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

by J. Allan Dunn

  “Twenty-Nine,” said the Griffin in his deep voice. “Sit there. Quantro, bring me that cage.”

  The dwarf brought forward a gilded cage on a pedestal. Inside the bars, which had been covered with a silken cloth, was a canary that now hopped on its perch, gave a chirp or two and tried to find seed in an empty receptacle.

  The Griffin released his drawers, took out a wide-mouthed vial that held about an ounce of powder, extremely fine crystals that, in the mass, showed gray, but separated, scattered on to a square of paper, were almost invisible.

  “You say that this needs only moisture to combine all its virulence, its toxic force?”

  “With the moisture it becomes a powerful poison,” said the man.

  “Causing instant death? Leaving no traces for analysis?”

  “No present analysis could discover it.”

  “In fact,” said the Griffin gloatingly, “a perfect poison! A new discovery. An alkaloid that holds all the venom of a king cobra.”

  “It is allied to such a venom,” said Twenty-Nine, shifting a little uneasily on his chair. “A new method of assembly, as you desired. And, now, now that I have done your bidding, may I have my release?”

  “Your release?” The Griffin’s ophidian eyes regarded the man who had no name in that establishment, was merely a number, as were all his associates, experts in many professions. “You are out on bail on a homicide charge, or rather you were, since that bail has long been forfeited. I brought you here and I have given you a refuge. You killed a man….”

  “He was my wife’s lover.”

  The Griffin’s eyes flashed angrily.

  “I want no interruptions. I dislike emotions. Your wife and her lover are nothing to me. Of what use is your release to you? You will be discovered, charged with the crime, convicted.”

  “I might escape, get out of the country, get away from….”

  He checked himself.

  “You do not like this work. You fear that this perfect poison of yours may be used for purposes of which the law would not approve, that you may become the accessory of a crime?”

  Twenty-Nine kept silent.

  “We will see,” the Griffin went on with a sudden chuckle that was hellish in its suggestion of innate deviltry. “First we will test the crystals.”

  He ordered Quantro to fill the seed receptacle in the cage with some hemp and rope he shook from a package and carefully dusted with the poison powder. He stirred it all before the dwarf returned the cup to the cage. No sign of the fine crystals showed. The bird started eagerly to eat while Quantro took the drinking cup, which had also been empty, and filled it to its brim from the silver decanter.

  The Griffin and Twenty-Nine watched intently. At first nothing happened. The canary cracked the seed and the hulls fell to the sanded bottom of the cage. Then it hopped across and drank, taking the water in its beak, tilting its head upward.

  It fell to the sand limp, without a twitch, dead as if shocked by electricity.

  “Good,” proclaimed the Griffin and his voice held an indescribable note of triumph. “You have done well, Twenty-Nine. It is a valuable secret.”

  “And a dangerous one.”

  “True. But, if I give you your release, I can depend upon you not to divulge it.”

  Twenty-Nine took it as a question. There was a light in his faded eyes, hope in his voice.

  “Absolutely.”

  “Ah! You will smoke a cigarette while we go into it a little further?”

  He brought out a gold case, damascened with the design of a griffin on each side. Twenty-Nine eagerly accepted the favor. The Griffin took one himself, lit it, passed the lighter to the other, watched as Twenty-Nine inhaled, sent out the vapor.

  “You did not know,” said the Griffin, “where you were coming when you were brought here? You know nothing of this place outside the laboratory cellars?”

  “No—I—”

  The man without a name suddenly pitched forward to the floor. His tongue tip had moistened the tobacco of the cigarette which the Griffin had treated with the perfect poison. The combination he had himself discovered and perfected had resolved itself into its death-dealing venom. The Griffin, calmly finishing the cigarette he had taken from the same case, sent out a smoke-ring.

  “And,” he said, “you do not know where you are going. You have your release, my friend. And I have your secret. It will come in very useful, shortly. Quantro!”

  The dwarf knew what was wanted. He dragged the dead body easily off the magnificent rug it had crumpled, pulled back the chair. The Griffin released a lever. A circular mouth to a steel chute yawned instantly in the floor. The Griffin made other smoke rings as Quantro, with his prodigious strength, sent the corpse hurtling down and, with a slight clang, the opening closed, its source invisible.

  III

  GORDON MANNING was in his own library at Pelham Manor. His deft Japanese butler had brought in coffee, placed his tobacco humidor handy, with two favorite pipes that he had carefully cleaned for Manning that day.

  Manning, tall, lean, bronzed and athletic, sank into his big armchair a trifle wearily. The combat with the Griffin was telling on him. In their last encounter he had himself escaped destruction by a narrow margin. He had grappled with the Griffin’s actual agent of death and the man would act no more. Manning had shot him, sealed unintentionally lips that might have revealed some clew by which the Griffin might have been traced to his lair.

  And the Griffin had mocked him with a message, had hinted that he was getting tired of Manning’s insistency, had insolently stated that, if Manning ceased to entertain him, he would make an end of him as he had made an end of all the rest. And, direst of all, had threatened the life of the girl Manning loved.

  There would be a next time. When, Manning could not guess. The Griffin, for all his daring, made careful preparations before he struck and, so far, his madman’s cunning had bested Manning. There were lines beginning to be etched deep in the special agent’s strong, rugged face. He filled his pipe and the good tobacco solaced him, steadied nerves he was getting conscious of for the first time, nerves that had withstood scores of deadly perils in war and peace, on wild trails in strange lands.

  It was the uncertainty of when and where the Griffin would next attack that dissolved the mock-sportsmanship of the Griffin’s game. The Griffin openly announced to Manning the name of his next victim, the very day of his doom. To fail again seemed insupportable. Manning would not, could not quit. Either he or the Griffin must perish.

  These frightful crimes not only stirred New York, but sent their baleful influence from coast to coast. They affected the safety of social and civic stamina, they undermined public confidence in the police, they had begun to demoralize the very bases of existence, to upset trade conditions, to encourage all sorts of viciousness. And it was up to him to restore these things, to destroy this frightful being that, like the creation of a Frankenstein, stalked like a grinning, mocking, elusive specter about its grisly occupation.

  Even before his telephone rang he felt the malefic influence, the vibrations to which, because he was expecting them, he was tuned in. The Griffin had some method of synchronization by which he could segregate a telephone for his own use, creating an untraceable connection. The sound of the bell was subtly different. Manning obeyed the summons with a growing heat that filled his veins, a resentment of his inability to cope in some way with this crafty master maniac.

  He would know that voice of the Griffin’s anywhere, deep as a bell, infinitely mocking in its inflection.

  “Manning? The board is set for the next game. I give you greetings, adversary. I fear of late you lack a certain humor, a lightness, a finesse in our encounters. Do not take yourself too seriously, Manning. I warn you now that, this time, as last, your own existence may be in jeopardy. I say may, because I am not yet deliberate about getting rid of you, but it is likely you may fall into the same trap that will inevitably close on Gilman Grant.”

  Gil
man Grant! Manning could almost see the look on the Griffin’s face that accompanied the chuckle which came through the receiver, together with the faint sound of strange music, haunting, modern, yet primitive as the devil drums of cannibals.

  Gilman Grant. Civic engineer and architect. The man who was the city-builder of the future, who was solving traffic and airway problems, improving old cities and laying out new ones that would meet the modern and the future requirements. Master of the problems of light and fresh air and pure water, and creator of inspiring beauty. A man who would inspire citizens by the places he made for them to live in. The genius of the century.

  Manning set his jaw. The strains of music, the chuckle of the Griffin, were obscene. He fought down his fury.

  “Gilman Grant,” repeated the Griffin. “That projector of dreams, that waster of energies, an effete esthete who does not realize that soon men will again be at each other’s throats. A believer in a false millennium he hopes to hasten. Gilman Grant, who will be dead as his own idle theories before the week is out.

  “Next Thursday, Manning. I will even make the hour more specific this time. I do not ask the whole twenty-four hours. I will let the visionary live until noon. Between then and midnight I shall make an end of him. The presumptuous paragon! That is all, Manning. I promise you no immunity. I shall not be far away, in case your own luck fails to hold.”

  The voice ceased with a trace of laughter, like a flung-back echo. The contemptuous arrogance of the message, the murderous plan, stung Manning.

  Gilman Grant must not be killed. America, the world, could not spare him. One thing stood out. Why had the Griffin limited his time, cut it in half? There was some reason. Something connected with Gilman Grant’s habits which, without question, the Griffin had studied.

  This was Saturday. Manning had four full days to warn Grant, to make his preparations. This time, surely, he must win. Fate could not grant another sacrifice like Grant. Yet… recollection of other failures swamped his energies, but he fought it off.

  He tapped out his pipe, recharged it, lit it and sat in the deep chair marshaling his wits. There was so little to work on—only this declaration of the Griffin’s that Grant was secure until noon. It meant something. It was a part of the boasting that some day would trip the arch-fiend who styled himself the Griffin, sealed his triumphs by the display of an oblong of heavy scarlet paper, embossed with the head of the bird-beast that announced his nom-de-mort.

  IV

  GILMAN GRANT was out of town, summoned to Washington as an expert on a Civic Amendment Committee. He was expected back Tuesday evening and would be at his office on Wednesday morning. His home was on Long Island. When in New York overnight, as often happened, he slept at his club.

  Manning had no difficulty finding out these things and he was sure that the Griffin knew them also. The Griffin was never ill advised, likely to be prepared for all emergencies, whether Grant stayed on Long Island, in New York or was detained even in Washington. It was a prime factor in the Griffin’s grandiose dementia, in his successes, that he was not misinformed and never had slipped up on one of his announced crimes, amazing as had been the precautions taken.

  It was for this reason that Manning puzzled over the condition that left Grant safe until noon of the day that was set for his death. Not from any sense of honor, but merely for the satisfaction of his own pronouncement, the Griffin invariably kept his word, however much it might appear to handicap him.

  Murderer though the man was, crazed and devilish, Manning believed implicitly that Grant would be immune until noon on Thursday. Almost as much he feared that something untoward would happen afterward. The Griffin’s ingenuity was appalling. He had the advantage of knowing what he would do. Manning was relegated to the post of protecting a man already doomed, of trying to not merely frustrate but anticipate the Griffin’s methods.

  He got through to Gilman Grant on Wednesday in his offices, occupying a section of one of New York’s latest vertically designed, sky-soaring buildings. It was a busy place. Men, many of them beyond question important, talked with the outer protectors of Grant’s private quarters and spare time, passed in and came out again. Cranks and committee chairmen clamored to get through without appointment. There were two special secretaries, both girls, one red-headed, the other blond, who knew their duty.

  “Mr. Grant will be glad to see anybody if there is time,” they said repeatedly. “He has appointments that must take first place.”

  “I have no appointment,” said Manning to the blonde. “However, if you will take in this card, I hope that he will see me. The matter is very vital to Mr. Grant.”

  The girl looked at him gravely, with close attention. His voice, his manner, his face, his utter concentration, impressed her. She was pretty, but she had brains. She glanced at his card and her eyes widened.

  In the affairs of the Griffin, Manning had been at first under cover. The Griffin himself had been the first to find out about his appointment, to daringly write and congratulate Manning, while flinging him a challenge. Since then, in the catastrophes the Griffin had launched and Manning had striven to prevent, Manning’s name had unavoidably been linked with the investigations.

  She looked again, straight at him, and there was terror in her blue eyes. She had sentiments deeper toward Gilman Grant than just those of an employee, Manning fancied.

  “Can you identify yourself, Mr. Manning?” she asked.

  Manning smiled at her.

  “Good girl,” he said in a low voice. “Any place we can do it? In private?”

  He saw and interpreted the fleeting doubt of him she dismissed. Then she ushered him into a small room where blue prints lay on draughting tables and Manning showed her a special badge, his passport, with its pictures, various driving licenses that bore his signature, which he there and then duplicated.

  “You can call up the commissioner at Centre Street if you wish,” he said. “You or I can speak to him. He can send up a discreet person to complete the identification. But don’t fail to get me through to Mr. Grant before he leaves.”

  “If you don’t mind I will call up headquarters,” she said. “It is not just my own judgment, Mr. Manning, but I gather that this is a very grave affair.”

  Manning bowed.

  “It is,” he said. “I applaud your caution.”

  Within fifteen minutes a discreet plain-clothes man, close to the commissioner, okayed Manning as genuine, greeting him with evident respect and he got through to the great architect.

  “I can’t give you long,” said Grant genially. “Been out of town, you see, and these new ideas of ours about civic changes are so much in the public eye at present that I am literally besieged. People want to know the things I want to tell them and it’s hard to deny them. What can I do for you, Mr. Manning?”

  It did not take long to tell him. Manning cited the names of those who had been the Griffin’s victims. Grant nodded.

  “I’ve heard of all this, of course,” he said. “Yet I’ve been so immersed in my work that I’ve almost treated this man as a sort of myth. There is no conceivable reason why he should take dislike to me save that he is a crank to whom progress is abhorrent, unless he himself conceives it. I realize you are not here to waste time, Manning. What do you want me to do?”

  “Are you going to Long Island to-night? I want to be with you throughout to-morrow. I do not believe there is the slightest danger before noon, for some strange cause that has arisen in the diseased mind of the man. I do believe that once his plans do not turn out according to his schedule, his colossal conceit will collapse. To-morrow, of course is a holiday….”

  “This office will be closed,” said Grant, gravely. “I expected to come back here to-night and work late. I have often slept on that couch,” he went on, indicating the leather covered davenport. “I have rugs to cover me. I can get breakfast here with electric gadgets and intended to do so to-morrow. This is my workshop and I shall be alone and catch up on several things
. I have certain questions I want to decide and submit to Washington, for one thing. I hardly think,” he concluded, “that there could be a safer place than this. If you want to be here with me, I shall be glad of your company though I cannot promise to be an entertaining host.”

  They both went to the window and looked out. The lofty building was a stack of cubes, as were its neighbors. The contrasting shades of the time of day brought out their modern lines in high relief. Here and there were setbacks as the high edifices tapered off to their summits, a thousand feet and more above the sidewalks.

  Grant’s offices were at least seven hundred feet above the busy street where people passed like ants. The suite was in the central part of the building. It did appear almost impregnable, this aerie set in a cliff dwelling of steel and stone. Safe enough, to all seeming, Manning acknowledged, if, indeed, any place was safe from the devilish ingenuity of the Griffin.

  “I suppose several people know of your intention to be here to-morrow, alone?” Manning asked. “Some of them strangers, perhaps?”

  “Undoubtedly. But, with you as bodyguard, if we stay in here, and keep the outer doors locked, it seems to me we shouldn’t have to bother much.”

  Manning nodded. He did not entirely agree. Locks would not keep out the experts the Griffin employed. He did not doubt that one or more of them had been here, had inspected the locks, prepared to pass them at will, even as they had studied the habits of Gilman Grant. His best reliance was on his own success as a guard, his ability with his gun. Whatever method the Griffin employed would be subtle. There would be no tossed bombs and there was the implication that he himself might perish—not that he would. It was to be a question of luck.