Day of Doom: The Complete Battles of Gordon Manning & The Griffin, Volume 2 by J. Allan Dunn Read Free Book Online Page A

homes that had once been set along the shore and were now far too valuable, with lots at three or four thousand dollars for a seventy-five foot frontage, to be preserved save by very wealthy families who did not care to sell, by heirs in litigation or disagreement, or by cranks.
    Manning looked up the land records and found that the place had been bought ten years before by a man named Taylor. The deed was still in his name. The realtor who had acted as agent was dead; the lead petered out. With the other houses under suspicion he had, besides the agents, employed electricians, telephone operatives and water meter readers. With this house they had their own electric plant and water supply. The hard-featured woman who had answered the door had turned away all others.
    “When we want something we send and get it,” she told them.
    There was a fence round the place that had cost a lot of money, steel posts and wire with an extra overhang. Only in one section it was not used, where there was a sheer wall of dirt, a sort of bluff occurring in a wooded lane that rambled between this and the adjoining property, which was all woodland. The lane led down to the shore.
    Manning made a study of the water mains in the neighborhood and discovered that a large artery of the civic supply ran close along the front of the holding. It was easy enough to get the coöperation of any one in the locality, tradesman or corporation, in getting rid of such a fiend as the Griffin. Now a force of men were to start to work excavating along the line of the big pipe. Whether the house was connected or not, Manning meant to have men inside the fence within a few hours, legally or illegally. The grounds were heavily thicketed with laurels, ground pine and artificially planted shrubberies, besides trees. No one had ever been reported seen in these grounds except when passing in or out by way of the main drive, in a car. It screened the house from observation. It would also screen his men, Manning determined.
    They would set up a tall fence of vertical boards about their street excavation, as if they expected to build a cement or brick forebay there. And they would work under cover of it, moling through the hill, if necessary, straight to the cellars.
    Here, Manning was almost convinced, by reasoning as well as his own hunch, was the likeliest of all places for the Griffin to select. The lane to the sea, a beach with a boathouse and a wharf that looked ancient but needed no repairs. The boathouse had a waterfloor on deep water, doors opening to the Sound, closed tight, padlocked. There were windows, but they were shuttered. The shore end of the wharf joined steps that led down from a gate in the steel fence, exit of a path that was veiled by brush and trees.
    The piles of the wharf had been renewed quite recently. Here was either the hideout of a rum-runner or the lair of the Griffin. There would be a fast launch in that boathouse, Manning was sure. Or it might even be an amphibian plane. The Griffin had used one once.
    Manning, driving his own roadster, approached the excavation. He had to be careful, for he was working with a wary opponent. But he hoped that the Griffin was still underestimating him, that in his still colossal, if crumbling, egoism, he would not credit Manning with making many elaborate moves out of the usual routine of police investigation, which the Griffin had long laughed at and despised.
    Yet it would not do to avoid every caution. By prearrangement, a workman stepped out, carrying a red flag, and halted the car. He seemed to be suggesting that the ground was dangerous and Manning appeared to demur. He wanted to linger as long in the neighborhood as might be discreet, as well as to get a general report.
    “We’re running in a side tunnel,” said the man. “We’re going through soft soil, without any bad ledges so far. Mostly loose rocks. We’ll go round any obstructions we can. We’ll board up as we go. The new dirt-drills chew