aired old man. As
she looked at him she found it hard to believe that one so gentle from
outward appearances had such a vast, grim power for evil. In repose
his face was kindly, though there was something out of character in
the fact that it was so apple rosy. And his lips were far too red.

"Where," she said quietly, fearlessly, "is Lee Bentley?"

Barter raised his eyebrows as he stared back at her. So far she had
not looked around at this great room into which he had had her
conducted; she had seemed interested only in her mission, whatever
that might be.

"You mean that delightfully rude young man?" he asked sardonically.

"You know well enough whom I mean! Where is he?"

"Then he is not to be found in his usual haunts?"

"He has disappeared."

"And you come out seeking Professor Barter because Bentley his
disappeared! It is almost as though you had previously arranged with
him to come seeking me if, at a certain time he failed to return from
some mysterious rendezvous...."

- - -

Barter's face was now a mask of uncanny shrewdness. In a few words he
had pierced through Ellen's secret of why she had deliberately placed
herself in the way of Barter's minions in order to be taken, and now
he had used the words of her own questions to form a weapon against
her. Ellen gasped in terror.

Had she made a hideous mistake? Had she, by failing to wait for word
from Bentley, ruined all his well laid plans?

Barter now stood before her, his eyes almost shooting fire.

"Tell me quickly," he began, and for a second she thought he would put
his hands on her, "what sort of plan is he making to betray me into
the hands of my enemies, who are the enemies of super-civilization
because they are my enemies?"

"I know of nothing," said Ellen stoutly, hoping that she had not,
after all, betrayed the fact that she knew Bentley had started to work
out an unusual scheme. The details she didn't know, for Lee hadn't
told her. "But I do know, what all the world knows, that he was
helping the police against you. Naturally, then, when he vanished I
thought of you. Besides you had already warned him that you would
remove him in your own good time. He caused you the loss of two of
your puppets and I thought, naturally enough, that you would try to
remove him to some place where he could not operate so successfully
against you."

"That's all?" queried Barter eagerly. "You don't know of some special
scheme that has been