Beware The Beasts Read Online Free PDF Page B

crouched in corners, and waited for him at the head of the stairs. Later he had tried to explain to friends the horrors that may lie in the concrete symbolisms and personifications of a cartoon if interpreted naively by a child, but had been unable to get his idea across.
    The conductor growled out the name of a downtown street, and once again he lost himself in the crowd, finding relief in the never-ceasing movement, the brushing of shoulders against his own. But as the time-clock emitted its delayed musical bong! and he turned to stick his card in the rack, the girl at the desk looked up and remarked, "Aren't you going to punch in for your dog, too?"
    "My dog?"
    "Well, it was there just a second ago. Came in right behind you, looking as if it owned you - I mean you owned it." She giggled briefly through her nose. "One of Mrs. Montmorency's mastiffs come to inspect conditions among the working class, I presume."
    He continued to stare at her blankly. "A joke," she explained patiently, and returned to her work.
    "I've got to get a grip on myself," he found himself muttering tritely as the elevator lowered him noiselessly to the basement.
    He kept repeating it as he hurried to the locker room, left his coat and lunch, gave his hair a quick careful brushing, hurried again through the still-empty aisles, and slipped in behind the socks-and-handkerchiefs counter. "It's just nerves. I'm not crazy. But I've got to get a grip on myself."
    "Of course you're crazy. Don't you know that talking to yourself and not noticing anybody is the first symptom of insanity?"
    Gertrude Rees had stopped on her way over to neckties. Light brown hair, painstakingly waved and ordered, framed a serious not-too-pretty face.
    "Sorry," he murmured. "I'm jittery." What else could you say? Even to Gertrude.
    She grimaced sympathetically. Her hand slipped across the counter to squeeze his for a moment.
    But even as he watched her walk away, his hands automatically setting out the display boxes, the new question was furiously hammering in his brain. What else could you say? What words could you use to explain it? Above all, to whom could you tell it? A dozen names printed themselves in his mind and were as quickly discarded.
    One remained. Tom Goodsell. He would tell Tom. Tonight, after the first-aid class.
    Stoppers were already filtering into the basement. "He wears size eleven, Madam? Yes, we have some new patterns. These are silk and lisle." But their ever-increasing numbers gave him no sense of security. Crowding the aisles, they became shapes behind which something might hide. He was continually peering past them. A little child who wandered behind the counter and pushed at his knee, gave him a sudden fright.
    Lunch came early for him. He arrived at the locker room in time, to catch hold of Gertrude Rees as she retreated uncertainly from the dark doorway.
    "Dog," she gasped. "Huge one. Gave me an awful start. Talk about jitters! Wonder where he could have come from? Watch out. He looked nasty."
    But David, impelled by sudden recklessness born of fear and shock, was already inside and switching on the light.
    "No dog in sight," he told her.
    "You're crazy. It must be there." Her face, gingerly poked through the doorway, lengthened in surprise. "But I tell you I - Oh, I guess it must have pushed out through the other door."
    He did not tell her that the other door was bolted.
    "I suppose a customer brought it in," she rattled on nervously. "Some of them can't seem to shop unless they've got a pair of Russian wolfhounds. Though that kind usually keeps out of the bargain basement. I suppose we ought to find it before we eat lunch. It looked dangerous."
    But he hardly heard her. He had just noticed that his locker was open and his overcoat dragged down on the floor. The brown paper bag containing his lunch had been torn open and the contents rummaged through, as if an animal had been nosing at it. As he stooped, he saw that there were greasy, black stains on