The Golden Age of Science Fiction Novels Vol 04
Page 535
Lecky walked blithely along the street and turned right when he was opposite the limousine. Without a moment's hesitation, he stepped into the limousine, pressed the starter, shifted gears, turned in the middle of the block and started swiftly uptown.
After Lecky had shifted gears he drove with his left hand alone. His right was still busy with the walnut.
Barter now looked like a man in a trance, so deeply did he concentrate on his task of guiding his soulless, ape-brained puppet, Lecky, through the heavy traffic of Manhattan.
Chapter IV
The Opening Gun
"That list, Tyler," said Bentley, after he had somewhat calmed the fears of Ellen Estabrook and had returned to the task of tracing Barter, "is headed by Harold Hervey, the multi-millionaire. I know Barter well enough to know that he'll go down the list methodically, taking each person in turn. We'd best take immediate precautions to guard the old man's home. For Barter, if not entirely ready to take drastic steps, must be almost ready, else he couldn't issue his manifestoes and take a chance of some slip-up before he could get really started."
"Why do you suppose he named Hervey on the list?" asked Tyler.
"Because Hervey is a financial genius. Barter wishes not only to carry out his plan of creating a race of supermen, but wishes at the same time to maintain personal control of them. And to control Manhattan, from which he logically hopes to extend his control to the whole United States, then to the whole world, Barter must also control the money marts. Hervey is the shrewdest financier in the world."
"But won't we frighten Hervey's family if we take steps now?"
"Better to frighten them now than to be too late entirely. However, we can place his house under surveillance without the knowledge of the family for the time being. And you'd better send a couple of men to his office in the Empire State Building to see that nothing happens to him on the way home this evening. I talked to him by telephone and he pooh-poohed the whole thing. Hard-headed business executives have no imagination."
Bentley and Tyler rode uptown in the back seat of a speeding police car driven by one of the best chauffeurs Bentley had ever ridden behind. He edged through holes in the traffic where Bentley could scarcely see any holes at all. He estimated the speed of cars which might have collided with the police vehicle and slipped through with inches to spare. In his way the man was a genius. But Bentley was yet to see the driving of a master genius….
- - -
Far out in the residential district the police car came to a stop. Other police cars arrived at intervals to disgorge men in plain clothes who immediately entered upon their guard duties as unobtrusively as possible. If Hervey's family noticed at all they would scarcely attach any importance to the arrival of cars and the discharging of passengers who seemed to have nothing to do except dawdle on the sidewalks.
But all the way uptown a hunch had ridden Bentley. He had the feeling that no matter how fast the police car traveled, no matter how skilfully the chauffeur inched his way through the press, they would be too late to save Hervey. The feeling became an obsession. Many times he called through the speaking tube.
"Faster, driver, for God's sake, faster!"
Now near the home of Harold Hervey, Bentley found himself unable to walk slowly, with the air of nonchalance, which the other police officers wore like a cloak.
"Something's happened," said Bentley, "I'm sure of it. I feel that Barter is so close to me that I could touch him if I knew in which direction to extend my fingers."
Suddenly a speeding car, with horn bellowing, came crashing up the street toward the Hervey residence. It was traveling at great speed, careening from side to side like a ship in a storm at sea.
"There comes Hervey's car," said Tyler. "And something has happened to make him travel like that. Old man Hervey doesn't allow his chauffeur to go faster than twenty miles an hour."
- - -
Tyler and Bentley were near by when the car squealed to a stop before the Hervey residence and a hatless, disheveled man leaped out almost before the car stopped rolling.
"That's not Hervey," said Tyler. "That's his private secretary. Something's up. It's time we took a hand in things."
Tyler and Bentley grasped the young man by the elbow.
"What's up?" demanded Tyler.
"It's Mr. Hervey, sir," panted the secretary. "It just happened. He's been kidnaped!"
The secretary was a slight man, but fear had given him strength. He almost dragged Tyler and Bentley off their feet as he strode on up the walk leading to the home of Hervey.
"You'll scare his family half to death!" said Tyler.
"It'll have to come sometime, Tyler," said Bentley. "It might as well be now. They'll have to know. We'll have to sit inactively from this moment on. Tyler, there's nothing that can be done for Hervey. Barter has scored. We couldn't catch him now to save ourselves from perdition. But his next step will involve the Hervey menage. We'll have to wait there for his next move."
Tyler and Bentley entered the vast gloomy structure of the old-fashioned Hervey domicile on the heels of the frightened secretary. Mrs. Hervey, a faded woman of sixty or so, met them at the door. Her head was held high, her lips grimly drawn into a straight line.
"So," she said evenly, "they've got Mr. Hervey. I begged him to take those threats seriously. He's been either killed or kidnaped."
"Kidnaped," said Bentley, continuing brutally because of the courage he saw in the old woman's face. "And that means he'll be dead within the hour, if he isn't dead already. We've got to stay here for a few hours, to await the next move of the madman calling himself the Mind Master, in the hope that we can trace him when he makes his next move."
Mrs. Hervey lifted her head still higher.
"We'll place no obstacles in your path, gentlemen," she said, "if you are from the police. The family will confine itself to the upper floors of the house."
- - -
Tyler and Bentley took possession of the living room. Outside a dozen plain-clothes men were to patrol the grounds during the hours of darkness.
Other men were at every adjacent street corner. A rat could not have got through unobserved.
Tyler and Bentley took seats at a table facing the door. The police car in which they had arrived stood at the curb, with the chauffeur at the wheel, the motor humming softly.
"Timkins," said Bentley, addressing the private secretary who stood in the most distant corner of the room, his eyes fearfully fixed on the street door, "how was Mr. Hervey captured?"
"I was accompanying him to his car, sir," replied the young man, "when a dapper fellow in a chauffeur's uniform confronted us on the sidewalk. He stood as stiff and straight as a soldier. He didn't say a word. He just looked at Mr. Hervey. Mr. Hervey stopped because the man was blocking the sidewalk. I looked into the chauffeur's eyes. They seemed utterly dead. I shivered. I'd have sworn the man had no soul, now that I look back at it. Suddenly he lashed out with his fist, striking Mr. Hervey on the jaw. Mr. Hervey started to fall. The man caught him under the arms and tossed him into the tonneau of a limousine at the curb. The car was away before I could summon the police."
Bentley nodded.
"Which way did the car go?" he demanded.
"Downtown, at top speed," replied Timkins.
Bentley turned to Tyler.
"The Stuyvesant exchange is downtown," he said. "Now Timkins says that the kidnaper's car went downtown. And the naked man was killed in the Flatiron Building, which is well downtown in its turn. Tyler, fill all the area covered by the Stuyvesant exchange with plain-clothes men. Telephone Headquarters to see whether a stolen limousine has been reported from somewhere in the area. Barter wouldn't have cars of his own for fear they could be traced. He'll use stolen cars when he uses cars at all. And he had his puppet pick up the limousine close to his hideout."
- - -
Tyler nodded and quickly spoke into the telephone on the table at his elbow.
The telephone reminded Bentley of E
llen Estabrook.
When Tyler had finished issuing pointed instructions Bentley called the residence of the Estabrooks in Astoria, Long Island.
Carl Estabrook answered the telephone.
"Is Ellen all right?" asked Bentley. "May I speak to her?"
Carl Estabrook's answering gasp came plainly over the wire.
"Are you crazy, Lee?" he asked. "Not ten minutes ago you telephoned Ellen and told her to meet you near the arch in Washington Square. I asked her if she was sure the voice was yours, and she was…."
But Bentley, white-faced, had already clicked up the receiver.
"Tyler," he said, "Ellen Estabrook, my fiancée, is walking into a trap. It's Barter again. He'd know how to imitate my voice well enough to fool Ellen. It would be simple enough for a man like him. He probably had that long conversation with me at headquarters to make sure he hadn't forgotten the timbre and pitch of my voice … and to hear how it sounded over the telephone. Please have plain-clothes men pick up Ellen in Washington Square. And that, Tyler, if you'll notice, is also downtown."
Bentley felt that he would go mad with anxiety as he awaited some news from the plain-clothes men Tyler had ordered to look for Ellen Estabrook.
He had asked Tyler to issue rather unusual instructions to the plain-clothes men around the Hervey residence. They were to make no attempt to halt anyone who might approach the house, but were to permit no one to depart. It was a weak plan, but knowing the supreme egotism of Barter, Bentley felt that the old scientist would deliberately accept such a challenge. He wouldn't mind risking the loss of a minion.
- - -
"He controls his puppets from his hideout, Tyler," Bentley explained, "and won't hesitate to send them into danger since it can't touch him. And he watches every move they make, too. He's made some television adaptation of his own. I'll wager, if he so desires, he can see us sitting here right now, even perhaps hear what we say. I can fancy hearing him chuckle, and Tyler…?"
"Yes?"
"I can see old man Hervey on an operating table with Barter bending over him, working fiendishly. Behind Barter are cages of apes."
"But how could he transport apes to his hideout?"
"He could manage to smuggle anything anywhere. Money paves the way to any accomplishment, Tyler. We needn't concern ourselves with how he does it, but with the fact that he must surely have apes in his hideout."
There came suddenly an imperious ringing of the doorbell.
Bentley and Tyler leaped to their feet, their hands streaking for their automatics which they had placed within easy reach on the table. Side by side they sprang for the door, and flung it open.
A chill of horror ran through Bentley.
"Mother of God!" cried Tyler.
"Mr. Hervey!" shrieked Timkins. The secretary, noting the figure which toppled so grimly into the room, fainted. The thud of his body followed the thud of the old man's body to the floor.
In that first moment of overwhelming terror, all three men noted that Hervey's skull-pan was missing.
"Look after details here, Tyler!" cried Bentley, quickly recovering himself. "I'm after whoever brought the old man home."
Bentley was racing down the path for the street, where a man in chauffeur's uniform was hurling himself into a limousine, while bullets from half a dozen plain-clothes men, racing to head him off, sang about his ears. But the stranger gained the driver's seat and the limousine was away like a shot. The police car was rolling as Bentley leaped upon the running board, then eased in beside the driver.
"Don't stop for anything!" cried Bentley. "Keep that car in sight!"
The car headed downtown at breakneck speed.
Chapter V
To Broadway's Horror
Bentley would never forget that nightmarish ride downtown. It was a dream as terrifying and ghastly as had been his experience in the African jungles when he had been Manape. Added to the utter fear of the ride was his fear for the safety of Ellen Estabrook. Caleb Barter, so far, was utterly invincible. It seemed he could not be beaten or outwitted in any way. But Bentley set his lips tightly.
Caleb Barter must have some weak spot in his insane armor, some way by which he could be reached and destroyed—and Bentley swore to himself that it would be he who would find that weak spot.
The limousine ahead was going at dangerous speed. The police chauffeur beside Bentley crouched low over the wheel as he drove. His eyes never left the speeding limousine. People on the sidewalks stared in astonishment as the two cars flashed downtown.
The leading car sped on, the driver obviously expecting ways to open in the last second before threatened collision. He passed cars on the left and the right. There were times when his wheels were up on the curb as he went through lanes between cars and sidewalks. He was determined to go through.
Only Bentley understood that the driver ahead was an automaton, a man whose brain did not know the meaning of fear. He knew that from his hideout Caleb Barter was directing the flight of the escaping car. He could fancy the old man of the apple-red cheeks, sitting in a chair in his hideout, his hands in the air as though they gripped the wheel of a car, sweat breaking forth on his cheeks as he guided his puppet through the press of cars.
But by now in that uncanny way that sometimes happens the streets were being cleared as if by magic before the flight of one whom all observers must have thought a madman. Only Bentley knew that the driver ahead was not a madman.
- - -
His own car careened from side to side. Bentley wondered what the chauffeur would think if he knew he was driving a race against one of Barter's supermen. He would perhaps have realized that no man could possibly follow with any degree of success. The police driver had succeeded so far only because, Bentley guessed, he felt that where any other man could drive, so could he.
Only Bentley knew that the driver up there was not a "man" in the normal meaning of the word. He wondered who "he" really was—not that it mattered greatly, for the entity required to make "him" a normal man had perhaps been destroyed, or had become part of some giant anthropoid to be used later in Barter's ghastly experiments.
"I wonder if Tyler will send out calls for police cars in other parts of the city to try and cut off the runaway," shouted Bentley above the shrieking of the motor and the wailing of the siren. "Are any police cars equipped with radio?"
"Several," answered the police chauffeur. "And they are able to cut in on various public radio stations, too. By this time warnings are being heard on every blaring radio in Manhattan."
The two cars sped on. For a brief space the car ahead took to the sidewalk. Suddenly a human body was tossed violently against the side of a building, and the fleeing car passed on. As the pursuing car passed the spot Bentley knew by the shape of the bundle that the enemy had killed a woman. At that speed he must have crushed every bone in her body. In a matter of seconds the information would be telephoned to radio studios and people would be warned to take to open doorways when they saw cars traveling at undue rates of speed.
"I'm a better driver than he is!" yelled the police chauffeur, out of the side of his mouth at Bentley. "I haven't killed anyone yet."
The words had scarcely left his mouth when a blind man, tapping his way with a cane, came from behind a building at an intersection and stepped into the gutter. The fool, couldn't he hear the shrieking of the siren? But perhaps he was deaf, too.
- - -
The police chauffeur turned sharply to the left and for a second Bentley held his breath expecting the careening car to turn over. If it did it would roll over a dozen times, and destroy anything that happened to be in its path. But with a superhuman manipulation of the wheel the police chauffeur righted the car, got it straightened out again, and was on his way. The old man had not been touched, but there was no doubt that he had felt the wind of the great car's passing.
The fleeing car was gaining now.
It rode madly down Broadway. The great pillared intersection where Broadway cuts
through Sixth Avenue was dead ahead. The fleeing car continued on, crashing through, while cars evaded it in every direction, and into Broadway beyond. After it went Bentley, all other matters forgotten as he prayed to the god of speed to guide them through.
Two cars came out of Thirty-first Street. Their drivers saw their danger at the same time. But they turned different ways, and as Bentley's car flashed past them the two cars seemed welded solidly together. They were rolling across the sidewalk toward the huge plate glass window of a restaurant. Just as the pursuing car lost them as they swept past, the two cars went through that plate glass window. Bentley, in his mind's eye, saw the two dead, mutilated drivers, and the passengers with them, he saw the wreckage of the restaurant, the mangled diners who sat at the tables nearest the fatal window.
"More marks against Barter," he muttered to himself. "How long will the list be before I'll be able to drag him down?"
- - -
On and on went the two cars. People packed the sidewalks, but they kept close against the buildings. The streets were almost deserted now, for that warning had got ahead. Three other police cars were careening down the street, too. Bentley saw them with pleasure. Other cars would be coming in to head off the fleeing limousine. This one puppet of Barter's, at least, would be pocketed before he could find time to leap from his car and escape.
"Barter's sweating blood as he saws with both hands at an imaginary driver's wheel," thought Bentley. "When will he give up—and what will his driver do when Barter relinquishes control?"
For the first time the grim thought came to him. He knew that the creature there had the brain of an ape. What would an ape do if he suddenly found himself at the wheel of a car going down Broadway at eighty miles an hour? He would chatter, and jump up and down. The plunging car, with accelerator full on, would be out of control.
"God Almighty, I never thought of that!" yelled Bentley. "As soon as he sees he can't save his puppet he'll let him get out the best way he can, himself … and that car will be traveling, uncontrolled, at eighty miles an hour."