“Lee Bentley disappears! Believed kidnaped or slain by Mind Master!”
How had that story got out? Surely Tyler would have kept that from the press. Following on the heels of the Colombian ape story, Barter would almost surely put two and two together to arrive at the proper total.
Bentley read on:
“Ellen Estabrook, fiancée of Lee Bentley, disappears mysteriously from her hotel room. Guarded by a score of police, not one has yet been found who knows anything of her disappearance or saw her leave. Nobody seems to have seen anyone go to her room or leave it. Our police department must have fallen on evil days indeed when twenty crack plain-clothes men cannot keep one woman under surveillance.”
Something was radically wrong, but Bentley could not piece the whole story together, simply because he had been out of touch for so many hours that the thread of it had slipped from his fingers.
Suddenly Bentley noticed that a solitary man was watching him curiously, a dawning amazement in his face. Bentley roused himself and saw that he was standing against the mesh, fingers hooked into it above his head, his weight on his left leg, his right foot crossed over his left, his head thoughtfully bowed. 250
To the amazed man yonder the “Colombian ape” must have looked remarkably like a condemned man clutching the bars of his cell, awaiting the coming of the executioner.
Bentley recovered himself and sat down on the floor of the cage in the loose easy manner an ape would have used.
He forced himself to sit thus until evening, when the last curious one vanished from the park and darkness began to fall.