In the Grip of the Griffin: The Complete Battles of Gordon Manning & The Griffin, Volume 3 (7 page)

The swimming guests had watched Cooke’s performance and remained outside. Now they were all in the pool, disporting there in an impromptu program of their own.

The dressing pavilion was empty. There was a row of cabinets, with one lettered with Cooke’s own name, reserved for his private use. His hand was almost on the handle of the door when Manning entered. Cooke turned to see who had followed him, grinned in recognition.

“You see, I did it, and I’m still alive. I’ll be out as soon as I’ve changed.”

The water dripped from his bathing suit about him in a little puddle. His feet were in it as he took hold of the handle.

The smile on his face turned to a grimace. His features were contorted and his body convulsed as he clung to the metal handle in a grip he could not relinquish. Then, with his expression frozen to a mask of horrible pain, he was released, and fell backwards.

The pavilion was filled with a curious odor, sour, metallic as Manning leaped for him, made a brief inspection, then dashed outside.

The pleasure seeking crowd fell back before his stern face. The commissioner came forward to meet him. They exchanged a glance. Manning nodded.

“Mr. Cooke has had an attack. It looks like heart failure,” he announced, for the benefit of the crowd. “Better get a doctor and have the place cleared, Commissioner.”

He spoke with his eyes on the little shack with the green door at the end of the pavilion. The door opened slightly and a man peered out. It was the New England expert.

The commissioner issued sharp orders, a man revealed himself as a physician. The electrician closed the door again as he saw Manning hurling himself towards him. There was no inside bolt, he had no chance to lock the door before Manning plunged through and found the man at bay.

He had connected wires with two electrodes and held one in either hand. If they met, even while they were a little apart, Manning knew that a terrific current would unite its poles. They were sputtering now, flinging off blue light. There was the same metallic smell and taste of tremendous voltage in the air.

“Keep away,” the man yelled. “Keep away, I tell you.”

“I want you,” said Manning steadily. “You killed Cooke, for the Griffin!”

“For the Griffin? For Satan himself! The devil drove me. Stand back! I will not surrender.”

The killer was beside himself, foam flecked on his lips, and his eyes were wild. Manning lashed out with his cane and the end of the rod struck Cyrus Allen on his elbow. It was a risky blow. It had to be precise, to avoid contact with the wires. Allen dropped one of them and then the other. They coiled sputtering on the cement floor like burning fuses. Manning glanced round for a main switch and the murderer leaped for him, grappling with mad and desperate force that took all of Manning’s strength and experience to offset. They struggled about the place, the gaunt man striving to trip Manning and Manning trying to get at his gun. He had been forced to drop his cane to grapple with the other.

Allen was like a mad dog, snapping with his teeth. They brought blood from Manning’s shoulder, they grazed his jugular, breaking the skin. Manning got an arm under Allen’s leg, tore loose his hold and tossed him in a heavy throw.

Allen struck the floor in a heap, lighting on top of Manning’s steel-cored cane. He slid upon it towards the crackling wires, and the cane completed the circuit. There was a flash, a frightful stench of burning flesh, the body of Allen jerking in the midst of it, then still. Manning staggered back from the sheer impact of the discharge.

The shocked guests were departing when Manning came out of the green door. The detectives were handling the crowd ably. The pool was empty. The commissioner was in the dressing pavilion, with the doctor. The body of Cooke had been laid upon a lounge, covered with a blanket found in a locker.

“We’ll have to have the official examiner, of course,” the commissioner said to Manning. “But Dr. Drake here says there is no question as to the cause of death. He was electrocuted. There was no chance of bringing him back.”

Manning nodded.

“I was afraid of something like that,” he said. “I suspected the pool. The contracting electrician stepped-up the voltage and connected it to this handle with a switch in the control shack. He threw it when he saw Cooke going in to change. He could tell when the contact was made, and, when he was sure Cooke was dead, he shut it off.”

“Cooke’s hands are burned. There are ruptured veins. No doubt an autopsy will reveal deranged organs. Death was probably instantaneous, if that is any relief,” said the doctor.

The commissioner and Manning both thought of the same thing; the penitentiary autopsies of those who die in the chair. The cause of death would be verified.

“Is there anything else I can do?” asked the physician.

“Nothing, Doctor,” Manning answered quietly.

When the doctor had gone he turned to the commissioner and told him what had happened behind the green door. “It will come out soon enough,” he said. “The doctor could do nothing for him, less than he might have done for poor Cooke. It was not a pleasant death, for he knew what was coming before he died. I only wish it had been the Griffin. He said he’d be looking on. Come outside.”

The autogyro had vanished. The police planes still circled, waiting orders.

“He was in that gyro; did you notice it?” Manning asked the commissioner.

“I saw it. I… what’s that floating in the pool, Manning, over at the outflow end?”

Manning fished out a black, wooden disk. A weight at the end of a string anchored it, had steadied it for a straight drop. Part of the center had been carved out into a shallow receptacle that was filled with sealing wax, scarlet as blood, in which was sharply imprinted the seal of the Griffin.

Death Has Its Fling

Up at Nitamo Lodge Sportsmen Hunted Game, but Gordon Manning Went There to Hunt a Savage Beast of Prey—the Diabolic Griffin!

Nitamo Lodge, named after a famous Sachem of the Mahikanders, is an exclusive fishing and hunting lodge in the Adirondacks. The stream is the Wiequaskeck and the man once privileged to cast a fly over its lively, well-stocked waters, speaks well of no other river. The club has its own hatchery and breeds its replenishment of feathered game. As for the deer, they have to be kept down.

It stands in the wilderness, almost as savage today as when Peter Stuyvesant made his treaties with the Katskils, the Mahikanders and the Indians of the Esopus. The land is beautiful, a happy hunting ground.

Membership is limited and expensive. Its privilege is rigidly guarded by a grave and severe Board of Governors. You must have right to it through family inheritance. If misfortune makes it impossible for you to meet the dues, you are still a member. They are true sportsmen who make up the gatherings at Nitamo Lodge. They never refer to it as a club.

They are liberal with guests, but a card is extended only twice a year to each one, once for fishing and once for shooting, a week at a time. If a man wants a deer he must forego trout or birds. And he must be proven. His sponsor not only guarantees his gentility, but his sportsmanship. He must know and love rod and gun. He must cast his fly with skill and proper selection. He must be able to pick off dodging bobwhite, or rocketing pheasant, with reasonable accuracy and bring down his buck with one well-placed bullet.

Above all, he must not be a braggart, or selfish, and must be as good a companion about the big fireplace as he is in field or stream. If a man does not come up to these matters his sponsor is fined his guest-right for a month. Therefore, it is not easy to be a visitor at Nitamo Lodge and a man will speak of it proudly.

As for the Lodge itself, it is convenient, it is supremely comfortable, but it is anything but luxurious. One man and his family of one son and two daughters, besides his wife, manage it completely; the plain cooking is incomparable, varied with game in season. Men do not take their private servants to the Lodge, neither do they rough it. It furnishes a happy medium and—aside from the wife and daughters of the manager—it is strictly stag.

No woman has ever cast a fly on the Wiequaskeck, or fired a shot within the coverts of the club. Nor will they, with the consent of the owners. The place is a sanctuary from everything that reminds them of everyday life and affairs; the members are like the herd bucks that leave the does and camp in seclusion on the ridges; not that they love the females less, but their own, intimate communion more.

It was the first week in May and the season fairly opened, but the weather had been unkind. The night before, frost had lightly revealed itself on the porches, again in the morning; not nipping, but enough to prevent any hatch of flies, to keep the water too cold for early fishing. The trout might rise in the late afternoon as the sun went off the pools it had warmed all day. Meanwhile only a Simple Simon would hope for fish.

On the Wiequaskeck the lusty trout were given an even break. You fished with flies only—the mere mention of bait was anathema. You matched the hatch, and some tied their own flies. It was lovely water, rapids and riffles, stretches clear as gin where the big fellows just dimpled the surface when they rose and you had to put a dry fly over them just once, and that perfectly; or they flipped at it with broad tails in disdain. There were cascades and pools and everywhere it was wide enough to be waded, to cast in comfort between the trees that thickly ranked it most of the way.

It was a fast stream, and, in places, a deep one. You had to be careful, even when you knew it, and guests were warned of the bad spots where a slip, with waders on, might mean death. But there were no records of casualties since the old Indian days, when the Mahikanders and the Katskils waylaid each other and the warwhoop drowned out the shrill whistle of the arrow, the rustle of the warriors from ambush, and the Wiequaskeck ran streaky pink at twilight.

The seven men gathered at the Lodge occupied themselves in various congenial ways. Some overhauled tackle already in perfect shape but always a joy to go over, to compare, exhibit, and discuss. Others swapped tales of earlier seasons, of prize fish. In mid-morning someone organized a friendly casting contest. There was no wind and a target was set out on the lawn, a circle of white cardboard at which they deftly cast their flies from various marked limits.

None of them was a duffer, some were more than merely expert. The best known, and best loved, man among them was Governor Thorpe. Ex-governor, for the time being, since party domination had swung in the State; but nevertheless always known as “Governor,” until the time when his friends and followers believed he would be called “President.”

A genial man, a just one, ever alive to the interests of his home State and its citizens. He was emphatically the People’s Choice in his own party, a man of education and family, but a thorough patriot. He had fought for water rights, for reforestation. A fine figure of a man, not far from sixty, he spoke with the conviction of an honest mind, he gave out the sense of power and dignity and humanity.

The governor threw a pretty fly. Time and time again his tapered cast of silkworm gut, chosen and tied himself, allied to the line of oiled silk, plaited and also skillfully tapered, sent the lure to touch the target.

But the wizard among them was a guest, sponsored by one of their eldest members, Derrick Blythe, himself debarred from being with them and his guest by a bad attack of asthma.

The guest’s name was Anthony Bostick. He was tall and gaunt with a black shock of upstanding hair and a wiry, trimmed mustache. He had caught more trout than any of them, so far. They had noted the absolute delicacy of his casting, the flirt of his wrist at the last second that let the lure down upon the surface with the exact imitation of a fly.

Now he took his honors modestly. He had been trained when he was a boy, he said, by his father’s gamekeeper, who taught him how to tie flies and how to cast them. Under persuasion, he gave an exhibition of unusual flycasting, including the famous Spey, or underhand, throw. His rod and his arm seemed to combine as one and when, time and time again, he flicked the target, they spontaneously applauded him.

They were still at it when the gong sounded. The midday meal was ready. It was laid in the trophy room. Plaster casts and stretched skins of fish were on the walls, with beautifully preserved birds, heads and antlers. A fire burned in the hearth, though the windows were open to let in the breath of Spring, balmy and promising, telling of rising sap and mating creatures. Trout did their breeding in the fall, but the other wild things were choosing lovers. Bird songs came in.

The table was laid, as usual, with the service plates face down and a clean napkin of red and white check atop each one. Linen, crockery, and silver were spotless. In the center was a great bowl of daffodils.

Only one end of the long table was set. The governor’s place was at the head. He took his seat, arranged his napkin over one knee, and turned his plate in expectation of the first course. He stared at his plate. The dishes were of plain design, white with lines of green and red about the outer edge and the emblem of the club on the border.

This was an heraldic dolphin contrived into a ring with the club motto within it.

Simon Peter said: I go a fishing.

Now, Governor Thorpe was gazing with changing and conflicting emotions at the inside of the platter, which should have been plain.

It held a scarlet splotch, red as blood, a lozenge of bright crimson, an
affiche
that was embossed in a design that, at the first glance, impressed Thorpe as sinister before his brain swiftly gathered and aligned the data stored there.

The design was that of the upper part of a griffin in heraldic device, showing the lion’s claws and tail, the eagle’s wings and beak of that mythical creature.

The Griffin!

II

It was the title taken by the evil, murderous genius whose killings had amazed and terrorized the continent. A madman whose stupendous egomania prompted him to hate all that was good, progressive and wise. The monster who had slain a score of men who could hardly be replaced, men who stood for advancement, philanthropy and wisdom. He had thrown society and finance into temporary panics until he had been captured by Gordon Manning and sent to Dannemora.