The Crime Master: The Complete Battles of Gordon Manning & The Griffin, Volume 1 (Gordon Manning and The Griffin) (7 page)

He was sure now he had his man. Absolutely certain that one of the Griffin’s pawns stood in front of him. To prove it was another matter. But he had one card to play. The rest stood on intuition, blended with logic, and one or two things he noticed that seemed to interlock, like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. There were many missing, but these joined, they gave a glimpse of pattern.

“You say you came recently into Mr. Hastings’s service, Jennings? Through an agency, I suppose.”

“Yes, sir.” For the space of a swift breath Jennings had hesitated.

“Which one was it?” Manning’s voice had taken on an edge. The self-contained butler looked at him with eyes that strove to read his mind—eyes that gazed straight for one glance and shifted. His red and white complexion was patched.

“I don’t really remember, sir. I registered at several. You see, I’ve not been over on this side long. I’m not acquainted. But Mr. Hastings was well satisfied with my references.”

“I’m sure of that. It doesn’t matter much. Let’s see what the rest are doing.”

Manning turned to walk from the butler’s sanctum. He heard back of him a suppressed sigh of relief. He had his man now, he believed, but he would still have to bluff, to force the other’s hand. He could arrive by more tedious and lengthy ways, but such methods did not go well with the tactics of the Griffin. If he had alarmed Jennings the play might fail.

There are scores of employment agencies in New York, yet there are only a few, less than six, catering to the extremely select. From the garage phone Manning had sent in inquiry concerning Jennings, asking if he had been on the books of the twenty most flourishing concerns, and the answer had been
no!

But Jennings had lied when he said he did not know from what agency he had been sent—or he had not come from any. And lied again about the Hindu.

A bluff, in Manning’s opinion, was just as good as the man who made it. The setting also helped.

VII

MRS. HASTINGS was still under the merciful influence of the drug. The body had not yet been removed for autopsy. The police surgeon and the detectives were waiting the arrival of the proper conveyance, the grisly accessories of the coroner’s and undertaker’s rites. They were in the dead man’s room, investigating, questioning the servants, brought to them one by one by the housekeeper. Understanding of human nature led them to hold the inquisition where the murdered man lay stark, his face covered now, a mute witness that might force some sign from any guilty person. Precisely for this reason Manning took Jennings with him. He was not going to lose sight of him.

He believed that the only reason Jennings had not disappeared was because to do so would have aroused instant suspicion and a too close hue and cry.

The police surgeon nodded to Manning.

“I found this on the dead man’s chest,” he said. “His skin is smooth, and this was pasted right over the sternum bone.”

Manning did not have to look at it. It was the scarlet seal of the Griffin, the symbol of slaughter.

“You think he was killed with the cord?” he asked. “Jennings here says he saw a Hindu, at least a man with a turban, traveling in the same train with him some days ago, getting off here. Some of them practice Thuggee.”

“Whoever did it,” interrupted the sergeant, “must have climbed to the porch, come in through the open window, killed, got the gems, and gone out the same way. Simple enough, though he was foxy and wiped out prints. They always do these days.”

“Sometimes they overlook a thing or two,” said Manning. “They smooth out the marks of the ladder, clean their shoes, but, after they put the ladder away, they might forget to clear
that
of prints.

“At the same time,” he went on, eying Jennings covertly, “I don’t agree with you. I don’t think any one came in through the window at all. The man who tied that cord round Hastings’s neck, opened the safe and got the jewels, came through the door.”

“You mean an inside job?” asked the sergeant.

“You haven’t answered my question yet,” Manning told the surgeon. “Mr. Hastings’s own physician thought it strangulation.”

“The cord is sufficient to cause death. There are certain signs of suffocation.”

“Of suffocation, yes,” said Manning. “But some are missing. That cord was tightened after Hastings was dead. The eyes should have been bulging, the tongue protruding. I doubt also whether even a strong and active man could have subdued the deceased without his turning in an alarm. Hastings was well on in years, but he was still physically active enough.”

“Then what killed him?” demanded the sergeant incredulously.

“A weapon that has now become invisible, vanished, save for the effects it left, that the autopsy will reveal in the lungs. Traces of sulphurous oxide or cyanogen. I am not certain which, until I have examined the frigidaire more closely. But the man who killed Hastings knew his ways, knew of the alarms, knew he slept with his window open, the others closed. There is a fireplace here, but it has its throat shut by a damper during the summer.

“A man climbed to the porch, set in through the window a cake of the compound used for the extra refrigeration, a special accessory to cabinets of the elaborate type used here. He closed the window and left it to evaporate, to give off its deadly fumes, leaving no trace. Then, two or three hours later, he opened the window again. You will see it has been treated to slide very freely in the steel frame.

“When the room was clear again, he entered—through the door. He may have opened the damper for a time to insure a draft, he opened the safe, and, for a final flourish, an attempt to provide false evidence, to set us on a wrong trail, he twisted that cord about the dead man’s neck. Suffocated, but not strangled.

“That is not theory, gentlemen, it’s facts. That ladder you used, Jennings, reeks with your finger-prints!” he said.

The butler’s patchy complexion had turned white, but it was the pallor of desperation rather than fear. His dignity fell from him like a cloak. Manning was between him and the door. He crouched like a trapped beast, his features a mask of snarling hate as his hand shot toward his left shoulder under the morning coat he wore. This was the face of a man who had worn the clothes marked with the broad arrows of bleak Dartmoor, the face of a killer.

The detectives reached for their weapons as Jennings got to the butt of his, held in a clip.

“Damn you, I’ll get
you!”
he cried. For a moment his fury was so great, his convulsed face so demoniac, that Manning half wondered if this could be the Griffin himself.

He had been leaning, lightly, casually, on his cane. Now he flicked this from right to left, back again, more sharply. The heavy rod struck Jennings’s shins, the ferrule ripped the cloth of his trousers, went through to the bone with a nerve shock that could not be offset, a blow bringing agony, halting all nerve coördination.

The butler’s hand was checked, the gun in it, but still beneath his coat, for a single pulse beat. Manning’s right fist shot hard to the other’s jaw. It was a blow that would have dropped most men. But, like the extra smash that sometimes actually restores a fighter on the verge of a knockout, it failed of its purpose, and the next second saw them closed, wrestling to get possession of the gun while the officers hovered, afraid to shoot.

Jennings literally gnashed his teeth. Foam flew from his lips, and then he tried to close his jaws on Manning’s neck. His teeth grazed the skin.

Manning got his right hand free, his left still grasped the other’s wrist above the pistol, the muzzle jerking here and there. He stepped a little to one side, devoting all his attention to the butler’s right arm. Thumb and two fingers sought and found a spot close to the biceps, viced down in a jujutsu grip. He stepped back. The gun had fallen. Manning shifted holds a little. His left arm went back of the murderer’s elbow, his right now at the wrist. He put out pressure, there was the crack of snapping bone, and Jennings went down in a writhing heap.

Instantly, the detectives swarmed over him, jerked him to his feet, regardless of his broken arm.

“No sense in beating him up,” said Manning. “He isn’t the Griffin. We’ve got him for murder, anyway.”

“You haven’t proved it yet,” gasped the prisoner.

“I think we will. We haven’t searched you yet, or your quarters. And there’s the ladder. You came here under false presentations, to begin with. You overplayed the game. I rather think that cord was your own idea. Ah! You should have got rid of those, Jennings. That was clumsy.”

The butler wore a chain of heavy gold links. A watch on one end, on the other the little contrivance known in England as a sovereign purse. There were none there, but there were two of the Griffin’s scarlet seals.

“That takes you to the chair, my lad,” said the sergeant. “Now, what did you do with the gems?”

VIII

JENNINGS, like a true bulldog, refused to aid them. It was Manning who found the package at last, in a false bottom of the butler’s suitcase. He did not need now to see if there were finger-prints on the ladder.

But, with the evaporation of the chemical—the death invisible—the case might have been incomplete. There was the cord, but the condition of the flesh beneath it showed it was not the cause of death; that it had been applied long after life had fled and the blood had ceased to circulate.

They could get nothing out of him.

“I can’t tell you about the man you call the Griffin,” he said. “I have never seen him. I don’t know where he lives. I don’t know anything.”

“If he ever actually interviewed him,” said Manning, “he might have been taken there blindfolded. What were you going to do with the jewels? How were you going to deliver them?”

“You’ve got me,” said the butler. “I suppose you’ll burn me. I tell you I wanted them for myself.”

His head rolled from side to side. He was in pain, and the inquisition had not been a light one. That end of it was not Manning’s affair.

Manning hid his chagrin. Again the Griffin had eluded him. Hastings was dead.

The recovery of the jewels was a hollow victory. The tool would die, but the Crime Master was still free.

They could not promise Jennings any immunity. He must pay the full penalty. And Manning believed him when he vowed he could not tell them anything to lead them to the Griffin. That diabolical assassin still lurked in his secret den, plotting fresh horror.

“Better set that arm of his,” he suggested to the police surgeon. “You might examine that ladder for prints to tie up the case. You’ll find it in the orchard, under some grass, in a little ditch. It was not, after all, a perfect crime. But he may have overstepped instructions at that.”

He picked up his cane, which he had dropped in the fight, got his hat and went out to his car. In his ears he seemed to still hear those faint strains of music, an echo of the Griffin’s mocking laugh. Once more he had failed—and he felt depressed.

He stepped into his car, started to switch on the ignition, and went rigid. The control button of his horn was in the center of his wheel, and on it, neatly affixed, was the crimson cartouche, the red seal, red as blood, with the head of a griffin embossed upon it.

Tuned Out

The Griffin Strikes Again, and a Blaze of Green Flame Leaves a Baffling Riddle for Inspector Manning

THE mysterious individual known as the Griffin, to the police, the press and public of New York; his ill fame swiftly spreading nation-wise; the man who mockingly announced himself as the Crime Master; sat in his thronelike chair in the strange room with curving walls.

Music, rare music, not the chance selection of a radio program, sounded faintly and melodiously in that curious chamber with its bizarre appointments. The scent of burning amber permeated it. There were no signs of ventilation, no windows, no visible entrance. The walls were of steel, back of the tapestries of woven gold, the floor of steel beneath the priceless rugs.

The Griffin wore a robe of heavy silk brocade. He had just set aside the jade mouthpiece of a hookah pipe. On the desk were a gazing globe of crystal, three suspended bronze discs, the central much larger than the others, a vase of Ming dynasty in which there was a single golden-flecked orchid of deepest violet, looking like a poised butterfly, an inkstand of rare onyx, whose lid was a griffin’s head, in gold.

Immediately before him was an astrological chart, a list of names, names prominently known, each with a date of birth beside it. Two names had been scored through with a crimson pencil. There was also a pad on which the Griffin had been figuring.

His was an almost perfect face, from the sculptor’s standpoint, yet it was marred with an expression of evil, the face of a fallen angel. The cranium was that of a person of high intelligence, but it was perverted. Here was a man who might have achieved the heights but had deliberately preferred the depths. His profile was falconlike, the brow high above the outstanding, finely chiseled nose. The well-shaped lips, a trifle thin, yet sensuous, were set in a mocking curve. The eyes were cruel, cruel as those of a tiger waiting for its prey to pass, as those of a boa expectant of a victim.

He studied the chart. His intention was to find a name whose birth stars now showed conjunction with the evil sidereal influences. He did not believe in astrology, he did not believe in god or man or devil. The stars decorating his dome were set there from a whim of fantasy, largely for effect on those who served him. His present occupation was, for him, a means of choosing his next victim. He held no doubt of the result. His strike was deadly. That it accorded with the predictions of the chart was his own doing. He would use the coincidence for his own ends: to cater to the superstitions of his underlings, to give himself in their eyes the mystery and awe of supreme wisdom, of infallibility.

A madman who was not a maniac. A brilliant brain gone astray, its intent set to a revenge multiplied and distorted by the malignant growth of his insanity, his grandiose dementia. A genius, with the instincts of a fiend, without humanity.