The music ended. At a sign from the Griffin, Quantro got to his feet with his apish, agile awkwardness, and took the cloth off a wicker cage. In this were two ringdoves. Quantro opened the door, tapped the bars until the doves flew out, circling the room while Quantro squatted again.
The Griffin spoke certain key-syllables at a fixed pitch into the disk of bronze. A low humming commenced, like the sound of a distant dynamo. The doves found no handy perching place. They continued to circle the room. The Griffin watched them with his glittering eyes, hard as onyx orbs.
Suddenly, out of midair, one dove fell lifeless, as if shot, though its feathers were unruffled save where one wing was outspread. The other flew on and then, in turn, tumbled.
The Griffin spoke again. The humming ceased. With a chuckle indescribably fiendish, the Griffin picked up the two dead birds and examined them. Quantro watched with leashed excitement.
“The finger of Death has touched them, Quantro,” said the Griffin aloud, while the dwarf tried to lip-read his meaning. “They are quite dead, and the death was swift and merciful. I am always merciful, though I may be dramatic. You, my Quantro, like to mangle and worry and rend. You lack artistry. But I kill instantly and I never repeat the process.
“This is a far different fate from the one that overtook those two foolish, would-be Judases the other day. Them I annihilated. They could not even hold a coroner’s inquest, for the lack of remains. It must have been amusing to watch Manning’s face. He is not a fool. He is persistent, and, if he comes too close for comfort, he must be eliminated. I may give that task to you, my Quantro. It would be a pretty play to witness.”
He broke off, chuckling.
Then he touched a button and entered the lift, whose door suddenly appeared in the curving wall. He was taking the dead birds to his underground laboratories, where his slaves labored for him—men without names, numbered robots. Men of science among them, expert craftsmen.
One was working at a laboratory bench in a chamber of cement-lined brick. He was once a surgeon, though now he practiced only for the Griffin.
He looked at the doves, ran a long finger almost tenderly over their plumage, touched the rings on their necks, muttering:
“And the voice of the turtle is heard in the land.”
“Don’t wander, Number Nineteen,” said the Griffin sharply. “Dissect these. I want to see what has happened to their vital organs. See if you can tell how they died.”
IV
AT last the message had arrived.
Manning looked at the familiar and ominous envelope, square, of heavy gray paper. His name and office address were written there in bold, characteristic chirography that yet, to an expert, betrayed the unbalanced but powerful mind of the writer.
Manning turned it over, breaking the scarlet cartouche with its embossed symbol. Red as a blot of blood.
“Who now?” he asked himself.
My dear Manning:
Once again the board is set, the pieces assembled, and you and I are adversaries. I trust that, by now, you will have recovered from any shock you suffered witnessing the abrupt termination of the lives of my renegade agents. It was foolish of you to think I am so remiss as not to countercheck the moves of those whom I employ.
The next person I shall remove, release from this mortal coil, has annoyed me by his mouthings, his writings, his ultra-altruism.
An old man, but still dangerous. In fact, his powers seem to ripen as his body declines. He has lived too long.
The finger of Death is pointed at him. The stars in their courses decree that celestial protection will be weakest for him on Tuesday next, which will be the seventeenth. On that day the frozen, fatal finger of the Universal Harvester will touch him, unless you, Manning, can usurp the place of the Heavenly Powers, for neither steel nor stone may protect him.
The name is Eric Bannerman.
By the way, Manning, don’t try and play the “game” off the board. Though even that effort was amusing. But it cost two lives. That means nothing to me, but you are inclined, it appears, to consider life valuable.
The signature, the Griffin, was appended, with the seal in crimson wax.
Manning felt a wave of revulsion engulf him.
Of all people, Eric Bannerman. Nearing seventy, a singer of the true things of life, of lofty ideals and inspirations. Bannerman, the uplifter, a poet who knew the heart of people and of Nature and reconciled them. A true poet of the people!
And, on the seventeenth, five days away, Eric Bannerman, who lived the simple life and, though close to three-score and ten, had many years of useful, invigorating, enlightenment within him, must die.
By the Griffin’s whim, the time for the deed might occur at any moment within midnight of the sixteenth and midnight of the seventeenth. It amused him to keep his victims and their would-be guards on tenterhooks.
Manning had learned by now that most of the Griffin’s successes had been consummated through his close attention to the habits of the men he doomed.
Eric Bannerman was wealthy, made so by the will of a spinster admirer who had found in his poetry, his company, and his conversation, an uplift. She had left him, with ample means to support it, her summer place in Connecticut, close to the shore.
There was a group of younger, more or less immature poets, who styled themselves as his “disciples” and called Bannerman “master.” Simple as was Bannerman’s nature, he had a shrewd faculty of testing others and sifting the fraudulent from the true, unerringly.
He received the homage of his followers with a twinkling eye, alive to their faults and frailties, teaching them much, not merely of poetic technique and license, but of things and thoughts that were clean and beautiful. To him poetry was a supreme art that should never be desecrated and his school was one of direct and lasting benefit.
There were seldom less than a dozen house guests at Windy Ridge, usually twice that number staying in the neighborhood.
Windy Ridge looked south across the Sound to Long Island, east to the broad Atlantic. It was sheltered by trees whose boughs were rocked and tossed by the vigorous sea breezes. The house was commodious and comfortable.
There were terraced lawns, shrubbery, flowers that grew at random in the grass, a rose garden, blossoming bushes. It was a refuge for birds.
On the highest of the terraces, in front of the house, with a magnificent vista spread out before it, was a seat of marble of exquisite proportions, simply but beautifully carved by a sculptor-admirer of the poet. It curved, and the center was deeply recessed and higher backed than the rest, to make a throne.
Here, cushioned and enthroned, Bannerman sat every afternoon when the weather was fine, to sometimes read one of his own poems, or one written by one of the disciples who showed true merit.
His pupils sat on either side of him, or threw themselves on the grass to listen, to hear the master descant on the beauty of poetry, the duties and responsibilities of all true bards.
So Gordon Manning found Eric Bannerman an hour before sunset, surrounded by his court.
Manning had obtained an introduction, but he found there was little formality to Windy Ridge. He stayed back, listening, after he had come to where the Japanese boy showed him the group. It was a simple but dignified and peaceful scene with the bearded poet and his noble face, the rapt pupils.
Save for the modern costumes, it might all have been set in Ancient Rome or Athens upon some verdant hillside.
Bannerman’s deep, sonorous voice was declaiming. Manning caught the lines; a somewhat turgid composition of one of his scholars.
“…the shouldering seas,
Shadowed beneath the sweeping argosies of cloud.
The cliffs, upstanding, arrogant, as they defy
The steady onslaught till the tide retreats
In broken, sullen ranks that will reform
To charge again in the unending conflict
’Twixt sea and shore.”
Manning introduced himself, as the
poem ended. The mutual acquaintance had already communicated with Bannerman, earlier in the day. Bannerman remembered it.
“Ah, yes,” he said. “I understand you wish to see me upon business personal and private to myself, business of the utmost importance.”
Manning bowed.
“Vital,” he said.
“I can imagine nothing more vital or important than a gathering such as this,” said the poet, with a wave of his hand.
The clouds were marshaling for sunset in the west, already taking on tinges of the glorious hues they would presently assume. The wind rustled the trees; the Sound was a stretch of sparkling, wrinkled blue; Long Island, twenty miles across the water, seemed ethereal in azure, purple and pearl gleams.
“Unless,” said Manning gravely, “it should be the discontinuance of them.”
“One may not live forever,” smiled Bannerman.
But he was struck by something he saw in Manning’s face, in his eyes.
“You will excuse me, all?” he asked. “I must talk with Mr. Manning. We will go into the house.”
V
Manning went to the heart of the matter without preamble. To his amazement, Bannerman knew nothing of the Griffin, save as a name vaguely remembered. He listened gravely as Manning enlightened him, recording briefly the Griffin’s crimes.
“The man is a homicidal maniac,” he concluded. “With a colossal ego. He is in deadly earnest. Your life will be in dire peril from midnight to midnight on the seventeenth. I shall do my utmost to protect you. I believe this, that if the Griffin’s plans should once fail, the man would go stark insane, a raving lunatic, unable to plot with his uncanny faculty, to use his immense resources.”
“What do you propose to do?” asked Bannerman. “If we can circumvent such a monster, it is surely my duty to place myself in your hands—aside from the fact that I am not at all eager to die. I enjoy life. I believe what there is left of it for me may prove useful.”
Manning explained his general plans. Then he showed Bannerman a copy of the letter he had received from the Griffin.
“This time I think he has overreached himself,” he said. “I may be mistaken, but I believe he has trusted too much to his own ingenuity and, I hope, underestimated my intelligence. He has had cause to do so, but it is usually a fatal error.
“He talks of the fatal, frozen finger that neither steel nor stone may deflect or keep out. It is my profound conviction that he anticipates using some sort of death ray. He has unquestionably studied your habits. He knows, for instance, of your custom of sitting here on your lawn at a certain hour. I think he intends to project his ray at that time when you would be in plain view to an operator, either through a telescope or closer at hand, perhaps from an airplane.”
“I have heard something of these death rays,” said Bannerman. “I understood one or more of them were ready, or almost ready, to use in the Great War when the Armistice was signed. Frightful instruments, and examples of man’s inhumanity to man. I had supposed the governments owned them.”
“I think they do—the formulae,” replied Manning. “I know the United States Government has one, Great Britain another, Germany probably a third. But there has been much experimentation, certain publicity, upon which a clever scientist might follow the trail, repeat the result, even improve upon it. It is certain that the Griffin has such men working for him. He has proved it many times with his diabolically ingenious methods.”
“One may not avert one’s destiny,” said Bannerman. “I am in your hands. You will stay here to-night? Do you think it is advisable to tell the rest? I can trust them all. I think they would risk their lives freely to protect me.”
“By all means,” Manning agreed. The more protection the better. But he did not intend to go into the means by which he personally hoped to circumvent the cunning of the Griffin. He did not even explain it to Bannerman. For once he intended not to keep in personal touch with the threatened victim.
He had gone deeply, within the past day or so, into the history, as known, of the various death rays; coming finally down to two inventions, the ray invented by H. Grindell Matthews, an Englishman, and the so-called Odic Ray, invented by a Californian, living in Pasadena. At the time, this Odic Ray was investigated by the Mount Wilson Observatory and finally dismissed as negligible, but its possibilities had later been greatly enhanced by its discoverer.
It was highly plausible that the Griffin’s captive scientists had even outdone the Californian’s results. And it was another name for the Odic Ray that determined Manning on his choice. The Cold Ray.
Through his previous connections with the Government Secret Service he was able to learn more about it. The object to its use was the fact that it was impossible to generate sufficient power to enable rays of this nature to wipe out an entire city, as claimed by the discoverers; but Manning was told that it was quite feasible for such a ray to be concentrated, focused upon some definite object, and pass through it, breaking down life, producing death and disintegration at considerable distances.
The Cold Ray seemed a fitting synonym for the Griffin’s phrase, “Death’s frozen finger.”
VI
The day of the seventeenth was passing, to all appearances, as quietly as any other. Morning found Bannerman awakening from sound sleep, eating a hearty breakfast, genial and courageous.
Manning’s men, relieving each other in four-hour watches, swarmed in the grounds, were posted in the house. As the morning turned to afternoon, the tension increased with every hour, every minute. How would the Griffin strike, and whence?
No visitors were permitted, no tradesmen. No one left. The poet’s disciples had gathered at Windy Ridge the evening before. Few of them had slept.
At his usual hour, Bannerman came out to his seat. He was to read his latest poem. The pupils gathered round. They watched as they listened. Manning’s experts were alert. Bannerman had agreed to go inside on request. The terrace was spacious, with its open view of the Sound. Every covert that bordered it was guarded; so was the house behind.
It did not seem credible that such a peaceful scene could become an arena for murder. Its serenity was the same as that of the first afternoon when Manning had visited Windy Ridge. The air was still. The breeze was failing toward sunset. The trees were silent. The Sound looked like a stretch of ribbon, deep blue. The atmosphere was crystalline. Details stood out startlingly on Long Island; houses were distinct. The sky held little vapor.
Bannerman delivered his poem, not reading it, but giving it from memory, his voice like organ tones for depth and strength and clarity. He was, of all of them, serene and unafraid, citing his creed.
“From the sea we came;
Clinging and creeping, crawling and inanimate;
Sexless and formless;
Knowing not life, nor love.
Motes on a mote that swung in awful space.
Atoms of vaguely groping ignorance;
But quick with cosmic urge,
Journeying—whither?
Yet this is known:
We have that within us is immortal.
It may not perish….”
A faint and far off drone came out of the sky. It was like the hum of a bee. It came from a speck that soared at a ceiling of five thousand feet, a plane chartered by Manning, in which he sat behind the most expert pilot who had experienced, and survived, the Great War. He was an Ace of Aces who had volunteered with alacrity for the chase of the monster.
It was not Manning’s first flight, by a hundred times. The pilot had a machine gun synchronized to his propeller. His ship was fast—faster than anything he had ever flown in France. It could make well over two hundred miles an hour. In Manning’s cockpit there were grenades, specially weighted, finned for accurate flight.
Manning could have secured fifty ships, but he feared to arouse the suspicions of the Griffin’s agents. Even though they masked their flight by seeming to go through regular maneuvers, the Griffin might defer his attack un
til after dark. Manning could not tell how far the Griffin’s experts might have perfected the Cold Ray. But, with Bannerman in the open, they would strike now; unless Manning’s theory was wrong.
And he knew it was not. This time the Griffin would fail—if Manning could find the projector of the Odic Beam.
It was no easy matter, and yet the problem was not too hard. The Griffin had tipped off his opening moves by his phrasing, his mention of “the frozen finger of Death.” Manning’s careful survey of the grounds at Windy Ridge had narrowed his search.
The ray might be able to traverse timber, but, unless the wise men in Washington were all wrong and Manning’s own deductions and inferences false, the use of the ray was as yet so limited that the object of its destruction must be sighted, must be properly focused.
They had come in the plane from the north, as if a casual air-traveler, making for a Long Island landing. The flight had been timed to fit Bannerman’s emergence on the lawn, his reading of the poem. Too premature an appearance would spoil everything.
Manning had glasses of powerful magnification, as he did not doubt the Griffin’s fiendish executioners also held. There was no other plane in sight. There were vessels in the Sound, but perfect aim could hardly come from those. He looked to find the base of the Griffin’s operations on shore, on the shore of Long Island Sound, at some point nearly opposite Windy Ridge, some place where they could focus Bannerman between the trees. He would make a perfect target. The sprawled disciples in front of him would not be hurt. It was the Griffin’s boast to get only his man—with Manning occasionally included.
The plane went swooping down, perfectly flown. Its actions were natural enough, so far.
Beneath them were scattering estates, most of them grouped about havens and inlets. A few abandoned farms not yet sold to the New Yorkers who would make them over into pseudo-Colonial homes. Strips of beach. Hillsides, covered with light growth of trees.
It was these copses that Manning and his pilot watched most carefully, suspecting camouflage. They had only a few precious minutes to find their objective. It was well masked.
Day of Doom: The Complete Battles of Gordon Manning & The Griffin, Volume 2 Page 2
