The Crime Master: The Complete Battles of Gordon Manning & The Griffin, Volume 1 (Gordon Manning and The Griffin) (3 page)

Manning accepted it as a fact. There was no use taking time to determine what indiscretion had freed the information. A harassed man might mutter in his sleep. Gossip flies far and often its links are intangible.

It was not himself. He slept soundly. He slept apart. The thing was out. The Griffin had learned of the appointment and, in his bizarre fashion, it had given him greater zest to prove his own powers, to show himself the Crime Master.

“A form of grandiose dementia,” Manning diagnosed it. There was nothing to do but wait for the fulfillment of that promised “very soon,” to wait for that “opening move” which would be fraught with inevitable tragedy, too late to remedy.

The Griffin might overplay his hand. He might not be playing chess so much as hurling boomerangs. So far, none had swung back to destroy him. He was like a wolf, captain of a lupine band, swooping down on defenseless, unsuspecting sheep. And Manning was the shepherd.

He ate dinner by himself, waited on by the imperturbable Japanese who had been with him for years, devoted, impeccable retainers who would protect him if he needed them, who maintained the little house Manning had built from his own plans, secure from intrusion.

After the meal Manning read a review, smoking a pipe. His hoped-for encounter with the Griffin might prove only a battle of wits, but, if it ever came to handgrips, with him or any of his followers, the man would need all of a maniac’s strength to cope with Manning.

V

IN Manning’s private office the next day the telephone rang crisply, imperatively. It was a private line, unlisted, unconnected with the general office instrument. As he lifted the receiver he was conscious, almost as if he had received an electric shock, of the same sensation he had experienced with the letter he had received from the Griffin.

A question, doubtless, of vibrations, himself tuned-in, receptive, expectant, his whole being, body and brain, a coherer.

Manning did not consider the voice disguised. It was resonant, but not harsh, cultured, tinged with maleficent humor, mocking.

“Manning,” it said. “It is within a few minutes of eleven o’clock. I trust you have standardized time, so you can check the moments. They are quite important.

“Don’t try to trace this phone call. It cannot be done. I told you you would hear from me very soon. This is the first move, now in the making. It will be accomplished by eleven o’clock, precisely.

“Then you can get busy and solve the problem, if you can. To use a vulgar idiom, this is being pulled off under your very nose, Manning. I have chosen the man because of his close proximity to you. In a measure, you are responsible for his selection and his demise, his most untimely and unforeseen demise. Not entirely. He has other qualifications, naturally.”

Manning glanced at the clock on his desk. It was accurate to a second. He felt that the Griffin—there was no question of his identity—was talking against time. He knew that he could not trace the wire. Others had tried to do that. The Griffin had some method of using the telephone service without automatic cut-in. He was equally sure that the crime now being predicted would be carried out.

The mocking voice kept on.

“I am afraid, my dear Manning, that you are powerless to prevent my coup, but I shall take precautions. We have another seventy odd seconds. It would be too late for you to take advantage of the occasion by buying certain stocks for a swift fall, as I have done. I have no especial enmity against the man chosen, but his death will be very profitable to me. I have an expensive organization to maintain.

“He dies by a new method I have recently perfected. I shall be interested in your failure to uncover it—and me. It will exercise your ingenuity. And the name of the man—”

The clock on Manning’s desk began to chime the hour.

He heard his caller chuckle as the strokes went on to four—to five.

“The name is Richard Ordway. Two floors beneath you, my dear Manning. And quite dead by now, I assure you.”

Richard Ordway! Private banker, promoter, financier, manipulator. Manning knew him. They were members of the same club. He often saw him in the building. Stocks might well go into turmoil when Ordway died suddenly. There would be a panic on the Exchange, the Curb. Sales that could not be traced in the mad scramble.

And the Griffin, scattering his orders, using his organization, could not be detected. Yet, because of that quirk in his brain, he had thrown down the challenge to Manning.

Manning’s wits worked fast. The supreme impudence, the insolence of the call, sent a surge of hot blood through him. His resolve might hardly be strengthened, but it rose within him. And the Griffin, for all his cleverness, had given out something that might yet betray him.

His voice was distinctive. Manning would not forget its inflections. He had landed more than one spy because of certain shadings and intonations, slight accents. He might never hear it again, but—if he did?

He leaped into action, wasting no time. He knew he could not save Ordway, but, before the last stroke had sounded, he was out of his side door into the corridor, hat on, cane and gloves in hand.

The Griffin had, he fancied, overlooked one other matter. He pressed the button, caught the express descending, stepped into the car. On the third floor they overtook the local. When the latter arrived Manning was lounging at the cigar and news stand. He had bought an impromptu but effective mask that he had used before—a newspaper. Like many other individuals in the district, he buried his face in it, seemingly seeking market news.

He had marked the indicator of the other local—the third still out of order. It was at the top of the building. Four people stepped out of the one that had followed his express car. A young clerk, a girl, a man he knew and another man who carried a brief case, well dressed, self-assured, walking swiftly, but showing no especial signs of hurry.

Manning had certain qualities that make up the born detector. He had studied many things. He did not absolutely believe in physiognomy, but there were certain features he considered evinced undeniable traits. He acted now like a hound that has caught the scent.

He was assured that Ordway, up on the fifth floor, was dead. He could not aid him. He was not anxious to uncover himself in any capacity of investigator until he had to. But he followed the man with the brief case, realizing that, if he was a member of the Griffin’s organization, he might, would, know him by sight.

Manning knew the tricks of shadowing. At Wall Street and Broadway the man dived into a subway entrance. Manning followed, running to make the express, seeing his quarry enter, two cars ahead. The man kept in the train until Forty-Second Street, and Manning trailed him, up through Grand Central to Madison Avenue.

The man swung aboard a surface car. Manning followed in a taxi, telling the driver what he wanted. A New York taxi driver is surprised by nothing. He scented a hot tip. Above Fifty-Seventh he stopped and Manning saw his man turn a corner. He left the driver grinning over a two-dollar bill.

The hotel was one that harbored all sorts and conditions of people, both men and women, who did not obviously work. There was a lobby and a desk, facing two elevators. Between the cars there was a long mirror, used by the lady guests for a final overlook.

Manning found a pillar, stood back of it, seeing his man in the mirror, marking the pigeonhole from which the clerk gave him his key. He made sure of it as he asked an idle question about an imaginary registration, and then left.

Fifteen minutes later his carefully relayed message got through and was responded to by Rafferty, detective of the old-school, but to be relied upon in ordinary routine. Rafferty had an intimate description of the man, knew the number of the room. It was sufficient.

Manning’s instinct told him he was on the right track, but he had to go warily. He was dealing with no ordinary opponent. There was no reason for him to arrest his suspect, many reasons not to. Manning did not forget the Griffin’s boasted “new method” of killing. He acted on inspiration, based on experience. The Griffin would not have expected him to dash down to the lobby of the building to trace the man. At least, he did not think so.

VI

THE death of Ordway was a sensation. When Manning got back down town it had been long discovered by his secretary, who had been immediately hysterical. All had happened as the Griffin must have hoped. On ’Change the news spread like wildfire. Fortunes were made and lost, matters were still in the balance as Manning arrived.

The police were there. Detectives from the homicide squad. There was nothing to show that Ordway had not died from natural causes. He was slumped over his desk, without mark of a wound.

But an alert reporter had been on the spot. He had seen, pasted on the dead man’s blotter, conspicuous, flaunting, the scarlet seal of the Griffin. Already the press was reeling off sensational stories. This time Centre Street could not cover up. The Griffin had struck again.

Newsboys proclaimed it. The Street was in disorder. The panic spread through the length of Manhattan.

And Richard Ordway lay on the operating table while experts tried to find out how he died.

Manning read the report of Rafferty, on a flimsy, sent by ordinary messenger service to his office.

Suspect traced to Hermes Hotel, room 637, registered as David Sesnon. Checked out at 1.20. Took Yellow taxi 3748, name Alekko Kalimachos—driver has good record. Two bags. Checked in at Hotel Clarence at 1.30, under name of Daniel Sievers. Same initials. Probably careful of laundry marks. Went to barber shop. Shaved off close-clipped mustache and had hair cut. Looks different, but could identify. Took taxi to Pennsylvania Hotel stockbrokers, watched market. Am continuing shadow.

R.

There was some delay at the Morgue. Manning insisted on a special autopsy. He believed he had circumvented the Griffin, but he was not congratulating himself beforehand. Sesnon—Sievers, was still under observation, but they had nothing on him, and the Griffin was not to be caught easily.

The observation of the market, powerfully “bear,” suggested that the man he had trailed was more than ordinarily interested, but it did not prove it. The latest editions carried the announcement of the police surgeon that Ordway had died of heart failure, but they hinted at other, more sinister reasons.

The grim operation of autopsy was under way. There were two surgeons present, one distinguished specialist supplementing the regular official, by request of the chief commissioner. Assistants in the laboratory searched the organs.

A third man stood with the surgeons. He was accredited, had proved his identity, shown his knowledge of their craft. He made no suggestions. It was Manning, but he was subtly altered. His skin was darkened, his lean cheeks were plumped, his body was cleverly padded. His voice was altered, his movements slow and deliberate. Glasses veiled his eyes, though their eagerness pierced the lenses.

There was nothing, after long investigation. No sign of a weakened heart, only the body of a man who regularly visited his doctors, who had recently passed a practically perfect test for a vast sum of additional insurance. Dead, he still commanded millions by his demise.

No sign of bullet, of knife. None expected. No trace of known poisons. No unusual traces in any analysis.

Manning had said nothing of his telephone call. This affair was his own. He would conduct it in his own fashion. It could add nothing to their thorough search. The scarlet seal proclaimed that murder had been done, but the men of science stood baffled.

There were no bruises, no discolorations on the body. A blemish or two, a mole, blotches that looked like slight eruptions, lesser pimples, such as might appear on the skin of any man.

A ghastly spectacle, though the proceedings had been conducted with dignity.

Manning moved closer, under the powerful overhead light. He looked at the reddish marks, one in particular.

He knew of poisons in the Far East, largely vegetable ones that, even when introduced into the blood, would be absorbed within an hour or so by the tissues, leave no trace by any reactions known to Occidental science, if to Oriental.

“Would you mind examining this mark closely?” he asked the surgeons. “It looks like a half-healed eruption, there seems to be a slight trace of what might be pus. I have a theory it may not be.”

His credentials and his manner, his knowledge, made them deferential. They were willing enough to try anything, perplexed, weary.

An incision was made, the pallid and bloodless flesh removed about the spot, the specimen taken off for minute observation.

Manning was examining the dead man’s coat when they got back, regarding critically a slight stain, almost invisible, on the sleeve.

“We find no trace of anything toxic,” said the specialist. “But there has been a parting of the tissues, not by any sharp instrument, hardly discernible. The curious thing is that stearine, wax of some sort, seems to have been injected. We have not yet determined its exact composition.”

“Exactly,” said Manning. “And the mark, as you will see, was on the shoulder, beneath this spot on the sleeve. I think you will find your stearine also there. It should show slightly on his shirt. His undervest was sleeveless.”

They gazed with animation, energetic to follow his theory, though they did not see what it would prove.

The stain on the fine weave of cloth, on the linen of the shirt, swiftly yielded results. A waxy substance was held in the fibers.

“It passed through,” said Manning. “A pellet of wax that has almost dissolved, but not so thoroughly as its contents. You may know that a candle can be fired through a board from a gun. This capsule, loaded with virulent poison, was probably discharged from an air pistol. Probably at close range.

“That, I think, is the cause of death. As for the poison, there are several, not classified, their source in doubt, that I have met with in the Malay peninsula, Borneo, and other places. Unless you can think of some reason why stearine should have been injected through the coat, the shirt and shoulder of such a man as Ordway, immaculate, precise.