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.