Detective Fiction Weekly. Vol. 75, No. 4, April 15, 1933

Manning Gets an Invitation to a Murder, to Watch an “Ingenious Method” — an Invitation Sealed with the Terrible Scarlet Griffin

I

The little graveyard was a place forgotten. A private cemetery, no longer visited. Its tombstones sagged and some were fallen. The stone had flaked and the inscriptions were illegible, if anyone had cared to read them. Sumach and thornapples and blackberry brambles discouraged investigation. Old yews and native cypress shadowed the dismal spot. There was a vault of stone that was still intact, though it had tilted as the soil had shifted with the centuries on the slope which the vault crowned. The vault had a gate of wrought iron secured by a rusty chain and padlock, and a door that seemed to await the Resurrection morning.

Behind the slope, across neglected pastures, stood a house of brick and stone that had been nobly designed but had suffered the wear of the elements for fifty years without human occupation or reinforcement. Once there had been a garden and still a few roses bloomed, stunted, and hedges once trimmed grew wild.

The land was part of a great grant by King George to one of his overseas subjects. Most of it had been sold. This had been a portion bequeathed to a minor heir. At the back of the house were great, gaunt lilacs guarding an alley where once George Washington had walked in his unsuccessful wooing of Marion Philipse, visiting there.

There was a cloud about the title. The old, proud family had gone into oblivion. But someone had recently risked buying the forty ragged acres. The house was almost a ruin, with its rotting sills and leaking roof, its sagging shutters and mouldering paint, within and without.

Tonight, dim through the driving, persistent rain, a light gleamed downstairs. Some thought the newcomers were merely caretakers for the purchasers. They made no attempt to farm, little to offset the impending ruin of house and land. They were a tall, taciturn Yankee and his equally lean and silent wife; they attended strictly to their own affairs, paid their bills in cash.

The place had long been dismal, desolate and deserted. The light in the window did little now to dispel its dreariness. Rain dripped from the dark trees, beat upon the sunken mounds in the pale gleam of a sun that fought and failed against the gloomy, swiftly gathering night.

The new owner was recorded as a Mr. Silbi. A foreign sounding name, surely not New England, like that of Cyrus Allen, now living in the house. None locally had ever seen Mr. Silbi.

Surrounding this forty acres was more deserted land, also with clouded title. Two big tracts of it, wooded and hilly. On one of them was a weedy mere that had once been a lake. No one ever fished there. Once a girl had drowned herself in it. These wild acres had been considered by real estate developers with an eye to summer bungalows and country homes, but the uncertain titles checked them and the land lay slowly reverting to wilderness.

They said the ghost of the suicide haunted the mere, that weird blue and green lights flickered above the graves — corpse-candles lighting the phantoms back to their beds of clay. Some swore that a party, taking the back road by mistake, had seen the vault open, with an unearthly glare revealing broken coffins and scattered bones, and a fearful goblin, capering, hairy and legless, its head neckless and tiny; walking on its hands, in the midst of the charnel place.

An owl hooted its melancholy note. A nightjar swooped with a screeching whistle. A few bullfrogs croaked in sheer defiance of the rain. Thunder muttered and lightning flickered incessantly as the smouldering sunset died.

The state road was two miles away. The dirt lanes were little better than quagmires, rutted by those who stole the timber from the old Luddington Grant. Few passed after nightfall.

A mighty, closed car came surging through the slush, driven by an expert who used the power of twelve tremendous cylinders with consummate judgment, whose steel wrists and fingers controlled their force with ease as the big black sedan threatened to skid and swerve.

Behind drawn blinds a man sat who was dressed — as his chauffeur was — in black. Sable, from wide-rimmed slouch hat, turned down, to his shoes. He was wrapped in a black cloak like a condor with folded wings. His vulturine features, half hidden between upturned velvet collar and the brim of his sombrero, were offset by a close trimmed Spanish beard, twin-forked and upcurled mustachios. His eyes were yellow of iris, his high-bridged nose was thin and bony, like a bird’s beak.

This was the mysterious Mr. Silbi and he sat couched in the deep cushions with an expression infinitely feral, evil and content.

The sedan slowed, turned to a miry rise, plowed up a lane, its headlights spraying through the darkness and the filtering rain, now beginning to slacken.

The driver showed no hesitation. This was not his first visit. Mr. Silbi did not tolerate mistakes. He was well served, as was Iblis, Prince of Darkness, cast out by God because he refused to abase himself before the latest creation — Adam.

Iblis, the Moslem Satan, becomes Silbi when spelled backwards. No one in Grangers’ Mills had noticed it. Nor, as yet, elsewhere.

They surged about the house across the muck of an old byre and the car disappeared in the dark maw of a staggering barn, still held together by its frame of timbers hewn two hundred years before from forest giants. The driver stayed there. Silbi emerged, his black cloak flapping in the wind and rain, only his beaklike nose showing. He ascended a rear stoop and rapped on a door that was instantly opened and closed behind him.

The lean, bony woman who was the consort of Cyrus Allen held an oil handlamp as they passed on to a front room with a blotched Empire mirror over a black marble hearthplace, old, blistered and blackened portraits on the walls, furnished with chairs whose brocade was mildewed and frayed, chairs by Heppelwhite, a loveseat, a spinet, an inlaid sideboard by Sheraton upon which stood a tarnished empty candelabrum.

“Put down the lamp, woman,” said Silbi imperatively. “Bring another, with your husband. Have him fetch kindling and logs and light a fire. It should have been laid. It is colder than the soul of Lucifer. Begone!”

II

There was a dramatic and tragic air about him, an aura of force, the hint of a dynamic will never at rest within; that made his somewhat stilted phrases not unfitting as he stood wrapped in his cloak with his yellow, evil eyes gleaming in the lamplight while his distorted shadow fell upon the paneled wall like the shadow of a swooping bird of prey, hunting carrion.

There was a touch of madness in his lambent orbs that stared the woman down as she looked at him with a certain latent rebellion that dissolved like ice at the gate of hell.

He chuckled hideously as she turned away, in a low but frightful cackle of.malice and satisfaction. Then he turned impatiently to the empty hearth, chafing his hands. For all the vigor that seemed to seethe within him, his face was pinched, and carved with suffering, and the hands he chafed were cold. There was a ring upon one long, clawlike finger, a ring of gold with a deeply incised design of a demi-griffin, its eagle wings outspread, with tufted beak and pointed ears, its lion’s tail showing above the sheer line of the coup.

There came a shriek from the woman in the dark hall and Silbi laughed noiselessly with intense enjoyment, his red tongue tip showing between his teeth. He knew the cause.

The next instant a strange shape came into the room, a creature with a microcephalous head, no bigger than an infant’s, set neckless upon the shoulders of a blacksmith. The body ended at the hips, it swung between two enormous arms that raised the trunk clear from the floor with hands set knuckles down. Silbi’s grotesque fancy had dressed this unfinished being in a sort of turtle-necked sweater with long hairs woven into it like those of an Angora goat. There could not be much intelligence in that contracted cranium, but the eyes showed delight and obedience.

The freak was mute, but it babbled inarticulately as it came noiselessly to the side of its Master, the man known to a horror-stricken world as the Griffin, the monster once caged but kept alive by the law of the land for the criminally insane. Now he was free again, launched again upon his fanatical crusade against those whom he envied, or fancied had done him wrong; always the choicest citizens.

The Griffin patted the monstrosity as if it had been a dog. He called it by its monosyllabic name and the creature lip read the title and fawned with hands that could crush a potato to pulp, stroking those of Silbi, the Griffin.

AL — that was its name, the Griffin’s title for the misbegotten object he had bought from a traveling show. AL — one of the gruesome group of demons in Persian mythology that sit in sandy places meditating impure designs.

This AL was peaceful enough now, but it was not hard to imagine it surcharged with malevolence, handicapped but horrible. It could travel from beams or trees with the effortless ease of a chimpanzee, it could have wrestled on even terms with an orang-outang with those long, sinewy arms where the sheathed muscles scarcely showed more than the constricting muscles of a boa. It could walk and even run on its arms as well as an ordinary man could travel on his legs.

The Griffin motioned it to a corner where it stood squat in the shadow with eyes still twinkling from the fright it had given the woman.

There was light outside the room again. Cyrus Allen and his wife both carried lamps. Allen had kindling wood and paper. He fixed them in the grate and went away to bring back a double armful of logs. The flames gathered strength and soon the fire was roaring up the chimney, sending dancing shadows about the room with shafts of light as the wood snapped and distributed its heat. The Griffin warmed his hands, then stood with his back to the blaze, arms folded.

“Well, Allen,” he said, “have you completed the device? Are you ready to demonstrate it to me, as I asked? You got all the apparatus you asked for, I believe?”

“I got the tools and the machinery,” said Allen slowly. “They came at night, like you said they would, like the other things came. Mine is set up in the vault. They took the stuff in through the passage back of the paneling in the dining room. The other stuff’s been set up in the cellars. I ain’t inspected none of it. It ain’t in my line. The men are living here, keeping upstairs, using the back way. My wife’s fed ’em, but she’s through. It’s too much work for her. I don’t aim to stand having that freak swinging around, spying, noiseless. It scares my wife, coming on it unexpected, like I did once, in the vault. It ain’t human. Also the work’s getting too hard for her.”

“Hard labor, eh?” asked the Griffin. His tone was almost jovial, but his eyes were the eyes of Satan, the eyes of an old he-goat in the dark. “You’d like to avoid hard labor — for her, or yourself, I suppose,” he added.

“I’m not afraid of work,” said the man, “but I ain’t got that contraption ready for you. I don’t aim to have it ready, not unless I know what you’re going to use it for. It don’t figure legitimate to me. I could fix it, easy, but I won’t,” he went on, with growing firmness. “We’re quitting, the two of us, right now. Give us what’s coming to us and we’ll leave tomorrow morning. This place ain’t right. We just waited for you to come...”

Cyrus Allen had worked himself into indignation, but now he faltered under the baleful look of the Griffin’s sardonic expression.

“You want what’s coming to you?” asked the Griffin. “I wonder? Let me see, Allen, when you and your wife came to see me in town, at my studio, you said she was an excellent housekeeper and that you were an expert electrician. If I remember right, you told me of certain inventions you had made and that should have brought you money, if the capitalists had not robbed you. There was another one you were eager to complete. You said you preferred a quiet place, for yourself and your wife. A quiet place like this—”

“It’s too quiet,” broke in Allen passionately. “It ain’t right or natural, the way things are run. You didn’t say my wife should work her fingers to the bone for a lot of cranks, half of ’em foreigners—”

“Well, well,” the Griffin said soothingly. “You may quit if you want to, only, I want you to remember that I showed you the crystal globe, the Orb of Truth, with its swirling fires. You remember that, Allen?”

“I remember looking into it. It gave me a headache.”

“It gave me the creeps,” his wife spoke up, and then the Griffin’s diabolical laughter checked them to silence. He laughed like a demon who watches some tortured soul racing down a corridor in Hades that will end in a blazing pitfail; his eyes were like the eyes of a snake watching the fluttering of a fascinated and already helpless bird.

“The Orb of Truth brought out your hidden thoughts, your memories and your fears,” the Griffin said at last. “You told me everything. You signed a paper, which was duly witnessed. Let me read it to you.”

They listened with whitening faces, with terror growing in their eyes. The woman shook like an autumn leaf in a cold wind. The man broke the spell with a screaming oath.

“Damn you for a fiend!” he cried. “I’ll get rid of that and you, too!”

The Griffin did not move, but AL came in three great hitches, and reaching upwards, gripped the man’s arms at the elbows so fiercely that he howled with anguish, unable to shake off the legless creature whose fingers clamped down on his nerves and paralyzed his efforts.

“Fool!” said the Griffin. “This is a copy. And if anything should happen, at any time, that would disappoint me in you, any act of disobedience, the signed and witnessed confession would be released, automatically. That you were hypnotized into telling the truth does not alter the facts that can and will be eagerly substantiated. In the State where you committed the crime, kidnaping now brings life imprisonment. If you were able to clear yourself of the question as to whether you killed the child, you could not avoid that. Hard labor for both of you, for life!”

He gestured to AL, who released Allen. The New Englander stood stricken with despair that was reflected on his wife’s wan face.

“I’ll fix that contraption for you tonight,” he said humbly.

“I thought you would,” said the Griffin. “See that it is successful.”

III

Gordon Manning was the last client that afternoon at the downtown gymnasium where business men tried to keep themselves physically fit and offset the depression by virility. There was no partner available for handball but the professional. That suited Manning well enough and he threw himself into the game with an ardor and finesse that left his opponent panting, chagrined, and frankly admiring.

Manning went into the shower and let the needle sprays run icy cold. He had played hard not merely to win, but to help him forget the problem of the Griffin, to prevent it becoming an obsession that would rob him of his best judgment by incessantly suggesting he was no match for the monster, that the handicaps were too severe. The handball game had temporarily sidetracked even the workings of his subconscious mind as he set every energy to the task in hand.

But the poisonous leaven was there. The task had to be taken up again, helpless as it seemed. He was the only man who had ever defeated the Griffin, who had ultimately sent him to the asylum for the criminally insane at Dannemora. Now it was all to do over again. The Griffin had scored. The people looked to Manning to rid them of the menace.

He was well equipped for it, late officer in the Army Intelligence, scientist, world traveler, soldier and adventurer. He had been called in when the police had failed, given special commissions by the New York Police Commissioner and the Governor of the State; commissions still in effect. The Griffin, with his organization, his own intuition spurred by insanity that amounted to evil genius, had written satirically congratulating himself upon obtaining a worthy opponent. He had mailed the letter with its heavy gray paper, its purple ink and scarlet seal, upon the same day Manning had secretly accepted the commission. Not even the press had known — under restriction of publication — of his undercover appointment; but the Griffin had discovered it.

The Griffin professed to call it a game. He condescended to name his victim, to state a twenty-four-hour limit to the time of mysterious murder.

But he had inevitably planned his moves, made all his preparations, studying the problem intricately during the weeks between killings, when he was silent. A silence that was like the steady drip of water upon Manning, waiting, waiting, for the inevitable boasting announcement of a crime so devilishly planned that no protection availed against the madman’s craft.

That first capture had been largely owing to Manning’s blocking of one of his diabolical murders. Failure had so inflamed the Griffin that rage had made him almost futile, careless of consequences in his wild desire, to restore his fallen ego. Manning believed that the bringing about of another failure was the best, chance once more to secure this fiend in human shape.

The man was a devil loosed on earth. He had killed a score of valuable men who could hardly be replaced. He meant to keep on killing. He juggled with astrology and divination, doubtless believing himself an appointed destroyer.

Once, since the Griffin’s escape, Manning had foiled him, saved his intended victim, not so much by discovery of the devilish device employed as by strict vigilance and alertness at a crucial moment.

Then Manning had seen him, had gripped the cloak he wore, only to lose him in a surging crowd where the Griffin’s minions took advantage of the confusion.

Soon the Griffin would strike again, when he was ready, the victim selected, studied, all moves considered.

Manning, brown, lean, dressed, nodded to the old trainer who ran the gymnasium, and stepped outside, swinging his favorite weapon, a cane made from a steel tapering rod on which were shrunk scores of rings of leather. It was as efficient as a sword in his skillful hands. He asked nothing better than a chance at the Griffin, cane against gun or other weapon. His morale was not shaken, but he had a hunch, certain vibrations that tuned-in to evil emanations, that told him it was not long before he would be hearing from the arch-enemy, the man who hated all other men.

Ever since the last attack, the police force, public and private, had been trying to get clews concerning the Griffin’s whereabouts or those of his agents. His former elaborate organization had been shattered, but he still had great resources and he was rebuilding his force. All clews had failed. There had been no real clews. The score stood two to one, since his escape, in the Griffin’s favor. And now...

Manning’s powerful roadster had been standing at the curb. He stood with his hand on the doorturn, looking at the button to his siren at the hub of his steering wheel. On the black circle a scarlet oval showed red as blood, sinister as blood. An affiche of thick paper embossed with the signet of the Griffin!

Still another scarlet symbol was placed on the flap of the side pocket of the car, indicating certainly, to Manning, that he would find a letter tucked inside. It was infinitely galling for him to recognize the probability that either the Griffin or one of his agents, perhaps the very man who had found the chance to affix the seals and place the message, was watching him from some nearby point of vantage to make sure he received the letter. He denied them that satisfaction, got in, and drove to Pelham.

Not until he was in his own garage did he take out the envelope, again with the signet of the Griffin, sealed in wax, on the heavy handmade gray paper. The address was in the too familiar bold hand that, to a handwriting expert, revealed eccentricity of mind and also force of character and purpose.

Manning’s face was grim as he broke the seal in his library, after deliberately filling and lighting his pet briar and waiting until his Japanese butler brought him a highball.

Manning:

(There was no signature but only a delicate pen drawing of the demi-griffin, couped.)

Manning knew of Evans Cooke. He was himself an amateur athlete of high standing with one record which, while not included in ordinary programs, was spectacular and interesting — the underwater long dive, “fetching.” Cooke had inherited money and large interests on leaving college and had shown good capacity in handling his business.

He was always willing to give funds to true athletic promotion, however small and humble might be the attempt, however provincial. To greater projects he was equally liberal, once assured of their sincerity. He endowed gymnasiums, donated swimming pools, paid for running tracks and basketball and tennis courts, and bestowed numerous trophies every week of his existence.

It was this man the Griffin proposed so lightly to destroy, and Manning knew well that the monster considered his plans perfect before he announced his fell intention.

Manning had been given the date — seven days distant — but only in mockery. It was as if the Griffin, in this “game” of his that he likened to chess, had granted a lesser player a bishop or a castle. The main advantage still lay with the Griffin.

As for Manning’s moves, they were clear enough — to enlist the police in providing protection, to himself mount guard over Evans Cooke, whether Cooke was willing or not; to exhaust every precaution and to be alert to discover the diabolical preparations, to prevent the kill. The Griffin had suggested he might himself be present. That must not be overlooked. He was mad and therefore he might make a false move out of sheer grandiose dementia.

Manning put in a call for the Police Commissioner. He was sure of full cooperation there.

“There’s a dinner at the New York Athletic Club tomorrow night,” said the Commissioner. “Given to some of our Olympic winners. Cooke will be there. He’ll speak, distribute special awards. I shall be there. You’re a member, aren’t you? Good. Then we can talk with him. He’s not going to be easy to handle.”

IV

Cooke was not easy. He did not pooh-pooh the danger. No man could do that against the Griffin’s scarlet record; but Cooke declined to take special means to protect himself.

“Look at this last chap the Griffin killed,” he said. “Shut himself up with you in vaults, Manning, wouldn’t eat or drink. And he died. If my time has come I can’t stop it. I suppose I’m a bit of a fatalist. They say the Griffin is also. He reads the stars and uncovers fates. He may have uncovered mine. You chaps can take all the precautions you want to, so long as you don’t interfere with the fête I’ve arranged.

“I’m opening my new pool at my country place. No sports program except that a few record holders have kindly promised to christen the pool with the spray from their dives and sprints. It’s built just the length of my own record underwater dive and I’m going to see if I’m still equal to it.”

He looked it, Manning fancied; a man in his prime at something over forty, deep-chested, powerful. A fine specimen, a model for the type he hoped to develop.

“That’s one fine pool,” he went on enthusiastically. “I’m trying out, demonstrating rather, the new method of purifying swimming pools with ultraviolet rays instead of using chlorine to sting the eyes out of you. It works wonderfully. And I’m jing-ding-damned,” he added, half humorously but evidently in dead earnest, “if I’m going to let the Griffin put off that event. The invitations have been sent out. It’s a private affair so I haven’t announced it to the press. They’ll probably scent it and be on the job, however. Now, I suppose, I’ll have to add you and the Commissioner to the guest list?”

“We’ll both be there,” said Manning grimly. “Invited or not. What’s more, Cooke, I want a list of your guests. I want to know very precisely who will be present, as guests or employees. I don’t propose to annoy any of them at all unnecessarily. We’ll check ninety-five per cent out inside of twenty-four hours. But we’ve got to know; and I want to go to your place tomorrow and look things over. I’ll drive there, may be there continually.”

Evans Cooke looked at Manning more attentively. There was a manner about the crime investigator that was as evident and compelling as a flow of magnetic current. His eyes were cold with purpose.

“You’re welcome, of course,” said Cooke. “I wish it was only as a guest, Manning. I should like to know you better. Like to have you interested in my movement. You’re the sort of chap could stir up enthusiasm.”

“I’m interested right now in you,” said Manning. “Take this threat seriously, Cooke. It’s more than a threat. It’s mighty likely to become a certainty.”

Evans Cooke looked into Manning’s eyes and there was laughter in his own. Not merriment, not derision, but the gay humor of a man who is unafraid. Manning gripped his outstretched hand with genuine liking. A man of this caliber was well worth preserving. Cooke made a gallant gesture.

“Te morituri salutamus,” he quoted, and turned to greet some of the guests of the evening.

“What was that he just said?” asked the Commissioner who had come up from the ranks and lacked a classical education.

“It was a slogan of the Roman arena,” Manning told him. “The gladiators stood in front of the imperial box and chanted it to Caesar or Nero or whoever happened to be imperator. ‘Hail!’ they said. ‘We who are about to die, salute thee!’ ”

“Ludonia,” Evans Cooke had named his place. It was after the Latin verb indicating “sporting pastime.” The place was on the level land of Long Island. The house itself was well designed but not unusual. There was a separate sports building with as complete an equipment, lacking the amphitheater, as Madison Garden. There was a quarter of a mile track encircling a space for field sports. The tennis courts were perfection.

Cooke practiced what he preached to the extent of his own capacity, and his guests were frequently amateurs and sometimes professionals of the top rank. The fête on the nineteenth was, however, largely a social affair. The new tank had been completed and was to be the last word in swimming-pools.

Manning surveyed it approvingly. It must have cost plenty of money, he imagined, looking at the tiled interior, now empty, slanting from eight feet to three. The tiles had been specially designed. Fresh water was emitted through a bronze dolphin’s mouth, made exit through an overflow shaped like a giant conch shell. The tiles were specially designed to represent fishes in action, luxuriant growths of weed. The globes that illuminated the tank of a night, beneath the water line, were concealed behind shades of actual nautilus shell. The ultra-ray lamps that would automatically keep the water pure were not yet installed. Manning idly watched the man in charge of the work and passed on to his minute survey of the grounds. They were fenced and could be efficiently guarded.

The Police Commissioner was working on the list of guests. None seemed even to suggest suspicion, but the Griffin was wealthy. Aside from the society end there would be athletes, male and female. The game was none too lucrative professionally, expensive from a purely amateur standpoint. The Griffin had unlimited funds. He had bought his way out of Dannemora. He might buy an assistant murderer. There would be plenty of men in plainclothes to look out for everyone who might be doubted. The employees were checked. Evans Cooke vouched for them.

During the late night of the eighteenth the trained, picked men of the Police Commissioner came quietly to Ludonia to take up their vigil. At midnight the place was dark. Evans Cooke believed in moderation, his entertainments were never carousals. The sound body needed sleep and he set the example and not merely expected his guests to follow it, but had all lights switched off at twelve. The estate, with neighboring ones and the village, was served by a subsidiary power line from high tension wires of the main power plant, reduced through a transformer.

Manning had a battery lamp. He had also a powerful electric torch. He had been there, day and night, for a week, and he was convinced that he had built up a good defense.

Now the zero period had commenced, he had little fear that the Griffin, for all his deviltry, could pass the cordon established about the grounds and the house. Inside, Cooke slept in the room next to Manning’s. Close by there were vigilant protectors, eager and alert.

The Griffin was certainly not within the grounds. He would strike later, devise some means of delivering the blow in the open. It would fall like a bolt from the blue, it would be spectacular.

More than once the Griffin had boasted to Manning that, in order successfully to murder a man, one had only to study his habits to find the weak spot.

Manning had bestowed a week’s extensive research upon the habits of Cooke, feeling sure the Griffin had done the same.

Now, prepared for twenty-four hours of tireless vigil, he went over his notes, his deductions, instructions he had issued and was yet to issue, working like a field marshal on the eve of a decisive battle by the light of his battery lamp.

The Police Commissioner would arrive in the morning. The guests would begin to appear shortly before noon. An elaborate luncheon was to be served and the waiters would be chosen members of both civic and private detective forces.

He went over once more the roster of the guests. Their records were flawless. Yet Manning believed that someone would be on the spot who was prepared to carry out the Griffin’s diabolical plot.

At two in the morning he made his grand rounds. The one exception to Cooke’s ukase of “lights out” was by the pool, where they were testing the globes that, underwater, lighted the pool after dark with colors that could be combined, changed into varying effects. The switches were in a small cement building, an addition to the dressing pavilion, where also the valves for the intake and outflow of the pool were controlled.

At the pool the program of the day would center. Three girl champions, two of them Olympic winners, with two male stars, would display their speed and grace. Cooke himself would try to repeat his record. Manning believed he could, having seen him try it the day before, marveling at his host’s prowess.

V

The pool was empty now and a corps of men was busy under the brisk direction of a gaunt New Englander who had undertaken the contract and was, Cooke said, a genius in the rough. He lacked education so far as books went, but Cooke proclaimed him another of those talented products of the northeastern seaboard who begin as tinkers and wind up as Edisons or Fords.

Sentinels had challenged, and then saluted Manning in his inspection. It was inevitable that these workmen must know that special precautions were being taken for some purpose. But the master electrician seemed concentrated on his job and its success, and on that alone.

He answered Manning curtly but not rudely and showed him how the work had been planned and carried out both for the illumination and the purification violet rays. Manning saw the purple rays flash on and off. He noted the inlets and outlets for the current, inspected the switchboard. Much of the work was completed, underground. Manning was not a practical electrician, but he knew the general theory and he could see nothing wrong. Yet he suspected that tank; he dreaded the moment of Cooke’s underwater dive.

Still, it seemed as if the barricade was invincible. He could find no flaw in it as he returned to the house and sat on the terrace beneath Cooke’s window, smoking pipe after pipe until the dawn came.

The water flowed into the pool. Final tests were made, the lights were shut off. The workmen left, checked out at the gate, the contractor remaining to see his work approved, collect his money.

“I wish,” Manning told himself, “that Cooke hadn’t made that gesture and used that quotation.”

He meant the “te morituri salutamus,” the “I, who am about to die, salute thee,” phrase that Manning had explained to the Commissioner.

Half a dozen times, as he tapped out his briar, refilled it and sent the aromatic smoke into the still air, Manning deplored that little speech. “Confound him,” Manning muttered. “I wish that had not come into his head.”

The sun rose, the day wore on without sign of trouble. Vigilance was maintained. The forenoon passed, the guests arrived and were entertained, unconscious of the keen-eyed sleuths who served them deftly but watched everything, waiting for any sign of the unusual.

Manning sauntered about, introduced by Cooke as amateur handball champion. The strain was terrific, but Cooke appeared serene.

The attempt at tragedy, Manning told himself, would happen before sunset. At three in the afternoon, after the elaborate luncheon and some speechmaking, the guests assembled about the pool. Manning kept close to his host, a service gun holstered under one shoulder, his leather-covered steel cane in his hand.

Now, with a sudden quickening of inner alarm, he felt that the supreme moment of the Griffin’s would-be fatal move upon this animated chessboard was imminent. But there was no sign of it. There was no unaccredited person upon the estate. The guards were all upon the qui vive. The waiters, relieved of their pseudo duties, added to the ranks of the protectors. Manning saw the Commissioner himself, vigilant, experienced. The only outside employee, if the man could be so styled, was the electrician who had installed the lighting.

A shadow drifted over the sparkling pool as the first of the guest exhibitors came from the dressing rooms and started to climb to a diving platform. Manning looked up and saw an autogyro hovering overhead. He remembered the Griffin’s hint that he might be present. But there were other planes close by. They had passed in circling patrol ever since sunrise. Two of them came racing up now. Police planes, armed with quickfirers, far speedier than an autogyro, if that turned out to be anything but the machine of a casual spectator out for a flight and attracted by the crowd. Someone was looking out of the gyro’s cockpit. Manning caught the gleam of binoculars. If they were merely looking on, they had a commanding position.

The body of the girl Olympic champion leaped, poised in the air with exquisite grace, making a perfect swan dive as the spectators applauded heartily. The others followed.

Cooke had gone to the dressing pavilion. Manning watched for his appearance, with his pulse gone up, his blood tingling, his tension strained to the limit. He could not foretell what would happen, but he knew it was imminent. Yet he was sure there was nothing connected with the pool, with the lighting, that was out of the ordinary, that was harmful.

He looked about him and caught the eye of the Commissioner, grimly watchful. He did not notice the electrician in the crowd about the pool. After all, the man was a mechanician, not a guest. He glanced up and saw the autogyro still hovering. The two police planes were close by.

Cooke appeared and the applause heightened as he took his stance. In his diving suit he was a really magnificent figure as he acknowledged the greeting with a smile and a gesture that brought the Latin phrase flashing again into Manning’s mind.

“I who am about to die...”

Manning half started forward to stop the dive, but he was too late. Cooke crouched, his arms back, then forward, as he lanced in a flat trajectory into the pool. His body glided beneath the surface, his head came close to it but did not break the water.

He was going to make it, to equal his record, and nothing had happened. The onlookers stood ready to cheer him, Manning stood staring, waiting.

Cooke’s hands grasped the rail that ran all about the pool. He stood up in the shallow water and moved to the steps, coming out of the pool unscathed, smiling and bowing to his applauding guests. Manning almost gasped with relief. Still he could hardly believe that Cooke had passed the ordeal Manning had believed the pool somehow constituted, though he had not been able to detect anything amiss. Cooke pressed through the crowd, walking erect in a little triumphant progress to the dressing pavilion. Manning followed him. He was not going to let Cooke out of his sight until midnight.

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.