The squad car found an opening and ploughed ahead to the Boys Gate. Eastman directed the car to the West Drive, and then realized that he didn't know where to go. To the left, a group of Puries ran by, brandishing shovels and axes. A moment later he recognized Converse. Eastman screamed at the cop driving the squad car to stop, but the cop's reaction was slow. By the time he got out, the Puries and Converse were both out of sight. He took three deep breaths, slowly, and then ran after them.
The snake crawled into a thicket and rested, its eyes fixed on the bobbing lights that had been clinging to it in pursuit. Suddenly, a light shone directly into its eyes, and behind the light the snake could make out a shadowy figure.
Bill Hextall, at the extreme right Hank of squad S, saw the snake when his flashlight beam reflected in its eyes. The snake, except for its head and neck, was hidden in brush. Hextall stared at the snake in fascination, then, as its head withdrew, let out a hoarse shout.
He saw the other members of the squad stop. He continued to shout until they started to run back toward him. He pointed toward the thicket where he had seen the snake, and half a dozen of them began to beat the area with their weapons. Then someone spotted it, gliding across an open area, speeding westward, where it disappeared into brush. Shouting, squad S took up the pursuit.
They picked up its trail again as it was crawling through the children's playground near the Boys Gate. It fled before them and ran through the opening into Central Park West.
Afterwards, in gloriously embroidered detail, a dozen or more citizens were to claim the honour of having been the first to see the snake slither out of the park and onto the pavement of Central Park West. Several others pinpointed the real discoverer as a well-dressed man wearing a pinstriped seersucker suit with shirt and tie, and a cocoa straw hat.
This man, who shouted in a strangulated voice described predictably by those who heard it as sounding like "a man having his throat cut," saw the snake reverse itself and curve back toward the shelter of the park retaining wall.
The commingled voices of the crowd, including those who never actually saw the snake themselves, combined overtones of fear, horror, terror, revulsion, triumph, and pure excitement. The more prudent among them pushed backwards; others poised themselves in a balance that would allow them to retreat if the snake came toward them; still others pressed forward. From north and south along Central Park West, new crowds of people, hearing the screams and shouts and sensing a denouement, converged on the scene.
Given the stifling heat and the bodily reaction to the release of their emotions, it was little wonder that everyone in the crowd was pouring sweat. The mingled odour of burned foliage and petroleum was suffocating, and massive clouds of smoke were drifting murkily across the leaden sky.
Into this scene, a cop, who had been directing traffic at an inter section, arrived with drawn gun. He stood well back from the snake, which was crawling along the base of the retaining wall, aimed at its elevated head, and pulled the trigger. The shot struck the stone wall a full foot to the left of the snake, ricocheted, and tore a hole in the door of an unoccupied car parked at the curb.
The snake swerved outward from the wall, and, with the crowd retreating before it, crawled toward the curb and ran up into the open door of a taxi which had just pulled up, and which contained a man and two women in its back seat.
Squad S poured out of the park behind Buck Pell.
The snake panicked in the close confines of the taxi, It struck out at the flailing legs, bit once, twice, a third time, perhaps the same leg. Then it succeeded in turning around, and it dropped to the pavement, already squirming forward, its whiplike tail following. It ran toward the entrance to the park, but there were many figures blocking its path. It changed direction to its left and the figures moved with it; to the right, and the figures moved with it. It stopped, piled its length into a coil, lifted its head hi, — hissed dryly, opened its mouth wide, and swayed menacingly.
The sound of the crowd carried into the park, and Eastman knew that the snake had been found. He lowered his head and ran, making outrageous demands on his heavy, out-of-shape body, grunting and sobbing as he fought for breath.
And if I have a stinking heart attack, he thought, there will be no in spector's funeral, just the ordinary burial of a fat cop who died rather normally in line of duty, and thank God for the pension, though it won't be enough to see the boys through college and so they'll drift into the NYPD, and start accumulating pensions of their own, which, God willing, they'll collect before they get so fat that they die in the simple act of running.
He heard the sound of a shot.
Converse had lagged behind the Puries, poking in some underbrush, when he heard the shot from outside the park. He began to run. By the time he burst out of the park, hurdling the stone wall, only dimly aware that the plodding figure he had passed was Eastman's, the snake was in the center of a ring of black-clad Puries, which in its turn was surrounded by a massed, concentric ring of onlookers.
Holding the Pilstrom tongs over his head, he strained to break through the crowd to the inner ring. Pushing, pleading, using his shoulders and elbows, he tried to make a passage for himself. Once, when he raised his head to take a deep breath, he caught a glimpse of Holly, her face pale, her body cramped by the press of other bodies.
"Close on in," Buck Pell shouted, "but slow, careful."
With their weapons extended, the Puries shuffled forward, contracting their circle. The snake turned its head to follow their movements, hissing, it’s anterior rigid and swaying, mouth wide open. Suddenly, as the ring pressed in, it began to crawl forward. The crowd gasped and re coiled. A Purie leaped forward, and, half running to keep pace with the snake's movement, smashed the flat side of his shovel down on its curving posterior quarter.
"Death to the Devil," he screamed.
Ile snake rolled over completely, writhing, coiling over on itself. A ragged cry rose from the crowd, half horror, half exultation. Writhing, knotted, the snake moved forward again, its shattered rear dragging behind.
Buck Pell signalled, and the Puries of squad S closed in, flailing downward with their weapons. The snake's head rose, and it launched a strike at a Purie that fell short. A swinging blow from a rake knocked the snake flat.
Its body squirming, knotting, it tried to right itself. The head came up, but a second blow struck it to the ground, bleeding. It flopped over on its back, and its light underside was turned up before it succeeded in righting itself. As it started to crawl forward, Buck Pell went to meet it, an axe raised high over his head. He braced himself, and brought the bright axhead down in a gleaming arc. Sparks flew from the pavement, and a chip, white at its edges, flew off into the crowd. The snake's head was severed just behind the neck. Near it, the long body, oozing blood, pulsed and shuddered and writhed.
Converse was still struggling against the density of the crowd when he saw the axhead flash upward and then down. He heard the thud and ring of the axe, and, from the crowd, a concerted gasp like a sudden gust of wind. At the same time, whether in awe or revulsion or both, the crowd eddied back, flowed around him, and he stood at the forefront. The black mamba's head and writhing body lay on the blood smeared pavement, no more than six inches apart, but grotesquely out of line with each other.