tley disappears! Believed kidnaped or slain by Mind Master!"

How had that story got out? Surely Tyler would have kept that from the
press. Following on the heels of the Colombian ape story, Barter would
almost surely put two and two together to arrive at the proper total.

- - -

Bentley read on:

"Ellen Estabrook, fiancee of Lee Bentley, disappears mysteriously from
her hotel room. Guarded by a score of police, not one has yet been
found who knows anything of her disappearance or saw her leave. Nobody
seems to have seen anyone go to her room or leave it. Our police
department must have fallen on evil days indeed when twenty crack
plain-clothes men cannot keep one woman under surveillance."

Something was radically wrong, but Bentley could not piece the whole
story together, simply because he had been out of touch for so many
hours that the thread of it had slipped from his fingers.

Suddenly Bentley noticed that a solitary man was watching him
curiously, a dawning amazement in his face. Bentley roused himself and
saw that he was standing against the mesh, fingers hooked into it
above his head, his weight on his left leg, his right foot crossed
over his left, his head thoughtfully bowed.

To the amazed man yonder the "Colombian ape" must have looked
remarkably like a condemned man clutching the bars of his cell,
awaiting the coming of the executioner.

Bentley recovered himself and sat down on the floor of the cage in the
loose easy manner an ape would have used.

He forced himself to sit thus until evening, when the last curious one
vanished from the park and darkness began to fall.

Then excitement at the approach of a hoped for denouement began to
rise in his heart like a rushing tide.

Would Barter fall for the ruse? Or did he already know that the
Colombian ape was Lee Bentley?

In either case, Bentley thought, the Mind Master would take action
during the first hours of darkness. Bentley was gambling desperately
on what he knew to be characteristic of Caleb Barter.

CHAPTER XI

_In the Dead of Night_

Bentley knew that if Ellen were in the hands of Caleb Barter the mad
professor would probably do her no harm, but use her as a club against
Bentley, and through Bentley, the Manhattan police. He did not believe
that the Mind Master would consider performing the brain operation on
Ellen. Caleb Barter's scheme seemed to consider only men, and men of
substance.

No, Ellen would