King Kong

by Edgar Wallace

  “Denham!” he shouted senselessly. “Denham! Where are you? Can’t you stop—”

  He ran back to the door and blundered down the corridor to an elevator.

  In the streets below New York was mobilizing for a fantastic, grim pursuit. From a score of waiting posts police radio cars raced toward the hotel, their sirens screaming for clear traffic lanes. A hundred police night-sticks rapped the pavements and aroused a hundred more. Far south on Centre Street a dozen motorcycle cops, with Tommy-guns, careened out of Headquarters, and in their wake rolled the multiple-cylindered automobiles of the Department’s highest.

  “…How did that brute ever break loose? Those chains should have held an army tank….” “…Get some fire trucks! This is going to be a ladder job….” “…Clear the streets! Get everybody off! Everybody….”

  Driscoll thrust the elevator operator aside and got out of doors just as Denham, surrounded by policemen, came breathlessly around a corner of the hotel.

  “He went up the side of the hotel, officer! Don’t shake your head, you damned fool! He did. That beast can climb smooth marble.”

  “Denham!” Driscoll cried. “He got her.”

  Denham stopped short and raising clenched fists, shook them above a torrent of profanity. One of the policemen hiked up his coat tail and hauled out a revolver. The police radio cars streamed in, six at a clip through the cleared lanes.

  “Look!”

  The packed throng in front of the hotel spoke with a prolonged single voice.

  Two blocks down the avenue Kong appeared momentarily on a rooftop, in the glare of an electric sign. Ann was a small white patch in the crook of his left arm. The policemen fired uselessly as the beast-god swarmed up the side of a higher building and disappeared.

  “Everybody pile on this fire truck,” shouted a sergeant; and then to the driver he commanded, “on your way, waterboy!”

  Driscoll was aboard, and Denham, too, as the truck whirled in pursuit.

  “Keep going!” the sergeant ordered. “He was going east, toward Sixth Avenue. Go a block past where we saw him and stop.”

  Kong was nowhere in sight when the riders leaped down to look; but a taxi-driver ran across the almost empty street under the dark elevated structure and waved still farther east.

  “It jumped!” he screamed, still refusing to believe his own eyes. “It jumped. From that building there, to the L tracks, and from the tracks to the building on the other side.”

  “Scatter!” shouted the sergeant. “Circle the whole block!”

  Far to the east, crossing Madison, were yellow headlights in front of screaming sirens. The quick-witted firetruck driver sounded his own signal, and the yellow headlights raced forward and stopped. A stuttering string of motorcycles followed and close behind the police commissioner and a carful of his inspectors.

  “Will machine gun bullets kill that brute of yours, Denham?”

  “Enough will, I guess.”

  “Is he cornered?”

  “We lost him right here, sir,” the sergeant said.

  From the distant eastern side of the block came the sound of shots.

  “I circled some men around there, Mr. Commissioner,” the sergeant cried.

  “After him!”

  The cars swung into Sixth Avenue, tore down the block, whirled east against the one-way traffic signs and slid to a stop on screeching brakes. The motorcycles swung in front, on either flank, and in the rear, like torpedo boat destroyers around a battleship. Last came the rumbling truck. At the corner of Fifth Avenue a shaking policeman pointed south. But in that direction Kong was not to be seen.

  “If only we knew of a place he might be heading for!” the Commissioner cried.

  “I can make a guess,” Driscoll said ruggedly. “It’ll be some place high up. Kong is used to mountains. He lived in one. The higher he is, the safer he believes he is from his enemies. If there’s any building in this district that towers over everything else, that’s the building we’ll find him on. On the very top of it.”

  “So that,” said the Commissioner slowly, “is why they ran the Empire State Building up a thousand feet and more.”

  “Rot!” said the blunt chief inspector.

  “Driscoll’s right,” Denham interposed. “That’s our best bet.”

  “I guess it’s our only one,” the Commissioner amended. “Let’s go.”

  By now a dozen reporters had gathered, and a crowd which packed the street. The Commissioner shouldered through these to his car, Denham and Driscoll following his beckoning hand.

  “There! There! Down there!”

  The great host gave tongue.

  Kong appeared for the third time since he had made his capture. Again he was far down the street; again he crouched a brief instant on the roof of a building and again disappeared.

  “Let her out,” said the Commissioner, and his car swept away to where the square tower of the Empire State lifted its crown up through an encircling veil of white light.

  They reached the building’s corner just in time to witness a scene which no one of them believed, even though he sat watching. From a roof on the upper side of the street, Kong leaped. His black, monstrous body curved in a long arc, clear across the roadway to the lowest section of the sky-scraping structure opposite. And then he pulled himself, from windowledge to windowledge up the first setback and disappeared.

  By the time Driscoll, Denham and the Commissioner had leaped out, the beast-god was swarming up the next setback.

  “Don’t shoot,” said the Commissioner. “He’s still got the girl.”

  There was no mistaking that. Ann rested in the arm Kong did not use for climbing.

  “Send some of those Tommy-guns up the elevators,” the Commissioner ordered. “He’ll never climb to the top. We’ll maybe catch him on the roof of one setback or another.”

  Driscoll struck down the Commissioner’s pointing arm.

  “You’ll never catch King Kong on any roof,” he cried furiously. “He’s going to the top of the mountain, I tell you.”

  “Easy, Jack,” Denham said.

  “It’s true. Look! There he goes up again.”

  Kong was so high now that his figure seemed smaller than that of a man, and still he climbed. A black silhouette against the chalky walls he drew himself from ledge to ledge until he rose into the bright flood lights which swept around the crest of the building and still he crawled.

  “That means the end of the girl,” the police sergeant said. “If we shoot him up there, she’s gone.”

  “Wait a minute,” Driscoll cried. “There’s one thing we haven’t tried.”

  The Commissioner looked at him.

  “The army planes,” Driscoll explained, “from Roosevelt Field. They might find a way to finish Kong off and leave Ann untouched.”

  “It’s a chance,” said the Commissioner. “Call the Field, Mr. O’Brien. Burn up the wires.”

  “I’m going up into the building,” Driscoll announced, loosening his collar. “I’ll take a try at Kong’s mountain myself.”

  “I’ll go along, Jack,” Denham offered.

  The Commissioner motioned to half a dozen police officers armed with sub-machine guns and they followed.

  “Let me take one of those things,” Driscoll demanded when they were inside the cool corridor of the building.

  The policeman caught a nod from his sergeant and handed the piece over.

  “I can use it,” Driscoll assured him. “Denham, tell him how good I am.”

  “The boy’s good,” Denham said. “Plenty good,” he added hoarsely.

  There was a fair delay after they got to the last elevator level. The keys to the door which led to the observation platform were missing and the custodian had to be found.

  “Listen!” Driscoll whispered.

  F
rom far off they heard the drone of a plane, of a squadron of planes.

  “The good old Army!” Denham said, trying to laugh.

  The planes came into sight, tipped with green and red lights, six of them, high in the air. They were far higher than the top of the skyscraper. They were so high that their red and green lights almost merged. One after another, they hurtled down beneath the stars.

  Kong roared overhead and the drum note of his fists rose to a wild tattoo.

  “We can see from here,” Driscoll said and led the way through a window to the farthest corner of the small roof which belonged to this topmost setback. Above them, on the ledge of the observation platform, Kong roared his challenge as the zooming ships swept down.

  Ann, in her shimmering white dress, lay between his solidly planted feet.

  The second plane had cut in close, obviously meaning to brush Kong with a wing tip. As the plane curved, its wing missed. It was Kong who struck the blow. His great paw swung out and struck. He staggered; but the plane, torn out of its path in the air, crashed down, bounded from the wall, and then spun out and down to the distant street. Halfway in its flight it burst into flames, and this illumined infinitesimal figures which swarmed around as the wreck struck.

  “They’re coming back,” Denham said. “The whole five are circling back.”

  “And this time,” Driscoll prophesied, “they’ll shoot. There’s room. When Kong rises to challenge and beat his breast Ann is so far below they can jump at his chest and not risk hitting her.”

  “About all we can do is pray, I guess,” said the sergeant.

  “You can pray if you like,” Driscoll told him. “But I’m going out. I can wait behind the door that goes out onto the platform. When Kong gets his, I want to be close.”

  Denham said nothing, but he followed; and so, after a short uncertainty, did the policeman.

  By the time Driscoll got to the door the planes were zooming back, and Kong was giving them his whole, infuriated attention. His great feet gripping the parapet, he flung his roaring defiance to the night wind.

  High up among the stars, the red and green lights of the leading plane twinkled, then suddenly rushed downward.

  Kong pounded his chest, stretched to his highest stature.

  Driscoll unlocked the door, opened it a crack and waited.

  The plane came down in a long swift slide. For a split second it seemed to poise, like a giant humming bird, in front of its beast adversary; then it curved upward and was away. But in the instant of pause its machine gun had poured lead into Kong’s breast.

  Driscoll, watching, could have sworn he saw the bullets jerk Kong’s coarse hair as they plunged into his heart. Kong staggered, and one lifted foot, brushing Ann, rolled her off the parapet back onto the roof space.

  Kong turned slowly, as though he meant to pick her up. His lifted foot settled back. He stooped, staring down at Ann with a puzzled, hurt look. He began to cough.

  From high in the night, the other planes swooped down. Kong’s challenge broke upon a harsh, rending cough, but he straightened to his greatest height and his drumming tattoo was as loud as ever.

  One after another the planes slid down, poised each for its successive murderous instant, and then curved away. The rattle of the successive machine guns grew louder over Kong’s tattooing. He swayed, and in spite of his gripping feet, began to topple.

  He fought to the end. With his last strength he leaped for the rearmost plane as it curved away. He missed, but his mighty spring carried him clear of the setbacks below, and out above the street. For a breath then, high above the civilization which had destroyed him, he hung in the same regal loneliness that had been his upon Skull Mountain Island. Then he plunged down in wreckage at the feet of his conquerors.

  Driscoll swept Ann into his arms.

  “Ann! Ann! You’re all right.”

  Ann lay against his breast crying in soft thankfulness.

  Denham and the sergeant leaned over the parapet.

  “Well!” said the policeman. “That was a sight. I never thought the aviators’d get him.”

  “The aviators didn’t get him,” Denham replied slowly.

  “What?”

  “It was Beauty. As always, Beauty killed the Beast.”

  The sergeant’s puzzled frown grew deeper.

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