Day of Doom: The Complete Battles of Gordon Manning & The Griffin, Volume 2 (29 page)

The secretary’s manner got under his skin.

“You have been warned,” he said. “I am Gordon Manning. If the Griffin should succeed in adding Mr. Shirley to the list of his victims, your attitude should entitle you to be cited as an accessory to the crime. We are not here to try and sell protection in any form nor to impress Mr. Shirley with the efficiency of the force. I tell you, my man, his blood be on your head!”

The secretary fell back a little. His face blanched slightly and his eyes widened at the name of dread.

“The Griffin?” he faltered. “Of course, Mr. Manning….”

Manning cut him short.

“The Griffin, following his usual habit,” he said, “has notified me that he intends killing Haydn Shirley on the twenty-fourth of this month. It is true that I foiled his last effort, as you are doubtless informed through the press. It is equally true that I may not be able to prevent this attempt, which will surely be made. Sure also that the Griffin’s plans are perfected. However, since you seem willing to accept the responsibility, there is nothing for us to do but leave.”

The secretary stammered an apology, broken off by the querulous voice of an old man speaking from a gallery that ran across one end of the room where they had been at last given an audience.

It was Haydn Shirley. He was thin and bent, his face was lined. His eyes, deep-socketed, were his outstanding feature. He clasped the rail of the gallery balustrade with veined and corded hands and barked down at them. Manning detected fear in that bark. He fancied the trembling hands were not normally so palsied. Haydn Shirley was not a feeble man but Manning knew he was a frightened one.

“What’s this? What’s this I hear?” he snapped. “The Griffin! I’m coming down there. Richards, are you sure you know these two men?”

“Mr. Gordon Manning and the New York Police Commissioner, sir,” said the secretary deferentially.

“Ha! I’m coming.”

There was a wait while he disappeared and then entered the room. He was more than merely well dressed. His clothes suggested the dandy. Other men Manning had tried to protect had been courageous. Haydn Shirley wilted, physically and morally, as he listened. The light went out of his eyes, his skin seemed to dry, and though he thrust his hands deep in his pockets, he could not control nor conceal their shaking. His voice became a squeak.

“Kill me, on the twenty-fourth? It’s incredible. Why, that’s my birthday! Good God! They say the Griffin casts horoscopes to discover when a man is vulnerable. Why…? Look here, Manning, what do you propose to do? What can I do? I don’t want to die. I can’t die. I have much to do. Important things. Important for other people. The world can’t afford to have me die yet, Manning! Mr. Commissioner! I want to live. I want to live!”

Manning noticed the secretary, Richards, gazing at his employer with a peculiar expression. He was seeing the man he had almost defied exposed, stripped of dignity, whimpering like a child in a dark room, his quivering hands now clinging to Manning’s arm. He had been hedged about with privacy but he had never feared assassination. Now his ego crumbled.

“The one thing to do, Mr. Shirley,” said Manning, “is to secure your safety for the twenty-four hours in which your life is threatened. I am sure you are in no danger until midnight on the twenty-third, I do not believe you will be in any danger, if you are still alive, on midnight of the twenty-fourth.”

Haydn Shirley cringed at the plain words—
if you are still alive.
His chin was trembling, his grip on Manning’s sleeve became despairing, like the clutch of a drowning man.

“If we can foil the Griffin,” Manning went on, “we shall convince him that he is fallible in his methods, we shall pierce the armor of his colossal conceit. He will not attack you again.”

“Yes, yes,” mumbled Shirley, his own morale destroyed. The potentate was only a puppet. “We must find some place where it is impossible for anyone to reach me. Not here.” His uneasy glances darted about the place, rested with suspicion on the secretary. “Not here. The Griffin, as you say, may have made his plans already, to conform to my habits. He may have spies here. I may have traitors close to me. Why”—he sank his voice to a whistling whisper, waving his secretary to a distance—“if those close to me
knew
I was going to die on a certain date they could reap a fortune, a fortune! Think of some place, Manning, for me to stay—not alone. You with me. Some place utterly impregnable.”

There was no courage in him, but there was cunning. The brain that had piled up millions was now, after the first shock, concentrating on this problem.

“I have it,” he said. “Look you, Manning, Mr. Commissioner, see what you think of this. We have vaults in the Shirley Building, specially constructed. Burglar-proof, bomb-proof, fire-proof, even earthquake-proof. The last word of experts. There is a central room there where valuable papers may be shown and private matters discussed in secret and absolute safety. Access to it is guarded by the time-locks on the entrance to the vaults.

“There are guards outside. They can be doubled, tripled. The Treasury itself, the Mints, are not better protected. The twenty-fourth, my birthday, falls on Sunday. From Saturday until Monday, the time-locks hold the vaults inviolate. I will stay there, in the conference chamber—you with me, Manning. You will be armed, but there will be no need. I shall fast for those twenty-four hours. I will not touch food or drink of any sort. I will not smoke. The Griffin did not think of my vaults, gentlemen. He did not think of my vaults.”

He had attained confidence, but it was not complete. He looked for assurance and the commissioner gave it to him.

“If the vaults are all you say, Mr. Shirley, we’ve got the Griffin stopped. And, as Mr. Manning points out, another failure might make a raving lunatic out of him again, instead of an insane genius. Will you consider Mr. Shirley’s suggestion that you remain with him through the zero period, Manning?”

Manning nodded. He had not mentioned it, but he had not forgotten the Griffin’s personal threat to him. And he did not think the Griffin had overlooked those vaults in the Shirley Building, invulnerable to attack as they might be.

“It sounds convincing,” he said, “but there must be no mention, no suggestion, made of your purpose.”

Haydn Shirley glanced again at his secretary. His narrow lips closed even more tightly.

“I will attend to that,” he said grimly.

“And I will attend to matters on the outside,” said the commissioner, “while Manning stays inside with you. There won’t so much as a mouse get through the cordon I’ll set round that building.”

IV

The conference chamber, set as it was in the heart of metal even harder than chilled steel, was safer than the control room of a battleship. There were doors twenty inches thick containing twelve-inch plates of pure copper that conducted heat away too rapidly for the entire body to be raised to fusing point and rendered even oxy-acetylene torches inefficient while the ductility of the copper resisted explosives. There were walls of concrete reinforced by steel plates attached to the inner faces by rag-bolts. There were combination locks and four-movement time-locks, each combination known but to one man.

Attempts at unlawful entry released gases, flooded approaches. Invisible rays played sentry.

After minute inspection Manning was assured that the Griffin was absolutely baffled in any attempt to penetrate to the interior of this fortress where he and Haydn Shirley were to stand siege for the twenty-four hours between midnight of Saturday and midnight of Sunday. Actually they would be pent-up for a longer period—from six o’clock on Saturday night until nine on Monday morning.

The chamber was furnished with comfortable chairs and couches. There was excellent ventilation, outside communication through telephone; a lavatory. There was a buffet supplied with charged water, and stronger refreshments for privileged users, also a frigidaire. Additional comforts had been provided for the occasion in the shape of cots, bedding; and food for Manning.

Haydn Shirley persisted in his resolution to touch neither liquid nor solid nourishment, no matter how he might thirst or suffer hunger. Manning imagined he had little appetite. Certainly he had lost weight, little as he had to spare, in the past few days. He did not even propose to smoke. He would sleep, and read.

They could send out an alarm, but nothing could be done to reach them until the time-locks automatically released them. Only two employees knew that Shirley was passing the week-end in the vaults, with another unnamed man. These two assumed that this was some special conference, some vital discussion of a project that might shake the world’s markets.

Nothing could reach them here. They were definitely and absolutely insulated from all danger from without, and Manning made certain there was none within. He knew his own life was threatened, but he did not go to Shirley’s extremes of total abstinence. He had his service gun, though its possession seemed the sheerest folly.

Yet he was not content, though he simulated perfect assurance for Shirley’s sake. An inner warning persisted as the hours passed, the hands of the electric clock registering the decreasing limit of the twenty-four. Haydn Shirley, on the contrary, seemed to absorb a confidence that Manning’s logic told him he should share—but could not.

“Two hours more,” said Shirley, as he looked at the clock. “Science has proven superior to a madman’s dreams. The Griffin did not know my resources.”

He was almost jaunty, and rallied Manning upon the latter’s gravity.

“It looks as if we had completely foiled him,” Manning agreed. “Nothing living, no extraneous agency could hope to enter here. I will admit that I had some doubt as to the ventilation until I saw the ingenious device of merely renewing the freshness of the air contained here. But,” he added, “I have made it a lifelong habit never to halloo until I was out of the wood.”

Shirley grinned.

“You’re a pessimist,” he said. “I’m going to sleep.”

Within five minutes he was slumbering while Manning grimly watched the clock. There were still one hundred and fifteen minutes, still nearly seven thousand seconds….

He filled his pipe and smoked. At midnight he could end his vigil. The Griffin prided himself upon living up to his predictions. Accuracy was part and parcel of his scheming. The minute hand crept on. Ten-fifteen, ten-twenty, ten-twenty-five….

Haydn Shirley was writhing on his cot, twitching and jerking in supreme and fearful agony. It was a terrible thing to witness. He was in pajamas and the silken garments and the sheets beneath and above him—it was too warm for blankets—were blotched with sweat. His lips had cracked, his eyes had retreated in their deep sockets and were dull from pain as he flung himself about, arched from feet to the back of his skull; his spine bowed, rigid. His hands darted to his abdomen and then tossed high. There was foam on his lips.

He could not answer Manning. There was dreadful appeal in his faded eyes but he could not speak, he could barely moan in great gasps. Manning brought water, tried to give him whisky. It was useless. The man was dying. What reserves were in his aged frame were burning up, dissolved in torment.

Manning knew he was dying. He had seen men die like that before, from various hideous causes. He did not try now to diagnose this condition. Shirley was spent. His ghost was passing. In some manner that seemed supernatural the Griffin had scored, had passed all their defenses. Manning himself was not attacked, so far….

It looked like poison, frightfully and swiftly irritant. But Shirley had tasted nothing.

The foam on his lips was suddenly bloody. There was a rattle in his throat, last horrible convulsions. Shirley’s body was racked, twisting like a man whose vitals were on fire.

Suddenly it was over.

Manning covered the collapsed form with a sheet. Haydn Shirley had ceased to exist. Manning might follow presently. Only an autopsy could—or could not—tell what had killed the financier. But the Griffin had scored once again. It seemed to Manning that he could almost hear the mocking laughter of the fiend, echoing hollowly in the vaulted place. Ten hours still to pass. More than that. The clock marked the time at ten forty-eight. Shirley had been twenty-three minutes dying in increasing torture.

Manning did what he could. He used the telephone, reached the commissioner. Outside there was a cordon of police. The medical examiner would be on hand when the vaults opened automatically. But he would be too late. There would be men from Centre Street, camera men and reporters from the press, the tabloids, the newsreels. A horde of morbid people. Another national tragedy blazed in the headlines. Manning would be a leading but unheroic figure in the stories.

He had failed!

Those matters done, he prepared to take up his vigil with the body of the man he had hoped to protect. The conference chamber was now a mortuary.

Manning did not refill his pipe. He knew that its fumes would seem to gather into the semblance of the Griffin’s triumphant, taunting face. He looked at the still outlines of the chilling corpse, trying to remember when he had seen a death like that before—and what had caused it.

So midnight came—and passed.

It brought no feeling of reprieve to Manning. The Griffin had hinted he would die, but the time limit had concerned only Haydn Shirley. The threat against Manning had been presaged as possible “after the elimination of Shirley.”

The threat did not harass Manning. While he combated the Griffin, every breath he took might be his last. He wanted only to come to grips with the Griffin once again.

V

Manning waited until the officially essential things were done before he attempted to leave the building. The medical examiner vaguely gave the cause of death as internal hemorrhage but reserved final decision until after an autopsy. Newspapermen swarmed, demanding details of the stirring and sensational story that would be flung upon the streets in extras. Already the news had spread; the market was reacting to the tragedy.