A red tricycle delivery van stopped at the curb and a man got out with a bundle. Inspector Riverton, inside the van at the wheel. First-grade Detective Halloran playing delivery boy.
They would follow.
The smoke-gray car turned into the wooded lane that ran down to the beach. It had many tire tracks. Bathing and picnic parties used it. The shore sand was firm and they often did not return by the same route.
Manning followed. That steep bank where there was no fence? It had one or two features that had intrigued him. One was that the bluff was covered, almost matted, with ivy. That was not altogether extraordinary, but the ivy was of the evergreen variety. It would screen the bank summer and winter alike. What else might it screen?
It was a rough lane that necessitated slow going, if one regarded car springs. Manning went slowly. He saw the gray car almost stop, saw a tall, lithe figure get out, lean against the verdure-clad bank. It was hidden from view for a moment by the ivy. Then it came forward, or seemed to come forward, stepped into the car again and the car drove on, beachward.
But, to Manning’s eyes, the figure was not just that of the first man. Dressed like him, similar in size, but lacking the alert gait, though it imitated it.
He chuckled to himself. There was something back of that ivy.
Did the Griffin think Manning would investigate?
He did.
Manning stopped, locating the spot readily enough by the tire marks that showed where the big car had started up again. He leaned against the ivy and felt, back of the strands, hard metal.
At the foot of the lane the red delivery van had halted. Halloran, bundle in hand, was arguing with Riverton. All programmed.
Programmed also, Manning told himself, was this heavy, hidden door that slowly yielded to his pressure. The lock had failed to catch?
That did not seem likely, even with the Griffin stark crazy.
Manning remembered a story of the Spanish Inquisition, where a captive found a door ajar and wandered fearfully through corridors, hoping for freedom, shrinking behind a pillar when wandering friars passed by in chat, reaching at last the final gate—and being welcomed by the chief inquisitor with a mock benediction.
Just the sort of devilish device the Griffin would use—in his present state of mind. A door, ajar, for Manning to enter.
But Manning was not an escaping, tortured prisoner. He was armed, he was trained to a hair, and he had allies close at hand.
He pushed back the door and entered.
It clanged instantly behind him.
The tunnel had been cemented. It dripped moisture and it was faintly lighted by electric globes. It showed unbroken sides on to where it turned to the left. He might be trapped, but he was sure it would lead to the Griffin at last. The Griffin wanted to gloat in person over his captive, to twit him, break him down. And Manning was prepared for the ordeal.
He made the left turn and passed through vaulted rooms that were equipped with benches, machines and apparatus, but were empty. And he came at last to one that seemed to be used as a sort of refectory, a table and stools, a stale smell of cooking.
Here a score of gaunt men in overalls were whispering furtively together, men who were stamped with intellect, though bowed by slavery. They looked at Manning with parted lips that showed their teeth. Some almost snarled at him.
The Griffin—if it was the Griffin—had passed on. There was a dark corridor leading from this chamber deeper into the core of the hill, but Manning calculated they should not be far from directly beneath the house.
These wasted men had numbers in brassards on their arms, like convicts.
“I’m not looking for any of you,” he said. “I am Special Deputy Commissioner Manning of the Manhattan Police Department. I am here—and not alone—to get the man who has held you here. You may be wanted, but not by me. If you can get away, that’s your affair.”
It was a slim hope enough, for any of them, he thought, but he was willing to give the poor devils a chance. They would be picked up, destitute, wearing what they did. Half starved, at that.
Wolfish eyes gleamed avidly as he showed his badge. Dry tongues licked drier lips. Here was something the Griffin had overlooked, would not have overlooked in former times. He despised these creatures, even as he affected to despise Manning, whom he had tolled within. After all, he had possibly calculated on them. What he wanted most was to get Manning caught in his web.
“You mean that?” gasped one man as Manning showed his badge. “You say you’re not alone. Then your men’ll pick us up if we can get that door open.”
“Not this trip. They are not concerned with you. But—I want one thing in return. Where did that insane monster go and how can I follow him?”
He still stood in the passage entrance—exit now—to the refectory, a slightly smiling, efficient, formidable and eloquently official figure. As a few started up, and forward, he shook his head at them and suddenly two guns showed in his hands.
“Play fair,” he said.
A man with a gray beard—none of them were lately shaved—cackled.
“Play fair? It’s a long time since we heard that. You don’t get it here. Well, I’ll show you where he went, but if you’re wise you won’t follow him. I’ve been up there. He’s a devil—a devil straight from hell, I tell you. He’ll get you and he’ll torture you. He’ll….”
“Steady.”
Manning saw signs of swiftly coming hysteria. He took the elderly man by the elbow.
“Show me where he is: how to get there,” he said, “and I’ll promise you immunity for whatever you may have done. I’ll see you get an ample reward.”
The man turned on him, hope in his eyes. Manning saw, with a shock, that, for all his gray beard, he was young.
“I’ll give you a note now,” Manning went on. “On my card. To the police commissioner.”
He wrote rapidly while the others looked on.
This man is to be taken care of. He has rendered me valuable assistance and I have promised him immunity, no matter what happens.
G.M.
“Now,” said Manning as he signed his initials and the man put away the card, his eyes glistening with tears and his chin trembling. “Brace yourself. Where did he go?”
VII
Manning found himself, with his guide, at a corner that curved outward. It looked just like the surrounding cement. But the man grinned at him.
“I saw how Quantro—that’s his dwarf and bodyguard—worked it,” he said. “You want to be careful of that dwarf. He’s strong as a gorilla. Look.”
He stood with feet astride a crack in the cement floor that suggested adjoining slabs; then rocked from side to side. The convex corner slid aside and showed the tubular entrance to an elevator.
“There are buttons inside. It’s automatic,” said the young-old man. “Good luck to you.”
“Good luck to you!” said Manning, and meant it. No penitentiary could be worse than this underground prison. And that gleam in the man’s eyes had seemed to Manning to mean much. Pardon, a fresh start, a reunited family.
He inspected the buttons, touched one, and immediately the curved entrance closed and he shot up—to what?
Manning stepped into the circular chamber. It was filled with the incense of amber and the music he had so often heard over the telephone. He saw the Griffin, unmasked, back of his carved desk, erect, showing above his bronze disks.
“Welcome, Manning. I have been expecting you. Now you are here. I trust you will not disappoint me. As an antagonist, I mean. You cannot win, but….”
Manning had made up his mind just what to do. He was a crack shot, though he had missed the Griffin once, through some chance distortion of a glass window pane. He saw now, out of the side of his eyes, a crouching figure that must be Quantro.
Quantro the dwarf, of whom he must be careful. Crouching like a beast ready to leap. The gleam of a naked knife.
Manning fired pointblank at the Griffin. He wanted his
man. He aimed to crack his sternum and his collar bone, to shatter the scapula. The nerve-shock would bring down his quarry. If the dwarf persisted he would get the same medicine—a dose of lead.
The Griffin swayed, caught at the carved edge of his desk, shook his head.
“I am not vulnerable, Manning,” he said. “If I was, I would not have let you come here. Hey, Quantro! Up!”
The command was doubtless superfluous and unheard. But obeyed. The dwarf launched himself sidewise at Manning with the shock of a star interferer, interlocking arms about Manning’s knees, teeth snatching at cloth and flesh. He had orders not to use his knife—not now.
Manning almost went down. He hesitated to kill the witless moron with a bullet, far more ready to slay the Griffin, though he did not want to. He survived the first shock of the tackle, staggering and raining blows on Quantro’s head from the butt of the gun that had proved useless against the Griffin. The dwarf’s voluminous turban protected him and masked Manning’s objective, which he reached at last, the rocking bone of the cranium. Then Quantro suddenly dropped, nerveless.
Manning pointed the muzzle of his gun at the Griffin, holding it high.
“Wear a steel jacket, do you?” he said a little pantingly. “Well, this is a steel-jacketed bullet that will drill through your head if you are not very careful.”
“Manning,” said the Griffin, “I have too many headaches recently. For the present, I regret to say that you are safe. The stars protect you. Why, I cannot tell. But they are infallible. I submit.”
He held out his wrists. Manning had handcuffs, slender bracelets of chilled steel. The dwarf lay senseless. The Griffin’s madness, his paranoia, might well include a sudden surrender. But Manning was still cautious.
He advanced from the edge of the rug toward the desk where the Griffin stood waiting.
It might have been the quick gleam of triumph in the Griffin’s eyes, it might have been the quick tremor under his feet; Manning never knew.
But his superb coördination catapulted him in a leap from the diaphragmatic opening of the throat of the death tube, up to the top of the desk, hurling aside the bronze disks, to grapple with the Griffin.
How old the monster was Manning never knew. But he was supremely virile and in his madness his strength was that of a giant.
It was fortunate for Manning that he knew where and how to strike, how to use the art of jujutsu. Otherwise he would have succumbed instantly. He was fighting a man with the strength of four. It was not a pretty battle. Manning hit shrewdly, wherever he knew he could best sap the other’s super-vitality. They rolled from the desk to the floor, barely avoiding the open shaft. They fought round the circle of the wall, and when they came to the slack figure of Quantro there was a struggle to get the knife.
The Griffin was bleeding. His hawklike nose was smashed. One eye was closing, but the superhuman strength of the madman was in his sinews and once, when he got a scissors hold, Manning thought he was gone before he could break it. If the Griffin had known anything about wrestling that might well have ended it.
And, all the time, the Griffin gasped out incoherencies, the slime and smut of many nations, the oaths of the galleys and the ropewalks. He cursed as Manning’s thumb drove between the carpal bones of his wrist and released the Griffin’s clutch on the knife. Then Manning kicked the weapon into the shaft, where it went tinkling down. And the fight went on.
Soon the dwarf must come back to sense and action.
Again and again Manning applied Oriental holds and could not complete them against the unnatural resistance of the Griffin. Time and time again he got home a blow that should have put out a Goliath, but the Griffin seemed to have the resistance of an octopus.
All the time the barbaric music sounded. The amber incense fumed. And then, dimly, Manning heard a noise of hammering and hacking. His men were on the job.
But they would have to come soon. Very soon! Manning knew he was playing out. His lungs could not get air enough. His arms were heavy as lead. He could not easily get at his guns, and he did not want to have to use them.
The Griffin seemed to fail to realize that there was anything to fight with but his own body. He swarmed all over Manning, who, like a clever wrestler, let the other exhaust himself by his own efforts.
Quantro was awakening, crawling toward them. His knife was gone, but his hands opened and shut. He could throttle.
Manning set his knee deep in the Griffin’s lean stomach and heaved. He rolled away, got a gun free.
Dead or alive!
They were both tackling him.
He could sight only the dwarf. He got him, through the chest. Quantro curled up and rolled, over and over, to the steel shaft and toppled into it, howling as he fell.
Manning got to his knees, panting, exhausted, his gun hand trembling.
“Put up your hands,” he said. “My men are coming.”
They were coming. There was no question of that, but they had not arrived.
The Griffin let out a discordant laugh.
“You fool!” he panted croakingly. “Do you think I can be caught?”
He lunged across the room to his desk, slumped over it, badly bruised and beaten, feeling for certain disks.
“We go to hell together!” he cried as Manning fired.
“Well, you landed him, but he’s a mess,” said the police commissioner. “You got him just in time, nicked him back of the head with your bullet. Same thing they called creasing, out West, when they knocked down the wild broncos. And you surely beat him up. Your second slug went through his lungs, but he had touched that button and if you hadn’t had that fake excavating crew on the spot that would have been the grand finish, with the place burning up the way it was.”
Manning, stiff and sore and seared, managed a grin.
“I told you it was in the lap of the little gods,” he said.
“Oh, yeah? Well, you get the credit, Manning. We can’t send him to the chair, though I’d like to exhibit him down at the Battery in a steel cage. Swing him there till the gulls pecked him to death. But the law of the land will say he is an incurable lunatic—which I grant—and we’ll have to let him live, though why a nut should be allowed to live, after he’s done what the Griffin has done, is beyond me. Probably die of T.B. with his punctured lungs, they say. Meantime they want to observe him. I’d like to skin him and set him up in a museum as a horrible example.”
“I know how you feel,” said Manning. “But we’ve got him.”
“And we’ll hold him,” said the commissioner.
“Here’s hoping,” answered Manning. “I did my best.”
He surveyed his broken knuckles a bit ruefully. His shots had done the actual trick, but, after all, he relished the memory of the blows he had sent home. It had been a good scrap, man to madman.
“Mind if I use your phone?” he asked the commissioner.
“I might let it go, this time. Listen, anything I can get for you?”
“Thanks, but I’m afraid not,” returned Manning with a grin the other thoroughly understood. “I’m going to call my girl.”
The Mottled Monster
It Was a Fearsome Murder That Had Struck Two Victims—Murder That Had Come and Gone a Way Only a Bird Could Follow
The Insistent note of his bedside telephone awakened Gordon Manning. Dawn was not far away, but his sleeping chamber was still dark and the light outside the open windows was a deep purple.
He could afford to sleep with open windows these nights, with the Griffin insane and safely incarcerated. Yet, instantly alert, Manning noted the time, five thirty, on the luminous dial of the clock on his bedside table as he picked up the instrument.
The message was from the chief police commissioner, New York City.
“Manning? This is Melleny speaking. Something strange has happened: a double killing, or at least a double death, on Park Avenue. A local doctor was called in for one—a woman. The precinct captain has been there and two men from the Central
Office. I’ve just got the report. The whole thing is almost incredible. It seems a baffling mystery, especially the cause of death. Manning, if I wasn’t sure the Griffin is safely put away—and to make sure he is I just called Dannemora—I’d feel certain that cunning devil was up to his old devices.”
For a moment Manning had also wondered whether the Griffin, in some satanic trick, had not got away once more. It had taken him months to capture the arch-fiend whose web of murder and fear had been spread over the whole United States.
“There’s only one Griffin, what’s left of him,” he said to Melleny. “At that, I’m glad to know he’s where we put him. But I need a rest, commissioner.”
“And we need you. There’s only one Manning. Your commission and authority as special investigator are not revoked. If you’ll do me this much of a favor, go there and see what you think of it, then you can say ‘no’ if there isn’t an angle to it that grips you. You’ll have full charge. I’ll hold everybody until you get there. I’m sending a cartographer and a photographer and a fingerman, though Dr. Henley says there’s nothing in it for the last. He told me to say he hopes you’ll take the case.”
If Henley was puzzled it meant something a long way out of the ordinary. The old lure of adventure, of the mysterious, came back to Manning. He was not as fagged as he had fancied after all. He was still underweight, there were still lines of strain in his hawklike features, but suddenly he was no longer tired.
“I’ll come,” he said. “Give me the address.”
He set it down with pencil and pad, touched a buzzer for Yamata, his Japanese body servant and butler.
“Good man,” Melleny replied, and the commissioner’s voice showed relief.
Twenty minutes later, having showered and breakfasted, Manning was driving his powerful roadster into the city.
II
The precinct captain had turned over the police end of it to the Central Office detectives. The three office men had made their maps and pictures, sprayed for prints. But the two detectives of the homicide squad were waiting, and so was Dr. Henley, chief medical examiner. They greeted Manning with eagerness.
Day of Doom: The Complete Battles of Gordon Manning & The Griffin, Volume 2 Page 5
