by Roy J. Snell
CHAPTER VII THE BURNING OF THE ZOO
One moment Johnny sighted the familiar, stooping figure, the next he hadlost him in the throng which appeared to have sprung up from the ground.However, he did not despair of finding him again. As for the fire, it wasnow none of his affair. Terrible as it promised to be, he could donothing to stop it. That was the firemen's part. Already they werestretching their hose. After a single thought given to the safety of thetrophy he had hidden under the bushes, Johnny bent his every thought andenergy toward the finding of that man.
"For," he told himself, "it may result in the unravelling of a greatmystery and bring to a sudden end a series of great catastrophes." Atthat he lost himself in the throng.
With the firemen came Mazie. She had gone to the central alarm station inthe hope of finding Johnny there. Instead she had found the Chief. Whenthe first and second alarms came in from the Zoo alarm box, the Chief hadbundled her into his car and they had raced for the park.
Hardly had she alighted from the Chief's car at the scene of the firethan she felt a slight touch on her shoulder and, on looking up, saw thatJerry, the firemen's monkey mascot, was on her shoulder.
She was not surprised at this, but so pleased that tears glistened in hereyes. From the time Jerry had saved her life by bringing a rope to her inthe burning building, he had apparently thought of her as his especialcharge.
Seeing the Chief about to enter the burning Zoo behind the firemen withthe spurting hose in their hands, Mazie took his arm to enter with him.Though he frowned at her, he did not say no. It was a terrible sight thatmet her eyes. Just as they entered, the fire broke through the woodenpartition between the office and that portion of the Zoo set apart forbirds. The fluttering and screaming of frightened birds was almost morethan she could stand. Beautiful yellow canaries, brown warblers, parrotsof gorgeous green, magnificent birds of paradise, tropical birds withplumage as varied as the hues of the rainbow--they one and all beat theirwings against their cages and cried for freedom as they never had criedbefore in all their captive lives.
"And all in vain," the girl fairly sobbed.
"It's no use," muttered the Chief grimly, "we may save the animals, butthis part of the Zoo is doomed. C'mon. Let's get out."
Reluctantly the girl turned away. As she did so she saw a single yellowcanary in a small cage near the door--the commonest bird in the world.Why he was there alone she could not tell. She only knew that out of allthat priceless collection here was one that might be saved. Seizing thecage, she tore it from its hanging, then followed the Chief into theouter air.
"Dear little bird," she whispered, as she hung the cage high on the limbof a tree well away from danger, "I have given you a new bit of life. Mayyou sing long and sweetly for that."
Once more she joined the fire-fighting throng. She was hoping all thetime to come upon Johnny. This was the kind of fire he was supposed toinvestigate. He must be here, but where?
"He might be in there," she thought to herself as she followed a band offire fighters into the long, low compartment occupied by the monkeytribe. Jerry, who was still on her shoulder, let out a scream of delightat sight of so many of his kind. His scream was answered by one long wailof terror, for at that very moment a broad tongue of fire came lickingthrough the thin wooden ceiling of the room.
"It's the garret," muttered the fireman. "There's a garret running thelength of the building. There's a company coming against the fire from upthere. We can probably stop it here, but this place is doomed. Unless wecan get 'em out, every monkey of the lot will burn."
There had been times when, in her dreams, Mazie had seen human facesdistorted with fear, peering down from windows where flames reached outto grip them. But nothing she had ever dreamed of could be as bad as thesight of hundreds of monkeys, baboons, apes and chimpanzees, clinging totheir cages and uttering plaintive cries and wild shrieks while theirman-like faces were shrunken with fear.
In vain did their keepers attempt to call them down to the doors throughwhich they might escape.
It seemed that they, like the birds, must meet a terrible death. But justwhen matters were at the worst, Mazie felt a tearing at the shoulder ofher coat and turned to see Jerry snatched from his place there. To hersurprise and consternation, she saw that the man who held the mascottightly in his right hand was none other than the pink-eyed man whom sheand Johnny suspected of being the firebug.
"Stop him!" she fairly screamed.
But she was too late. The man was already well away and up to the side ofthe great cage of monkeys. In his left hand he held a fireman's axe.
The thing Mazie witnessed in the next three minutes impressed a pictureon the sensitized film of her brain that she will never forget.
Holding Jerry up to the cage, the pink-eyed man allowed him to clingthere for a full half minute. During that entire time the strange littlecreature kept up an incessant chatter that could be heard even above thescreams of the frightened prisoners.
What it was he said, Mazie could not tell. She did realize that thismonkey speech of his had an extraordinary effect upon the other monkeys.By the time his half minute speech was up, the screams had died downnearly to a whisper.
It was at this psychological moment that the pink-eyed man made his nextmove. With a single stroke of his axe he cut a perpendicular gash fourfeet long in the heavy wire screening of the cage. A second slash made ahorizontal one quite as long. By turning out the ragged corners he made alarge hole there. On the edge of this hole he placed Jerry.
Then came the astonishing thing. Jerry seemed to understand his part for,with a twist of his head toward the nearest monkey, he appeared to say:"C'mon." Then, catching hold of the cage, he executed a swinging jump andlanded on the floor. The foremost monkey in the cage followed hisexample, then another and another.
Calmly the pink-eyed man slashed the side of cage after cage and out ofeach leaped all those man-like creatures, and man-like still, as ifobeying orders, they each and all joined the procession led by Jerry. Theprocession grew and grew and grew until at last there was not a livingcreature in the cages.
There arose a hoarse shout of approval from the firemen. Mazie lookedaround for the hero of the hour--the pink-eyed man. He had vanished!
As she made her way once more into the open air of the park thatsurrounded the Zoo, she found the trees full of happy chatteringcreatures who were enjoying to the full such freedom as they had notknown for years.
For a time she stood there staring at the burning building. As she turnedto go, there came a chatter from the tree above her, followed by a thudon her shoulder.
It was Jerry. With cap gone, his red coat scorched and torn, he stillappeared to be the happiest monkey in all the world.
The firemen by this time had the fire somewhat under control, but themingled sounds of screams, roars and trumpetings which came from theother end of the Zoo was all but deafening.
Having always had a desire to know how different wild animals acted understress of danger, Mazie decided to re-enter the Zoo and pass through ituntil stopped by the fire. She could not do this without considerablefear and trembling, nor was this entirely unwarranted. The time was tocome, and that within the next quarter of an hour, when she would regretso rash an undertaking.
In the meantime, what had become of Johnny? While all these things werehappening to Mazie and her strange companion, Jerry, what success had hehad in finding his man?
It is not easy to locate a particular person in a throng of five hundredor a thousand people at night. Johnny thought he knew all about that. Hehad entered upon just such a task more than once before. More than once,too, he had found himself baffled, beaten back by the mob, in the enddefeated. This time he was determined to win.
But even as he entered into the search he asked himself seriously whetheror not he had any business with the man he sought.
"I may, and I may not," he mumbled to himself at last, "but one thing issure--
this thing has got to stop. When the police can't pin a thing on aparticular man they go out looking for suspects and bring in everysuspicious looking character. That's what I'll have to do."
At once his mind was at work on possibilities. Two men had come undersuspicion; the pink-eyed man and the man with the hooked nose and thelimp. If either was the firebug, which was it most likely to be? Johnnyremembered the look he had seen on the face of the pink-eyed man thenight of the school house fire. It was a look of pleasure which hadseemed to say: "I set the fire. Isn't it grand!" And yet, had he readthat look correctly? One thing was sure--a moment later the look hadvanished from the man's face and he was showing an active interest in thesaving of a child from the school building.
"And that," thought Johnny, "would tend to make a fellow love him."
"On the other hand," he mused, "he lives in a disreputable looking place;at least I saw him go in there. And he was at that second fire. What's hedoing at every midnight fire if he has nothing to do with them?"
As for the man who limped, he had seen him at but one fire, and that timethere was nothing of a suspicious character revealed other than hispresence behind the lines.
"And yet I have a sneaking notion," Johnny mused, "that it was he whoshot at me out there on the marsh."
"Not much proof for that conclusion, either," he murmured a moment later.
His mind went back to the double telephone wires he had found in theburned schoolhouse and the one he had hidden beneath the bushes but a fewmoments before.
"Might be something to it," he said suddenly and quite out loud."Might----"
He broke short off. Over to the right he had caught sight of his man--theone who limped, and to his great joy he found the fire Chief close besidehim.
"See!" he exclaimed, gripping at the Chief's arm, "See that man! Get thatman! He--he--perhaps he's the firebug!"
The Chief made a lunge toward the man. Johnny followed. It did look tooas if he had spoken the truth, for the instant the Chief made a move inhis direction the suspected man was away. Not fast enough, however, toescape Johnny's keen eye.
"This way, Chief," he exclaimed, then dashed straight away from the firetoward the shore of the lake, whence came the dull roar of rollingbreakers.
