Day of Doom: The Complete Battles of Gordon Manning & The Griffin, Volume 2 (30 page)

Manning’s hunch warned him that the Griffin, knowing himself triumphant, might endeavor to make his victory all complete by ridding himself of the one man who had ever mastered him. Success might make him reckless.

At last Manning got clear and passed through the revolving door at the main entrance of the Shirley Building, courting fate.

A police sergeant saluted him. Other uniformed men handled the thick traffic.

Manning’s own car was parked close by where it had stood since Saturday evening, immune from regulations by the number on the license plate. He moved towards it, alert, but with the problem of Haydn Shirley’s death leavening in his brain. He thought he could answer that riddle. He wanted to get to his library, to his notebooks of travel, at Pelham Manor.

He saw a car in the congested traffic. The lights had shifted and it was speeding away. It was a black sedan with a long hood that suggested power. The morning sunlight glittered on the ornament that topped the radiator cap. A crouching griffin.

Manning glimpsed a driver in dark uniform, his face obscured by the peak of his cap. He saw another face, in the rear of the car, gazing through the glass.

The face of the Griffin, gloating, challenging, mocking!

And then the car had vanished. It was impossible to give chase in that crowded street.

Manning cursed, and then turned to his car. He had that premonition of danger. His roadster had stood in that spot through the nights of Saturday and Sunday. Patrols would not disturb it, under instructions, but they had not been constantly observing it. He opened the hood gingerly and his face became sharply set as he saw the infernal device that would have been set off at the first whirr of the starter’s gear, would have made scrap-metal of his car, pulp of Gordon Manning.

It was mid-afternoon when the medical examiner called Manning at his home.

“I am still at sea,” he said. “The intestines seem to have been simultaneously perforated by foreign particles that have worked through the walls in scores of places. No trace in the stomach. I thought of powdered glass but….”

“The action would have been too swift,” said Manning. “Look for traces of silica. Yes, silica. Or else setaceous animal matter. But I think silica.”

“Setaceous? Bristles?” The surgeon’s tone was bewildered.

“Yes,” Manning answered a bit impatiently. “Haydn Shirley was killed by
guna guna.
That’s Malay for magic. That means love philters, poisons. They get them from the dukon, the magician, who does his hocus-pocus and hands out the medicine. Or you can buy death charms in the native markets.”

He realized that East was East and West was West. There were things in Oriental usages unknown to occidental pharmacopoeias.

Haydn Shirley had watched his diet since the day Manning had warned him. And, at that very moment, Manning believed, he had been a slowly dying man, incurable, unconscious of malady.

“Listen,” Manning went on. “I’ve seen something of these things myself, but I’ve been checking up authorities. I’ll quote you one. You may want to use it when you turn in your diagnosis. If you confirm it the papers will rise and call you blessed. This is by Hendrik de Leeuw in ‘Cross Roads of the Java Sea.’ I’ll just give you a paragraph. You can get the book. You’ll find it illuminating. Here it is.

“ ‘But
guna guna
goes much further than this. Ground glass, tiger’s whiskers, shredded bamboo fibre, and similar devices, are used to cause slow death, puncturing the internal organs. Such is the skill in the use of these that they can be administered unnoticed and may be timed to take just so long to produce the desired effect.’

“I could tell you curious tales about such cases,” said Manning. “So does De Leeuw. Tiger’s whiskers are not easy to get over here but bamboo is available. The outer cuticle is so siliceous it is used as a razor in the East, also as a whetstone. Tiny slivers of that cuticle make a hellish device for premeditated murder. I’m inclined to think I may have more confirmation, definite confirmation, before long. If I do I’ll let you know. Meantime, test for silica.”

He heard the medical examiner’s shocked exclamation before he hung up.

Manning sat smoking, remembering the poisons, the “radjun,” of Java and Sumatra and India. He saw again the medicine women of the market place in Djocja, Java, selling openly, and without fear, arsenic, pounded glass, shredded bamboo, tiger’s whiskers, oil from glands of the seacow. Those old witches were said to be able to calculate to a nicety the effect of various lethal means of inducing an apparently innocent death.

The Griffin did not care for the aspect of innocence. He was inclined to boast of his satanic ingenuity. Manning had escaped death by a narrow margin, Shirley had met it. The Griffin’s thoughts should be divided between triumph and chagrin. Though there was no telling how his disordered mind might work.

Manning was just finishing his dinner when the medical examiner called back.

“I found it,” he said, “thanks to your tip. The shredded fibers showed up under the microscope. They’ll make a big spread of it in the morning editions. The boys are waiting here now for my report. I’m giving you the credit, naturally.”

“I don’t want it,” said Manning. “I merely tipped you off. It will be much more authoritative, coming from you, and it will show off the acumen of the police force, which won’t do any harm. Leave me out of it.”

His Japanese butler entered with coffee and liqueurs, passing through to the living room. Manning trailed the man. His nerves were tingling, vibrating like the aërial antennae of a radio. He knew he was about to hear from the Griffin.

Within the hour it came, delivered by telegraphic messenger service. Manning did not trouble to detain the uniformed lad. He was probably authentic. The sender could not be traced.

He broke the splotch of scarlet wax with the imprint of the Griffin’s signet upon it, opened the double sheet of heavy, handmade, gray paper, written on with purple ink in striking chirography. Three clippings were enclosed. Manning glanced them over.

They were brief. Accounts of inconspicuous persons who had been found dead, who had lived alone. One a trapper in Missouri; one a man who collected and sold to tourists mineral specimens in North Carolina; the third a fisherman dwelling on the marshy shores of Chesapeake Bay, selling clams, oysters, shad, and occasional ducks and shore birds.

Men, Manning gathered, who were missed but not lamented. Obscure, if useful beings, without relatives to question or be questioned. None of them living with women. The time of death was approximated by the various coroners after discovery of the bodies. In every case the cause was given as inflammation of the bowels, probably induced by drinking poisonous alcohol.

Manning put the clippings under a weight, read the Griffin’s letter. It was characteristic.

Since you are still alive, my dear Manning, I imagine you have guessed the cause of Haydn Shirley’s well deserved death.

I watched you as your astuteness discovered the little contrivance I had placed in your car, which would have instantly solved all your earthly problems, including the one of my capture. I decided that you were still amusing. Therefore I shall again set the board before long, for another contest between your wits and my genius.

This time I took a leaf out of your own book, Manning. I used the methods of the Orient. Haydn Shirley was a coward and not so readily dealt with as a brave man. His habits, carefully studied, gave me my opportunity. I do not hesitate to give you details, since I never repeat myself. Shirley lunched every Thursday at the exclusive club known as The Financiers. I had my man there as waiter for the past seven weeks, catering to Haydn Shirley’s idiosyncrasies. He learned just how to serve him.

Meanwhile, with the aid of another of my retainers, a really superb chemist, a specialist in poisons who unfortunately threw himself in front of a subway train quite recently, I conducted some personal experiments to check up his statements. As you will see by the clippings, I choose my subjects judiciously and the reactions were very satisfactory. My late servitor timed the use of Bambusa Vulgaris to a nicety.

In these preliminary experiments he gauged the reactions within an hour. He did not know that I was going to test his statements with actual subjects, though he may have surmised it.

There was some discrepancy with Haydn Shirley. I learn, however, through the obliging press, that he fasted during his retreat in the vaults he thought Death could not enter, though Death strode, step by step with him. The fasting delayed, to some extent, the intestinal constrictions. But not efficiently.

You escorted a dead man into those vaults, Manning. I thought you might like to give these details to the papers. When you do, tell them to expect another sensation shortly. Tell them the Griffin, like the phoenix, is immortal, arising from destruction. Tell them….

The characteristic writing trailed off into an indecisive, wavy sprawl. There was no signature.

Only the
affiche
of an oval of embossed paper, scarlet, bearing the embossed device of a griffin’s head and upper body, rampant.

The Griffin had scored again. He was contemplating fresh deviltries.

Death in a Leash

“The Deed I Propose Shall Be Fitting in Thine Eyes!” It Was the Griffin’s Dread Vow to the Four-Armed Ebon Goddess

Full moonlight shone through the big skylight of the nearly dismantled studio and Al, the legless biological “sport,” rested on his trunk, muscled and formed like that of a gladiator, torturing with a lighted cigarette a dozen blotched and bloated toads in a tray.

He was supposed to tend them, feed them with flies, but his malicious nature prompted him to torment. His nature was akin to his Master’s, who had bought him from a traveling sideshow and now used him as slave and bodyguard. He was efficient enough, in spite of his missing limbs.

These toads were not ordinary species. They came from the interior of China and, when irritated, their glands produced a poison that, dried, produced Senso, allied to picrotoxin, causing spasmodic death. It was part of the fiendish experimentations of the monster known as the Griffin, murderer and maniac at large, killer of invaluable citizens, hater and envier of all that was worthy and progressive.

This studio, in mid-Manhattan, was a temporary aerie of the Griffin. Since his escape from Dannemora where he had been sent by the master-investigator, Gordon Manning, ex-Military Intelligence, explorer, adventurer and scientist, he had rehabilitated his organization, assembled his vast resources, and was once again ready to extend his career of satanic crime. He was established finally within fifty miles of New York in an old manor house in the midst of wild acres, whose uncertain title kept them from development and gave him isolation.

The city building from which he had not yet moved, was a survival, fifty years old, amid modern skyscrapers. It stood on the corner of a main avenue and a one-way street, and, above the ground floor, was leased to commercial artists. The studio suite on the top floor, laid out to suit one of the heirs of the estate, dead in Europe from an accident, had been rented to the Griffin, masquerading as Mr. Silbi. He had taken a long lease and bought the furnishings. The money meant little to him. He would still retain the place, unless Manning should discover it. In any event it had served his purpose.

Now his form, cloaked and sormbreroed, flitted up the stairs (the elevator was shut down at eight) like the form of a condor, a mysterious and sinister figure. His velvet collar was turned high. Long hair that was not his own, any more than the mustachios and Spanish forked beard that accentuated his saturnine features, strayed over the collar and made him appear a romantic figure, an eccentric artist or musician, a conspirator. Rasputin himself must have cast such a shadow.

There was a jeering twist to that name, Silbi. Spelled backwards, it was Iblis, the angel flung from heaven to become a devil because he would not give tribute to God’s creation, Adam. Equally the Griffin hated mankind, in general and particular, and deemed himself appointed The Destroyer. The man was insane with grandiose dementia, but that inflamed brain of his was potent for evil. The sinful phantasmagoria it conjured up were colossal in their conception and execution.

He went swiftly up the stairs beneath dim electric lights, and let himself into the studio. The main fixtures had been removed, but, as he set a switch, some lights shaded in violet and amber went on and gave mysterious light to the roomy place. A globe of crystal began to revolve, and within it showed whorls of colored smoke. Exotic music sounded and a censer automatically heated incense that gave off fumes like burning amber, intoxicating, sensuous.

Al came swinging forward on his arms, active as an ape, fawning like a dog, then hastening to set fire to the wood and cannel coal in a big firepot in the open hearth. The weather was warm, but the Griffin’s blood was as cold as that of the squatting toads. He threw off his cloak and warmed his hands. Lines of suffering were graven in his vulturine features, the face with the beaked nose and the cruel eyes.

He poured a purple liquor from a decanter of Venetian glass into a small silver goblet and sipped it slowly, chuckling.

He was expecting a visitor. He had planned another coup, consulted the stars and found the time propitious, the house of his victim threatened, his own horoscope favorable.

The music gave out its strange phrases and barbaric rhythms. Al squatted in a dark corner, his eyes intent upon his Master, his fingers playing with the hilt of a straight dagger in a scabbard slung to chest and shoulder.

Presently the Griffin rose and pulled aside a curtain revealing a painting on Hindu muslin. The subject was not a pleasant one, but the Griffin gave it a sort of ironical obeisance.