Day of Doom: The Complete Battles of Gordon Manning & The Griffin, Volume 2 (16 page)

“It was at a dinner that the
tuan
gave. There were five there, three women and two men, beside the
tuan.
That night he made a salmi….”

“Go on,” said Manning. The more details Bino remembered, the better. It looked like a definite clew. It might not go far but it would serve, it might be a bit of a jigsaw puzzle that he could solve, putting it together and suddenly sensing the whole in a flash of inspiration, as he had suddenly lit upon the solution to wartime secret ciphers, after weeks of patient work. “Did you show anyone the sky-stone that night?”

“My
tuan
noticed it. It was the first time I had worn it. They all looked at it and I told them about Aguinaldo. They smiled. I did not miss it until I went to bed. It had been wrenched loose. It might have caught in a chair. I searched everywhere, but I could not find it. I feared it had fallen while I was cleaning up, fallen into the rubbish and gone into the incinerator. The
tuan
wished to give me another, but I explained that one may not bring back luck that way. I did not suspect any of the honorable guests of finding it, and keeping it.”

“Can you remember those guests ?”

“By sight, yes. By name, no. Perhaps one or two. One was bald, I think, but I am not sure.
Tuan,
I have not eaten, I have not slept. It is hard to think.”

“You try, Bino. Sleep first. Eat, perform your devotions. Rest. Remember I am your friend.
Salaam aleikum!”

He left the Tombs tingling inwardly. If Bino could remember…. A long, long way from proof, from conviction. But, like a hunting dog, Manning faintly winded the early scent. He was a thoroughbred; he would not turn aside for lesser game. If only the scent lasted!

Meantime, he borrowed the use of the Department’s fluoroscope and made an interesting discovery that set his eyes glowing with an inner fire. The quarry was not yet in sight, but he knew he had picked up the trail.

He drove home in his powerful roadster to his own house at Pelham Manor, and was greeted by his Japanese servants.

There was mail awaiting him. He reserved one envelope, addressed in unfamiliar writing, to the last. Ito, his butler, had brought him a highball, he was slippered, his pipe drew well and his dog was at his feet. Manning chuckled as he read. It was like old times—with the Griffin. He had told himself he needed a long vacation from the wear of that affair, but now the zest of the chase rose within him.

The epistle was written on a sheet of thick paper of the type known as vellum finish, without a watermark, easy to procure at any drugstore. The envelope was of the same material, mailed at the Grand Central Station post office during the morning rush hours marked 8:45. The ink seemed ordinary writing fluid. The writing was characteristic, distinct and scholarly. The letter had none of the Griffin’s arrogant showing of gray paper and purple ink, of scarlet seal and griffin’s head for signature. This was unsigned. Yet it was somewhat patterned on the Griffin’s methods.

Dear Manning:

It is an honor to have you assigned to the affair of the Bullet from the Blue, as the papers so euphoniously describe it. If it had not been for you, I doubt whether they would ever have known the bullet was a meteorite. You must make the most of it. I really had nothing against Hyde. He was a man of parts, though he was ridiculous in his efforts to bring cosmos out of chaos by mathematical calculus.

The sky-stone seemed an apt vehicle for the demise of a man who prided himself upon his knowledge of the Universe. He realizes his ignorance now. I could have used something else, but this fitted in and it is a hobby of mine to produce a crime at once original and perfect. It is the process, I enjoy, the resultant exultation, far more than the demolition of the individual. He is only the end to my means, if you will pardon the paraphrase.

I think you will find this case a little hard for even you, the demolisher of the Griffin, to solve. I am willing to pit my liberty, perhaps my life, against your ability and undoubted reputation.

It may interest you to know that I am working on another problem. These things suggest themselves. But I shall not, like the Griffin, give out warning. He is now in Dannemora because he was too generous.

Some day I may devise a perfect crime in which you, my dear Manning, will be the principal. I consider you a worthy subject.

For a few moments Manning considered the calligraphy. In one respect, the writer had divulged identity. He had called the meteorite a sky-stone. That was a phrase he must have heard at Hyde’s own house. A phrase general to Tagalogs, Moros, Bisayans, but not elsewhere outside the Philippines. A phrase Bino had used.

It was another spoormark on the trail. It seemed as if the killer
must
have been at the dinner when Bino lost his talisman.

Still a long way to go. A long, long way. But Manning began to see a dim horizon, a vague dawn. There was still dust in his eyes.

He opened a steel file and took out the “Lee and Abbey” chart for calligraphic tests. The writing of the unknown, but acknowledged killer, fell into Class Three.

It displayed skill. The small letters were apt to be disconnected, as in Greek script. The shadings were fairly heavy. There was some embellishment indicating vanity. The movement was forearm and showed vigor, speed, freedom and originality of purpose. The terminal strokes inclined downwards, and the general degree of slant was over eighty degrees. It was the writing of an educated man, a monomaniac and something of a sadist, undoubtedly; but a clever villain.

He tested it for finger-prints and found none. Most likely the writer had used collodioned fingers.

“You are clever, my friend,” thought Manning, as he ran his fingers through the rough hide of his dog, “but you are not so clever as the Griffin. You may be dangerous. I rather hope you are. But, with all your cleverness, you give me some ideas and a few definite clews. I rather think
you’ll
eat dirt instead of the commissioner, and there may be lime in it. It depends, a bit, on Bino’s memory.

IV

“The man,” said Manning to the Commissioner of Police, “is a monomaniac. His mania may be concentrated on the development of a perfect crime, but I would not be surprised if the core of it was envy. Jealousy of Hyde, for instance. The peculiarity of his type—a cultured one, mark you, very likely inbred and mentally perverted—is, that, having committed one perfect crime, or one he thinks is perfect, he will proceed to others.

“I have a literary friend who prowls New York, looking for situations that may stimulate his imagination for the mystery stories he develops. He gazes out of the windows of elevated trains, seeking combinations of buildings, of gardens, of ways of entry and escape that suggest what he emits, harmlessly, in a yarn. He studies unusual people. I have an idea it may be much the same with the man who killed Hyde. I don’t know now what his motive was, for certain, but I know he was not sane. He is like the jungle tiger who eventually kills human meat and becomes a man-eater. In the letter to me, he shows his quirk. Dislike of Hyde, ordinarily smothered by polite conventions and breedings, may have let loose his murderous idiosyncrasy. Once released, you cannot determine its limits. Aside from this crime, he is a menace to society. We’ll run him down.”

The commissioner regarded a list of five names that Manning had given him. The list of the people dining with Hyde on the night Bino had lost his sky-stone.

“It looks to me as if you are facing a stone wall,” he said. “These people are all responsible people. We’ll have to prove this thing. I don’t want to discount your record, but it looks to me as if Bino handed you something.”

“I think he did,” Manning agreed. “The East is East, and West is West, but
sometimes
the twain
do
meet, Commissioner. Christianity and Islam have points of similarity.”

“What has religion got to do with this case?” growled the commissioner.

“More than you’d think,” said Manning. “Mind letting me see what you’ve got on those five guests of Hyde’s?”

The commissioner shoved the report across the desk. He had not lost faith in Manning. He had come up from the ranks himself and he knew that he lacked education, but he felt he knew human nature. East or West. Those five names were all in the Social Register. Manning did not care for such things. The commissioner had to. There must be proof, overwhelming proof, to combat the assembled defense that would be made. Defense, backed by money and position, not only social but political. A stand the papers would be swift to take up as vital news. If he went into court he must be impregnable. Manning’s reputation was strong, but the commissioner had to show positive evidence.

He watched the crime specialist’s face and felt some relief at the grin he saw.

“Commissioner,” said Manning, “we won’t start reaping until we’re sure the wheat is ripe. So, hold your horses. Did you ever read the book by Rosamond Lehmann?”

“I don’t read many books,” said the commissioner. “Who is she, and what’s the book about?”

“It’s not so much the book, as the title,” said Manning. “The book is called ‘The Dusty Answer.’ I’ll explain that to you in a day or so.”

“You’ll be explaining it to a new commissioner if you don’t hurry. Election’s ten days from now. There may be a new Mayor and, if there is, there’ll be a new commissioner, particularly if this case is still unsolved.”

“The Mayor seems fairly well set, even for a third term,” said Manning. “And I’ll give you your dusty answer before Election Day. And you will get all the glory.”

“If you solve the case,” returned the commissioner, “you are welcome to the glory. All I want is not to get run out of my job.”

“All I want,” said Manning, “is a vacation. And I’m going to get it.”

The commissioner grunted in his non-committal fashion. He was not so incredulous as he appeared. He could see no positive solution to the case, but he held faith in Manning and he was cheered by the farewell grin Manning bestowed upon him as he left with the police report of the five names remembered by Bino as guests of Morton Hyde on the evening when Bino lost his sky-stone.

There was only one name Manning considered. The other four were coupled, married attachés of two big museums. Manning had met them all, more or less casually and he dismissed them from the case.

The fifth name and record he pondered very carefully.

Kuyper. John Kuyper, descendant of the original Jan Kuyper who was contemporary with Stuyvesant; a trader who had sold turnip seed to the Indians for gunpowder, both because it was profitable and safer than letting them have the genuine article. Jan had grown to be a merchant, a power in Manhattan, the family successfully hanging on to their holdings through all phases of politics and revolutionary wars. They had become wealthy aristocrats. They had invested wisely and secured their interests. They had been careful also about their breeding, as a result of which the Kuyper family had run somewhat to seed.

The present John had been stodgy in his student days. He had not achieved greatness in class or field or track. He was not a social favorite, except where newspapers flattered him in their social columns or mothers cultivated him for their daughter’s sake. He became a fraternity man by force rather than favor. Before he graduated he had inherited the Kuyper millions, was fat and already inclined to be bald. Lonely, no doubt, for all his position.

He had, it appeared, shown more interest in astronomy than anything else. There was a professor who felt that this vague trend toward science might be cultivated, that the Kuyper heir might endow an observatory that would outshine all others, bring fame to the university and opportunity to the professor.

It is hard to believe that an astronomer would stoop to earthly affairs and motives, but it was noticed that his daughter took a special interest in young Kuyper, that she assisted her father in certain observations, when Kuyper would act also as her aide in the hours spent after dark in the dim observatory while transits were observed and spectra noted.

The university got its new observatory. It was called by Kuyper’s name. It gave him some sort of scientific kudos that might have compensated for the sad fact that, once the endowment fund had passed over, Kuyper got, not the stratosphere of celestial bliss he had hoped from the lady, but what is known as “the air.”

He soured. He withdrew into himself and became somewhat of a misanthrope with a vast sense of his own unacknowledged importance. He mooned about at scientific meetings, contributed to the funds for celestial exploration. It was in such a manner that he met Morton Hyde. Kuyper might not supply ideas and theories, but he was a patron who could be depended upon for expenses.

Such a man, self-centered, inclined to be morose, might, Manning believed, have killed Hyde, have contrived the murder with considerable ingenuity and pride himself upon the achievement. The world might think him dull, but he would demonstrate that he was a genius. He could not proclaim it, but he could not resist writing to Manning. And Manning, if his theories evolved properly, was willing to give him credit for a devilish ingenuity.

But there had to be utter proof and Manning’s first attempt met with staggering and disheartening failure.

The old Kuyper home was on Staten Island, the estate diminished in acreage by the increased values of real estate which could not be overlooked. But there were still spacious grounds, trees and a garden behind high walls; it would have been a showplace if visitors were permitted. Kuyper had lived there in the summer, but this spring he had closed it up and stayed in town. He lived at his club. Manning had a decoy letter written there that suggested Kuyper’s coöperation in an expedition to a crater in Central Africa for the purpose of observing the transit of Venus. Kuyper would achieve certain honor as sponsor.