Death Silent and Invisible
Closeted Behind Guarded Doors with Judge Carruthers, Gordon Manning Waits for the Diabolical Griffin to Spring his Death Trap
Gordon Manning was on his way, afoot, to his Wall Street office from the down town gymnasium where he kept himself physically fit. His lean, long body strode along replete with vitality and purpose; his eyes were clear and keen as he acknowledged the greetings of those who knew him and others who did not possess that distinction, but recognized him from the publicity that had once again environed him.
It was publicity he was never eager to have thrust upon him, although the reluctance had nothing to do with the fact that the columns, topped with flash lines, carrying pictures of Manning, of the victim and scene of the latest tragedy that had shocked Manhattan and all the nation bore the news that Manning had lost in his first encounter with the maniacal monster known as the Griffin, recently escaped from Dannemora.
It was Manning who had sent him there after a series of desperate encounters; after the police had despaired in the quest and Manning had been called in by the police commissioner to cope with the fiendish madman whose devilish genius had murdered one after another of the country’s most brilliant and useful men.
Achievement, progress, benevolence, all seemed to arouse the Griffin to an insane fury, as if he was indeed the fallen Lucifer, Son of the Morning, who now hated all that was honorable and noble, all that was good; with a brain inflamed, but of incalculable ingenuity, coupled with the venom of serpents spawned in the foulest spot in Hades.
There was trouble in Manning’s eyes, there were lines in his deeply tanned, hawklike face, that had not quite been erased since the Griffin had been sent to the State Hospital for the Criminally Insane at Dannemora, Clinton County.
Now the Griffin was free; the monster was loose again—a creature of infinite evil—loose to plan and perpetrate his frightful purposes. Already “It” had struck and killed, despite the efforts of the police, warned by Manning; despite the last hour attempt of Manning himself to save the victim. It was Manning’s intuition that had uncovered the substitute left by the Griffin in his cell while he made good his escape; a substitute excellent enough to deceive the prison authorities.
That availed nothing. The Griffin was out and he would strike again, with scanty and mocking warning. Until the Griffin should be heard from again, Manning’s hands were tied. Every effort to trace clews in the last crime—the one in which the most powerful controller of politics in the State had been sent to a horrible death because the Griffin believed he had blocked his release from Dannemora—had utterly failed, vanished in thin air.
Traffic halted Manning on a corner where he stood until the light changed, gazing without especial interest into the window of a store that specialized in automobile accessories. The window was arrayed with devices for radiator caps, emblems suggesting flight and speed. They had, most of them, been designed by excellent artists. Here were eagles, Mercurys, greyhounds, figures of men and beasts in headlong career. Some were ultra modern and symbolical, zigzags of shining lightning, a poised arrow.
The latest design of all held the center of the display. A beam of light fell upon it, distinguishing it from the rest. It was made of golden bronze and it was exquisitely fashioned.
It was a Griffin, sometimes called griffon, or gryphon—the rapacious creature with four legs, wings and a beak, the fore part resembling an eagle, the after part a lion. Portrayed by the Greeks and Syrians and Romans, shown in the cathedrals of France and Italy, in the temple of Antoninus. Herodotus claimed that the one-eyed Arimaspi waged constant war with them. Sir John de Mandeville described them as eight times larger than a lion.
Terrible beasts that could crouch for leap or flight; tear with talons and beak—supposed inhabitants of Asiatic Scythia—emblems of cruelty and death. Fit emblem of the inhuman monster who had adopted them for his title.
The device seemed alive in the ray of light. The sculptor who had first modeled it in clay had achieved a masterpiece. It embodied force and swiftness, the ruthlessness of perfect coördination. It hardly seemed adapted for an ordinary car ornament. It might have fitted a racing machine, or a tank of war. It was beautiful, but terrible.
Manning felt a clammy finger tracing his spine, offset by a swift tingling of his blood, as he regarded it. It was to him a symbol that challenged all of his manhood. It summoned up a vision of the Griffin from his brain, where it always lived, never entirely dormant.
He was not a man who suffered from nerves or he would long ago have perished; explorer, scientist, adventurer, ex-major of the Military Intelligence Department, survivor of a thousand hazards on the field, in the jungle, by sea and land.
That varying tremor that went through him was a hunch, a warning from his subconscious mind where he automatically filed his observations, where the leaven of his experience waited for release.
He was going to hear from the Griffin. Once again he would be challenged; hear the mocking voice or read the high-flown message, tinged with the exaggeration of a grandiose dementia, that announced the Griffin’s next fateful enterprise.
It was no surprise to him to see among the letters his secretary set in front of him an envelope of heavy, gray, handmade paper, the address inscribed with purple ink in a bold hand that, analyzed, showed the writer to be arrogant, forceful and abnormal.
Manning did not immediately open it. He took the letter and looked out of the window of his private office at the lofting spires and towers of the world’s greatest city—at the spidery stretch of a bridge that was a web of human genius.
The envelope was sealed with scarlet wax in which was imprinted the upper part of a griffin’s body, rampant.
The Griffin’s resources were being reassembled. His old aerie with its corps of experts in science and mechanics, held under the Griffin’s thrall by his knowledge of their lapses against the law, had been destroyed. But the Griffin had proved that he still had followers, that he still possessed the master-key to power, money. Here was the old, too familiar, style of correspondence. The letter seemed to fairly quiver with hidden menace, as if it diffused a deadly odor.
It took a stout heart to break that seal, a stouter one to read the communication. But Manning did not falter though the lines in his face deepened and a white streak showed where his jaw was set. The look in his eyes was grim.
Dear Manning:
We have met once since my, shall we call it emancipation?—and we shall meet again. It cheers me to realize that you still have sufficient resource and enterprise to render you an interesting and rather amusing opponent in this game of ours, resumed after several months of idleness on my part. Idleness and recuperation, my dear Manning.
It somewhat lengthens the scores against you, but I shall delay that reckoning. Without you there would be no opposition whatever to my plans. They would be but tedious means to my ultimate end. What that is, in detail, I may tell you some day, but not at present.
Some day I shall eliminate you, Manning, when you cease to interest me. Meanwhile I have certain items to be balanced on my book of life. One of these I have checked off. You may be interested in the next.
I find that by horology and hepatoscopy….
Manning lowered the letter. Hepatoscopy! Divination of the liver. That meant that this half-crazed, but eminently dangerous being was still practicing unhallowed rites, endeavoring, perhaps, to justify his crimes to himself by consulting the stars and the livers taken, smoking, from still living bodies. They might even be human bodies, Manning considered. The incarceration at Dannemora had not alleviated, but aggravated his madness.
The Griffin invariably cast the horoscope of his intended victim, deciding when the protection of the planets was weakest and their maleficence greatest. In these rituals he doubtless catered to his conviction that he was an agent of Destiny, so appointed by a supreme power.
Again Manning gazed out at the lower end of Manhattan, the mighty city that th
e terror of one man had once held in thrall and might so again. There had been times when dread of the Griffin, results of his crimes, had not only shattered the peace of society, but had rocked the foundations of the civic and financial worlds. He could do it again. His evil fame, his fearfulness, had been trebled by his escape. And they were looking to Gordon Manning to once again enchain this monster, to destroy him.
He should have been destroyed, Manning told himself. The Griffin was as inhuman as the creature Frankenstein created from the grisly relics of graveyard and dissecting room and endowed with vitality. The Griffin’s mind was a charnel house. The judge who had sentenced him, much against his will, had told Manning that he lamented the law.
“He should be put to death,” said the distinguished jurist, Bernard Carruthers. “There is no virtue in his living. He is of no use, save as an examination of his brain may teach scientists something. He should be put out of the way, painlessly and peacefully—perhaps without any preparation, anaesthetized out of existence, as one would chloroform a mad dog. Jurisprudence and science have yet to unite in a thoroughly modern code. Meantime we must uphold the present statutes. So long as he lives that man is a menace.”
Carruthers had not spoken publicly, but Manning wondered what he thought now, with the Griffin out. Manning resumed the letter.
I find by horology and hepatoscopy that the propitious moment in which he will be eliminated is close at hand. His hour has struck.
In ancient lore, as doubtless you are aware, but may have forgotten, griffins were consecrated to the Sun. They not only were held to have drawn the chariots of Helios and Jupiter, but also the car of Nemesis. You will see the allusion.
There is a man to whom I am directly indebted for long weeks of suffering, a man who poses as an upright judge, one who tempers justice with mercy, who clamors for the establishment of new prisons which shall be humane, sanitary, and upbuilding….
The bold writing had now covered three pages. Manning turned the fourth. The “allusion” was very clear. He knew the name he would read.
Carruthers!
Therefore this man, who so ruthlessly and arrogantly sentenced me, Bernard Carruthers, is now sentenced in turn. He shall shuffle off this mortal coil between dawn on Friday, the seventeenth, and dawn on Saturday, the eighteenth. He shall no more see the sun, nor the light of day.
Not even your vigilance and ingenuity, Manning, may avert this reprisal. It will be amusing to watch your efforts. In the meantime you should be glad to know that my scattered organization is being reassembled. I shall again prove a scourge to the unworthy. I, the Appointed One!
In place of a signature there was an affiche of thick scarlet paper in the shape of an oval, embossed by the signet of the Griffin. Thus:
The big studio on the top floor of the building was silent and dark. Some light filtered in through the great north-light and dimly revealed its furnishings. Carved chests and chairs, a big refectory table. A yawning fireplace. A deep lounge, many cushioned. Faint glitter of arms on the walls, a suit of armor, vessels of polished bronze and copper. Rugs and draperies and screens. The typical studio of a successful artist.
The whole building above the ground floor was given over to artists; few of them successful, most of them commercial. It was an old edifice, but it stood in the commercial heart of the city on the corner of a main avenue and a one-way side street. That gave it two entrances. There was one elevator, but it did not run after ten o’clock at night. Nobody actually lived there except the new tenant on the top floor.
The original tenant, one of the family that owned the building, had been killed in a car accident in Europe. The studio had been left vacant, untouched. Depression came, the artist’s relatives lost their funds. They were glad to let the place to the Mr. Silbi who took a lease, paid a good price for the furnishings and moved in promptly.
He was not often seen. Sometimes the janitor would see him gliding down the stairs after the elevator ceased running, a somber figure in a long cape with its collar well turned up and almost meeting the rim of a black slouch hat. His shadow looked like that of some great bird of prey, swooping on.
A beaked nose, dark, piercing eyes, a mustache and vandyke beard with hair untrimmed. The typical artist, eccentric, inclined to be theatrical, but generous with rent and a regular tip to the janitor, to whom he explained that an old servant of his would clean his studio.
Sometimes there were men—always men—who hurried up the stairs and knocked at the studio door; emerging late in the night. The janitor listened now and then, a little fearfully, but there was a heavy drape inside the door and he heard nothing except murmurs, faint sounds of music.
The door opened now, with the key in the hand of the tenant, Mr. Silbi. He entered, closing the door carefully behind him, sliding additional bolts he had installed. He turned a switch and lights came on in oriental lanterns of brass filigree that hung in chains from the high ceiling, their glow ruby and amber through the glass insets. The stars winked out above the big skylight, it became only a blank of blackness.
Silbi touched a button and music sounded, softly—curious, exotic strains. They suggested barbarian encampments, music and marches, dirges and triumphal chants. He touched off the kindling beneath the cannel coal in a large brazier in the fireplace and held his hands to the gathering flames for a moment as if he were cold, though it was only late summer.
Then he tossed off his cloak and hat; he shed the mustache and beard and wig, all masterpieces of deceptive craft, and sank into a deep chair in front of the hearth.
It was the Griffin. He had found sanctuary here, a place in which to recoup lost prestige, to foster revenge, to plot evil machinations and arrange a fresh organization. His face showed the hollows, the emaciation of suffering, of physical and mental stress. But vigor still emanated from him. He was dynamic, capable of storing energy and discharging it. The memory of his misfortunes stimulated his inflamed brain, increased its phantasmagoria. His conceit was still colossal.
His face was far from pleasant as he warmed his hands once more. It might have been that of Iblis, Prince of Darkness, the fallen angel of the Moslems, smitten by the curse of God for refusing to prostrate himself before Adam. Iblis, smitted but defiant, brooding in hell while its flames cheered him. Nor was it all coincidence that Silbi, (spelled backwards) was Iblis. There was no name on the door or in the hall, but the Griffin had signed his lease with that title in one of his characteristic moods of subtle irony.
Presently he filled the bowl of a Turkish pipe with tobacco that was finely cut and contained a blend of hasheesh. He lit it and held the tube of the hubble-bubble in one hand as the smoke came through the rose-scented water, sweet and soothing.
With his other hand he picked up an object he had bought recently, the same radiator cap ornament that Manning had noticed. It appealed to the Griffin, but he frowned as he remembered the golden griffin that had once mounted an onyx base on the desk of his now destroyed aerie. The recollection of all came back, the circular steel chamber, the underground laboratories, the mute Haitian dwarf who had been his bodyguard, the serfs laboring to carry out his commands.
Manning had demolished all that. There would be a reckoning with him some day; meantime the Griffin would use him as the antagonist, without whom the game would lack interest.
He still possessed his hidden sources of tremendous, incalculable wealth. He had been free only a few weeks, but already he had exterminated one against whom he held a grudge—the man who might have freed him—or, so the Griffin had imagined in his grandiose dementia. He had already located some of his old slaves who had imagined themselves free men once again; brought them again under his thrall, forced to do his bidding because of the Griffin’s knowledge of their lapses against the law; men trying to go straight, but caught again in his infernal net. Through them he would get others.
In forty-eight hours the judge who had sentenced him would cease to live. His death would prove that the Griffin was ag
ain regnant. Thousands would cower, millions shudder at the news.
He chuckled suddenly, a deep, ghoulish chuckle. Michael, the Archangel, had flung Lucifer, Son of the Morning, into Hades, but Lucifer had risen, a mighty insurgent, a power for evil. So would he.
He touched another switch and a board became illumined. Tiny globes showed constellations. The signs of the zodiac glowed. An inset wheel spun, slowed down, clicking. Again the Griffin chuckled.
“It is so ordained,” he muttered. “The stars in their courses fight for me and against thee.”
There was a steel cage behind a screen, blanketed, set on a stand. The Griffin moved the covering, opened the door and a white monkey, little smaller than a chimpanzee, but infinitely more graceful and agile, sprang out, clung to his shoulder, chittering before it leaped to the floor and ran and crouched before the hearth, warming its paws, looking at the fire with eyes sad and curious, with gestures almost human.
“Alfar,” said the Griffin. “To-night I sacrifice you to the Cause. It will be a swift passing, if my genius has not forsaken me.”
The white monkey turned and gabbled something. The Griffin went into another room. Here was his kitchen and his laboratory. Off that, his bedroom and bathroom. He put on a long garment of black silk brocade weft with a design in gold. The pattern was that of chimaeras, the griffins of China, whose images were set to guard the tombs of kings.
Next he unlocked a tall, shelved steel cabinet. With a metal spatula he took yellowish crystals from a glass vessel and smeared them on the surface of a banana he peeled and tipped. The crystals instantly dissolved in the juice of the fruit.
The monkey cried for the banana, reaching eagerly. The Griffin watched as the quadruman took one bite and almost instantly collapsed, curled up with its topaz eyes glazing before the fire they no longer reflected. It shivered once and lay still.
Day of Doom: The Complete Battles of Gordon Manning & The Griffin, Volume 2 Page 19
