Part 7

Corcoran spat on the floor disgustedly.

“Part of that yarn’s all right,” he said. “That part about his stealing the watch and all, I mean. The rest is all bull. How would he get the stuff off a big guy like that without croaking him? How did he kill him, anyway?”

Captain Dolan leaned forward, his eyes gleaming.

“Yes, officer,” he repeated. “How did he kill him? Tell us that if you can.”

Corcoran thrust his captive toward Kenton and knelt beside the body. When he looked up, his face was blank. Rising he turned savagely on “Big Jim.”

“Come, now!” he ordered roughly, shaking the foreigner by the shoulder. “How did you kill him? Speak up!”

“No kill!” repeated “Big Jim” stubbornly. “No kill!”

Corcoran raised his club menacingly. Whether he would have struck “Big Jim,” or merely wished to intimidate him, I do not know; he had not been long on the force, and he felt his authority keenly. But Captain Dolan stepped forward, holding out an imperative hand.

“One moment, officer!” he said sternly.

* * * * *

For a breathless instant the tableau held. Then Corcoran, closing his amazed mouth, thrust his flushed face close to Captain Dolan’s.

“What business have you got butting in on this, anyway?” he shouted. “Who told you to give orders? You seem to have been a friend of this fellow’s, by what Tom here says. But how do we know you didn’t have a grudge against him and doped him tonight aboard your boat? How do we know you didn’t give him wood alcohol or something to drink that put him down and out? You’d better just keep quiet and stick around here till the doc takes a look at him.”

Captain Dolan’s wrinkled, parchment-like face turned an angry red, and his bony hands clenched. Then, suddenly, he relaxed, uttering a short, mirthless laugh.

“In remaining here, as you request,” he replied, “’tis my idea to see justice done. Little love as Terence had for Jerry Kramer and his gang, he would wish fair play, even for ‘Big Jim’ there. And for that reason I’ll be asking your kind indulgence while I tell you a little of Terence McFadden.”

Corcoran glared at the old man. Kenton shrugged his shoulders.

“Go ahead,” he said. “We’ve got to wait for the car.”

Captain Dolan stood erect beneath the grimy electric bulb, which cast a brassy gleam upon his grizzled locks. At his left stood Corcoran, scowling, one hand gripping his subdued prisoner. Beyond him Kenton leaned against the loading platform. I watched them from the shadows.

“Every man of us has his secret fear,” began Captain Dolan abruptly, and a trifle oratorically. “With one it’s the open sea. With another it’s a horror of great heights. But we all have it. As for Terence McFadden, it took no more than a little, long-tailed, hand-organ monkey to set him a-shivering.

“And they seemed to know it, too, the grinning devils. No sooner would he pass a Dago organ-grinder on the corner than the little red-capped ape would let out a chatter and make a rush for Terence. And would you believe me, the man would actually turn pale.

“‘Come away, Ira,’ he’d say, clutching at me, ‘come away, Ira. Sure, and he’ll be looking for a bite from the leg of ye.’

“I mind me of a day when we went to the Zoo, Terence and I. ‘’Tis understood,’ says he, when we reached the gates, ‘that we make no visit to the monkey house.’

“But I give him the laugh, with hints about his courage, d’ye mind, till at last he sets his teeth determined-like.

“‘No man shall say Terence McFadden is a coward,’ says he. ‘Let us go in.’

“The minute we enter the room, the place is in an uproar. The little yellow-haired monkeys are hanging by their tails and chattering, and even the big apes down in the corner are roaring like devils let loose. ’Tis no use for me to point out to Terence that the hour for feeding is at hand. He will have none of it.

“‘The beasts know me,’ he mutters between chattering teeth. ‘’Tis my blood they would be having.’

“‘For why would they be having your blood?’ I asks.

“‘I know not the why of it,’ says he, shaking in every limb, ‘but ’tis so.’

“‘Rubbish!’ says I, for I wished to rid him of this foolish fear of his. ‘Walk with me to this cage, and look the big chap in the eye. There’s no harm he can be doing to you, and him safe behind the bars!’

“Terence was fair sweating with fear, but he grits his teeth, and arm in arm we walk over to the cage. The big tawny fellow—the ugly-faced one by the far door—sits there humped up in his corner, glowering at us with eyes like coals.

“‘Look, man,’ says I, ‘and give over your foolishness. Why, even in the open ye’d be a match for him.’

“No sooner are the words out of my mouth than the beast makes one jump from his corner and lands half way up the bars at the front of the cage, with a roar that would blast the very soul of ye. I own I was startled, little as I fear monkeys and their likes.

“But poor Terence gives a sort of gasp and leans against me, actually paralyzed with fear. His eyes are set in a glassy stare, like a dead man’s. And I swear to you that after I got him outside, it was half an hour before the color came back to his cheeks and his knees gave over their quivering.

“‘Did ye see the horrible face of him?’ he gasps. ‘And the long arms reachin’ for me throat?’

“And then he’d fall to trembling again.”

* * * * *

Captain Dolan paused as abruptly as he had begun. So vividly had he told his story that he had been for the moment transported bodily to the monkey house at the Zoo. Now, in the sudden silence, we moved uneasily, glancing at one another.

Corcoran scratched his head in a puzzled manner.

“What’s all this got to do with finding the murderer?” he burst out.

Captain Dolan shook his head.

“There is no murderer,” he said.

We all looked startled, I imagine. Kenton would have spoken, but Captain Dolan motioned him to silence. Even Corcoran, for once, found himself without words.

“I spoke of an item in the paper tonight,” continued Captain Dolan. “Doubtless ’twas seen by all of you. Did you not read that one of the gorillas at the Zoo had escaped from its cage and was at large in the city?”

In the breathless silence which ensued I felt a peculiar thrill of terror pass up my spine. Kenton was fingering the holster of his revolver with nervous, clumsy motions. In some uncanny manner the gaunt old sea-captain’s grim words of doubtful import had woven about us all a web of superstitious fear in which we vainly struggled, unable to grasp the saving clew.

“’Twas that item which spoiled his supper for Terence, when he read it aboard the ship tonight. And no use I found it to reason with him. To his mind the grinning face of the big ape was peeping in at every porthole!”

Suddenly Corcoran whirled, peering into the blackness at the far end of the warehouse, where something stirred softly. Kenton drew his pistol. I felt the goose-flesh rising along my arms. Only the dead man, undisturbed, stared unwinkingly in the opposite direction.

The next moment a stray cat wandered leisurely into the circle of light and sat herself down to wash her dusty fur, blinking complacently up at our pallid faces. I wiped the cold drops from my forehead and breathed a deep sigh.

Corcoran turned almost pleadingly to Captain Dolan.

“The gorilla—” he said. “Was it the gorilla from the Zoo that killed Terence McFadden?”

Captain Dolan shook his head.

“I would not say that,” he answered.

I stared at the parchment-like face in amazement. Like Corcoran, I had jumped to this conclusion. Kenton drew his hand across his forehead in perplexity.

“But you said there was no murder!” cried Corcoran. “Was it ‘Big Jim’ that killed him, after all?”

“I would not say that,” repeated Captain Dolan.

Corcoran looked at the old man dazedly. Then he spoke very softly and soothingly, as one might interrogate a backward child:

“Then tell me, Captain Dolan,” he said. “How did Terence McFadden die?”

“He was murdered,” replied Captain Dolan.

Corcoran stared.

“Murdered? But you said there was no murderer!”

“Nor was there,” said the captain.

Corcoran dropped his hands helplessly. Kenton took up the interrogation.

“Did he kill himself?” he demanded. “Was it suicide?”

“I would not say that,” repeated Captain Dolan for the third time.

But Kenton was not to be baffled.

“With what weapon was the man killed?” he asked doggedly.

Captain Dolan gazed at the contorted face of the man at his feet.

“With one of the oldest weapons in the world,” he answered. “A weapon which has caused the death of many a brave man—aye, braver and more powerful than Terence here.”

The waves lapped saltily against the rotting piles at the far end of the warehouse. In the darkness a rat squeaked, and the cat, interrupting its toilet, darted out of the circle of light and vanished. In the darkness was heard the sound of a speeding motor.

Captain Dolan raised his eyes from the corpse of his friend, and his voice was very soft and compassionate:

“Did I not say that Terence was his own worst enemy? Had it not been for that foolish bewitchment of his—”

He turned and pointed suddenly toward “Big Jim,” standing stupidly there in the shadows. It seemed almost that the eyes of the dead man, following the direction of his extended arm, were staring at the bestial, repulsive features of the prisoner with sentient terror.

“Look at the hairy arms of him!” he cried. “Look at the long, shaggy beard! When he stood on the platform yonder by the door and crooked his elbow about the throat of Terence, do you think the poor lad knew of the pistol stuck in his back, or the words of warning jabbered in some haythin lingo? To the mind of Terence ’twas nothing less than the coming true of all his nightmares! Small wonder that his eyes are bursting from their sockets as he lies there with the grip of terror stopping the valves of his heart and curdling the very blood in his veins!”

“Then the name of the weapon—”

“It is called Fear,” said Captain Dolan.

The throbbing motor sounded at the end of the street. With a _squeal_ of brakes, the police car halted outside. Doctor Potts pushed through the crowd and bent briefly over the body.

“Heart failure,” he said.

_Whether or Not You Believe in Reincarnation, You Will Be Thrilled By Reading_

JUNGLE BEASTS

_A Complete Novelette_

_By_ WILLIAM P. BARRON

“Look!” said the nurse to the young interne on the second floor of Dr. Winslow’s sanatorium. “See what I found in the table drawers of 112—the patient who was discharged last evening. Do you suppose this horrible story can be true?”

The interne took the manuscript with a blase air. He had read so many of these ravings on paper!

“This one is really unusual,” said the nurse, noticing his manner. “Please read it.”

Mildly interested, the interne began to read:

THE STORY OF A VAMPIRE

Why am I here in this place of madness, this house of diseased minds? Because of a cat!

And it is a cat that takes me away from this place—to go to my death! And maybe this cat will follow on to haunt me in some other world, as it has in this. Who knows?

This doom had its beginning, as far as this life is concerned, when I was a boy, a lonely boy in my grandmother’s house. My grandmother had a great yellow Tartar cat that she loved as only a lonely old woman can love a cat.

[Illustration]

Perhaps it was because I was jealous of the love and attention my grandmother lavished on Toi Wah—a boy’s natural antipathy for anything that usurps the place he thinks is his by right. Or perhaps it was the same inborn cruelty, the same impish impulse to inflict suffering on a helpless dumb creature, which I have observed in other boys.

Anyway, with or without reason, I hated this self-complacent, supercilious animal that looked at me out of topaz eyes, with a look that seemed to see through and beyond me, as if I did not exist.

I hated her with a hatred that could be satisfied only with her death, and I thought and brooded for hours, that should have been devoted to my studies, of ways and means to bring this death about.

I must be fair to myself. Toi Wah hated me too. I could sense it as I sat by my grandmother’s chair before the fire and looked across at Toi Wah, who lay in a chair on the opposite side. At such times I would always catch her watching me out of half-closed eyes, stealthily, furtively, never off her guard.

If she lay in my grandmother’s lap and I leaned over to stroke her beautiful yellow fur, I could feel her actually shrink from my hand, and she would never purr, as she always did when my grandmother stroked her.

Sometimes I would hold her on my lap and pretend that I loved her. But as I stroked her, my hands would itch and twitch with the desire to clinch my hand in her satiny skin, and with the other hand choke her until she died.

My desire to kill would become so over-powering that my breath would become hurried, my heart would beat almost to suffocation and my face would flush.

Usually my grandmother, noticing my reddened face would glance up over her spectacles, from the book she was reading and say, “What ails you, Robert? You look flushed and feverish. Perhaps the room is too warm for you. Put Toi Wah down and run out in the air for a while.”

I would take Toi Wah then, and, holding her as tightly as I dared, and with my teeth clenched to restrain myself, I would put her on her cushion and go out.

My grandfather had brought Toi Wah, a little yellow, fluffy, amber-eyed kitten, home with him in his ship from that mysterious land washed by the Yellow Sea.

And with Toi Wah had come a strange tale of her taking, stolen from an old Buddhist Monastery garden nestling among age-old pines beside the Grand Canal of China.

About her neck was a beautifully-wrought collar of flexible gold, with a dragon engraved along its length, together with many Chinese characters and set with stones of Topaz and Jade. The collar was made so as to allow for expansion as the need arose, so that Toi Wah was never without her collar from her kittenhood to adult age. In fact, the collar could not be loosened without injury to the metal.

One day I descended into the kitchen with the cat in my arms and showed Charlie, our Chinese cook, who had sailed the Seven Seas with my grandfather, the collar about her neck.

The old Chinaman stared until his eyes started from his head, all the time making queer little noises in his throat. He rubbed his eyes and put on his great horn spectacles and stared again, muttering to himself.

“What is it, Charlie?” I asked, surprised at the old man, who was usually so stoically calm.

“These velly gleat words,” he said at last, shaking his head cryptically. “Words no good flo you. Words good for velly gleat cat; Gland Lama cat.”

“But what do the words say?” I urged.

He mooned over the inscription for a long time, fingering the collar lovingly, while Toi Wah lay passively in my arms and looked at him.

“He say what I no can say good in English,” he explained at last. “He say, ‘Death no can do, no can die.’ See? When Gland Lama cat wear this colla’, no can die. No can be kill him—just change flom cat to some other thing; monkey—tiger—hoss—maybe man—next time,” he concluded vaguely.

“He say, ‘Love me, I love you, hate me, I hate you.’ No can say good in English what Chinese say. See?”

And with this I had to be content for the time. Now I know the characters engraved on Toi Wah’s collar referred to a quotation from the seventh book of Buddha, which, freely translated, reads as follows:

“_That which is alive hath known death, and that which lives can never die. Death is not; there is only a changing from shape to shape, from life to life._

“_Mayhap the despised animal, walking in the dust of the road, was one time King of Ind, or the consort of Ghengis Khan._

“_Do me no harm. Protect me, O Man, and I will protect thee. Feed me, O Man, and I will feed thee. Love me, O Man, and I will love thee. Hate me, and I will hate thee. Slay me, and I will slay thee._

“_We be brothers, O Man, thou and I, from life to life, from death to death, until Nirvana be won._”

If I had only known then, and stayed my hand, I would not now be haunted by this yellow terror that peers out at me from the dark; that follows after me with softly padding feet; never nearer, never receding, until....

Toi Wah was mated with another Tartar cat of high degree, and became the mother of a kitten.

And such a mother! Only the hard heart made cruel by fear would remain unsoftened by the great cat’s untiring devotion to her kitten.

Everywhere she went she carried it in her mouth; never leaving it alone for a moment, seeming to sense its danger from me; an abnormal, hated cat!

However, she seemed to relent even toward me if I happened to pass her chair when she was nursing the little creature.

At such times she would lay stretching out her legs, opening and shutting her great paws in a sort of ecstasy, purring her utter content. She would look up at me, maternal pride and joy glowing in her yellow eyes, soft and lustrous now, the hate and suspicion of me crowded out by mother love.

“Look!” she seemed to say. “Look at this wonderful thing I have created out of my body! Do you not love it?”

I did not love it. No! On the contrary, it intensified my hate by adding another object to it.

My grandmother added fuel to the fire by sending me out to the shops to buy delicacies for Toi Wah and her kitten; liverwurst and catnip for the mother, milk and cream for the kitten.

“Robert, my son,” she would say to me, all unaware of my hatred, “Do you know we have quite a royal family with us? These wonderful cats are descended in an unbroken line from the cats of the Royal Household of Ghengis Khan. The records were kept in the Buddhist Monastery from which Toi Wah came.”

“How did Grandfather get her?” I asked.

“Do not ask me, child,” the old lady smiled. “He told me only that he stole her in a spirit of bravado from the garden of this ancient Buddhist Monastery when egged on to do so by his friends. They were spending an idle week exploring the ancient towns along the Grand Canal of China, and were attracted by the beautiful Tartar cats in this garden. It seemed the Buddhist Monks reared these cats as a sort of religious duty.

“Your grandfather always believed that a Buddhist curse of some sort went with Toi Wah after a Chinese merchant translated the Chinese characters on her collar for him. And he often said he wished that he had not whisked her into the pocket of his big sou’wester jacket, when the priests were not looking.

“Myself, I do not believe in these superstitious curses and omens, so I would not let him take the collar off. In fact, he _could_ not do it; it was so cunningly riveted.

“He always feared some evil would come from the cat, but I have found her a great comfort and a thing to love.”

And she would hold out her hands to Toi Wah, and the great cat would leap in her lap and rub her head lovingly against my grandmother’s neck.

After that I feared Toi Wah more than ever. This fear was an intangible, elusive thing. I could not understand it or analyze it; but it was very real. If I wandered about the dim old passageways of my grandmother’s ancient house, or explored the dusty cobwebby rooms, there seemed always to follow after me the soft padding sound of Toi Wah’s paws. Following, always following after me, but never coming nearer; always just beyond where I could see.

It was maddening! Always to have following after me the stealthy, soft, almost inaudible sound of padded feet. I could never win free from it within the house.

In my bedroom, sitting alone before the fire with the door locked and bolted, every corner of the room previously explored, the bed looked under, I would always feel that she was sitting there behind me, watching me out of vigilant yellow eyes. Eyes that were full of suspicion and hate. Waiting, watching—for what? I did not know. I only feared.

Out of this fear grew many unreal terrors. I came to believe that Toi Wah was waiting a favorable chance to spring on me from behind, or when I was asleep, and to dig her great curved claws into my throat, tearing and rending it in her hate.

I became so possessed by this fear that I fashioned a leather collar for myself that fitted well up under my ears and around my neck. I wore this always when I was alone in my room and when I slept, gaining some sense of security thereby. But in the night time! No one can know what I, a lonely boy, suffered then!

My eyes would no sooner close in drowsy weariness when the stealthy padding of Toi Wah’s footsteps would begin. I could hear them coming softly up the stairs, stealing along the dark passageway to my room, at the end. They stopped there because the door was locked and bolted, with the heavy chiffonier jammed against it as an extra precaution. I would listen intently, and I fancied I could hear a faint scratching sound at the door.

Then there would rush over me all the terrors of the dark. Suppose I had failed to close the transom securely? If the transom was open Toi-Wah could, with one great leap, win through and on to my bed. And then—

The cold sweat of fear would exude from every pore, as my imagination visualized Toi Wah leaping through, and, with a snarl, pouncing upon my throat with tooth and claw. I would shudder and tremblingly feel about my neck to make sure my leather collar was securely fastened.

At last, unable to stand the uncertainty any longer, I would leap out of bed, turn on the light, rush to the door, frantically drag the heavy chiffonier to one side, and throw open the door. Nothing!

Then I would creep along the passageway to the head of the stairs, and peer down into the dimly-lighted hall. Nothing!