by Anthology
Then the ape did a grim thing.
He paused on the eleventh floor, and crouching on a window sill, deliberately snapped Balisle's head against the wall of the Clinton Building! In his time Bentley had slain rabbits exactly like that. Balisle hung now as limp as a rag and blood dripped from his mouth and nose. But Bentley knew, as his face went white at the sound of that sharp, thudding blow that Balisle had not been killed by it.
- - -
Savage oaths burst from the lips of policemen who saw the action of the ape.
"He acts like a human being! An ape wouldn't have thought of that!"
The words came hysterically from the lips of a woman who, frightened though she was, could not tear herself from the window to the right of where Bentley and Tyler leaned out to stare down.
Bentley smiled grimly. What would she think if he told her gravely that the creature crawling down the face of the building was not quite an ape?
So far the public didn't know what the Mind Master schemed. He'd spoken of stealing brains, but that had meant nothing to the general public. Just the maunderings of a madman, perhaps.
At the third floor the anthropoid hesitated. He seemed to be gazing all around, noting the preparations which were being made to trap him at the street level.
"An ape wouldn't do that," muttered Bentley. "A man would. The man in that manape is showing through—but he won't be able to force himself free of Barter's domination. If he could he'd probably throw Balisle down now to keep him from being … well, treated as Barter intends to treat him."
The ape dropped to the second floor. Silence seemed to hang over Fifth Avenue. Ugly gun muzzles protruded from every window across the street. Scores of rifles were aimed down from windows in the Clinton Building, to drill the ape through from above.
At that instant a limousine whirled into Fifth Avenue, traveling fast, and ground to a stop under the ape.
"What's this?" cried Bentley.
"That's Saret Balisle's car," said Tyler. "There's nobody in it but his chauffeur. The fool! Does he think he can take his master away from the ape singlehanded?"
"That looks like foolhardy loyalty, but I'm not so sure that it's Balisle's chauffeur at the wheel. Tyler, send somebody down to wherever it is that Balisle parks his car."
- - -
But before Tyler could move to obey, the anthropoid ape made his surprise move, and did a thing which no ape would have thought of doing. He hurled Balisle toward the limousine. The somersaulting body struck the roof of the car, crashed through the fabric, and dropped into the tonneau.
At the same instant the limousine leaped to full speed ahead.
A shower of bullets smashed windows and scored deeply and menacingly the brick walls all around the giant anthropoid which for a second still crouched on the second-story ledge. The ape whirled and crashed through the window at his back.
"Tyler, send half a dozen cars after that limousine. They simply have to catch it. But they mustn't fire for fear of killing Balisle. Have the car followed right to Barter's hideout. The men in this building will scatter at once through the building. We must trap that ape!"
The whole police organization was in a turmoil.
Sirens screamed as police cars flashed after the fleeing limousine which carried Saret Balisle away. Doors slammed and windows crashed as two score policemen scattered through the building, armed with riot guns and pistols, seeking the ape.
Tyler, after barking the staccato orders which set his men in motion, turned to Balisle's secretary.
"Quickly, the number Balisle calls when he wants his automobile sent around."
The girl gave it, and Tyler called the number.
"Are Mr. Balisle's car and chauffeur there?" he asked.
He swore explosively and hung up the receiver.
"Another killing," he said. "Balisle's car is gone and the garage people have just found his chauffeur, almost ripped to pieces, in another car left at the garage for storage.
"That means this ape is armed with metal fingernails, just like the one that killed the insurance man in the Flatiron Building. That means he'll be doubly dangerous when caught. The murdered chauffeur will have to wait for a few moments while we capture the ape."
- - -
Shouts and shots rang through the Clinton Building. The ape was going wild, crashing through doors and windows as if they weren't there. His mad bellowing sounded terrifying in the extreme, so deep and rumbling that the air seemed to tremble with its menace.
But in the end there came a chorus of triumphant shouts which told that the giant ape had been surrounded.
Bentley and Tyler raced in the direction of the sounds. From all directions came the sounds of footfalls as other plain-clothes men raced to be in at the death. Bentley held his automatic tightly gripped in his right hand. He knew exactly where he was going to aim if the ape were not dead when he reached him.
The creature had been cornered in the areaway between two banks of elevators and had climbed up the cage as high as he could go. He was just out of reach of human hands, even had there been any men there with the courage to try to take him alive. A white foam dripped from the chattering lips of the anthropoid. His red-rimmed eyes flashed fire. Bentley noted the little metal ball on top of the creature's head.
Deliberately he stopped, raised his automatic, and held it steady while he pressed the trigger with the extreme care which a sharp-shooter knows to be necessary … and a bullet ploughed through the top of the ape's head.
The little ball vanished, and the ape released his grip suddenly. His chattering died away to an uncertain murmur, the fire went out of his eyes, and he fell to the floor. No bullet had yet actually struck him, for he had whirled into the window from the second-story ledge simultaneously with the barking of the policemen's rifles and pistols. He had escaped there—but here he was not to escape.
Bentley and Tyler both lifted their voices to shout warnings to the policemen, but their voices were drowned in the savage explosions of a dozen weapons, in the hands of men who probably thought the creature was in the act of charging … and the ape sprawled on the floor, his legs and arms quivering.
- - -
Half a dozen men rushed forward, weapons extended.
"Keep back!" yelled Bentley, rushing in.
He stood over the ape, staring intently at his glazing eyes.
"Tyler," snapped Bentley, "have everybody fall back beyond earshot."
Tyler issued the orders. Bentley shouted, "Quickly, quickly!" knowing he had little time.
Then, with Tyler beside him, he knelt beside the ape.
"I know you can't talk, but you can answer me by nodding or shaking your head. You are Harold Hervey, aren't you?"
The eyes of the ape were hopeless. Tyler gasped, staring at Bentley as though for a moment he thought him crazy. But in the next instant he doubted his own sanity, for the ape, slowly and ponderously, nodded his head.
"I'm going to name a number of places where I think you might have been taken," went on Bentley. "In each case nod or shake your head. Is it near Sixth Avenue?"
Slowly the great head moved, more slowly even than before; but it nodded.
"Where? Below Twenty-third Street?"
Again the ponderous, agonizing nod.
Bentley went on.
"Below Fourteenth Street?"
Again the nod, barely perceptible this time.
"Below Christopher Street?" asked Bentley.
This time the head shook from side to side, ever so slightly.
"Two blocks above Christopher?"
But this question was never destined to be answered. The giant anthropoid in whose skull-pan was the brain of Harold Hervey, entirely controlled by Caleb Barter, until Bentley had shot the little metal ball from his head, had died.
Bentley rose and looked down at the anthropoid for several seconds.
"Barter will hate to lose this creature," he said. "He probably has just the number of apes he needs—and Tyler, he
re's a hunch: he'll need an ape to take the place of this one! Get me the best surgeon to be found in Manhattan, and get him as fast as you can!"
"Good God!" ejaculated Tyler. "What do you want a surgeon for? What are you going to do?"
"Barter needs an ape to take the place of this one. I shall be that ape!"
* * * * *
The Mind Master
By Arthur J. Burks
Conclusion
[Illustration: "Now, Bentley," said Barter, "I'll explain what I intend doing."]
Chapter VIII
The Mute Plungers
It would be difficult to comprehend the nervous strain under which Manhattan had been laboring during the past thirty-six hours. The story of the kidnaping of Harold Hervey had not been given to the newspapers, for an excellent reason. If Hervey's financial enemies knew of his kidnaping and death they would hammer away at his stocks until they fell to nothing and his family, accustomed to fabulous wealth, would have been reduced to beggary.
The Mind Master himself, up to a late hour, had given no word to the newspapers in his "manifestoes." The Hervey family held its breath fearing that he would—for the newspapers would have played the story for all the sensationalism it would carry. Bentley, when this matter was called to his attention, wondered. Barter had kept his own counsel for a purpose, but what was it? There was no way of asking him.
The story of the mad race down Broadway in pursuit of the limousine which had returned the lifeless body of Hervey to his residence had been a sensational one, and the tabloids had given it their best treatment. The chauffeur who had crawled out like a monkey atop his careening car, to lose his life when catapulted into the entrance to the Twenty-third Street subway station: the three policemen whose lives had been lost because the chauffeur hadn't stopped as they had expected him to, the kidnaping of Saret Balisle by a great ape hadn't yet broken as a story, nor the murder of Balisle's chauffeur.
But everybody knew something of the story of the naked man of the day before. Many were the speculations as to what had ripped and torn his flesh from his body, along with his clothes. What manner of claws had it been which had sliced him in scores of places as though with many razors?
Men and women walked the streets apprehensively, and many of them turned at intervals to look behind them. No telling what they would do when the story of Balisle's kidnaping by an anthropoid ape and a queer mute chauffeur got abroad. To top it all the police pursuers lost the Balisle limousine and Saret Balisle had taken his place among the lost.
- - -
Bentley knew as soon as the disgruntled and rather frightened police officers returned to the Clinton Building with the news that Balisle had got away from them in the stolen Balisle car, that already the ill-fated young man was probably under the anesthetic which Caleb Barter used on his victims.
"Tyler, do you know a surgeon who can do any surgical job short of brain transplantation?"
"Yeah. There's a chap has offices in the Fifth Avenue Building. He's probably the very best in the racket. Maybe it's because of his name. It's Tyler."
"Some relative of yours?"
"Not much. He's just my dad—and one of the world's finest and cleverest."
"Will he listen to reason? Can he perform delicate operations?"
"He's my dad, Bentley, and he'd do almost anything I asked him so long as it was honest … and he could switch the noses of a mosquito and a humming bird so skillfully that the humming bird would go looking for a sleeping cop and the mosquito would start building a nest in a tree."
"Get him here. No—has he an operating room where all sound can be shut out? I've got a hunch I'd like somehow to try and drop a screen around us as we work. Maybe your dad would know what to do. You see, I'm positive that Barter sees everything we do and if he sees me turning into an ape he would just chuckle and pass up the trap."
"He's got a lead armored room where he keeps a bit of radium."
"That's it. Talk to him. No, not on the phone. You'll have to figure out some way to do it so that you can be sure Barter isn't listening."
"I'll manage. I'll send him a note."
"Your messenger will be killed on the way to him."
"Then I'll go myself."
"And Barter will watch everybody that goes into his office or comes out, and mark down each person as possibly being connected with the police. However, you figure it out."
- - -
When Tyler had gone and the dead "ape" had been stretched out in one corner of Balisle's office, and covered with something to cloak its hideousness, Bentley telephoned Ellen Estabrook.
"Have I been making any appointments with you this morning?" he asked her cheerily.
"Please don't jest when things are so terrible. Have you seen the latest papers?"
"No. What do they say?"
"There's a lot of the story I'm thinking about. You'd better read it right away. It's an extra, anyhow. The newsies ought to be calling it around you somewhere—and where are you, anyway?"
Bentley informed her, and told her, too, that he would be with her as soon as he possibly could. Taking the usual masculine advantage he decided to tell her now what he wouldn't have had the heart to tell her to her face, that he was planning a rather desperate stunt to reach Barter, and would consequently be away from her for an indefinite period.
"But I'll see you first?" she said after a long hesitation. Bentley could hear her voice tremble, though he knew she was fighting desperately to keep him from noting the catch in her voice.
"Yes, nothing will happen until—well, not until I've seen you again."
Just as Bentley hung up the receiver the extra was being cried. Some two hours had now elapsed since Balisle had been taken away, and now the newsboys were shouting the headlines.
"Extra! Extra! All about the big Wall Street crash! Hervey fortune entirely swept away!"
- - -
Bentley sent an office boy out for the paper and spread it out on the desk to digest it as quickly as possible.
"One million shares of Hervey Incorporated," read the black words in a box on the first page—a story in mourning, "were dumped on the market at eleven o'clock this morning. Four men seem to have been behind the queer coup. One of them had a power of attorney from Harold Hervey himself, and he had the shares to sell. So many shares were dumped that the bottom fell out of the stock. Others holding the Hervey shares, fearful that they would get nothing at all, also began to dump, and every share thus dumped was bought up quickly by three other men about whom nobody knew anything, except that they paid with cash. The strangest thing about it all was that the three men who bought Hervey Incorporated, seemed to be dumb-mutes, for they didn't say anything. They acted through a broker, and indicated their purchases with their fingers in the conventional manner and tendered cards as identification! They were Harry Stanley, Clarence Morton, and Willard Cleve—addresses unknown, history unknown.
"Nothing, in fact, is known about any of the three or the little white-haired, apple-cheeked man who sold so heavily in Hervey Incorporated. That the three mutes did not buy the shares sold by the little white-haired man would seem to indicate that all four of them worked together … but it is only a supposition as they were not seen together and apparently did not know one another. But the three mutes constantly ate walnuts. All four men, who among them knocked the bottom out of Wall Street, and wiped away the Hervey fortune, slipped out in the excitement inspired by their rapid buying and selling, and seemed to vanish into thin air."
Bentley didn't know much about the stock market, but it seemed to him that Barter had managed a theft of mighty proportions. With a power of attorney, which he had wrung from Hervey after his capture, he had managed to possess himself of Hervey's shares. In themselves they were worth millions. Even at a fraction of their price Barter would realize heavily on them. Selling quickly he would force the price far down. Then his puppets—and Bentley had no doubt that Stanley, Morton and Cleve were his puppets—bought all other
shares offered by panicky investors in Hervey Incorporated at a tiny fraction of their value. Far less, naturally, than Barter had made by selling his loot.
The purchased shares Barter could hold for an increase. Hervey Incorporated was good and its price would go up again, and Barter would sell and gain millions.
- - -
That is how Bentley saw it, and his lips drew into a firmer, straighter line as, half an hour later, he explained it all to Ellen.
"It's desperate, dear," he whispered in her ear. "Manhattan's financial structure has been shaken to its foundations. But that isn't all by any means. Barter has performed his horrible operation on two of New York's most brilliant men. It was a Barter gesture to send 'Harold Hervey' to capture Balisle, and the horror of it staggered me."
"Lee," said Ellen, "understand this: that if I have no word from you within seventy-two, no, forty-eight hours after you get started on this scheme you have in mind, I'm going to get through to Barter somehow. If I put an ad in the paper and tell him where I'm to be found he'll surely make another attempt to take me in. If he's captured you, or uncovered the trap you're laying, then I'll at least be with you. If he kills you he kills me. If we can't live together we can die together."
Bentley kissed her fervently, trying not to think what it would mean to him now if she were in the hands of Caleb Barter. Secretly he intended having Tyler keep her so closely guarded that she couldn't possibly do anything as foolish as she had suggested.
The late evening papers carried another manifesto of the Mind Master to the effect that the remaining eighteen men named on the original list were to be taken before noon of the next day.
Oddly enough eighteen kidnapings were reported from various places in Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens.
"So," thought Bentley, "he's afraid to send out normal apes to capture his eighteen key men. Maybe his control over them is not perfect. That's it. I suppose—he needs human brains before he can exercise perfect control. I suppose Stanley, Morton and Cleve did the kidnapings."
- - -
Late that night Bentley kissed Ellen good-by, told her to keep up her courage, and repaired to the rendezvous arranged for by Thomas Tyler and his surgeon father. In the operating room was the cold body of the anthropoid that had successfully abducted Saret Balisle.