These were the blanks used by an astrologer for casting horoscopes. The top one had a sign set upon it. It looked as if the Griffin had been at work, trying to decide which of his victims was next ordained by the stars to die—at the hands of the Griffin, the “Avenger of the Universe.”
There was one thing missing that had once been familiar as the Griffin’s shadow. This was Al, the legless freak the Griffin had employed as buffoon and bodyguard. Al was deaf and mute. He had had about the intelligence of a chimpanzee, but the Griffin had found him useful.
Manning had eliminated Al. It was one reason for the Griffin’s desire to do away with Manning, aside from the fact that Manning was sworn to the Griffin’s capture and annihilation.
The Griffin set the jade mouthpiece of a hubble-bubble pipe through the mouth-slit of his mask. The rosewater in the container bubbled as he sucked the smoke, emitted it. Coming from that ghastly countenance, it seemed like hell-vapor outbreathed by a devil.
“This is but a temporary place, Manning; I must apologize for receiving you so poorly. But I will make the reception as warm as I can. I have been very busy lately; too busy to get properly settled, thanks to you.”
His derision turned to hatred in the last three words, bitter and venomous as the bite of a mamba.
Manning regarded him serenely. He felt helpless. Hope was a rainbow dying in the dark, but his spirit held strong within.
“I feared,” said the Griffin, “that Thirty-Nine might be baffled by some safety device of yours, installed too recently for me to know about. So I planned a second offense, that looked like a defense, on the principle of judo. And you fell for it, like the dupe, the simpleton, the gobemouche that you are. Once you amused me. Now you weary me. Any time I cared to concentrate I could have destroyed you. I have let you run, like a cur on a string. Now—it ends. Despite all your vaunted ability as an investigator, all your police, all your press, all your precautions. You are going to die, within the hour, Manning—and not at all pleasantly.”
He hissed the last words with concentrated hate, the mask fluttering before his lips.
Manning looked at him steadily. He had faint doubt that this was his death warrant. The room seemed close. The amber fumes, the hasheesh, with which the Griffin tinctured his Turkish tobacco, were a little overpowering.
He took the handkerchief from his left cuff and patted his forehead. He remembered the sweat on the brow of Thirty-Nine, and was not ashamed to find it on his own.
But his hand was steady, his voice was calm, as he tucked the handkerchief into his breast pocket, looked at his wrist watch. The Griffin surveyed him mockingly. He had enjoyed that show of sweat. It was the first sign that he had affected his prisoner.
“It is a bit warm in here,” Manning said. “You mentioned ‘within the hour.’ Am I to understand that my death is one of those appointed by the stars, that the Lord of my House had been careless, or cannot defend his domain against the aspects of evil on this night?”
It was his turn to jeer subtly at the Griffin’s supreme belief in the omnipotence of the stars as controllers of fate.
“This is my vengeance, Manning. I have appointed the time myself.”
“I see. By the way, I wonder if you noticed the recent announcement by astronomers that the obliquity of the ecliptic slowly changes? And that this upsets the astrologer’s ideas as to what sign of the zodiac rose above the horizon at the particular moment of anybody’s birth. Astronomy, as against astrology. I do not venture to declare which is the more exact science.”
Manning had method in his talk. There was faint hope of successful interference through Tierney’s tailing; very faint. But if he got the Griffin tangled in the erratic beliefs, he might cajole him long enough to play the hidden card he carried.
Already he had made movements he had feared he wouldn’t be permitted. They had disarmed him, but he was sure he was being watched closely; that the first sign from the Griffin would start the final move.
He could see the mask pucker on the monster’s forehead. It would not do to excite him too much.
“Astronomers! Einstein, and the rest! All charlatans! The stars have predicted every great event. They dominate all lives. It is proven.”
“Nevertheless,” Manning argued, “is it not true that there is now a discrepancy in the zodiac amounting to the breadth of a whole sign? That—”
The twitching mask smoothed out. The Griffin sat back, pulled on his hubble-bubble, and chuckled.
“You are trying to pull my leg, Manning; to make me angry, so that I will have you slain swiftly, and without much pain. But I refuse to be drawn out. That was a good move; the move of a brave man who does not fear death. But you, my Manning, will know fear, and agony, before you die. Your death has naught to do with your horoscope. It is the will of the Griffin. I, who am myself, alone. Unlike all others. The Destroyer! The ‘Appointed One’ of Abaddon and Apollyon.”
Tiny flecks of froth broke through the mouth-slit, clung to the jade mouthpiece.
“I do not doubt your omnipotence,” said Manning. He took the handkerchief from his breast pocket, dabbed his forehead, replaced the linen in his left cuff once more. “After I, of minor importance in your scheme of things, am blotted out; who comes next?”
“Ah-ha!” The chuckle was almost friendly. “So that you may win yourself recognition in the Land of Shades, by predicting an early entry? No, Manning. That I will not do. I have not myself entirely ratified the selection. I shall finish that horoscope after I am through with you—rid of you, Manning!”
The outbursts of maniacal fury that broke his speech were proof of his lessening control.
“But I will read you the list of those who will be chosen, each in their appointed hour.”
It was to satisfy his own colossal vanity that the Griffin read his roll; of those who had died, and those who were about to die if his career of crime could not be checked. He gloated over the knowledge that the one man who might have accomplished that, listened, powerless.
Manning heard that roster of brilliant names, condemned by a madman to have their careers cut short, with far more emotion than the Griffin’s pronouncement of his own death had stirred. For these men and women were geniuses. To slaughter them was to maim all humanity.
Once more he dabbed his forehead. Now he held the handkerchief crumpled in his right hand. The Griffin set down the list of those he had marked for death.
“As for you, Manning,” he said, “I have devised several means of shuffling you off this mortal coil. You have evaded some of them. This one you will not evade. These buildings are a part of old New York. In those old days, men went to see terriers tossed into a rat-pit. The terriers usually won, though terribly bitten, because they were equipped by Nature with punishing jaws, with the necessary teeth.
“You have good teeth, Manning, but they are not those of a bull-terrier. One annoyance of this place is that it is infested with rats. I have caught many of them, or had them caught. I have placed them in a special cellar, kept them hungry, but not so starved that they have become too weak. When they started to eat each other, I considered them sufficiently ravenous. I have kept them that way, for you.
“I am going to drop you into that rat-pit, Manning, as you are, unbound. And I shall enjoy the spectacle far more than Nero ever relished the casting of a Christian maiden to the lions. I hope you put up a good fight, Manning. There will be a spotlight—”
He half rose, in his mad frenzy. The jade mouthpiece fell from his lips. The flecks of foam clotted on the mouth-slit.
“A rat, devoured by rats—”
Manning moved the crumpled handkerchief, as if to stuff it automatically into the cuff of his left sleeve. His fingers worked for a moment.
“Not to-night!” Manning challenged.
The Griffin subsided into his throne-chair. He was not too mad to notice what Manning held in his right hand, brought from the elastic holdout on his left arm. The searchers had missed it, he held his
arms aloft in the courtyard.
It was the pistol Thirty-Nine had carried. And it was pointed, with a hand that showed not the slightest tremor, at the Griffin.
“Sit down, and sit quietly,” said Manning. “The aim, I think, is not very important. You know best what the poison will do to you. I think the rats will wait. I tested the trigger, and eased the spring. It will take but the slightest pressure to release the charge.”
The mask stiffened. The eyes of the monster glared through.
“You are going to take me out of here,” said Manning. “You will have to be very careful, for I shall be liable to mistake your intentions, being set on my own. To deliver you to justice, which, in the person of the police, will welcome you far more readily dead, or dying, than alive. All the psychiatrists in America will not suffice to send you to Dannemora again. It has been a long time since there was a lynching in New York, but—”
He was sure the Griffin had made no move, but suddenly the bronze disk clanged out a clamor of alarm.
“Sit still,” said Manning. “I think the police you so recently derided are closing in. I had my own judo, my own second line of offense.”
The yellow mask quivered a little.
“Get up, turn your back to me, make no false move. We shall go out arm-in-arm,” Manning ordered.
The disk quivered with its message of imminent danger.
Slowly the Griffin rose, and turned his back. He uttered a high-pitched cry. And suddenly the wave-green light went out. The room was plunged into absolute blackness.
Manning heard the slither of robes, sensed the inrush of the Griffin’s myrmidons. He pressed the trigger, but there was no spurt of flame, no sound. The compressed gas discharged the poisoned missile, but he could not tell if he had scored a hit.
He had to pull back a cylinder to recharge, a clumsy arrangement in the dark. He would have given much to swap this murderer’s weapon for his own good gun.
The brazen gong ceased its discord. The Griffin had fled, careful not to expose himself against any light, fearful of the poison-gun he had himself devised.
His high-pitched call had not only summoned his men, but by a sympathetic vibration, had put out the lights. It had been an emergency mechanism.
It seemed as if Tierney must have made contact. The commissioner must have closed in. But that was not getting in.
There was a faint draft of air, suddenly shut off. The room was filled with unseen shapes.
The Griffin had left his creatures behind to kill Manning. He was in a rat-pit after all.
How many underlings Manning might destroy with the poison-gun would not count with the Griffin. He was ready to sacrifice them. If they guessed that, they would not show any mercy to Manning.
A voice sounded in the room, seeming to come from the ceiling.
“Kill!” it commanded. “Kill! He has betrayed you all.”
His back against the long table, Manning awaited the onslaught. He could hear their breathing, feel their motion. Then, with a rush, they were on him, swarming from all sides. They panted and grunted, uncouth, hideous and deadly, grappling with him, striking, clawing, seeking to get him down, to tear him apart.
V
The Strangling Horde
Manning fought for his life. Most of the Griffin slaves were weak and emaciated, but they seemed a legion. They knew him by the feel of his clothing, which they snagged and ripped to tatters.
Twice they got him to his knees, and twice he staggered up again, blood streaming down his face where their long nails had torn the flesh. Time and again he shook them off as they clung to his arms and legs. He struck out, and hit flesh and bone. Once he cracked two skulls together. The celestial sphere toppled, the table was upset.
Once, when someone he smashed fairly tripped over a connection, there was a brief flare of blue lightning. It showed him a score of gibbering faces, hollow of cheek, eyes blazing. They used their teeth and fought bestially. Only the darkness and their own numbers, which made them block each other, added to his own prime condition and fighting ability, kept Manning on his feet. Once down, they would trample him to death, mutilate him beyond recognition.
The greatest horror was the fact that they did not speak. They only uttered feral noises. He felt their hot breath on his cheeks. They stripped the pistol-gun from his grasp. He was just as glad to use his free fist. The gun was of little use to them in the darkness. It fell to the floor, trampled and kicked.
Manning began to weaken under the buffeting, the blows and kicks. He had no definite goal to fight for. All sense of direction was lost. For all he knew, the Griffin had deliberately shut them in there to finish him; locked them in, and left them to whatever fate would ultimately come to them.
His throat was scraped and bruised. A dozen times he tore loose strangling holds.
Then one man closed with him again. He was of different quality from the rest, better fed, perhaps, or naturally more muscular. He seemed to have held off cunningly, reserving himself until Manning was worn down. His hands grappled Manning’s windpipe, shutting off air and blood. Manning thrust his own thumb at the base of the man’s neck, thrust with all his force.
This was judo, the deadly Japanese defense for a frontal attack. The man choked, an agonized rattle came from his throat. Then he collapsed, the tiny hyoid bone crushed. He went limp, dying in Manning’s arms.
Manning was tired, but so were the others. Their courage had long since been leached out of them by the Griffin.
Manning charged them, and they fell back. He barked his shins on the edge of the overturned table, but he strode over it, carrying the man he had killed.
To the rest the table was a formidable barrier in the dark. They gave him a moment’s respite while he crouched, stripping the robe and hood from the dead man, putting them on himself. A disguise might be useless, but if he ever got out of here alive—
The voice came again from the ceiling.
“Come, the way is clear! Leave him if you are sure he is dead. If not, finish him! But hurry!”
A subdued light began partially to illuminate the big room. The Griffin had calculated the horror of that unseen attack, the advantage that any light would have given to Manning, with his gas gun.
The Griffin had gone to see what the alarm might mean, to set his defense against violent attack and entry; to prepare for his own escape. He had found flight necessary.
One of the doors was opening. There was a faint glimmer of light beyond it.
Now Manning saw that all these forgotten, nameless men, had numbers stenciled in white on the back of their black robes. Most of them showed wounds that he had inflicted or where he had damaged them. They stared about, bewildered, in a huddle, looking at the dismantled room, seeking the stranger they were bidden to destroy.
He had disappeared. Manning had his hood well pulled about his scratched face. Some of them started uncertainly for the door.
Manning led them. He was first through into the passage. A robed figure came hurrying towards him. Motioned him back. The wide sleeve only partly concealed an automatic pistol.
“Get back. I am to make sure of him,” said the man harshly. His features were only a blur in his cowl, but Manning knew the voice, knew the man.
He stood aside as if to let the other pass, then flung himself upon him, left arm crooked about the neck, a knee set in the spine, right hand grasping the wrist above the gun.
Manning set out all his force, all the reserve strength that came surging to his aid. He felt the vertebrae snap in the small of the other’s back. He heard him groan, and let him fall forward; to his knees, then full upon his face, while Manning tore loose the gun.
His own gun! With which the man had meant to give him the coup de grâce.
The white figures on the back of the gunman showed plainly enough. This was—or had been—Number Thirty-Nine.
Black forms blocked the doorway, irresolute. They were unarmed. Thirty-Nine was a murderer. The other man had been ki
lled in a fight where the odds were with him.
Manning did not want to kill again—except the Griffin.
He fired over their heads. The heavy gun roared in the passageway. Plaster came falling down. The reek of powder was in the faces of the slaves as Manning turned and raced down the corridor.
That single shot, if the Griffin heard it, would be taken as the one that finished Manning. The Griffin would surely linger to know that his enemy was dead.
Manning prayed for that. He was willing to trade his own life in if he could know that the mad monster would commit no more murder.
Gun in hand, he hurried on. The passage ended in a door, unlocked. Beyond there was a flight of worn stone steps that led down to a hall of stone. It was dimly lighted with a single electric bulb. From it there led another passage, dotted with faintly glowing bulbs. On each side there were small chambers, like cells.
Manning knew where he was. This was the mortuary, the crypt below the ancient foundations of St. Jude’s-in-the-Fields. He stopped for a moment. He fancied he heard a vague murmuring ahead.
Looking back, he thought he saw black figures, like shadows, wavering and uncertain.
They must know who he was now, and they were afraid of him. They had attacked him in a pack, hysterical, rather than hostile. But they were cowed now.
The corridor led into what must have been a chapel for the dead. The chapel was paneled to the groined ceiling, in conventional, ecclesiastical design. There was a spiral stair that led up, but it was solidly blocked off with masonry. That had led to the church. What of the other exits? He was sure the Griffin had come this way.
The black-robed slaves had trailed him to the entrance to the chapel. They stood there timidly, like so many phantoms. They knew he had killed two of them, and had the means of shooting more.
“Any of you know how to get out of here?” demanded Manning. “If you do, I’ll not interfere with your own getaway.”
In the Grip of the Griffin: The Complete Battles of Gordon Manning & The Griffin, Volume 3 Page 23
