ed a newspaper.

"Do you mind if I glance through the headlines?" Bentley asked Ellen.
"I haven't looked at an American paper for ever so long."

- - -

The cab started again and Bentley folded the paper, falling easily
into the habit of New Yorkers who are accustomed to reading on
subways where there isn't room for elbows, to say nothing of broad
newspapers.

His eyes caught a headline. He started, frowning, but was instantly
mindful of Ellen. He mustn't show any signs that would excite her,
especially when he didn't yet understand what had caused his own
instant perturbation.

Had Ellen looked at him she might have seen merely the calm face of a
man mildly interested in the news of the day, but she was looking out
at the Fifth Avenue shops.

Bentley was staring again at the newspaper story:

"An evil genius signing his 'manifestoes' with the strange
cognomen of 'Mind Master' gives the authorities of New
York City twelve hours in which to take precautions. To
prove that he is able to make good his mad threats he
states that at noon exactly, to-day, he will cause the
death of the chief executive of a great insurance company
whose offices are in the Flatiron Building. After that, at
regular stated periods, warnings to be issued in each case
ten hours in advance, he will steal the brains of the
twenty men whose names are hereto appended:" (There
followed then a list of names, all of which were known to
Bentley.)

He understood why the story had startled him, too. "Mind Master!"
Anything that had to do with the human brain interested him mightily
now, for he knew to what grim uses it could be put at the hands of a
master scientist. Around his own head, safely covered by his hair
unless someone looked closely, and even then they must needs know what
they sought, was a thin white line. It marked the line of Caleb
Barter's operation on him that terrible night in the African jungles,
when his brain had been transferred to the skull-pan of an ape, and
the ape's brain to his own cranium. Any mention of the brain,
therefore, recalled to him a very harrowing experience.

It was little wonder that he shuddered.

Ellen noticed his agitation.

"What is it, dearest?" she asked softly, placing her hand in the crook
of his arm.

- - -

He was about to answer her, desperately trying to think of something
to say that would not alarm her, when their taxicab, with a sudde