Day of Doom: The Complete Battles of Gordon Manning & the Griffin, Volume 2
by
J. Allan Dunn
Altus Press • 2015
Copyright Information
© 2015 Steeger Properties, LLC under license to Altus Press
Publication History:
“Death’s Frozen Finger” originally appeared in the July 18, 1931 issue of Detective Fiction Weekly magazine. Copyright 1931 by Popular Publications, Inc. Copyright renewed 1958 and assigned to Steeger Properties, LLC. All Rights Reserved.
“The Menace of the Monster” originally appeared in the August 29, 1931 issue of Detective Fiction Weekly magazine. Copyright 1931 by Popular Publications, Inc. Copyright renewed 1958 and assigned to Steeger Properties, LLC. All Rights Reserved.
“The Mottled Monster” originally appeared in the February 27, 1932 issue of Detective Fiction Weekly magazine. Copyright 1932 by Popular Publications, Inc. Copyright renewed 1959 and assigned to Steeger Properties, LLC. All Rights Reserved.
“The Way the Wind Blew” originally appeared in the July 2, 1932 issue of Detective Fiction Weekly magazine. Copyright 1932 by Popular Publications, Inc. Copyright renewed 1959 and assigned to Steeger Properties, LLC. All Rights Reserved.
“The Dust of Destiny” originally appeared in the July 30, 1932 issue of Detective Fiction Weekly magazine. Copyright 1932 by Popular Publications, Inc. Copyright renewed 1959 and assigned to Steeger Properties, LLC. All Rights Reserved.
“Hunch!” originally appeared in the September 24, 1932 issue of Detective Fiction Weekly magazine. Copyright 1932 by Popular Publications, Inc. Copyright renewed 1959 and assigned to Steeger Properties, LLC. All Rights Reserved.
“The Unknown Menace” originally appeared in the October 8, 1932 issue of Detective Fiction Weekly magazine. Copyright 1932 by Popular Publications, Inc. Copyright renewed 1959 and assigned to Steeger Properties, LLC. All Rights Reserved.
“Death Silent and Invisible” originally appeared in the November 5, 1932 issue of Detective Fiction Weekly magazine. Copyright 1932 by Popular Publications, Inc. Copyright renewed 1959 and assigned to Steeger Properties, LLC. All Rights Reserved.
“Day of Doom” originally appeared in the November 19, 1932 issue of Detective Fiction Weekly magazine. Copyright 1932 by Popular Publications, Inc. Copyright renewed 1960 and assigned to Steeger Properties, LLC. All Rights Reserved.
“Death in a Leash” originally appeared in the December 21, 1932 issue of Detective Fiction Weekly magazine. Copyright 1932 by Popular Publications, Inc. Copyright renewed 1960 and assigned to Steeger Properties, LLC. All Rights Reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Designed by Matthew Moring/Altus Press
Special Thanks to Joel Frieman, Monte Herridge, Everard P. Digges LaTouche, Ray Riethmeier and Jonathan Sweet
Death’s Frozen Finger
From the Air, Manning Fights the Ferocious Scheme of His Arch-Enemy, the Griffin
Gordon Manning usually went for lunch to his favorite down town restaurant. It is open to the public at large, still it is a sort of a club, one of the few places where they still have real waiters who remember the tastes of their customers and know how to cater to them.
The food is excellent, the liquor, if you want it, may be relied upon. It is a true copy of a first-class, old-fashioned English chophouse. There are comfortable stalls where you may enjoy a game pie or a steak and kidney pudding. Manning appreciated good food. He kept himself always in the prime of condition. Now, more than ever, it was necessary to do so.
He was on the trail of the Griffin, the inhuman monster who had terrorized Manhattan, had made his malignant deeds felt throughout the whole United States, with his frightful and deliberate killings of the finest citizens.
Manning, ex-officer of the military Secret Service, had been detailed to succeed where the regular police forces had failed in the apprehension, the elimination, of the Griffin. So far, Manning had also failed. He had grappled with the Griffin’s agents, arrested some of them, killed some of them, but he had not succeeded in preventing any one of the crimes that the Griffin so audaciously announced beforehand; nor had he any real clew to the whereabouts of the monster’s headquarters.
This arch-fiend, undoubtedly mad, suffering from grandiose dementia, from egomania and homicidal and sadistic impulses, his mentality warped against all that was honorable, against all advancement and achievement, as a demon is warped against all goodness, had adopted as a title the name of the mythical creature, half lion, half eagle, the griffin.
To place emphasis upon his misdeeds, he used a scarlet seal, a flaming oval embossed with the symbol of a griffin’s upper body, rampant. The symbol of his own readiness to swoop, to leap, to strike and rend!
Through some mysterious source of knowledge, he had not merely the audacity to congratulate Manning upon his secret appointment, supposedly only known to Manning and the commissioner of police; but he had proclaimed the conflict between them a game.
A contest like that of the chessboard, using living pieces; a game wherein he challenged Manning, reserving for himself the moves of his opening attack, yet boldly giving out not merely the name of his intended victim, but the actual day upon which the tragedy would take place.
Manning sat in his usual seat at the restaurant now, his demitasse of coffee before him. He filled his pipe and lit it, ruminating.
With every thought and energy set upon his task, Manning was so closely attuned to the evil vibrations sent out by the Griffin that he sensed the imminence of the next crime, even as the primitive savage can feel the presence of an enemy hidden in the bush, miles away.
Manning was worn with anxiety. Even his perfect nerves were beginning to feel the constant strain, the heavy responsibility. He had a premonition, a hunch, that the diabolical being had plotted his moves, was ready to commence the play, to open the gambit in the Game of Death. He could not shake it off, and he rose, laid down his always generous tip, picked up the check, paid it to the smiling cashier, got his coat from its peg on the nearby stand, and felt in his pocket for his gloves.
There was a paper that had not been there when he had come in! It would not be hard in the busy luncheon hour to thrust a neatly-folded note into the pocket of the hanging garment.
It might be a message from the Griffin!
It was a mystery he deliberately left unsolved until he had returned to his offices, where he practiced as a consulting attorney, doing some legal business despite his tremendous special task.
In his private room that overlooked the towers and spires and set-in buildings reared high against the sky, the monuments of Manhattan, the weblike bridge, and the busy river, Manning unfolded the note.
It was hand-printed with great neatness. Manning read it through three times before he set fire to it and saw it burn in a metal tray to a fragment of carbon which he crushed to ash. Its contents were photographed on his brain.
TO-NIGHT, WHEN YOU DRIVE HOME TO PELHAM, FOLLOW THE BLACK CAR WITH GRAY WHEELS, BUICK SEDAN, THAT WILL PICK YOU UP AT MT. VERNON. DO NOT TRAIL TOO OPENLY OR TOO CLOSELY. WE WILL GIVE YOU A LEAD YOU ARE LOOKING FOR. WE WILL SHOW YOU WHERE THE MAD DEVIL LIVES. THAT IS AS FAR AS WE CAN GO. IT MAY MEAN OUR LIVES, BUT, IF IT MEANS THE DEATH OF THIS FIEND, WE SHALL BE CONTENT.
Manning walked to the big window and gazed out with unseeing eyes, considering the communication.
It might be a t
rap, but, if so, it was a very obvious one; unlike the Griffin’s devious, unexpected methods. Manning had been indirectly threatened, more than once, when he had run almost equal risks with some man he was endeavoring to protect. The Griffin had told him often, by word of mouth over an untraceable telephone wire, through television or radio apparatus, in letters written in his own bold script—purple ink on heavy gray paper, sealed always with the scarlet symbol—that, the moment he failed to amuse the Griffin as an opponent, he would cease to live.
Though he knew no such thing as fear, physical or mental, Manning realized that this was a very real danger, hanging always like the Sword of Damocles upon a thread, a thread that was the whim of the monster.
He knew also that he was constantly under the observation of the Griffin’s agents. There was a great advantage the Griffin did not fail to use—his knowledge of Manning’s whereabouts, his home, his offices, his usual haunts.
The agents who had been captured had inevitably refused under all pressure to give any clew. They were slaves of the Master, held in bondage by the dread of punishment not only for themselves, but those they loved.
No doubt they hated him, many of them. There might be a few of those agents who were of the Griffin’s own twisted, evil kind, but the majority must rebel against their servitude, at the frightfulness of the deeds which they were forced to commit.
These particular men—there were evidently two or more, as he understood the note, one the driver of the car and the other the observer—might well be mutineers, determined to lead Manning to the lair of the master murderer.
He made up his mind swiftly and definitely. He could not afford to overlook any lead. He would trail the sedan, as directed.
II
For several hours he worked on the affairs of clients, deciding, dictating, signing papers. He left at his usual hour, getting his powerful roadster from its parking place, driving his ordinary route, sure enough that he was watched. But he saw nothing of the black sedan with the gray wheels until he reached Mount Vernon.
There, true to appointment, it appeared ahead of him, making a right turn, giving him a lead. With his pulse going up a few beats, then settling to normal, but his blood still tingling at the prospect of discovering the aerie of the Griffin, the chance of coming to close quarters with him at last, Manning fell in behind.
He got no more than the barest glimpse of the two men in the sedan; nor had they looked his way. He followed them, through Pelham Manor, his own residential suburb, on to New Rochelle, through Larchmont and Mamaroneck. The steady string of cars had thinned out by now, but there were still plenty of them on the road. Manning kept one or two between his own and the machine he was following.
It was hardly dusk, though some lights were on in the houses, when they headed for Rye. They had kept close to the coast line. Manning had always figured the Griffin would not be far from water, rail, or good roads. He had once used a powerful hydroplane. Doubtless he had calculated on possible getaways. Manning had been pretty close to the Griffin sometimes in their grisly game of tag.
It would not be far now. He felt it in every nerve. Just how close might he get this time?
A long car, powerful, heavy, painted a neutral tint, running silently, swiftly, and so easily as barely to indicate its tremendous speed, passed Manning’s roadster as a race horse might pass a farm colt.
Manning was rolling at about forty with plenty of reserve. This car was making eighty.
He had seen it before. Once he had chased it, fruitlessly. Another time it had bested him in pace. He was sure of this car’s identity, and was smitten with a sudden sense of failure, of disaster.
It passed the black sedan. Something was tossed from it into, or through, a window of the smaller car. No one would ever tell just what happened. The long car fled with an increased burst of speed. Vanished. Inside the sedan there was a sudden tremendous explosion. Enough force had been released there to have performed a task twenty times as great, and as hideous. A burst of flame, a stench of gases, fragments of wood and metal and of men hurtled far and wide.
Rolling, yellow smoke, as if some terrible jinni had wrought this frightfulness and was escaping in his cloak of vapor, borrowed from hell’s own wardrobe!
The car immediately behind the fated sedan was twenty feet away, but it was flung on its side by the force of the explosion; the one back of it swerved to the curb, ran up on the sidewalk, crashing, out of temporary control, into a low stone wall.
Manning had to grip his wheel with all his strength. He set his brakes hard. The impact of the blast had already checked him.
Then he got out, looked at the rough pits torn in the smooth road, at the ghastly scraps that testified to the Griffin’s supreme and continuous control over his operatives. It almost seemed to him that, with the terrific trump of the explosion still smashing on his eardrums, he heard also the echo of mocking laughter lingering in the air.
A motorcycle officer came tearing up, intrepid and ready. Manning halted him with a gesture of authority as he braked to a stop, showed him a badge that brought a swift salute.
“Another racket bump-off,” said the cop, conclusively. Manning did not contradict him. There was no evidence. Shreds of human flesh cannot talk. And Manning was not disposed to. Not yet.
III
Manning had no appetite for the savory meal his Japanese servants had prepared and served him. He was used to awful sights, to carnage, to dreadful spectacles. It was his soul that had to steady itself in its citadel. There were moments when he almost wondered if the Griffin was really human, not some hideous conjuration of evil, an atrocious creation of a modern Frankenstein made from materials gathered from graveyard and dissecting room. Even a materialization out of hell itself!
He set those fantasies aside, lighting the tobacco in the brier-root bowl. Frankenstein’s monster destroyed itself. So it might be with the Griffin.
One failure to make good his predictions, and the man’s inflamed brain might well give way like rotten wood at a firm touch.
But he had scored to-night!
There seemed to be a stirring in the air of the room. The logs on the fire fell in, flame leaped and the room grew darker. This was his library. As yet, only one shadowed light suggested the rows of books, the furnishings. Manning himself was deep in a wing-chair that faced the window.
He saw there, pressed against the panes, a face—hideous, devilish. A light from without played on it; its owner was using an electric torch to illuminate it.
There was some sort of close-clinging mask over the high features; nose, cheek bones, eyebrows, chin! The light made the mask look like a leper’s countenance, or as if the skin was shedding, as a snake sheds.
Filmy yet close, like goldbeater’s skin, the mask clung; revealing but screening, giving suggestions of a hideous, triumphant mirth heightened by eyes that shone like green phosphorescent growths, the cold glow of a firefly, of a fungus, of sea-flame.
Instantly, with a movement too swift to be anything but a blur, Manning snatched the gun he had tucked down beside him in the cushion of the chair, and fired.
Followed the crash of glass, the stillness after the shot, smoke wisping in the room! And, this time, surely there came the sound of a laugh, infinitely disdainful and assured.
The face was gone. Manning, who seldom missed, knew that this time he had not scored. His grounds were inclosed, but there was no sign of intrusion, nothing to show that his alarm was anything but illusion—except for the oval of scarlet paper, like a blotch of bright blood, affixed to the window sill.
The sign of the Griffin. His symbol and unholy seal!
Manning knew well enough that the Griffin always deliberately tried to weaken him, to upset his poise. His nerves seemed sensitive as the shrouds of a ship suddenly plucked by a malignant wind. He forced himself to normal as he waited for the message he knew must surely arrive.
The failure of the little revolt might well hasten the Griffin’s next move, o
r it might not.
The days passed, and no message came. Manning was constantly waiting, half dreading, half welcoming the belated challenge to a test in which he was inevitably handicapped.
Meantime, the Griffin was conducting certain important experiments.
Gordon Manning was right. The Griffin held in subjugation men who served his purposes, carried out the orders of that distorted mentality that still was controlled by the mad will within.
The Griffin imagined himself maltreated by the world. It did not appreciate nor understand him. It had injured him, and he was out for deadly reprisal.
His madness conjured up monstrous things, reacting to what he learned of modern experiments. Whatever science devised and perfected, the Griffin twisted to his own criminal intents, exploiting his slaves to carry out his ideas.
He sat in his thronelike chair back of the massive, carved desk. In front of him swung a suspended disk of bronze upheld between two fluted pillars, each of which was topped by his device of a griffin’s head. The symbol was repeated in the inkstand that held purple ink, in a paper weight.
The chamber was circular, seemingly without door or window. The lighting was hidden, the air was kept pure by a ventilating system, though now it was tinged with the fragrance of the tobacco—containing a modicum of hasheesh—that he was smoking through a Turkish hookah pipe.
Hung with golden tapestries, the walls were of steel, fire-proof, bulletproof. So were the floors beneath the rich rugs. There was a faint sound of strange, exotic music, in curious rhythm, barbaric and sensuous.
The Griffin was clad in a long gown of black brocade. His features were disguised beneath the thin mask that set off the high-arching nose and cheek bones, the despotic chin. He looked not unlike some mummied priest or monarch of Old Egypt, upon whose face the golden face mask was still undisturbed.
Quantro, the Haitian dwarf, squatted on the floor, grotesque in his vividly hued turban, sash and robe; his arms long as an ape’s, his misshapen head too big; a deaf and dumb familiar and bodyguard; perpetually fingering the long blade thrust in his sash, the knife he always longed to use. To him the Griffin was God. A Papa of obi and voodoo.
Day of Doom: The Complete Battles of Gordon Manning & The Griffin, Volume 2 Page 1
