Authors: J. Allan Dunn
Tags: #Action and Adventure
Manning felt a shock as if some one had struck him with a steel rod. There was a slug through his left forearm, but his man was down, he had lost his gun, his right wrist bored through. He tried to get it left-handed as he squirmed, but Manning was on him, kicking the weapon that went sliding down the floor of the corridor.
The effects of the irritant powder were dying. He had one of the Griffin’s emissaries and the man was alive, not dangerously wounded.
There would be a notable third degree when the commissioner got hold of him. This was not the first of the Griffin’s agents they had landed, but the others had refused to speak, more fearful of their mad employer than of the law. They would have to be more ingenious in their examination of this one.
He was a swarthy man who was probably a foreigner though he spoke good enough American, mostly profanity, as Manning yanked him to his feet, none too gently and frog-marched him back to Grant’s offices, through to where the dead man lay.
“That’s murder, my man,” he said. “You’re in it. You planted it after the Griffin planned it. Sit there. Never mind where you’re plugged. I’m plugged myself. That can wait. The police will fix us up better than we can. They’ll be here, with a surgeon, in a few minutes.”
“You can’t pin anything on me,” said the man. He was not so much defiant, as sure of himself. The Griffin chose his active agents well, Manning told himself. “What killed him? Nothing you’ll trace to me. Or trace at all.”
“Perhaps not,” said Manning. “But I’ll promise you this. You’ll be behind bars for the rest of your life, without privileges. It wouldn’t surprise me a lot if they tried to lynch you, right here in New York. But, if you talk, if you tell us where we can find the Griffin; I’ll also promise you some leniency.”
“Yeah? Well, call your cops. I don’t mind talking—some. I don’t want to be cooped up in stir for the rest of my natural and that lynching idea don’t sound at all good to me. Want to know how he got bumped off? I didn’t do it. I didn’t even plant the pipe cleaners. That was done yesterday by another man. I just came up here to see if you had croaked as well as him.”
Manning ignored the utter callousness of the man, drug-hardened, in the statement he made. He looked at the package of pipe cleaners.
The other grinned in his cocaine-inspired bravado, braced also by his dread of the Griffin, chuckled.
“Sure. It was easy. We find out all about this guy. We know he don’t smoke till noon, ever, and then he goes to the pipe like a Chink hitting the
chandu.
Know he’s always got cleaners and matches on the desk, handy. So the Griffin gets a pack, opens ’em, dopes ’em up, see. Another guy plants ’em, switches packs.”
He had picked up the package and taken out a cleaner, twisting it nervously in his fingers, rapidly.
“Drop that,” said Manning. “Drop it or I’ll….”
“You’ll what, governor?” asked the man wearily. “Plug me? Aw, this is quicker!”
Manning was almost swift enough. His wound hindered him, but he caught the other’s wrist. Then the man thrust out his moist tongue, desperate, deliberate.
The telephone had gone dead. The Griffin’s efficiency had destroyed its synchronization. Manning was forced to ring up an elevator with the operator staring at him as he stood there dripping blood. He showed his badge, was taken down to a building telephone.
He rang headquarters, got through to the commissioner. His tone was flat and infinitely weary when he got the connection. The official had been waiting.
“I’ve got two dead men up here,” said Manning. “One of them is Gilman Grant, the other the Griffin’s man. When you send up have the surgeon along with his kit, will you?”
He returned to the offices, temporarily binding his hurt. The body of Grant, which had lain face down, had been turned over. On the cold forehead was the crimson seal of the Griffin.
The Hour Appointed
In a Silent, Barricaded House, Manning Waits for the Arch-Fiend, the Griffin, to Stride
THE circular chamber of the Griffin was empty. There was the low, sweet sound of exotic music, a strange fragrance that suggested burning amber in the motionless air, kept fresh by some ingenious method of ventilation in that windowless, secret spot where the being known only as the Griffin, almost as fabulous as that mythical beast—half lion, half eagle—hatched and perfected his diabolical plots against society in general and famous men in particular.
So far, the Griffin had never included a woman in his machinations, save once to threaten the girl beloved by Gordon Manning, the man selected by the Commissioner of Police of New York to uncover the fiend whose murders were at once the horror and terror of Manhattan; Manning self-sworn to destroy this mysterious menace, this fiend in human shape, this man cursed with the cunning of madness and the ingenuity of Satan.
There was a weak point in Manning’s armor that gave delight to the warped mentality of the Griffin. Manning dared not court the girl, dared not even see her, for fear the Griffin would carry out some hideous device, some means to torture Manning by getting possession of his sweetheart.
It pleased the Griffin to consider Manning his opponent in the grisly diversion that the former called a Game. In it he made the first move, planned his campaign, and then declared his intentions, mocking Manning, who had once been the mainstay of Army Secret Service, with the announcement of the name of the victim to be and the actual day of his taking off.
This amused the Griffin and would continue to do so until Manning came too close to circumventing him. This had happened more than once. “And,” he had told Manning over the telephone, “when you cease to amuse me, I shall remove you.”
It was a Game that, with the increasing toll of frightful murder, the removal of the finest of men, was bound to tell on even Manning’s superlative nerves, his physical perfection. On the other hand, there was Manning’s profound belief, backed by the opinion of the greatest psychiatrists, that, once the Griffin failed in the horrific programs he announced, in any major detail, his colossal conceit, his grandiose dementia, would collapse, and the man would become a creature without reason, without power to plan; a mere maniac; dangerous to cope with personally, but unable to devise any more major crimes. It began to look to Manning, in his more despondent moods, as if only in such fashion would the Griffin be conquered.
II
THE curving walls of the Griffin’s chamber were of steel. So were the floor and the ceiling. It was soundproof, fireproof, bulletproof. The walls were covered with golden tapestries; the floor with rare rugs. The great desk where the Griffin sat in contemplation and in judgment, where he cast the horoscopes that his weird fantasy connected with his selection of victims, was elaborately carved.
On it stood a brazen disk, suspended between two standards of bronze, each tipped with a small statuette of a griffin. The lid of his inkstand was of the same design. A paperweight was a griffin cast in gold upon black onyx that held crimson streaks, like blood. A creature that could fly and swoop, run and leap, rend and tear with beak and talons, ruthless, infinitely malicious. That was the symbol of the Griffin.
Noiselessly, an arc of the wall slid aside and a grotesque figure, bizarre, like some dwarfed, distorted butt of a medieval court, stepped into the empty room from an elevator that immediately descended again as the door vanished.
This was Quantro, the bodyguard of the Griffin, looking like a fiend’s familiar. He came from Haiti, the land of voodoo, and it seemed as if its bestial customs surged through his veins. A high turban surmounted his grotesque head, too long, too narrow, too close between the mischievous eyes, red-rimmed, that looked like the eyes of a chimpanzee, furtive, not quite human. His hands could scratch his knees without his stooping his enormous shoulders. His costume was fantastic, vivid in its velvet and brocade contrasts.
There was a long knife thrust into his sash. His fingers itched constantly for the feel of its hilt; he ached for the sensation of the sharp steel sinking home. He was a deaf mute and his perceptions were limited. He was the Griffin’s dog, but at times he was a moody one, sulky or merely curious. His strength was prodigious.
Now, with a duster of ostrich plumes he removed imaginary dust from the furnishings. The chamber was dustless in its own construction, but the Griffin sometimes gave audiences to strange and not altogether spotless characters; therefore the dwarf performed his perfunctory and meticulous task, his eyes rolling in their yellowish, blood-flecked whites.
He tested, as he had scores of times, the locked drawers, fruitlessly. Then, swayed by an irresistible impulse that, for once, broke down his fear, he pointed his finger at the brazen disk, his red tongue thrust between his blubbery lips. He was like an overgrown child stealing jam as his finger gradually approached the object he had been strictly forbidden to touch.
Suddenly it gave out a low, deep sound, infinitely musical, penetrating, like the soft vibrations of a distant temple gong.
Quantro shrank back, his dark skin turning the hue of cigar ashes, his eyeballs projecting. He looked like nothing so much as some masquerading ape that had inadvertently, ignorantly, touched a red hot stove. Yet he had not touched the disk. His soul, if he had one, shriveled within him.
Again the elevator door showed, and the Griffin stepped into the chamber. His tall figure was clad in a voluminous robe of dull black velvet, the loose sleeves lined with vivid scarlet His face was masked with a close clinging domino of yellow, shining fabric, like goldbeater’s skin. Through it his beaklike nose projected, his cheekbones and outstanding jaw showed as if through some outer, leprous skin. His eyes glittered like balls of jet, reflecting lurid flame.
He did not speak, since Quantro could not hear, knew no language beyond that of a limited system of signs. The Griffin had no mind to lessen his ignorance. He stood there until the wretched dwarf slowly turned his head on his neck, owlishly, like an automaton.
The Griffin pointed, inexorably. His eyes flashed fire. The eyes of a madman, beyond question, but a madman whose brain tissues were inflamed, but functioned. He exuded evil. He entertained the persistent idea of some real or imaginary wrong that had set him against all that was worthy, all that was beneficial. His was the mind of Lucifer, cast out of heaven, powerful for sin.
Quantro understood. He gibbered, and then, in hypnosis, he moved forward with extended, faltering finger that at last touched the disk. It gave out a hideous clamor that might have been the barking of Cerberus, that blended with the brutish howl of Quantro as he rolled in anguish on the floor, half numb, his coördination severed, while the agony of the shock he had sustained seemed to flood his veins and arteries with searing acid.
He rolled into a corner while the Griffin took seat in the thronelike chair behind the desk, touched a secret button that opened a drawer and took out a scroll on which were written names. Some had been marked with a scarlet pencil. Now he checked off another with a low, indescribably malicious chuckle.
The music swelled, died away. The brazen disk gave off more vibrations, melodious again. Quantro crept on all fours to his post behind the chair, submissive, whimpering.
For the third time the lift ascended. A man stepped out of it who was dressed in an overall stained with smears of oil, with metallic filings that grimed his artistic hands. He looked with apathy at the strange surroundings, his face devoid of expression, unless it was that of utter hopelessness.
He was a man without a name, a number, one of the Griffin’s clever slaves, bound by the Griffin’s knowledge of the other’s indebtedness to the law. With others who had been carefully selected for their skill, this one had thought to find a refuge and had realized only a stern and unrelenting drudgery, known by their tasks that they were participants in crimes far worse than they had committed, fettered faster than any links of steel could hold them.
In his hand he carried a mechanical contrivance which he set down on the desk at the Griffin’s gesture and exhibited in action. The Griffin watched, nodded.
“You have done well, Number Twenty-Nine,” he said in his deep voice, always baleful, toned with doom. The other showed no pleasure, no expectation of reward. But the Griffin opened another drawer and took from it a crisp currency bill for a hundred dollars. “I am not ungrateful for good workmanship,” he continued with the tinge of mockery that was always in his lightest utterance. “Send this to your family. You may write them. Naturally you will attempt to give no information, though there is none you could extend that would be of any value to those who—who do not appreciate my activities. Give the letter to Quantro, who will attend to it. That is all. You may leave the model. Go.”
Twenty-Nine left, his misery relieved, not so much by appreciation of the gift from the man who held him in thrall, owned him, body and spirit, beyond all ransom, as thankful in the knowledge of what the money would do for the family he had renounced.
The Griffin gazed after him sardonically, anticipating the eagerness of those relatives, of wife and children, changed to bitterness as they read the barren lines, charged with blank despair, the money, precious enough, cast aside like the fairy gold that turns to withered leaves.
“I think,” said the Griffin aloud, softly, purringly, “that we can now get in touch with our friend Manning.”
III
MANNING came out from the showers in the down town gymnasium where he kept himself in training, his lean body glowing from the brisk rub down with a rough towel after his game of handball. The lithe muscles played beneath the smooth, tanned skin, showing a little too prominently. He was too gaunt, body and face.
The grizzled trainer, owner of the place, regarded his favorite client with affectionate anxiety. Manning had started out to fight the Griffin under cover, but the Griffin had himself exploded that in a congratulatory letter to Manning the day after his appointment. Publicity could not be avoided. The trainer surmised the strain, the danger Manning incurred, and he feared he was in danger of going stale.