Chapter 11: In the Dead of Night

Bentley knew that if Ellen were in the hands of Caleb Barter the mad professor would probably do her no harm, but use her as a club against Bentley, and through Bentley, the Manhattan police. He did not believe that the Mind Master would consider performing the brain operation on Ellen. Caleb Barter’s scheme seemed to consider only men, and men of substance.

No, Ellen would not be harmed, he felt, but that made him feel no easier, knowing that she might be in the hands of Barter.

How could he know of Naka Machi, and the refined vengeance of the Mind Master?

The last visitors had left the park and comparative quiet settled over the zoo. Save for the sounds of animals feeding and the occasional cursing voices of attendants there were no sounds. Not since Bentley had taken his place in the cage had anyone spoken to him. He had never felt so lonely and uncertain in his life.

Now there was utter darkness and silence.

And then before his cage appeared a tiny spot of light. If Barter’s minions expected to deal with a powerful ape they would come prepared to subdue him by whatever means seemed necessary. Bentley had no wish to be injured, and yet he must make some show of resistance in order to allay any possible suspicion that he wished to be stolen.

There was a faint gnawing sound at the wire outside the cage. Mice might have made that sound, sharpening their teeth on the wire. Bentley decided to feign sleep. Had Barter come personally to supervise his capture? That didn’t seem reasonable as Barter must realize that all his effectiveness depended upon his ability to retain control of whatever organization he might have built up--and his central control must be his hideout.

Then he would be sending some of his puppets to get Bentley.

Would they be apes with man’s brains? Impossible. Apes could not travel from place to place without attracting attention, especially if they traveled unguarded and went casually to a given destination as men would go. So, if his puppets were not men in the normal meaning, then they were “apemen.”

The wire came softly down. Bentley hoped that no attendant might come blundering around now to spoil everything. His heart pounded with excitement.

At last he was going to see Caleb Barter again at close quarters.

“I shall destroy him,” he told himself.

The shadowy outlines of two men came through the severed wires. Bentley still pretended to be asleep. He wondered if Barter’s televisory equipment included any arrangements permitting him to see in the dark, and knew instantly that it did. How else could these two puppets have come so unerringly to the proper cage in Bronx Park?

No, Bentley did not dare allow himself to be taken easily in the hope that his actions would pass unnoticed.

But he waited until the ropes began to fall about him, testing the strength of his adversaries by mental measurement. By their uncertain, hesitating actions he knew that he dealt only with the forms of men--forms which were ruled by brains which had not in themselves intelligence enough to perform the acts they were now performing. Ape brains in the skull-pans of men. The brains in themselves were only important because they were living matter which was being used as a sensory sounding board by which Caleb Barter, the Mind Master, transmitted his commands to the arms and legs and bodies of his puppets.

Bentley sprang into action. He growled and snarled at the two men who were trying to take him. Only two men? Surely Barter would have sent more than two men to take a great ape! He knows I’m not a true ape, thought Bentley. He’s giving me a challenge. He knows I wish to get to his hideout and he is making sure that I get there.

But Bentley was only guessing. Calmness descended upon him as he realized that he was soon to face a crucial test.

Just now, however, he struck out at the two men who were striving to bind him. They were husky chaps, and one of them packed the wallop of a real fighter. Neither man said a word to him, and when his own hands clawed at them--how would he dare strike out with his fists?--the men made queer animal sounds in their throats. Bentley could well remember how helpless, hopeless and lost he had felt when his brain had been in the skull-pan of Manape.

The brain of an ape could not be a terribly intelligent instrument in the first place. What thoughts, if apes had thoughts at all, coursed through an ape brain which found itself inside a human skull?

The answer to that was simple: only such thoughts as Barter originated and transmitted through the mental sounding board. After all, the material of the human brain and the ape brain were perhaps very much alike, and Barter was working on a sound scientific principle in making a sounding board of an ape’s brain.