Authors: J. Allan Dunn
Tags: #Detective/Hard-Boiled
There was light outside the room again. Cyrus Allen and his wife both carried lamps. Allen had kindling wood and paper. He fixed them in the grate and went away to bring back a double armful of logs. The flames gathered strength and soon the fire was roaring up the chimney, sending dancing shadows about the room with shafts of light as the wood snapped and distributed its heat. The Griffin warmed his hands, then stood with his back to the blaze, arms folded.
“Well, Allen,” he said, “have you completed the device? Are you ready to demonstrate it to me, as I asked? You got all the apparatus you asked for, I believe?”
“I got the tools and the machinery,” said Allen slowly. “They came at night, like you said they would, like the other things came. Mine is set up in the vault. They took the stuff in through the passage back of the paneling in the dining room. The other stuff’s been set up in the cellars. I ain’t inspected none of it. It ain’t in my line. The men are living here, keeping upstairs, using the back way. My wife’s fed ’em, but she’s through. It’s too much work for her. I don’t aim to stand having that freak swinging around, spying, noiseless. It scares my wife, coming on it unexpected, like I did once, in the vault. It ain’t human. Also the work’s getting too hard for her.”
“Hard labor, eh?” asked the Griffin. His tone was almost jovial, but his eyes were the eyes of Satan, the eyes of an old he-goat in the dark. “You’d like to avoid hard labor—for her, or yourself, I suppose,” he added.
“I’m not afraid of work,” said the man, “but I ain’t got that contraption ready for you. I don’t aim to
have
it ready, not unless I know what you’re going to use it for. It don’t figure legitimate to me. I could fix it, easy, but I won’t,” he went on, with growing firmness. “We’re quitting, the two of us, right now. Give us what’s coming to us and we’ll leave to-morrow morning. This place ain’t right. We just waited for you to come….”
Cyrus Allen had worked himself into indignation, but now he faltered under the baleful look of the Griffin’s sardonic expression.
“You want what’s coming to you?” asked the Griffin. “I wonder? Let me see, Allen, when you and your wife came to see me in town, at my studio, you said she was an excellent housekeeper and that you were an expert electrician. If I remember right, you told me of certain inventions you had made and that should have brought you money, if the capitalists had not robbed you. There was another one you were eager to complete. You said you preferred a quiet place, for yourself and your wife. A quiet place like this—”
“It’s
too
quiet,” broke in Allen passionately. “It ain’t right or natural, the way things are run. You didn’t say my wife should work her fingers to the bone for a lot of cranks, half of ’em foreigners—”
“Well, well,” the Griffin said soothingly. “You may quit if you want to, only, I want you to remember that I showed you the crystal globe, the Orb of Truth, with its swirling fires. You remember that, Allen?”
“I remember looking into it. It gave me a headache.”
“It gave me the creeps,” his wife spoke up, and then the Griffin’s diabolical laughter checked them to silence. He laughed like a demon who watches some tortured soul racing down a corridor in Hades that will end in a blazing pitfall; his eyes were like the eyes of a snake watching the fluttering of a fascinated and already helpless bird.
“The Orb of Truth brought out your hidden thoughts, your memories and your fears,” the Griffin said at last. “You told me
everything.
You signed a paper, which was duly witnessed. Let me read it to you.”
They listened with whitening faces, with terror growing in their eyes. The woman shook like an autumn leaf in a cold wind. The man broke the spell with a screaming oath.
“Damn you for a fiend!” he cried. “I’ll get rid of that and you, too!”
The Griffin did not move, but Al came in three great hitches, and reaching upwards, gripped the man’s arms at the elbows so fiercely that he howled with anguish, unable to shake off the legless creature whose fingers clamped down on his nerves and paralyzed his efforts.
“Fool!” said the Griffin. “This is a copy. And if anything should happen, at any time, that would disappoint me in you, any act of disobedience, the signed and witnessed confession would be released, automatically. That you were hypnotized into telling the truth does not alter the facts that can and will be eagerly substantiated. In the State where you committed the crime, kidnaping now brings life imprisonment. If you were able to clear yourself of the question as to whether you killed the child, you could not avoid that. Hard labor for both of you, for life!”
He gestured to Al, who released Allen. The New Englander stood stricken with despair that was reflected on his wife’s wan face.
“I’ll fix that contraption for you to-night,” he said humbly.
“I thought you would,” said the Griffin. “See that it is successful.”
III
Gordon Manning was the last client that afternoon at the down town gymnasium where business men tried to keep themselves physically fit and offset the depression by virility. There was no partner available for handball but the professional. That suited Manning well enough and he threw himself into the game with an ardor and finesse that left his opponent panting, chagrined, and frankly admiring.
Manning went into the shower and let the needle sprays run icy cold. He had played hard not merely to win, but to help him forget the problem of the Griffin, to prevent it becoming an obsession that would rob him of his best judgment by incessantly suggesting he was no match for the monster, that the handicaps were too severe. The handball game had temporarily sidetracked even the workings of his subconscious mind as he set every energy to the task in hand.
But the poisonous leaven was there. The task had to be taken up again, helpless as it seemed. He was the only man who had ever defeated the Griffin, who had ultimately sent him to the asylum for the criminally insane at Dannemora. Now it was all to do over again. The Griffin had scored. The people looked to Manning to rid them of the menace.
He was well equipped for it, late officer in the Army Intelligence, scientist, world traveler, soldier and adventurer. He had been called in when the police had failed, given special commissions by the New York Police Commissioner and the Governor of the State; commissions still in effect. The Griffin, with his organization, his own intuition spurred by insanity that amounted to evil genius, had written satirically congratulating himself upon obtaining a worthy opponent. He had mailed the letter with its heavy gray paper, its purple ink and scarlet seal, upon the same day Manning had secretly accepted the commission. Not even the press had known—under restriction of publication—of his under cover appointment; but the Griffin had discovered it.
The Griffin professed to call it a game. He condescended to name his victim, to state a twenty-four-hour limit to the time of mysterious murder.
But he had inevitably planned his moves, made all his preparations, studying the problem intricately during the weeks between killings, when he was silent. A silence that was like the steady drip of water upon Manning, waiting, waiting, for the inevitable boasting announcement of a crime so devilishly planned that no protection availed against the madman’s craft.
That first capture had been largely owing to Manning’s blocking of one of his diabolical murders. Failure had so inflamed the Griffin that rage had made him almost futile, careless of consequences in his wild desire to restore his fallen ego. Manning believed that the bringing about of another failure was the best chance once more to secure this fiend in human shape.
The man was a devil loosed on earth. He had killed a score of valuable men who could hardly be replaced. He meant to keep on killing. He juggled with astrology and divination, doubtless believing himself an appointed destroyer.
Once, since the Griffin’s escape, Manning had foiled him, saved his intended victim, not so much by discovery of the devilish device employed as by strict vigilance and alertness at a crucial moment.
Then Manning had seen him, had gripped the cloak he wore, only to lose him in a surging crowd where the Griffin’s minions took advantage of the confusion.
Soon the Griffin would strike again, when he was ready, the victim selected, studied, all moves considered.
Manning, brown, lean, dressed, nodded to the old trainer who ran the gymnasium, and stepped outside, swinging his favorite weapon, a cane made from a steel tapering rod on which were shrunk scores of rings of leather. It was as efficient as a sword in his skillful hands. He asked nothing better than a chance at the Griffin, cane against gun or other weapon. His morale was not shaken, but he had a hunch, certain vibrations that tuned-in to evil emanations, that told him it was not long before he would be hearing from the arch-enemy, the man who hated all other men.
Ever since the last attack, the police force, public and private, had been trying to get clews concerning the Griffin’s whereabouts or those of his agents. His former elaborate organization had been shattered, but he still had great resources and he was rebuilding his force. All clews had failed. There had been no real clews. The score stood two to one, since his escape, in the Griffin’s favor. And now….
Manning’s powerful roadster had been standing at the curb. He stood with his hand on the doorturn, looking at the button to his siren at the hub of his steering wheel. On the black circle a scarlet oval showed red as blood, sinister as blood. An
affiche
of thick paper embossed with the signet of the Griffin!
Still another scarlet symbol was placed on the flap of the side pocket of the car, indicating certainly, to Manning, that he would find a letter tucked inside. It was infinitely galling for him to recognize the probability that either the Griffin or one of his agents, perhaps the very man who had found the chance to affix the seals and place the message, was watching him from some nearby point of vantage to make sure he received the letter. He denied them that satisfaction, got in, and drove to Pelham.
Not until he was in his own garage did he take out the envelope, again with the signet of the Griffin, sealed in wax, on the heavy handmade gray paper. The address was in the too familiar bold hand that, to a handwriting expert, revealed eccentricity of mind and also force of character and purpose.
GORDON MANNING ESQUIRE ADDRESSED
Manning’s face was grim as he broke the seal in his library, after deliberately filling and lighting his pet briar and waiting until his Japanese butler brought him a highball.
Manning:
Still you serve to amuse me and therefore I again invite you as antagonist. The board is set, I have planned the gambit in which I may lose a pawn but only to win. I realize that you have been eagerly expecting my challenge. Last time we almost became closely acquainted, but, even if the cloak had held, I had not played my final trick.
You may be glad to know that I am succeeding admirably in restoring the organisation you and the authorities so ruthlessly destroyed—for which you will some day pay in full. I have another Headquarters that it will take all your vigilance to discover, my dear Manning. I believe you called my last my “aerie” though it is by no means certain whether the griffins, who were the steeds of the sun and drew the chariot of Nemesis, nested or used a lair. It matters little. Things shape well. The next to be eliminated will be that persistent prig and self-publicist, Evans Cooke, who claims to be building the true type of young American manhood by his interest in and contributions to the Olympic Games, the Amateur Athletic Association and other “body-building organizations,” as he styles them. He considers himself a philanthropist and his chief enjoyment is to read about himself in the press. The man is a stench in my nostrils.
He may have an opportunity of recommending himself, as a shade, to Zeus, on Mount Olympus itself, since he will most certainly shuffle off this mortal coil at some swift second during the twenty-four hours calendered as the nineteenth of this present month. May you, my dear Manning, be there to see. I may be a spectator myself. The method employed is ingenious and I confess to a slight curiosity to observe how well it works, though, as you know, I never repeat myself.
(There was no signature but only a delicate pen drawing of the demi-griffin, couped.)
Manning knew of Evans Cooke. He was himself an amateur athlete of high standing with one record which, while not included in ordinary programs, was spectacular and interesting—the underwater long dive, “fetching.” Cooke had inherited money and large interests on leaving college and had shown good capacity in handling his business.
He was always willing to give funds to true athletic promotion, however small and humble might be the attempt, however provincial. To greater projects he was equally liberal, once assured of their sincerity. He endowed gymnasiums, donated swimming pools, paid for running tracks and basketball and tennis courts, and bestowed numerous trophies every week of his existence.
It was this man the Griffin proposed so lightly to destroy, and Manning knew well that the monster considered his plans perfect before he announced his fell intention.
Manning had been given the date—seven days distant—but only in mockery. It was as if the Griffin, in this “game” of his that he likened to chess, had granted a lesser player a bishop or a castle. The main advantage still lay with the Griffin.
As for Manning’s moves, they were clear enough—to enlist the police in providing protection, to himself mount guard over Evans Cooke, whether Cooke was willing or not; to exhaust every precaution and to be alert to discover the diabolical preparations, to prevent the kill. The Griffin had suggested he might himself be present. That must not be overlooked. He was mad and therefore he might make a false move out of sheer grandiose dementia.