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

  The Crime Master: The Complete Battles of Gordon Manning & the Griffin, Volume 1

  by

  J. Allan Dunn

  with an introduction by

  Sai Shankar

  Altus Press • 2014

  Copyright Information

  © 2014 Altus Press

  Publication History:

  “The Crime Master” originally appeared in the November 30, 1929 issue of Detective Fiction Weekly magazine. Copyright 1929 by Popular Publications, Inc. Copyright renewed 1957 and assigned to Steeger Properties, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

  “The Crime Invisible” originally appeared in the December 14, 1929 issue of Detective Fiction Weekly magazine. Copyright 1929 by Popular Publications, Inc. Copyright renewed 1957 and assigned to Steeger Properties, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

  “Tuned Out” originally appeared in the February 15, 1930 issue of Detective Fiction Weekly magazine. Copyright 1930 by Popular Publications, Inc. Copyright renewed 1957 and assigned to Steeger Properties, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

  “The Unknown Hazard” originally appeared in the March 1, 1930 issue of Detective Fiction Weekly magazine. Copyright 1930 by Popular Publications, Inc. Copyright renewed 1957 and assigned to Steeger Properties, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

  “The Point of Death” originally appeared in the March 15, 1930 issue of Detective Fiction Weekly magazine. Copyright 1930 by Popular Publications, Inc. Copyright renewed 1957 and assigned to Steeger Properties, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

  “Globes of Jeopardy” originally appeared in the September 27, 1930 issue of Detective Fiction Weekly magazine. Copyright 1930 by Popular Publications, Inc. Copyright renewed 1957 and assigned to Steeger Properties, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

  “The Griffin Flies” originally appeared in the October 25, 1930 issue of Detective Fiction Weekly magazine. Copyright 1930 by Popular Publications, Inc. Copyright renewed 1957 and assigned to Steeger Properties, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

  “The Perfect Poison” originally appeared in the November 29, 1930 issue of Detective Fiction Weekly magazine. Copyright 1930 by Popular Publications, Inc. Copyright renewed 1958 and assigned to Steeger Properties, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

  “The Hour Appointed” originally appeared in the January 3, 1931 issue of Detective Fiction Weekly magazine. Copyright 1931 by Popular Publications, Inc. Copyright renewed 1958 and assigned to Steeger Properties, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

  “The Fate of Ezra Farnett” originally appeared in the March 14, 1931 issue of Detective Fiction Weekly magazine. Copyright 1931 by Popular Publications, Inc. Copyright renewed 1958 and assigned to Steeger Properties, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

  “The Griffin’s Double Cross” originally appeared in the April 18, 1931 issue of Detective Fiction Weekly magazine. Copyright 1931 by Popular Publications, Inc. Copyright renewed 1958 and assigned to Steeger Properties, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Designed by Matthew Moring/Altus Press

  Special Thanks to Gordon Dymowski, Joel Frieman, Monte Herridge, and Everard P. Digges LaTouche, and Ray Riethmeier

  Introduction by Sai Shankar

  JOSEPH ALLAN ELPHINSTONE DUNN was born on 21 January 1872 in London into a wealthy Irish family. The son of Joseph H. Dunn and Elizabeth Elphinstone (Miall) Dunn, he was educated at Winchester Public School and went to New College, Oxford, where he got his Bachelor of Arts degree in 1893. Subsequently, he also received a degree of Bachelor of Science. He was a tall (6'1") and handsome man.

  Interested in travel, adventure and writing, Dunn became a journalist, which allowed him to journey around the world. He covered the Spanish-American war of 1898 in the Caribbean and the Philippines, and the Russo-Japanese war of 1904. He was a friend of Jack London, and during the Russo-Japanese war they witnessed the battle of Port Arthur and nearly got shot.

  He traveled the China Sea, Hawaii and the South Pacific, and was one of the first white explorers in New Guinea, claiming to have faced death from hostile tribes there:

  White man’s magic saved the day. I traced the tribal totem–a tortoise–on my arm with a stick of soap. Then I set fire to jungle bark fibers with my burning-glass, rubbed the ashes over my arm, and lo, there was the turtle’s outline, showing my kinship with the tribe. Soon I was pressing on, my most thrilling adventure safely behind….

  Ending up in Hawaii, he became the associate editor of Austin’s Hawaiian Weekly for a period. During this time, he married Grace K. Buchanan on December 15, 1900 in Honolulu. While in Honolulu, he inherited around £4,000 from his uncle (the equivalent of half a million dollars to-day). With this newfound freedom, he built his own yacht and sailed the seas, circumnavigating the world thrice. A description of him at the time from an actor friend of his who visited him:

  Dunn lives in a little house, on the outskirts of Honolulu, that was once occupied by the late Robert Louis Stevenson. This is not remarkable, because, according to the Hawaiian landlords, everything on the island was once the home of the famous Scotsman. Dunn has a big wicker chair on his veranda that he occupies most of the time. His writing materials, paint boxes, cigars, canvases and prompt books are piled around within easy reach. He wears, in the privacy of his home, a costume that is a combination of the native dress and certain portions of the Shakespearean wardrobe that he used while in Janet Waldorf’s company. He writes a bit, paints a bit, acts a bit and altogether enjoys himself mightily all the time.

  By 1904-05, he moved to San Francisco with his wife, and was a member of society there, staging and acting in plays with his society friends. He was the editor of Sunset Magazine from 1906-07, and advertising manager for the San Francisco railroad. He continued to be a close friend of both Jack and Charmian London during this time, staying at their home frequently.

  In January 1913, he was caught after having pawned stolen jewelry from his friends and hosts, though no one prosecuted him. His thefts included some pajamas from Jack London! He claimed that he committed these thefts because the magazines for which he wrote had delayed payments and he had run out of money.

  He divorced his first wife the same year, remarried in September 1913, to Gladys Courvoisier, and moved to Greenwich Village, New York. It was Gladys’s third marriage; both prior marriages had ended in divorce for cruelty. He started his writing career the same year, starting with a couple of articles in the Saturday Evening Post. His writing career took off, and he was on his way to producing a million words a year.

  He and Gladys had a son on March 13, 1916.

  On August 11, 1918, he and Gladys quarreled, and Gladys threatened to kill herself and the child. She rushed to her room, took out a gun and held it to her head. When Dunn called to her, she turned around and discharged the revolver, killing their son.

  During the trial, and later, Dunn stood by her side, and she was sentenced to a year in prison. They were separated by 1926 and Dunn was paying her $600 a month alimony.

  Dunn was a member of the American Expeditionary Forces in France during World War I, and was thrice decorated for his actions, reportedly attaining the ranks of major and staff officer.

  Dunn may have married for a third time, as there was a news report of his disappearance in 1927 and of his wife’s search for him. The trigger for the disappearance seems to have been a telegram Dunn received: “Book ordered st
op. Not received. Awaiting instruction.” It was signed “Given,” and without a return address. Dunn went away the same night, without waking his wife.

  He married one more time, on October 30, 1936, to Loyola Lee Sanford, who was his agent.

  Dunn was a director of the Explorers Club, member and vice-president of the Adventurers Club, member of the Circumnavigators Club and the Advertising Club. He published more than forty novels, and more than two thousand stories in all.

  J. Allan Dunn died on March 25, 1941.

  The Crime Master

  “One of Us Is Going to Win,” the Griffin Warned Investigator Manning. “That One Is—Myself!”

  THERE were no windows to the curious room, elliptically shaped, the high walls in one continuous curve with no visible sign of a door. Diffused and mellow light flowed in from unseen mysterious sources. There was ample ventilation. From somewhere, diminished, rather than faint from distance, music sounded, music orchestrated in the ultra-modern school that some call decadent. Music that stirred the physical emotions rather than exalted the mind or stimulated the spirit. Not the strident, strenuous phases of jazz, but insinuating melodies, rhythms that seemed to suggest exotic landscapes, the glidings of great, gorgeous snakes, the flight of rainbow-plumaged birds, the fall of crystal waters—lovers watched upon by lurking, creeping ape-men.

  The walls were tapestried in two shades of gold, dull and burnished, in a pattern that did not obtrude yet made itself manifest. The carpet, ankle deep, was of rare weave, matching the walls. There was a hint of incense, of burning amber. And a strange atmosphere of evil, an influence that abused beauty and harmony, twisted them to its own malignant purposes.

  Those walls back of the golden tapestries were of steel. The place was at once a sanctum and a stronghold. The ceiling curved in a shallow dome. On its background of dark blue, certain constellations were accurately inlaid in gold. Two signs of the zodiac, in conjunction, and their attendant stars.

  Here and there were divans, deep cushions on the floor. A high chest of black wood, with inlays of pearl and ivory, actually a safe of the most modern construction. A chair, carved, like a throne, back of a carved table. On the table a strip of ancient woven silk, once the back of a Manchu princess’s robe; a crystal globe, slotted at the top with openings for air, three-quarters filled with water into which streamed constantly a jet of compressed air. Emerald weeds waved and contorted goldfish swam solemnly through the subaqueous jungle.

  There was a disk of smooth copper-gilt suspended in a frame of ivory. On either side of this smaller replicas. A tablet of white porcelain, illuminated from beneath, on which a man was making notes and calculations with a stylus of agate tipped with lead.

  The whole place was bizarre. It might have been the abode of an astrologer, a mystic. The seated figure should have worn a pointed cap, a robe inscribed with cabalistic characters, a long beard.

  Instead, there was a clean-shaved man in modern dress. His face was the most arresting thing in the room. At the moment it was calm, cold, rigid, almost, as an ivory mask and nearly as colorless. But the eyes gleamed like jewels; hard, brilliant, the eyes of a fanatic or a madman whose brain, while erratic, still retained control. It was in the eyes that the malignant influence of the room seemed to concentrate, perhaps to emanate.

  The features were, in their way, beautiful, but they were stamped with a predatory cast. The lips were thin, cruel, the nose a finely chiseled beak, the whole face dominating. The ears well shaped, but the ears of a faun, pointing up to crisp hair, silver-gray that did not give so much the suggestion of age, but of virility that lacked pigment. The only lines were two scores that ran from nostrils to the ends of the mouth.

  This was the man who called himself the Crime Master. He might, as he looked, have been a fallen archangel, hurled from Heaven, intent upon revenge. He was an arch-enemy of society, of the world of finance, nursing injuries that, in his warped brain, had mounted until he was a foe to all established foundations of modern civilization.

  A gong sounded, with a light, sweet note. The music ceased. A voice thin but distinct came from the smaller disks, synchronized. He listened intently, a smile that lacked all kindness, deepening the brackets about his mouth.

  He spoke into the big disk. His voice was smooth, silken-smooth, but forceful, exultant, mocking. He gave swift instructions. Then, as the music once more crept in, he erased, with a moist felt, all that had been on the tablet of porcelain, now transferred to a memory of intense energy and reception; made another note—a date, and regarded it with the same smile. His long, thin fingers folded themselves about each other. Then, with a swift movement, subtle rather than sudden, he brought heavy paper from a drawer, dipped a quill pen into violet ink, held in a well of onyx whose lid was the head of a griffin, the mythical winged lion, and wrote quickly, still smiling; folding the letter with a chuckle that suggested the soft gurgle of an eddy on the Styx, or of the sacred river of Kublai Khan, running through caverns measureless to man, down to a sunless sea; addressed the envelope, sealed it.

  “So,” he said softly. “It appears we have a worthy opponent. The real game commences.”

  He pressed a silver button in the desk-top. From a deeper drawer he drew out a mask that seemed made of gold-leaf, pliant but distinctive, changing his features to the semblance of an Egyptian relief of the Hawk-God. Now he looked not unlike the griffin lid of the inkwell, the device that was on the scarlet seal that closed the letter.

  The gong sounded twice. With his foot he pressed on the heavy carpet and a section of the wall slid noiselessly aside. A man appeared, a valet, his sign of service the wasp-striped waistcoat he wore, a human automaton, expressionless.

  “See that this is mailed at the Grand Central post office by four this afternoon.”

  The Crime Master felt in the pocket of his coat, brought forth a tiny box of gold, damascened, enlivened with small, sparkling and exquisitely cut gems. In it was a green paste—hasheesh.

  Five minutes later he was at full length on a divan, the phantasies of the hempen extract mingling with the music that now played more and more faintly, lulling him to sleep and dreams. His features relaxed, but they did not lose that stamp of enmity.

  II

  THE wise old trainer, owner of Garrity’s Gymnasium, looked with professional interest and approval at Gordon Manning, coming out briskly from the needle shower after his daily handball game.

  “There you have a man who keeps himself fit,” said Garrity to a new and somewhat paunchy patron. “Always has kept fit, if I know anything, and there’s not much in the line of athletics he couldn’t get away with, if he put his mind to it. As it is, there’s worse boxers an’ wrestlers swaggerin’ round, thinkin’ they’re champs.”

  “He doesn’t look such a marvel to me,” said the other, watching Manning closely, a little enviously, as the latter came striding naked from the shower cabinets, lean and lithe. “You wouldn’t call him much on muscle.”

  “You wouldn’t? Next time you git a chance, you take a look at the limbs of them chimpanzees out to the Bronx Zoo. You won’t see much muscle on them. They’re skinny, those chimps, they look stringy, but they can take apart a man twice their weight an’ size.

  “It’s quality that counts. Know anything more muscular than a snake? One of them big boas? See any muscles bulgin’ on them? Manning is built the same way. His muscles are like first-class rubber bands. They’ve got resilience. His brain’s the same way. Watch him play handball and you’ll get what I mean. Coördination.”

  “What does he do? Anything?”

  “He’s some sort of a lawyer. I know he’s got offices down on Liberty Street. I know he was the youngest major in the A.E.F. where I was top sergeant. An’ I’m dead sure he don’t loaf. He couldn’t, not his sort, any more’n quicksilver’ll stay put.”

  The listener was impressed, almost against his will. There was something out of the ordinary about Manning, his poise, the carriage of his spare person, the lif
t of head and chin, a certain pride that was not offensive, a suggestion of proved efficiency. Perhaps the trainer had not exaggerated, after all.

  “Now you, sir,” said Garrity bluntly. “You’ve got a nice body, but you’ve abused it. You want to take it easy at first. I’ll start you off with the medicine ball. There’s a class of gents ready to start in a few minutes.”

  While the pudgy, somewhat puffy patron turned toward the gym, Manning dressed rapidly, left the place and walked the few blocks to his office, lithe as an Indian, though with a freer tread, swinging his cane. His face was thoughtful.

  That was a curious cane he carried, heavier than it appeared. It was made of rings of leather shrunk about a steel core whose end made the ferrule, while the head was capped with a plain gold band bearing the initials G.M. in modest script. A weapon, rather than a cane. The only weapon Manning carried, as a rule, no matter how dangerous his errand, but one that, in the hands of a skillful and powerful man, was formidable, deadly. And even Garrity did not know that Manning was an expert fencer.

  He came to his office building, tall though not one of the latest, sandwiched in between others on a strip of land that ran between two streets. There were four elevators, one of them an express, stopping first on the seventh floor, where Manning had his office suite. One car was temporarily out of order, as announced by the card on the grille. The starter gave Manning a military salute. Manning answered it in swift gesture of authority, now discarded yet still recognized by a few.

  The car shot up, stopped. The operator opened the door with a friendly grin. They didn’t know much about Manning’s affairs in the building, but any public servant gets to be a good judge of people he sees every day.

  On the outer door of Manning’s suite his name appeared above the two words that seemed to designate his profession.

  GORDON MANNING

  Advisory Attorney

  But there was only one man in New York, anywhere, besides himself, who knew Manning’s true vocation. So he believed. And hoped.