So Bentley contented himself with waiting.
Lying on his back on the floor of the car he tried to see what he could through the car windows. He knew when he was carried under an elevated system by the crashing roar of trains over his head. He knew he was being carried downtown, but he wasn’t sure that this was the Sixth Avenue elevated.
How could he find out the road they were traveling without sitting up and looking at street signs?
He felt he didn’t dare do that. He’d be as careful as possible on the off-chance that Barter really believed him a Colombian ape, when the benefit of surprise would be with Bentley.
The car progressed downtown at a normal speed. It stopped for red lights and obeyed all other traffic regulations. Barter was taking no chance on losing more of his puppets.
Bentley suddenly gasped with horror as he remembered something. Eighteen important men of Manhattan had been kidnaped that day by Caleb Barter. Would Bentley be forced to watch the mad professor perform the eighteen inevitable operations?
Perspiration poured from every pore as he visualized the horror he might be compelled to witness when he was finally taken into Barter’s hideout. The ape skin clung to him as though it were actually his own. There were even moments when Bentley feared that it might grow to him.
But he put the feeling of horror from him with the thought that if Ellen were in Barter’s power, Barter might even be forcing her to anesthetize for him while he performed his grisly slaughter.
Bentley’s courage returned and now it seemed to him that the journey would never end, so eager was 253 he to discover whether or not Ellen had eluded the hands of the Mind Master.