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

been included in the man’s record. Now he realized the Griffin knew all. His eyes gleamed with a long smoldering hate, fanned to fire by the wind of fury.
    “I know it,” he snarled. “The canting hypocrite!”
    Again the Griffin chuckled malignantly.
    “Good,” he said. “If I give you a chance to serve me, and to even a score with this man, will you obey with eagerness?”
    “Give me the chance!”
    “The chance is yours if you prove clever enough to pass the test,” the Griffin told him. “Revenge is sweet. Is it not, 17745?”
    The man snarled again.
    “He sent me there, he branded me with that number,” he cried. “He made a caged beast out of me and called it duty. I’ll measure up. If I could put him where he placed me I’d give the rest of my life to do it.”
    “Your wish may be accomplished,” said the Griffin and there was a mocking ring to his tones that the other missed. “Your instructions will commence to-morrow. Meantime you will be well served though your quarters may prove confining and, perhaps, a trifle reminiscent of your recent habitation. But at least the food will be better. There will be liquor and something else I fancy you crave more. Though that is a habit you must keep in hand for the present.”
    “You’re going to give me some snow?” asked the other, half incredulously.
    “A certain prescription. Be careful of it. It will not be diluted like the drug the trusties slipped you in Ossining. That is all.”
    Again the tapestry moved, the door slid aside. At a gesture from the Griffin, Al stalked grotesquely forward to lead the way for the bewildered Burns. Light glowed blue in a curving corridor. The steel door closed again. Alone, the Griffin reached for the silver mouthpiece of a Turkish hubble-bubble. He lit the fragrant weed in the bowl, tinctured with hashish. The air bubbled in the rose-scented water and wreaths of smoke made wispy patterns.
    Manning admired Harvey Allison first, then liked the man for his sheer humanity. He was both an advanced intellectual and a gentleman of the utmost courtesy.
    He was a rare combination. If his head was occasionally in the clouds his feet were firmly planted on the earth. He was primarily a gentleman and a scholar, far from the ordinary conception of what such an ultramodern scientist might be. He was perhaps the foremost man of the age, since he did not stay at theories, but proved and made them practical and of value to his fellowman and Allison was altogether a charming person to meet.
    He had the skull of the born scholar with eyes far apart and seeking, a tolerant mouth; the nose of the adventurer—whether of uncharted seas or unknown cosmic realms.
    He was the opposite of the Griffin. Here, Manning reflected, was the true genius, a power for good, while the Griffin was like an evil jinni bent only upon malice.
    Allison, if his claims were well founded, and Manning did not doubt them, was possessed of a force that was stupendous, that could not be comprehended. Men thought of it in terms of war, of destruction and it was true that, so used, it would prove irresistible. But Allison looked beyond that. If he could secure world peace, that was but a step in the progress he imagined. That atomic power of his could provide light, heat, energy that would release all men from the slavery of producing necessities and set them truly free for higher efforts. With it he could defeat climate, eliminate present fuels, outleap electricity, harness cosmic forces to the chariot of ascending evolution.
    That, he owned, was still his dream, but it was more than a vision. He had isolated the idea and made it concrete. In his brain there glowed a divine inspiration.
    Something of this, beyond public knowledge, Manning knew through his associations with the secret archives of the Government. Now that he had met the man he believed in him. Allison had the brow of a prophet, the inner glow of one set apart, appointed.
    His workshop was a penthouse,