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.

Bentley shuddered through the fur that covered him. Knowing the sort
of creatures with which he had to deal--men in all things save their
intelligence--made him tremble with nausea. Such grim, ghastly
hybrids. But he stopped shuddering when he recalled that he still
dealt with men after all--at least with one man, Caleb Barter. When he
thought of these two "apemen" as separate entities of a human being of
many personalities--Caleb Barter--he w