Golden Age of Science Fiction Vol IX

by Various

  With little attempt at concealment the two men led Bentley to a long black closed car outside the park. They met no one. The two men avoided discovery with uncanny ease. Bentley thrilled with excitement. He felt he knew approximately where Barter's hideout was.

  It was useless, to speculate, however; time would show it to him.

  Bentley was tossed into the tonneau of the car. His two captors, moving with the precision of men in a trance, took their places in the front seat. Bentley struggled for a time against his bonds. He wanted to sit up and peer out, to see what way they took so that he would know where he was when he reached Barter's hideout. But of course, even if he shook his bonds free he did not dare rise to a sitting position, for to control the intricate handling of his two puppets, Barter's attention must have been pretty carefully fixed upon this car.

  So Bentley contented himself with waiting.

  Lying on his back on the floor of the car he tried to see what he could through the car windows. He knew when he was carried under an elevated system by the crashing roar of trains over his head. He knew he was being carried downtown, but he wasn't sure that this was the Sixth Avenue elevated.

  How could he find out the road they were traveling without sitting up and looking at street signs?

  - - -

  He felt he didn't dare do that. He'd be as careful as possible on the off-chance that Barter really believed him a Colombian ape, when the benefit of surprise would be with Bentley.

  The car progressed downtown at a normal speed. It stopped for red lights and obeyed all other traffic regulations. Barter was taking no chance on losing more of his puppets.

  Bentley suddenly gasped with horror as he remembered something. Eighteen important men of Manhattan had been kidnaped that day by Caleb Barter. Would Bentley be forced to watch the mad professor perform the eighteen inevitable operations?

  Perspiration poured from every pore as he visualized the horror he might be compelled to witness when he was finally taken into Barter's hideout. The ape skin clung to him as though it were actually his own. There were even moments when Bentley feared that it might grow to him.

  But he put the feeling of horror from him with the thought that if Ellen were in Barter's power, Barter might even be forcing her to anesthetize for him while he performed his grisly slaughter.

  Bentley's courage returned and now it seemed to him that the journey would never end, so eager was he to discover whether or not Ellen had eluded the hands of the Mind Master.

  CHAPTER XII

  A Woman of Courage

  Caleb Barter smiled warmly at the woman who had come to him almost as though in answer to a prayer. He admired her flashing eyes and the lifted chin which spoke of pride and courage.

  "I had thought of improving the feminine strain of the race also," he told her, but almost as though he spoke to himself, "but I realized that it mattered little the stature of the mothers of the race as long as the fathers were made virile. But if all women were like yourself, Miss Estabrook, the race would not require the improvement it is now my duty to bestow upon it."

  Ellen stared directly into the eyes of the white-haired old man. As she looked at him she found it hard to believe that one so gentle from outward appearances had such a vast, grim power for evil. In repose his face was kindly, though there was something out of character in the fact that it was so apple rosy. And his lips were far too red.

  "Where," she said quietly, fearlessly, "is Lee Bentley?"

  Barter raised his eyebrows as he stared back at her. So far she had not looked around at this great room into which he had had her conducted; she had seemed interested only in her mission, whatever that might be.

  "You mean that delightfully rude young man?" he asked sardonically.

  "You know well enough whom I mean! Where is he?"

  "Then he is not to be found in his usual haunts?"

  "He has disappeared."

  "And you come out seeking Professor Barter because Bentley his disappeared! It is almost as though you had previously arranged with him to come seeking me if, at a certain time he failed to return from some mysterious rendezvous...."

  - - -

  Barter's face was now a mask of uncanny shrewdness. In a few words he had pierced through Ellen's secret of why she had deliberately placed herself in the way of Barter's minions in order to be taken, and now he had used the words of her own questions to form a weapon against her. Ellen gasped in terror.

  Had she made a hideous mistake? Had she, by failing to wait for word from Bentley, ruined all his well laid plans?

  Barter now stood before her, his eyes almost shooting fire.

  "Tell me quickly," he began, and for a second she thought he would put his hands on her, "what sort of plan is he making to betray me into the hands of my enemies, who are the enemies of super-civilization because they are my enemies?"

  "I know of nothing," said Ellen stoutly, hoping that she had not, after all, betrayed the fact that she knew Bentley had started to work out an unusual scheme. The details she didn't know, for Lee hadn't told her. "But I do know, what all the world knows, that he was helping the police against you. Naturally, then, when he vanished I thought of you. Besides you had already warned him that you would remove him in your own good time. He caused you the loss of two of your puppets and I thought, naturally enough, that you would try to remove him to some place where he could not operate so successfully against you."

  "That's all?" queried Barter eagerly. "You don't know of some special scheme that has been worked out to trap me?"

  "I know of no scheme. Now that I am in your hands, Professor, what do you intend doing with me?"

  Barter stared at Ellen for several minutes.

  "I haven't captured Bentley ... yet," he said at last, slowly, "but I shall--no doubt about that. It is inevitable--as inevitable as Caleb Barter. I can use him in my labors for humanity. How I treat him after he is taken depends somewhat on you. You may therefore consider yourself a sort of hostage. I have much medical work to perform. Have you ever been a nurse?"

  - - -

  Ellen recoiled in horror. "You don't mean you would ask me to help you perform those horrible--" She stopped abruptly before her sudden tendency to hysterics should make her say things to anger Barter too far.

  "So," he said quickly, "you think my brain operations are horrible, eh? Well, you shall see that they are not horrible; that Professor Barter, the greatest scientist the world has ever produced, is really preparing to prevent civilization from utterly decaying."

  "And afterward?" asked Ellen. "I know that eventually you will be taken and that the people will destroy you, tear you limb from limb. But you will never believe that. Tell me, then, what you plan to do with me."

  For a brief time he considered the matter.

  "I am an old man," he said at last, musingly, "but I am young in spirit and in body. It would be amusing to have a mate--but no, no, that would not do! The destiny of Caleb Barter is not linked with a woman. You would simply hold me back. However, I have often been interested in miscegenation and its effect on the race if properly guided. My assistant Naka Machi, is one of the finest specimens of his race. Perhaps I shall arrange for you to mate with him, under conditions which I shall dictate, in order to experiment with your offspring...."

  Ellen swayed, her face going dead white. She hadn't yet met Naka Machi, but his name told her enough. The thought of a Japanese, however, was far less repellent than the cold, calm way in which Barter spoke of using the offspring of such a union.

  "I'll kill myself at the first opportunity," said Ellen suddenly.

  - - -

  Barter put his forefinger under Ellen's chin in a paternal fashion. His eyes looked deeply into hers. She thought of what his fingers had done in the past ... those long slender fingers. His touch made her shudder.

  But his eyes held her. They seemed like deep wells. Then they were like black coals advancing upon her out of the darkness, growing bigger and bigger as the
y came, with little flames in their centers also growing as they approached.

  "You will submit your will to mine," said the soft voice of Caleb Barter.

  His right hand was making swift snakelike movements back of Ellen's head. His voice droned on, but already it seemed to Ellen to come from a vast distance.

  "Your mind will be concerned only with the welfare of Caleb Barter," droned on the voice. "You will think only of Caleb Barter; your greatest desire will be to serve him. There is nothing you would not do for him. Let your objective mind sleep until Caleb Barter wakens it; give your subjective mind into my keeping."

  Beads of perspiration broke out on the cheeks of Caleb Barter as he worked quickly to place the girl entirely under his skilled hypnosis. At last she stood like a statue, her wide-open eyes staring into space, straight ahead. She did not move. She scarcely seemed to breathe.

  "You will know that my home is your home, Ellen," said Barter softly. "You will feel that you are welcome here and that you love this place. It needs the attention of a loving woman; you will give it that attention. But you will be subservient always to my will. You will enter upon your duties."

  Ellen Estabrook sighed softly as though with relief. Her hands went up to remove her hat, which she placed on a chair in a corner of the hellish laboratory. She removed her light coat and arranged her hair with skilled fingers. But even as she moved around the room of the long table her eyes stared vacantly into space. She was as much a puppet of Caleb Barter as were Stanley, Morton and Cleve. But, mercifully, she did not know it.

  - - -

  Barter studied her for several moments; his eyes squinted. He was making sure that she was not duping him with pretense. Satisfied at last be turned his eyes away from her. He stepped to the porcelain slab set in the bronze wall of his laboratory and looked at the push-buttons marked "C-3" and "E-5". The red lights were on, indicating that the two puppets controlled by these two keys were returning toward their master. The lights had been green when Barter had begun his conversation with Ellen Estabrook, indicating that the two puppets were still going away. With a tremendous effort of will he had given them sufficient mental stimulus to keep them traveling without his direct will for the few minutes he would require for Ellen.

  Now, however, he quickly donned the metal cap and the little ball, and inserted into the orifice in his cap the swinging key which connected by chain with the key which fitted into the slot under the button marked "C-3".

  He had returned to his puppets just in time. "C-3" was Cleve, who was driving the car sent out to bring in the Colombian ape. As Barter got in touch with the car it narrowly averted a crash with a police car ... and the perspiration broke forth afresh on the body of Barter as he resumed control of his puppets.

  The second creature, in the front seat of the car, was Morton, and it didn't matter particularly about him as he was not driving. But Morton was now becoming all ape. Barter did not wish to use any more of his mental energy than was necessary. He contented himself by sending his will into Cleve, who began at once to drive like a master. Whenever Morton, beside him, showed an inclination to jump out of the car or otherwise interfere with Cleve in his work, Barter had but to express the thought, and Cleve either pulled him back to his place beside him, or gave him a walnut from his pocket.

  - - -

  Barter could as easily have had them change places, since he assumed control of either at will, or could have controlled a score simultaneously. But that would have required additional thought stimulus, and he wished to conserve his mental energies for the work which yet faced him.

  Once he switched his attention from the heliotube which controlled Cleve--and through which, concurrently, he saw everything that transpired near Cleve, because his televisory apparatus and his radio control were co-workers on almost identical vibratory waves--to the area of Manhattan immediately surrounding his own neighborhood.

  "Hmm," he said to himself, "the police are getting too close. As soon as I have completed my labors to-night I shall destroy some of them as a warning to others to keep their distance."

  Morton and Cleve drew up to the curb while Barter watched carefully on all sides, through the heliotube, to make sure that their arrival was unmarked by the police.

  They climbed out quickly and raced across the sidewalk to the green gate which gave on a gloomy old court, inside which they were swallowed by the shadows from all eyes save those of Caleb Barter.

  Five minutes after the strange trio had entered the "place," the great chrome-steel door of Barter's laboratory swung open.

  "Morton and Cleve, my master," announced Naka Machi, bowing low and sucking in his breath with a hissing sound.

  Barter's own puppets entered with the ape between them.

  Barter walked fearlessly forward. He had slipped the key from the orifice atop his head. Morton and Cleve now stood listlessly, dumbly, looking with dead eyes at their master. Barter tossed them several walnuts each.

  Then he turned his attention to the ape, rubbing his hands together with pleasure.

  But the ape was behaving strangely. His eyes were staring past Barter. His hands sought to lift as though he would hold them out to someone; but the ropes prevented him. Barter turned to look. Ellen Estabrook stood beyond him, white of face, motionless as a statue. The ape was straining toward her.

  Caleb Barter chuckled with understanding.

  "Good evening, Lee," he said gently. "I've been expecting you!"

  CHAPTER XIII

  Where the Bodies Went

  Bentley had been bound carelessly. Who could expect ape brains to devise clever bonds, even when controlled by Caleb Barter? And now it seemed that Caleb Barter had known all along; he said he had been expecting Bentley. No, that wasn't it. Barter had seen him yearning toward Ellen Estabrook, statuesque and wide-eyed on the other side of the room. If it hadn't been for the presence of Ellen he might have been accepted as an ape. Now it made little difference.

  But his bonds were not tightly drawn. He found himself fighting them fiercely, trying to get his hands on Caleb Barter. He could see the scrawny Adam's apple of the mad scientist, and his fingers itched to press themselves into the flesh.

  Caleb Barter stood his ground calmly. "Naka Machi," he said softly.

  Suddenly Bentley felt a dull, paralyzing blow on his skull. He knew it had been intended to render him utterly unconscious. But Naka Machi hadn't taken into consideration that his skull was protected by the hide of an ape. He remembered, as he stumbled and fell forward, that the Japanese were wizards with their hands. That's why Naka Machi could knock him down, render him helpless, yet leave his brain as clearly active as before. Perhaps clearer, even, for now his brain did not act on his legs and arms, which were helpless.

  Bentley felt as he imagined a patient on the operating table might feel when not given sufficient anesthetic, yet given enough to make him incapable of speech or movement. Such a patient would hear the soft discussions of the surgeons, see them prepare their instruments, yet be unable to tell them that he wasn't entirely unconscious.

  - - -

  Barter stooped over Bentley and rolled back the lids of his eyes.

  "Good. Naka Machi!" he said. "He won't be in any position to do us an injury. Remain powerless, Lee Bentley, but retain your knowledge."

  Barter, then, was familiar with the strange hypnosis which the blow of Naka Machi's hand had put upon Bentley. Barter had taken advantage of it to add to it a sort of mental paralysis, so that the condition would continue.

  "You are in my hands, Lee," he said in paternal fashion, "but you can do me no harm. Since you were associated with me in the first of my great experiments you know much about me. I have never ceased to hope that you would one day understand and appreciate what I am doing for humanity and be brought to aid me. Perhaps if I force you to watch my efforts you will understand them and sympathize with my ambitions."

  Bentley could say nothing. Barter's eyes seemed to leap at him growing large and glarin
g, just as the eyes of caricatured animals leap at the camera in trick motion pictures. Physically he was powerless. Only his brain was active.

  "Remove this covering from him, Naka Machi," went on Barter. "Remove his bonds. You are about his size. Garb him in some of your own clothing."

  Bentley had the odd feeling that he didn't need to turn his head to see things around him. His head felt huge, almost to bursting, and his eyes felt huge, too, so that he could see in all directions, as though his eyeballs had been fish-eye lenses.

  - - -

  He studied Naka Machi. A nasty opponent in a fight, he decided. He hadn't figured on any opponent other than Barter. This man was almost as great. The skill of his fingers as he quickly removed the ape skin from Bentley, using scalpels taken from Barter's table, amazed Bentley with their miraculous dexterity. He cleaned Bentley's body with some solution in a sponge and clothed him in some of his own clothing which fitted fairly well.

  Then he lifted Bentley from the floor and stood him against the wall.

  Bentley was unbound. He tried to lift his hands but they refused to move. His feet, too, seemed anchored to the floor. His knees were stiff and straight. He might as well have been a wooden image for all his ability to get about.

  Now Barter spoke.

  "Come here, Lee," he said.

  Bentley was amazed at the kindliness in Barter's attitude. He dealt with Bentley as though he had been his son. He felt that Barter genuinely liked him. It was rather amazing. Barter liked him but would remove him without compunction if he thought it necessary.

  Bentley found he could move his feet, or rather they seemed to move of their own volition, as he crossed the room to stand before Barter.

  "I'm rather proud of what I have been able to do, Lee," went on Barter, "and I am now entirely safe from the police. I've issued another manifesto telling the public that for each attempt made against me, one of the eighteen men captured by me to-day will die. Manhattan is the abode of terror. Here, see for yourself."

  He extended to Bentley what seemed to be a pair of binoculars, but with the ear-hooks common to ordinary spectacles. He set them over Bentley's eyes and set them in place.