“Doctor Traub, our health commissioner, has the welfare of the community at heart,” said Gollomb.
Agent “X” rose. “I’d like to take a look around the institute, Gollomb.”
The director nodded. “I’ll show you over the place myself.”
HE showed “X” the steel cages from which the gorillas had escaped. The explanation of how the animals had got out was simple. One had contrived to break the lock on his door. Naturally imitative, he had opened the doors of the others from the outside as he had seen their attendant do. Then a window had been raised and the band of huge jungle creatures had trooped out into the night.
“A late spring freeze-up had made the ground hard,” explained Gollomb, “but there was no snow. That prevented us from tracking them down.”
Gollomb and “X” visited the bacteriological room with its glittering microscopes, centrifuges, incubators and cultures; the vast chemistry department under the charge of Doctor Ritchie, the Institute’s treasurer. There was a physics department, another devoted to biology.
Agent “X” met the staff, too — or those of them doing night work. These were principally in the departments of medicine, chemistry, and biology, co-operating now in an effort to combat the ghastly epidemic.
It was after nine when the Agent left. He went directly from the institute to city hall to see Doctor Traub, Branford’s health commissioner. But the commissioner was not in his office. A weary-eyed secretary told “X” that he was supervising sanitary precautions in distant parts of the city, and might not be back until midnight. Since the spread of the sleeping sickness he had given up all semblance of regular hours.
As he went down the steps of the city hall to his roadster, “X” decided again to take an active part in the gorilla hunt. It might be three hours before he could see Traub.
His pulses quickened as he slid behind the wheel. He had a dual reason for wanting to capture one of the hairy beasts that menaced Branford.
He must if possible gain concrete proof that the animals were being trained to carry and use an injection device leaving a mark like teeth. His brain hammered at the problem of why such a device should be used, since the beasts’ claws and teeth carried the infection — but that must wait until he had proof that the thing was actually being done. That the apes could be trained to use such an injector was a startling but not utterly fantastic idea.
He must also, somehow, capture one of the animals alive and take it back to the institute. The lack of adequate media for experimentation was crippling the work of those at the institute. Some sort of serum, made from the spinal fluid of one of the apes, on the order of rabies serum, might save hundreds of lives.
“X” guided the powerful roadster through Branford’s business section and headed for the suburbs. He felt he was better fitted than the police to make a live capture. The police were armed with death-dealing automatics, machine and riot guns. “X” had his ingenious gas pistol. At short range it would knock out an ape as well as a man. That was the weapon he intended to use.
His eyes gleamed with excitement as he approached the vicinity of the Garwick mansion again. This open section with its lawns and wooded patches seemed the logical place for the apes to prowl. And he was definitely sure now that the rich of Branford were being preyed upon.
Accident alone had caused the disease to spread to the poorer sections; even the most cunning criminal mind could not control the flights of germ-laden mosquitoes.
He passed other cars filled with men hunting the apes. These he avoided, and parked at last in a dark side street. Unseen, silent, he struck off across the wide lawn of a big house that was tightly shuttered.
“X” slipped a square of black cloth over his face. He remembered that gorillas were supposed to be able to see in the dark. With his gas gun in one hand, a concentrating flashlight in the other, he prowled across many lawns.
Once a night watchman hailed him. Agent “X” retreated swiftly into a clump of shrubbery, half expecting to hear a charge of buckshot whistle by. But he saw the watchman turn and dash into the house. “X” moved quickly on to a section several blocks away.
A moment later two police cars flashed by. They had, “X” assumed, come in response to the watchman’s telephone call. He turned his back to them, continued his own lone way. Fighting single-handed, he had been able to achieve some brilliant results in his warfare on human menaces to society. Tonight he was pitting his trained alertness against the instinctive cunning of animals.
At the rear of a group of rich men’s estates “X” paused and tensed. Had something moved over by the low wall that separated one lawn from another? He strained his eyes. Yes — there it was! An instant’s glimpse of a dark silhouette against the star-studded sky.
He crouched low to the ground to get a better view. The silhouette showed again, an ungainly blob on the top of the wall. Then the Agent’s heart raced. For his straining eyes made out a massive, furry head.
He gripped his gas pistol more tightly, moved forward. The dark blot against the sky had disappeared. Had it gone over the wall? Was it coming stealthily his way? Agent “X” was not sure, but cautiously he moved on.
Close to the wall, at a point fifty feet below the spot where he had seen the moving shadow, he crouched again. Nothing was in sight. No faintest sound broke the peaceful stillness of the night. And yet he was positive he had not been mistaken. Prickles raced along his skin. Alone in the blackness, he was close on the trail of one of the great, germ-spreading apes. Horror was somewhere ahead of him, watching him perhaps, waiting to spring.
He moved catlike along the ground parallel with the wall. He was slowly approaching the spot where he had glimpsed the ominous shape.
He felt certain now that it had been going over the wall when he saw it. Yet he had no proof of that. A windbreak of low evergreens made a dark line twenty feet from the wall. The creature might have slipped into them. The Agent waited, ears attuned to the infinitesimal sounds of night. The creature must not get away. Luck had played into his hands.
Lightly, silently, he placed his feet on the top of the wall, tensed for the spring over. Then grass blades rustled behind him. Out of the blackness, from the direction of the evergreens, a huge furry shape hurtled at him.
The Agent sensed, rather than saw it. But the spruces made a background as black as jet. He raised his gas gun, fired; and knew instantly that his aim had been poor.
For a snarl came from the darkness slightly to his left. And before he could swing the gun again a heavy paw descended on his arm with paralyzing force, and the weapon was knocked from his fingers.
Chapter III
POWERFUL hairy arms enveloped the Agent’s body in a smothering embrace. In that instant he felt himself in the very shadow of death — either instant death at the hands of the great ape, or the slow death of sleeping sickness. For “X” had glimpsed the gleam of metal in the anthropoid’s powerful paw.
His own hand vised over the creature’s wrist, warding off the deadly prongs of the germ-laden injector. The merest scrape of it against him, the merest skin abrasion — and all the knowledge of present-day science could not save him from the slow advance of the encephalitis bacilli. His features, too, would set inexorably in the rigidity of the ghastly Parkinsonian Mask.
The creature’s repulsive breath fanned his face. Dimly he saw the glitter of eyes deep-sunken in its massive, hideous head. “X” lurched sidewise, threw the ape off balance. They crashed to the hard ground in what seemed a death grip.