ictaphones. They were extremely thorough in
their preliminary preparations for the defense of Saret Balisle.

At five minutes of ten o'clock Balisle was at his desk, pale of face,
but grinning confidently.

There were men in uniform in the hallways, on the roof, in the windows
of rooms across the avenue. Bentley and Tyler should have felt sure
that not even a mouse could have broken through the cordon to reach
Saret Balisle. But Bentley was doubtful.

He went to the window nearest Balisle and looked out. Sixteen stories
down was Fifth Avenue, patrolled in this block by a dozen blue-coats
and as many more plain-clothes men. Saret Balisle seemed to be
impregnable.

But at ten o'clock exactly, a blood-curdling scream came from the room
adjoining Balisle's, where some insurance company had offices. The
scream was followed by other screams--all the screams of women....

For just a moment Bentley and Tyler whirled to stare at the door
giving onto the hall, their hands tightly gripping their automatics.

"God Almighty!" It came in a choked scream from the lips of Saret
Balisle, simultaneous with the falling of a shower of glass in the
room.

- - -

Tyler and Bentley whirled back.

A giant anthropoid ape stood on the window sill, and the brute's left
hand held tightly clasped the ankle of Balisle, holding him as a child
holds a rag doll.

The ape swung Balisle out over the abyss.

Tyler flung up his automatic.

"Don't!" shouted Bentley. "If you shoot he'll drop Balisle!"

Bentley felt sick and the bottom seemed to drop out of his stomach as
the anthropoid, still holding Balisle as lightly as though he didn't
know he held extra weight at all, dropped from sight.

Tyler and Bentley leaped to the window, looked down. The ape had
dropped safely to the ledge of the window just below. He held on
easily with his right hand while Bentley and Tyler swayed dizzily. The
anthropoid still held Balisle by the ankle.

A head looked out of the window to the right. A frightened woman.

"God!" she choked. "That beast came out of the clothes closet. We've
been wondering why we couldn't open it. He must have been inside,
holding it."

A hundred men, all crack shots, stood helpless on roofs, in windows
across the street, in the street below, while the anthropoid ape
dropped slowly down the face of the Clinton Building toward the
street.

How would Barter lead his minion free of this tangle when, as was
inevitab