Keller clicked off the button and looked over at Bentley. He alone
remained of Barter's frightful experiment. He alone remained and it
seemed that he was trying to tell Bentley something ... asking him to
now take the tube and turn it full on the body which housed his human
brain.
While Bentley hesitated, the manape bent down and placed the tube on
the floor of the cage, the muzzle pointing inward. With a clumsy
motion of a long hairy arm he reached out and snicked on the button,
then placed himself within its deadly range. Keller vanished and the
ray bit into the wall back of the cage; began to eat through.
Bentley leaped to his feet and tore across the floor. He plunged his
trembling hand through the bars of the cage, switched off the button
and lifted the tube.
There were the remaining normal apes. They could have been saved for
transportation to the zoo, but horror was on Bentley and he used the
tube again, and yet again....
And there were the keys. He pulled them from their slots in the
porcelain slab, in case there should be other "Stanley-Morton-Cleves"
abroad of whom he knew nothing....
He turned the tube against the red lights and the green lights.
Then he turned the tube upward and held it steadily. He watched the
charred hole grow bigger and deeper in the high ceiling....
When at last he heard the approaching clang of the fire engine bells
and the screaming triumph of police sirens, he carefully snicked off
the button of the tube and returned to lift the form of Ellen in arms
that were strong to hold her.
(_The end._)
* * * * *
Transcriber's Changes:
Page 30: Added closing double-quote (Ellen. "I haven't
looked at an American paper for ever so =long."=)
Page 32: Was 'that' (Bentley suddenly knew =what= the man
was trying to say. The half-uttered)
Page 32: Was 'interne' (Five minutes later the ambulance
=intern= hastily scribbled in his record the entry, "Dead
on Arrival.")
Page 41: Added closing double-quote (chauffeur to go faster
than twenty miles an =hour."=)
Page 44: Was 'scarely' (The words had =scarcely= left his
mouth when a blind man, tapping)
Page 45: Was 'multilated' (Bentley, in his mind's eye, saw
the two dead, =mutilated= drivers, and the passengers with
them, he saw)
Page 45: Was 'relinquished' ("When will he give up--and
what will his driver do when Barter =relinquishes=
control?")
Page 45: Changed ',' to '.' (effective. The fleeing car was
trapped. Barter must know =that.= If he did know, it proved
that he)
Page 46: Was 'plainclothes' (reached her. She had been
immediately picked up by =plain-clothes= men and had
thought herself captured)
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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