"What do you mean, monk?" snapped McGinty.
"I mean you," said Pfusch."Gwan, chase yaself, willya?"
McGinty advanced menacingly."I don't let anybody call me a monkey."
"Gwan, this is a meeting for workers, not monkeys."
McGinty mounted the stand, bared his fangs, and reached for Pfusch.
Pfusch tumbled off the stand and clutched the cop's sleeve."Help! He's threatening me!"
"He don't let nobody call him a monkey," said the cop impassively.
"But he's got my stand! He can't do that! I got a right—"
"Ga wan before I run you in."
The audience, preferring drama to dialectic, cheered McGinty. McGinty hesitated a bit, then launched into a little speechifying of his own: "Equal rights for chimpanzees!" he shrilled, standing on one hand and gesturing with the other three."Smash the tyranny of men over the animal world! If zoo keepers can dictate to chimpanzees, why not chimpanzees dictating to keepers? Say, that's an idea. Your own leaders are in-intel-intellectually bankrupt. Why not try us, the chimpanzees? Only a stranger can be impartial, as Bernard Shaw put it—" There was a lot more, much of it irrelevant or incoherent. But an audience of thousands was still approving when a department-of-parks truck full of keepers arrived to take McGinty into custody.
"There they are!" he screamed, pointing. - "The villains! The tyrants! Tear them limb from limb!"
The audience laughed and opened a lane for the keepers. McGinty, seeing that his appeal was not being taken seriously, made a half-hearted effort to escape. But the crowd could not have opened to let him get away, even had it wished. When keepers and cops appeared on all sides of him, with nets, ropes, hypodermics, buckets of chloroform, and guns, he submitted tamely enough. All the way back to the zoo he wept and shivered with despondent apprehension.
When the keepers, having stowed McGinty, made a checkup of all the cages, Johnny was sound asleep in his den. He had pulled foot for home the minute the truck appeared. When Pound questioned McGinty about his escape next day, McGinty claimed that Johnny had not only accompanied him, but had suggested the escapade in the first place. Johnny denied having left his cage at all. Since nobody had seen him, it was his word against McGinty's. Pound, knowing McGinty's unreliability, believed Johnny and ordered McGinty confined to his cage for a month. By the time the month was up, the autumn was too far advanced for the apes to be allowed out in the open anyway. The sea lions were away most of the time on a theatrical engagement; the elephants disliked the cold; so the meetings of the Emancipated petered out.
With a mind as omnivorous as his digestive system, Johnny was having the time of his life. The New York University authorities let him attend any classes he wished. And among his bears he felt, for the first time in his life, that he belonged. Kobuk appointed himself Johnny's bodyguard, and nobody argued with Kobuk. When a professor of history objected to Johnny's presence in his class because it distracted his human students, Kobuk stood up and coughed. He looked ten feet tall. Johnny continued to attend the class.
Came spring, and when the weather was warm enough the Emancipated recommenced their evening meetings. Johnny expected McGinty to start a row about their respective parts in the Columbus Circle incident. But the mercurial McGinty was this time in a silent and saturnine mood, sitting with his chin —or the place where his chin would have been if he had had one—on his fist. He said he had spent a good deal of the winter reading Sorel and Pareto. Johnny had heard of these direct-actionist philosophers, if he hadn't read them himself. He guessed that they had proved a heavy load for the chimpanzee's brilliant but immature mind.
The cats had all received the Methuen treatment by now. They loudly demanded the right to attend the meetings. Pound referred their demand to Malone, who went around saying, "Oh dear me." When Malone asked the Emancipated what they thought of the idea, there was a unanimous "No!" The elephants, for anatomical reasons, had never been able to learn to talk. But Rosebud pulled the oversized pencil out of the band around her foreleg and wrote on the pavement: "I don't like cats, especially big ones with stripes." She underlined "like" twice.
So the cats stayed in their cages, having to content themselves with occasional plaintive roars of "We want to join you!" during the sessions.
The sea lions were back. Being born extraverts, they enjoyed their work. But their demands for personal salaries, equal billing with the Rockettes, and one spotlight per sea lion had ended the experiment.
When the sea lions had finished barking their tale of woe, McGinty swung himself to the top of the iron fence around the sea-lion pool. He said: "All this proves what I've been saying. You'll never get your rights from man by talk."
"What zen?" rumbled Behring, the male polar bear.
"Force! How did we get here in the first place? Force! How do they keep us here? Force! What settles every question between organisms in the long run? Force! I've read—"
"What is an organism?" asked Kobuk.
"Never mind. What are we? Nothing but a lot of playthings for men! What rights have we? None! What can we do if they decide to starve us and eat us? Nothing!"
The outburst rather staggered McGinty's audience. The elephants shuffled uneasily.
Johnny said: "Some troof in zat. But ze men have awr ze force. Zey treat us pretty werr now. But you try using force; see what happens to you."
McGinty snapped: "Are you so afraid of dying you won't risk anything for liberty?"
"Zat's right," said Johnny.
"You'll have to die some day."
"I know. Don't want to die any sooner zan I have to, zough."
"Coward! I always knew you were on their side. I haven't forgotten your running out on me last fall. If we're going to get anywhere, it must be by united action."
Johnny's thick hide shed McGinty's epithets as easily as it did water. But he did think that obvious misapprehensions should be corrected."I just meant it's no use getting in troubre when we can't do anysing. I know somesing about—" "That's enough!" shouted McGinty."Coward! Traitor! Lackey of the hour— I mean the human race! None of us want to hear you, do we?"
And the other four chimpanzees, who had worked themselves into an almost equal state of excitement, cried: "No! Get out!"
Kobuk stood up and stretched."Sink you can srow us out? Ret's see you!"
McGinty yelled: "No rough stuff! If there's a fight it'll be the end of everybody's privileges!"
The elephants rolled forward a step or two. The bears stood up in a bunch, looking at Johnny for instructions.
Johnny said: "He's right; no rough stuff. Zat doesn't mean we're going to reave."
So the primate and bear factions settled into a state of inactive but watchful hostility. The remaining animals oscillated between the two groups.
Came Independence Day. Malone came around and told the Emancipated that Mayor Coffey was going to speak to them at 7:00 p. m., and would they please behave themselves particularly well on that occasion. He didn't say that he had tried to dissuade the mayor from what he, being a timid soul, considered a rash act. But in the mayor's mind the publicity that would accrue from a speech made under these circumstances outweighed all other considerations.
The mayor arrived, only half an hour late, in a swirl of motorcycle cops. He had already made nine speeches that day, but you would never have known it. Mayor Coffey was a huge bulbous man with little red blood vessels showing through the skin of his nose. He had a voice of thunder and, apparently, a larynx of tungsten steel.
McGinty had suddenly turned cordial. He insisted on shaking paws with all the bears, and to show his trust in them—he said—he asked to be allowed to sit among them.
Malone got Tip and introduced the mayor. There may have been worse speakers than Chauncey Malone, but if so history does not record their names. So Coffey's full-lunged bellow was something of a relief to everybody. He roared: "And so, my animal friends, in consideration of and in recognition of and as a reward for your exemplary behavior, your admirable deportment, your splendid conduct, I am pleased, happy, glad to announce on this historic occasion, this sacred date, this memorable anniversary, that we are going to furnish you with a splendid new structure, a beautiful new assembly building, a magnificent new social hall—"