Page:Weird Tales Volume 9 Number 4 (1927-04).djvu/33

  "As Bonita pivoted toward us, something yellow and shiny slithered down from above on her shoulder." Weird Tales v09n04 - The Endocrine Monster.png

T WAS my usual mid-weekly visit to Dr. Wilkie's laboratory. For some reason a large and heavily barred animal cage had arrested my attention. Its sole inhabitant was a small guinea-pig.

"What's the idea of this big cage for a dinky guinea-pig?" I demanded promptly. "Going to make a lion out of him?"

Dr. Wilkie grinned. "Perhaps," he said. "As a matter of fact, the ordinary cages are not strong enough to hold Andy. That's what I call this chap. Just watch!"

He took an empty basket cage, the square kind with half-inch meshes of chicken-wire and open at the top, and dropped it into the barred cage, covering the guinea-pig. "Now watch Andy!"

Anyone who has ever watched guinea-pigs in a laboratory will have noticed the patience of these animals, which makes them such ideal subjects for experiments. They are passive and never show signs of fight. This Andy chap, however, was different, decidedly so. As soon as the basket cage fell over him, he reared up and began to claw the chicken-wire. To my amazement the wires bent and snapped like so many feeble threads. In scarcely ten seconds a rent was made, sufficiently large to permit Andy to pass through.

But Andy was not content with the opening. He turned to another spot and ripped and tore, then to still another point to repeat the performance. He tore and twisted with a quiet ferocity that was completely startling in a guinea-pig. In a short minute the basket cage was reduced to a mass of accordioned shreds.

After that he ran to the bars and began to nuzzle them.

"Good Lord!" I exclaimed, drawing back a bit. "He's—doctor, is he bending those bars? Or is my imagination making me think they are bending?" 463