“There is one thing I don’t understand,” said Osgood. “Where is the legitimate van?”
Manning smiled grimly.
“You may be assured the Griffin knew all about it,” he said. “I think you will find that your publishers got a second call not to deliver today, for what seemed a sufficient reason.”
“If I knew where to send it,” said Osgood, “I’d present him with a copy. If he is ever tried again I hope some of the changes I advocate will be adopted.”
“I doubt if the Griffin will ever be tried again,” said Manning. “They might let him off. I don’t intend to, next time I get within range of him.”
The Griffin’s Gambit
A Legless Figure of Horror Climbs into a Locked House to Start a Game of Death That Brings Manning and the Griffin Face to Face
I
The Griffin’s Key
The long black car slid along the country road. The purring of the engine was inaudible. The moon was shining, though it was low in the heavens, and no lights showed in or about the big sedan. It glided with the somber, sinister aspect of a hearse.
Trees lined the road, which was a branch from a main highway. It possessed no lighting, either for traffic control or general purposes. It ran for about two miles before it linked with another highway, and in that distance there were but four houses, well apart; comfortable country residences without especial pretense to display or size.
The car came to a noiseless halt where the shadow was thick. Across the road from it ran a high hedge of osage orange, thorny and impenetrable, backed by wire fencing that was invisible from the road. There was an entry gate of ornamental iron, swung between two pillars of cemented fieldstone, topped by electric lanterns that had been switched off.
One figure remained at the wheel of the car, seated as rigidly as an automaton. A door opened, and two weird figures descended. One was dwarfish, not more than four feet in height. It was dressed like a man, but it appeared like a deformed ape. It had no legs, but it moved with astounding agility, the trunk swung between the arms.
The other figure was almost as mysterious. It was tall and lean, wrapped in a black mantle of ankle length. On the head was a high-crowned, wide-brimmed sombrero. This man looked like some tragic figure of mediaeval Spanish romance. The collar of the cape was turned up, his features were not to be seen in the light. What was to be glimpsed of the face appeared ghastly and unnatural.
No words passed between them. What was to be done seemed to have been planned to the minutest detail.
The legless creature climbed one of the stone pillars as nimbly as a chimpanzee, hoisting its bulk with the strength of its arms, hand-over-hand, with fingers that gripped the crevices securely.
It was a fearful sight to see this object swarming up the wall to the lantern cage. It squatted there, like a gargoyle, motionless.
A dog came bounding and barking across the lawn. It was not yet enraged, its voice was a first warning, rather a general alarm. Its nostrils twitched to catch the strange scent that had roused it to duty.
The legless freak tossed a juicy fragment of meat. Here was a more inviting odor. The dog gulped it down. A sound, half groan, half howl, as the pellet inside the meat dissolved, and the deadly poison paralyzed lungs and heart, died away as the unlucky brute fell on its side, twitching, gasping, limp.
In the darkness the human gargoyle chuckled noiselessly. It was deaf and dumb. Such deeds as this amused it. Then it lowered itself inside the garden. No lights appeared. There was no disturbance.
Balanced on its torso, the freak juggled with the lock of the gate. It was not elaborate. The gate opened, and the cloaked figure passed in like a shadow, sinister and silent.
The two strode across the velvet lawn, one on legs, the other on its arms. Still they moved with the fell and absolute precision of those who have spied out the land. Their evil purpose was manifest in their appearance, their approach, the silent hour, when vitality is low in sleeping folk, and courage has retreated.
A veranda ran about the building, once a Colonial farmhouse. The cloaked man stood between bush-cypresses, hidden, as the living gargoyle hitched itself up a post. The freak disappeared, entered a window opened to the night, festooned with clambering roses.
Swinging between softly planted palms, it passed through the sleeping chamber. It glanced at the fine four-poster bed where a woman lay, and almost halted. But the will of the cloaked man, who was its master, drove it on to open the unlocked door, to propel itself down the stairs.
The house had an odor of serenity, almost of sanctity. It believed itself secure. But this whimsy of a pernicious Nature left a taint behind it of perversion, almost of obscenity.
The front door opened. The freak made a hissing sound. The cloaked man passed through the door, ascended the stairs.
On the landing a faint night light burned on a small stand. The cloaked man gestured, ordering his slave to descend. Now a high-bridged nose showed, like a hook in shape. There was a glint of infinitely evil eyes, flickering like the licking flames of hell. They seemed to glow through a scabrous mask, as a leper’s orbs might shine. The man’s skin was dull gold, curiously wrinkled about features that looked like those of a long-mummied Pharaoh, resurrected from a sarcophagus.
The legless thing hopped down the stairs, awkward now, like a toad. It went out into the night, out to the car, where it took its place on the rear seat, without a sign from the chauffeur.
The moon sank slowly. The landscape lay dark, windless and inanimate. The woman awoke. She slept soundly, as a rule, without dreams; sane and healthy. She was a psychiatrist, without illusion, her life dedicated to those whose minds were too often filled with fear. Fear that she often banished, mental ghosts she laid.
But now fear gripped her.
Two green eyes stared at her. They were centered with black pupils. They did not move. Back of them, she felt a horrible, inflexible malevolence.
Her heart contracted. She was not sure if the vision were real, or conjured out of unsound sleep, by nerves that for the first time in her sound life had betrayed her.
The malignant orbs disappeared. They had focused upon her from battery-lit lenses in a contrivance suspended from the cloaked man’s neck, like binoculars.
Now, in the dark, his own hidden eyes gloating like a ghoul’s, the cloaked man shifted the green lenses.
The woman was brave, too brave. She had no weapon, no way of summoning help from servants who were faithful, yet might not be too ready to respond. But there was a reading lamp clamped to the head of the bed. She reached for it, fumbling and stealthy, still half-tranced by slumber.
The light showed her a horrible face, beaked like an eagle. It seemed to have a leprous skin, like that of a shedding snake, dully gold.
Her voice died in her throat as she roused, and tried to raise herself. The leprous face twitched to a derisive grin. A hideous chuckle was the last thing she heard as hands like talons clutched her throat, pressing, with deadly thumb-thrusts, upon her jugular vein and vagus nerve. Air and blood cut off, she thrashed like a landed salmon, subsiding with gasps as her lungs failed her.
The green lights played again upon her distorted face, lips twisted in the sardonic smile of death.
The chuckle sounded again.
The man leaned forward. He drew a small silver box from an inner pocket, took out of it a scarlet label, a small oval of stiff paper he licked beneath his skin-tight mask.
He affixed it to her forehead.
Then he glided from the room, down the stairs. The door clicked, with its automatic lock of false safety.
The car moved down the road into the farther highway.
There its lights went on, and it gathered speed, rushing through the night, with many other cars carrying men and women. Most of them were, or had been, pleasure bent.
But none experienced greater delight than the mad monster who sat with the freak Al beside him. The Griffin had made his first move, his gambit, in his l
atest game, the sport in which his perverted nature delighted; the murder of the worthy.
“We’ll see what our friend Manning makes of this opening,” he murmured. Al could not hear. The chauffeur, driving like an automaton, heard nothing.
He was not only servant, but slave to his master, who held him in unrighteous thrall, as the Griffin held all who served him, fearful of his power, his knowledge of their hidden lives.
II
The Voice of Evil
The lifeless, strangled body of Martha Everest, eminent psychiatrist, was found this morning by her personal maid when she brought her dead mistress her usual tray of tea and toast and orange juice.
On the brow of her mistress was the crimson insignia of the homicidal madman known as the Griffin; a red cartouche embossed with the design of an heraldic griffin, rampant, showing the upper half of the mythical monster, half-lion and half-eagle.
The maid, Susan Robinson, who has been in the service of Dr. Everest for many years, retained her senses long enough to call the police. They arrived to find the rest of the household unconscious of the tragedy, and the maid in a profound swoon.
Aroused, she stated, and the two other servants of the household corroborated her story, that there had been no alarm in the night. The doors of the house were found locked, the entrance gate fastened. A Belgian police dog was discovered poisoned, apparently by cyanide.
There were faint tracks on the lawn, but dew had plainly fallen later. The police….
Manning, at breakfast, tossed aside his paper as the telephone sounded. With its first tinkle he knew, aside from what he had been reading, that the Griffin had struck again. Without warning. Then the mocking voice spoke to him, with its inevitable, faint accompaniment of eerie, barbaric music.
“My dear Manning, you will have learned by now that I have made my opening move in a fresh game, and established my gambit. I attended to this matter with my own hands. It seemed to me quite a personal matter, and I must admit that I got distinct exhilaration out of it.”
The voice paused, as if hoping to draw some retort, some expression, from Manning. But Manning did not answer. He was pledged to destroy the Griffin. Manning had caught him once, and the law had judged him insane, placing him in Dannemora, where his fiendish ingenuity devised means of escape.
“That vaporing harridan, Martha Everest, had the temerity to refer to me as an outstanding example of dementia praecox. I sealed her lips and brain forever. She was a strong-minded woman, but I almost spoiled my own purpose. I almost frightened her to death before I strangled her. There have been times when I should like to strangle you, Manning, but I have thought of many other more ingenious ways of disposing of you. You were born under a lucky star, but some day the signs will properly assemble, and you will cease to bother me—though, mostly, you have amused me.”
There had been times when Manning had actually lifted a chalice of death to his lips, others when he escaped by the breadth of a hair. It would always be so until he annihilated the Griffin or the Griffin played an unbeatable gambit and swept Manning from the board.
“I am reverting to previous methods in my next move, Manning,” continued the Griffin. “You will hear from me within twenty-four hours. I shall send you the name of my next candidate for elimination, also the date of his demise.”
Then came the taunting laugh, tainted with madness, tinged with infinite malevolence, laughter that would fit well in the horror-haunted halls of hell itself.
The laughter blended with the exotic music, died away.
Gordon Manning, ex-Major of Military Intelligence in the World War; adventurer, explorer and also counsellor-at-law, though he never appeared to plead a case, had been commissioned by both city and state to uncover and annihilate the Griffin.
But he did not now bestir himself to aid in the search for the murderer of the woman. He knew that once the Griffin had struck—given a clean getaway—he would not be traced by any ordinary methods. The police would do their best.
Manning was gradually gathering a force of under cover agents to offset the Griffin’s slaves. Manning’s recruits knew no age limit. He chose them for their aptitude. They included boys and men in all walks of life, one or two girls, and one woman. Not all of them knew to what end they worked, or even that they did police work.
A lot of them seemed slender threads to weave a net about such a monster, but Manning was the weaver. Slowly, but he hoped surely, Manning’s agents worked to the final end of discovering the Griffin’s lair.
Manning adopted the method of the honey-hunter, who, capturing a bee, let it fly and marked its direct flight to the hive. The ultimate crossing of the angles would locate the hidden spot, where the Griffin had regathered his forces since his escape from Dannemora.
So far, Manning had gathered odds and ends of information that seemed to show that the Griffin’s powerful car invariably headed towards a destination not far from New York. Such a car was fairly conspicuous, but not unmistakable. No doubt he shifted his license numbers, but there was a limit to that dodge.
Also, Manning had spotted a few of the men who had worked with the Griffin in the execution of his crimes. He might have discarded them, and they were watched, but Manning watched them also.
So now Manning waited to hear from these agents of his. In the hours before the message of impending doom arrived he meant to store up energy. He did not dismiss the matter from his mind entirely. That was a nervous impossibility. The Griffin’s evil impulses broke through any attempt at assuming a genuine serenity.
Manning had breakfasted in dressing gown above his pajamas.
But he did light a Burmese cheroot and selected a volume from the handy shelves of the library.
The book was an early edition of Bunyan’s “Pilgrim’s Progress.” He riffled the pages to the place where Christian encountered the “foul fiend, Apollyon.”
“So he went on, and Apollyon met him. Now the monster was hideous to behold: he was clothed with scales like a fish, and they are his pride; he had wings like a dragon, and feet like a bear, and out of his belly came fire and smoke, and his mouth was the mouth of a lion…. Then Apollyon straddled quite over the whole breadth of the way, and said, I am void of fear in this matter. Prepare thyself to die; for I swear by this infernal den that thou shalt go no further; here will I spill thy soul.”
Manning did not liken himself to the redoubtable “Pilgrim,” but he fancied that the Griffin might be comparing himself to Apollyon. And Apollyon finally got the worst of it.
That chuckle was not so confident in the late afternoon. He had a certain book in his hand when the Griffin’s expected message was delivered. That might have been coincidence, but it was somewhat uncanny. In the light of what happened, Manning began to wonder about the intimate knowledge the Griffin revealed of his private life—if it were privy against the power of that perverted genius.
The message came at dusk, normally enough delivered. Manning considered the uniformed messenger boy genuine, though he would check up on that without hope of learning much. To trace the Griffin by such clews was about as useful as trying to trace the course of a fish in the water.
The letter, with its envelope, was on the familiar heavy hand-made gray paper, the bold writing in purple ink. Its general style was the grandiloquent and autocratic manner the Griffin always affected. But the form of address had varied. The epistle was headed with the name of the Griffin’s next victim.
It was a name that Manning knew well. A man he knew, respected, and admired; with whom he had actually adventured along wild trails.
Bayard Harding.
In “Who’s Who,” Harding was set down as a zoölogist, but he was also an explorer and anthropologist of note.
His latest dictum had stirred not only the scientific, but the world at large. The gorilla, claimed Harding, had almost given up entirely its habit of living in the trees. Its nests were now made upon the ground. It no longer traveled by swinging through the boughs. Its arms
were shortening, legs lengthening, and it maintained an upright position as its natural gait.
Soon, very soon, as science measures time, the gorilla would begin to follow the course of natural evolution, it would become a kind of man.
This statement of Harding’s had provoked anger in some quarters. But the Griffin appeared to be more virulent than any other critic. To the Griffin, star-gazer, necromancer, caster of horoscopes, and ardent believer in zodiacal influence; Harding was a blasphemer, seeking to asperse the principle of astrology, to mock at the signs of the heavens. Therefore, Bayard Harding was to be eliminated.
The Griffin wrote:
This man, seeking notoriety, would pretend that the positions of the heavenly bodies and their courses through the starry universe are linked up with the destinies of brutes. He offends the gods and I, their appointed arbiter and agent, shall destroy him.
The date, my dear Manning, shall be on the seventeenth of this month. That give you time to prepare your important defenses. Nothing on earth may save him.
I am also granting you a pawn. Here is a hint for you. If you ever read the analects of Lao Tsze you may remember the following:
“To know the habits of your friend is not always wise, lest that make you despise him. To know the habits of your enemy enables you to defeat him, even to easily compass his death against all opposition.”
I know some of your habits, Manning, as well as those of Bayard Harding. Beware your own destruction.
There was no signature, only the heraldic device of a demi-griffin, rampant, showing the eagle beak and wings, the lion’s mane and claws.
Manning set down the letter, looked at the book he had been reading when the telephone had tinkled, and brought to him the premonitory thrill of evil and peril.
It was a small volume, beautifully printed and bound in vellum. The title was deeply stamped in gold: “Analects of Lao Tsze.”
There was small doubt that the Griffin did not boast when he said he knew some of Manning’s habits, little question that Manning was being spied upon. Yet he would have risked his life upon the integrity of his two Japanese servitors. Soon, that was going to be proven.
In the Grip of the Griffin: The Complete Battles of Gordon Manning & The Griffin, Volume 3 Page 16