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

impossible,” said the inspector as another officer went to the telephone, a third knelt beside and between the dead men.
    “I’m not contradicting you,” Manning answered. “Get a set of Sergeant Dougherty’s finger-prints sent up from the official file. Get a print man here, too. Ask the Identification Bureau if they’ve got any other prints similar to Sergeant Dougherty’s. They should be not far from identical.”
    “I don’t know what has happened to Sergeant Dougherty,” Manning said to the police commissioner. “I hope he’ll show up, but I doubt it. The Griffin got him, inside of the last forty-eight hours, during the time I relieved him. He was going to see his girl, poor devil. As for this chap, you can see he’s the double of the sergeant. He fooled you, and it was easy for him to fool Allison and myself. Look at those sets of finger-prints. Nobody but twins could have them so alike. Did you know the sergeant had a twin brother, Commissioner?”
    “God help me, I did,” said the commissioner. He had come up from the ranks and his knowledge was wide in police affairs. Now his seamed face was troubled. “But I had forgotten it. We all agreed to forget it, years ago. Dougherty’s twin was a bad lot. Tom got him out of trouble time and time again when they were both lads, but he couldn’t stop him. It was Tom who recognized him eight years ago in New York and turned him in. He was wanted for homicide. He got ten years. It was hard on Tom, but he did his duty. And his brother cursed him for a canting hypocrite. We never spoke about it, we forgot it for the sake of Tom’s feelings—and his promotion. I should have thought of it. I blame myself for this, Manning.”
    “It was not your fault,” Manning tried to reassure him. The commissioner pulled himself together.
    “I don’t see now how it was done,” he said. “They both ate the fruit.”
    “It’s not entirely a new method,” said Manning. “Not often used outside of the Orient. It’s a Malay trick. The killer mixes poison with honey and smears it on the underside of a knife. Then he shares a meal with his victim, divides a melon with the poisoned blade and is careful to eat only the upper and harmless portion. The method is common in Treggannu and they use either cyanide or physostigmine, which is taken from the Calabar or Ordeal bean. He was nervous and he used his left hand to cut the melon, as he did to shoot with afterwards. I think you’ll find Tom Dougherty’s twin was left-handed. Of course he disguised it at first. Then I saw his eyes. He had taken dope to nerve himself. It was too late then, but I knew what had happened when Allison started to pronounce the word ‘honey.’
    “The Griffin knew, of course. He knew of the killer’s hatred against his brother, and he undoubtedly had something hanging over him that forced him to revenge himself on his brother and also kill Allison. He was probably given the choice of being given over to the police or doing this job for a big reward he would never have collected. The Griffin would figure the odds of his capture, though it was a smart move of his to offer to get a doctor.”
    The Medical Examiner reserved announcement on the poison used until the melon was analyzed.
    “No doubt as to what killed the other one,” he said. “Either bullet would have done it.” He opened the clothing over the murderer’s chest and showed the wound. It was not bleeding much, but there was a brighter crimson mark on the opposite breast, too regular for a birthmark.
    It had been recently tattooed there. The upper half of a griffin in scarlet ink, indelible and sinister.

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