CHAPTER XI

_Barter Acts_

Bentley remained motionless, awaiting Ellen's return to consciousness.

He waited in fear and trembling. How would she react to the horrible

thing he had told her?

Now there was possibility of converse between them. If she knew and

realized the meaning of his revelation. But would her mind stand up

under the awfulness of it? He had thought so, else he would not have

taken the chance he had taken. Much now depended upon Ellen, and all

he could do was wait.

Slowly she began to move. Moans escaped her lips, little pathetic

moans, and the name of Lee Bentley.

At last her eyes opened, and widened with horror when they met those

of Manape. Bentley knew that there were tears on the face of

Bentley-Manape. Manape, it seemed, cried easily, like a child.

Her eyes still wide with horror. Ellen Estabrook slowly turned them

until she gazed at the dust rectangle in which presumably a great ape

had written words in English. But Bentley-Manape had rubbed out the

words. She turned and looked at Manape again, and her lips writhed and

twisted. She was seeking for words, shaping words, to ask questions

such as none in all the world's history had ever asked of a giant

anthropoid, with any hope of receiving answers.

"You tell me you are Lee," she began slowly, hesitantly, as though the

words were literally forced from her against her will. "I cannot grasp

the meaning of that. You say you are Lee, yet I recognize you as

Manape, Caleb Barter's great ape. Yet Manape could not have written

those words. Yet, if you are Lee Bentley, who or what is that?"

* * * * *

She turned and pointed a trembling finger at Apeman. Bentley of course

could not answer her in words, yet his mind was busy conceiving of

some way in which he might answer her. She turned back to him after a

long look at Apeman and studied him. His huge barrel chest, the mighty

arms, the receding forehead--the outward seeming of a giant ape.

Again that hesitant, horribly difficult task, of forcing the arms of

Manape to perform actions which were not natural to the arms of a

great ape. Bentley managed to raise the right arm in the gesture of

pointing.

He pointed at the other apes, some of which slept, some of which ate

of grubs and worms, or bickered savagely among themselves over

whatever childish trifles seemed important to the ape mind.

"You mean," said Ellen huskily, "that Lee Bentley there is really an

ape?"

Manape nodded, ponderously.

Ellen's face became animated. She was beginning to understand how to

hold speech with Manape.

"You tell me he is a great ape, yet he has the body of Lee Bentley.

You tell me you are Bentley, yet I see you as Manape. Caleb Barter's

trained ape. How am I to understand? Are my eyes betraying me, or is

this a nightmare from which I shall waken presently? I see the shape

of Manape, who writes in the dust that he is Lee. How can I know? None

of you I can see is Lee Bentley. What part of you that I cannot see is

Lee?"

* * * * *

Again the effort of forcing the hands of Manape to obedience.

Manape-Bentley tapped his receding forehead with his knuckles, and a

gasp burst from the lips of Ellen Estabrook.

"You mean your brain is Bentley's brain, and that Bentley's body holds

the brain of a great ape?"

Manape nodded clumsily.

"But how? You mean--Caleb Barter? I remember about him now. A master

surgeon, an expert on anesthesia--a thousand years ahead of his time.

You mean then that we three are part of an experiment? You, Manape,

have the brain of Bentley, and Bentley has the brain of a great ape?"

Bentley nodded.

The face of Ellen Estabrook writhed and twisted. Her eyes studied the

person of Manape the great ape. She could not believe the thing she

had been told, yet she was thinking back and back--back to when Apeman

had carried her away, his subsequent behavior, his behavior in the

house of Barter, and his interest in the she ape who had licked his

wounds.

She remembered how Manape in the beginning had looked at her with the

eyes of a lustful man--and how later all his attitude had been

protective. There seemed evidence in plenty to support the statement

Manape had mutely managed to give her. She was forced to believe.

"But, Lee,"--she came closer to Manape as she spoke--"we must do

something for that creature there--that thing with the ape she which

looks like the man I love. You've heard me say that I love Lee

Bentley?"

Manape nodded.

"Does Lee Bentley love me?"

Again Manape nodded, more vehemently this time. Ellen smiled. Then,

quickly, she came to Manape, thrust her fingers against his skull and

examined it closely. Her brows were furrowed in concentration. She

left Manape and strode to Apeman. The she growled at her but she

ignored the beast as much as possible, though plainly cognizant of the

fact that she dared not touch her hands to Apeman on pain of being

torn asunder by the fighting fangs of the ape she.

* * * * *

Then Ellen came back.

"The evidence is there, Lee," she said. "There are the marks of a

surgeon's instruments. Marvelous. One is almost inclined to forget the

horror of it in the realization that a miracle has been performed. The

operation was perfect. But what did he use for anesthesia? How did

Barter manage to complete his operation and cause his two patients to

feel no-ill effects, to be to all intents and purposes well in mind

and body--all within less than twelve hours? However, that does not

matter now. Something must be done. Since Caleb Barter was the only

man who could perform this unholy operation, he is the only one who

could repeat it restoring each of you to your proper earthly

casements. So we must play in with him. I suppose you've long since

decided that way, Lee?"

How strange it seemed to Ellen to discuss such matters with Manape.

But behind his brutish exterior was the brain of the man whom she

loved.

"And there is one other thing," Ellen almost whispered, and her face

flushed rosily. "No harm must come to the body of Lee, you understand?

He must never be permitted to do anything of which Lee Bentley of

after years may have cause to feel ashamed."

Manape nodded. He understood her, and despite the grotesquerie of the

whole thing there was something intimate and sweet about this

interchange. A man and woman loved. Just now that love was mentioned

more or less in the abstract, discussed on purely a mental basis--but

both Bentley and Ellen Estabrook were thinking of the future, and were

as frank with each other as they perhaps ever would be again.

* * * * *

Now the apes were beginning to stir themselves. It was time to be on

the move again. Eyes were turned toward Manape, who was plainly

intended to lead them further into the jungle. Ellen and the white

body of Bentley were already being accepted as a matter of course.

If the great apes wondered why their returned lord did not jabber with

them in the gibberish of the great apes, there was no way of telling,

for there was no way in which Manape could make himself understood,

nor any way the great apes could tell their thoughts to Manape.

Then, without warning, the blow fell.

The storm broke, and even as the uproar started Bentley was sure that

he could sense behind it the fine hand of Caleb Barter--still working

out his "experiment," with human beings and apes as the pawns.

The apes were on the move, entering a series of aisles through the

gloomy woods when the blow fell--in the shape of scores of nets, in

whose folds within a matter of seconds the great apes were fighting

and snarling helplessly. They expended their mighty strength to no

avail. They fought at ropes and thongs which they did not

understand--and only Manape made no effort to fight, knowing it

useless.

Scores of black folk armed with spears danced and yelled in the brush,

frankly delighted at the success of their grand coup. Barter was

nowhere to be seen, and there was a possibility that he knew nothing

about this. Yet Bentley knew better. Perhaps, in order to stimulate

the blacks, he had offered them money for great apes taken alive.

Anyhow, scores of the apes were taken, and now exhausted themselves in

savage bellowing and snarling, as they fought for freedom.

A half dozen to each net, the blacks gathered in their captives. They

made much over Ellen Estabrook. They pawed over Apeman despite his

snarls and bellowings, and laughed when Apeman played the ape as

though to the manner born. They scented some mystery here, a white man

raised by the apes, perhaps. But that Ellen and Apeman were prisoners

of blacks, Bentley could plainly understand. He scarcely knew which

was the more horrible for her--to be prisoner of the apes or the

blacks.

But for the moment there was nothing he could do. And the blacks were

not torturing either Apeman or Ellen, though there was no mistaking

what he saw in the faces of the blacks when they looked at Ellen and

grinned at one another.

Darkness had fallen over the world when the blacks went shouting into

a village of mud-wattled huts, bearing the trophies of their ape hunt.

Still in their nets for safety's sake, the great apes were thrown into

a sort of stockade which had plainly just been built for their

reception--proof to Bentley that this decision to make an attack

against the passing band of anthropoids had been a sudden one. What

did that indicate?

Someone had caused the blacks to react in a way that never would have

occurred to them ordinarily.

Caleb Barter?

Bentley thought so. What now was Bentley supposed to do? What did

Barter expect him to do? What did Barter expect Ellen to do? What did

he expect Apeman to do?

There was no question, as Bentley saw it, but that Caleb Barter still

pulled the strings, and that before morning this jungle village was to

witness a horror it should never forget.

But at the moment Bentley had but one thought: to escape quietly with

Ellen and Apeman, and return to the dwelling of Caleb Barter.