Day of Doom: The Complete Battles of Gordon Manning & The Griffin, Volume 2 (24 page)

“He named a Dr. Genthe, of Vienna,” the warden went on. “Claimed Genthe would be glad to visit him. A man who had written treatises and books on mental cases, delivered lectures, a master authority on criminal mania. He wanted us to write him.”

“Didn’t try to pass a letter out?” suggested Manning.

“He knew that was impossible.”

Again Manning said nothing, but he held his own opinion in the matter. If the Griffin had asked for the letter to pass through prison channels, he had his reason for it.

“I sent it,” said the warden, “because I did not believe there was any such person. I wanted to prove that to the Griffin. To get his reaction to it. But we got an answer.”

“Have you got that answer handy?” asked Manning.

“Of course. In the files. We got a letter, and a book, in German, by Dr. Genthe, treating of criminal psychiatrics. I don’t read German, but I gave it to a physician, who said it was sound, but did not advance any new ideas. Dr. Genthe said in his letter that he had read about the case and was interested in it, but not to the extent of making a special trip to the United States. He added frankly that, if a big enough fee was forthcoming, he might be tempted. Also that there was a slight possibility of his making a visit here, to the Psychiatric Congress, in which case he would like to see the Griffin, though he was sure there had not been, and could not be any recovery.

Manning grunted. His burns were beginning to sting badly, but he hardly heeded them. His mind was in action.

“So, when he did arrive, this Dr. Genthe, you gave him an interview with the Griffin and the Griffin flew into a rage? Was there a guard present?” he demanded.

“Certainly.” The warden seemed slightly nettled. “The doctor was given professional privileges, but we did not let him see the Griffin alone.”

“Sure of that?”

“I’ve just told you there was a guard.”

“The interview was in his cell?”

“No. In one of the hospital rooms. Dr. Genthe wanted to observe certain eye and nerve reactions. It was that that threw the Griffin into his tantrum. He was convinced nothing was wrong with him.”

“So Genthe got scratched up? Get treated for his hurts?”

“No. The guard separated them. They had to put a jacket on the Griffin. Dr. Genthe made light of it. Said the Griffin was incurably mad, but was still an interesting case.”

“May I talk with that guard?” asked Manning.

“Not now, at any rate.”

“Quit?” asked Manning grimly.

“Yes. He went out West to take up an inheritance.”

“He would,” said Manning, mentally resolving to have the man found. It must have been he who had mailed a letter to Curran.

“There is no Dr. Genthe of Vienna, never was, unless I myself have gone crazy,” Manning went on. “There also has been no recent Psychiatric Congress. It was nicely done. Someone planted in Vienna at the given address to answer the letter of inquiry in a manner calculated to nicely erase any suggestion of sympathy. The book was sound, but held nothing new. Not hard to have a work on that subject translated into German, printed—in a limited edition—sent over here, with a portrait of Dr. Genthe, as he appeared to the warden, for a frontispiece. Neither hard, nor remarkable, for a man of the Griffin’s peculiar genius. And very disarming.

“The rest was easy. The Griffin has acted a part here, ever since he began to recover. He had two accomplices. The pseudo Dr. Genthe and the guard. A Dr. Genthe came in, and a Dr. Genthe went out, with a scratched face, half concealing it with a handkerchief, no doubt; though he was still disguised with wig and flowing beard, with the clothes that suggested the eminent Viennese psychiatrist. Worn by the man, chosen by the agent with whom the bribed guard had already communicated, picking a man from the thousands of unemployed actors who was a fair double for the Griffin. With miming ability, with the right background, he had only to be moody and maintain the deception while the Griffin walked out free in the clothes, the make-up, and the manner of Dr. Genthe of Vienna—and parts unknown.”

The commissioner and the warden were silent, holding no doubt that Manning had spoken the truth.

The Griffin was free! The inhuman monster had been loosed again upon the society it hated, its murderous fury inflamed with a desire to be revenged.

The news could not be kept secret. The Griffin himself would see to that. He would surely again use the press to publish his taunting messages. He would strike again—and soon.

“You coped with him before, Manning,” said the commissioner. “I pray God you can do it again!”

There was real reverence in his apostrophe to the Deity. For both himself and the warden, the handwriting was already shining on the wall. They needed no Daniel to translate its message of their downfall.

Manning said nothing. He was consumed with a fire that ate at his very vitals, the flame of a spirit pledged to battle with evil. Evil personified in the Griffin who, it seemed, had hoarded resources and was once more free to use them for his hellish purposes.

Death Silent and Invisible

Closeted Behind Guarded Doors with Judge Carruthers, Gordon Manning Waits for the Diabolical Griffin to Spring his Death Trap

Gordon Manning was on his way, afoot, to his Wall Street office from the down town gymnasium where he kept himself physically fit. His lean, long body strode along replete with vitality and purpose; his eyes were clear and keen as he acknowledged the greetings of those who knew him and others who did not possess that distinction, but recognized him from the publicity that had once again environed him.

It was publicity he was never eager to have thrust upon him, although the reluctance had nothing to do with the fact that the columns, topped with flash lines, carrying pictures of Manning, of the victim and scene of the latest tragedy that had shocked Manhattan and all the nation bore the news that Manning had lost in his first encounter with the maniacal monster known as the Griffin, recently escaped from Dannemora.

It was Manning who had sent him there after a series of desperate encounters; after the police had despaired in the quest and Manning had been called in by the police commissioner to cope with the fiendish madman whose devilish genius had murdered one after another of the country’s most brilliant and useful men.

Achievement, progress, benevolence, all seemed to arouse the Griffin to an insane fury, as if he was indeed the fallen Lucifer, Son of the Morning, who now hated all that was honorable and noble, all that was good; with a brain inflamed, but of incalculable ingenuity, coupled with the venom of serpents spawned in the foulest spot in Hades.

There was trouble in Manning’s eyes, there were lines in his deeply tanned, hawklike face, that had not quite been erased since the Griffin had been sent to the State Hospital for the Criminally Insane at Dannemora, Clinton County.

Now the Griffin was free; the monster was loose again—a creature of infinite evil—loose to plan and perpetrate his frightful purposes. Already “It” had struck and killed, despite the efforts of the police, warned by Manning; despite the last hour attempt of Manning himself to save the victim. It was Manning’s intuition that had uncovered the substitute left by the Griffin in his cell while he made good his escape; a substitute excellent enough to deceive the prison authorities.

That availed nothing. The Griffin was out and he would strike again, with scanty and mocking warning. Until the Griffin should be heard from again, Manning’s hands were tied. Every effort to trace clews in the last crime—the one in which the most powerful controller of politics in the State had been sent to a horrible death because the Griffin believed he had blocked his release from Dannemora—had utterly failed, vanished in thin air.

Traffic halted Manning on a corner where he stood until the light changed, gazing without especial interest into the window of a store that specialized in automobile accessories. The window was arrayed with devices for radiator caps, emblems suggesting flight and speed. They had, most of them, been designed by excellent artists. Here were eagles, Mercurys, greyhounds, figures of men and beasts in headlong career. Some were ultra modern and symbolical, zigzags of shining lightning, a poised arrow.

The latest design of all held the center of the display. A beam of light fell upon it, distinguishing it from the rest. It was made of golden bronze and it was exquisitely fashioned.

It was a Griffin, sometimes called griffon, or gryphon—the rapacious creature with four legs, wings and a beak, the fore part resembling an eagle, the after part a lion. Portrayed by the Greeks and Syrians and Romans, shown in the cathedrals of France and Italy, in the temple of Antoninus. Herodotus claimed that the one-eyed Arimaspi waged constant war with them. Sir John de Mandeville described them as eight times larger than a lion.

Terrible beasts that could crouch for leap or flight; tear with talons and beak—supposed inhabitants of Asiatic Scythia—emblems of cruelty and death. Fit emblem of the inhuman monster who had adopted them for his title.

The device seemed alive in the ray of light. The sculptor who had first modeled it in clay had achieved a masterpiece. It embodied force and swiftness, the ruthlessness of perfect coördination. It hardly seemed adapted for an ordinary car ornament. It might have fitted a racing machine, or a tank of war. It was beautiful, but terrible.

Manning felt a clammy finger tracing his spine, offset by a swift tingling of his blood, as he regarded it. It was to him a symbol that challenged all of his manhood. It summoned up a vision of the Griffin from his brain, where it always lived, never entirely dormant.

He was not a man who suffered from nerves or he would long ago have perished; explorer, scientist, adventurer, ex-major of the Military Intelligence Department, survivor of a thousand hazards on the field, in the jungle, by sea and land.

That varying tremor that went through him was a hunch, a warning from his subconscious mind where he automatically filed his observations, where the leaven of his experience waited for release.

He was going to hear from the Griffin. Once again he would be challenged; hear the mocking voice or read the high-flown message, tinged with the exaggeration of a grandiose dementia, that announced the Griffin’s next fateful enterprise.

It was no surprise to him to see among the letters his secretary set in front of him an envelope of heavy, gray, handmade paper, the address inscribed with purple ink in a bold hand that, analyzed, showed the writer to be arrogant, forceful and abnormal.

Manning did not immediately open it. He took the letter and looked out of the window of his private office at the lofting spires and towers of the world’s greatest city—at the spidery stretch of a bridge that was a web of human genius.

The envelope was sealed with scarlet wax in which was imprinted the upper part of a griffin’s body, rampant.

The Griffin’s resources were being reassembled. His old aerie with its corps of experts in science and mechanics, held under the Griffin’s thrall by his knowledge of their lapses against the law, had been destroyed. But the Griffin had proved that he still had followers, that he still possessed the master-key to power, money. Here was the old, too familiar, style of correspondence. The letter seemed to fairly quiver with hidden menace, as if it diffused a deadly odor.

It took a stout heart to break that seal, a stouter one to read the communication. But Manning did not falter though the lines in his face deepened and a white streak showed where his jaw was set. The look in his eyes was grim.

Dear Manning:

We have met once since my, shall we call it emancipation?—and we shall meet again. It cheers me to realize that you still have sufficient resource and enterprise to render you an interesting and rather amusing opponent in this game of ours, resumed after several months of idleness on my part. Idleness and recuperation, my dear Manning.

It somewhat lengthens the scores against you, but I shall delay that reckoning. Without you there would be no opposition whatever to my plans. They would be but tedious means to my ultimate end. What that is, in detail, I may tell you some day, but not at present.

Some day I shall eliminate you, Manning, when you cease to interest me. Meanwhile I have certain items to be balanced on my book of life. One of these I have checked off. You may be interested in the next.

I find that by horology and hepatoscopy….

Manning lowered the letter. Hepatoscopy! Divination of the liver. That meant that this half-crazed, but eminently dangerous being was still practicing unhallowed rites, endeavoring, perhaps, to justify his crimes to himself by consulting the stars and the livers taken, smoking, from still living bodies. They might even be human bodies, Manning considered. The incarceration at Dannemora had not alleviated, but aggravated his madness.

The Griffin invariably cast the horoscope of his intended victim, deciding when the protection of the planets was weakest and their maleficence greatest. In these rituals he doubtless catered to his conviction that he was an agent of Destiny, so appointed by a supreme power.

Again Manning gazed out at the lower end of Manhattan, the mighty city that the terror of one man had once held in thrall and might so again. There had been times when dread of the Griffin, results of his crimes, had not only shattered the peace of society, but had rocked the foundations of the civic and financial worlds. He could do it again. His evil fame, his fearfulness, had been trebled by his escape. And they were looking to Gordon Manning to once again enchain this monster, to destroy him.

He should have been destroyed, Manning told himself. The Griffin was as inhuman as the creature Frankenstein created from the grisly relics of graveyard and dissecting room and endowed with vitality. The Griffin’s mind was a charnel house. The judge who had sentenced him, much against his will, had told Manning that he lamented the law.