CHAPTER XVI
Admitted
O’HARA stepped up and, grasping the elaborate iron scroll-work, shook the gate angrily.
“Here, you,” he cried, “if this is the city zoo, what do you mean by letting your ferocious baboons and gorillas roam the country at large?”
The guardian of the gate, he who had opened it for the ape’s entrance and closed it in the face of its pursuer, made no reply, unless an incoherent mutter could be so accounted.
He seemed a tall, thin man, dressed in rough corduroys, and his narrow, triangular face peered out at Colin through the floral scrolls with a curiously furtive looks. Colin could see him very well by the light of the road-lamp, and thought that his face had a whiteness, as if the man had been badly frightened, or was just risen from a sick bed.
“What’s that?” d
