Arthur Zagat - The Golden Age of Science Fiction Volume IX

But the idea stuck in his mind and he believed in it enough to tell Tyler, upon arriving at the Hervey residence, to warn every man named on the list of the Mind Master to make no appointments over the telephone, no matter how sure they were of the voices at the other end of the wire.

It sounded wild, but was it?

That night Ellen and Bentley occupied rooms which faced each other across the hall in a midtown hotel, and plain-clothes men were on duty to right and left in the hall. There were men on the roof and in the lobby, in the garage, everywhere skulkers might be expected to look for coigns of vantage from which to proceed against Ellen Estabrook. Bentley knew quite well that Barter would not drop his intention against Ellen, especially since he had failed once already.

Tyler and Bentley sat in Bentley’s room drinking black coffee and discussing their plans for the next day. The latest paper had contained another manifesto of the Mind Master! the second man on his list was to be taken at ten o’clock the next day. The man was president of a great construction company. His name was Saret Balisle; he was under thirty, slim as a professional dancer, and dark as a gypsy.

“But what does Barter want with all these big shots?” asked Thomas Tyler. “Just what is the point of his stealing their brains and putting them into the skull-pans of apes, if that’s what you think he has in mind?”

“The Barter touch,” said Bentley grimly. “At first he probably intended to kill just any men and make the transfer, and then use his manapes to send against the men he wished to capture, and through whom he intended to gain control of Manhattan. Then he decided, since he had learned to control his manapes, by radio I suppose, that it would be an ironic touch to make virtual slaves of the “key” men he had chosen for his crusade.”

“But why the transplantation at all, even if the man is mad? He reasons logically. Only his premises are unthinkable… and he builds successful ghastly experiments on top of them….”

“He claims he wishes to build a race of supermen,” Bentley answered. “His reason for the brain transference is therefore plain. An anthropoid ape has a body which is several times as hardy, durable and mighty as that of even the strongest man, but the ape has not the brain of a civilized man. A specialized man, one with a highly developed brain, generally has a very weak body. He’s constantly put to the necessity of taking exercise to keep from growing sick. Therefore the ape’s body and the man’s brain would seem, to Barter, an ideal combination. That nature didn’t plan it so troubles him not at all. He will make a fool of nature!”

“I wonder if we’ll get him. Nobody knows how many lives have been lost already.”

“We’ll get him, Tyler. I’ll bet anything you want to name that your men have walked back and forth across his hideout. I’ll bet that decent, respectable people live within mere yards of him and do not know it. We’ll get to him the second he makes a mistake of any kind. Maybe he’ll make his first one when he tries to get Saret Balisle—Good Lord, I forgot something. Tyler, phone again and ask Headquarters if the coroner found anything strange about the head of the men I chased down Fifth Avenue.”

Tyler phoned.

“Yes,” he said, clicking up the receiver, “he had bits of metal which looked like aluminum in his scalp; but the autopsy shows that it came from outside somewhere.”

“It’s part of Barter’s radio control,” muttered Bentley, “it must be! It has to be… and I didn’t think of looking for it at the time.”

Long before sunrise Bentley and Tyler repaired to the office of Saret Balisle, letting themselves in with keys which had been furnished them last night. It had been decided that Balisle would not try to run away from the threat of the Mind Master, but would be in his office as usual. If he ran, and got out of touch with the police, Barter would get him anyway and nobody would be the wiser.

Balisle had grinned and shrugged his shoulders, but the wanness in his cheeks showed that he didn’t take the threats lightly, considering what it was thought had happened to Harold Hervey.

“I wonder,” said Tyler as they walked through the cool of the morning to the Clinton Building on lower Fifth Avenue, where Balisle had his offices, “how Barter keeps his apes with men’s brains from trying to break away from him when he has to divert his mental control to other channels?”

Bentley hesitated, seeking a logical answer. It seemed simple enough when the answer came to his mind.

“Suppose, Tyler,” he said, “that you wakened from a nightmare and looked into a mirror to discover that you were an anthropoid ape? That you were incapable of speaking, of using your hands save in the clumsiest fashion? When it came home to you what had happened to you, would you rush right out into the street, hoping that the people on the sidewalks would understand that you were a man in ape’s clothing?”

“Good Lord! I never thought of that!”

“You would if you’d ever been an ape. I know the feeling.”

“Then Barter’s manapes are more surely prisoners than if they were sentenced to serve their entire lives in the deepest solitary cells in Sing Sing! How horrible—but still, they yet would have a way of escape.”

“Yes, simply break out and start running, knowing that the crowd would soon take and destroy them. Right enough—but even when one knows oneself an ape it isn’t easy to destroy oneself.”

They entered the offices of Saret Balisle and looked about them. It was just an ordinary office. They looked in clothes closets and in shadowy corners. They took every possible precaution in their survey of the situation. They looked for hidden instruments of destruction. They looked for hidden dictaphones. They were extremely thorough in their preliminary preparations for the defense of Saret Balisle.

At five minutes of ten o’clock Balisle was at his desk, pale of face, but grinning confidently.

There were men in uniform in the hallways, on the roof, in the windows of rooms across the avenue. Bentley and Tyler should have felt sure that not even a mouse could have broken through the cordon to reach Saret Balisle. But Bentley was doubtful.

He went to the window nearest Balisle and looked out. Sixteen stories down was Fifth Avenue, patrolled in this block by a dozen blue-coats and as many more plain-clothes men. Saret Balisle seemed to be impregnable.

But at ten o’clock exactly, a blood-curdling scream came from the room adjoining Balisle’s, where some insurance company had offices. The scream was followed by other screams—all the screams of women….

For just a moment Bentley and Tyler whirled to stare at the door giving onto the hall, their hands tightly gripping their automatics.

“God Almighty!” It came in a choked scream from the lips of Saret Balisle, simultaneous with the falling of a shower of glass in the room.

Tyler and Bentley whirled back.

A giant anthropoid ape stood on the window sill, and the brute’s left hand held tightly clasped the ankle of Balisle, holding him as a child holds a rag doll.

The ape swung Balisle out over the abyss.

Tyler flung up his automatic.

“Don’t!” shouted Bentley. “If you shoot he’ll drop Balisle!”

Bentley felt sick and the bottom seemed to drop out of his stomach as the anthropoid, still holding Balisle as lightly as though he didn’t know he held extra weight at all, dropped from sight.

Tyler and Bentley leaped to the window, looked down. The ape had dropped safely to the ledge of the window just below. He held on easily with his right hand while Bentley and Tyler swayed dizzily. The anthropoid still held Balisle by the ankle.