The Crime Master: The Complete Battles of Gordon Manning & The Griffin, Volume 1 (Gordon Manning and The Griffin)

by J. Allan Dunn

  The man was precise. Birth, death, no occasion would flurry his trained composure.

  “I shall want to see Mrs. Hastings,” said Manning.

  “Yes, sir. I am afraid you will have to wait. She is quite prostrated. The doctor is with her. A severe shock.”

  A man came bustling out of a room on the right. Manning placed him, officious, cursed, rather than blessed, with authority.

  “What do you want?” he asked.

  “I’ll tell you privately,” said Manning. “Let’s go where you came from.” The butler opened the door of that room, closed the front one.

  “Too damn smug that man,” said the local officer. He looked at the special credentials Manning showed him with respect, but he was still dubious.

  “I’ve phoned New York,” he said. “There’ll be men out here soon.”

  “Then I’m glad I got here first,” said Manning evenly. “They’ll know these credentials of mine, or you can telephone again. I would suggest the chief commissioner. If you please.”

  He was in no mind to wait until others arrived. He wanted a preliminary investigation, to find his own clews. Centre Street detectives were sometimes primitive clumsy.

  “I’ll stroll round the grounds,” he said. “Mrs. Hastings is really too ill to see?”

  “Doctor gave her a shot of hop. She’s out. I reckon you’re all right. Plain case of murder. Strangled. Cord round his neck now. I ain’t touched a thing. Wall safe’s open, but those wall safes are junk. It ain’t empty. I saw papers there.”

  Manning nodded and went outside. The butler came out from the back as Manning strolled around.

  “Anything I can do for you, sir?” he asked.

  Manning eyed him. The man seemed to take him for granted as some one of importance and authority.

  “You can show me Mr. Hastings’s room from the outside,” he said. “Is it here, or in front?”

  “In the rear, sir. Up there. The front gets the morning sun, you see, sir. Mr. ’Astings didn’t like it in the mornings.”

  “I see.”

  There was a loggia, a portico, set into the walls, arched. On the second floor.

  “That’s all,” said Manning. “What’s your name, by the by? I’ll want to talk to you later.”

  “Jennings, sir. I’ve not been in Mr. ’Astings’s service long, but he was a fine gentleman and a good master. Very considerate. A terrible thing to ’appen, sir.”

  “Yes,” said Manning curtly. “That’s all.”

  Jennings bowed and left. A bit of a hypocrite, Manning fancied, but his job called for it, he supposed. Maintaining the regret of an old retainer, a little nosey, a little reluctant to leave. Manning saw him watching from a window of what might be the butler’s pantry.

  He looked for signs beneath the portico, but hardly expected to find them. The Griffin would not bungle. But that strangling cord was nothing new.

  A ladder would reach there easily enough. There was a four-car garage, elaborately equipped. Stables, with riding horses in the stalls. Doubtless Mrs. Hastings rode, perhaps Hastings. No chauffeurs, no grooms. They would all be in the house, in the servants’ quarters, gossiping.

  A small building that was locked. It held garden tools. It was designed in Italian fashion, with a lean-to under a tiled roof. There were ladders here—two of them, on wall hooks. Manning appraised them. There were vines on the house, and they would be used for trimming them and the trees in the orchard.

  He tore a handkerchief in two, wrapped the halves about his palms, and took down the shorter ladder, carrying it back into the orchard, sliding it in a slight depression where the long grass hid it.

  He was back at the tool house when he saw the butler hurrying toward him. He stood nonchalantly regarding the view, filling his pipe.

  “The constable, or whatever he is, sir, says it’s perfectly all right, sir.”

  “Then I’ll come in.”

  The detectives from New York had not arrived. The local man was apologetic.

  “The commissioner said you were to take over,” he said.

  Manning nodded.

  “I want you to come over the house with me, Jennings,” he said. “We’ll see Mr. Hastings’s room first.”

  The body of the multi-millionaire lay on his bed in his pyjamas, his head on the pillow, his body partly underneath the clothes. The doctor had seen him, a police surgeon would presently appear.

  Manning did not disturb him. He saw the cord tight about his neck, sunken, the flesh bulging. The eyes were closed. The jaw had fallen. He saw the opening of the wall safe, a circular door. It had not been jimmied, but that meant little. A man expert with a microphone could have listed the combination in a few minutes.

  There was a gun on a bed table, by a lamp. A treatise on star sapphires lay close to the shaded light.

  There was a button in the frame of the bed, placed handy for an alarmed man to touch.

  “Did Mr. Hastings fear burglars?” Manning asked Jennings.

  “I wouldn’t say that, sir. He was cautious. Had a lot of stones in the safe, I’m told. And, for an elderly man, he was active. Quite. It’s hard to understand how he got strangled without turning in an alarm, even if he could not get at his gun. That button sets off a gong that would wake the dead. But we heard nothing.”

  Manning glanced at the open window, a door that might lead to a dressing room, another to a bath.

  “Slept with the window open?”

  “Always, sir. It was open when I brought him his coffee and toast.”

  “You served him?”

  “Yes, sir. He preferred it that way. Didn’t like a maid in his room.”

  “All right. Have you a telephone directory?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Bring it.”

  The moment the butler left, Manning raced through the suite as his own setter might search the brush. The tiny colonnaded portico made for privacy. The bathroom window was large enough to admit a man, but it was fast locked, with a patent catch. So was the one in the dressing room. When Jennings came back Manning was gazing reflectively at the safe.

  “We’ll go over the house,” he said. “Top to bottom.”

  “Excepting Mrs. ’Astings’s apartment, sir?” Manning nodded.

  There was nothing of luxury lacking in the house. Manning passed through the servants’ hall, crowded with excited help, through the kitchen, through the cemented room that held the big frigidaire. He asked for ice water and got it, Jennings pulling out a tray of cubes.

  “You run this?” he asked.

  “I try to, sir. Would you like some breakfast?”

  “I’ve eaten,” said Manning. “Now show me where the help sleeps. All of you.”

  “I ’ope, sir”—Jennings dropped intermittent hs—“you don’t think this is an inside job?”

  “Inside or outside, you want to know who did it, don’t you?” he challenged Jennings.

  “Of course, sir.”

  “All right. I’ve had my breakfast. I’ll stroll about outdoors again until the others get here.”

  He had seen two telephones in the garage. One looked like a house connection. The other might be direct. He made sure he was not overlooked when he tried the second, got a “through,” named his number.

  VI

  THERE were a police surgeon, a detective sergeant, and two aides, three reporters. Manning let the sergeant take charge.

  The sergeant looked through the safe, found in some steel drawers morocco cases that held necklaces, other jewels.

  “One drawer empty,” he said. “May or may not mean a thing. I’ll dust for finger-prints. I understand Hastings had a collection of uncut stones. Looks like they were after them. Might have been in here. There’s some bits of wadding.”

  “Strangled!” said the police surgeon. “Died of suffocation. Look at this cord. Yellow silk. Oriental. Any Japs or Chinks in the household?”

  “None,” said Manning laconically. “He strangled, but not from the co
rd. You’d better have an autopsy.”

  “Why?”

  “Because a man who dies that way has bulging eyes, his tongue shows. Look at that bed-clothing, look at that pillow. Strangle a man, and he struggles, writhes. This one died in his sleep.”

  “How?”

  “I’m not sure yet. But I think you’ll find sulphurous oxide in his lungs.”

  The surgeon looked at Manning. He knew the authority he held. He looked at the pillows and the spreads upon the bed.

  “We’ll do that,” he said.

  The sergeant surveyed the open window, looked through the arches of the portico.

  “Came in this way,” he announced.

  “Yes, and no,” said Manning. “You’ll find no traces.”

  The sergeant regarded him with the superior glance of a professional toward an amateur as he rated Manning.

  “You got it all faded?” he asked, superciliously.

  “Just a hunch,” said Manning. “Call Jennings.”

  The butler came.

  “You wanted me?” he asked.

  “I wanted you,” said Manning. “These gentlemen have got their own theory about what happened. I don’t agree with them. I’d like a chat with you, in your own quarters. Confidentially.”

  He watched the butler closely, winked at him.

  “Very well, sir. Come this way.”

  Jennings had a tiny suite for himself. Sitting room, bedroom and bath. There was a telephone—two phones—in the sitting room. Manning took a comfortable chair. The butler stood until Manning asked him to sit down.

  “They think it’s a Jap or a Chink,” said Manning. “Tell me, have you seen any round here, probably Chinese, though it might be a Hindu?”

  “Why, come to think of it, sir, there was a dark complexioned man on the same train with me the other day. He got off at the same station. Wore a cloth wrapped round his head. I took him for one of these chaps that give what they call seances in the old country. But I’ve seen nothing of him since. I’ve not been away from the house. I’ve been getting things organized and in running order, sir.

  “Do you think it was some one like that who strangled the master and took the stones, sir?”

  Manning shrugged his shoulders. He was not yet ready to express himself.

  The telephone tinkled. Jennings answered it. It was one of the extensions of the outside service line.

  “It’s for you, sir,” he said respectfully. He stood close to Manning, outwardly deferential. He must have heard, whether he intended to or not, the message. It contained one word after Manning’s voice had identified himself.

  “No.”

  Manning hung up. For a moment he stood silent, tapping the floor with his cane.

  “Shan’t I take your cane, sir?” asked the butler.

  “No, thanks; it doesn’t matter. I shall be leaving soon.”

  He was sure now he had his man. Absolutely certain that one of the Griffin’s pawns stood in front of him. To prove it was another matter. But he had one card to play. The rest stood on intuition, blended with logic, and one or two things he noticed that seemed to interlock, like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. There were many missing, but these joined, they gave a glimpse of pattern.

  “You say you came recently into Mr. Hastings’s service, Jennings? Through an agency, I suppose.”

  “Yes, sir.” For the space of a swift breath Jennings had hesitated.

  “Which one was it?” Manning’s voice had taken on an edge. The self-contained butler looked at him with eyes that strove to read his mind—eyes that gazed straight for one glance and shifted. His red and white complexion was patched.

  “I don’t really remember, sir. I registered at several. You see, I’ve not been over on this side long. I’m not acquainted. But Mr. Hastings was well satisfied with my references.”

  “I’m sure of that. It doesn’t matter much. Let’s see what the rest are doing.”

  Manning turned to walk from the butler’s sanctum. He heard back of him a suppressed sigh of relief. He had his man now, he believed, but he would still have to bluff, to force the other’s hand. He could arrive by more tedious and lengthy ways, but such methods did not go well with the tactics of the Griffin. If he had alarmed Jennings the play might fail.

  There are scores of employment agencies in New York, yet there are only a few, less than six, catering to the extremely select. From the garage phone Manning had sent in inquiry concerning Jennings, asking if he had been on the books of the twenty most flourishing concerns, and the answer had been no!

  But Jennings had lied when he said he did not know from what agency he had been sent—or he had not come from any. And lied again about the Hindu.

  A bluff, in Manning’s opinion, was just as good as the man who made it. The setting also helped.

  VII

  MRS. HASTINGS was still under the merciful influence of the drug. The body had not yet been removed for autopsy. The police surgeon and the detectives were waiting the arrival of the proper conveyance, the grisly accessories of the coroner’s and undertaker’s rites. They were in the dead man’s room, investigating, questioning the servants, brought to them one by one by the housekeeper. Understanding of human nature led them to hold the inquisition where the murdered man lay stark, his face covered now, a mute witness that might force some sign from any guilty person. Precisely for this reason Manning took Jennings with him. He was not going to lose sight of him.

  He believed that the only reason Jennings had not disappeared was because to do so would have aroused instant suspicion and a too close hue and cry.

  The police surgeon nodded to Manning.

  “I found this on the dead man’s chest,” he said. “His skin is smooth, and this was pasted right over the sternum bone.”

  Manning did not have to look at it. It was the scarlet seal of the Griffin, the symbol of slaughter.

  “You think he was killed with the cord?” he asked. “Jennings here says he saw a Hindu, at least a man with a turban, traveling in the same train with him some days ago, getting off here. Some of them practice Thuggee.”

  “Whoever did it,” interrupted the sergeant, “must have climbed to the porch, come in through the open window, killed, got the gems, and gone out the same way. Simple enough, though he was foxy and wiped out prints. They always do these days.”

  “Sometimes they overlook a thing or two,” said Manning. “They smooth out the marks of the ladder, clean their shoes, but, after they put the ladder away, they might forget to clear that of prints.

  “At the same time,” he went on, eying Jennings covertly, “I don’t agree with you. I don’t think any one came in through the window at all. The man who tied that cord round Hastings’s neck, opened the safe and got the jewels, came through the door.”

  “You mean an inside job?” asked the sergeant.

  “You haven’t answered my question yet,” Manning told the surgeon. “Mr. Hastings’s own physician thought it strangulation.”

  “The cord is sufficient to cause death. There are certain signs of suffocation.”

  “Of suffocation, yes,” said Manning. “But some are missing. That cord was tightened after Hastings was dead. The eyes should have been bulging, the tongue protruding. I doubt also whether even a strong and active man could have subdued the deceased without his turning in an alarm. Hastings was well on in years, but he was still physically active enough.”

  “Then what killed him?” demanded the sergeant incredulously.

  “A weapon that has now become invisible, vanished, save for the effects it left, that the autopsy will reveal in the lungs. Traces of sulphurous oxide or cyanogen. I am not certain which, until I have examined the frigidaire more closely. But the man who killed Hastings knew his ways, knew of the alarms, knew he slept with his window open, the others closed. There is a fireplace here, but it has its throat shut by a damper during the summer.

  “A man climbed to the porch, set in through the window a cake of the comp
ound used for the extra refrigeration, a special accessory to cabinets of the elaborate type used here. He closed the window and left it to evaporate, to give off its deadly fumes, leaving no trace. Then, two or three hours later, he opened the window again. You will see it has been treated to slide very freely in the steel frame.

  “When the room was clear again, he entered—through the door. He may have opened the damper for a time to insure a draft, he opened the safe, and, for a final flourish, an attempt to provide false evidence, to set us on a wrong trail, he twisted that cord about the dead man’s neck. Suffocated, but not strangled.

  “That is not theory, gentlemen, it’s facts. That ladder you used, Jennings, reeks with your finger-prints!” he said.

  The butler’s patchy complexion had turned white, but it was the pallor of desperation rather than fear. His dignity fell from him like a cloak. Manning was between him and the door. He crouched like a trapped beast, his features a mask of snarling hate as his hand shot toward his left shoulder under the morning coat he wore. This was the face of a man who had worn the clothes marked with the broad arrows of bleak Dartmoor, the face of a killer.

  The detectives reached for their weapons as Jennings got to the butt of his, held in a clip.

  “Damn you, I’ll get you!” he cried. For a moment his fury was so great, his convulsed face so demoniac, that Manning half wondered if this could be the Griffin himself.

  He had been leaning, lightly, casually, on his cane. Now he flicked this from right to left, back again, more sharply. The heavy rod struck Jennings’s shins, the ferrule ripped the cloth of his trousers, went through to the bone with a nerve shock that could not be offset, a blow bringing agony, halting all nerve coördination.

  The butler’s hand was checked, the gun in it, but still beneath his coat, for a single pulse beat. Manning’s right fist shot hard to the other’s jaw. It was a blow that would have dropped most men. But, like the extra smash that sometimes actually restores a fighter on the verge of a knockout, it failed of its purpose, and the next second saw them closed, wrestling to get possession of the gun while the officers hovered, afraid to shoot.

  Jennings literally gnashed his teeth. Foam flew from his lips, and then he tried to close his jaws on Manning’s neck. His teeth grazed the skin.