ts,
Barter's attention must have been pretty carefully fixed upon this
car.

So Bentley contented himself with waiting.

Lying on his back on the floor of the car he tried to see what he
could through the car windows. He knew when he was carried under an
elevated system by the crashing roar of trains over his head. He knew
he was being carried downtown, but he wasn't sure that this was the
Sixth Avenue elevated.

How could he find out the road they were traveling without sitting up
and looking at street signs?

- - -

He felt he didn't dare do that. He'd be as careful as possible on the
off-chance that Barter really believed him a Colombian ape, when the
benefit of surprise would be with Bentley.

The car progressed downtown at a normal speed. It stopped for red
lights and obeyed all other traffic regulations. Barter was taking no
chance on losing more of his puppets.

Bentley suddenly gasped with horror as he remembered something.
Eighteen important men of Manhattan had been kidnaped that day by
Caleb Barter. Would Bentley be forced to watch the mad professor
perform the eighteen inevitable operations?

Perspiration poured from every pore as he visualized the horror he
might be compelled to witness when he was finally taken into Barter's
hideout. The ape skin clung to him as though it were actually his own.
There were even moments when Bentley feared that it might grow to
him.

But he put the feeling of horror from him with the thought that if
Ellen were in Barter's power, Barter might even be forcing her to
anesthetize for him while he performed his grisly slaughter.

Bentley's courage returned and now it seemed to him that the journey
would never end, so eager was he to discover whether or not Ellen had
eluded the hands of the Mind Master.

CHAPTER XII

_A Woman of Courage_

Caleb Barter smiled warmly at the woman who had come to him almost as
though in answer to a prayer. He admired her flashing eyes and the
lifted chin which spoke of pride and courage.

"I had thought of improving the feminine strain of the race also," he
told her, but almost as though he spoke to himself, "but I realized
that it mattered little the stature of the mothers of the race as long
as the fathers were made virile. But if all women were like yourself,
Miss Estabrook, the race would not require the improvement it is now
my duty to bestow upon it."

Ellen stared directly into the eyes of the white-h