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

by J. Allan Dunn

  As an adversary, I salute you! You play a better game than I thought you would. But don’t prove too dangerous. I may call checkmate, in so many moves. I may even give you a hint of what you can expect in the near future.

  I can tell you this much beforehand of what I have planned. The man whose demise, not untimely, is forecast lives not very far from you—or from me.

  Antagonistically, but sincerely,

  The Crime Master.

  Manning put down the letter. It held the elements of madness, of illusion. He believed a part of it lies. How much he could not tell. It was the cunning of dementia. The Griffin was a supreme egomaniac. He seemed to consider himself pledged to remove men he had marked down under the plea of their villainy. And he had chosen upright, valuable citizens. It was another proof of his warped mentality.

  Here was another doomed. And there was nothing to do but wait. To wait, and control himself. The communication was cunningly devised to undermine Manning’s resistance.

  He did not believe the phrase about there being no more pawns in this game. The Griffin might have devised some devilish means of death that did not call for an actual assassin, but someone would be there. He knew that he would surely find that scarlet seal conspicuously affixed on the scene of crime, on the body of the victim probably, as he had himself seen it, had found the taunting symbol on the wheel of his car, on the lock of his house-door. The Griffin was not supernatural.

  If he was given time he would have a cordon ready to surround the place. If he was given time. He acknowledged the cleverness of the man who styled himself Crime Master. To Manning there were two readings to that phrase. If he won he would be a Master of Crime. He meant to be so far as the Griffin was concerned.

  There came a rap on his door. The secretary reëntered. This time a radiogram.

  It was from the girl he had begun to love. A sentiment he must now deny himself. The Griffin had forced him into the open. He was a marked man. He must carry on alone.

  Arriving Renalia Wednesday next via Cherbourg and Southampton. Hoping to see you soon.

  Eleanor.

  Manning folded the message into a spill. As the Griffin had destroyed his calculations, so Manning burned this, down to the last half inch, crumpling the char into his metal waste-paper basket. He washed his hands, took hat and cane and went out, his face grim, drawn.

  He got into his swift roadster and drove swiftly homeward, out to Pelham Manor, where he owned the house built under his own plans. There three Japanese attended him, faithful retainers, devoted. It was a little sanctuary of its own. But, as he drove, he dwelled on the phrase in the Griffin’s letter, that the next crime would take place not far from his house, not far from where the Griffin himself lived in secrecy. If he was not lying again.

  Would he come this time into contact with the Crime Master in person? The thought, the hope, spurred him, eased the terrific strain of inability to check that opening move, to devise means of coping with it beforehand.

  What did the Griffin mean by semi-suicide, by automatic modus operandi?

  III

  DEEP in the rocky bowels of the foundation of his lair, the Griffin, masked, watched an experiment arriving at completion and, he hoped, perfection. This was his laboratory, a series of stone chambers hidden from all sight, buried beyond betrayal.

  He was masked. So were the two men who worked over the devilish contrivance. So were all his men save Quantro. Nothing could disguise his hideous misproportion. He accentuated the Griffin’s mystery and power. Those who labored here, some servants, some specialists, were all nameless, numbered. They preferred to be so. On each arm was a brassard bearing the numerals of their identity, known only to the Griffin.

  He was no scientist by training but his brain, inflamed though it might be, was capable of comprehension of all they did. It was his mind that conceived the modes of death he dealt out, each one different, mysteries until Manning’s acumen had solved the last two.

  He might solve this. But he could not prevent it. Its ingenuity was satanic, devised to meet the conditions of the victim’s habits, long since studied and spied upon by the Griffin’s orders. He had a servant of his own now in the unconscious victim’s employ.

  Wires crossed this chamber, wires insulated, vibrant with charges from the purring, unseen dynamo that provided the Griffin’s lair with light and heat, with ventilation and power.

  On a stand there stood a radio set of the latest make, its loud speaker attached. The universal dial for reaching given sending stations was missing. Its gap yawned.

  There were two telephone instruments attached to the strung wires.

  The loud speaker announced the beginning of a program. A man in working overalls threw a switch. The wires became less active. They had been fairly throbbing with power which still flowed through them in diminished volume.

  Before the program started the Griffin took up one phone, the man who had thrown the switch the other. The Griffin spoke in a low, clear tone and the other answered. The line was in order.

  Now the program started, a violin solo. Another switch was thrown. The chamber was suddenly aglare with high voltage. The experiment was at its height, concluded.

  Under his mask the Griffin’s face was triumphant. Its rare beauty blurred. It became the face of Apollyon, deriding Heaven.

  “So,” he said quietly, “it will work. Continue the tests. There must be no slip. You understand! Number Nine, Quantro will bring you up to me in an hour. I have instructions for you.”

  Number Nine, gaunt, his hair prematurely gray above his mask, turned toward the Griffin as if to expostulate. He saw the Crime Master’s eyes and gave a gesture of capitulation.

  When the hour was up he appeared in the upper chamber. Quantro stood on guard beside the chair of the man he hailed as Supreme Lord. He could not understand what was spoken but his small eyes glittered, he watched intently, for sign of treachery, for some dim comprehension of what might be in hand. He knew it would end in death, in victory for the Griffin.

  The Crime Master spoke swiftly, distinctly, giving directions that were technical, some of them, all simply set forward.

  “There must be no mistake,” he emphasized. “You understand that? I shall be close at hand. All will be arranged for you, your credentials will not be challenged but, if they are, I shall take measures to have them credited. You know the place, the time. See that your watch is set to standard time, within a second. I will provide that. You will be paid for success, a thousand dollars. For failure—”

  His pause was more pregnant with threat than spoken words. The dwarf edged forward, his hand on the hilt of his weapon, sensing some sort of crisis, hoping to be employed as executioner. The Griffin sat like a statue.

  Number Nine tried to speak, cleared his throat, found a husky voice.

  “You said I would be employed only as an expert electrician.”

  “That is how I am employing you.”

  “But this is murder.”

  “That is a word too often foolishly employed. You have your orders—there are alternatives. You know what I can do with you. If you spend your life in the prison from which I rescued you, and your sentence, at your age, would mean just that, I am afraid your family will suffer. There is another way out, if you choose to take it, but that would leave them in the same distressing circumstances. You have no insurance. That is all I have to say. You will do as I order—or suffer consequences that will, I assure you, not be pleasant, that will extend to that family of yours, for whom you still retain a foolish responsibility. Now go.”

  The gaunt man seemed to shrink in stature. He threw out his arms, dropped them listless to his sides. He was trebly a prisoner now, to the Griffin, to the consequences of previous weakness, to his family. It was the Crime Master’s last hideous threat that conquered his limited resistance, not the reward, given for being accomplice and accessory to callous crime.

  “Take him down, Quantro,” said the Griffin in the dwarf’s langu
age. “You need not return to-night, save to your usual post.”

  Alone, the Griffin refilled his hookah bowl but did not light it immediately. His face became convulsed, he rocked with devilish laughter, out of his usual control.

  “You sought to smirch me,” he chuckled. “Now, my dishonorable and learned friend, I shall tune you out—out of the Universe into the Everlasting Void!” His mirth echoed from the starred dome, the curving walls. He spat blood from his lips where he had bitten through his cheek. It calmed him. He took out a flagon of silver and a small silver goblet from a drawer, measured himself a draught and sipped it.

  Then he lit the hookah. The smoke bubbled through the scented water. Music sounded faintly, insidiously. He took off his mask and sat relaxed, the mocking sneer fixed on his lips.

  IV

  MANNING sat in his own study on Tuesday evening. He dared not leave town, whatever emergency might arise, though he did not doubt that the Griffin would find means to communicate with him; he was certain that the emissaries of the Crime Master kept close touch with his whereabouts.

  To-morrow morning the Renalia docked. He meant to be there to meet Eleanor Severn. He could not break off intimate relations so abruptly, he hoped to renew them. But now, with that mysterious hunch, that same sense that warns the adventurer of lurking foes, of oncoming, unseen danger, he feared he might not meet the steamer.

  Tuned in as he was to the activities of the Griffin, sensitive to the vibrating emanations of that tainted but powerful mind, he felt that the time for the next crime was close at hand.

  He had, to what extent he might, provided for it. Four picked men were ready at the local police quarters, equipped with motor cycles, armed. He could do no more for the moment. He could not tell in which direction the blow might fall. The detectives had been there within a few hours of his receipt of the Griffin’s letter.

  He forced himself to read. Zero hours had not found him wanting, but he was conscious of a certain internal nervousness, an irregular rise and fall of his diaphragm. At least the enemy on the front were tangible. Known to be there. He knew the tremors would cease with action, but he could not be human and remain unmoved when, at any moment, a man might be foully slain.

  At last the telephone rang. He heard the voice of the Crime Master, clear, with that mocking inflection that always made Manning’s blood tingle, caused imaginary hairs to lift at the back of his neck where his atavistic forebears had worn them.

  “Manning, look at your time. Mine says nineteen minutes of nine. At nine precisely, very precisely, the affair will be arranged. I am giving you what is termed a sporting chance. There is a bare possibility that you may arrive in time, not, I think before the blow falls, but in time to perhaps resuscitate my man sufficiently to hear his last words, his farewell wishes. Perhaps.

  “You should arrive close to nine. Those four men of yours will be a little late, I fear. They are farther away from the spot where they are quartered. Now, listen intently, while I tell you where the house is situated. Not very far from you, as I promised. Not very far from me. I may even observe your efforts.”

  Manning had taken out his watch. It coincided with the time given by the Griffin, within a few seconds. He longed to speak with the inhuman brute but he knew it useless.

  “The gentleman’s telephone is temporarily out of order, Manning. It is not listed, anyway. Neither will those of his neighbors be in commission, if you want to waste your time trying to get the numbers. Are you ready for the directions?”

  They were terse and succinct. The Griffin took pains to make them clear, to indicate the swiftest route. Manning knew the house, though he did not know who lived in it. An old survival of Colonial days, up a dirt road half a mile from the highway. He had glimpsed it among the trees. He permitted himself to answer.

  “I know the place,” he snapped.

  “Good!” The tone of the Crime Master was infinitely condescending. “At nine sharp—the fireworks! Now for the name, my dear Manning. I would like you to know it now. Jeffrey Ferguson. I fancy you know it. Ferguson the charlatan! That’s all. I may see you later. You may even glimpse me. Hurry, Manning, hurry.”

  For a second Manning sat as if turned to stone though he heard the faint echo of a mocking laugh, of far-off music.

  Jeffrey Ferguson! The preëminent psychiatric! Retired now from active practice, living in seclusion to devote his time to writing. A man who had done more for nervous ailments than any other in America, who had devoted his gifts free of charge to shell-shocked soldiers after the war, holding a clinic that included the most skillful of his colleagues; establishing a foundation, giving up his wealth.

  God! This arch-fiend seemed intent upon destroying the best and noblest. Ferguson had many useful years ahead of him. The solution flashed through his mind, a possible solution, even as he called the number to get his four men started.

  Was it possible, was it not plausible that Ferguson had known the taint in the Griffin, that he might, in the past, have declared him insane, dangerous, in or out of court?

  The line was dead. The Griffin’s sporting chance was a jest, save perhaps for Manning. He summoned his butler, left instructions for one man to continue to try and get the line, for another to take his second car and hurry to the waiting four, with directions where to go. He knew he could rely upon his Japanese.

  Then he started his own roadster, raced down his drive, struck the highway, sounding his special Klaxon. The local patrolmen knew its note and its authority. The eight pistons rose and fell in perfect rhythm. The car quivered as the indicator showed the speed on the dial. Forty, fifty, sixty, seventy! It quivered at ninety, and then Manning had a little in reserve.

  He skidded into the dirt road at almost that speed and called upon the engine for all it had for the final spurt.

  The house was to the left. High banks hid it. Then trees. Now came a picket fence and he saw the residence, two lights in the back lower story, more brilliant illumination on the second floor.

  Manning swung his searchlight, looking for the gate. It was open, as if in invitation. He slackened and then lurched through on two wheels, grazing a post.

  His car clock was a good one, in time with his watch. It was exactly nine o’clock. Suddenly the house was dark. Then a vivid flare of green light shone through the upstairs window, flashed on a great elm near it, died.

  He was too late!

  He leaped from the car, flash-torch in one hand, spraying the path, his cane in the other.

  Manning sprang up the steps to the porch, tried the front door, half expecting it to be open. It would be like the Griffin. But it was closed and he hammered on it with his cane.

  A light appeared through the glazed side-panels. A man was approaching, slowly, with a candle.

  He opened the door.

  “What do you want?” the man asked. He seemed half stupid.

  “Your master, Mr. Ferguson! Something has happened. Stand back, you fool!”

  “Yes, sir. The lights went out, all of a sudden.”

  Manning barely listened as he sprang up the curving staircase, his ray lighting him. He knew how these old houses were planned. This one had been restored but he went direct to the door of the room where he had seen the green flare, opened it.

  V

  JEFFREY FERGUSON sat in his library, going over the notes for his next chapter. Now and then he glanced at the old but reliable clock that stood in the corner. He had received a telegram an hour before. A long message, signed by the secretary of the Ferguson Foundation. It said that John Hayward, whom Ferguson looked to as the most brilliant of the younger men of his own branch of the profession, would speak from WRAK at nine o’clock on Medical Jurisprudence. It was a subject dear to Ferguson.

  His radio was in perfect order. The man who had called that afternoon to overlook his telephone installation, which came in on the roof, had told him that he had repaired a slackness in his aërial. A tall, gaunt man with gray hair and an anxious look. Fergus
on had thanked him, given him a glass of medicinal port. The man had choked over it, he remembered, but drained the glass.

  The old clock started its preliminary whirr before striking the hour. Nine! Ferguson glanced at the memorandum he had made of the proper setting of his dial to bring in WRAK.

  He twirled it, seated before the set. As he made the combination he suddenly tensed, rigid. He seemed enveloped in green flame. His veins were filled with scalding fluid. The dial burned like molten lead. Only his finger tips touched it, and then he fell sideways from the chair—electrocuted.

  Tuned out.

  The door burst open at two minutes after nine. Ferguson lay stiff beneath the beam of Manning’s torch. There seemed to be a blotch of blood on his forehead. Manning knew what that was. The Griffin’s seal.

  The lights stayed out. The radio was silent. All through the house fuses had blown out. He heard the ticking of the clock, its mechanism undisturbed, as he knelt above the dead man with the cartouche on his forehead. There was no chance of resuscitating Ferguson. He had been tuned out.

  But—someone, some human agency, had placed that seal on his brow. The man with the candle appeared in the doorway.

  “Is anything wrong?” he asked.

  “Put that candle down,” said Manning. He knew there was no use to call aid with the telephone, that it would come too late, for Ferguson. He listened in vain for the beat of motor cycles coming up the hill. But, as he guessed what might have happened, threw his ray on the devastated set, he meant to hold this man, at any cost. There might be others.

  The man advanced, looking at the dead, stiffened body. Then he blew out the candle and kicked at Manning’s torch.

  Manning swung the cane he still held, swung it viciously. He heard the other groan. His torch had struck some piece of furniture, gone out. The next moment someone sprang at him.