There was something about it that suggested life was not extinct. The other covering moved slightly as if the unmistakable body beneath it breathed. Now and then there were twitchings.
The Griffin frowned at this and Sixty-Seven spoke swiftly. “This is the example in which the toxin was first used upon a human subject. It proved not to be sufficiently concentrated. You told me you did not mind how many subjects I used from the numbers you supplied me.”
“True, so long as you succeeded. Those men have passed their utility to me. But why show me a failure?”
“I shall show you also a perfect success. I thought that you might like to see both phases. The first man will ultimately die. He has suffered frightful torments. He is now anaesthetized by pain. He can bear no more.”
Sixty-seven stripped off the coarse shroud. The body of the “subject” was emaciated—the Griffin did not feed his slaves too munificently—but it was also horribly swollen. It looked like something badly stuffed. The limbs were shapeless and blotched, the veins like black cord, twisted and coiled. The lips were drawn back, and the teeth showed between the bloodless gums like those of a skull. Only the blood-specked white of his eyes showed. They seemed to be staring inwards.
“This is after twenty hours,” said Sixty-Seven. “I doubt if I could save him, even if I had prepared an anti-toxin. No one else could. They could never determine the toxin. There are no known tests for it.”
“He looks as if he had been bitten by a snake,” said the Griffin. “Let us see the other one.”
Sixty-Seven covered the blotched man, whose body still twitched to the pain engendered by the toxin, though the worn-out consciousness no longer registered.
There were no such terrible stigmata on the second body that lay exposed and nude. The eyes were open but fixed.
They did not respond to touch or movement, but there was a horror manifest in the distended pupils, the narrowed irises.
Like the first, this body was ill nourished, but it showed no sign of violence, or of agony, beyond the haunting horror in the immobile orbs. The breath misted the mirror Sixty-Seven placed to the slightly parted lips and the chest rose and fell almost imperceptibly. The limbs were plastic, the flesh seemed normal but it was cold as that of a cadaver.
Sixty-Seven thrust a lancet into the nearer arm. No blood followed the withdrawal.
“The heart has ceased to beat, the arterial system is idle. This is after twelve hours. It is a perfect state of suspended animation. He will be dead, to all intents and purposes, within another hour. But there will be no decay. Not for many weeks. He is embalmed alive. While alive.”
The Griffin frowned again.
“It is good,” he said, “but not all I had hoped. He will die too soon.”
“I can modify the toxin so that the subject will not lose consciousness, as this one nearly has, for days, for a week, perhaps more.”
“Good. And the brain?”
“The subconscious cerebration will cease, but he will know he is alive. Until life—as we term it—finally passes, he will be able to think, he will remember, he will imagine the future.”
The Griffin chuckled. He tapped Sixty-Seven on his shoulder, leaned on him and began to shake with ghoulish laughter.
“It is excellent,” he cried at last. “I was not sure when you showed me the two which I might choose, after all. The torment or the peace, with perfect understanding. I select the latter. The living death. The torture in the brain. I shall bring you your subject soon. And then, Sixty-Seven, name your reward.”
The magnified blue eyes flamed behind the lenses. “You mean—whatever I wish?”
“I have said so,” replied the Griffin magnificently.
“Freedom, that is what I want. I want the sun, I want to mingle again with men—and women.”
“Strange talk for a scientist. Yet you wizards are often very human. It was a question of women that brought you here, I remember. Would have taken you to the chair, if I had not intervened. If I gave you freedom you are apt to land there yet.”
“Who would know me?” Sixty-Seven burst out bitterly. “Look at me, forty in years, seventy in appearance. Old enough, in seeming, to be my own father. But young enough to want to use my life. I could leave the country. I could….”
The Griffin checked him. “You shall have your freedom,” he said. “Complete and absolute. After you have done this thing for me.”
He turned away. Sixty-Seven gazed at him with an expression hard to interpret.
“What shall be done with these?” he asked. “The first will corrupt before long.”
“Dispose of it. Have the other set aside for observation. Interesting things may be done with living death, if only for exhibition, and an object lesson.”
“And I shall be free?”
“You have my promise, after you have served my purpose.”
Sixty-Seven stared after the Griffin’s departing figure. His lips moved as he muttered silently.
“Freedom, complete and absolute! I have his word.”
The Griffin had disappeared. From the stone passage there came a chuckle. The low roof echoed it.
IV
Race to Death
Gordon Manning, in the study of his house at Pelham Manor after dinner, preparing to enjoy a cheroot and a liqueur, was not surprised when Mizu, his Japanese butler, brought in a letter, instead of the Eau-de-vie de Dantzig.
One might never be surprised at a madman’s whimsies, murderous though they were. The Griffin had struck the day before, though Al’s hand had held the lethal weapon. The sight of blood, of death, had whetted the monster’s appetite perhaps; or he might be merely boasting, not knowing Manning had seen the crime.
The letter was in the usual gray envelope of thick, hand-made paper. Manning could see it had been sealed with a scarlet
affiche,
an oval stamped with a demi-griffin in relief. The address was in purple.
How it had been delivered did not much matter, he thought, a trifle wearily. The Griffin was not to be so easily traced. He listened to Mizu’s half apologetic explanation.
“The berring, verree, ritter ring, but I hear. I put on chain, open ritter bit. This retter come through, prease excuse.”
“Excuse what, Mizu?”
“Excuse I no rook. You terr me be carefur. I pick up this, shut door.”
“That’s all right, Mizu. Bring in the liqueur.”
Manning broke the seal, glanced almost casually at the few lines. Whatever this might be, he had already prepared a counter-stroke.
Farrell had taken his damaged car back to the garage, taken along Bishop’s body, from which Manning had wrenched the lance.
Police regulations did not count where Manning was concerned with the Griffin. The medical-examiner could be dispensed with in his capacity of being the first to arrive on the scene. And the local authorities would be subordinate to those Manning summoned.
He wanted to fade out of the picture for the time. There had been no other witnesses but the crows. The tracks of the black sedan were still there, not to be traced immediately.
The Griffin was wanton enough in his slayings but there must have been some suspicion behind this one. He would be alert to watch for any follow up, though Manning doubted if he would return, in person or by an agent, to the scene of his crime.
That was, Manning fancied, perilously close to his lair. The Manor House must be investigated if, as Manning felt they did, the tire tracks led there. But it was best to let the Griffin think he had definitely succeeded. His madness must be growing for him to be this reckless. It was his swollen ego, inevitably leading him on to what he might consider a sort of divine immunity, granted to him, the appointed servant of the stars.
Manning had prepared the net to be drawn. He had consulted with the commissioner, made plans that would be put in motion at midnight. Then Manning, in his own roadster, would join the picked New York detail at Farmers’ Mills. The commissioner would be there in person.
It was a few minutes after eight. Manning drew the straw from his cheroot, lit it carefully, inhaled the first fragrant pull before he read.
My dear Manning:
This notifies you of my next elimination. But not of the date. You must puzzle that out. Briefly, I am tired of you. You do not play the game properly. You move pieces in ways the rules do not permit. You have won a game or two, but I no longer propose to lose.
I am sweeping the board, so far as you are concerned. You no longer amuse me. The name of my next “victim,” as the papers style it, is Gordon Manning.
In this the stars are with me. Put your affairs in order, Manning, for you are about to die. And, as I promised, I have designed for you a demise both fitting and unique.
For the last time, for you, I sign myself.
The signature was a sketch of a griffin, excellently drawn above a blob of crimson wax.
It was not really news to Manning. He knew the Griffin had many times tried to kill him. This would be a special and concentrated attempt, but it did not disturb him. He was striking first.
The tire-tracks had been followed that afternoon, closely enough to know they led to the manor, beyond which there was no road. The Griffin had been traced to his lair. The place would be surrounded. Manning had heard the short speech the commissioner had made to his subordinates.
“The man who shoots and kills the Griffin will be promoted. He will be praised by the whole nation. The Griffin is to be treated like a mad dog. Major Manning will have charge of the detail, and I shall be along.”