In the Grip of the Griffin: The Complete Battles of Gordon Manning & The Griffin, Volume 3

by J. Allan Dunn

  Manning had once liberated those unfortunate accomplices. But the Griffin had gathered them again, or others. His resources were profound.

  Manning knew that crime detection meant the painstaking investigation of nine hundred and ninety-nine blind alleys before entry to the one that led to apprehension and conviction. At times—rare times—brilliant deduction or a genius flash of intuition, might prove a short cut.

  But every alley that Manning discovered to be a cul-de-sac was likely to hold the body of a victim. He would have to find some way to anticipate the Griffin’s plans, to circumvent them, to tangle the monster in his net. Even now, though he did not know it, not one but three mangled bodies were added to the Griffin’s ghastly tally. He did not have to wait long.

  His telephone sounded, and Manning felt the premonitory thrill of evil committed before he picked up the receiver.

  He heard the weird, barbaric music, and then the Griffin’s demoniacal, triumphant laughter.

  That was all. It was enough. Far more than if the Griffin had spoken. The laughter meant that the Griffin no longer warned him in advance, but advised him—afterward—that the fiend had scored.

  Manning tuned in his radio on short wave, knowing what must shortly follow. He listened to the barked-out message that came within three minutes.

  His car took him to Larchmont with his special siren shrieking, claiming clearance. Moments seemed hours while he revved up the motor and propeller of his private amphibian. It seemed a day before it threw off the suction of too placid water and soared to Blueport. There he dropped again to the surface and taxied to the dock where the car he had telephoned for was waiting.

  He broke through the small crowd that had gathered. No officials had yet arrived from New York, but they would soon be there, with the reporters and cameramen. The Blueport chief of police was harassed, not recognizing Manning at first, but glad to acknowledge his authorities. Manning foregathered with the two officers who had first arrived, and the excited and bewildered gatekeeper. He found the State trooper succinct.

  “It sounds phooey, the rest of it,” said the man, after he had given a crisp report of what he had seen. “This gate guy is goofy, or maybe I am. It’s mighty funny nobody got hurt bad enough in the car that did the trick; on the wrong side of the road, of course; so they couldn’t get away. There ain’t a sign of trouble, though the wheel’s jammed back into the seat. No blood. No nothing. And Doc Sassoon and the two with him smashed like half-roasted eggs! He was one swell guy, Sassoon.”

  The trooper was trying to be hard-boiled. Manning gave him a chance to fiddle with his belt.

  “Where does the gateman come in?” he asked.

  “Claims he saw something like a big ape swingin’ through the trees after the car left the driveway. Saw that, mind you, but didn’t think much of it, he says. Only remembered it a few minutes ago. Can you beat it?”

  “There is such a thing as registering an image without making a mental tie-up at the time,” said Manning. “Like seeing a ghost. You put it down to imagination, subconsciously. Then something happens and it all clicks properly. What else?”

  “That board, ‘Men Working.’ We called up the Light and Power Company. They sent a man. He’s here now. Says they had nobody anywhere near here, an’ that the board’s a fake. Ought to have their name burned on the woodwork, branded in. The Griffin did this, Mr. Manning, and he pulled a fast one. Killing a guy like Sassoon ain’t just murder. Why, he—I mean doc—he was a prince. Cured my brother—didn’t charge a red cent. If I got a chance at that Griffin, I’d kill him with my bare hands. I’d….”

  “What makes you think it was the Griffin?” asked Manning.

  “I’ll show you. There ain’t much left but the rear end of Sassoon’s car, but there’s something stuck there. Looks like it was put there after, see? When the goofy gate guy beats it to the house; by one of those phony trouble men. I got it covered up. It’ll be news quick enough, I reckon.”

  Manning knew what he was going to see before the trooper escorted him to the remains of the Sassoon car, still holding the half charred bodies until examination was completed.

  The crowd, curious, pitiful and morbid, were being kept away. The officer had hung a dust-robe taken from the other car over the back of the death machine, as what was left of it lay on its side. The trooper lifted the light cloth and showed the sticker—the scarlet cartouche that was the Griffin’s insignum, his memento mori, the blood-red token of his victory.

  Manning conferred with the local chief and got the road roped off, all onlookers kept well away. Then he had a talk with the gatekeeper.

  “There was men workin’, all right,” said the man. “I didn’t see ’em when I run back to the house to give the alarm, but I wasn’t thinkin’ of anything but gettin’ help, knowin’ I was too late. All three was dead, mister, covered with blood, an’ the fire ragin’, an’ stinkin’. Dr. Sassoon, he was in back, all mashed-like between the seats. Ryan, he had the wheel drove into his chest. Dr. Moore’s head was nigh cut off with glass, or something. I’ll not forget it to my dyin’ day.”

  “How about what you saw in the trees?” asked Manning.

  The man stared at him. His shallow brains were half scrambled. There was a vacant stare in his eyes.

  “I dunno as I see anything,” he said, half pleadingly. “It ain’t easy, lookin’ back, to remember. But it was something, mister, swingin’ through the trees, like one of them chimpanzees. I was sober, though you might think me drunk or crazy, when I tell you that whatever it was didn’t have any legs.”

  Manning remembered a stormy night when a legless thing had tackled him. “I wouldn’t talk about it too much,” he suggested.

  He doubted if the gateman would ever be called upon for that evidence, vital as it was. Or that it would be believed that the attacking car was actually empty.

  He reserved his own decision.

  It did not take him long to find the dirt road that showed where a car, with the same tire treads as the one that had crashed into Sassoon’s machine, had backed off the highway and reëntered it.

  The road sloped upward, blank of anything but hoofprints for a while. Then Manning found the imprints of human hands, palm-flat to the dirt.

  They led on, in an eerie trail, from where the legless monstrosity had dropped from a tree, until it joined two men and a car, that had come in, and left, the dirt road from the opposite direction.

  Manning noted the tire prints until they struck a cemented way. The prints could be photographed, cast in plaster, but he did not doubt that the Griffin would see those tires disposed of promptly.

  This killing showed that the ingenious working of the mad brain were once more in action.

  Three dead men, and one woman, since the Griffin had run amuck. So far, not a tangible clew. The laughter of the fiend seemed to ring in Manning’s ears as he returned, to find the scene of the murder swarming with those whose business it is to attend such grisly functions.

  They went about their grim business of removing the dead, of carrying out official routine, while those who were to give out the news avidly covered their assignments.

  An inspector saluted Manning.

  “We’re powdering for prints,” he said. “They must have been wearing gloves.”

  “Looked inside?” asked Manning.

  “Of course. There ain’t a mark on the wheel, or….”

  “I meant inside the hood,” said Manning curtly. “They may have changed a tire. Powder the tools, look in the unusual places, everywhere. We’ve got to find somebody who bare-handled this car, Inspector, and pray to God his prints are on record. It must not be touched except by our men.”

  VI

  “You read about Marconi steering a ship into harbor by radio beacons,” said Manning to the commissioner. “It’s not the first time it’s been done with boats, up to battle cruisers; with cars, right here in New York; even with planes.

  “That’s how it happened. The Griffin�
�s car, with all its numbers filed and eaten off—and no license plates—was empty when it shot out of that dirt road.

  “The troublemen were fakes; one of them had plugged in to the power line. He was the control man; the other a lookout. If cars had come along they would have put it off, that’s all. It was damnably simple, damnably impossible to foresee, to prevent, even if the Griffin had warned us.”

  “What about the thing in the tree, that legless freak?”

  “Another lookout, to signal in some way when Sassoon’s car was coming down his driveway. He had to be treed to look over the high hedge. The man on the pole had enough to do.”

  “So the Griffin wins, leaving us nothing to go on,” said the commissioner grimly.

  “There are the finger-prints we found on the radio car. On the spokes of the spare tire, under its canvas cover, on a wrench; and a beautiful impression on the only spark plug that wasn’t shattered. Has the report come through?”

  The commissioner touched a disk, gave an order to the man who answered.

  He and Manning looked at each other while they waited. The commissioner tore the end off a cigar and thrust it into his mouth, chewing on it without lighting it.

  Manning selected an imported cheroot from a pigskin case and lighted it, puffing quietly, but inhaling the strong smoke. It steadied his nerves. He did not expect too much from those prints that had been almost overlooked, but he did not want to draw a blank.

  The head of the finger-printing bureau brought up his findings.

  “Casey Flynn, alias Mickey Flynn, alias ‘Croaker’ Casey,” he said. “Here’s his record. Sent up for homicide, paroled, in again for manslaughter. When he left Sing Sing last he didn’t come in to New York. The boys picked him up in Albany. They had nothing to hold him on, though he had plenty of money and was living high. He told them he had struck something good. They kidded him, asked him if he was going straight, and he told them he was going too straight for any dick to follow.”

  “Electrician?” asked Manning.

  “No. Mechanic. Drove trucks for ‘Alky’ Simms. He could run marine engines. Claimed he was an aviator.”

  “Just an all round handy man,” said the commissioner sarcastically. “Thanks, Cunningham. Leave that here. We can pick up that chap, Manning,” he said. “He’s an outside man for the Griffin. Might be hiding out, but more likely is not. Figures a roundup might create wonder why he disappeared; doesn’t figure we found his prints. He worked on that death car. He’s been mugged. Plenty of our men know him on sight. We’ll get busy and bring him in.”

  “Don’t do that,” said Manning. “Let him ramble. But put your best under cover men and shadows on the job, to find out where he rambles, and get his connections. It’s a slender thread, but it may be like the one that led to the heart of the Cretan labyrinth and the lair of the minotaur.”

  The commissioner grunted. He was not quite sure what Manning was talking about, but he understood his drift.

  “It’s our only chance,” Manning went on earnestly. “To weave such threads into a rope, into a net, to trace the Griffin’s agents back until we get in touch with him.”

  “Agreed. I’m with you, Manning, heart and soul, so long as they don’t ask me to resign, or fire me. I’m none too keen to look at the evening editions. Can’t you see the headlines? ‘No Clews to Triple Murder. Commissioner Confesses Police Are Balked.’ Not that I did confess it, confound them.”

  “I’ll be blamed equally,” said Manning. “I’ve no job to lose, Commissioner; there I’m ahead of you. But I’ve got to save my own face, and I won’t look at myself with any satisfaction until the Griffin is in his coffin.”

  “Make it a triple one, lead, steel and solid stone.”

  “Amen,” said Manning, and said it reverently.

  The Six Scarlet Seals

  Poison Had Slain the First of Six Men Menaced by the Griffin—and Before the Moon Set Some New and Awful Engine of Death Would Snatch the Second

  The latch clicked, and Gordon Manning entered the hall of the old brownstone house in Chelsea, where the man who had been his friend—and his father’s friend before him—had always lived.

  Whenever it was possible, Manning visited the old professor once a week to play chess, in which intellectual tournament Manning was seldom the victor. Victor Harland, ex-curator of the National Museum of Anthropology; author, lecturer and explorer; had passed seventy and was no longer active in professional work, though his mental activity was unimpaired by advancing years. He had earned, and was enjoying, leisure.

  He could, and did, play a dozen or a score of chess games simultaneously, and win ninety per cent of them, against crack opponents. Too often Manning saw a twinkle come into his friend’s eye after the twentieth move or so, and knew that Harland had recognized a vulnerable situation. It was not for the chess Manning came to see him, so much as from sincere affection and admiration.

  The big room at the back of the house was the same as Manning had always seen it, whether the gap between his visits was one of a week or a year. Walls halfway paneled between bookcases, a marble fireplace, where cannel coal burned cheerily. It was only early September, but the professor’s blood was thin.

  Tea things were on a table. Liquors on a sideboard. Harland was a bachelor. The wife of the man who lived in the basement, and whose husband acted as janitor and gardener, was his acting-housekeeper. The professor liked to fend for himself. He was not over fussy, but he did not like to have familiar things shifted about. He owned the house and leased the upper floors to responsible, respectable persons who were quiet and orderly.

  He greeted Manning cordially. The chessmen were already set upon the board. Manning was prepared to open with a Queen’s Pawn Gambit if he won the first move. That opening would help to stall off defeat. But first there must be tea. The choicest buds of golden pekoe, that Manning saw was supplied his friend and mentor.

  It was a rite with Harland. The infusion he made was perfect, to eye and nose and palate.

  Plants, flowering and foliage, were inside the windows. The professor did not often use the balcony, or go outside at all. The long curtains of crimson damask were three-quarters drawn. Dusk was just approaching, and Harland had advanced the twilight by lighting the chess-lamp, with another on the tea table, where a silver urn hissed softly beside a priceless service of Crown Derby china.

  It was very cosy. A canary disdained the professor’s ruse and, looking into the garden, sang happily.

  There was the usual interchange of talk. Harland knew of Gordon Manning’s special mission and authority to capture the Griffin, but he did not mention it. At his age, he did not care to contemplate the spectacle of a monster in human form who deliberately destroyed, or attempted to destroy, the men who stood for advancement, men of achievement, of benevolence and enlightenment.

  As he prepared the tea, Manning asked what had happened of interest to his host since the last visit.

  “Not much. Save that I have met an opponent worthy of my sharpest steel, my boy. He may yet prove my master. He called first on Monday, introducing himself as a chess-player. He reads my column. He disputed a theory of mine and convinced me he was right. A strange character in some ways, but very keen. A brilliant mind. He was here again this afternoon and we had a match. He undertook to prove that Niemzowitsch was always right, and Steinitz wrong. And he could have proved it in that game if he had not made a slip that I saw, but naturally, did not inform him about.

  “There is your tea. You do not take sugar. I should not. It destroys the fine taste. But I must have my sweetenings in my old age, my boy.”

  He chuckled as he passed the cup to Manning.

  Harland was far from old age. He was still good for another decade, if not two. He helped himself to two lumps of sugar. Manning sniffed at the stimulating fragrance of the tea, sipped it. Chess-table and tea-table were close together. Soon the first moves were made, and countermade. There was silence in the room, save for the cheery chirpi
ng of the bird, with its occasional snatch of melody.

  Harland had black, but he began to take the aggressive on the second move. On the seventh, he suddenly castled and sacrificed a bishop. Manning knew this was not weakness but some brilliance he must solve. Harland sat back and finished his tea. Manning closely studied the problem.

  Then, suddenly, Harland was gasping for breath. His eyes bulged, his speech was harsh and incoherent. He glared at Manning; tears running from his eyes. The pupils were merely points. Sweat had broken out on his skin. His face and hands glistened with it as if varnished.

  “Tarrasch does not take sugar,” he proclaimed. “I defy either of you to dispute it.”

  He sank back in his chair with muscular twitchings that merged into a continuous tremor, as Manning jumped up, upsetting the chessmen. He lifted the professor as lightly as if the latter were a child. He loosened waistband and collar, stripped off coat and vest. He placed Harland face down on a lounge, doused his head with cold water, flung open both the windows—wide. The canary stopped chirping. It was growing dark. Manning felt the feeble pulse.

  For a split-second he hesitated between applying artificial respiration immediately, or telephoning for powerful stimulants. It was touch-and-go. Harland’s heart was blocked in its action, his respiration was more and more labored. His lungs needed oxygen. He was dying from both paralysis of the heart and pulmonary edema.

  Manning had studied medicine and surgery as a means of self-preservation during his exploits in strange and remote places. He had an especial knowledge of plant poisons, many of them alkaloids known to native wizards but included in modern pharmacopoeias. Here were symptoms he recognized, though he did not attempt absolute diagnosis.

  He called police headquarters and his voice rang sharply and with authority.

  “Snap it through. Emergency. Gordon Manning talking. Is Inspector Sullivan there? Good—put him on.