The Crime Master: The Complete Battles of Gordon Manning & The Griffin, Volume 1 (Gordon Manning and The Griffin) (11 page)

Antagonistically yours,

The Crime Master.

Beneath the signature was the drawing, cleverly enough done, of a griffin’s head, its hackles rampant, its tongue protruding from its open beak in derision.

The conceit, the colossal, mad conceit of it, was staggering. To announce the name of his proposed victim, the date of his contemplated death. It was sheer lunacy! Yet it was through that supreme impudence, that evidence of grandiose dementia, that Manning hoped eventually to trip his man, to get him in the toils. That happening, when it occurred, would be fraught with vital hazard to himself, he did not doubt. Nor care. He longed to come to grips with this modern Frankenstein.

And he believed that the Crime Master would make good his boast. And soon.

II

THE strange sanctum of the Griffin was vacant. It was a room with curving walls, without visible doors, without windows. The appointments might have belonged to any century. There was a gazing globe, suspended disks of bronze—an inkstand with a carved head of a griffin, in gold. Light came from invisible sources, the air was sweet, perfumed with amber. Music sounded faintly, muted music that was primitive.

Actually, the chamber itself was intensely modern. Back of the wall tapestries there was chilled steel, the floor was steel beneath the priceless Oriental weaves. Modern science and ingenuity had many devices connecting with that room.

A section of the wall opened. A bizarre figure stepped out of an elevator, black of skin, wearing a loin-kilt and turban of scarlet; deformed, long-armed as an ape. It squatted like a toad. The Crime Master sat back of his carved desk in a thronelike chair. The Griffin’s strange eyes gleamed from a mask of plastic material like goldbeater’s skin. Eyes of topaz, snake’s eyes, tiger’s eyes, cruel, pitiless. Now they glittered with anticipated satisfaction as he spoke to the hunchback dwarf in the latter’s native Haitian.

“I do not think I shall need you again to-night, Quantro,” he said. “I am only waiting for a report from the laboratory. You may—”

Suddenly the hidden music faltered, the bronze disks gave out an ominous note. The whole room seemed slightly shaken as if an earthquake had rumbled, save that the sound was sharper. It seemed to come from far below, where the Griffin, with the aid of expert employees, conducted certain malevolent experiments, deep in the rocky foundations of his house. He spoke sharply, his eyes flaming.

The dwarf rose, went through the opening that reappeared as the Griffin pressed a foot button. The lift shot down the steel tube. The Crime Master waited, immobile, as if carved. The close-fitting mask aided the illusion of his having turned to a statue, the folds of his brocaded robe were still.

The lift ascended again, the dwarf stepped out once more, behind him a man in mechanic’s overalls, a plate round his arm bearing the numeral “12,” a mask over his face, above which his partly bald head, like a monk’s tonsure, seemed incongruous.

The Griffin came to life, nodded him to a chair. Quantro took place behind the man he deemed his god, his beady eyes avid. He fingered a long, curving knife in a shagreen scabbard, thrust through the band that sustained his loin cloth. He scented trouble; his nose was like that of a snuffing beast of prey.

The Griffin listened coldly to the explanations of Number Twelve. When he spoke, the syllables were like pellets of hail.

“It was, you say, the fault of Number Fourteen?—but for his carelessness the experiment was a success?”

“He paid for that carelessness. My God, I saw him die. It was terrible, horrible!” Number Twelve shuddered. The Griffin’s mouth accentuated its ever present sneer, turned it to a devilish smile, licked his lips.

“I shall look at him presently,” he said. Now his even tones held a gloating note, a hideous anticipation.”  There is no doubt that what I asked for is practical?”

Number Twelve shuddered.

“It is. I have not yet done all you asked. It can be done. But—I ask you to get some one else to complete the job.”

“Why?” The word was icy, imperative.

“It is not human, to—”

“Have you a substitute? Am I to be disobeyed? Who are you to judge my actions, my motives? Yours, I think, have been challenged.”

“There are limits. You goad me too far. I—”

“Exactly—there are limits.”

Number Twelve had started up in his chair, his hands on its enfolding arms. And Quantro, the dwarf, had come forward, his knife half out. It was not needed. Number Twelve sank back, writhing, twisted, powerless under the current that, suddenly, galvanically gripped him.

“Those limits are yours,” said the Crime Master. “I have none. I need you, so I spare you, for the present. Do you know where you are, who I am?”

“No.” The current had diminished. The racked man could speak. “You brought me here drugged.”

“From a place to which you can be readily returned—with all the consequences—in the same manner. Will you complete this task I have set you—or—”

Once more the galvanic current raced through the poor wretch’s tissues, filled his veins with scalding fire. His head fell forward in abject assent.

Again the opening appeared. Number Twelve staggered toward it, his momentary mutiny quelled. A little later the Griffin descended, with the dwarf. At the bottom of the shaft he walked through stone chambers where strange lights flickered, where the hum of a dynamo prevailed, through to where the pawn who had been known as Number Fourteen lay. It was a ghastly sight, but the Griffin seemed to revel in it. The dwarf Quantro, voodoo worshiper, steeped in bloody ritual, looked on, rubbing his clawlike hands and, for the moment, there was little to choose between the two.

III

WITH the first tinkle of the telephone Manning knew who was calling. He was on edge. He had been for days, with the horror of experience, the hope of this time grappling with the Griffin himself. There were to be no pawns. If that was true, the Crime Master would not be far off to witness the success or failure of his coup. If Manning could cope with him it might be failure. Surely this time the Griffin would overreach himself.

He knew it was hopeless to trace the phone call. There was some principle of induction involved by which the Griffin got through to the circuit he wanted without himself using a commercial instrument. Manning’s pulses beat high as he lifted the receiver in his own study, at Pelham Manor.

He knew the voice well, every inflection of it. Refined, subtly mocking. He could never mistake it.

“Manning. This is the eighteenth. Some time on the twentieth—that gives a twenty-four hours’ margin, and it happens to be the birthday of a man who has lived too long”—here the voice became momentarily strident, vindictive, hinted of madness hard-curbed—“some time on the twentieth I shall kill Richard Pollard. Unless, of course, you contrive to prevent it. Good-by.”

There was a strain of music—bizarre accompaniment to such a threat. The merest echo of a mocking laugh.

Richard Pollard! The thing was inconceivable. Why Richard Pollard? What could that man have done to provoke the Griffin’s vengeance, if it was vengeance, and not the mad tangent of a lunatic, striking only at the best and noblest.

The sheer audacity of it chilled Manning’s blood, brought down his beating pulses to normal, set his face in grim lines. Pollard!

It might be that, in his colossal conceit, the Griffin envied him, considering himself the Lord of Destinies. The mad reactions of such a creature could not be calculated.

Pollard was the famous explorer-scientist. He was resting now from his latest trip, preparing for another, after a lecture tour, that fall. A man between fifty and sixty, still vigorous, yet in his prime.

He was studying the ocean rifts, the faults of submarine formations, with a view to solving the questions of changing climates, altered currents, the seismic disturbances prevalent in certain lands. Living on his country place on Long Island, a national hero because of his adventures, though not yet recognized, save by the few, for his scientific exploits.

He must be warned, protected.

For a while Manning sat still and silent. Then he drew the morning paper toward him. Pollard had been mentioned there, strangely enough, on the sporting page. He had made a hole in one on the golf course close to his home. That was one of his relaxations, almost a hobby. On one expedition he had made a nine-hole course on snowy wastes, played with crimson balls. He had what was jokingly known as his golf cabinet. In final decisions of associates, Pollard would lean to the man who handled a good mashie, made a long drive.

Manning could understand that. He liked the game himself. It had nothing to do with the matter in hand, save that Pollard’s picture was published, the face of a fine Nordic, intelligent and forceful.

He must be warned, protected. The day after to-morrow. There should be time, plenty of time, to circumvent any schemes of the Griffin, satanically ingenious though they were. Manning roused himself to start a chain that would give him access to Pollard, no easy man to know; not because of his nature, but from the demands made on his time. He meant to be with him every minute of the twentieth, from midnight to midnight.

It was not so readily accomplished. Pollard met him when he arrived, greeted him cordially, listened to all Manning had to say—and laughed.

“It would seem this Griffin, as you style him, should be destroyed. You say you have undertaken that office. But I cannot conceive of any hate against me.

“Except that he is mad,” said Manning.

“Grant that. Then, sane brains should cope with him. I have had several communications concerning you, Manning. It would seem that you have already crossed swords with this Griffin, are well equipped to cope with him. But, if you will pardon me, I am well qualified to take good care of myself. There have been times when my life has been threatened by a horde of fanatics—madmen of a type. I refuse to be coddled.”

“Let me tell you a few things that have happened,” said Manning. “This man has more than the cunning of a savage, more than pits and poisoned arrows. He studies his victims, and he has never failed. Whether you like it or not, Mr. Pollard,” he added, with his jaws grim, his eyes like the points of steel drills, “I intend to see you well guarded to-morrow. If you will give me the privilege, I should like to be within sight of you all the time. I am sure the Griffin will strike.

“You have not only yourself to consider. There is our own prestige, the prestige of the police force, to which I am unofficially attached, but which is being undermined by these crimes. I have a feeling, a presentiment, which you may laugh at, that this time the Griffin himself will not be far away. He plans some mechanical method to take you off. He says he will use no pawns in the actual play. It is imperative that you are guarded. Your life, your work, belongs to the nation, to the world.”

“I hope so,” said Pollard more soberly. Manning admired his poise, his physique. The man was eminently fit, his personality compelling. “I do not laugh at your presentiment, as you call it,” Pollard said. “I have had them myself. They come, I think, from the quickening of natural senses by circumstances, coupled, of course, to observation and experience.

“I have sat long nights in the jungle waiting for some rare beast to come along—and generally have had the luck to bag him. Usually I resorted to bait—a live goat, perhaps. It seems I must take you seriously. And this time I am to be the bait, the goat, though I shall not be a helpless one. You may bring your men, if you wish, search the house and grounds, patrol them. But I imagine your Griffin, who cannot be fabulous, with his grisly record, will be expecting some such move, since he has warned you.

“You and I will sleep together in the little cabin I have, outside, where I go when I want to be entirely alone. It is not actually a cabin, though the front of it is built of logs. It is actually a cave in a rocky outcrop on the grounds. We can make sure there is no undermining”—he was still quizzical, Manning noticed—“they can only come at us from the front.

“It appears to me, from what your Griffin has said and you have told me, that he is playing some sort of game with you in which he feels himself the master. As long as you are with me, he will not risk losing you as his future adversary. A kink of insanity. And I shall be pleased to have your company. But I have no idea of having my holiday spoiled. My birthday is the one occasion on which I refuse to do anything but enjoy myself. Do you play golf, by any chance?”

Manning answered in the affirmative, adding that he had no clubs nor shoes with him.

“I can outfit you, or the pro’, on the Cold Brook Club Links. I had planned to play in the morning with him. He is far too good for me, but I have a reputation now. I made the seventh hole in one. A hundred and eighty-three yards, across the stream, to the green.

“Sheer luck, of course. I have got on the green before, but this time the ball went beyond the pin and trickled down the slope. The pin was in the cup, but the ball made it. I shall never make it again, but, from now on, that hole is mine in two. What is your handicap?”

Manning told him.

“Then you should give me three bisques at least. Nearer five. I’ll tell you what we’ll do. We’ll spend the daylight on the links. Few play here in the middle of the week. It is open country. If you want me to, I’ll promise to pack a gun and stand by if any one I do not know comes near us. We’ll lunch on the veranda of the clubhouse. When dark comes, we’ll go back to my cabin. I am doing this largely on the recommendations you have had poured in on me, Manning. I still feel the whole thing is a hoax, perhaps a draw-off to let your Griffin strike elsewhere.”

Manning did not agree with him. But the prospect of staying out in the open pleased him. It looked as if the Griffin’s problem would not be solved so easily, so bloodily, this time.

“You got a letter from the Police Commissioner?” he said. “It included a set of my finger-prints, my signature. I want to reproduce them.”