The Mind Master by Arthur J. Burks (smallest ebook reader TXT) 📖

pores of your skin to breathe. If they are hidden under the hair they will scarcely be noticed, unless of course Barter sees what we are doing here and suspects from the beginning.”

“I can stand the discomfort for as long as may prove necessary,” said Bentley grimly, conquering a feeling of terror as he already saw himself in the role of an ape, a role previously played in which he had suffered the torments of the damned, “and anything is preferable to the wholesale carnage which Barter is doing. In seventy-two hours he has wrecked the morale of Manhattan. I shall try to get it back. Tyler, will you make every effort to guard the other eighteen men named on the Mind Master’s original list?”

“Of course,” but Tyler said it dubiously. Barter had proved it almost impossible to outwit him. In their hearts both Bentley and Tyler knew that Barter would make good his boast to take the eighteen men he had named. It seemed a grim price Manhattan must pay to be finally rid of Barter’s satanic machinations.

When Bentley, stripped naked, quietly announced his readiness to take his place on the operating table, Tyler senior took a deep breath, like a diver preparing to plunge into icy water, and looked questioningly at Bentley.

“I’m ready, sir,” said Bentley quietly. “Let’s get on with the task.”

Dr. Tyler set to work with amazing, uncanny speed. He had never been more skilful in closing sutures of the flesh in any of his myriad of operations. He was a man inspired as he labored on the task of changing Lee Bentley from a normal human being to a Colombian ape.

While the surgeon worked his son telephoned to the Colombian explorer whose return from Latin-America had been mentioned in the day’s news. He couldn’t explain anything over the telephone, he said, but would Doctor Jackson come at once to the private offices of James Tyler, surgeon?

Doctor Jackson grumbled, but the urgency in the voice of Tyler convinced him that the thing was important. He promised to be on hand within an hour. It then lacked a few minutes of three o’clock in the morning.

Next at Bentley’s suggestion––and he talked quickly and eagerly to keep his mind off the ordeal he knew he was facing––Tyler got the curator of the Bronx Zoo out of bed and asked him to wait upon Doctor Tyler immediately.

At four o’clock Doctor Jackson and the curator entered the room where Surgeon Tyler had performed a miracle. 245

Doctor Jackson stepped back in amazement when he noted the manlike ape which leaned with arms folded against one wall of the operating room. His eyes were big with amazement.

He studied Bentley for several minutes, while no one spoke a word.

It was the curator who broke the strained silence.

“So this is your Colombian ape,” he said. “I read the news story, but I understood that the ape you had found had been killed in the attempt to capture it.”

Surgeon Tyler spoke easily.

“That news story,” he said, “was to prevent Doctor Jackson from being annoyed by visitors eager to see his find. As a matter of sober fact Doctor Jackson captured the Colombian ape alive and is now about to turn it over to the zoo. Understand me, Doctor Jackson?”

Still the explorer said nothing. For a moment longer he stared at Bentley; then he walked over to him.

“The hair is different,” he said as though talking to himself. “The Colombian ape’s hair is of a slightly finer texture. But that could be explained away as I allowed only the merest bit of information to the reporters to-day. I can add a supplementary story in the next newspaper which will explain that the coarse fur of the Colombian ape is the only thing about it which makes it resemble a giant anthropoid.”

Jackson had walked to Bentley without fear and ran his fingers through the hair as he spoke.

“I know it’s a man, and some surgeon has performed a miracle,” he said. “Just what is it you wish me to do?”

“You’ve read the stories relating to the Mind Master, Doctor?” asked Bentley suddenly. How strangely his voice came from the body of an ape!

“I’ve read some of them,” answered Jackson. “Is this a scheme whereby you hope to trap the Mind Master?”

“Yes.”

“Then depend upon me for any assistance I can render. As a scientist I understand fully the power for evil of a mad genius of our class. This Mind Master should be ruthlessly destroyed.”

“Thank you,” said Bentley, stepping forward. “You know, perhaps, how the Colombian ape behaves, enough that you can coach me how to walk, how to gesture?”

“Certainly. It will take perhaps an hour to prepare you to fill your role creditably.”

Jackson’s face flushed with enthusiasm. He was launched on a task which fired his interest. He was an authority on apes and anything relating to them inspired him.

“Seat yourself on a chair,” said Jackson. “The Colombian ape sits upright like a man.”

Bentley seated himself as Jackson had bidden him.

“Now spread your legs apart awkwardly, with the knees straight. The Colombian ape doesn’t exactly sit on a chair or a rock or a tree, he leans against it in a half sitting position.”

Bentley quickly assumed the awkward strained position suggested by Jackson.

Jackson stepped up to him and placed Bentley’s arms, unbent, so that his fists hung down outside his wide-apart knees, and cupped his fingers so that they seemed perpetually in the act of closing on something.

“You can’t possibly take the proper position with your toes,” went on Jackson, “for it’s beyond a man’s ability to curve his toes as he does his hands. The Colombian ape’s toes are prehensile.”

“Can’t you say in your next news story, Doctor,” suggested Bentley, “that the Colombian ape, the nearest 246 animal relative of man, seems to be in an advanced stage of evolution. Can you not say that the Colombian ape is by way of losing the use of his toes?”

“Many scientists know that to be untrue,” said Jackson, “but perhaps we can help you through your scheme before they begin denying details in the newspapers. Too bad we can’t send secret suggestions to all anthropologists that they remain discreetly silent until the mantle of horror is lifted from Manhattan. But of course we can’t, since we’d betray ourselves. Our only hope, then, is to work at top speed.”

“I am as eager as anyone to finish a particularly horrible task,” said Bentley.

Under Jackson’s instructions Bentley walked up and down the room. His shaggy shadow on the several walls as he turned, marched and countermarched at Jackson’s commands, filled Bentley with self-loathing. He found himself repulsive. His body perspired freely impregnating the ape skin with a harsh odor that was biting and terrible in his nostrils. It was sickening. He tried to close his mind to the repulsiveness of what he was doing.

He walked with a swaying, side-to-side gait, something like a sailor’s rolling walk, while his arms swung free at his sides as though they merely hung from his body. The Colombian ape walked like that, Jackson said.

“How about the intelligence of the Colombian ape?” asked Bentley.

“We shot the only specimen so far seen by man before we could discover any facts bearing on his intelligence,” said Jackson.

“Then you can safely say that he possesses intelligence far beyond that of known apes,” said Bentley quickly, “somewhere, let us say, between that of the lowest order of mankind and civilized man.”

Jackson nodded his held dubiously.

“It seems,” he said unsmilingly, “that I arrived in the United States at exactly the right time! You would have failed signally to convince the Mind Master in the role of an African great ape.”

Bentley managed a short laugh. How horribly it came from the lips of an ape!

“I’m not overly superstitious,” he said, “but I regard this as a good omen. I feel we’re sure to succeed in what we are planning. I think Barter will surely wish to experiment with me if he thinks I am in reality a great ape from Colombia. He’ll welcome the chance to examine any ape which so nearly resembles man. I’m an important link in his plan to create a race of supermen. At least that’s how we must hope that Barter will estimate the situation when my story is told in to-morrow’s papers.”

An hour before dawn Doctor Jackson, weary from his arduous instruction of the equally exhausted Bentley, pronounced Lee a satisfactory “ape.”

“Now here’s where you come in,” said Bentley tiredly to the curator. “I’m to be taken now to a cage in the Bronx. During the rest of to-day you will quietly instruct your attendants that their guard to-night at the zoo must not be too strict. I must be in position to be stolen by the minions of the Mind Master.”

Now the full significance of the desperate expedition upon which Bentley was embarking came home to them all. Their faces were white. Bentley shuddered under his ape robe. His mind went catapulting back into the past to the time when he had been Manape. This was much like it, save that all of him was now encased in the accouterments of an ape and he did not suffer the mental hazards which had almost driven him insane when he had been Manape, with the 247 perpetual necessity of keeping close watch over his own human body which had held the brain of an ape.

He stiffened. “I’m ready,” he said.

Immediately upon arrival the curator had been asked to have a closed car, quickly walled with a mixture of lead and zinc––which Bentley and Tyler hoped would thwart the spying of Caleb Barter––brought to Tyler’s door.

Three or four zoo attendants entered with a cage when Bentley pronounced himself ready. They stared agape at Bentley and their faces went white when he strode toward them upright, like a man.

Bentley would have spoken to reassure them, but Tyler signaled him to keep silent. The zoo attendants might talk and entirely spoil their scheme.

Two hours later, long before the first crowds began to arrive at the Bronx Zoo, Lee Bentley was driven from his small cage in the car, into a huge cage at the zoo. From a dark corner, in which he crouched as though overcome with fear, he gazed affrightedly out across what he could see of Bronx Park.

“When I used to feed the animals here,” he said to himself, “I never expected that the time would come when I myself would be caged––and one of them.”

The curator had ridden out with the cage. But, save for making sure of the fastening on the big cage, he paid no heed to Bentley. He treated him, of necessity, as though he were actually the Colombian ape he pretended to be. From now on until he succeeded or failed, Lee Bentley was an ape from the jungles of Latin-America.

Just before the crowds could reasonably be expected to begin arriving, curious to see this strange thing Doctor Jackson had brought from Colombia, an attendant arrived with a freshly painted sign.

“Colombian Great Ape,” it read, “Presented to Bronx Zoo by Doctor Claude Jackson.”

It seemed to close entirely behind Lee Bentley the vast door which separated the apes from civilization. Miserably he crouched in his corner and awaited the coming of the curious.