In the Grip of the Griffin: The Complete Battles of Gordon Manning & The Griffin, Volume 3 Read Free

of decided intelligence who might have gone as far along the upward path as he seemed to have descended on a lower. He glowered at the Griffin.
    “What’s the idea of the Chamber of Horrors and this freak out of a sideshow?” he demanded. “I’ve seen bones before—and legless wonders.”
    He was belligerent, but as he glanced about the chamber and again at the masked figure of the Griffin, he appeared less confident, impressed against his will by the atmosphere of the place.
    “What’s the idea of the snatch?” he went on. “I think I’m met by pals outside the College and then I get a rod shoved into my ribs and I get a ride to this dump. What’s the big idea?”
    “Nothing but what may turn out to your advantage,” said the Griffin in his deep voice. “Sit down, Burns. That was, I believe, your latest alias. Make yourself comfortable. You might glance over this dossier.”
    Half against his will, the man took the paper offered, sat in the comfortable appearing chair that was indicated.
    “I could stand a drink, and something to smoke,” he grunted.
    “Presently,” said the Griffin. “Read that first.”
    The man looked indifferently at the document, then intently, last of all with a growing fear. Here were set down the intimate details of his life for the last twenty years; things that he believed the police did not know, intimate matters he had been sure no man surmised.
    “How the devil did you get this dope?” he muttered.
    “My friend, I am the devil,” said the Griffin complacently. “It pays to serve the devil, though you may not have found it so hitherto. You may have heard of me, even in Ossining. I am the Griffin.”
    Burns, alias many other names, late 17745 of Sing Sing, with other numbers to his name that penitentiaries had given him, twitched a little. His nerves were shaken. He had heard of the Griffin. In the underground gossip of Ossining the Griffin had loomed large as a master-criminal, a monster of deviltry and cunning. His escape from Dannemora had set him on a pinnacle for those still behind gray walls of stone and bars of steel.
    The Griffin beckoned and the two men back of the still open door advanced. They also wore masks, of gray linen, tinted to suggest skulls. It was melodramatic, but in this place they did not seem out of keeping.
    “You have his finger-prints?” asked the Griffin. He received the record, studied them, compared them with others and chuckled. He waved the two men back. The door slid to, the tapestry fell.
    The man grew suddenly belligerent, with a burst of anger.
    “You trying to frame me?” he cried.
    The Griffin grinned and his mask wrinkled.
    “You are already framed,” he answered.
    Burns started from his chair. Al’s knife rose halfway from its sheath as he gazed for permission from his master to complete the cast. But there came a yelp of anguish from Burns. His eyes bulged from his head, his face twisted in anguish, his hands were clamped about the arms of the chair as an electric current held him there, galvanized, helpless, suffering. The current died and the man sank panting into the deceptive cushions.
    “Just a foretaste, my friend, of what may be your ultimate end,” said the Griffin. “If the authorities knew all that paper held it would not be long before you would be in the autopsy room back of the Execution Chamber, after you had squatted in the hot seat. I have the power to send you there, or to keep you free of it, to condemn you for your past sins or reward you for services rendered—to me. Look at this disk of bronze— look at it!” —he commanded compellingly—“and tell me if you know this name.”
    Burns scowled villainously. He was missing something. Back in the dark, unused recesses of his mind he wondered vaguely if he had been mistaken for his brother—if he were being punished because his brother was on the police force.
    Letters appeared in flickering incandescence on the disk. They spelled a name that had not