“Write,” hissed the Griffin, “write, you fool! Or—”
Manning jabbed the broad gold point of the pen into the capsule. With a movement fast as the strike of a snake, he drove the envenomed nib into the Griffin’s cheek, twice.
Blood showed, mixed with purple ink. The Griffin gasped with rage and astonishment, and with that indrawn breath, his doom was sealed.
“Deadliest venom known, Griffin,” said Manning, coolly but swiftly, so that the Griffin would hear him before the frightful poison took effect. “Venom of the boomslang, the South African tree snake. You are a dead man as you stand there.”
Curds of foam were thick about the lips of the Griffin. His voice rasped horribly as he sought to utter words his brain would not confirm.
“You lie, Manning! You lie!”
His eyes showed completely circled by the whites, and then the whites were suddenly congested with red veins, that broke and met until the dark irises seemed floating in blood.
His nostrils flared wide, trying to catch a full breath. His hands clutched at his throat as if he would tear it open to gain oxygen. His vitality was amazing, beyond all belief. Just as the mad monk, Rasputin, fought off poison, so the Griffin resisted the boomslang venom.
The attendants watched, spellbound and motionless. They did not know exactly what had happened, save that this had been a duel between two Masters; the Griffin, and the man who was the law to which they themselves were subject.
Manning watched, marveling. He knew the ink could not have diluted the venom. Unlike the viperine snakes, where the toxine destroys the blood corpuscles, the boomslang, like the mamba and the cobras, paralyzes the nervous system.
The Griffin swayed upon his feet, bereft of speech now. His face twitched. With infinite effort he moved one hand, one taloned finger quivered in the endeavor to point it at Manning.
There was a hideous cackle in his throat that changed to a rattle. His glaring eyes accused Manning of using cogged dice against his own prepared cubes, in this last gamble in which the Griffin lost.
He seemed to attempt to speak. Then his jaws became rigid, the ghastly grin of death fixed upon them, before he toppled to the floor, his bloodset eyes still staring horribly, his face the hue of old putty.
The slaves still stood silent, servile and irresolute. Their timid eyes moved toward Manning.
“The Griffin is dead,” Manning told them. “You are free. I am the law, but I am not seeking you. After I leave, serve yourselves as best you can. I shall leave you so that you can soon release yourselves. The law may trail you eventually, but I am not your hunter. I have rid you of a monster. I am giving you a break for liberty.”
It might not be ethics, but it was humanity; and not far from justice, he told himself. They all had suffered terribly.
They made no demur as he herded them into a smaller chamber and rolled a heavy barrel against the door.
He put the Griffin’s pen, capped carefully, into his pocket, for a souvenir. The commissioner might like it.
The madness had gone out of the Griffin’s feral features as Manning bent over him. The eyes were dead eyes. It was a magnificent cranium, the upper skull a case that had held a genius some taint had curdled, turning every thought to the desire to destroy all that was good.
Manning realized that the men who had been in the car, like those who had flown the autogyro, might not be so amenable as the numbered slaves. He found the Griffin’s mask in a pocket of the robe he took from the dead body, and now put on. In another pocket was his own gun. He donned the skullcap and went up the stairs to the central hall, imitating the stride of the man who had once worn this garb.
The chauffeur sat there, springing to attention.
Manning snarled at him in a rasping voice, and the man cringed as if struck with a whip.
“The car, fool, the car!”
The car stood at the door with its powerful engines purring like lions in the sun. The driver opened the door—and Manning clubbed him neatly and efficiently with the muzzle of his gun.
He took the driving seat and rolled the car away from the old house.
The Griffin was dead! There was no doubt of that. And all of his slaves and sub-fiends were impotent without the head devil.
Well away, Manning took off robe and mask and skullcap. They were more trophies. The mask he meant to retain for himself, to place it among his other relics of grim adventure.
He struck a highway and drove north, rapidly and expertly. Within half an hour he passed the sign: baltimore—15 miles.
The voice of the commissioner came through clearly over long-distance.
“There will be no trouble with the Maryland authorities, Manning. They are sending men to meet you and will cooperate with us. I am flying down. They ought to elect you president for this.”
Manning laughed. “I might get a medal—thirty years or so from now. I’ll be waiting for you, commissioner. I’ve got a nice souvenir for you. But—how about Farnum?”
His face lit up as he listened. “That is the best news I’ve heard in a long while,” he said as he hung up.
Farnum had won with his thousandth chance. The surgeons credited him with an escape that was literally made by a hair’s-breadth. That much to the left, and the steel dart would have torn the vein beyond repair.
As Manning turned away from the booth a bellboy looked at him, bright-eyed and inquisitive as a sparrow.
“Gee, Major Manning,” he said, “ain’t there somethin’ I can do for you?”
Of course there were leaks somewhere. Operators are human. But it did not matter. The Griffin was dead.
“Sure you can, son,” said Manning. “Lead me to the bar. I need a drink.”
Table of Contents
In the Grip of the Griffin: The Complete Battles of Gordon Manning & the Griffin, Volume 3
Copyright Information
Sign Sinister
The Scarlet Seal
Death Has Its Fling
The Griffin Returns
The Griffin Runs Amuck
The Six Scarlet Seals
The Griffin’s Gambit
The Griffin’s Living Death
In the Grip of the Griffin
The Seventh Griffin
In the Grip of the Griffin: The Complete Battles of Gordon Manning & The Griffin, Volume 3 Page 27