Page:Weird Tales Volume 6 Number 4 (1925-10).djvu/31

"When this pauvre Mademoiselle Humphries is killed in that so terrible manner I remember my own African days and I say to me, 'Ah, ha, it look as if Monsieur le Gorille—the gorilla—have been about this place. I ask to know if any such have escape from a circus or zoo from near by or far. All answers are no.

"Then that Sergeant Costello, he bring me to this so splendid savant, Dr. Trowbridge, and with him I go to interview that young Paul Maitland who have encountered much strangeness on the golf links where the young woman was killed.

"And what do he tell me? He relate of a thing that have hair, that jump up and down like an enraged ape and that act like a gorilla, but wear man's evening clothes. Parbleu! It is to think! No gorilla have escape, yet what seems one is here encountered, wearing the clothes of a man. I search my memory. I remember that madman and the poor infants he turn into monkey-things with his damnable serums.

"I say: 'If he can turn man-children into monkey-things, why not can he turn ape-things into men-things? Eh?'

"I find one Dr. Kalmar live here unknown. I search about, and learn a certain man here are seen coming from his place in secret. I also find in this certain man's discarded shirt the hair of a gorilla. Morbleu! I think some more, and the thoughts I think are not pleasant thoughts.

"I reason: 'Suppose this serum which make a man-thing of an ape are not permanent? What then? If it are not renewed at times, the man becomes an ape again.' You follow? Bien.

"Now, the other day, I learn something which make me think some more. This Beneckendorff, he rave against one Madam Comstock. You, Madam Comstock, admit you once knew this Beneckendorff. He have loved you, as he understand love; now he hate you as only he with his diseased, but great brain, can hate. Is it not against you he plan his devilish scheme? I think so.

"I send a cablegram—never mind who to; Dr. Trowbridge knows that—and I get the answer I expect, but fear. The man in whose shirt I find those gorilla hairs is no man at all, he is one terrible masquerade of a man. So. Now, I reason, 'Suppose this masquerading monkey-thing do not get his serum as expected, what will he do?' I fear to answer my own question, but I do answer it, just the same, and I buy a gun.

"This gun have bullets of soft lead, and I make them still more efficient by cutting a V-shaped notch in each of their heads. When they strike something they spread out for a space you could not cover with your hand.

"Voilà! I take my gun and wait. Tonight what I have expect come about. I am ready. I shoot, and each time my bullet strike, it tear a great hole in the body of the man-who-is-an-ape. He drop his prey and seek the shelter his little ape-brain tell him to fly to. He goes to the house of this so unknown Dr. Kalmar. I follow quick.

"The ape are tortured with my bullet wounds. When he reach the house of Kalmar, he is angry, and set upon this Kalmar and tear him to pieces, even as he have killed poor Sarah Humphries before. I, arriving with my gun, I kill the gorilla with one more shot.

"But before I come back here I recognize the dead corpse of that Dr. Kalmar. He are one and the same as that Beneckendorff who have escape from our Paris madhouse.

"I destroy his devil's brews with which he make monkeys of men and men of monkeys. It is better their secret be never known.