_High Jeopardy_
Ellen Estabrook was almost in hysterics when Bentley reached her. She
had been immediately picked up by plain-clothes men and had thought
herself captured by minions of Barter. She had been panic-stricken for
a moment, she told Bentley, and it had taken her some little time to
be persuaded that she was in the hands of police.
But Bentley's heart was filled to overflowing with gratitude that he
had been able to safeguard Ellen against Barter. He never doubted it
had been Barter who had telephoned her. And even now he fancied he
could hear Barter's chuckle of amusement. Barter was watching, perhaps
even listening. Bentley felt that the madman was just biding his time.
Barter could have taken Ellen in this attempt, but hadn't tried
greatly, knowing himself invincible, knowing that he could take her at
any moment if it was necessary. And he might take her even if it were
not necessary, since he had warned Bentley she must be removed.
The police car raced back uptown so that Bentley could inform himself
of any new developments in the Hervey case. Ellen snuggled against him
gratefully. "You'll have to stick close to me," said Bentley, "until
something happens, or until the exigencies of service draw me away
from you. Then it will be up to Tom Tyler to look after you."
"I can look after myself," she retorted spiritedly. "I'm over age and
not without brains...."
"Yet you went to Washington Square," said Bentley gently. "Didn't it
even seem strange to you that I would have selected such a place as a
rendezvous?"
- - -
Ellen turned away from him and her lips trembled. His gentle thrust
had hurt her.
"But I would have sworn it was your voice, Lee," she said. "And--I
still think it was!"
"I tell you I didn't phone you to meet me in Washington Square!"
"But you told me you had talked with Barter for a long time on the
headquarters phone, didn't you? Remember that you are dealing with the
cleverest and maddest brain we know of to-day. What if he had merely
talked with you to get a record of your voice? Suppose a voice were
composed of certain ingredients, certain sounds. Suppose those
ingredients could somehow be captured on a sensitized plate of some
kind! Edison would have been burned as a sorcerer a few centuries
before he invented the wax record. Twenty years ago who would have
thought of talking pictures ... voices permanently recorded on
celluloid?"
"But the talkie films merely parrot, over and over again, the words of
actual people. When I talked with Barter this morning I certainly said
nothing about meeting you at Washington Square."
"But the tone, the timber, the frequency of your voice! Lee, suppose
he had gone a step further than the talkies and had found a way to
break the voice apart and put it back together to suit himself...?"
"Good Lord, Ellen! It sounds crazy ... but if you would have sworn
that voice was mine, then mine it may have been, speaking words with
my voice that I never spoke personally. But wait until we find out for
sure. We're just guessing."
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.
A head looked out of the window to the right. A frightened woman.
"God!" she choked. "That beast came out of the clothes closet. We've
been wondering why we couldn't open it. He must have been inside,
holding it."
A hundred men, all crack shots, stood helpless on roofs, in windows
across the street, in the street below, while the anthropoid ape
dropped slowly down the face of the Clinton Building toward the
street.
How would Barter lead his minion free of this tangle when, as was
inevitable, the brute reached ground level?