Day of Doom: The Complete Battles of Gordon Manning & The Griffin, Volume 2 Read Online Free

resources.”
    “What do you propose to do?” asked Bannerman. “If we can circumvent such a monster, it is surely my duty to place myself in your hands—aside from the fact that I am not at all eager to die. I enjoy life. I believe what there is left of it for me may prove useful.”
    Manning explained his general plans. Then he showed Bannerman a copy of the letter he had received from the Griffin.
    “This time I think he has overreached himself,” he said. “I may be mistaken, but I believe he has trusted too much to his own ingenuity and, I hope, underestimated my intelligence. He has had cause to do so, but it is usually a fatal error.
    “He talks of the fatal, frozen finger that neither steel nor stone may deflect or keep out. It is my profound conviction that he anticipates using some sort of death ray. He has unquestionably studied your habits. He knows, for instance, of your custom of sitting here on your lawn at a certain hour. I think he intends to project his ray at that time when you would be in plain view to an operator, either through a telescope or closer at hand, perhaps from an airplane.”
    “I have heard something of these death rays,” said Bannerman. “I understood one or more of them were ready, or almost ready, to use in the Great War when the Armistice was signed. Frightful instruments, and examples of man’s inhumanity to man. I had supposed the governments owned them.”
    “I think they do—the formulae,” replied Manning. “I know the United States Government has one, Great Britain another, Germany probably a third. But there has been much experimentation, certain publicity, upon which a clever scientist might follow the trail, repeat the result, even improve upon it. It is certain that the Griffin has such men working for him. He has proved it many times with his diabolically ingenious methods.”
    “One may not avert one’s destiny,” said Bannerman. “I am in your hands. You will stay here to-night? Do you think it is advisable to tell the rest? I can trust them all. I think they would risk their lives freely to protect me.”
    “By all means,” Manning agreed. The more protection the better. But he did not intend to go into the means by which he personally hoped to circumvent the cunning of the Griffin. He did not even explain it to Bannerman. For once he intended not to keep in personal touch with the threatened victim.
    He had gone deeply, within the past day or so, into the history, as known, of the various death rays; coming finally down to two inventions, the ray invented by H. Grindell Matthews, an Englishman, and the so-called Odic Ray, invented by a Californian, living in Pasadena. At the time, this Odic Ray was investigated by the Mount Wilson Observatory and finally dismissed as negligible, but its possibilities had later been greatly enhanced by its discoverer.
    It was highly plausible that the Griffin’s captive scientists had even outdone the Californian’s results. And it was another name for the Odic Ray that determined Manning on his choice. The Cold Ray.
    Through his previous connections with the Government Secret Service he was able to learn more about it. The object to its use was the fact that it was impossible to generate sufficient power to enable rays of this nature to wipe out an entire city, as claimed by the discoverers; but Manning was told that it was quite feasible for such a ray to be concentrated, focused upon some definite object, and pass through it, breaking down life, producing death and disintegration at considerable distances.
    The Cold Ray seemed a fitting synonym for the Griffin’s phrase, “Death’s frozen finger.”
    VI
    The day of the seventeenth was passing, to all appearances, as quietly as any other. Morning found Bannerman awakening from sound sleep, eating a hearty breakfast, genial and courageous.
    Manning’s men, relieving each other in four-hour watches, swarmed in the grounds, were posted in the house. As the morning