Bentley and Tyler raced in the direction of the sounds. From all
directions came the sounds of footfalls as other plain-clothes men
raced to be in at the death. Bentley held his automatic tightly
gripped in his right hand. He knew exactly where he was going to aim
if the ape were not dead when he reached him.
The creature had been cornered in the areaway between two banks of
elevators and had climbed up the cage as high as he could go. He was
just out of reach of human hands, even had there been any men there
with the courage to try to take him alive. A white foam dripped from
the chattering lips of the anthropoid. His red-rimmed eyes flashed
fire. Bentley noted the little metal ball on top of the creature's
head.
Deliberately he stopped, raised his automatic, and held it steady
while he pressed the trigger with the extreme care which a
sharp-shooter knows to be necessary ... and a bullet ploughed through
the top of the ape's head.
The little ball vanished, and the ape released his grip suddenly. His
chattering died away to an uncertain murmur, the fire went out of his
eyes, and he fell to the floor. No bullet had yet actually struck him,
for he had whirled into the window from the second-story ledge
simultaneously with the barking of the policemen's rifles and pistols.
He had escaped there--but here he was not to escape.
Bentley and Tyler both lifted their voices to shout warnings to the
policemen, but their voices were drowned in the savage explosions of a
dozen weapons, in the hands of men who probably thought the creature
was in the act of charging ... and the ape sprawled on the floor, his
legs and arms quivering.
- - -
Half a dozen men rushed forward, weapons extended.
"Keep back!" yelled Bentley, rushing in.
He stood over the ape, staring intently at his glazing eyes.
"Tyler," snapped Bentley, "have everybody fall back beyond earshot."
Tyler issued the orders. Bentley shouted, "Quickly, quickly!" knowing
he had little time.
Then, with Tyler beside him, he knelt beside the ape.
"I know you can't talk, but you can answer me by nodding or shaking
your head. You are Harold Hervey, aren't you?"
The eyes of the ape were hopeless. Tyler gasped, staring at Bentley as
though for a moment he thought him crazy. But in the next instant he
doubted his own sanity, for the ape, slowly and ponderously, nodded
his head.
"I'm going to name a number of places where I think you might have
been taken," went on Bentley. "In each case nod or shake your head. Is
it near Sixth Avenue?"
Slowly the great head moved, more slowly even than before; but it
nodded.
"Where? Below Twenty-third Street?"
Again the ponderous, agonizing nod.
Bentley went on.
"Below Fourteenth Street?"
Again the nod, barely perceptible this time.
"Below Christopher Street?" asked Bentley.
This time the head shook from side to side, ever so slightly.
"Two blocks above Christopher?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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