Authors: J. Allan Dunn
Tags: #Detective/Hard-Boiled
He mixed a short glass for himself, quaffed it with a nod at Thirty-Nine. He shut the intruder’s gun away in a drawer.
“Let’s talk turkey,” he said, as Thirty-Nine felt the good liquor warm his belly. “The Griffin sent you here. You think the Griffin owns you, body and soul—if you have a soul. You rather wish you haven’t one, in the light of some crime of yours, through which the Griffin holds you. Possibly affecting others, for whom you care. Mother, wife, kiddies?”
Thirty-Nine set down his emptied glass.
“You’ve got me,” he said. “Why rub it in?”
“Have another drink,” said Manning.
Thirty-Nine gulped it down.
“The Griffin has got what the police call ‘the dope’ on you. But I’ve got considerable influence with the police myself. If you were turned in as an agent of the Griffin, captured by me, you’d be, to use the expression of the commissioner, considerably ‘mussed-up’ before you hit the line-up.”
The throat of Thirty-Nine went dry.
“There has been no real lynching in New York City for the past fifty years,” said Manning, “but there might be. Not having the Griffin they might take it out on you. If they didn’t, a jury would.”
“Gimme another drink,” said Thirty-Nine. “I don’t care what it is,” he croaked, “so long’s it’s wet. I was forced to do this, see? You called the turn. Suppose I come clean, how about it? If I fix it so you get the Griffin, and you find something, or he tips you off to something that might give me the worst of it? How about that? Where do I get off?”
“I can’t definitely promise you anything, legally. And I’m not a particularly wealthy man. But I’ll bet ten thousand dollars to a shirt button that if you furnish the means of capturing the Griffin you’ll get a pension rather than a penitentiary sentence—if I have to pay the pension myself.”
“I can show you where he’s moved to. It don’t suit him. It’s only temporary. You’ve got him on the run. Listen, Mr. Manning, I got a wife an’ two kids, growing up fast, see? Mebbe they think I’m dead. Mebbe she’s got no use for me. But I’ve got use for them.”
He sucked down the drink Manning had given him. He seemed sincere enough, but even if he were acting superbly Manning knew that the mere thinking of such things would produce emotions that would fool the most blase, even as Hollywood actors supply themselves with synthetic reactions.
“Take off that silly mask,” said Manning. “I’m going to ask you some questions. Don’t lie to me, because I’ll have it checked up before we leave. I won’t stool on you. So come clean.”
Thirty-Nine told a lot in the next few minutes. The location of the Griffin’s lair, the nature of the crime the Griffin held over him, and the Griffin’s especial grip upon him. The man could not tell the nature of the acid, nor explain the mechanism of the little gun that Manning had appropriated, but he explained their uses. The poisoned bullet could be analyzed, the glass solvent should not be too hard to discover; though Manning saw no immediate use for it, save as evidence against the Griffin.
And, when he landed the Griffin next time, evidence would be superfluous.
There were plans to be made before Manning could attack the Griffin’s stronghold. He could not pull this off alone. But he must scout ahead alone. However carefully he moved, he would be in jeopardy.
Manning had deliberately stalked a Javanese rhino on a mountain trail, where there was no chance to evade its charge. He had gone on foot into the bamboo to finish off a wounded tiger. But such things were tame and safe pastimes compared to seeking the Griffin in his lair.
“You can’t get out of here,” he told Thirty-Nine. “Don’t try it. I won’t be long. Did you come in your own car?”
The man nodded. He was not going to try to get out of that place where he had been so easily trapped.
“The car’s in the all-night garage, two blocks south,” he said, a little sullen after Manning’s inquisition. “It’s best for us to use it. The Griffin has lookouts. Your own car ’ud be spotted, and they might toss a pineapple at the two of us. My car’s a taxi, see? At least it looks like a taxi, though it ain’t registered as one. They know it. They’ll pass it through. They don’t have to see you. They won’t know what my job is to-night. The Griffin don’t hand out information. So I can drive you right past the place. And then, mister, you’ll have to take care of me, if you have to plant me in solitary in Sing Sing until you get him.”
Manning nodded. It was like the Griffin, fatalist that he was, to choose a new, if temporary, aerie in the city, where nineteen thousand police waited to get a glimpse of him.
Manning took the acid-blower and poison-pistol with him to his bedroom. Through the peephole he saw Thirty-Nine pour himself half a tumblerful of Scotch, and drink it neat.
He made no attempt to examine exits, but he furtively lifted the French phone, testing it to listen in. He might not have known that an extension could be automatically made exclusive, as Manning now made the one on his night-table, with a switch.
He first called police headquarters. His name was a sesame, and he got the inspector on duty immediately, giving him Thirty-Nine’s true name, asking for his record.
“It’s just a check-up,” he said. “I’ll call back in ten minutes.”
Next Manning got through to the police commissioner at the latter’s home. The commissioner’s sleepiness vanished as he listened, while Manning talked crisply.
“When I spot the place, I’ll get through again to you, at headquarters. We’ll complete plans then. We won’t get the Griffin by throwing a cordon about the place. He’ll have his getaways prepared. I want you to rouse out the right men in the city engineers department, so that we can get at the details of all sewers, conduits and subterranean works in the neighborhood. We want to stop all exits before we try an entry.”
“I’ll do it, Manning, but I don’t like it,” the commissioner said. “It seems too much like toasted cheese in a trap. A mouse ought to know it smells too good.”
“I’m not a mouse. I may smell the cheese, but I won’t sniff at it. I have no idea of trying to get into the place, now. Only to locate it.”
“Right! But put a tail on yourself, from your end. We’ll try and pick you up as you come off the bridge, but I’m not banking on it. The traffic is heavy these nights. And it’s a bit foggy over here. Thick on the rivers.”
Manning switched back to the inspector. Thirty-Nine appeared to have told the truth. He had actually told more than the department had against him. But Manning kept faith with him.
He took another look at his captive. He was still fiddling with the telephone. Manning called the local chief of police, found out that a sergeant named Tierney was then on night duty at the station, and arranged for him to be relieved.
“It’s the Griffin, Chief,” he said, and knew how the other would react as he held the wire. “I want Tierney to tail me in a private car, in plain clothes, from the all-night garage two blocks south. I’ll be leaving there in a taxicab, fifteen minutes from now. Tierney is one of the few coppers I know who can wear civvies and drive a car as if he wasn’t a policeman. How about it? He can hire a car from the garage.”
“He’ll be there. I’ll phone him now, and I’ll take over his trick myself, Major Manning.”
Manning took his time to dress. Tierney had to be given his fifteen minutes. And, since there was fog in New York, it would grow thicker towards dawn. Time was not vital.
He put on a double-breasted suit of dark gray that fitted him to perfection. He chose his tie carefully, the plaid of a famous Scotch regiment, with whom he had liaisoned in the war. For all the fog, it was warm, and he decided against an outer coat.
He shifted his automatic into a shoulder holster. A tinkle sounded on his telephone as he tucked a linen handkerchief into his left cuff, in military fashion.
It was Tierney reporting. The sergeant had found plain clothes at the station, borrowed somebody else’s hat. An efficient officer, Tierney. He would go higher.
Thirty-Nine was jumpy when Manning went down to him. He had finished the bottle of whisky, but it seemed to have had little effect, except to help bring out the sweat that glistened on his forehead.
“Wondering why I didn’t telephone?” Manning asked him, pleasantly.
The Griffin’s vassal shot him a look that mingled respect and fear in a cunning leer. He had gone through a very bad half hour.
“I didn’t give you away, Hammond,” said Manning. “Now, keep on behaving yourself.”
He took the other in a grip above the elbow that could change instantly into a paralyzing vise. But Thirty-Nine was docile as a dachshund.
The cab had all the aspect of a private taxi, complete with inspection pasters, and framed license. The photograph resembled Hammond sufficiently, though the name was false, as were the number plates, the registration and the numerals on the engine.
It was a smart idea. A taxicab attracted small attention, day or night, so long as the driver obeyed traffic rules.
Manning fancied there was plenty of power under the hood, but Thirty-Nine drove at a steady gait, respecting automatic signals.
Somewhere behind, the faithful Tierney trailed. Manning made no attempt to be sure of it. Either the sergeant was there, or he was not.
They found the fog after a short drive. There was considerable traffic, with produce trucks, full and empty, running in both directions on the Queensboro Bridge, thin but steady stream of private cars, and a good sprinkling of taxis.
The mist vapored up from the East River. Melancholy hoots came from vessels trying to steal their way to a pier. Regular night water-traffic was over, except for a few barges, towed to take advantage of the tide.
The lights of the prison of Welfare Island were barely visible.
If the commissioner’s men picked up the car under these conditions they were miracle men. Manning was just as well pleased. All cops were not Tierneys. He did not want to be made conspicuous.
Tierney’s tailing him was like the tail to a kite. It helped to steady it. It was a good precaution. Manning would have used it even if the commissioner had not thought of it.
The cab was comfortable. With the fog, and no light, save on the dashboard, Manning was invisible as if he had drawn curtains. He did not smoke, though there was an ash-receiver and a cigar lighter; but he relaxed against the well-padded cushions; counting blocks after they got through the congestion at the Fifty-ninth Street end of the bridge.
They turned south, down town, zigzagging gradually west.
III
The Hidden Lair
There are certain sections of New York, notably those through the Twenties to the middle Thirties, that are partly commercialized but still preserve brownstone fronts that once were private mansions. They hold much of forgotten history.
Here are homes that have been closed for a century, where the dust lies thick on pre-Victorian furnishings. Clouded titles and the disputes of heirs keep them mysteries. They defy modern progress.
They are sandwiched between apartment houses and business buildings. Some have yards, deserted stables, spaces that once were gardens. They are at once the hope and the despair of enterprising realtors; bringing in nothing, paying taxes; worth thousands of dollars by the front inch.
It was easy for Manning to place himself as the taxi rolled on its way, occasionally passing, or being passed, by another vehicle. This was the city of his birth and preference. They were in the middle Twenties when they made the final turn to the west. Two blocks ahead, the new subway would run—when the city could afford to open it.
To the right was the shell of an incompleted apartment house, awaiting better times and lower taxes. On the left there was a high fence on the corner. The promoters had planned to build a movie theater, but they had got no farther than the clearing of the ground. To do that they had razed the ancient church of St. Jude’s-in-the-Fields.
There had been farms all about the sacred edifice when it was erected, and was the sanctuary of the fashionable. But the edifice, and the dead and buried bodies of a host of parishioners had slowly moldered.
The bones had long since been transferred from the original cemetery. Now the church was gone. Only its stone pavings lay undisturbed, with the mortuary beneath them.
That was a maze of passages and crypts, where corpses had been held against interment. The papers had carried features about it when the theater was projected. It was mentioned as an eerie spot, with mysterious exits.
Next to the fenced-off corner, on the street that ran east and west, stood two houses that had been used by the clergy. They were gloomy and forbidding, a driveway between them, that led to a common courtyard beneath a dismal archway of stone, closed partly with heavy gates, and partly with a grille of iron.
It had an air all its own, that archway, somber and sinister. Windy eddies swept dead leaves, old papers, in and out of it. Children did not play there. Loiterers dodged it, even in bad weather.
Now the pseudo-taxi slowed down, moving in towards the curb.
Here, Manning told himself, might well be the Griffin’s lurking place. It seemed to suit him, with the old cellars, the crypt, even the as-yet-unopened subway, with its unlit corridors of artificial stone, its exits merely boarded up.
The sliding glass panel between driver and passenger was pushed aside. Thirty-Nine looked over his shoulder at Manning.
“Is this the place?” the latter asked.
“Just a minute, mister. I’ve got to—”
Manning had not watched the eyes of tricky savages for nothing. For all the vague light, filtering from an arc through the wispy fog, he saw the shifting orbs of Thirty-Nine; and he reached for his automatic.
The cab halted at the curb with a jar of suddenly applied brakes that jolted Manning. The glass panel closed with a vicious snap. The window on his right, which he had kept partly open, slid in its grooves. The light on the dashboard went out.
Thirty-Nine leaped from the car, leaving his engine running; hurled himself across the sidewalk ramp into the black gorge of the driveway beneath the arch.