In the Grip of the Griffin: The Complete Battles of Gordon Manning & The Griffin, Volume 3 (23 page)

Harding had taken a long swig of his highball, expecting Manning was doing the same thing.

Suddenly he rose, strangling, stiffening, clutching at the air with hands that grew rigid. Harding dropped before Manning could reach him. Tiny bubbles of thick froth gathered at his lips, his eyes rolled up. His face was livid, then gray, splotched with crimson. He rattled in his throat, clawing at the rug; horrible, gasping for breath.

The Griffin had struck, almost at the eleventh hour.

But for the grace of the gods, Manning felt he would be lying there beside his friend.

The “Analects of Lao Tsze.” The habits of your friends and enemies!

Ali had not tampered with the Scotch whisky. It was the seltzer that Harding preferred. But how?

Manning flung open the window. It was his full belief that Harding could not be recalled to life. He could summon medical aid—but there was also the necessity of seizing Ali!

Ali, with his fiddle, who had somehow poisoned the seltzer.

Manning made a dash for the door, entered the main corridor of the apartment, and saw Ali gliding for the entrance. Ali turned and a long knife flashed in his hand.

Manning tackled him bare-handed.

Ali had changed the carton of sparklets in the library. One of the Griffin’s slaves in his infernal laboratories had charged them with some fatal gas, and Ali had bided his time. Manning meant to capture him alive.

He locked his left wrist below that of Ali, his forearm thrust through the bend of Ali’s arm as he elbowed it back.

His right hand grasped the right wrist of Ali. The fingers of his left hand vised his own right wrist as he faced his opponent. It was a jujutsu armlock with terrific pressure applied to force Ali to let go of the knife or have his wrist dislocated.

Ali countered, falling on his stiffened left arm. He flung his legs about Manning’s in a scissors throw, one leg above and one below Manning’s knees, destroying his balance.

But Manning fell sideways, his weight lunging into Ali’s crotch, both hands free again. Ali squirmed, seeking his knife as Manning went for his gun.

He struck with the muzzle at Ali’s skull, and Ali’s blade thrust upwards. It entered Manning’s forearm; it grated on the bone. In the agony of the nerve shock Manning pulled trigger. The report of the gun thundered in the passage and Ali collapsed, a bullet between his eyes, ranging upward.

There would be no confession from Ali, even if one could ever have been wrung from him.

Manning was bleeding, too. Blood dripped from his arm as he called police headquarters, giving his name.

Every aid that the Griffin had tested on the unfortunate human guinea pig failed to resuscitate Bayard Harding.

The medical examiner bound up Manning’s wound. Ali’s steel had not been poisoned. The hurt was not dangerous.

“Nothing could have been done,” the examiner said. “I’ll take the siphon along. I see you didn’t take your own drink, Manning. I’m taking that, too. You had a narrow escape.”

Manning looked sadly upon the face of his friend. If his own death had saved Harding, had compassed that of the Griffin, he would have been content, he thought.

But the monster had scored again.

V

Face to Face

It was close to dawn when Manning let himself into his own house at Pelham Manor. He switched on a light and wearily went into his own library. His wound throbbed, but more poignant than that was the burden of defeat that clutched at his heart.

His favorite armchair invited him. It was by the side of the hearth, partly facing a lacquered cabinet that stood on high legs. Its paneled doors showed two scowling figures of Chinese gods.

He touched a switch and a shaded light went on beside his chair.

It was occupied by a shape of mystery, shrouded in a cloak.

It was the Griffin—here in Manning’s own house! It meant that death must have come to Manning’s faithful servitors, that death awaited him.

The Griffin chuckled.

“Face to face at last, Manning. I have been waiting for you. I won the game to-night, but I am tired of you as an opponent. I prepare to clear the board.”

Manning’s weariness fled. He jerked his gun and fired pointblank at the mocking monster. He knew the slug went true, aimed at the Griffin’s heart. He saw the Griffin stagger from the impact, heard his jeering laugh.

The Griffin’s knees struck the seat of the big chair and he fell into it. But he was filled with unholy glee. He was not wounded. Bruised, perhaps, beneath a steel vest.

Before Manning could pull trigger again, this time to send a bullet through that leprous mask, the doors of the lacquered cabinet swung silently apart and an apelike thing propelled itself through the air.

The arms of Al went about him. The fingers of Al clamped on Manning’s throat with prodigious fury.

His wind was shut off. Hot flames seemed to fill his skull. His bulging eyes saw the Griffin, sitting forward like a devil in hell, watching a soul tortured to death, the mask wrinkled in his fiendish grin.

But this was Manning’s house. He had built it, had planned it. The Griffin had his devices—and Manning was not destitute of some of his own.

He rolled over on the floor to the baseboard, hurled himself against it with the last remnant of his strength.

It gave way, swinging on spring hinges. This opening was not of wood, but steel. It gave into a narrow closet that opened on another room.

Al was scraped from Manning’s back. A shrill contact alarm rang out as the panel snapped back and an automatic plunger held it fast.

Manning lay there, panting, choking, safe enough.

The alarm rang on.

It sounded at the nearest police station. But when the radio patrol cars arrived, the Griffin and his freak had vanished.

The Griffin’s Living Death

Doomed to Become a Living Corpse—This Was the Fate That Awaited Manning as the Griffin Prepared His Most Diabolic Trap

I

The Monster’s Trail

Although time was the one thing he could not afford to waste, Gordon Manning did not use the police siren allotted to him by the department. He did not dare in any way to make his progress conspicuous, despite the fact that he had made arrangements for a quick and secret shift from his own to another car, before he got out of the city.

For the first time it began to look as if the use of his peculiar type of agents to close in on the Griffin, to discover the secret lair of that homicidal mad monster, were about to be crowned with at least some measure of success.

But Manning was well aware that he himself might be under the constant surveillance of the Griffin’s own men, and they would work as mysteriously, be as much under cover and hard to distinguish as Manning’s own private corps.

One slip might spoil everything. At any moment that evil genius might become suspicious. It was hard to cope with the swift changes of an eccentric but brilliant mind.

It was best to strike the moment the iron became tolerably warm, rather than wait until it was hot and glowing.

For long, weary weeks, Manning had been receiving the reports of his unprofessional but efficient spies. It had seemed hopeless work, while every now and then the Griffin struck sometimes with warning, sometimes without.

When he warned, it was because of a belief in his own invincibility, the belief that the stars were in favorable aspect for the success of his crimes. Such warnings were intended to strike terror to the soul of the victim and those who loved him—or her. To fray the steady, strong nerves of Manning, always attuned to the thrill of evil, the expectation of hearing the Griffin’s mocking voice announce a new murder of some one the world badly needed; or receiving a letter to that effect in the Griffin’s characteristic writing, signed by his scarlet seal—scarlet as fresh-spilled blood, and stamped with his symbol.

Now Manning was on his way, summoned to a rendezvous where one of his men waited to point out the trail to the Griffin’s den.

Such a job had been like the assembling of a mammoth jigsaw puzzle, handicapped by an intricate and confusing design, and the fact that the pieces had to be picked up here and there, scraps that seemed impossible to weave into the answer.

For weeks Manning had been plotting circles and triangles within which he would gradually narrow the limits of the neighborhood where the Griffin had his aerie.

That lair, Manning had concluded, was within fifty miles of City Hall, New York. That was a territory that included three States in its scope. None knew better than Manning how many places it held that were still rural, remote from the general lines of travel.

Radio and telephone may link up a house with civilization; a mile of dirt road and a lack of street lighting keeps it a place apart. The rapidly increasing mixture of cosmopolitan population, in both city and country, breaks up the old neighborliness.

Manning believed the lair was north, from the beginning; probably somewhere in Putnam, Dutchess or Rockland Counties, with the last doubtful. New Jersey had the handicap of too easily checked tunnels or slow-moving ferries. Long Island was not hard to scout and Manning had dismissed it before his first clews began to point to the north. Connecticut was, of course, a possibility.

But this tip, from one of his own agents, swung the needle of suspicion steadily north. There were hamlets in Putnam and Duchess where woods were still thick about them, railroads well away. They had been the centers for farmers before most of the farms went back to sumach and thornapple. Now they had dwindled to a disconsolate general store or so. The mills no longer ran; deserted houses stood about, reached only by wood roads. Houses that dated back to the days before George Washington wooed Mary Philipse at Philipse Manor, near Carmel, in Putnam County, and was refused.

There are, believe it or not, forgotten villages within that radius, where the main attraction for the winter is The Swiss Bell Ringer, playing the
Blue Danube Waltz.

In such a place the Griffin lurked.

Manning wove his way through traffic expertly. Near the bridge that must take him out of Manhattan, he swung off the street into a garage. He stepped swiftly from his roadster into the closed van of a dyeing and cleaning establishment, and was driven off immediately to another garage, where he transferred again to another roadster, of different make and color from his own, but equally as powerful.

He had used this method of throwing off possible espionage before. He had no reason to think that he had been followed, even to the first garage; but precaution was paramount if the Griffin was going to be caught. Nothing would be learned at the garage. They knew who he was—Gordon Manning, special-service agent, commissioned to eliminate the Griffin.

Manning had brought him in once, and the clumsy law, working on medieval procedure, had called the Griffin mad, legally irresponsible for his hideous crimes. They had locked him up in Dannemora, and the Griffin had not stayed there long.

Next time—this time, Manning prayed it might be as he sped along the parkway—Manning was going to assume responsibility. If he closed in and the Griffin gave him the excuse, as no doubt he would, Manning meant to bring back a dead monster, eliminated beyond all recall.

Manning’s present method, continued steadily, aside from the events furnished by some new crime of the Griffin, was similar to that of the old bee-hunters who roamed the prairies, catching bees as they went, letting them escape, marking their lines of flight.

Where those lines converged there would be their prize, a dead limb of some tree, dripping with luscious honey.

Manning’s “bees” were the cars in which the Griffin, or his agents, escaped from the scenes of horror. Many times those cars were the same machine, and carried the Griffin. It was a long-hooded sedan of the most expensive make. It was black, shining with the rich luster of enamel. Many rich men had cars like it, and it was not easy to distinguish.

It seemed certain that the Griffin had a more powerful engine than the one originally sold with that make. He had left Manning’s fast roadster behind, more than once. There was no doubt that the license number was frequently changed, that it could be shifted automatically as the car sped along.

The flight of these “bees” was of course broken by the very nature of the routes taken by the cars, by the odds of a deliberately twisted course; yet, little by little, they had converged to what should be a common center.

And Manning had established, within the narrowing area of his search, both key men and field men.

He had picked them from all ages. Some were learned and others could not spell properly. They had no headquarters; only few of them came in contact with each other.

Now he was bound for a key man, a good mechanic who had been glad to be placed in charge of a roadside garage and machine shop. There was not much trade, but the profits were all his, aside from the salary Manning paid him and the prospects of bonuses. Manning got a public telephone booth installed in the garage, which brought Farrell close to village gossip.

It was through Farrell, and a field man, Bishop, that Manning was making this play. His agents made themselves known to be in good standing with each other by the use of code words, changed every three days. A man not in possession of the last word was to be considered untrustworthy.

Though he picked carefully, paid well, and knew them grateful, Manning was careful. It was not that he mistrusted them so much, as his knowledge of human nature. The Griffin had unlimited means. He could offer a sum to a man that would, after months of poverty and distress, tempt him beyond his powers. Or he could threaten, he could strike. Once let him suspect one of Manning’s spies and he would surely either bribe the man to be a traitor, or make away with him.

II

The Flying Death

Farrell was thirty-odd, unmarried, ambitious and straightforward. As garageman he did not play a hard rôle.