Dato, the sun bear, whispered to Johnny: "Does he mean one buird-ing or sree?"
"Shh!" hissed Johnny.
"—for which the ground will be broken three weeks—twenty-one days—from today. 1 shall be glad, happy, overjoyed to meet you all here again on that auspicious occasion, that felicitous celebration, that jolly reunion, that—"
"What do zose big words mean?" whispered Dato.
McGinty had been sitting among the bears, quietly smoking a cigarette. Behring, next to him, had gone to sleep. Nobody had seen McGinty, with his left rear hand, slowly insinuate a large wooden match between two of Behring's toes. Nor did they see him lower his cigarette to touch the protruding match head.
But they all heard Behring's sudden bawl, and saw him leap straight up from his seat. Before he came down to earth again, McGinty had scuttled out from among the bears. The mayor stopped in the middle of a metaphor as McGinty dashed past him. After the chimpanzee came one thousand two hundred pounds of polar bear, knocking other animals out of his way and snarling like a thunderstorm.
Everybody screamed and ran. Having their backs turned, they did not see Johnny leap on Behring's back and hold on for dear life while the polar, mad with fury, reared and rolled and foamed. Then the keepers came with their nets. In the tussle Johnny received a couple of nasty gashes from Behring's claws and teeth. But eventually Behring was knocked out with chloroform and returned to his cage. Mayor Coffey went home to nurse his nerves, and to issue an order to Malone that no bears were to be let out of their cages under any circumstances.
Behring, when he came to, tried to explain what had happened to anybody who would listen. They listened, but they didn't let bears out any more. Ewing had to bring all their schoolbooks down from the Bronx so they could continue their studies. Some did; some were too lazy to do so without human supervision. Johnny was irked; he, had enjoyed a good deal of freedom, and being cooped up twenty-four hours a day didn't set well with a bear who held a Master's degree—honorary— from Columbia University.
One evening McGinty came over to taunt him. The chimpanzee said: "Hee-hee! The great Johnny Black locked up like an unemancipated brute! That's funny! If you'd had sense you'd have stuck with me, instead of opposing my plans. Now I've got you where you can't interfere."
"What's zat?" asked Johnny sharply. But McGinty merely hopped up and down and hurled insults. Johnny yawned ostentatiously and went back to his books. But he wondered what McGinty had in mind.
The next day he sent one of the keepers to fetch Pound. He told him a few things about McGinty, and said: "If I were you, I wourdn't ret him out for zis ground-breaking ceremony. He has somesing up his sreeve."
Pound said, "I'll ask Malone." Which he did. But Malone was afraid to bring the matter up with the mayor, who had developed a certain touchiness on the subject of bears.
July 25th was hot and sticky. Mayor Coffey suffered particularly. But the chance to make a speech was too tempting for him to forgo the ceremony.
Johnny found that the scene of the occasion was visible from the top of the rocks in his den. So he sat there, reading with elaborate unconcern, while people and fauna gathered on the spot.
The sun went out. Johnny looked over his shoulder; a fleet of huge dim thunderheads was drifting over the skyscraper apartments on Central Park South. Johnny prudently put his book in his den and returned to his post. The only animals present on this occasion were the five chimpanzees, the orangutan, the gibbon, the chacma baboon, the two coyotes, and the four sea lions. Though the elephants had been well-behaved enough, Coffey didn't trust anything of their size.
Johnny could hear Coffey's bull voice, though he couldn't make out the words at that distance. Then raindrops began to spatter on the rocks around him. They got on the lenses of his spectacles. He irritably put the spectacles away. That would happen just when he was sure something interesting was going to happen!
He couldn't see clearly at that distance without his glasses, especially through a curtain of rain. But he could make out moving blobs that were people leaving the ceremony and running for shelter. Coffey's voice rolled on. It would take more than a thundershower to stop Coffey in a speech.
Then the speech was cut off short. Johnny could see a maddeningly dim blur of motion in the crowd—or what little was left of it. A blob detached itself from the rest and moved swiftly toward the monkey house. There was a chorus of shouts, muffled by the rain. The moving blob passed out of sight. The lions and tigers, between Johnny and the monkey house, woke into a chorus of excited roars.
Johnny fretted with unsatisfied curiosity. He began pacing the length of his inclosure, like any un-emancipated bear. The other bears threw futile questions from cage to cage. Men ran about outside, calling to each other. But nobody said a word to the bears.
Hours passed, until the roars and squeals from the various houses reminded -the keepers that their charges' meals were long overdue. When the black bears were brought theirs, Johnny asked the keeper what was up.
"They kidnaped the mayor!" explained the keeper."Who did?"
"The apes! They jumped on him while he was makin' his speech, and dragged him into the monkey house. The cops couldn't shoot for fear of hittin' him. Now they're holdin' him for ransom. Every time we try to get near, they pinch him to make him yell. Say they'll kill him if we try to rescue him."
"What do zey want?"
"They say they want the department of sanitation's mansion turned over to them and, oh, a lot of things. They ain't gonna let him go, either."
"What are you going to do?"
"Good Heaven!" cried the keeper."How do I know? It serves 'em right," he went on, not explaining whom he meant by "them." "These educated animals are against nature."
That was all the information that Johnny had to work on that night. He thought and thought. He, personally, didn't care the least about Mayor Coffey. If the chimpanzees and their fellow conspirators wanted to take Coffey apart, joint by joint, that was their business. If the officials of the city of New York couldn't think of a method of thwarting the apes' felonious designs, that was their hard luck.
A yelp from the monkey house indicated that the swarms of policemen who infested the zoo had made another attempt to sneak up, and had been detected.
But, Johnny's thought rambled on, he was, through no fault of his own, one of the Emancipated. Whatever one of them did would reflect to some extent on all. If the apes murdered Coffey, the other members of that domineering and vindictive species, Man, might very easily wipe out all the recipients of the Methuen treatment to prevent future revolts. And that would include him, for all Ewing or Methuen could do.
He could see McGinty's point of view, much as he disliked the temperamental chimp personally. If the apes could get away with their daring scheme, he wouldn't be without some slight sympathy for them. But he knew that in the long run they would fail. Men were too numerous and clever and powerful. Besides, self-interest demanded that, if he had an opportunity of thwarting McGinty, he should take it. It would not only save his own hide, but that of the other emancipated bears, whom he liked. And, of course, he would get credit for one more brilliant coup. That wouldn't be hard to take.