Dr. Griick appeared again. “My dear Herr Wilenski - that is your name, is it not? - do you realize that if I am telling you the truth-” he carefully smote his plump breast - this biped is a very valuable animal, very high-strung and nervous, which must be protected? Am I to endanger his health? Do you think I am such a fool?” A little laughter; scattered shouts of approval.
The red-bearded man popped into view again, aiming his finger sternly. “What about the biped’s charge that you drugged him? What have you to say to that?”
Then Griick’s earnest face, in close-up: “Somehow the animal got hold of a piece of soap, Herr Wilenski. The keeper who was responsible has been-”
(“Soap?” echoed Wilenski’s voice.)
“Yes, soap. The sodium and potassium salts in soap have a toxic effect on these bipeds. You must remember that they are not human beings, Herr Wilenski.” He raised one plump hand. “Let me continue.” Mutterings from the audience. “But first let me say this to you, Herr Wilenski, and to all of you - if I shall not convince you that we have to do here with a hoax, a dirty publicity scheme - if you shall have listened to me and still believe that in that poor biped’s body there is the soul of a human being - then I solemnly promise you that I will release Martin Naumchik!”
Sensation in the hall. The biped closed his eyes and groped weakly behind him for the chair. His relief was so great that he did not hear the next few words from the screen.
“-we here at the Zoo were just as much in the dark as you, you may believe me! How could such a thing occur? We did not believe the biped’s story for a moment - yet, what other explanation could be found? We were at our wits’ end, gentlemen and ladies - until we had the lucky inspiration to search the biped’s cage! Then! Imagine our ( shock, our horror, when we found … this!”
The camera drew back. Griick, half turning, was extending his hand in a dramatic gesture toward a machine that lay on a little table behind him. An assistant wheeled it closer. It was, as far as the biped could make out, nothing but a solid-state recorder, the same kind of machine Opatescu had used …
A cold feeling took him in the chest. He leaned forward uneasily.
“Under the blankets of the biped’s bed,” Griick’s voice went on, “we found this recording machine concealed!”
“How did it get there?” boomed Wilenski’s voice.
Griick’s face turned; his expresion was solemn. “We are still investigpting this, he said. And you may believe me, that when the guilty individuals are caught, they shall be punished with the full severity of the law! But at this moment, I can say only that we are highly interested in questioning the keeper who was discharged. He stepped closer to the small table, laid his hand on the recorder. Now, I want you all to listen to what we found in this concealed machine! Listen carefully!”
He switched on the recorder.
After a moment, a man’s deep voice spoke. “Listen and repeat after me. My name is Martin Naumchik … I was born at Asnieres in 1976 …I am a newspaperman. I work for ParisSoir. My superior there is Monsieur Claude Ehrichs …”
A distant murmur came through the glass. The biped turned his head involuntarily, and saw a little knot of people clostered around the aerial of a portable TV. Fists were being shaken. Voices drifted over, faintly: “Charlatan! Hoaxer!”
With a sense of doom, the biped turned back to the screen. The camera was panning now over the faces of the listeners. He saw shock and surprise give way to cynical understanding, disgust or anger. People were beginning to stand up here and there throughout the room; some were leaving. The biped saw the red-bearded man, shaking his head, move off toward the aisle.
“Wait! Wait!” he called. But the man in the screen did not hear.
The room was emptying. The monotonous voice of the recorder had stopped. Griick was standing idly looking out over the room, with a faint smile of satisfaction on his lips. Wenzl leaned over to speak to him; Griick nodded absently. His lips pursed: he was whistling.
And so, said the voice of the announcer breathlessly, in this dramatic revelation, the mystery of the human biped is explained! All honor to Herr Doktor Griick for his dignified handling of this difficult situation! We now return you to our studios.
The screen flickered, cleared. The biped hit the control button blindly with his fist; the image faded, dwindled and was gone.
“Ssss! Fritz the faker! Ssss!” came the voices from outside.
THE uproar in the Aviary redoubled the moment Wenzl strode in. Toucans opened their gigantic beaks, Rapped their wings and screamed. The air was full of fluttering smaller birds, flash of tail feathers, red, yellow, blue. Macaws left off hitching themselves along their wooden perches, beak, claw, beak, claw, to flutter against the invisible air fence shrieking, “Rape! Rape!” Wenzl strode past them, his death’s-head face like a pale shark swimming down the green corridor of the Aviary.
At the far end of the building, two under-keepers stood to attention. All was in order here. Wenzl crossed the short open entranceway, making a path through the sluggish crowds, and went into the Primate House.
Shrieks, roars and the thunder of shaken bars greeted him as he stepped through the doorway. Capuchins hurtled forward over one another’s backs, clustering at the bars, showing their sharp yellow teeth, shrieking their little lungs out. Proboscis monkeys dropped out of their tree-limb perches, blinking and chattering. The baboon, Hugo, leaped against his bars with a crash, shoved off and somersaulted in midair, flashing his blue behind; the two chimps rattled the bars and squealed together.
Wenzl moved along the row of cages, attentive and calm. He passed through another open en trance to the Reptile House.
Here all was quiet. Wenzl’s glance softened for the first time The Galapagos tortoise, big as wheelbarrow, was slowly munching a head of lettuce in his cruel jaws. The boa constrictor was coiled sluggishly around a conspicuous lump in its gullet. Foul diamondbacks hissed, clattered faintly, slithered off into their rocky den.
In its floodlighted cage, the grass snake hung in graceful festoons. Its tiny head swayed toward Wenzl; the pink tongue flickered out. Wenzl paused an instant to regard it with pleasure. Then he moved on.
In the Terrestrial Mammal House, there was a crowd around the rhinoceros wallow, where Prinzmetal was giving the rhino an injection. Finished, he climbed over the rail and joined Wenzl, mopping his brow with a tissue.
“Successful?” Wenzl demanded.
“Oh, yes, I think so,” said Prinzmetal in his soft, unassuming voice. He will be all right.
“It is necessary for him to be all right.”
“Oh, well, he will be.” They walked through the exit together, turned right, opened a door marked “No Admittance.”
A slender, flaxen-haired young keeper was hurrying toward them, carrying a pail of fish.
“Schildt, why are you not feeding the sea lions?” Wenzl demanded severely.
“Just going now, sir!” said the unfortunate keeper, stiffening to attention.
“Then what are you waiting for? Go!”
“Yes, sir!”
Wenzl, as he strode along beside Prinzmetal, took a tiny notebook from his breast pocket and with a tiny silver pencil, sharp as a bodkin, made a minuscule entry in it. Prinzmetal watched him with one soft brown eye, but made no comment.
“Have you seen the papers?” Prinzmetal asked, as they rode up in the elevator.
“Yes,” said Wenzl. They got out. Wenzl hesitated, then followed Prinzmetal into the latter’s washroom.
“What papers did you mean, exactly?” he asked.