_Ultimatum_
How terribly far-fetched it seemed! It was unbelievable enough that
Bentley had once reposed in the body of an ape. That had been in the
African wilds. But the idiocy of the thing now rested in Bentley's
belief that here, immediately upon landing, he was again facing
something just as horrible.
But the coincidences were too clear. The palaver about "brains," and
"Mind Master"--and those ape hairs in Bentley's hands. He wished he
knew all that had led up to that story he had read in the paper just
prior to the appearance of the naked man from the west door of the
Flatiron Building. However, the killing would get front page position
now, due to the importance of the dead man--Bentley never doubted it
was the man whom, in the paper, the "Mind Master" had promised to
slay.
Great apes in the heart of New York City! It sounded silly,
preposterous. Yet, before he had gone through that dread experience
with the mad Barter, Bentley would have sworn that brain transplantation
was impossible. Even now he was not sure that it hadn't all been a
terrible dream.
Should Bentley go at once to the police to give them the benefit of
whatever knowledge he might have of Caleb Barter? He wasn't sure. Then
he decided that sooner or later he must come out into the open. So he
caught a cab and went to police headquarters.
"I wish," he said, "to talk to someone about the Mind Master!"
If he had said, "I have just come from Mars," he could scarcely have
caused a greater sensation.
- - -
But his calm statement got him an instant audience with a slender man
of thirty-five or so, whose hair was prematurely gray at the temples,
and whose eyes were shrewd and far-seeing.
"My name's Thomas Tyler," said the detective. He certainly didn't look
the conventional detective, but Bentley knew instantly that he
_wasn't_ the conventional detective. "I work on the unusual cases. If
you hadn't sent in your name I wouldn't have seen you, which means
that as soon as you leave here you are to forget my name and how I
look."
He motioned Bentley to a seat. Bentley sat back. Suddenly Thomas Tyler
was around his desk and had pushed back the hair from Bentley's
temples. He drew in his breath with a sharp hiss when he saw the white
line which circled Bentley's skull.
"It's not exactly proof," he said, as though he and Bentley had been
in the midst of a discussion of that awful operation Barter had
performed on Bentley, "but I'd take your word for it."
"The story, in the main, was true," said Bentley.
"I thought so. What made you come here?"
"I saw that naked man run across Fifth Avenue from the door of the
Flatiron Building. I saw the officer subdue him, helped him do it in
fact, and saw the man die. Since there was no detective there, I took
the liberty of removing these from the fingers of the dead man."
Bentley gave Tyler the coarse hair, stained with blood. Tyler looked
at it grimly for a moment or two.
"Not human hair," he said, as though talking to himself. "Not like any
I know of. But ... ah, you know what sort of hair, eh? That's what
sent you here!"
"It's the hair of an ape or a gorilla."
"How do you know, for sure?"
"Once," said Bentley grimly, "for several horrible hours ... I was a
giant anthropoid ape."
- - -
Tyler's chair legs crashed solidly to the floor.
"I see," he said. "You think this thing has some connection with your
own experiences. How long ago was that?"
"Slightly over two months."
"You think the same man...?"
"I don't know. But who could want, as a newspaper story I just read
says, to steal the brains of men? What for? It sounds like Barter.
I've never heard of anybody else with such an obsession. I'm putting
two and two together--and fervently hoping they'll add up to seven
instead of four. For if ever in my life I wanted to be wrong it's
now."
Tyler pursed his lips. Bentley saw that his eyes were glinting with
excitement.
"But there's a possibility you're right. Do you know what the Mind
Master's first manifesto said? It was published by a tabloid newspaper
as a sort of gag--a strange crank letter. Here it is."
Tyler tossed Bentley a newspaper clipping a week old. Bentley read
quickly:
"The white race is deteriorating physically at a dangerous
rate. In fifty years, if nothing is done to prevent it,
the world will be filled with men whose bodies are so soft
as to be almost worthless. But I shall take steps to
prevent that, as soon as I am ready. I need a week. Then I
shall begin my crusade to make the white race a race of
supermen, whom I alone shall rule. They shall keep the
brains they have, which shall be transferred to bodies
which I shall furnish.
(Signed) The Mind Master."
- - -
Tyler squinted at Bentley again.
"You see? Brains are all right, he says, but the white race needs new
bodies. If he isn't suggesting brain substitution, what is he
suggesting? Though I confess I never thought of your story until your
name was sent in to me a while ago. For the world thinks of Barter as
having been killed by the great apes."
"Yes, I told newspaper reporters that. I thought it was true. But this
Mind Master must be Barter. There couldn't be two persons in the world
with mental quirks so much alike."
"Tell me what Barter looks like. Oh, there are plenty of pictures
extant of the famous Professor Caleb Barter who disappeared from the
world some years ago, but he'll know that, of course, and he won't
look like the pictures.
"Alteration of his own features should be easy for a man who juggles
brains."
"He may have changed his features since I saw him, too," said Bentley.
"But I'm sure I'd know him."
Tyler's telephone rang stridently.
He took down the receiver. His mouth fell slackly open as his eyes
lifted to Bentley's face. But he recovered himself and slapped his
hand over the transmitter.
"Anybody know you came here?" asked Tyler.
Bentley shook his head.
"Well," went on Tyler, "I don't know how it happens, but this
telephone message is for you!"
Bentley's heart seemed to jump into his throat. One of those hunches
which sometimes were so valuable to him had struck him, as though it
were a blow between the eyes. His lips tightened. His face was pale,
but there was a grim light in his eyes.
He hesitated for a second, the receiver in his hand, his mouth against
the transmitter.
"Well, Professor Barter?" he said conversationally.
- - -
There came a gasp from Thomas Tyler. He jumped to the door and
motioned to someone. A man in uniform came to his side. Bentley
distinctly heard Tyler tell the man to have this telephone call
traced.
From the receiver came a well-remembered chuckle.
"So you were expecting me, eh, Bentley? You never really believed that
one of my genius would fall such easy prey to the great apes did
you?"
"Of course not, Professor," said Bentley soothingly. "It would be an
insult to your vivid mentality."
"_Vivid_ mentality! _Vivid_ mentality! Why, Bentley, there isn't
another brain in the world to compare with mine. And you of all people
should know it. The whole world will know it before I'm finished, for
I have made tremendous strides since you helped me to perform that
crowning achievement in Africa. By the way, tell your friend Tyler,
who just called the officer to the door, that it's useless to try to
trace this call!"
Bentley jumped as though he had been stung. How had Barter known what
Tyler was doing? How had he guessed what Tyler had told the man in
uniform? How had Barter known Bentley was visiting Tyler? How had he
discovered even that Bentley was back in the United States? Why,
besides, was he so friendly with Bentley now?
"You speak, Professor," said Bentley softly, "as though you could see
right into police headquarters."
"I can, Bentley! I can!" said Barter impatiently, as though he were
rebuking a schoolboy for saying the obvious.
"You're close by, then?"
"No. I'm a long way--several miles--from you. But I can see everything
you do. And you needn't look at Tyler in such surprise!"
- - -
Bentley started. He had looked at Tyler in a surprised way and, clever
though he was, he didn't think that Barter could have _guessed_ so
accurately to the second the gesture he had made. Barter chuckled.
"It's a good jest, isn't it? But listen to me, Bentley, I've a great
scheme in hand for the amelioration of mankind. I need your help,
mostly because you were such an excellent subject in my greatest
successful experiment."
"Will it be the same sort of experiment as the other?" Bentley's heart
was in his mouth as he asked the question.
"Yes, the same ... but there are improvements I have succeeded in
perfecting since the creation of Manape. My one mistake when Manape
was created was in that I allowed myself to lose control of him--of
you! That will not happen again. Oh, if you'll help me, Bentley, that
operation will not be performed on you until you yourself request it
because I shall have proved to you that it is better for you. You
shall be my assistant and obey my orders, nothing more."
Lee Bentley drew a deep breath.
"If I prefer not to work with you again, Professor?"
A chuckle was Barter's answer. The chuckle broke off shortly.
"You should not refuse, Bentley," said the scientist at last. "For
then I should find it necessary to remove you. You might stand in my
way, and though you would be but a puny obstacle, you still would be
an obstacle. For example, consider Ellen Estabrook, your fiancee. I
can find no use for her ... and she knows as much about me as you do.
Therefore, at my convenience, I shall remove her."
- - -
"Caleb Barter," Bentley's voice was hoarse with anger as he dropped
his soothing mode of address toward the man he knew was insane, "if
anything happens to Miss Estabrook through you I shall find you no
matter how well you are guarded ... and I shall destroy you bit by
bit, as a small boy destroys a fly. For every least evil thing that
happens to Miss Estabrook, a hundred times that will happen to you at
my hands."
"Good!" snapped Barter, no longer chuckling. "I am happy to know how
much she means to you. It shows me how easily I may control you
through her. It means war then, between us? I'm sorry, Bentley, for I
like you. In a way, you know, you are my creation. But in a war
between us, Bentley, you haven't a chance to win."
Bentley clicked up the receiver.
"Could you trace the call, Tyler?" he snapped.
Tyler shook his head ruefully.
"We couldn't locate the right telephone, but we could tell which
exchange it came through, and the lines of that exchange cover a huge
section of the city."
"Can you find out exactly the section and the address of each phone on
every line?"
"Yes. The exchange is Stuyvesant."
"That gives me some help. I used to live in Greenwich Village and I
had a Stuyvesant number. I'm going after Barter. Say, Tyler, how do
you suppose Barter knew exactly what was going on in this room?"
Tyler's face slowly whitened as his eyes looked fearfully into the
eyes of Lee Bentley. He shook his head slowly.
Bentley squared his shoulders and spoke quietly and determinedly.
"Mr. Tyler," he said, "I am in a great hurry. May I be conducted in a
police car? Might as well. I'll be working with you hand and glove
until Barter is captured."
Bentley rode behind a shrieking siren to the home of the Estabrooks
... while from a distance of two miles Caleb Barter watched every
move and chuckled grimly to himself.