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

by J. Allan Dunn

  “You have his finger-prints?” asked the Griffin. He received the record, studied them, compared them with others and chuckled. He waved the two men back. The door slid to, the tapestry fell.

  The man grew suddenly belligerent, with a burst of anger.

  “You trying to frame me?” he cried.

  The Griffin grinned and his mask wrinkled.

  “You are already framed,” he answered.

  Burns started from his chair. Al’s knife rose halfway from its sheath as he gazed for permission from his master to complete the cast. But there came a yelp of anguish from Burns. His eyes bulged from his head, his face twisted in anguish, his hands were clamped about the arms of the chair as an electric current held him there, galvanized, helpless, suffering. The current died and the man sank panting into the deceptive cushions.

  “Just a foretaste, my friend, of what may be your ultimate end,” said the Griffin. “If the authorities knew all that paper held it would not be long before you would be in the autopsy room back of the Execution Chamber, after you had squatted in the hot seat. I have the power to send you there, or to keep you free of it, to condemn you for your past sins or reward you for services rendered—to me. Look at this disk of bronze—look at it!”—he commanded compellingly—“and tell me if you know this name.”

  Burns scowled villainously. He was missing something. Back in the dark, unused recesses of his mind he wondered vaguely if he had been mistaken for his brother—if he were being punished because his brother was on the police force.

  Letters appeared in flickering incandescence on the disk. They spelled a name that had not been included in the man’s record. Now he realized the Griffin knew all. His eyes gleamed with a long smoldering hate, fanned to fire by the wind of fury.

  “I know it,” he snarled. “The canting hypocrite!”

  Again the Griffin chuckled malignantly.

  “Good,” he said. “If I give you a chance to serve me, and to even a score with this man, will you obey with eagerness?”

  “Give me the chance!”

  “The chance is yours if you prove clever enough to pass the test,” the Griffin told him. “Revenge is sweet. Is it not, 17745?”

  The man snarled again.

  “He sent me there, he branded me with that number,” he cried. “He made a caged beast out of me and called it duty. I’ll measure up. If I could put him where he placed me I’d give the rest of my life to do it.”

  “Your wish may be accomplished,” said the Griffin and there was a mocking ring to his tones that the other missed. “Your instructions will commence to-morrow. Meantime you will be well served though your quarters may prove confining and, perhaps, a trifle reminiscent of your recent habitation. But at least the food will be better. There will be liquor and something else I fancy you crave more. Though that is a habit you must keep in hand for the present.”

  “You’re going to give me some snow?” asked the other, half incredulously.

  “A certain prescription. Be careful of it. It will not be diluted like the drug the trusties slipped you in Ossining. That is all.”

  Again the tapestry moved, the door slid aside. At a gesture from the Griffin, Al stalked grotesquely forward to lead the way for the bewildered Burns. Light glowed blue in a curving corridor. The steel door closed again. Alone, the Griffin reached for the silver mouthpiece of a Turkish hubble-bubble. He lit the fragrant weed in the bowl, tinctured with hashish. The air bubbled in the rose-scented water and wreaths of smoke made wispy patterns.

  Manning admired Harvey Allison first, then liked the man for his sheer humanity. He was both an advanced intellectual and a gentleman of the utmost courtesy.

  He was a rare combination. If his head was occasionally in the clouds his feet were firmly planted on the earth. He was primarily a gentleman and a scholar, far from the ordinary conception of what such an ultramodern scientist might be. He was perhaps the foremost man of the age, since he did not stay at theories, but proved and made them practical and of value to his fellowman and Allison was altogether a charming person to meet.

  He had the skull of the born scholar with eyes far apart and seeking, a tolerant mouth; the nose of the adventurer—whether of uncharted seas or unknown cosmic realms.

  He was the opposite of the Griffin. Here, Manning reflected, was the true genius, a power for good, while the Griffin was like an evil jinni bent only upon malice.

  Allison, if his claims were well founded, and Manning did not doubt them, was possessed of a force that was stupendous, that could not be comprehended. Men thought of it in terms of war, of destruction and it was true that, so used, it would prove irresistible. But Allison looked beyond that. If he could secure world peace, that was but a step in the progress he imagined. That atomic power of his could provide light, heat, energy that would release all men from the slavery of producing necessities and set them truly free for higher efforts. With it he could defeat climate, eliminate present fuels, outleap electricity, harness cosmic forces to the chariot of ascending evolution.

  That, he owned, was still his dream, but it was more than a vision. He had isolated the idea and made it concrete. In his brain there glowed a divine inspiration.

  Something of this, beyond public knowledge, Manning knew through his associations with the secret archives of the Government. Now that he had met the man he believed in him. Allison had the brow of a prophet, the inner glow of one set apart, appointed.

  His workshop was a penthouse, set high on a Manhattan skyscraper, secured to him by special privilege of the magnate who had built the towering edifice as self-tribute to a successful career. These were the days when successful financiers raised buildings, as the Pharaohs erected stele needles and pyramids.

  “I’ve heard of you, Manning,” said Allison cordially. “It seems that I am marked down by this maniac who styles himself the Griffin. A fanatic, of course. Star-gazer and so on. Well, I have been threatened before. I could paper my main room with warnings and death warrants from every variety of communist, syndicalist and the generally deluded who think that world progress must be based upon destruction.

  “Perhaps you know Dougherty?” he went on. “He has been appointed my special bodyguard to protect me from annoyance and my penthouse from sabotage. I am happy to say that he has become my close friend and also my assistant.”

  Manning shook hands with Detective Sergeant Dougherty who laughed at the idea that he was able to assist Allison. But it was clear that the upstanding Irishman was an admiring adherent of the noted scientist and that, aside from science, the two liked each other.

  The police commissioner had told Manning about Dougherty.

  “He’s due for an inspectorship,” said the commissioner. “He deserves it. There’s not a braver, straighter man on the force than Tom Dougherty. I wish I had a dozen like him. He leans over backwards when it comes to honesty and he’s got intelligence. Allison rates him highly and I miss him badly. He’s been an efficient bodyguard but, if the Griffin’s in on this, we’ll see he’s reënforced. What do you propose?”

  Manning was not backward in his proposals.

  “Here,” he said, “is a man born once in a century, once in ten centuries. His brain holds value greater than that of all the treasuries of the world. His success means not merely the supremacy of the United States but, far more than that, the establishment of world friendship. He is the outstanding product of modern intelligence. He told me, half jestingly, that he preferred his penthouse laboratory because, if the atoms should run amuck and there should be a catastrophe it would cause least damage on the top of a high building.

  “It makes it easier for us to protect. It is most vulnerable from the sky. As for that….”

  “I’ll see to that,” said the commissioner, “that the sky is clear not only during the twenty-four hours of the eleventh, but from sunset of the tenth until sunrise of the twelfth. Washington will help us in this. They know the value of Allison. We’ll not let a mosquito get with
in an air mile of the Whistler Building. And we’ll not let a stranger, we’ll not let anyone get on that roof or into that penthouse. Inside, it’s up to you, Manning. You and Dougherty, though of course I’ll give you all the men you want. You’ll be in a state of siege. I defy the Griffin to get through.”

  “I defy him,” said Manning, “but I don’t underestimate his resources. He is not an ordinary man. He is a fiend. His genius is as facile for evil as Allison’s is for good. I only trust I can get a glimpse of him.”

  “I’m with you in that,” said the commissioner. “Manning, if you get a chance to kill that devil, don’t hesitate.”

  “I have no intention of seeing him go to trial a second time,” said Manning grimly. He did not count his chickens before they were hatched, much less the brain children of a griffin. But his hunch told him that the Griffin had counted all defenses, calculated them as a master chess-player reckons the possible moves of a skilled opponent.

  The sky might be guarded, all approach to the penthouse protected; but the Griffin had a plan. His mine was planted, the fuse would soon be lit.

  It was midnight. The beginning of the zero hours—twenty-four hours of constant vigil to guard the life of Allison and the secret he alone held. That secret was nearing completion.

  Allison, Manning and Dougherty stood in the laboratory of the penthouse. It was skylighted with glass, proof against ordinary missiles, layers held together by shock absorbing glucose. The sky was clear. The stars shone in a cloudless sky and seemed to gaze benignly on the mortal who sought to solve the riddle of the infinite; to learn the law that kept them in their orbits, that marshaled the constellations and fixed the planets and controlled the blazing suns.

  Allison was serene. Constantly he encountered minor setbacks, but he was convinced he was on the right track. His last experiment was a profound success that had startled Manning and Dougherty and left them solemn after the demonstration they had witnessed.

  The laboratory was a place of shining glass and metal, of rods and spirals and strange-shaped containers—condensers and transformers, inducers and reducers, generators and converters, elaborate contrivances of which they could only guess the use.

  They had seen a million volts released without thunder, sending a purple glare high into the heavens, then subdued, eliminated. The primal force that held the atoms indivisible had been split. Allison was a god.

  Manning had been with him as guest and guardian for forty-eight hours, relieving Dougherty for short watches.

  Now the three were together for twenty-four hours. No one else was in the penthouse. The servants had been given a holiday. All through the building detectives and private operatives saw that nobody penetrated to the roof. The whole building was being thoroughly searched, every hour. Its own watchmen were supplemented by picked men from Centre Street.

  The penthouse was shut off, in a state of siege. It was, of course, amply provisioned. Dougherty had volunteered as cook and butler.

  “I’m no Oscar of the Waldorf,” he said, “but I can handle plain food. I’ve made you a menu.”

  It was simple, but satisfactory. Eggs, bacon, coffee and melon for breakfast. A simple luncheon. Canned turtle soup, steak, asparagus and baked potatoes for dinner, with a dessert. Manning had ordered and taken in all the food. He had provided water, even a supply of ice. He was leaving nothing to chance. He included tobacco, cigars, cigarettes and certain liquors from his own supply. They would fare well enough, but they would use nothing that was on hand, not even the running water. The servants were not let off because they were in any way mistrusted, but because Manning was resolved to eliminate all chance of outside interference. The Griffin’s money might bribe one of them to do some apparently insignificant thing which might prove the loophole he needed.

  How the Griffin would strike was beyond Manning’s ken, beyond the ideas of Dougherty. That the stroke would be subtle and sudden was certain.

  Allison surrendered himself to their dual keeping with a laugh.

  “I am yours for the next twenty-four hours,” he said. “To guard and keep. For that period I shall do no more work. I have earned a rest and I intend to relax and enjoy it. Do not take your own responsibilities too heavily,” he added. “The Fates look down, my lot is determined. Whatever happens, I have made some advancement in the right direction. Even to have pointed out the way is satisfaction.”

  Dougherty said something almost incoherent. His voice was strained and harsh. Manning felt the terrible tension, but he was primed with the thrill that always prefaced an encounter with the Griffin. He felt that Dougherty was going stale from his steady stress of guardianship to which the climax now seemed imminent. The sergeant had changed within the last twenty-four hours and Manning wondered if he would crack, but his jaw was steady and there was a glint in his eyes that proclaimed resolution. Allison rallied him.

  “You’re not yourself, Dougherty,” he said. “Let’s go into the living room and get some refreshment. Afterwards, if you smoke, I’ll play to you both. I know Dougherty doesn’t play the piano, but how about you, Manning? My instrument is the violin.”

  “I never got farther than chopsticks,” Manning confessed, “but I’m a music lover.”

  “I find it lets me down,” said Allison. “Clears up the cobwebs and all the trash left over from concentration on a problem.”

  Manning glanced upwards through the vaulted skylight. He could see dark shapes soaring, manbirds on motionless wings, their cruising lights gleaming on patrol. There were police planes and army pilots. All landing fields had been notified not to fly over that part of Manhattan without reporting it in advance. No unknown airplane could penetrate that flying cordon.

  Surely the place was impregnable. The elevator doors to the penthouse were locked, the door at the head of the stairway was closed. The building swarmed with armed and alert officers, the approaches to it were heavily guarded. The penthouse was shut off, it was rendered invulnerable.

  Yet Manning, keyed-up to the expectancy of disaster, felt his spirit vibrating with premonitory alarm. He had no fear. He did not know what fear was. But he had seen many strange things in his Oriental travels, in African kraals; things inexplicable to ordinary knowledge, in old temples, spirit-houses, where phantoms had seemed to gather and take shape, chilling the hearts of warriors.

  The Griffin’s apparent concession in naming the twenty-four hours in which his victim should die was in reality a crafty maneuver. It increased strain to the snapping point, while vigilance was so widely extended that, with Manning and Dougherty, it was stretched to extreme limits.

  Now Manning felt certain phenomena that did not materialize out of his own consciousness. They were as automatic as the lifting hackles, the quivering nose and trembling body of a hunting dog that scents a dangerous quarry. There was evil in the penthouse, crouching, cowering, amorphous at present, invisible. At any moment it might assume some form, make itself manifest.

  There was the same sort of atmospheric pressure that makes a dog howl hideously while old women predict the passing of a soul. Manning felt as if something clammy crawled down his spine, as if ghost hackles were rising on his neck, his skin goosefleshing.

  Dougherty was rated the bravest man on the force. He, too, seemed haunted. Allison was the least concerned. He led the way into the living room and produced his cased violin from a carved chest.

  Manning took it from him, went with it through the tall glass doors to the parapet, closing the doors behind him. He exercised the greatest precaution in opening the case, examining the violin, the bow, the cube of rosin. He had not forgotten the Griffin’s hint, which, of course, might turn out to be only a false lead, that some habit of Allison might be used as the means of destroying him.

  There was nothing wrong. Out here on the roof terrace the air was cool and sweet. The lights of the theater district glowed below. All about, the towering buildings were dotted with squares and oblongs of illumination. The lighted spires gleamed like
beacons. The low murmur of the city came up to Manning and now he felt nothing of that impression, that emanation of evil he had experienced within.

  Allison smiled as he took over the violin.

  “I played that last night for a little while,” he said, “after my formulas had proven themselves. Now I shall give you a concert.”

  Dougherty and Manning smoked and sipped highballs. Allison declined a drink. From now on they partook of nothing that Manning had not personally inspected and provided.

  Allison’s music was excellent and varied. He played the chansons of French voyageurs, barcarolles of Venetian gondoliers, sweet lieders of Germany, a stately Largo; passing from berceuse to minuet, from lilting gypsy airs to stirring marches, as the mood led him. Different music, this, from the barbaric strains Manning sometimes heard as the Griffin ceased talking through the telephone.

  The room was delightfully furnished, artistically lighted. Through the tall windows they looked west, towards the Hudson. A few pinnacles cut the skyline where the stars glittered and the planes kept their vigil. Allison played with consummate skill for over an hour. Then he set down the violin and poured himself a drink.

  “A nightcap,” he said. “I haven’t been sleeping too well lately, but I feel I shall to-night. Here’s to your healths, my friends and guardian angels, and, incidentally, here is also to my own health. I’ll turn in. See you both in the morning, although I suppose you’ll be peeping in on me, to see I haven’t been spirited away or otherwise eliminated.”

  “He’s got nerve,” said Dougherty as Allison disappeared into his bedroom. “I’m damned if he hasn’t got more than I’d have, in his shoes. How about turning in, Manning? If you like we’ll split watch until breakfast time. Two four-hour tricks.”

  Manning shook his head.

  “I couldn’t sleep,” he said. “Go ahead and get a few hours if you feel like it. Things seem serene enough, but I haven’t had the long session you have for the past few weeks. I’m out of sleep until the time’s up.”