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

by J. Allan Dunn

  And, when he landed the Griffin next time, evidence would be superfluous.

  There were plans to be made before Manning could attack the Griffin’s stronghold. He could not pull this off alone. But he must scout ahead alone. However carefully he moved, he would be in jeopardy.

  Manning had deliberately stalked a Javanese rhino on a mountain trail, where there was no chance to evade its charge. He had gone on foot into the bamboo to finish off a wounded tiger. But such things were tame and safe pastimes compared to seeking the Griffin in his lair.

  “You can’t get out of here,” he told Thirty-Nine. “Don’t try it. I won’t be long. Did you come in your own car?”

  The man nodded. He was not going to try to get out of that place where he had been so easily trapped.

  “The car’s in the all-night garage, two blocks south,” he said, a little sullen after Manning’s inquisition. “It’s best for us to use it. The Griffin has lookouts. Your own car ’ud be spotted, and they might toss a pineapple at the two of us. My car’s a taxi, see? At least it looks like a taxi, though it ain’t registered as one. They know it. They’ll pass it through. They don’t have to see you. They won’t know what my job is to-night. The Griffin don’t hand out information. So I can drive you right past the place. And then, mister, you’ll have to take care of me, if you have to plant me in solitary in Sing Sing until you get him.”

  Manning nodded. It was like the Griffin, fatalist that he was, to choose a new, if temporary, aerie in the city, where nineteen thousand police waited to get a glimpse of him.

  Manning took the acid-blower and poison-pistol with him to his bedroom. Through the peephole he saw Thirty-Nine pour himself half a tumblerful of Scotch, and drink it neat.

  He made no attempt to examine exits, but he furtively lifted the French phone, testing it to listen in. He might not have known that an extension could be automatically made exclusive, as Manning now made the one on his night-table, with a switch.

  He first called police headquarters. His name was a sesame, and he got the inspector on duty immediately, giving him Thirty-Nine’s true name, asking for his record.

  “It’s just a check-up,” he said. “I’ll call back in ten minutes.”

  Next Manning got through to the police commissioner at the latter’s home. The commissioner’s sleepiness vanished as he listened, while Manning talked crisply.

  “When I spot the place, I’ll get through again to you, at headquarters. We’ll complete plans then. We won’t get the Griffin by throwing a cordon about the place. He’ll have his getaways prepared. I want you to rouse out the right men in the city engineers department, so that we can get at the details of all sewers, conduits and subterranean works in the neighborhood. We want to stop all exits before we try an entry.”

  “I’ll do it, Manning, but I don’t like it,” the commissioner said. “It seems too much like toasted cheese in a trap. A mouse ought to know it smells too good.”

  “I’m not a mouse. I may smell the cheese, but I won’t sniff at it. I have no idea of trying to get into the place, now. Only to locate it.”

  “Right! But put a tail on yourself, from your end. We’ll try and pick you up as you come off the bridge, but I’m not banking on it. The traffic is heavy these nights. And it’s a bit foggy over here. Thick on the rivers.”

  Manning switched back to the inspector. Thirty-Nine appeared to have told the truth. He had actually told more than the department had against him. But Manning kept faith with him.

  He took another look at his captive. He was still fiddling with the telephone. Manning called the local chief of police, found out that a sergeant named Tierney was then on night duty at the station, and arranged for him to be relieved.

  “It’s the Griffin, Chief,” he said, and knew how the other would react as he held the wire. “I want Tierney to tail me in a private car, in plain clothes, from the all-night garage two blocks south. I’ll be leaving there in a taxicab, fifteen minutes from now. Tierney is one of the few coppers I know who can wear civvies and drive a car as if he wasn’t a policeman. How about it? He can hire a car from the garage.”

  “He’ll be there. I’ll phone him now, and I’ll take over his trick myself, Major Manning.”

  Manning took his time to dress. Tierney had to be given his fifteen minutes. And, since there was fog in New York, it would grow thicker towards dawn. Time was not vital.

  He put on a double-breasted suit of dark gray that fitted him to perfection. He chose his tie carefully, the plaid of a famous Scotch regiment, with whom he had liaisoned in the war. For all the fog, it was warm, and he decided against an outer coat.

  He shifted his automatic into a shoulder holster. A tinkle sounded on his telephone as he tucked a linen handkerchief into his left cuff, in military fashion.

  It was Tierney reporting. The sergeant had found plain clothes at the station, borrowed somebody else’s hat. An efficient officer, Tierney. He would go higher.

  Thirty-Nine was jumpy when Manning went down to him. He had finished the bottle of whisky, but it seemed to have had little effect, except to help bring out the sweat that glistened on his forehead.

  “Wondering why I didn’t telephone?” Manning asked him, pleasantly.

  The Griffin’s vassal shot him a look that mingled respect and fear in a cunning leer. He had gone through a very bad half hour.

  “I didn’t give you away, Hammond,” said Manning. “Now, keep on behaving yourself.”

  He took the other in a grip above the elbow that could change instantly into a paralyzing vise. But Thirty-Nine was docile as a dachshund.

  The cab had all the aspect of a private taxi, complete with inspection pasters, and framed license. The photograph resembled Hammond sufficiently, though the name was false, as were the number plates, the registration and the numerals on the engine.

  It was a smart idea. A taxicab attracted small attention, day or night, so long as the driver obeyed traffic rules.

  Manning fancied there was plenty of power under the hood, but Thirty-Nine drove at a steady gait, respecting automatic signals.

  Somewhere behind, the faithful Tierney trailed. Manning made no attempt to be sure of it. Either the sergeant was there, or he was not.

  They found the fog after a short drive. There was considerable traffic, with produce trucks, full and empty, running in both directions on the Queensboro Bridge, thin but steady stream of private cars, and a good sprinkling of taxis.

  The mist vapored up from the East River. Melancholy hoots came from vessels trying to steal their way to a pier. Regular night water-traffic was over, except for a few barges, towed to take advantage of the tide.

  The lights of the prison of Welfare Island were barely visible.

  If the commissioner’s men picked up the car under these conditions they were miracle men. Manning was just as well pleased. All cops were not Tierneys. He did not want to be made conspicuous.

  Tierney’s tailing him was like the tail to a kite. It helped to steady it. It was a good precaution. Manning would have used it even if the commissioner had not thought of it.

  The cab was comfortable. With the fog, and no light, save on the dashboard, Manning was invisible as if he had drawn curtains. He did not smoke, though there was an ash-receiver and a cigar lighter; but he relaxed against the well-padded cushions; counting blocks after they got through the congestion at the Fifty-ninth Street end of the bridge.

  They turned south, down town, zigzagging gradually west.

  III

  The Hidden Lair

  There are certain sections of New York, notably those through the Twenties to the middle Thirties, that are partly commercialized but still preserve brownstone fronts that once were private mansions. They hold much of forgotten history.

  Here are homes that have been closed for a century, where the dust lies thick on pre-Victorian furnishings. Clouded titles and the disputes of heirs keep them mysteries. They defy modern progress.

  They are
sandwiched between apartment houses and business buildings. Some have yards, deserted stables, spaces that once were gardens. They are at once the hope and the despair of enterprising realtors; bringing in nothing, paying taxes; worth thousands of dollars by the front inch.

  It was easy for Manning to place himself as the taxi rolled on its way, occasionally passing, or being passed, by another vehicle. This was the city of his birth and preference. They were in the middle Twenties when they made the final turn to the west. Two blocks ahead, the new subway would run—when the city could afford to open it.

  To the right was the shell of an incompleted apartment house, awaiting better times and lower taxes. On the left there was a high fence on the corner. The promoters had planned to build a movie theater, but they had got no farther than the clearing of the ground. To do that they had razed the ancient church of St. Jude’s-in-the-Fields.

  There had been farms all about the sacred edifice when it was erected, and was the sanctuary of the fashionable. But the edifice, and the dead and buried bodies of a host of parishioners had slowly moldered.

  The bones had long since been transferred from the original cemetery. Now the church was gone. Only its stone pavings lay undisturbed, with the mortuary beneath them.

  That was a maze of passages and crypts, where corpses had been held against interment. The papers had carried features about it when the theater was projected. It was mentioned as an eerie spot, with mysterious exits.

  Next to the fenced-off corner, on the street that ran east and west, stood two houses that had been used by the clergy. They were gloomy and forbidding, a driveway between them, that led to a common courtyard beneath a dismal archway of stone, closed partly with heavy gates, and partly with a grille of iron.

  It had an air all its own, that archway, somber and sinister. Windy eddies swept dead leaves, old papers, in and out of it. Children did not play there. Loiterers dodged it, even in bad weather.

  Now the pseudo-taxi slowed down, moving in towards the curb.

  Here, Manning told himself, might well be the Griffin’s lurking place. It seemed to suit him, with the old cellars, the crypt, even the as-yet-unopened subway, with its unlit corridors of artificial stone, its exits merely boarded up.

  The sliding glass panel between driver and passenger was pushed aside. Thirty-Nine looked over his shoulder at Manning.

  “Is this the place?” the latter asked.

  “Just a minute, mister. I’ve got to—”

  Manning had not watched the eyes of tricky savages for nothing. For all the vague light, filtering from an arc through the wispy fog, he saw the shifting orbs of Thirty-Nine; and he reached for his automatic.

  The cab halted at the curb with a jar of suddenly applied brakes that jolted Manning. The glass panel closed with a vicious snap. The window on his right, which he had kept partly open, slid in its grooves. The light on the dashboard went out.

  Thirty-Nine leaped from the car, leaving his engine running; hurled himself across the sidewalk ramp into the black gorge of the driveway beneath the arch.

  The doors of the cab were locked. So were the windows, the sliding panel. Manning could not budge them. A shutter had blanked the window in the back of the car, working outside the glass. He could not see whether Tierney’s car was in sight. The glass was all unbreakable. It was doubtful if he could have crawled out between frames, even if he could have smashed it, but he might have got a shot at Thirty-Nine, and let in some air.

  It was too late now. Thirty-Nine had been swallowed up by the big gates. The car was a trap of steel and crystal. Even the roof was steel. Manning hammered at all of it with the muzzle of his gun. Then with the butt. The glass shivered, seemed to become frosted—but he could not break through.

  He fired at a window. The only result was to star the bulletproof pane and fill the space where he sat with choking powder fumes.

  Next there would come carbon monoxide gas—the engine was still running. That would be a nasty death, but Manning expected it. It looked like the end. He would strangle like a woodchuck in its hole as the trapper pumps in the deadly fumes.

  The car began to move, of its own volition, as if a ghost were at the wheel—or Death.

  It backed, swung to the driveway, moved inexorably toward the archway. There came a voice, resonant, deep, infinitely mocking. It came through the radio transmitter of the car. It was plain, despite the closed panel. The voice of the Griffin!

  “Welcome, Manning! Quite a leaf out of your own book—the laminated glass! You should have brought along my agent’s acid-blower. But to cut your way out would have taken too long. You will remember, I think, that I have driven a car by remote radio-control before. I do not often repeat my methods, but, in this case, the idea seemed appropriate—and useful.”

  Into the mental vision of Manning there flashed, like lightning at midnight, the memory of a self-driven car crashing into that of a famous physician who had incurred the Griffin’s malice. That had been a hideous death, but a sudden one, comparatively merciful. Manning wondered if his would prove as easy—and doubted it.

  The voice ended with a chuckle as the car swung into the driveway beneath the arch, and the grim gates opened. Now the car was in a courtyard, black as a cave. The gates closed in well-oiled silence. Manning could barely make out the loom of the old stables, of high brick walls.

  His only hope was that Tierney had marked the car swing in. Tierney might have been able to see the crimson tail-light through the fog. If it had been lit…. If Tierney had not been lost on the road. It was a slim hope.

  Manning was in the grip of the Griffin.

  The car halted.

  “I am going to open the doors, Manning. If you will then step out, with both arms well extended, there will be no immediate trouble. Do that within the next sixty seconds, or else the monoxide fumes will be diverted from the baffler that now protects you.

  “They will sift in slowly. It will be a slow stupefaction, a long struggle for oxygen, while your lungs burn like fire. The sort of thing they do to guinea pigs in the laboratories. Guinea pigs under glass, as you are. And I shall watch your death throes with keen interest, Manning, with exceptional interest, I assure you.”

  The Griffin’s derisive chuckle came again, as a spotlight from either side the car stabbed through the darkness, dazzling Manning, revealing him pitilessly—every move, every shift of expression.

  There was a click as the windows and doors of the pseudo-taxi unlocked.

  “While there is life, Manning, there is always hope.”

  The sentence, as the Griffin spoke it, was nothing but a sardonic sham, yet it appealed to Manning’s aggressiveness.

  Here, in the heart of the greatest, the most modern metropolis on earth, he was as helpless, as removed, as if he were in some medieval oubliette, deep underground, forgotten. But so long as he was able to prolong life, even though it only became something for the Griffin to torture, he meant to stay alive. The Griffin would torture him mentally, psychologically, at first; to break down his courage. Sooner or later, the fiend’s latent insanity would rouse him to sheer sadism.

  Manning holstered his useless gun and stepped from the car, elevating both arms. Instantly two more spears of light lanced the gloom and centered on him. He could see nothing, no matter where he turned. The direct rays were blinding. He could see when black robed and hooded figures passed in front the spots, took his gun, and frisked him expertly, patting him from shoulders to ankles in search of other weapons.

  Then he was allowed to lower his arms. A hood of felted cloth was pulled down over his head. He was marched across the flagged courtyard, up carpeted stairs, through spaces that smelled dank and musty. They held him by the elbows. Manning thrust his hands into his trousers pockets, and went willingly enough. There was nothing else to do.

  IV

  The Horoscope of Hell

  Then he was vaguely conscious of a rare perfume, the fumes of amber. Strange, exotic, barbaric music sounded
softly. His hood was snatched off. The concealed lighting illuminated the room with a curious wave-green tint.

  The Griffin sat in a carved, high-backed chair of ebony, inlaid with pearl and ivory stars. He wore a long robe of sable brocade into which cabalistic signs were woven in dull gold thread. He wore a skullcap of black velvet. His face was fantastically hideous.

  The beaked nose, high cheekbones, the jutting chin, showed through a mask of gleaming yellow fabric that looked like the shedding skin of a snake, or the diseased tissues of a leper. It was thin, plastic, slightly transparent. It wrinkled with every change of expression, and distorted it. It puffed out from his lips when he chuckled or laughed through the mouth-slit. Through it his eyes gleamed wickedly. Dark eyes, with strange murky glints in them, like the lights in a black opal; fiery flecks of orange and red and blue; hideous and hellish.

  The eyes of a madman, a murderer, a monster!

  There was a table in front of him. Its top was black marble, its legs were crouching Griffins, with their eagle wings outspread, their lion claws clasping the rich oriental rug.

  There was a gong, or brazen disk, suspended between two rods of brass. Under a paperweight of silver-gilt, in the shape of a crouching Griffin with ruby eyes, were sheets of parchment. In front of the Griffin, on the table, there was a single sheet of heavy paper inscribed with a long list of names.

  Some of these had been crossed off with a crimson pencil.

  It was the death-list of the fiend. Manning wondered if his name appeared there. Those scored through in red had been killed. The Griffin would say, “Executed.”

  There was another seat opposite the monster. Manning took it as the Griffin gestured. The hooded men disappeared.

  The high and spacious chamber still held much of its original furnishings. The table, of course, was the Griffin’s own. Also a great sky-globe, on a stand that brought the celestial sphere to the height of a tall man’s head. It represented the heavens as seen both north and south of the equator.

  About it ran a great circle that was the ecliptic, the apparent pathway of the sun amid the stars. And this line was the center of a belt—the zodiac, divided into its twelve houses, depicted with its twelve signs. The globe was, in all, divided into twelve sections. Halfway up the stand, a slanting platform made a desk on which was a pad of paper, printed with the design of a planisphere.