are you going to do?"

"Barter needs an ape to take the place of this one. I shall be that
ape!"

* * * * *

The Mind Master

By Arthur J. Burks

_Conclusion_

[Illustration: _"Now, Bentley," said Barter, "I'll explain
what I intend doing."_]

CHAPTER VIII

_The Mute Plungers_

It would be difficult to comprehend the nervous strain under which
Manhattan had been laboring during the past thirty-six hours. The
story of the kidnaping of Harold Hervey had not been given to the
newspapers, for an excellent reason. If Hervey's financial enemies
knew of his kidnaping and death they would hammer away at his stocks
until they fell to nothing and his family, accustomed to fabulous
wealth, would have been reduced to beggary.

The Mind Master himself, up to a late hour, had given no word to the
newspapers in his "manifestoes." The Hervey family held its breath
fearing that he would--for the newspapers would have played the story
for all the sensationalism it would carry. Bentley, when this matter
was called to his attention, wondered. Barter had kept his own counsel
for a purpose, but what was it? There was no way of asking him.

The story of the mad race down Broadway in pursuit of the limousine
which had returned the lifeless body of Hervey to his residence had
been a sensational one, and the tabloids had given it their best
treatment. The chauffeur who had crawled out like a monkey atop his
careening car, to lose his life when catapulted into the entrance to
the Twenty-third Street subway station: the three policemen whose
lives had been lost because the chauffeur hadn't stopped as they had
expected him to, the kidnaping of Saret Balisle by a great ape hadn't
yet broken as a story, nor the murder of Balisle's chauffeur.

But everybody knew something of the story of the naked man of the day
before. Many were the speculations as to what had ripped and torn his
flesh from his body, along with his clothes. What manner of claws had
it been which had sliced him in scores of places as though with many
razors?

Men and women walked the streets apprehensively, and many of them
turned at intervals to look behind them. No telling what they would do
when the story of Balisle's kidnaping by an anthropoid ape and a
queer mute chauffeur got abroad. To top it all the police pursuers
lost the Balisle limousine and Saret Balisle had taken his place among
the lost.