Seabury Quinn

“ Here's one time when observed phenomena don't amount to proof. It seemed fantastic enough to find a cylinder of concentrated carbon monoxide in the car, with you chaps and Miss Watrous almost dead of CO poisoning, but to lug in a gorilla or orang-utan to throttle our would-be murderer before he had a chance to slip his gas mask on—Poe never thought up anything as wild as that. ”

“ As I glanced through the grimy window to the cheerless courtyard where the February wind was busy chasing little whirls of snow across the red-brick tiles it seemed to me that I could look clear down the vista of the years and straight across the ocean to a sun-washed summer afternoon in Fairmount Park where a boy and girl were idling by the monkey cage and he was telling her, "I bet you couldn't do it," as a little monkey fed itself from its hind foot. ”

“ Never mind the buts, old man. Ever since we found that Jerry secret agent throttled in our railway coach I'd puzzled over his bruises. The evidence all pointed to a great ape's having throttled him, but that was palpably absurd. I'd found Fedocia's putt and shoe unfastened, but that could have had have no bearing on the case—I thought. Then the other night you told me what Ten Eyck had said before he died—Fedocia's mother had been frightened into madness by a gorilla just before she had her baby; Fedocia never showed her feet to anyone ”

“ When I say 'It' I'm as near to being specific as anybody. Something—and no two of 'em are agreed on what it was—came crashing in from the hall way and grabbed the murdering drunkard by the neck, hustled him out and killed him, just as something we don't know about did in that Jerry secret agent on the train from Paris."
"Some of the girls declare it looked like a great white ape, one thinks it was a spider bigger than a man, but all agree it handled that six-footer as if he'd been a baby. ”

“ Crazy as a chinch-bug, and with a killing streak on him.
He'd knocked an orderly out cold and gone wandering through the hospital. While they were looking for him on the ground floor he was running up and down the second-story corridors, peeking into rooms and wards and scaring all he patients senseless. Finally he reached the nurses' ward. ”

“ I shook my head. "Possibly the bruise left by some sort of garotte," I hazarded. "The neck's broken and the hyoid bone is fractured; dreadful pressure must have been exerted, and with great suddenness. That argues against manual assault. Besides, no human hand is big enough to reach clear round his neck—he must have worn a sixteen collar—and even if it were, there isn't any thumb mark here." ”

“ In the evening there was always plenty of amusement, dances, dinners or the opera where fat German tenors serenaded equally fat German sopranos with a zest that defied years and embonpoint.
Fedocia Watrous was a favorite everywhere, pouring tea at the officers' club, dining at headquarters, or serving buns and coffee to the men. Half the younger officers were wild about her, but it took apKern to put their disappointment into words "Hang it, Carmichael," he complained, "the gal ain't human! She has you stopped, before you get a chance to get cranked up. She's—she's like a nun. ”

“ Charlie Norris had us all down to the mortuary when he performed the autopsy on that circus man and showed us the characteristic marks of an ape's hand contrasted with a man's. He was particular, to point out how a man grasps something, using his thumb as a fulcrum, while the great apes, with the exception of the chimpanzee, make no use of the thumb, but use the fingers only in their grasp. ”

“ I drove my fist through the window, jerked the door open and as the raw air whistled through the compartment bent to examine Miss Watrous. Her pulse was very weak but still perceptible, so were Weinberg's, Amberson's and apKern's. The stranger was past helping and the air would help revive the others. My first job was to find the chef de train—the conductor—and report the casualty.
"Find whoever is in charge of this confounded pile o' junk," I told an enlisted man I met in the corridor of the next coach. ”

“ The only reason that we worked no longer was that no day could be stretched to yield a twenty-fifth hour. Our patients died like flies; at first that hurt us, for it's no easier for a doctor than a layman to stand by and watch men die, but presently we grew used to it. ”

“ The longest-living author of this work died in 1969, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 53 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
It is imperative that contributors search the renewal databases and ascertain that there is no evidence of a copyright renewal before using this license. Failure to do so will result in the deletion of the work as a copyright violation. ”

“ I cast a glance at apKern, sitting two seats from her, and he must have read the malice in my eyes, for almost instantly he sounded off. "See this?" he tapped the dispatch case that rested on his knees. "Lot o' valuable dope in here; list o' suspected enemy agents and so forth I'm takin' up to Treves. 'Captain apKern,' the general says to me, 'I've got some very confidential documents to go to Germany. They're so secret that I daren't trust 'em to an ordinary courier. Only a man of proved sagacity, indomitable courage and more than usual cleverness can be entrusted with these papers, Captain. ”

“ Her power to dismiss the world from her consciousness, apparently to notice nothing about her, or even completely to forget the existence of the person talking to her, was extremely disconcerting to young men with matrimonial designs, and utterly absorbing to a doctor with a leaning toward psychiatry. ”

“ Nearly everybody's heard—and most laymen believe stories—of pre-natal influence; if a mother's frightened by an an animal her baby's likely to be marked with some characteristic of the beast. A mother terrified by a vicious dog, for instance, may give birth to a dog-faced child ”

“ The double braid on his cuffs marked him as a captain and where the raccoon collar of his short coat was thrown back I saw crossed rifles on the neckband of his blouse. His uniform was well-cut and expensive—English made, I guessed—his blond hair neatly trimmed, his slim, long, white hands sleekly manicured. More of a fop than a soldier he seemed, some dandy from the fashionable East Fifties with a bullet-proof commission going from the secretariat at Paris to staff headquarters at Coblenz; but in the army one goes where he is sent and does the work they set him at ”

“ Amberson shook his head, "but I'll bet G-2 will be glad to see his photograph. There's a Jerry undercover man been raisin' merry hell with our arrangments; shouldn't wonder if he's here—" he jerked a thumb toward the still form stretched on the railway seat. "Just for once I'm grateful to that big-mouthed apKern. When he began to sound off about carrying confidential papers we all knew it was for Miss Watrous' benefit, but this bird fell for it. He must have traveled with that can of carbon monoxide and gas mask all ready for such emergencies. ”

“ Just down the corridor, in M-40, is Amberson, in drydock with a smashed collar-bone, and next to him, in 41, is apKern with the flu. Notice anything?"
"Three of the five people who were in the compartment when the German spy was throttled were within a hundred feet or so of the spot where, presumably, this man was killed—again presumably—in the same way."
"Right. Right as a rabbit. This fellow was a Polack from Pennsylvania, miner or something; big as a horse and strong as a bull. Influenza convalescent who'd gone raving-wild on some whiskey someone smuggled into the first floor wards. ”

“ Greetings were in character: "Hullo," said Amberson, sweeping me with the quick look of suspicion which is the mark of the professional policeman. "Thought you'd gone A.W.O.L.," grinned Weinberg. "Wouldn't, blame you if you had. Lot o' flu up Treves way; lots o' work for us poor suckers in the M.C." "Hi lug!" apKern saluted me "Mopped 'em all up on the Paris sector and goin' up to croak a few in Germany?" ”

“ That's just it—"
"How d'ye mean—"
"That cylinder was filled with CO—carbon monoxide—which is a colorless and odorless gas almost as deadly as phosgene. It was pumped in under pressure and late last night someone turned the thumb-screw while we were asleep. let the gas escape, and—"
"Nuts!" he interrupted with a shake of his head. "No one would be such a fool. It'd get him, too—"
"Yes?" I broke in sarcastically. "Think so, do you?" Rolling the dead man over to get a grip beneath his arms I had discovered something he was lying on. A small, compact, but perfect gas mask. ”

“ Amberson who as a former New York police lieutenant had been assigned to the Intelligence, Weinberg of the Medical Corps, like me assigned to base hospital work in Treves, and Fontenoy apKern, an infantryman about to take up duties at the provost marshal's office at the old walled city. ”

“ Amberson's laid up with a smashed clavicle. That lets him out. A man in that condition can't wash his own face, let alone go tearing men to pieces. apKern's a fairly husky lad, but not qnite up to wringing Pennsylvania miners' necks. ”