Day of Doom: The Complete Battles of Gordon Manning & The Griffin, Volume 2 (32 page)

“Do what you please, Manning, but don’t delay the arrival of those fossil bones. Now, shall we look over the house?”

There seemed no doubt about the authenticity of Kumar Asit Gupta. He was discovered registered at the Plaza in the suite he had reserved by telegram from the Coast, sent the same time as his wire to Crossleigh.

A quiet and unobtrusive man, who spoke good English and, but for his signature, might have been one of a dozen nationalities with skins inclined to swarthiness.

He had not announced by which railroad he was traveling and the squadmen had failed to pick him up at depots or ferries, mainly because they had been imagining someone with a turban and an air of strangeness. According to the hotel management, Gupta was completely cosmopolitan. He had asked that a certain leather trunk, small enough to be carried, and which he had himself transported from his cab, should be placed in a vault. And he had ordered a modest but well chosen meal in his room without revealing any caste prejudices.

Later, he had telephoned Crossleigh and made an appointment for ten o’clock on the morning of the seventeenth.

All this Manning knew before he took charge of the Crossleigh premises, fortified by forty picked men, distributed strategically. In only one thing Crossleigh had proved difficult. He wanted to go to work immediately upon receipt of the relics, and insisted upon two of his assistants remaining. After all, this bid fair to crown the achievements of his lifetime, he considered it as vital as life itself, and he had placed the full responsibility of guarding that life upon Manning.

Manning found out that it was customary for Crossleigh to shut himself up for days at a time in his workshop with one or more assistants, or by himself, and that nobody dared disturb him. On these occasions he prepared his own meals, which he confessed to Manning were generally either inadequate or rather horrible messes, concocted on the gas burners he used in his experimental work.

Manning announced himself as the cook on this occasion. The two assistants seemed beyond suspicion, but their demeanor and their records did not eliminate them from Manning’s scrutiny. The Griffin had practically bought himself out of Dannemora, combining bribery of a supposedly honest guard with a most ingenious method of departure. Even assiduous scientific assistants had sick wives, mortgages, and private troubles that a golden wand might make vanish. They were not too lavishly paid.

Crossleigh curbed his impatience with difficulty as ten o’clock approached. His two aides were at work in a dark room and a partitioned off space, respectively, ready to make photographs and casts of the expected fossils.

A house phone rang and Manning answered it.

“It’s Gupta,” he said. “I’ll let him in here.”

The babu had exchanged his traveling suit of blue serge for haircloth clothing, a long, close-fitting coat, trousers tied at the ankles, shoes of soft leather, and an elaborate turban.

He was excessively polite, without humility. He carried, not the small leather trunk, but a casket of black wood, bound with brass, inlaid with nacre. This he retained hold of, while making his obeisance, first to Manning and then to Crossleigh. He mistook the two, thinking Manning the anthropologist.

Manning explained and retired. He took a place behind two exhibit cases, using the glass side of one as a mirror. Crossleigh returned formal salutation, but he was plainly afire with expectation as Kumar Asit Gupta set down the casket on a small table and proceeded to unlock it.

An assistant came from the dark room but stopped, seeing the visitor.

The babu set the key in the lock then stepped back.

“You shall open it yourself,” he said. “I trust I have not in any way deceived or disappointed you.”

Nothing could seem more harmless than the polite Oriental. His clothes were close and smooth-fitting as a skin, revealing no weapon, but Manning did not trust him. He did not trust anybody during these twenty-four hours, even Crossleigh. He knew the Oriental guile, and, even though there seemed no motive for the babu to harm Crossleigh, Manning was alert.

There might be a poisoned spring connected with that casket—he had not forgotten his dead dog—there might be a venomous snake, teased by electric cells.

He had made Crossleigh promise to open nothing, but now the anthropologist, with such a rich prize almost in hand, forgot everything else. Gupta had moved back, standing behind Crossleigh’s shoulder, a slighter, shorter man, his smile slightly deprecating.

Manning called a warning to Crossleigh, but it was not heeded. The lid opened. Crossleigh gave a gasp and leaned forward, lifting a layer of cottonwool. Nothing happened.

But now it came, like a stroke of lightning from a clear sky. The action was too swift for eye to follow, but something came out of Gupta’s sleeve, shaken out as a Hindu conjurer shakes the cobra in the mango trick. There was a glimmer of crimson and then Crossleigh was on his knees, his face darker than the silken scarf about his throat. Gupta’s placid face transformed to that of a demon in some hideous ritual, twisted with fingers of steel.

It was Thuggee. The Hindu was one of the professional killers who laid down their lives for a cause. A noose-operator, a worshiper of Kali, the Dark Mother, an expert at murder, a hireling of elimination.

He was swiftly expert. Crossleigh’s tongue protruded, with his eyes. A frightful wheezing came from his compressed windpipe. But Gupta was not swifter than Manning’s bullet that smashed into one arm at the shoulder and plowed on through, paralyzing the strangler, shocking his nerves with the splintering of bone.

He staggered back and Crossleigh dropped to the floor, feebly clutching at the silk throttling-scarf, linked with a sewn-in coin at one end. He could barely breathe, was still conscious, though veins stood out on his forehead like cords.

The assistant came running forward, kneeling beside Crossleigh, using a penknife to cut the constricting scarf, as Manning called on Gupta to surrender, to throw up his hands. Crossleigh gasped with relief, sitting up and tenderly feeling his throat, bruised and swollen. It had been a close call.

The Hindu was badly hurt. His black mohair clothing was sodden with blood, but he recovered, like a sorely wounded tiger that fights as long as life lasts.

He tossed up his hands in a gesture and flung abroad a powder that blinded and strangled. Manning fired through the dust of it and the babu darted for the door, opened it, plunged on for the street entrance.

Manning followed, gasping, wiping scalding tears away. He yelled at two plain-clothesmen who appeared with leveled guns.

“Let him go!” he shouted. “Follow up, but let him go now.”

Astounded, they withheld their fire. Manning was in supreme command by order of the police commissioner, as well as by virtue of his commission from the governor. Then, being experienced men, they caught his meaning.

The Hindu, wounded desperately, acting subconsciously, was, like a crippled beast, making for a lair, hoping for a getaway.

He dived out of the front door, dripping blood. Manning was hard on his heels, gun ready, eyes clearing a little.

His own car was parked, against ordinances, but privileged by its special license number, close by.

He saw a black sedan come gliding up. Its engine purred under the long hood that spoke of power. A curtain was half raised and a sinister face looked out of it for a moment before the blind was pulled down and the sedan swung out to the middle of the road, its speed accelerating, abandoning the wretch that now sprawled upon the sidewalk, splotching it with crimson, his turban unwound, his strength spent with his blood.

Manning leaped over Gupta’s limp body, racing for his car. It was a roadster and should be as powerful as the black sedan now disappearing round the corner. He left the babu to the detectives. Crossleigh had been saved in time, but Manning had seen the gloating countenance of the Griffin, mustachioed and fork-bearded, with his hooked nose like a beak above the cruel mouth, between the glittering eyes.

Manning’s starter whirred, his engine came to life. He cut out his ordinary signal horn and connected up the police siren to which he was entitled. He saw the sedan ahead speeding for Columbus Circle, sounding a similar alarm. Traffic made way. New York was used to the unusual. Theirs not to question why, when that shrill alarm proclaimed authority. Officers saluted, if a little doubtfully, as the black sedan and the cream-colored roadster sped past at even rates of speed, neither gaining or losing.

The black sedan selected Broadway. At Thirty-Fourth it swung east, careening on two wheels, Manning close behind. One block, and the sedan swerved south, down Fifth Avenue.

The radio cruisers would soon be closing in, Manning told himself, as they sped by crosstown traffic at Twenty-Third, held up by officers obedient to the ear-splitting clamor of the sirens.

At Washington Arch, the Avenue divided, but now it made a perfect speedway, with Manning beginning to gain a little.

Suddenly the sedan turned west. The one-way street was choked with cars and the sedan lunged up on the sidewalk, scattering foot-citizens like frightened fowl.

There was a report, like a backfire, or a shot, and the sedan came to a crashing halt, sideswiping a light truck. Manning threw on his protesting brakes as he saw a cloaked figure dart from the car and rush into a doorway.

Police cars were coming up, traffic officers and patrolmen were running. The truck driver was bleeding and cursing. The chauffeur of the black sedan was slumped over his wheel.

Manning glimpsed the face of the Griffin behind the gate of an elevator that slammed as the car shot upwards. His bullet struck the metal grille and glanced, whining. There was no return shot from the Griffin. For once, his face seemed desperate.

Manning imagined him holding his weapon on the elevator man. But he had traced the monster to his aerie. Crossleigh was all right, the would-be assassin was in custody, if he was not dead by now.

He took the stairs. The police were following. Manning was fast enough to be sure the elevator did not stop on the next floor, nor the next. As he gained the fourth, and top floor, it was going down.

He barely glimpsed the closing of a door at the far end of a passage. There was no name there, none on the two doors before it. But the Griffin had gone in.

A sergeant and a first-grade man came racing up, let out of the elevator.

“Guard those two doors,” said Manning. “Stand by!”

He pressed a bell on the one through which he had half seen the Griffin disappear. There was no answer. Manning smashed the upper glass panel with his gun butt, reached through and sprung the lock.

The studio seemed empty. A fireplace to the left, a door to the right. Manning went through it to a room that seemed half kitchen, half laboratory. It was vacant, without a hiding place. There had been a screen in the studio and Manning had looked behind it and seen nothing but what looked like a stool, covered with a drape.

He thrust his way into the third room of the suite. It seemed to be a bedroom with a couch, a chair, a bureau and a washstand.

A man stood there at bay, his black cloak cast aside, snarling, gun in hand.

Lead seared Manning’s collarbone, lead nicked his ribs, but the other toppled on his mustachioed and bearded face, shot through the heart.

Manning stood over him, powder-gas streaking from his gun. It seemed a tame ending for the Griffin. Too tame.

He stooped. He was hatless. Something like a white hot wire divided his hair, seared his scalp, and he saw a straight bladed knife embedded deep in the plaster of the wall. Then something attacked him savagely from the rear.

Hands, like claws, clutched him, clawed their way upwards with incredible fury as a living lump struck his spine. The claws gripped his throat, his windpipe was compressed.

He fought with the creature, casting his arms behind him, realizing that the thing had no legs. He hurled himself backwards and felt the figure squirm, muscular but formless, as wood and glass panels splintered and the police rushed in.

Manning saw an incredible figure that might have been evoked by his blood-flooded brain, thrust up a window with widespread hands and vault through the opening.

Uproar came from the street as Manning reeled forward. There was a burst of gunfire. It ceased and he looked upwards. There was nothing in sight.

“You see anything go out that window?” he asked an officer.

“I thought I did. I ain’t sure. It didn’t look human.”

Manning ordered them to the roof and examined the body of the Griffin. He was beginning to feel a trifle groggy and he did not improve as he saw a wig awry, a mustache pushed out of place by a dying hand. Under the wig the hair was scanty, reddish.

Here was a masquerader, some actor out of work, desperate for money, cleverly made up to a semblance of the fiend who must even now be chuckling.

Not chuckling too emphatically. Crossleigh had been rescued. The Griffin had lost two pawns—this impoverished Thespian, and Gupta.

Of course there had been no discovery in Java. Now Manning understood. Gupta had never come from there, even from San Francisco. The Griffin had arranged the telegrams, hired the disciple of Thuggee. There were probably no relics in the casket, at best poor imitations. But the Griffin had failed. The chagrin of it would bite into his ego like acid.

This was his aerie. Manning gazed about the studio uncertainly. It looked as if the Griffin had been ready to desert the place. His wounds smarted, his hair was clogged with blood. He looked at the dead man, another victim of the Griffin, perhaps, primarily, of depression. Poor devil, disguising himself for a fatal fee.

The sergeant reëntered.

“The commissioner’s on the way,” he said. “Say, you look like you needed the surgeon yourself. He’s coming.”

“Okay!” said Manning. “How about that thing that went out the window?”

“They’re searching the roofs. They saw something like an ape climbing up a fire shutter to the coping. But they can’t find it.”

Manning felt his throat tenderly. It was curious that both Crossleigh and he should have been attacked the same way, he thought. But the Griffin’s ways were not ordinary ways.