G.K. Chesterton

The Man Who Was Thursday

1908. Penguin, 1986.

He sprang over the tall railings almost with one swing. The others followed. They broke through a tangle of plants and shrubs, and came out on an open path. Nothing was in sight, but Dr. Bull suddenly struck his hands together. "Why, you asses," he cried, "it's the Zoo!"

Bull and a mixed posse are pursuing the diabolically clever Sunday, President of the Central Anarchist Council, determined to thwart his plot to destroy the world. 'Clean across the space of grass, about two hundred yards away, with a crowd screaming and scampering vainly at his heels, went a huge grey elephant at an awful stride...On the back of the bellowing and plunging animal sat President Sunday with all the placidity of a sultan, but goading the animal to a furious speed with some sharp object in his hand.' Once again the mastermind eludes them: 'the great grey elephant had broken out of the gates of the Zoological Gardens, and was careering down Albany Street like a new swift sort of omnibus'.