Authors: J. Allan Dunn
Tags: #Detective/Hard-Boiled
The other left, and the commissioner followed to see himself to the M.E.’s special messenger. His heart was heavy with foreboding. If Gordon Manning was done in, he doubted if any human agency could foil the Griffin. The mad monster would proceed in his course of horror, encouraged, and unchecked.
Manning had spoken of his own danger, admitting he believed the peril greater than ever before. He had said he had taken precautions, yet the commissioner had seen him racing across the floor alone, swarming up the pillar like the hero of some forlorn hope, which indeed it might well be; determined upon sacrifice, reckless as any subaltern.
It was not somehow, like Manning, the commissioner told himself. He took risks when they were inevitable, as a man will take a death-defying leap. But surely he had gone straight into a trap.
The commissioner went to where the six mock Griffins were huddled, cowed and not all undamaged after their third degree. They had been examined separately, but their tales had been the same, and they had remained unshaken.
They were actors, out of work, out of money. They had seen an advertisement calling for professionals, offering twenty dollars for a few hours’ work to men who were of the right size and otherwise qualified.
The address given was off Broadway, in the middle Fifties. The place seemed like that of any other curbstone agent. There was no name on the door. They did not know the name of the man who hired them. He was businesslike, short, squat, and swarthy.
He gave directions after he had weeded them out. There were tickets for the Junior Charity Ball, costumes to wear, all alike, with masks. It was a bet, a joke on somebody. They had no lines to deliver. All they had to do was to walk about mysteriously. He did not tell them what the costumes were. They were to wear them beneath black dominoes and take those off in the dressing room, put on their masks.
It looked like a soft thing and they jumped at it. They all swore that they had attached no significance to the costumes.
“I think you’re lying,” said the commissioner. “I’m holding you for further questioning. We’ll try to round up that fake agent,” he said to the sergeant who had quizzed the unhappy six. “Try and find out who made the costumes. It’s going to be tough. Let me see one of those masks.”
They were cunningly made, treated with wax so that the noses and cheeks could be moulded and stiffened.
The inspector he had sent after the men who had followed Manning, returned. His face was pale, his features working. He closed his lips, licked them and opened them again, twice, without speaking, evidently wrought up.
He was a man grown old on the force, earning his promotion. He had seen terrible things in his time.
“Damn it, Herron, don’t stand there goggling and jibbering,” said the commissioner, as premonition swept over him. “What’s happened, man. Out with it!”
“Gorman, sir. Ryan, an’—”
“I know their names. What happened?”
“I think you’d better see for yourself, sir.”
The commissioner was nearer fifty than forty, but he sprinted up the long stairway like an athlete, leading the inspector and a squad, summoned as they ran. He was not essentially a religious man, but he breathed a prayer as he looked at the shambles.
Quinlan groaned. His gallant vitality still clutched the last spark of life. The commissioner knelt beside the dying officer, as he muttered broken words through crimson froth.
“The—plane—they took—Mann—!”
The sun was palely gilding the tall spires. High up in the sky the commissioner saw a speck that seemed drifting, rising, a note that lost itself above the ceiling of fog.
It would take far too long a time before they could get pursuit planes into the air, to follow a wild goose trail. A curse took the place of prayer with the commissioner, a plea for the destruction of the fiend who had flown off with Manning.
He dared not hope for Manning.
“For God’s sake, Herron,” he said, as he turned away to do what might be done, however hopeless, “get something to cover up those bodies.”
V
The Griffin’s AErie
High over the city, above the strata of mist that veiled it, the autogyro changed course, flew south and east. The double engines drove it at almost a hundred miles an hour. It seemed to skim through the air, like a mammoth dragon-fly.
In the enclosed gondola, Manning looked up, his head throbbing. As consciousness returned, he saw the gloating, ghoulish face of the Griffin above his own, unmasked—sure sign that the monster counted himself paramount. His eyes glittered, distended, all pupils; his thin nostrils flared.
He chuckled as he saw Manning’s eyes open, and intelligent. The chuckle grew into a hideous laugh. Flecks of foam gathered on the madman’s cruel lips.
“I could drop you into the sea, Gordon Manning,” he said. “I could let you crash upon the sidewalks or the buildings of the City of Fools. I have thought of a score of ways to demolish you. And I am not yet decided. You must be made an eminent example.”
Manning blinked, closed his eyes. The Griffin went on.
“The world shall learn not to dispute the decrees that are written in the stars.”
Enraged at Manning’s attitude, he forced the latter’s eyelids apart with his lean fingers, thrusting the taloned tips into the corners of the eyes.
“You are in the grip of the Griffin, Manning, and this time I shall not let you go. You will amuse me, for the last time, when you writhe in your last agonies, and beg for mercy. So look at me, you miserable mortal, look at me! I am the Griffin, emblem of eternal vigilance!
“I caught you like a fish. My slave seined you as he used to seine a tunny in his native Italy. And I shall gut you, and scale you; scale by scale; while you are still alive.”
The nets were still about Manning. He was quite helpless.
“If you hope to get any enjoyment out of that performance,” said Manning, “why don’t you let me rest up, beforehand?”
The Griffin cackled. His long-inflamed brain was breaking down.
“You are a victim after my own heart, Manning. You are still brave and bold. You have not my wisdom, you are not of the Appointed, or we might have worked together. Death sits in your House of Destiny, and the power of the zodiac is absolute.
“So take your ease, for a little while. Reserve your powers. You will need them all. Our orbits cross, our fates clash like swords in the dark. But I am the conqueror. So rest. It will not be long.”
Manning forced himself to relax. He knew he would need all his wits, all his energy, if he were to survive. And he did not greatly care to, unless he knew the Griffin had been annihilated.
The astromancer had planned well and long, knowing before he sent out his threat that Farnum would be at the ball, where that was always held, leasing the empty building next door, erecting the shed that hid the autogyro, settling there at night.
Manning was not without his own purposes. He had meant to pit his sanity against the madness of the Griffin, to use his knowledge of the Griffin’s reactions; but now he was in the toils.
Farnum was dead, or dying.
The plane hummed and whirred, driving on above the mists, through clean air, where the stars spangled the firmament. Other planes would be mounting soon, searching with no more chance of discovery than men hunting a needle in a giant haystack.
The revolutions lessened, the driving propellers stopped. They were going down, descending through the fog that still held, though New York must be a hundred, perhaps two hundred, miles away. By the persistence of the mist Manning imagined they were close to the coast.
Suddenly they broke through the ceiling into bright sunlight.
“It will not be long now, Manning,” the Griffin hissed into his ear.
“Not long.”
They landed in what seemed to be a natural clearing, amid tall trees. The nets and cords were expertly taken off Manning, his gun was taken from him, and two men went systematically over him in search of other weapons, finding none. The contents of his pockets were turned over to the Griffin, who pouched them somewhere in the clothes he wore beneath a voluminous black cloak. With a wide-rimmed, high-crowned black hat, he looked, Manning thought, like a medieval Spanish brigand. It was a poor costume for flying, but it suited the Griffin.
“You will not need these things again,” he said to Manning. “Perhaps I shall find something to keep as a souvenir.”
He was being suave, infinitely polite, and infinitely deadly. He was the cat, playing with the mouse that could not get away, that presently it would kill, after physical and mental torture.
There was no road in the clearing, where the wiry grass grew high, but a car came into it a few minutes after they had made landing. Manning was transferred to it, with his arms bound behind his back. It was a big and powerful machine. A silent man, whose face wore the hopelessness of a convict condemned for life, took place on one side of Manning in the rear, another of similar type, his features expressionless, his form undernourished, sat on the other.
The Griffin got in beside the driver, and the car moved away, just as the autogyro took off with a splendid ease, soaring high, up again toward the still low ceiling.
It was a bright day in summer, the birds sang and flew, the morning shadows were long, and the air was fresh.
Here and there were broken-down fences. The place looked like a rundown and abandoned farm. Now and then Manning caught a glimpse of sunny water that must be, he thought, either Delaware or Chesapeake Bay. He was sure they had flown south, that they were either in Maryland or Delaware. Probably the first, from the hills.
He thought of the words of the condemned nobleman in the Tower of London, awaiting execution:
“One more glimpse of the sun, one more sight of the sea;
One embrace from my dearest one, then death come speedily.”
He was not morbid about it, or sorry for himself, but he knew his chances were slim. The things they had taken from him did not matter much, but he was not sure if something they had overlooked were still upon him. He could not find out, bound as he was. Without it, the sooner the Griffin could be persuaded or taunted into killing him, the better.
Manning had a “dearest one,” but he had not seen, nor spoken, nor written to her, for over a year. The Griffin had once tried to strike at Manning through her; and Manning had severed all communications, might indeed have severed the bond between them; vowed himself to eliminate the Griffin. Then, and only then, might he see her with safety to herself.
But he could not help yearning towards her, with regret for what might have been; as he looked at the bright glimpses of sun glare on the water. Life was never so sweet, the world never so fair, as when one was looking the last upon them.
They came to an old road, unworked for years, sandy and overgrown. Trees grew in close ranks beside it. Then they passed outbuildings that looked like ancient slave quarters.
The road forked, and they passed a wall, driving swiftly. Trees and shrubbery looked like a jungle inside.
All this time they had seen no human being but themselves. The place was infinitely remote, though cities could not be far away. But desolation had struck here, long before the depression started. It was a perfect hiding place. Save for the car tracks, there was no trace of anyone coming this way, to a spot so destitute of charm or utility.
But a fine lair for the Griffin, who was an adept at choosing his aeries, and concealing them. The tire marks could easily be erased, and Manning did not doubt that they would be.
An avenue went winding; trees, shrubbery and foliage thick on either side, tangled with vines, many of the trees dead. There were traces of a garden. Then came the house, once a stately enough mansion, fallen into decay. Planks were out of place, paint was only a vestige. One great chimney had crumbled, the porch tilted, with the gallery above it. Pillars were missing, and shutters hung crazily.
Yet, despite its deserted, haunted appearance, Manning did not doubt that, within, the Griffin had established a measure of comfort for himself, if not of luxury. He’d have some of his slaves here, men of once brilliant profession or useful occupation, bound to him by his knowledge of guilty secrets that would send them to jails they dreaded, to public announcements of their crimes and the ruin of the families who might—gratefully perhaps—now think them dead.
These men worked the Griffin’s perverted will, devised his means of murder. Nameless creatures, known by numbers. Once Manning had freed many of them, but he did not doubt that they had returned. Their bondage would end only with the Griffin’s death.
The car drove through gaping doors into the ruin of a coachhouse. The Griffin got out, entering the house from a side porch. The two men escorted Manning through a rear door, holding him by his bound arms. They were more like automatons than men. It was no use to think of appealing to them. They were quite ready to strangle him if he tried to escape.
The room into which he was shown was dark, from drawn curtains, furnished with odds and ends of furniture, including a table and a sideboard. The two men stayed on guard. To Manning’s surprise a meal was brought in, a well-cooked breakfast, to which he did ample justice, though he knew the motive was not one of hospitality, but sprung from the same cause that made the redskins feed their prisoners before they bound them to the stake—so that they would last longer.
When he had finished, the two cadaverous and silent men took him into a hall that led through the old house, down a stairway to a basement smelling of mold and decay, coming at last to a place that must have been the wine cellar in days gone by. It was flagged, walled with stone, lighted by narrow windows, set horizontally, and barred.
A heavy table stood beneath two gasoline lanterns that shed a brilliant light.
The Griffin sat there, in his black robe and skullcap, but his mask was still off. Manning saw that with relief, as he looked about him. There was a stool opposite the Griffin, no doubt for him to sit in, while the monster made a final arraignment. Manning was sure he would not forego that.