Day of Doom: The Complete Battles of Gordon Manning & The Griffin, Volume 2 by J. Allan Dunn Page B

himself was destroyed.
    The two men leaped simultaneously, weapons snatched from their sashes. Manning struck out twice, right and left, with his cane, left-handed. He hit one man on the shin, midway, and the other just below the knee. They howled with the nerve-shock and his stick swung in the rapid moulinet of a saber expert. The steel tip struck one on the temple, the second on the base of his skull. Both rolled over, no longer howling, and Manning faced Zerah.
    The mystic was back of the altar. He had shouted another order. The fluting music changed. It became irritant, high-pitched, and the Thing on the altar gathered itself, lifted, rearing high, and leaped at Manning.
    His hand came out of his pocket for the first time. It held something that ended in a tube and jetted out vapor. The terrific, furry monster seemed to crumple in mid-leap. It fell, folding in upon itself, with slender, hairy legs, with eyes that dulled.
    Manning swung on Zerah.
    “Some of the same?” he asked. “Or this?”
    In his right hand was the weapon that ended in a tube. In his left his cane.
    For answer Zerah flung his tulwar and followed it.
    Manning struck the shining steel aside with his cane. As Zerah hurtled forward, he thrust at him, and the mystic yelled with anguish as the rod pierced his body.
    Manning surveyed him grimly. The man would not die of that. He had withheld his wrist. Zerah would go to the chair, these other two….
    He whirled, just as a cloth flicked about his neck. For a moment he had forgotten the third man, the musician. A Thug, a devotee of Kali! Before the muslin tightened Manning got his hold, beneath the other’s thigh, with one arm, while the other hand gripped for a Goorka hold at the spot where the collar bones protect the windpipe.
    He was just in time. The Thuggee choker almost had him. But Manning’s fingers dug in and shut off his assailant’s wind, sent out his tongue between his lips. He collapsed and Manning stepped back.
    Now he drew a gun. He surveyed his late opponents. He stepped to the only modern thing in the room—a telephone.
    When he hung up he tilted the cage over the crumpled, furry Thing, slid the door beneath its limp body.
    “We’ll be needing you, later,” he said.
    IX
    Chief Commissioner Melleny and the district attorney sat in conference with Manning. Their eyes were wide.
    “I’ve seen spider’s webs in New Guinea,” said Manning, “that were used for fishing nets by the natives. They talked of these big insects and I tried to get one. They are nocturnal. Light blinds them, frightens them. When Power turned on the switch this one was scared. They have eight eyes, but they are useful only after dark. Eight legs, also. Tall legs, so that when the thing reared up it looked tremendous. It is tremendous, for a spider. You’ve got it upstairs. Take a good look at it. Furry, like a tarantula. The natives of New Guinea say it can kill a cassowary, or a tree-wallaby. I agree with them. It killed Mrs. Power—and Pelota.”
    “How?” asked the district attorney.
    “Zerah brought the thing in. He might have thought only to use it as a sort of fetich. You’ll never find out, from him. But, in the end, he used it to kill. Got Mrs. Power to shift her bedroom to one that looked east. Probably linked that up with sun worship. But it was right under his own window. He lowered the cage, as soon as he knew she had made over the policy. Lowered it outside the window he knew she always had open—or he told her to keep open—lowered it until its bottom legs hit the flower bed. I’ve got the measurements to prove that, and the dirt on the bottom of the cage.
    “He’d starved it until it was crazy for blood. It had leaped in and out, unsatisfied. He had lifted the lid, raised the cage. Even if they found the thing they couldn’t trace it to him, who had brought it over probably as an egg and hatched it out.
    “But it was still hungry. When the light startled it, it went up the wall of