Authors: J. Allan Dunn
Tags: #Action and Adventure
His long arms, immensely powerful, though they showed no more muscles than those of a chimpanzee, allowed the knuckles of his hands to reach to his knees. In his sash he carried a long knife, razor-edged. His shoulders and torso made up for his diminished legs. His head was oversized, his eyes held cunning and cruelty, and he was the personal bodyguard of the Griffin, ever aching to be allowed to play the butcher. He looked like the familiar to a wizard, and, in his clinging mask and sweeping robe, the Griffin might well have passed for the necromancer.
There were strange lights and shadows in these corridors and chambers, curious sights and sounds and smells. The odors of chemicals, of heated metals, of electric energy. The source of the general illumination was invisible, but it was ample. Here were men working over small furnaces whose glare enhanced their set, drawn features, the faces of men who had lost hope. Now and then some livid ray would flash out from electric contacts. This would be a workshop with these nameless craftsmen toiling over some diabolical conception of the Griffin, to be used in his fiendish plans against society, the world at large.
He walked quietly, his dark eyes glittering through the slits in his mask, observing all. Some of the workers cringed at his approach, while others glanced furtively and caught the roving gaze of the swaggering dwarf, eager to find excuse to annihilate, to kill.
The Griffin passed on, through this labyrinth hewn from the living rock, equipped so elaborately as to its mechanics, a dungeon in its living quarters.
He came to a vaulted place where a dog cowered, chained, fearful of the surroundings. A slave in brown denim overalls that hid his number—17—on sleeve and back, black numerals on a white label, stirred as the Griffin entered. Number Seventeen was elderly, not perhaps so old as his surroundings made him appear, but bald almost to entirety, deep lines in his tired face, his deepset eyes gleaming.
“You are ready?” asked the Griffin in a voice that sounded like a bell-stroke on a temple gong—a voice of doom.
“I am ready,” answered the man. “The dog has not been fed. It is hungry. I am not sure of the results until the experiment is made. The constituents of the lethal dose are new to me, and you stated that it was imperative they should be so compounded that all traces would be absorbed and disappear.”
The Griffin chuckled. It was the cluck of infinite derision.
“I like always to leave them baffled,” he said. “To show them that their analysts, their toxicologists, are purile. Also, there is the satisfaction of removing all clews. Even if they had me—the Griffin—in their hands, they could prove nothing. I should laugh at them. Knowledge—that is what we seek—the knowledge that is Power. So,” he added abruptly, as if he regretted his talk, “go ahead, show me.”
The orbs of Number Seventeen dilated their pupils, contracted them. He looked at the Griffin almost murderously. His glance seemed to say—“would this were you, instead of the dog.”
The famished beast seized the hunk of meat that was flung to him, smeared slightly by a white substance like ointment. It gulped down the flesh hastily and then terrific tremors took possession of its body. Writhing, convulsed, foaming—it died, with the Griffin watching its slightest motion with sadistic pleasure, though a frown slowly gathered on its features that wrinkled the half transparent mask.
“You must perfect this,” he ordered. “Whatever I might enjoy the more, it must not be said that the Griffin is not merciful in his executions. I want the last result to-morrow, at this hour. You understand?”
II
GORDON MANNING, ex-officer and distinguished agent of the Intelligence Department in the late war, left the down town gymnasium where he kept physically fit and walked with swinging strides toward his office suite.
There, on the outer door sign, he was announced as a consultant attorney and did, in normal times, so act. Now his whole energy was concentrated on unmasking the Griffin and delivering him to justice. Single-handed, he hoped to track down the unbalanced fiend whose whole diabolic pleasure was murder—track him down alone, after the whole civic force had failed.
There were times when Manning almost admitted failure himself. Thus far he had been worsted by the cunning of the insanely clever evil genius who believed he held a grudge against civilization and those who advanced its progress. But Manning was not without some clews by which he ultimately believed he would conquer in the strange duel.
It was literally a duel. The Griffin had deliberately challenged him to contest in what the Griffin called a game. He had been the first to congratulate Manning on his appointment, though this had been a closely veiled affair. He went further and named the victims he had, so far, counted, even going to the length of naming the days when they would be disposed of.
The Griffin’s succession of crimes had roused not only New York, but the whole country. They had affected the stock market, besides threatening the very foundations of civic existence. Manning’s pride was in arms, aside from his keen responsibility as a citizen. He had himself been jeopardized a dozen times and the Griffin, in his devilish cunning, had struck to undermine Manning’s resources and his manhood by placing the woman he loved in danger.
It was not easy to ignore such things, on top of the Griffin’s constant triumphs. The result showed in Manning’s face, in the extra leanness of his body. He fought against it, against the constant threat and strain of another pronouncement by the Griffin of his next coup.
It was close to the end of the year. New York had just experienced its bitterest day on record. It was still close to zero, though the weather showed signs of change. Throughout the United States and most of Europe the weather had been unseasonal. There had been one flurry of snow and then an icy aftermath. Even on Broadway there were streaks of ice along the pavement and the street. The apple vendors, the unemployed, shivered by their boxes and placards.
Manning crossed the street just at the changing of the light from red to green for north and south traffic. Vehicles anxious to make their destinations started up and Manning quickened his steps. A woman, burdened with bundles that proclaimed her Christmas shopping, slipped on a film of ice, dropped a package and tripped over it in front of a truck, coming on like a juggernaut with its clutch released to high speed.
The driver, through his cab window, did his best, his eyes goggling at the impending catastrophe. Onlookers held their breaths or expelled it in cries of alarm. The woman seemed doomed. No one ventured to rescue her save Manning, who dashed in front of the machine and grasped her, half lifting her by sheer strength as he leaped for the curb, thrusting her to safety, sprawling himself just beyond reach of the lurching truck.
Her bundles were scattered. Traffic was held up. A police officer came hurrying up as other now officious and eager persons collected the packages, crowded around rescuer and rescued. The woman was dazed, sitting up. Manning got to his feet and slid through the gathering throng. That was the fashion of the man. Only his supreme coördination could have pulled it off and now, with a split trousers knee beneath his overcoat, he hurried to his building, keeping the damage out of sight, mounting to his suite on the ninth floor. He had other clothing there, and once in his private office, he changed.
Deliberately, he took a drink of excellent Scotch, knowing his pulses were unsteady, his condition not normal. The issue between him and the Griffin was having its effect on him.
The Griffin called it a game, but it was one in which he had all the advantage of the first move, the initial planning and preparation. It would have unnerved a weaker man. To Manning it served to summon up a determination that was growing almost desperate, that not merely challenged patience but called for all his intelligence.
He had got so that he was tuned in to the Griffin’s activities. He had a prescience of when they were about to culminate, and to-day he felt a hunch that the Griffin was once more about to strike, to choose some outstanding and useful man and mark him for doom that Manning might not be able to prevent. The responsibility was enormous, almost overpowering, to be the man to guard against a madman’s uncanny cunning and diabolical resource.
Manning sipped his highball, looking out to the towering buildings beyond his office window, the peep of river and bridge that proclaimed the industry and genius of Manhattan. Yet all this was threatened by one fiendish maniac. Even as he gazed his telephone rang with a curious vibration that told Manning that the Griffin was on the other end of the line where with an ingenuity born of himself or those who served him, he had managed to so synchronize the impulse of the wire that it was useless to try and trace the call. The Griffin controlled many methods that ranked high in science. He was no ordinary antagonist and he was motivated with the instinct of a devil.
Manning did not avoid the issue. He had past reason to believe that the Griffin knew that he was present. The man had infinite resources.
“Manning?” The deep voice, like the sound of a temple gong tinged with mockery, boomed through the receiver. “It’s almost a month since I’ve called you. Have you been expecting to hear from me? The stars in their courses have controlled me.”
Manning said nothing. He was there to hear. He had guessed that in the Griffin’s madness there was a streak of mysticism, that the man supported his machinations by some outside aid like astrology.
“But my divinations evolve, Manning. The game is on once more, the pieces set. This time it is one of those pseudo-scientists who seek to set the world ahead, not knowing that I am far in front of them. You know Ezra Farnett, who prates of telepathy, of thought transference and vision, when he does not think he is a musical genius. Ha, ha!”
The mocking laughter rang in Manning’s ears, and back of it he could hear faint strains of exotic music.
Ezra Farnett!
A genius! He was of world-wide fame for his enterprise in science, particularly regarding the projection of sound and sight; known also as a musician extraordinary whose compositions had been termed occult, whose harmonies stirred and stimulated the soul. He stated freely that, to him, music was the complement to his scientific exploration and energies, that it inspired and hastened his discoveries. A curious being, Ezra Farnett, unique and masterful, a blend of the practical and the dreamer.
And the Griffin, in his strange complex, his hatred of all those who accomplished, who stood for advancement, had chosen him for sacrifice.
“It is still two days from Christmas,” the deep voice went on, a voice that was one of Manning’s few clews to the Griffin’s identity, a voice he could never fail to distinguish. “That is a pagan festival which certain cults keep holy. We will let it pass as hallowed. A time for gifts, which reminds me, Manning, that your own life is too valuable, or at least its efforts too interesting to me, for you to risk it on behalf of a woman out buying Christmas presents.”
This was far from the first indication of the Griffin’s watchfulness of Manning’s moves. It was an espionage that made Manning feel belittled, that was probably employed by the Griffin with such an idea in view. It was the Griffin’s boasting statement that murder should be an exact science, that the ordinary killer used his own crude methods, whereas, by carefully studying the habits of an intended victim, one could devise a method that was infallible. Manning had no doubt that, for all his talk of the stars, the Griffin had held Ezra Farnett under close observation for days, if not weeks, plotting his devilish deed.
“I shall kill Ezra Farnett sometime between midnight of the thirtieth and the same hour on the thirty-first. He will not live to see the New Year. You see, my dear Manning, I do not even concede you a chance of saving him. You will play your best, I know, but you are no match for me. I marvel, sometimes, at your continuing to play the game as you do.
“It will be a fitting elimination. Warn him, Manning. Protect him, to the best of your ability. And protect yourself. You may need to. There are times when you weary me and to-day is one of them. So use your wits, you will need them all,” he concluded sarcastically.
The voice ceased. The strange music that hummed through the receiver as Manning replaced it on its stand seemed to linger in the room while Manning sat with his face grim, his jaw set hard, his face lines graven deep, staring out of the window, striving to conjure up some plan by which to come to grips with the Griffin.
He sat there while the early winter twilight came sifting down upon Manhattan and its towers began to gleam with a myriad lights. He was still in his chair, in the dark, when his secretary came in before she left for the day.
III
IN his circular chamber at the top of his house the Griffin sat silently chuckling. In front of him, on the heavily carven desk, there was a bronze disk suspended. He had been talking in to it, to the man he loved to bait—Gordon Manning.
Quantro, the dwarf, stood behind his master’s chair.
The fantastic music rose and fell, murmuring about the curved walls of steel, covered with golden tapestries, walls that showed no inlet or outlet, no means of ventilation or lighting. Yet the air was pure, tinged with a faint incense of burning amber, the light was clear and steady.
The Griffin beckoned with uplifted finger and the ever watchful dwarf came before him. The Griffin spoke to him in swift finger language, using Spanish for the brief words.
An opening showed in the wall as the Griffin pressed a button. There was a lift there into which Quantro stepped, descending in the silent mechanism on his errand to the laboratories.
A few moments passed. Then the bronze disk gave out a note. The lift was rising. Out of it came the man numbered 17, Quantro back of him, watchful, suspicious.
“Well?” asked the Griffin. “Where is it?”
“I have not finished it. I will not prepare it in that fashion. It is the act of a devil. A horrible treachery. It means you intend to kill a man, to fling him into eternity, unprepared. It is murder. I will not be a party to it.”