Authors: J. Allan Dunn
Tags: #Action and Adventure
“So,” he said softly. “It appears we have a worthy opponent. The real game commences.”
He pressed a silver button in the desk-top. From a deeper drawer he drew out a mask that seemed made of gold-leaf, pliant but distinctive, changing his features to the semblance of an Egyptian relief of the Hawk-God. Now he looked not unlike the griffin lid of the inkwell, the device that was on the scarlet seal that closed the letter.
The gong sounded twice. With his foot he pressed on the heavy carpet and a section of the wall slid noiselessly aside. A man appeared, a valet, his sign of service the wasp-striped waistcoat he wore, a human automaton, expressionless.
“See that this is mailed at the Grand Central post office by four this afternoon.”
The Crime Master felt in the pocket of his coat, brought forth a tiny box of gold, damascened, enlivened with small, sparkling and exquisitely cut gems. In it was a green paste—hasheesh.
Five minutes later he was at full length on a divan, the phantasies of the hempen extract mingling with the music that now played more and more faintly, lulling him to sleep and dreams. His features relaxed, but they did not lose that stamp of enmity.
II
THE wise old trainer, owner of Garrity’s Gymnasium, looked with professional interest and approval at Gordon Manning, coming out briskly from the needle shower after his daily handball game.
“There you have a man who keeps himself fit,” said Garrity to a new and somewhat paunchy patron. “Always
has
kept fit, if I know anything, and there’s not much in the line of athletics he couldn’t get away with, if he put his mind to it. As it is, there’s worse boxers an’ wrestlers swaggerin’ round, thinkin’ they’re champs.”
“He doesn’t look such a marvel to me,” said the other, watching Manning closely, a little enviously, as the latter came striding naked from the shower cabinets, lean and lithe. “You wouldn’t call him much on muscle.”
“You wouldn’t? Next time you git a chance, you take a look at the limbs of them chimpanzees out to the Bronx Zoo. You won’t
see
much muscle on them. They’re skinny, those chimps, they look stringy, but they can take apart a man twice their weight an’ size.
“It’s quality that counts. Know anything more muscular than a snake? One of them big boas? See any muscles bulgin’ on them? Manning is built the same way. His muscles are like first-class rubber bands. They’ve got resilience. His brain’s the same way. Watch him play handball and you’ll get what I mean. Coördination.”
“What does he do? Anything?”
“He’s some sort of a lawyer. I know he’s got offices down on Liberty Street. I know he was the youngest major in the A.E.F. where I was top sergeant. An’ I’m dead sure he don’t loaf. He couldn’t, not his sort, any more’n quicksilver’ll stay put.”
The listener was impressed, almost against his will. There
was
something out of the ordinary about Manning, his poise, the carriage of his spare person, the lift of head and chin, a certain pride that was not offensive, a suggestion of proved efficiency. Perhaps the trainer had not exaggerated, after all.
“Now you, sir,” said Garrity bluntly. “You’ve got a nice body, but you’ve abused it. You want to take it easy at first. I’ll start you off with the medicine ball. There’s a class of gents ready to start in a few minutes.”
While the pudgy, somewhat puffy patron turned toward the gym, Manning dressed rapidly, left the place and walked the few blocks to his office, lithe as an Indian, though with a freer tread, swinging his cane. His face was thoughtful.
That was a curious cane he carried, heavier than it appeared. It was made of rings of leather shrunk about a steel core whose end made the ferrule, while the head was capped with a plain gold band bearing the initials G.M. in modest script. A weapon, rather than a cane. The only weapon Manning carried, as a rule, no matter how dangerous his errand, but one that, in the hands of a skillful and powerful man, was formidable, deadly. And even Garrity did not know that Manning was an expert fencer.
He came to his office building, tall though not one of the latest, sandwiched in between others on a strip of land that ran between two streets. There were four elevators, one of them an express, stopping first on the seventh floor, where Manning had his office suite. One car was temporarily out of order, as announced by the card on the grille. The starter gave Manning a military salute. Manning answered it in swift gesture of authority, now discarded yet still recognized by a few.
The car shot up, stopped. The operator opened the door with a friendly grin. They didn’t know much about Manning’s affairs in the building, but any public servant gets to be a good judge of people he sees every day.
On the outer door of Manning’s suite his name appeared above the two words that seemed to designate his profession.
GORDON MANNING
Advisory Attorney
But there was only one man in New York, anywhere, besides himself, who knew Manning’s true vocation. So he believed. And hoped.
There was an intelligent-looking red-headed youth in his outer room, two women stenographers in the next, deft, deferential, businesslike. His personal office was well but not luxuriously furnished. In one corner stood a circular safe of ultra-hardened steel, practically impregnable—and empty—though no one knew that but Manning.
It seemed all it was intended to represent, the obvious repository of secrets. It would take experts hours to get into it. And it was only a lure. Manning kept his secrets accurately filed in a trained memory, supplemented by a condensed file in a cypher that he had improved upon from many he had studied. That file was in his desk, ingeniously concealed.
Manning never appeared in court. He had clients, though they were not so numerous as important. He oftener refused advice than gave it. His fees were large, but his cases, turned over to other attorneys for action, did not occupy all his time. Yet, to those who took occasion to comment on him, he was a man of little leisure, of comparatively few friends though many acquaintances. None knew him intimately. He was cordial enough but reserved, although he was not considered an enigma.
He took seat in his desk chair, gazing out to the towers of Manhattan, lining the busy river, with its spidery bridges, its teeming commerce. The window was open, the sounds of the metropolis blended in a symphony of achievement.
His dark eyes were like those of a hawk, or an eagle, made for the fathoming of far perspectives, far-seeing, eager, with a certain fierceness that came into them now. His body lounged, at ease, relaxed, but his mind was centered on a desperate and dangerous quest. He sought a man, a universal enemy of the powers that had built up the city he loved, the greatest city in the world, New York. He sought him in secret and stern resolve, the man who had mocked, was still mocking, at the police—looting, murdering at will, head, without question, of a band that was not only devoted to him, or linked by rites of deviltry, but infinitely resourceful under the direction of their head. The Griffin.
Manning frowned. He admitted himself worried. It was never known where, when or how the Griffin would strike, and he had never failed. Mad perhaps, with a species of insanity that might some day burn out his inflamed brain, but, meanwhile, made it that of an evil genius.
He swung his chair to the desk, always clear of papers not under immediate consideration. He had been set to the trail, but he could find no starting point, no scent toward the following of it, the solution of the mystery that gripped him. The Griffin left no traces, save those of devastation. No clews.
Manning was fresh to the trail, but there was a long count against the offender—the man who had no name that is to say, no name unless it was revealed in a device he used, embossed on—ovals of heavy paper, cartouches he affixed as tokens of his presence—of his absence from the scene of crime—or token that he was the master-mind who originated it.
A device that was the head of the mythical creature known to heraldry as a griffin, stamped in scarlet.
It might, Manning fancied, be a clew to the surname of the man, who seemed more fiend than human. But that was only a fancy and he wanted facts.
It was a waiting game he was forced to play and that harassed him. The hideous certainty that the Griffin would reveal himself, stagger the city with some fresh crime that would come like a bolt from the blue, stagger the very foundations of law and order, without warning, without trace of the offenders.
These acts were like those of the fictional Frankenstein, shaped like a man, minded like a fiend. A fiend of frightfulness and inordinate cunning, of illimitable daring and deviltry, heading an organization growing ever bolder with success.
Manning signed some letters, summoned one of the stenographers, dictated, ran through typed documents, digesting their contents, arriving at solutions. But all the time his brow was furrowed.
His subconscious brain busied itself with the main issue for which his business was only a camouflage. It held a presage of impending trouble that he was powerless to prevent, though he must trace its source. He knew he was up against no ordinary opponent, but one as resourceful and relentless as any he had encountered in his duties in the war opposing the Boche Secret Service.
He finished up the correspondence, gave a word of praise to the girl and got his car from its parking space, easing the powerful but unostentatious machine through the traffic, driving with automatic accuracy, his mind ever prescient of impending calamity, out to Grand Concourse, through the park, on to his home in Pelham Manor, a bachelor establishment catered to by his picked Japanese servants, perfect if remote.
All the way his eyes, that saw the traffic, the lights, were conning with their eagle gaze for an elusive quarry, a fabulous beast, a scarlet griffin.
III
AS Manning picked up the square envelope with its bold superscription in violet ink, he had a premonition, perhaps of the quickened senses, a positive emotion or reaction; that here was something evil. He did not analyse such matters. He believed that all hunches were based upon actualities, that so-called luck was merely the blossom, or the fruit of seed some one had sewed where perhaps he might not pluck.
But he had seen many curious things in his time. In the war, when he was detailed on Secret Service though ostentatiously merely a brass hat. In the Orient and the far-off places he had traveled since the war. He would not have disputed that vibrations for good or wickedness might not persist, did not cling, as some subtle odor, to objects handled by persons of strong vitality and will.
And here was evil. As if the envelope had been defiled by a malignant touch. He opened it without hesitation, abruptly.
My dear Manning:
Allow me to exchange congratulations with you upon your acceptance of the post you have just taken over. I take it that, with myself, it is not entirely the pursuit of—shall we call it crime?—that interests you, whether to achieve or prevent it; but that the adventure of the chase appeals.
It does to me. I trust we shall share many interesting and thrilling episodes. I am complimented, spurred by having such an adversary. It inspires me to further efforts. I fear that we shall never meet. I may, ultimately, have to make sure of that. In the meantime, until you push me too hard, and I grant that possible emergency, I shall thoroughly enjoy playing the game with you.
It is like playing chess with a skilled opponent. A game in which, however, you labor under a handicap. I always make the first move. Let us pit our resources against each other. We might perhaps both be called Crime Masters. But it will be no stalemate. One of us is going to win. Myself. For, if you seek to master crime, I am its master.
You will hear from me soon. Very soon. I much prefer to dealing with you direct.
There was no signature, only the embossed griffin’s head, with its rapacious beak, its rampant attitude, stamped on an oval of bright red, scarlet as blood.
IV
IT was a shock, an unexpected blow from an unseen adversary; rather, not so much a blow as a flick of insult, a challenge.
The man known to the police as the Griffin had, attested the mute evidence of his scarlet seal, committed many crimes. He had robbed, he had at times killed with what seemed mere, diabolical wantonness. His coups were always coupled with great gains, carried out with a precision that bespoke an evil genius in conception and preparation.
He might, Manning reflected, be well termed the Crime Master, juggling the words to make the meaning suit his successes, though, as he had written, they could be twisted to have an opposite interpretation, one that Manning meant to make apposite—to himself—as one who mastered crime.
It would be a hard-fought game, not played in the open, with the quarry always well away. The letter told one thing. The Griffin was a man of education, of sardonic humor, with a brilliant, if warped, brain. The use of the seal already indicated that.
The writing, Manning was sure, would lead nowhere. He did not doubt the other’s ability to write several distinctive hands, carefully studied. He had shown an infinite capacity for taking pains.
As for the paper and the postmark, if a clever criminal was careful, they were useless as clews. Only the amateur, the person of one, sudden crime, forgot details. The Griffin was a professional.
Every little while, at intervals of weeks or months, a crime tagged by the seal was perpetrated. Every little while, press and public clamored for the police to apprehend him. They suspected Centre Street of concealing the use of the seals in certain cases—and they were not away from the truth.
The chief commissioner, with his newly appointed squad of secret police, could do nothing with the Griffin. He worked alone, he was not a gangster, a racketeer. The commissioner had called in the aid of Manning, enlisted it, a willing volunteer. They had held, so far, no communication, would hold none until Manning had tracked this beast, run it to earth, destroyed it, or been destroyed himself. Yet, the Griffin had discovered his employment. It was something close to magic, which is merely the mystery of the unknown.