The day wore on.
At noon a strange horror seemed to travel over the Bronx Zoo, and within a short time every last visitor had precipitately departed. Bentley could now safely approach the wire mesh and look out and around over a wider radius.
Right under the wire mesh was a newspaper someone had thrown away.
By pressing tightly against the mesh Bentley could see the headlines.
“Mind Master successful on all counts!”
So that’s what had turned the crowd to stony silence with very fear? They had all fled, wondering who would be next. Bentley had heard the shouting of the extra on the distant streets, but it had been so far away he hadn’t heard the words. One solitary newspaper had appeared among the Bronx crowd and the story it carried under startling scareheads had passed from brain to brain as though by magic ... and the crowd had fled.
Bentley stared down at the newspaper in horror, a horror that was in no way mitigated by his having fully expected Barter to succeed. Mutually, with no words having been spoken to express the thought, Tyler and Bentley had conceded to Barter the eighteen victims he had named.
Nothing could be done to stop him. His brains were greater than the combined wisdom of the city of New York.
What else was in that paper?
Bentley stared at it for an hour, and finally a vagrant breeze, for which he had hoped and prayed during that hour, whipped across the park and stirred the paper. He read more headlines.