In the Grip of the Griffin: The Complete Battles of Gordon Manning & The Griffin, Volume 3 (20 page)

He went on, presenting and discussing the high lights of his important opinion on the subject. It was, thought Manning, a somewhat macabre subject in connection with the threat of a madman who had been favored by the present laws; a threat that, to Manning, did not lessen with the passing of time, but became concentrated.

The Griffin had never failed to strike. But this time he had not mentioned an hour or a definite name. He might even now be delivering his blow elsewhere. Manning went to the gate to add the service delivery van to the list. There would be some household supplies from the village. No callers were expected, so far, but these were always possible. Known friends would drop in without warning.

VII

The Moon Sets

It was a little after half past four when the Universal Service’s light truck drove through the gates. He excused himself abruptly and went swiftly towards the gate.

“Did any of you notice the tires on that car?” he snapped. Osgood’s servant shook his head. So did one of the detectives, but the other spoke up.

“Yes, sir. The van had Fairgood tires, almost brand new. That’s a Forge car and the tires are regular equipment.”

Manning’s eyes narrowed. At the end of the avenue he could see the van turning in after making the circuit of the house.

He saw a manservant coming across the garden towards Osgood with a package in his hand.

“Close that gate,” Manning ordered. “Stop that car. Hold the men. They may show fight. Be ready.”

“You think it’s a phony, sir?” asked the man who had recognized the car.

“I know it is. I know the tires on all delivery-company cars of any importance. The Universal has a special contract for their rubber. They use nothing but Cupleys, even on new cars. Hold ’em.”

He turned as the men came into the open, and the gates were closed. He saw Osgood beckoning to the servant, who began to hurry with the expected package.

Manning began to run, shouting to Osgood, the servant and, more specially, to the commissioner.

“Don’t open that package! Don’t drop it, man! Get rid of it, safely—quick!”

The servant stopped, startled, alarmed.

He almost let the package fall. Osgood stood stock still. Manning was still twenty feet away. The commissioner barked at the man:

“Hang on to it! I’ll take it! It’s dangerous.”

The servant’s eyes bulged. He came to a sudden decision, and dodged the commissioner, taking a few rapid steps. For a moment Manning thought him an agent of the Griffin. To kill the man might be fatal. He was passing too close to Osgood.

Then the man, with a manifest air of triumph, tossed the parcel into the pool. He turned, looking for approval.

“That’ll fix—”

The ripples were still spreading when the explosion sent the water geysering upwards, with fish and weed; with fragments of the stone fountain, shattered to splinters.

It had received the full charge of the infernal machine. With his satanic cunning, the Griffin had doubtless arranged the bomb to explode on opening, but he had also determined that, if the parcel should be suspected, he would still get a measure of unhallowed joy, even if he missed his target.

He might have hoped to trap Manning. It is a common practice to drop a suspected contraption of this type into water. But the Griffin must have included metallic sodium or some element sympathetic to moisture, that acted instead of the detonator that would have worked by the friction of opening.

They would never know. They were all drenched. The servant was sent staggering by the air concussion. Osgood and the commissioner were thrown together. All three were uninjured, though they were drenched by the contents of the pool. People came running from the house.

Manning stumbled to one knee, recovered.

There was the crackling fire of a sub-machine gun at the gate. The van backed up, charged at full tilt at the iron gates—but failed to break through.

One detective was down, but the driver hung limp over his wheel. The man with him sprang out, shooting at another of the guards, wounding him. The man made for the wall, leaped into a tree, holstering his gun as he sprang. He was taking a desperate chance to gain the top of the wall, perhaps not counting on outside guards.

Manning came sprinting over the turf. He jumped and grabbed the man’s ankles, swung on them with all his weight and brought the other out of the tree. As the man fell he grappled furiously with Manning, the two of them rolling on the ground as the others came racing up.

They dared not shoot. Manning, always in condition, hard as nails from hand ball, was a good wrestler. He knew the holds of the Japanese, but the desperate agent of the Griffin was armed with the triple strength of fear.

Manning wanted the man alive. He did not have much luck questioning the Griffin’s men when he nabbed one, but there was always a chance.

The man tore loose from a grip that almost broke his arm, driving upwards with his knee at Manning’s groin. He managed to get out his gun. Manning, fighting against the nauseating agony, felt the barrel of the weapon against his ribs. He expected the searing flame and lead in his belly as he pushed back the man’s chin and struck sidewise at his Adam’s apple.

The man collapsed with a gasp, but his twitching hand pulled trigger. Manning’s clothes were burned, but his skin was not scorched. His chopping blow had diverted the other’s aim.

The bullet had gone upwards, through diaphragm and heart.

Even if the bullet had not been instantly fatal he would never have spoken again. Manning’s jujutsu chop had broken his hyoid bone; would probably have killed him.

This time the Griffin had failed, but once more his agents had not betrayed him, could not have done so had they dared.

Manning rose, panting, regretful.

“It’s over, so far as you and the other three are concerned,” he said to Osgood. “They were never in real peril, of course, and the Griffin never tries to retrieve a failure.”

“There is one thing I don’t understand,” said Osgood. “Where is the legitimate van?”

Manning smiled grimly.

“You may be assured the Griffin knew all about it,” he said. “I think you will find that your publishers got a second call not to deliver today, for what seemed a sufficient reason.”

“If I knew where to send it,” said Osgood, “I’d present him with a copy. If he is ever tried again I hope some of the changes I advocate will be adopted.”

“I doubt if the Griffin will ever be tried again,” said Manning. “They might let him off.
I
don’t intend to, next time I get within range of him.”

The Griffin’s Gambit

A Legless Figure of Horror Climbs into a Locked House to Start a Game of Death That Brings Manning and the Griffin Face to Face

I

The Griffin’s Key

The long black car slid along the country road. The purring of the engine was inaudible. The moon was shining, though it was low in the heavens, and no lights showed in or about the big sedan. It glided with the somber, sinister aspect of a hearse.

Trees lined the road, which was a branch from a main highway. It possessed no lighting, either for traffic control or general purposes. It ran for about two miles before it linked with another highway, and in that distance there were but four houses, well apart; comfortable country residences without especial pretense to display or size.

The car came to a noiseless halt where the shadow was thick. Across the road from it ran a high hedge of osage orange, thorny and impenetrable, backed by wire fencing that was invisible from the road. There was an entry gate of ornamental iron, swung between two pillars of cemented fieldstone, topped by electric lanterns that had been switched off.

One figure remained at the wheel of the car, seated as rigidly as an automaton. A door opened, and two weird figures descended. One was dwarfish, not more than four feet in height. It was dressed like a man, but it appeared like a deformed ape. It had no legs, but it moved with astounding agility, the trunk swung between the arms.

The other figure was almost as mysterious. It was tall and lean, wrapped in a black mantle of ankle length. On the head was a high-crowned, wide-brimmed sombrero. This man looked like some tragic figure of mediaeval Spanish romance. The collar of the cape was turned up, his features were not to be seen in the light. What was to be glimpsed of the face appeared ghastly and unnatural.

No words passed between them. What was to be done seemed to have been planned to the minutest detail.

The legless creature climbed one of the stone pillars as nimbly as a chimpanzee, hoisting its bulk with the strength of its arms, hand-over-hand, with fingers that gripped the crevices securely.

It was a fearful sight to see this object swarming up the wall to the lantern cage. It squatted there, like a gargoyle, motionless.

A dog came bounding and barking across the lawn. It was not yet enraged, its voice was a first warning, rather a general alarm. Its nostrils twitched to catch the strange scent that had roused it to duty.

The legless freak tossed a juicy fragment of meat. Here was a more inviting odor. The dog gulped it down. A sound, half groan, half howl, as the pellet inside the meat dissolved, and the deadly poison paralyzed lungs and heart, died away as the unlucky brute fell on its side, twitching, gasping, limp.

In the darkness the human gargoyle chuckled noiselessly. It was deaf and dumb. Such deeds as this amused it. Then it lowered itself inside the garden. No lights appeared. There was no disturbance.

Balanced on its torso, the freak juggled with the lock of the gate. It was not elaborate. The gate opened, and the cloaked figure passed in like a shadow, sinister and silent.

The two strode across the velvet lawn, one on legs, the other on its arms. Still they moved with the fell and absolute precision of those who have spied out the land. Their evil purpose was manifest in their appearance, their approach, the silent hour, when vitality is low in sleeping folk, and courage has retreated.

A veranda ran about the building, once a Colonial farmhouse. The cloaked man stood between bush-cypresses, hidden, as the living gargoyle hitched itself up a post. The freak disappeared, entered a window opened to the night, festooned with clambering roses.

Swinging between softly planted palms, it passed through the sleeping chamber. It glanced at the fine four-poster bed where a woman lay, and almost halted. But the will of the cloaked man, who was its master, drove it on to open the unlocked door, to propel itself down the stairs.

The house had an odor of serenity, almost of sanctity. It believed itself secure. But this whimsy of a pernicious Nature left a taint behind it of perversion, almost of obscenity.

The front door opened. The freak made a hissing sound. The cloaked man passed through the door, ascended the stairs.

On the landing a faint night light burned on a small stand. The cloaked man gestured, ordering his slave to descend. Now a high-bridged nose showed, like a hook in shape. There was a glint of infinitely evil eyes, flickering like the licking flames of hell. They seemed to glow through a scabrous mask, as a leper’s orbs might shine. The man’s skin was dull gold, curiously wrinkled about features that looked like those of a long-mummied Pharaoh, resurrected from a sarcophagus.

The legless thing hopped down the stairs, awkward now, like a toad. It went out into the night, out to the car, where it took its place on the rear seat, without a sign from the chauffeur.

The moon sank slowly. The landscape lay dark, windless and inanimate. The woman awoke. She slept soundly, as a rule, without dreams; sane and healthy. She was a psychiatrist, without illusion, her life dedicated to those whose minds were too often filled with fear. Fear that she often banished, mental ghosts she laid.

But now fear gripped
her.

Two green eyes stared at her. They were centered with black pupils. They did not move. Back of them, she felt a horrible, inflexible malevolence.

Her heart contracted. She was not sure if the vision were real, or conjured out of unsound sleep, by nerves that for the first time in her sound life had betrayed her.

The malignant orbs disappeared. They had focused upon her from battery-lit lenses in a contrivance suspended from the cloaked man’s neck, like binoculars.

Now, in the dark, his own hidden eyes gloating like a ghoul’s, the cloaked man shifted the green lenses.

The woman was brave, too brave. She had no weapon, no way of summoning help from servants who were faithful, yet might not be too ready to respond. But there was a reading lamp clamped to the head of the bed. She reached for it, fumbling and stealthy, still half-tranced by slumber.

The light showed her a horrible face, beaked like an eagle. It seemed to have a leprous skin, like that of a shedding snake, dully gold.

Her voice died in her throat as she roused, and tried to raise herself. The leprous face twitched to a derisive grin. A hideous chuckle was the last thing she heard as hands like talons clutched her throat, pressing, with deadly thumb-thrusts, upon her jugular vein and vagus nerve. Air and blood cut off, she thrashed like a landed salmon, subsiding with gasps as her lungs failed her.

The green lights played again upon her distorted face, lips twisted in the sardonic smile of death.

The chuckle sounded again.

The man leaned forward. He drew a small silver box from an inner pocket, took out of it a scarlet label, a small oval of stiff paper he licked beneath his skin-tight mask.

He affixed it to her forehead.

Then he glided from the room, down the stairs. The door clicked, with its automatic lock of false safety.

The car moved down the road into the farther highway.

There its lights went on, and it gathered speed, rushing through the night, with many other cars carrying men and women. Most of them were, or had been, pleasure bent.

But none experienced greater delight than the mad monster who sat with the freak Al beside him. The Griffin had made his first move, his gambit, in his latest game, the sport in which his perverted nature delighted; the murder of the worthy.