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 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.

Three or four zoo attendants entered with a cage when Bentley
pronounced himself ready. They stared agape at Bentley and their faces
went white when he strode toward them upright, like a man.

Bentley would have spoken to reassure them, but Tyler signaled him to
keep silent. The zoo attendants might talk and entirely spoil their
scheme.

- - -

Two hours later, long before the first crowds began to arrive at the
Bronx Zoo, Lee Bentley was driven from his small cage in the car, into
a huge cage at the zoo. From a dark corner, in which he crouched as
though overcome with fear, he gazed affrightedly out across what he
could see of Bronx Park.

"When I used to feed the animals here," he said to himself, "I never
expected that the time would come when I myself would be caged--and
one of them."

The curator had ridden out with the cage. But, save for making sure of
the fastening on the big cage, he paid no heed to Bentley. He treated
him, of necessity, as though he were actually the Colombian ape he
pretended to be. From now on until he succeeded or failed, Lee Bentley
was an ape from the jungles of Latin-America.

Just before the crowds could reasonably be expec