“Police department redoubling their precautions to prevent Mind Master from capturing eighteen intended victims.”
“Hideout of Mind Master still undiscovered. When will the public be delivered from the stupidity of the police?”
“Doctor Jackson returns from Colombia, bringing a living specimen of an ape hitherto unknown to civilized man, but more like him than any ape hitherto known. Visitors may see the creature to-day in the Bronx Zoo.”
That was the story which had brought out the visitors who were forming, moment by moment, a bigger crowd before Bentley’s cage. Bentley managed a glimpse of a woman’s wrist-watch after what seemed an age of trying to do so without his intention becoming plain to the too bright children who crowded as close to the cage as attendants would permit. It was ten o’clock. It would be at least twelve more hours before Bentley could reasonably expect any action on the part of Barter. Barter would now be concentrating on his plans to kidnap the eighteen men he had first named.
Bentley tried to make the time pass faster by imagining what Barter would be doing. By now his labors must be titanic. He must have separate controls for each of his minions, and there were many times when he must control several at one time, thus making his task akin to that of a man trying to look two ways at once, while he rolled a cigarette with one hand and shined his shoes with the other. Certainly the concentration required was enormous.
Yet, no matter how complicated became his puzzle, Barter was its master because he was its creator, and Bentley hadn’t the slightest doubt that, until someone actually penetrated Barter’s stronghold, he would not be stopped.
Bentley knew that at the very first opportunity he would destroy Caleb Barter as he would have destroyed a mad dog or stamped to death a deadly snake. The life of one man would rest lightly upon his conscience, if that man were Caleb Barter.
Perhaps, though, he could learn many of Barter’s secrets before he destroyed him. Properly used they might prove boons to mankind. It was only the use Barter was putting them to that threatened to fill the world with horror and bloodshed.