_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."
As though his very statement had fathered the thought, two police cars
swept into the intersection at Twenty-third Street and Fifth Avenue.
The fleeing limousine was turning right to go down Fifth Avenue.
The police cars were brought to a halt to effectively stop the further
progress of the speeding limousine. Three other cars plunged in to
make the box barrage of cars effective. The fleeing car was trapped.
Barter must know that. If he did know, it proved that he could see
everything that transpired. The next few seconds would show.
- - -
Bentley gasped as he put his hand on the driver's arm to have him slow
down to prevent a wholesale pile-up in the busy intersection. He
gasped with horror as he did so, for the fleeing car was now going
crazy. It zigzagged from side to side. Now it rode the two right
wheels, now the two left.
And suddenly the driver swung nimbly out through the left window, his
hands reaching up over the top, and in a moment he was on the roof of
the careening car.
"I've seen apes swing into trees like that," Bentley thought.
While the car plunged on, the creature stood up on the doomed
limousine, and in spite of the fact that the wind of the car's
passing must have been terrific, the ghastly hybrid jumped up and
down on the top like a delighted child viewing a new toy or riding a
shoot-the-chutes.
Suddenly the creature's right leg went through the top's fabric. It
struggled to regain its footing as an ape might struggle to regain
position on a limb in the jungles.
At that moment the fleeing car crashed mercilessly into the two
nearest police cars ahead. The men inside had expected the driver to
slow down to avoid a collision. How could they know what sort of brain
lurked within the driver's skull? They couldn't ... and three
policemen paid with their lives for their lack of knowledge as their
bodies were hurled beneath a mass of twisted wreckage, crushed out of
human semblance.
- - -
The hybrid atop the fatal car was hurled through the air like a
thunderbolt. His body passed over the railing of the subway entrance
before the Flatiron Building and Bentley knew he had crashed to his
death on the steps.
The police car had already come to a stop, and Bentley was running
toward the subway entrance.
The shapeless bleeding bundle on the steps no longer even resembled a
man. Fortunately nobody had been struck by the hurtling body; and,
miraculously enough, Barter's pawn was not yet quite dead.
Moans of animal pain came through his bleeding lips. The eyes scarcely
noticed Bentley, though there was a slight flicker of fear in them.
Then, in the instant of death, even that slight expression passed from
them. Bentley saw the scarline about the skull.
And now Bentley knew that Barter was missing no slightest move, that
he saw everything....
For the ghastly hybrid on the steps raised his right hand in
meticulous salute ... and died. It was an ironic, grotesque gesture.
Plain-clothes men gathered around.
"Take his fingerprints," said Bentley quickly. "Then telegraph the
fingerprint section, U. S. Army, at Washington, for this man's
identity."
An ambulance was taking aboard the three mangled policemen as Bentley
stepped back into his car for the ride down to Washington Square to
see what dread thing had happened to Ellen Estabrook.