The Crime Master: The Complete Battles of Gordon Manning & The Griffin, Volume 1 (Gordon Manning and The Griffin) (30 page)

Darkness there—and nothing more.

“Never mind, Tomaki, I was just quoting,” he said. “What did you find?”

The Griffin had his stronghold; this was Manning’s. There was no darkness outside his door, day or night. Extra light flooded the path from the gate, two hundred feet away. There was no shrubbery, no place for a man to hide. At the side, leading to the walled garden, topped with tearing spikes, and to the garage, were strong metal lattices with locked entrances. Yet some agency had been there, delivering a message. And he knew from whom.

Tomaki was holding out a letter on a silver salver. The envelope was of heavy, handmade, gray paper, the inscription in bold script, the ink purple.

Gordon Manning, Esq.

Manning turned the envelope over. It was sealed with an oval of scarlet wax that held the impression of a griffin’s head and neck.

“That’s all, Tomaki,” he said evenly.

Slowly he broke the seal.

III

THE Griffin sat enthroned in his high, carved chair behind his massive desk, like a semi-deity, and an angry one.

Behind him stood his bodyguard, Quantro the dwarf. Stunted and distorted of figure, grotesque of costume, he looked, in his turban, long robes, and sash, as if he belonged to some medieval court. A long, keen, unsheathed knife was tucked into the sash—the knife he ever itched to use. Deaf and dumb was Quantro, child of the Caribbees, born within the shadow of voodoo.

The chamber was circular, built all of steel. Rich rugs were on the floor, golden tapestries covered the curving wall. The lighting was screened. There were no windows, but the circulation of air was perfect.

The vague perfume of burning amber, the faint strains of barbaric music, suggested wild dances on a moonlit desert, dancing girls whirling in a savage saraband.

In front of the desk stood one of the Griffin’s slaves, men who were little better than living robots, save for their specialized brains. They had been picked for their abilities to carry out the mad schemes of the Griffin. All of them were men outside the law and had been promised a refuge that turned out to be a prison.

The man, nameless, known only by a number, was a gaunt, harassed figure in stained overalls, his fingers dyed with chemicals, his face deep-lined with despair, pallid and unnatural from working over retort, crucible, and test tube, shoulders bowed, eyes dull.

He had not been successful with his latest formula. The result had not pleased the Griffin. Number Eight awaited judgment, penalty. He had no longer a soul to be seared. He had concocted poisons before, knowing well enough that they linked him with murder. But he had a body to be tortured. He still clung to life because of the pittance—with an occasional bonus when he pleased the master—that was sent to his dependents, denying them knowledge of his whereabouts.

The Griffin owned what there was of him. Freedom meant the inevitable capture and penal servitude where he could not earn the little that kept his wife and children from destitution.

The terrible eyes of the Griffin, with the red light of madness in them, glittered through the slits of the mask he wore, a covering of clinging stuff, golden, clammy in appearance, like goldbeater’s skin. It seemed like a skin that was being sloughed off, still adherent, repulsive as a leper’s face, horrible, sinister. Through it his hawklike features showed, distinct, but sufficiently disguised.

His voice was deep, unmuffled by the mask. It was not unduly harsh. It did not match his flaming eyes.

“You say, Number Eight, that you fear even your final result will not come up to my expectations?”

“I am afraid not,” said the man, tonelessly. “The potion is tasteless, odorless, untraceable. It will be instantly absorbed by the tissues. No autopsy can detect its use.”

“It is not your function to discuss any possible use to which it might be put,” said the Griffin evenly, though the fire in his eyes waxed like the fire-play of an opal. “You assured me in the beginning that your formula would prove successful. I do not like to have my plans go awry. To what do you attribute your failure?”

“I am not certain that it is a failure. The last solution has yet to be tested. I was about to try it, on one of the dogs, when I was summoned.”

“Exactly,” said the Griffin, placidly. There were animals for experimental purposes kept in his deep underground cellars. “But you have not yet answered my question. Suppose this solution, like former ones, fails to kill instantly, produces extreme anguish while life lasts, wherein did your formula err?”

“The formula was correct,” said Number Eight. “I would stake my reputation—”

“Your reputation?” asked the Griffin, mildly enough, but with a mockery in his tone that brought a flush to the man’s face.

“My
life,
then,” he retorted with some show of spirit. “Not much of a wager,” he added bitterly. “But all I have. The error is not in the formula but in the materials. Three of the drugs are rare, imported from Saigon. They may have been adulterated, or deteriorated, a wrong species of one of them may have been substituted. Like digitalis, different types of the same genus produce varying effects on the heart, though with the same general attributes.”

“I see. Well, let us trust the test is satisfactory. I am sure you have worked hard. You have been useful to me. So, I did not summons you to criticize you unduly.”

The Griffin rose, somber, dominating in the long robe of black brocade he wore and crossed to where a cabinet whose pedestals were griffins conformed to the curve of the wall. He took from it two silver chalices and a silver flagon, handled and elaborately chased.

From it he poured two measures of liquor, spicy, the deep amber of Tokay in hue. He offered one to Number Eight, raised the other.

“I drink your health,” he said. “Honor me by drinking mine.”

Number Eight gazed at him with a curious hesitation, as if he found some irony in the suave speech.

“Tut!” chided the Griffin, gently. “You are afraid? Then I will drink first. To your health, Number Eight!”

He drained the shallow goblet, smiled as Number Eight followed his example and suddenly fell writhing to the floor, his face gray with anguish, his limbs cramped, his belly a pit of molten agony.

The Griffin watched him. Quantro stepped forward and gazed with malicious glee, the pleasure of a wanton child who enjoys the throes of a tormented animal.

It did not last long. No organism could sustain the racking torture that twisted the poor wretch. His body was still contorted, his face a thing of horror, when at last he died.

“You wagered your life,” said the Griffin. “And you lost, because you failed. I do not brook failure. You have upset my plans,” he went on, his voice quickening to fury. “To hell with you!”

He turned and beckoned to Quantro, then touched a button that caused an opening to suddenly appear in the floor, swiftly widening, as the diaphragm shutter of a camera opens. Into the steel chute the dwarf, displaying enormous strength in his long arms, shot the twisted body.

The Griffin poured himself another measure of the wine, careful to see that the air hole that had released the poisoned liquor through a second outlet in the curved lip was closed. It was but a common conjuring trick, a little elaborated, but he had used it before to like purpose and it intrigued him.

“I deal swift death upon occasion,” he said aloud, as he set down the chalice, “swift and violent, but never lingering. It is not artistic. He would have liked to see
me
writhe, the craven slave.”

He began to pace the floor where the opening had closed.

He had intended this latest poison for his next coup. Now he must change his arrangements within a fixed time, and it annoyed him to be thwarted.

Gordon Manning believed that if the Griffin once failed, his tremendous ego could not sustain the blow and he would go stark mad. Now, at this check, Quantro cowered. He had chuckled over the death of Number Eight, he quailed now before the storm he sensed brewing in his master.

But presently the Griffin chuckled also. Quantro could not hear it, but he felt the change.

“It will be amusing to see how Manning takes this,” the Griffin said.

He took his seat again, made sign to Quantro, who brought a Turkish hookah. The dwarf lit the bowl of hemp-treated tobacco as the Griffin set the crystal mouthpiece between his lips, and the smoke flowed upward through the rose-scented water.

Presently he pitched his voice to a certain note and spoke into the bronze disk that stood on the desk, suspended between pillars. It was through this he had broadcast his challenge to the listening world an hour before.

The sensitive diaphragm responded, translating his words into a vibrant sound that, in turn, was changed to an order underground, the order for the Griffin’s meal.

Quantro stood by, tasting each dish, smacking his blubbery lips. The Griffin watched him keenly. Some of his slaves might conspire in their despair. He took no chances.

With his liqueur he relaxed. Quantro removed the remnants of the meal, descending by an automatic lift that opened in the wall. The Griffin was left alone, to his sensuous music, his incense and his thoughts.

“Manning will have read my letter by now,” he said softly, his low voice like the purr of a satisfied tiger. “He will be on the alert once more. And, once more, it will be checkmate for Manning. This second plan is far better than the first.”

He took up the pipestem again, inhaling the fumes of
bhang.

IV

BELMONT is the name, my dear Manning. Raymond Belmont. The fool who thinks himself a wizard—who would pit himself against the adamantine rulings of the stars, who seeks to change the ordained course of life through his pitiful discoveries and medicaments.

There is the stake for our next game, Manning—the life of Belmont. I, who am elect, who have read the heavens, know that his course is ran on the nineteenth of this month, somewhere in those divisions of time that men use to divide that which is indivisible, in the twenty-four hours between two midnights.

It is ordained. The astral forces may not be halted. Do you take up the gage?

Manning read the letter over again the morning after he had received it. Night had brought him no special counsel.

He could see plainly enough that the Griffin’s enormously inflated egoism was increasing. Now his astrological studies had convinced him he was the chosen arbiter of Fate, appointed to carry out the destinies he imagined written in the stars, casting the horoscopes of those he divined were to be eliminated. In his warped brain the idea had become fixed that men like Raymond Belmont interfered with the decrees of preordained existence because they helped men to live happier, longer lives.

Belmont was a scientist who had devoted his time and his great wealth to the investigation of diseases whose sources were obscure. He had filtered germs that had eluded research, created serums to destroy them. His worth to mankind was incalculable. His foundation treated cases unable to otherwise obtain treatment. His loss, at the very zenith of his powers, would be staggering.

And the Griffin, in his arrogance, with his kinked brain, had selected him for destruction.

Belmont was a recluse, pursuing his studies and experiments on his estate on Staten Island, remote from the world, surrounded by his staff. He was never interviewed, and gave out his priceless discoveries only when they were perfect. It would be difficult even for Manning, with all the influence he could command to get through to him. But it had to be done.

Belmont, on a far higher scale, believed himself to be appointed for one purpose. He was the born healer. He would be inclined to scoff at the threat of the Griffin, if, indeed, he had ever heard of him. In some ways he was particularly vulnerable to the attack of this monster.

Yet he must be warned, be protected. This was the seventeenth. Manning had none too much time.

He found it impossible to get through to Belmont personally. They had no mutual acquaintances. The secretary who answered the telephone at Belmont’s place seemed to have been chosen for his ability to keep out all interference. Nothing that Manning could urge elicited anything further than the information that Belmont was engaged in a most important laboratory experiment.

“I’ll pass on what you say,” said the man finally. “But the orders are final. There is no occasion to worry. No danger of anything happening to Mr. Belmont while we are looking out for his safety.”

The telephone was shut off on this last statement, nor could Manning reconnect. There was nothing to do but make a personal visit, exhibit credentials, and try to impress on Belmont’s aides the very real danger. Belmont’s house was his castle, and he seemed to have stout protectors, but Manning knew that the Griffin had penetrated the most subtle of defenses before.

V

HIGH woven wire on steel poles, topped with strands of barbed wire, surrounded the barren grounds of Belmont’s place. There was no attempt at gardening, no shrubbery or trees, merely lawns through which wound the roads and paths.

At the only gate a guardian stood outside his watchbox, surly and reticent and suspicious of all comers. Two savage looking police dogs were beside him. He challenged the military looking man who drove up in a powerful roadster.

“You can’t come in without a pass. You got to have a pass of some kind. Got to make an appointment.”

“My name is Gordon Manning. I am a special agent of the police. Here is my badge. I must see Mr. Belmont on a matter that is vital. It may mean life or death.”

His manner had some effect, coupled with the sight of the gold badge.

“I’ll send your name up to Mr. Henderson,” said the guard grudgingly. “If he wants to see you, all right. You don’t look like a crank, but I’ve got my orders. Folks use all kinds of dodges to get inside. You got a card?”