CHAPTER IXThe Furry Mime
“Listen,boys,” said Dr. Tyler, after he had removed the skin of the ape, and for a few brief seconds had examined the brain, to shake his head in astonishment. “I’ve an idea that may help you. It would be impossible for you, Bentley, to play the ape well enough to fool this mad Mind Master. But a hitherto unknown type of ape has just been discovered in Colombia. I read the story of it in a scientific journal to-day. The ape is more manlike than any other known to science. You shall be that ape, brought in during the night by a famous returned explorer. There will be great interest in you now that the story of Saret Balisle’s kidnaping has broken. With the attention of New York upon you, certainly your presence will interest Caleb Barter.”
Tyler senior rummaged in a pile of papers on his desk and brought forth the story he referred to, which also carried a picture of the Colombian ape.244
“It would be impossible for me to change your shape and add to your size sufficiently to make you a real giant anthropoid. You’d have to be twice as deep through the chest; you’d have to have bowed legs as big as small tree trunks; you’d have to have a sloping forehead. No, it’s impossible, for I’d have to equip you by padding to an impossible degree, and a scientist would only need to touch you to know you as an imitation ape. But if you are made up as the Colombian ape––”
Bentley quickly interrupted.
“The idea is excellent. I was dubious before about my chances of success, but as an ape of a new species I have a far better chance, and my inevitable human behavior won’t be so noticeable.”
Dr. Tylermeasured Bentley as carefully as a tailor, proud of his skill, measures a particular, wealthy customer.
“You will almost suffocate,” he said, keeping up a runningmonologueas his inspired hands worked with forceps and scalpels, “but I can make plenty of air vents in the ape skin which will allow the pores of your skin to breathe. If they are hidden under the hair they will scarcely be noticed, unless of course Barter sees what we are doing here and suspects from the beginning.”
“I can stand the discomfort for as long as may prove necessary,” said Bentley grimly, conquering a feeling of terror as he already saw himself in the role of an ape, a role previously played in which he had suffered the torments of the damned, “and anything is preferable to the wholesale carnage which Barter is doing. In seventy-two hours he has wrecked the morale of Manhattan. I shall try to get it back. Tyler, will you make every effort to guard the other eighteen men named on the Mind Master’s original list?”
“Of course,” but Tyler said it dubiously. Barter had proved it almost impossible to outwit him. In their hearts both Bentley and Tyler knew that Barter would make good his boast to take the eighteen men he had named. It seemed a grim price Manhattan must pay to be finally rid of Barter’s satanic machinations.
When Bentley, stripped naked, quietly announced his readiness to take his place on the operating table, Tyler senior took a deep breath, like a diver preparing to plunge into icy water, and looked questioningly at Bentley.
“I’m ready, sir,” said Bentley quietly. “Let’s get on with the task.”
Dr. Tyler set to work with amazing, uncanny speed. He had never been more skilful in closing sutures of the flesh in any of his myriad of operations. He was a man inspired as he labored on the task of changing Lee Bentley from a normal human being to a Colombian ape.
Whilethe surgeon worked his son telephoned to the Colombian explorer whose return from Latin-America had been mentioned in the day’s news. He couldn’t explain anything over the telephone, he said, but would Doctor Jackson come at once to the private offices of James Tyler, surgeon?
Doctor Jackson grumbled, but the urgency in the voice of Tyler convinced him that the thing was important. He promised to be on hand within an hour. It then lacked a few minutes of three o’clock in the morning.
Next at Bentley’s suggestion––and he talked quickly and eagerly to keep his mind off the ordeal he knew he was facing––Tyler got the curator of the Bronx Zoo out of bed and asked him to wait upon Doctor Tyler immediately.
At four o’clock Doctor Jackson and the curator entered the room where Surgeon Tyler had performed a miracle.245
Doctor Jackson stepped back in amazement when he noted the manlike ape which leaned with arms folded against one wall of the operating room. His eyes were big with amazement.
He studied Bentley for several minutes, while no one spoke a word.
It was the curator who broke the strained silence.
“So this is your Colombian ape,” he said. “I read the news story, but I understood that the ape you had found had been killed in the attempt to capture it.”
Surgeon Tyler spoke easily.
“That news story,” he said, “was to prevent Doctor Jackson from being annoyed by visitors eager to see his find. As a matter of sober fact Doctor Jackson captured the Colombian ape alive and is now about to turn it over to the zoo. Understand me, Doctor Jackson?”
Stillthe explorer said nothing. For a moment longer he stared at Bentley; then he walked over to him.
“The hair is different,” he said as though talking to himself. “The Colombian ape’s hair is of a slightly finer texture. But that could be explained away as I allowed only the merest bit of information to the reporters to-day. I can add a supplementary story in the next newspaper which will explain that the coarse fur of the Colombian ape is the only thing about it which makes it resemble a giant anthropoid.”
Jackson had walked to Bentley without fear and ran his fingers through the hair as he spoke.
“I know it’s a man, and some surgeon has performed a miracle,” he said. “Just what is it you wish me to do?”
“You’ve read the stories relating to the Mind Master, Doctor?” asked Bentley suddenly. How strangely his voice came from the body of an ape!
“I’ve read some of them,” answered Jackson. “Is this a scheme whereby you hope to trap the Mind Master?”
“Yes.”
“Then depend upon me for any assistance I can render. As a scientist I understand fully the power for evil of a mad genius of our class. This Mind Master should be ruthlessly destroyed.”
“Thank you,” said Bentley, stepping forward. “You know, perhaps, how the Colombian ape behaves, enough that you can coach me how to walk, how to gesture?”
“Certainly. It will take perhaps an hour to prepare you to fill your role creditably.”
Jackson’sface flushed with enthusiasm. He was launched on a task which fired his interest. He was an authority on apes and anything relating to them inspired him.
“Seat yourself on a chair,” said Jackson. “The Colombian ape sits upright like a man.”
Bentley seated himself as Jackson had bidden him.
“Now spread your legs apart awkwardly, with the knees straight. The Colombian ape doesn’t exactly sit on a chair or a rock or a tree, he leans against it in ahalfsitting position.”
Bentley quickly assumed the awkward strained position suggested by Jackson.
Jackson stepped up to him and placed Bentley’s arms, unbent, so that his fists hung down outside his wide-apart knees, and cupped his fingers so that they seemed perpetually in the act of closing on something.
“You can’t possibly take the proper position with your toes,” went on Jackson, “for it’s beyond a man’s ability to curve his toes as he does his hands. The Colombian ape’s toes are prehensile.”
“Can’t you say in your next news story, Doctor,” suggested Bentley, “that the Colombian ape, the nearest246animal relative of man, seems to be in an advanced stage of evolution. Can you not say that the Colombian ape is by way of losing the use of his toes?”
“Many scientists know that to be untrue,” said Jackson, “but perhaps we can help you through your scheme before they begin denying details in the newspapers. Too bad we can’t send secret suggestions to all anthropologists that they remain discreetly silent until the mantle of horror is lifted from Manhattan. But of course we can’t, since we’d betray ourselves. Our only hope, then, is to work at top speed.”
“I am as eager as anyone to finish a particularly horrible task,” said Bentley.
UnderJackson’s instructions Bentley walked up and down the room. His shaggy shadow on the several walls as he turned, marched and countermarched at Jackson’s commands, filled Bentley with self-loathing. He found himself repulsive. His body perspired freely impregnating the ape skin with a harsh odor that was biting and terrible in his nostrils. It was sickening. He tried to close his mind to the repulsiveness of what he was doing.
He walked with a swaying, side-to-side gait, something like a sailor’s rolling walk, while his arms swung free at his sides as though they merely hung from his body. The Colombian ape walked like that, Jackson said.
“How about the intelligence of the Colombian ape?” asked Bentley.
“We shot the only specimen so far seen by man before we could discover any facts bearing on his intelligence,” said Jackson.
“Then you can safely say that he possesses intelligence far beyond that of known apes,” said Bentley quickly, “somewhere, let us say, between that of the lowest order of mankind and civilized man.”
Jackson nodded his held dubiously.
“It seems,” he said unsmilingly, “that I arrived in the United States at exactly the right time! You would have failed signally to convince the Mind Master in the role of an African great ape.”
Bentley managed a short laugh. How horribly it came from the lips of an ape!
“I’m not overly superstitious,” he said, “but I regard this as a good omen. I feel we’re sure to succeed in what we are planning. I think Barter will surely wish to experiment with me if he thinks I am in reality a great ape from Colombia. He’ll welcome the chance to examine any ape which so nearly resembles man. I’m an important link in his plan to create a race of supermen. At least that’s how we must hope that Barter will estimate the situation when my story is told in to-morrow’s papers.”
Anhour before dawn Doctor Jackson, weary from his arduous instruction of the equally exhausted Bentley, pronounced Lee a satisfactory “ape.”
“Now here’s where you come in,” said Bentley tiredly to the curator. “I’m to be taken now to a cage in the Bronx. During the rest of to-day you will quietly instruct your attendants that their guard to-night at the zoo must not be too strict. I must be in position to be stolen by the minions of the Mind Master.”
Now the full significance of the desperate expedition upon which Bentley was embarking came home to them all. Their faces were white. Bentley shuddered under his ape robe. His mind went catapulting back into the past to the time when he had been Manape. This was much like it, save that all of him was now encased in the accouterments of an ape and he did not suffer the mental hazards which had almost driven him insane when he had been Manape, with the247perpetual necessity of keeping close watch over his own human body which had held the brain of an ape.
He stiffened. “I’m ready,” he said.
Immediately upon arrival the curator had been asked to have a closed car, quickly walled with a mixture of lead and zinc––which Bentley and Tyler hoped would thwart the spying of Caleb Barter––brought to Tyler’s door.
Three or four zoo attendants entered with a cage when Bentley pronounced himself ready. They stared agape at Bentley and their faces went white when he strode toward them upright, like a man.
Bentley would have spoken to reassure them, but Tyler signaled him to keep silent. The zoo attendants might talk and entirely spoil their scheme.
Twohours later, long before the first crowds began to arrive at the Bronx Zoo, Lee Bentley was driven from his small cage in the car, into a huge cage at the zoo. From a dark corner, in which he crouched as though overcome with fear, he gazed affrightedly out across what he could see of Bronx Park.
“When I used to feed the animals here,” he said to himself, “I never expected that the time would come when I myself would be caged––and one of them.”
The curator had ridden out with the cage. But, save for making sure of the fastening on the big cage, he paid no heed to Bentley. He treated him, of necessity, as though he were actually the Colombian ape he pretended to be. From now on until he succeeded or failed, Lee Bentley was an ape from the jungles of Latin-America.
Just before the crowds could reasonably be expected to begin arriving, curious to see this strange thing Doctor Jackson had brought from Colombia, an attendant arrived with a freshly painted sign.
“Colombian Great Ape,” it read, “Presented to Bronx Zoo by Doctor Claude Jackson.”
It seemed to close entirely behind Lee Bentley the vast door which separated the apes from civilization. Miserably he crouched in his corner and awaited the coming of the curious.
CHAPTER XGrim Anticipation
A numbingfear began to grow upon Lee Bentley as the ordeal of waiting began.
Naturally he could not eat the food given usually to apes and of course he could not be seen calmly eating bacon and eggs with knife and fork. And because he couldn’t eat he was assailed by a dreadful hunger, which, however, he managed to fight down partially. He smiled inwardly as he looked ahead and understood that despite the warnings not to feed the animals, children of all ages, from four years to sixty, would surreptitiously toss peanuts and walnuts into his cage.
He felt a little hopeful about it. They would at least allay his hunger.
But no, he could not do that, either. Nobody had thought to ask Doctor Jackson how a Colombian ape manipulated his food. Even a certain clumsiness in that respect might start questions which would cause the public to doubt the authenticity of Jackson’s find.
Bentley decided to sulk. The ape he was supposed to be could reasonably be expected to resent captivity and would probably go on a hunger strike. He would do likewise and be in character if he starved.
He crouched in a far corner as the first comers began to arrive. They were fathers and mothers with their children, and the older people carried, usually, newspapers under their arms. Bentley wished with all his soul that he could see one of the248papers close enough to read the headlines.
However, when the crowd was not too thick, Bentley waddled nearer to the wire mesh which separated him from the curious crowd and through lids which were half closed as though he slept, he managed to glimpse a few excerpts from the paper:
“Police department redoubling their precautions to prevent Mind Master from capturing eighteen intended victims.”
“Hideout of Mind Master still undiscovered. When will the public be delivered from the stupidity of the police?”
“Doctor Jackson returns from Colombia, bringing a living specimen of an ape hitherto unknown to civilized man, but more like him than any ape hitherto known. Visitors may see the creature to-day in the Bronx Zoo.”
Thatwas the story which had brought out the visitors who were forming, moment by moment, a bigger crowd before Bentley’s cage. Bentley managed a glimpse of a woman’s wrist-watch after what seemed an age of trying to do so without his intention becoming plain to the too bright children who crowded as close to the cage as attendants would permit. It was ten o’clock. It would be at least twelve more hours before Bentley could reasonably expect any action on the part of Barter. Barter would now be concentrating on his plans to kidnap the eighteen men he had first named.
Bentley tried to make the time pass faster by imagining what Barter would be doing. By now his labors must be titanic. He must have separate controls for each of his minions, and there were many times when he must control several at one time, thus making his task akin to that of a man trying to look two ways at once, while he rolled a cigarette with one hand and shined his shoes with the other. Certainly the concentration required was enormous.
Yet, no matter how complicated became his puzzle, Barter was its master because he was its creator, and Bentley hadn’t the slightest doubt that, until someone actually penetrated Barter’s stronghold, he would not be stopped.
Bentley knew that at the very first opportunity he would destroy Caleb Barter as he would have destroyed a mad dog or stamped to death a deadly snake. The life of one man would rest lightly upon his conscience, if that man were Caleb Barter.
Perhaps, though, he could learn many of Barter’s secrets before he destroyed him. Properly used they might prove boons to mankind. It was only the use Barter was putting them to that threatened to fill the world with horror and bloodshed.
“Mama,why don’t he eat?”
“Hush,” said a woman, as though afraid the Colombian ape would hear and become angry; “don’t annoy the creature. He looks fully capable of coming right out at us.”
But the child who had been admonished began to juggle a bag of peanuts which he managed to throw into the cage. Bentley stooped forward, sniffing suspiciously at the sack, while a wave of hunger made him feel weak and giddy for a moment. He just realized that he hadn’t eaten for almost twenty-four hours. His time had been so filled with action and excitement that there hadn’t been opportunity.
“I hope,” he said to himself, in an effort to drive away thoughts of food, “that Tyler will take every precaution to prevent Ellen from doing something foolish.”
Knowing that he could no longer communicate with her, could no longer be absolutely sure that she was still out of Barter’s clutches, he249suffered agonies of fear for her safety.
“If Barter places a hand on her I’ll tear his skin from his carcass, bit by bit!” he said, unconsciously clenching his fists.
“Oh, look, mama, he’s shuttin’ his fists as though he wanted to fight somebody! I’ll bet he could whip Dempsey, couldn’t he, mama?”
“Perhaps he could, son. Hush now, and watch him. There’s a good boy!”
It brought Bentley sharply back to his surroundings and proved to him that he must not allow his mind to go wool-gathering if he did not wish to give himself away. What if, in an access of anger, he happened to speak his thoughts aloud? He could imagine the amazement of the crowd.
Theday wore on.
At noon a strange horror seemed to travel over the Bronx Zoo, and within a short time every last visitor had precipitately departed. Bentley could now safely approach the wire mesh and look out and around over a wider radius.
Right under the wire mesh was a newspaper someone had thrown away.
By pressing tightly against the mesh Bentley could see the headlines.
“Mind Master successful on all counts!”
So that’s what had turned the crowd to stony silence with very fear? They had all fled, wondering who would be next. Bentley had heard the shouting of the extra on the distant streets, but it had been so far away he hadn’t heard the words. One solitary newspaper had appeared among the Bronx crowd and the story it carried under startling scareheads had passed from brain to brain as though by magic ... and the crowd had fled.
Bentley stared down at the newspaper in horror, a horror that was in no way mitigated by his having fully expected Barter to succeed. Mutually, with no words having been spoken to express the thought, Tyler and Bentley had conceded to Barter the eighteen victims he had named.
Nothing could be done to stop him. His brains were greater than the combined wisdom of the city of New York.
What else was in that paper?
Bentley stared at it for an hour, and finally a vagrant breeze, for which he had hoped and prayed during that hour, whipped across the park and stirred the paper. He read more headlines.
“Lee Bentley disappears! Believed kidnaped or slain by Mind Master!”
How had that story got out? Surely Tyler would have kept that from the press. Following on the heels of the Colombian ape story, Barter would almost surely put two and two together to arrive at the proper total.
Bentleyread on:
“Ellen Estabrook, fiancée of Lee Bentley, disappears mysteriously from her hotel room. Guarded by a score of police, not one has yet been found who knows anything of her disappearance or saw her leave. Nobody seems to have seen anyone go to her room or leave it. Our police department must have fallen on evil days indeed when twenty crack plain-clothes men cannot keep one woman under surveillance.”
Something was radically wrong, but Bentley could not piece the whole story together, simply because he had been out of touch for so many hours that the thread of it had slipped from his fingers.
Suddenly Bentley noticed that a solitary man was watching him curiously, a dawning amazement in his face. Bentley roused himself and saw that he was standing against the mesh, fingers hooked into it above his head, his weight on his left leg, his right foot crossed over his left, his head thoughtfully bowed.250
To the amazed man yonder the “Colombian ape” must have looked remarkably like a condemned man clutching the bars of his cell, awaiting the coming of the executioner.
Bentley recovered himself and sat down on the floor of the cage in the loose easy manner an ape would have used.
He forced himself to sit thus until evening, when the last curious one vanished from the park and darkness began to fall.
Then excitement at the approach of a hoped for denouement began to rise in his heart like a rushing tide.
Would Barter fall for the ruse? Or did he already know that the Colombian ape was Lee Bentley?
In either case, Bentley thought, the Mind Master would take action during the first hours of darkness. Bentley was gambling desperately on what he knew to be characteristic of Caleb Barter.
CHAPTER XIIn the Dead of Night
Bentleyknew that if Ellen were in the hands of Caleb Barter the mad professor would probably do her no harm, but use her as a club against Bentley, and through Bentley, the Manhattan police. He did not believe that the Mind Master would consider performing the brain operation on Ellen. Caleb Barter’s scheme seemed to consider only men, and men of substance.
No, Ellen would not be harmed, he felt, but that made him feel no easier, knowing that she might be in the hands of Barter.
How could he know of Naka Machi, and the refined vengeance of the Mind Master?
The last visitors had left the park and comparative quiet settled over the zoo. Save for the sounds of animals feeding and the occasional cursing voices of attendants there were no sounds. Not since Bentley had taken his place in the cage had anyone spoken to him. He had never felt so lonely and uncertain in his life.
Now there was utter darkness and silence.
And then before his cage appeared a tiny spot of light. If Barter’s minions expected to deal with a powerful ape they would come prepared to subdue him by whatever means seemed necessary. Bentley had no wish to be injured, and yet he must make some show of resistance in order to allay any possible suspicion that hewishedto be stolen.
There was a faint gnawing sound at the wire outside the cage. Mice might have made that sound, sharpening their teeth on the wire. Bentley decided to feign sleep. Had Barter come personally to supervise his capture? That didn’t seem reasonable as Barter must realize that all his effectiveness depended upon his ability to retain control of whatever organization he might have built up––and his central control must be his hideout.
Then he would be sending some of his puppets to get Bentley.
Would they be apes with man’s brains? Impossible. Apes could not travel from place to place without attracting attention, especially if they traveled unguarded and went casually to a given destination as men would go. So, if his puppets were not men in the normal meaning, then they were “apemen.”
Thewire came softly down. Bentley hoped that no attendant might come blundering around now to spoil everything. His heart pounded with excitement.
At last he was going to see Caleb Barter again at close quarters.
“I shall destroy him,” he told himself.
The shadowy outlines of two men came through the severed wires. Bentley still pretended to be asleep. He wondered if Barter’s televisory251equipment included any arrangements permitting him to see in the dark, and knew instantly that it did. How else could these two puppets have come so unerringly to the proper cage in Bronx Park?
No, Bentley did not dare allow himself to be taken easily in the hope that his actions would pass unnoticed.
But he waited until the ropes began to fall about him, testing the strength of his adversaries by mental measurement. By their uncertain, hesitating actions he knew that he dealt only with theformsof men––forms which were ruled by brains which had not in themselves intelligence enough to perform the acts they were now performing. Ape brains in the skull-pans of men. The brains in themselves were only important because they were living matter which was being used as a sensory sounding board by which Caleb Barter, the Mind Master, transmitted his commands to the arms and legs and bodies of his puppets.
Bentley sprang into action. He growled and snarled at the two men who were trying to take him. Only two men? Surely Barter would have sent more than two men to take a great ape! He knows I’m not a true ape, thought Bentley. He’s giving me a challenge. He knows I wish to get to his hideout and he is making sure that I get there.
But Bentley was only guessing. Calmness descended upon him as he realized that he was soon to face a crucial test.
Justnow, however, he struck out at the two men who were striving to bind him. They were husky chaps, and one of them packed the wallop of a real fighter. Neither man said a word to him, and when his own hands clawed at them––how would he dare strike out with his fists?––the men made queer animal sounds in their throats. Bentley could well remember how helpless, hopeless and lost he had felt when his brain had been in the skull-pan of Manape.
The brain of an ape could not be a terribly intelligent instrument in the first place. What thoughts, if apes had thoughts at all, coursed through an ape brain which found itself inside a human skull?
The answer to that was simple: only such thoughts as Barter originated and transmitted through the mental sounding board. After all, the material of the human brain and the ape brain were perhaps very much alike, and Barter was working on a sound scientific principle in making a sounding board of an ape’s brain.
Bentley shuddered through the fur that covered him. Knowing the sort of creatures with which he had to deal––men in all things save their intelligence––made him tremble with nausea. Such grim, ghastly hybrids. But he stopped shuddering when he recalled that he still dealt with men after all––at least with one man, Caleb Barter. When he thought of these two “apemen” as separate entities of a human being of many personalities––Caleb Barter––he was able to plan some method by which to deal with them.
So now he fought, seemingly with the utmost savagery, to keep them from binding him with ropes. Even as he fought, however, he fancied he could hear the grim chuckling of Caleb Barter. What did Barter know?
Bentley knew that eventually he would discover the truth.
Instruggling against the two “men” his hands encountered the knobs on their heads––the tiny metal balls protruding from the top of the skull at the point where, in babies, the head remains soft during babyhood. He could have broken connection with Barter for these two by jerking the controls free. And then what? He would never get through to Barter and would release in Bronx252Park two men whose strange type of madness, when they were discovered, would startle the countryside. Two men with the savagery of anthropoid apes! He shuddered as he carefully refrained from disturbing those balls.
At last Bentley was quite securely bound, only his lower limbs remaining free so that he could walk, though the length of his steps was strictly limited. His hands were entirely and securely bound, and the significance of this fact did not escape him. Barter knew that he did not need his hands to aid him in walking! Of course the newspaper story released by Doctor Jackson had reported the Colombian ape as being able to walk exactly like a man.
But that didn’t prevent Bentley from nursing the suspicion that Barter alreadyknew. Even if he did, it could in no wise alter the determination of Bentley. His task was to penetrate the hideout of Barter––and he was on the way there now.
Withlittle attempt at concealment the two men led Bentley to a long black closed car outside the park. They met no one. The two men avoided discovery with uncanny ease. Bentley thrilled with excitement. He felt he knew approximately where Barter’s hideout was.
It was useless, to speculate, however; time would show it to him.
Bentley was tossed into the tonneau of the car. His two captors, moving with the precision of men in a trance, took their places in the front seat. Bentley struggled for a time against his bonds. He wanted to sit up and peer out, to see what way they took so that he would know where he was when he reached Barter’s hideout. But of course, even if he shook his bonds free he did not dare rise to a sitting position, for to control the intricate handling of his two puppets, Barter’s attention must have been pretty carefully fixed upon this car.
So Bentley contented himself with waiting.
Lying on his back on the floor of the car he tried to see what he could through the car windows. He knew when he was carried under an elevated system by the crashing roar of trains over his head. He knew he was being carried downtown, but he wasn’t sure that this was the Sixth Avenue elevated.
How could he find out the road they were traveling without sitting up and looking at street signs?
Hefelt he didn’t dare do that. He’d be as careful as possible on the off-chance that Barter really believed him a Colombian ape, when the benefit of surprise would be with Bentley.
The car progressed downtown at a normal speed. It stopped for red lights and obeyed all other traffic regulations. Barter was taking no chance on losing more of his puppets.
Bentley suddenly gasped with horror as he remembered something. Eighteen important men of Manhattan had been kidnaped that day by Caleb Barter. Would Bentley be forced to watch the mad professor perform the eighteen inevitable operations?
Perspiration poured from every pore as he visualized the horror he might be compelled to witness when he was finally taken into Barter’s hideout. The ape skin clung to him as though it were actually his own. There were even moments when Bentley feared that it might grow to him.
But he put the feeling of horror from him with the thought that if Ellen were in Barter’s power, Barter might even be forcing her to anesthetize for him while he performed his grisly slaughter.
Bentley’s courage returned and now it seemed to him that the journey would never end, so eager was253he to discover whether or not Ellen had eluded the hands of the Mind Master.
CHAPTER XIIA Woman of Courage
Caleb Bartersmiled warmly at the woman who had come to him almost as though in answer to a prayer. He admired her flashing eyes and the lifted chin which spoke of pride and courage.
“I had thought of improving the feminine strain of the race also,” he told her, but almost as though he spoke to himself, “but I realized that it mattered little the stature of the mothers of the race as long as the fathers were made virile. But if all women were like yourself, Miss Estabrook, the race would not require the improvement it is now my duty to bestow upon it.”
Ellen stared directly into the eyes of the white-haired old man. As she looked at him she found it hard to believe that one so gentle from outward appearances had such a vast, grim power for evil. In repose his face was kindly, though there was something out of character in the fact that it was so apple rosy. And his lips were far too red.
“Where,” she said quietly, fearlessly, “is Lee Bentley?”
Barter raised his eyebrows as he stared back at her. So far she had not looked around at this great room into which he had had her conducted; she had seemed interested only in her mission, whatever that might be.
“You mean that delightfully rude young man?” he asked sardonically.
“You know well enough whom I mean! Where is he?”
“Then he is not to be found in his usual haunts?”
“He has disappeared.”
“And you come out seeking Professor Barter because Bentley his disappeared! It is almost as though you had previously arranged with him to come seeking me if, at a certain time he failed to return from some mysterious rendezvous....”
Barter’sface was now a mask of uncanny shrewdness. In a few words he had pierced through Ellen’s secret of why she had deliberately placed herself in the way of Barter’s minions in order to be taken, and now he had used the words of her own questions to form a weapon against her. Ellen gasped in terror.
Had she made a hideous mistake? Had she, by failing to wait for word from Bentley, ruined all his well laid plans?
Barter now stood before her, his eyes almost shooting fire.
“Tell me quickly,” he began, and for a second she thought he would put his hands on her, “what sort of plan is he making to betray me into the hands of my enemies, who are the enemies of super-civilization because they are my enemies?”
“I know of nothing,” said Ellen stoutly, hoping that she had not, after all, betrayed the fact that she knew Bentley had started to work out an unusual scheme. The details she didn’t know, for Lee hadn’t told her. “But I do know, what all the world knows, that he was helping the police against you. Naturally, then, when he vanished I thought of you. Besides you had already warned him that you would remove him in your own good time. He caused you the loss of two of your puppets and I thought, naturally enough, that you would try to remove him to some place where he could not operate so successfully against you.”
“That’s all?” queried Barter eagerly. “You don’t know of some special scheme that has been worked out to trap me?”
“I know of no scheme. Now that I am in your hands, Professor, what do you intend doing with me?”
Barter stared at Ellen for several minutes.254
“I haven’t captured Bentley ... yet,” he said at last, slowly, “but I shall––no doubt about that. It is inevitable––as inevitable as Caleb Barter. I can use him in my labors for humanity. How I treat him after he is taken depends somewhat on you. You may therefore consider yourself a sort of hostage. I have much medical work to perform. Have you ever been a nurse?”
Ellenrecoiled in horror. “You don’t mean you would ask me to help you perform those horrible––” She stopped abruptly before her sudden tendency to hysterics should make her say things to anger Barter too far.
“So,” he said quickly, “you think my brain operations are horrible, eh? Well, you shall see that they are not horrible; that Professor Barter, the greatest scientist the world has ever produced, is really preparing to prevent civilization from utterly decaying.”
“And afterward?” asked Ellen. “I know that eventually you will be taken and that the people will destroy you, tear you limb from limb. But you will never believe that. Tell me, then, what you plan to do with me.”
For a brief time he considered the matter.
“I am an old man,” he said at last, musingly, “but I am young in spirit and in body. It would be amusing to have a mate––but no, no, that would not do! The destiny of Caleb Barter is not linked with a woman. You would simply hold me back. However, I have often been interested in miscegenation and its effect on the race if properly guided. My assistant Naka Machi, is one of the finest specimens of his race. Perhaps I shall arrange for you to mate with him, under conditions which I shall dictate, in order to experiment with your offspring....”
Ellen swayed, her face going dead white. She hadn’t yet met Naka Machi, but his name told her enough. The thought of a Japanese, however, was far less repellent than the cold, calm way in which Barter spoke of using the offspring of such a union.
“I’ll kill myself at the first opportunity,” said Ellen suddenly.
Barterput his forefinger under Ellen’s chin in a paternal fashion. His eyes looked deeply into hers. She thought of what his fingers had done in the past ... those long slender fingers. His touch made her shudder.
But his eyes held her. They seemed like deep wells. Then they were like black coals advancing upon her out of the darkness, growing bigger and bigger as they came, with little flames in their centers also growing as they approached.
“You will submit your will to mine,” said the soft voice of Caleb Barter.
His right hand was making swift snakelike movements back of Ellen’s head. His voice droned on, but already it seemed to Ellen to come from a vast distance.
“Your mind will be concerned only with the welfare of Caleb Barter,” droned on the voice. “You will think only of Caleb Barter; your greatest desire will be to serve him. There is nothing you would not do for him. Let your objective mind sleep until Caleb Barter wakens it; give your subjective mind into my keeping.”
Beads of perspiration broke out on the cheeks of Caleb Barter as he worked quickly to place the girl entirely under his skilled hypnosis. At last she stood like a statue, her wide-open eyes staring into space, straight ahead. She did not move. She scarcely seemed to breathe.
“You will know that my home is your home, Ellen,” said Barter softly. “You will feel that you are welcome here and that you love this place. It needs the attention of a loving woman;255you will give it that attention. But you will be subservient always to my will. You will enter upon your duties.”
Ellen Estabrook sighed softly as though with relief. Her hands went up to remove her hat, which she placed on a chair in a corner of the hellish laboratory. She removed her light coat and arranged her hair with skilled fingers. But even as she moved around the room of the long table her eyes stared vacantly into space. She was as much a puppet of Caleb Barter as were Stanley, Morton and Cleve. But, mercifully, she did not know it.
Barterstudied her for several moments; his eyes squinted. He was making sure that she was not duping him with pretense. Satisfied at last be turned his eyes away from her. He stepped to the porcelain slab set in the bronze wall of his laboratory and looked at the push-buttons marked “C-3” and “E-5”. The red lights were on, indicating that the two puppets controlled by these two keys were returning toward their master. The lights had been green when Barter had begun his conversation with Ellen Estabrook, indicating that the two puppets were still going away. With a tremendous effort of will he had given them sufficient mental stimulus to keep them traveling without his direct will for the few minutes he would require for Ellen.
Now, however, he quickly donned the metal cap and the little ball, and inserted into the orifice in his cap the swinging key which connected by chain with the key which fitted into the slot under the button marked “C-3”.
He had returned to his puppets just in time. “C-3” was Cleve, who was driving the car sent out to bring in the Colombian ape. As Barter got in touch with the car it narrowly averted a crash with a police car ... and the perspiration broke forth afresh on the body of Barter as he resumed control of his puppets.
The second creature, in the front seat of the car, was Morton, and it didn’t matter particularly about him as he was not driving. But Morton was now becoming all ape. Barter did not wish to use any more of his mental energy than was necessary. He contented himself by sending his will into Cleve, who began at once to drive like a master. Whenever Morton, beside him, showed an inclination to jump out of the car or otherwise interfere with Cleve in his work, Barter had but to express the thought, and Cleve either pulled him back to his place beside him, or gave him a walnut from his pocket.
Bartercould as easily have had them change places, since he assumed control of either at will, or could have controlled a score simultaneously. But that would have required additional thought stimulus, and he wished to conserve his mental energies for the work which yet faced him.
Once he switched his attention from the heliotube which controlled Cleve––and through which, concurrently, he saw everything that transpired near Cleve, because his televisory apparatus and his radio control were co-workers on almost identical vibratory waves––to the area of Manhattan immediately surrounding his own neighborhood.
“Hmm,” he said to himself, “the police are getting too close. As soon as I have completed my labors to-night I shall destroy some of them as a warning to others to keep their distance.”
Morton and Cleve drew up to the curb while Barter watched carefully on all sides, through the heliotube, to make sure that their arrival was unmarked by the police.
They climbed out quickly and raced across the sidewalk to the256green gate which gave on a gloomy old court, inside which they were swallowed by the shadows from all eyes save those of Caleb Barter.
Five minutes after the strange trio had entered the “place,” the great chrome-steel door of Barter’s laboratory swung open.
“Morton and Cleve, my master,” announced Naka Machi, bowing low and sucking in his breath with a hissing sound.
Barter’s own puppets entered with the ape between them.
Barter walked fearlessly forward. He had slipped the key from the orifice atop his head. Morton and Cleve now stood listlessly, dumbly, looking with dead eyes at their master. Barter tossed them several walnuts each.
Then he turned his attention to the ape, rubbing his hands together with pleasure.
But the ape was behaving strangely. His eyes were staring past Barter. His hands sought to lift as though he would hold them out to someone; but the ropes prevented him. Barter turned to look. Ellen Estabrook stood beyond him, white of face, motionless as a statue. The ape was straining toward her.
Caleb Barter chuckled with understanding.
“Good evening, Lee,” he said gently. “I’ve been expecting you!”