“But there’s a possibility you’re right. Do you know what the Mind Master’s first manifesto said? It was published by a tabloid newspaper as a sort of gag––a strange crank letter. Here it is.”
Tyler tossed Bentley a newspaper clipping a week old. Bentley read quickly:
“The white race is deteriorating physically at a dangerous rate. In fifty years, if nothing is done to prevent it, the world will be filled with men whose bodies are so soft as to be almost worthless. But I shall take steps to prevent that, as soon as I am ready. I need a week. Then I shall begin my crusade to make the white race a race of supermen, whom I alone shall rule. They shall keep the brains they have, which shall be transferred to bodies which I shall furnish.
(Signed) The Mind Master.”
Tyler squinted at Bentley again.
“You see? Brains are all right, he says, but the white race needs new bodies. If he isn’t suggesting brain substitution, what is he suggesting? Though I confess I never thought of your story until your name was sent in to me a while ago. For the world thinks of Barter as having been killed by the great apes.”
“Yes, I told newspaper reporters that. I thought it was true. But this Mind Master must be Barter. There couldn’t be two persons in the world with mental quirks so much alike.”
“Tell me what Barter looks like. Oh, there are plenty of pictures extant of the famous Professor Caleb Barter who disappeared from the world some years ago, but he’ll know that, of course, and he won’t look like the pictures.
“Alteration of his own features should be easy for a man who juggles brains.”
“He may have changed his features since I saw him, too,” said Bentley. “But I’m sure I’d know him.”