Day of Doom: The Complete Battles of Gordon Manning & The Griffin, Volume 2 (14 page)

“Looks like the Day of Judgment,” Carey observed with a laugh.

“Quite the correct setting,” said Manning. “Let’s see the sheriff.”

That somewhat disgruntled officer was stubborn. He telephoned Mills, two judges, and the County Prosecutor’s office, with cross-checkings, before he was convinced he could no longer hold his prisoner. A writ of release was issued and on the way. Manning sat with Carey in the sheriff’s office while he fussed. They had not yet seen Bailey. At last the order came and the sheriff summoned them.

“I’ll turn him over to you,” he said, “since you seem so all-fired interested in him. I’ll have my deputy get his things.”

Bailey seemed incredulous. He came out almost unwillingly.

“I ain’t through with this,” he said. “You can’t hoodwink me with last minute kindness.”

“We’re not trying to,” said Manning. “But we’ll take you in my car, if you want to come.”

“I want to go to the depot,” said Bailey. “I’m going back to Massachusetts. Mills gave me my money and I’ll pay my way. But I’m not through.”

There was thunder muttering now in earnest. It was mid-afternoon, but it was almost as dark as night. Lightning stabbed swollen masses of vapor, or edged them luridly. As yet there was no rain. And the wind was almost a hurricane for such northern latitudes.

“This will test some of your best jobs, Bailey,” said Manning.

“What do you mean?” asked Bailey. “Is this the road to the depot?”

“I mean you’re not through yet, Bailey,” answered Manning. “And this is the road to Fairtrees. We’re going back to see Mills, and take a look at that maple.”

The tree man scowled at him. He sat beside Manning in the latter’s car. Lieutenant Carey sat behind, vigilant.

“You see,” Manning went on, “there are some things about this case that got overlooked. In the first place, Mr. Willoughby never played in that swamp maple. He never had a chance. It grew in the grounds of Simon Marsh, who had no use for small boys or any trespassers. He swears that Willoughby was never on his premises before he bought them. Then it seemed curious that Mr. Willoughby should choose a tree surgeon from Massachusetts when his own State is full of them. No doubt he had a reason for it. And I think I’ve found it.”

The wind fairly rocked them as they came to an exposed place.

Javelins of forked lightning changed the blackness to a vivid glare of lavender. Bailey shifted in his seat.

“Sit still,” said Carey from the back seat, and set a gun between Bailey’s shoulder blades. “You might not get killed if you jumped, but you’d sure be crippled. We want you sound.”

“That wasn’t a skiver’s tool,” Manning went on. “It was unlucky for you it didn’t sink.”

The man beside him stared at him through the thick lenses, uttered something guttural and inarticulate, and subsided.

At the gate of Fairtrees they were challenged. Carey, in uniform, jumped from the car, his gun covering the gatekeeper.

“You’ll open up, in the name of the law,” he said, “or you’ll never turn another key. Never mind the telephone.”

Manning shoved his own gun into the ribs of the man beside him, who tried to leap from the car.

They drove through the gates and on towards the house, after Manning had dismantled the telephone.

“You’ll stay out of this,” he said to the gatekeeper and another man who appeared; “if you want to stay out of jail. You get Mills, Carey, and bring him along to the tree. I’ll drive as close to it as I can.”

Bedlam broke loose in the woods as Manning drove one-handed, his gun still in Bailey’s ribs. Then they got out and plodded through rain and wind along the brook. Broken twigs and boughs strewed their way. Here and there a tree was uprooted. The brook was high. Rain had fallen in the hills already.

“This may save some ax work,” said Manning grimly. “Don’t try to bolt. Carey said this looked like the Day of Judgment. He was right.
I thought so!”

They had come in sight of the swamp maple. It was down. The current had washed out more roots. The gale had clutched its crown and torn up the hollow bole.

It lay on its side. The iron bands bolted about it still held, but the cement that filled its hollow, Bailey’s handiwork, had cracked. The rotten shell of the trunk had split, revealing a gruesome sight.

The body of a man, in golf clothes, stuffed into the hollow, partly decomposed but recognizable.

A bolt of lightning made everything livid. Manning, alert, swung his gun to club the man, who suddenly grappled with him, desperate with maniacal strength, kicking, biting. The muzzle sight of the gun slashed his scalp, half stunned him, but he fought on, clutching for Manning’s throat.

Carey came charging through the woods. He stared at the fallen, twitching body.

“A wig!” he said. “And the other’s Bailey?”

“Willoughby was hard-pressed,” said Manning, “short of cash to swing his deals and keep things running. He might have had this in mind for a long time, seeing how things went. He chose Bailey, because they were about the same size. He waited until the last minute and killed him, changed clothes, shaved himself, put on the wig, stuffed Bailey in the trunk and cemented him up. He knew how to do it. He was actor enough to play the part of Bailey, who kept to himself. He figured to disappear, as Bailey, and then presently to come back as Willoughby with his cock-and-bull story of abduction. His idea was to run those shares down to the limit, then buy in, get control of the industry, gain ready money as well. Mills was in with him. Mills is clever, but he wrote those notes on his own typewriter. Mills professed sympathy for Bailey in jail, saw he was as comfortable as possible, saw that he kept clean shaven. But he forgot about his wig. A wig doesn’t grow. Willoughby, as Bailey, was three weeks in jail and his hair didn’t grow. What did you do with Mills, Carey?”

“I arrested him, as you said. I locked him up, handcuffed, in the cellar. I’ve got the keys. He’s safe. He crumpled. My men are there by now. You’re a marvel, Manning. I don’t see—”

“It looked phoney,” said Manning. “I never liked Willoughby. Nor Mills, when I met him. The depression makes men desperate. Willoughby might have gone in for trees, but that yarn about his sentimental affection for one because he’d dreamed in it seemed fishy. It turned out to be. His New England accent as Bailey wasn’t too good. There was no evidence he was dead or even kidnaped. The evidence the other way was too strong. Bailey’s record was excellent. A man who doctors trees doesn’t go around killing the one who gives him a job. Mills worked the market. Got instructions when he visited the jail. But they both overlooked the fact that
wigs don’t grow.
He’s coming round. Needs a few stitches. It’s your arrest, Carey. You handle the case. I want to get away on a vacation.”

The Dust of Destiny

Gordon Manning, Conqueror of The Griffin, Probes the Mystery of the Man Killed by a “Bolt from the Blue”

It was one of the narrower, one-way streets in Greenwich Village, about as wide as the colloquial “biscuit toss.” Many of its ancient houses had been converted into studio apartments with patio gardens; nearly all the remainder harbored at least as many families as there were floors. One exception was the residence of Morton Hyde, well known amateur physicist and delver into the laws of gravitation and electrodynamics and magnetism. One of the few men recognized by Einstein as capable of sympathy and comprehension of the latter’s theories.

Morton Hyde, once a wide traveler and explorer, was still hale and hearty, but he had grown stout in the years beyond sixty, and his life was largely sedentary. The house had come to him several years ago in an inheritance. He had remodeled its interior and changed its roof.

The ground floor had been made into one large apartment, the rear of which took up the full height of the original building and was roofed by a skylight, used as library and museum, filled with the gatherings of Hyde’s travels. It had a large open fireplace and was comfortably furnished. The front half of the same floor was both dining and living room, its height unraised. Above it were the bedrooms and bathrooms.

There was a perfectly equipped kitchen in the basement where Hyde often performed culinary miracles for his chosen guests, or was served by his one factotum, Bino, a Filipino of uncertain age but certain fealty and service. A dumb-waiter connected kitchen and dining room. Bino slept in the rear of the basement with his own lavatory arrangements.

The small garden space was enclosed in glass. By an ingenious arrangement of heating pipes Hyde had turned it into a place where strange and spiny growths flourished, brought from deserts on four continents; while rare and curious tropical fishes found themselves quite at home in a great octagonal tank, set amid bristling aloes and agaves. The glass was unbreakable and had been treated with acid to destroy transparency.

On the roof Hyde had made a terrace, its floor of Moorish tiles, awninged with striped canvas beneath painted metal, to protect from the fire of casual cigarettes, cigar ends and smouldering matches sometimes tossed carelessly from the apartment buildings. There were grass mattings for rugs, bamboo lounging furniture, cushions, a low parapet in front.

Hyde did not entertain very frequently. Whenever the capricious New York climate permitted, he spent hours on his terrace in a deep Badak chair with a high back, lounging in meditation, watching the sky in a mood absorbed by his theories; sometimes reading, sometimes smoking a Turkish hookah.

A self-contained man with a brilliant mind, somewhat of a recluse.

His awnings gave him seclusion. The house directly opposite had been unoccupied for two years. Its windows were without blinds or curtains, grimed with the dust of a dozen seasons. Its ownership was tied up in involved litigation. Hyde had tried to buy it so that there would be no observers of his sessions or siestas, but he could not, though he had obtained an option for a first bid from the lawyers of the controversial heirs.

Hyde had been honored by scientific societies throughout the world. He still contributed papers and pamphlets that were invariably received with great respect by the learned bodies.

One late afternoon, August, the eighteenth, he lounged in his Badak chair with considerable satisfaction. He had read once, and meant to read again, the announcement that amounted to an acknowledgment of the correctness of his belief that space was infinite and actually increasing; the subject of his only controversy with the great German-Swiss scientist.

Occasionally, as reflected, he glanced at certain paragraphs through his thick-lensed glasses. His sight was beginning to fail him, with his hearing; the results of severe malarial fevers contracted on his travels. Otherwise he was in full possession of his faculties, his mind was still brilliant.

It was growing dusk and he was thinking of going in. He straightened a little, preparing to close the bulletin of the Astronomical Society, which had contained the satisfying news.

His action ended abruptly, his head jerked suddenly. A dark spot appeared in the center of his forehead, exactly above the bow of his spectacles, the base of his nose.

A crimson bubble rose there, broke, and scarlet rain dripped down upon the printed page, that rustled for a moment in his quivering hands and then slid to the floor. The body of the scientist relaxed utterly. He lay still in the Badak chair, staring upwards at the sky.

There had been no sound to disturb the street. A slight thud as the missile bored into his skull, a low twang. That was all.

He had been dead for half an hour when Bino came to remind him he had guests for dinner.

The Medical Examiner, on his arrival, set the time at approximately two hours before, which coincided with Bino’s statement. The detectives proclaimed it murder and commenced their fruitless search for clews, taking Bino away to be held as material witness, unable to secure bail, under suspicion of the crime, when it was found that he was beneficiary under Hyde’s will for five thousand dollars. There were a few other personal bequests, none of them large. The residue, and bulk, of the estate, was left to the Society for Cosmic Research.

The autopsy disclosed that the missile was a curious pellet about the size of a shrapnel bullet, or a marble. It was even suggested that it was a marble, though not of a sort known to any of the dealers in those playthings. The papers made the most of it, especially the tabloids.

It was heavy and of a streaky green. Too heavy for glass, though it resembled it. It was not exactly spherical. Part of it was covered with a thin film of fused crust. In analysis it proved crystalline; it reacted to tests of metallic iron, and of nickel. It baffled the experts of the Crime Scientific Investigation Bureau. It was something new in the annals of crime and it seemed untraceable.

The house across the street was searched. The detectives found everywhere a coating of soft dust on the floors, the stairs, the stair rails; dust, undisturbed, from cellar to garret. Empty, silent as the grave, with not even the track of mouse or rat to disturb the dust in that inhospitable mansion. Cobwebs and dust and silence.

Such a missile, it was pointed out, must have been discharged from a smoothbore, hand-loaded. It had not formed part of a cartridge. It was too large for the bore of the old type Kentucky or pea rifle, but there were guns made for trade with natives that might fill the bill. Weapons like these were used sometimes for ornament, they could be bought at a Broadway store. It might have been an ancient pistol. But there had been no report heard. It was a quiet street but there had been passers-by at that hour. Of course a muffler blow-out might have covered it, but as Hyde sat in his chair (as the probe of the wound showed) that shot must have come from across the street if it had not been fired at close quarters, on the terrace.

The bullet, if it might be truly styled a bullet, had not penetrated the back of the cranium. There were no powder marks.

Bino swore no one had been in the house but himself. The guests, both well known scientists, had arrived later, to be shocked by the news. It could not have been an air rifle, the commissioner pointed out. The diameter and the weight of the missile precluded the use of such mechanism.