As Carton hurried into the street and through the throngs that surge each afternoon in the city's financial section, his excitement was high. From the crowds about him he heard cries and calls, and as he neared the giant building of the Vance National Bank on Broad Street, saw a dense crowd gathered at its doors, held back by a row of policemen. The news was spreading out over the city like flame. The Invisible Master had struck! For two days the Invisible Master had been almost the single center of New York's interest. The newspapers had made known to all that Dr. Grantham had been struck down and his projector stolen, and that the criminal who had done that had had the audacity to venture back into the very room where he had attacked Grantham, made invisible by the projector, and to leave a mocking note for the scientist in the very presence of the police! And in that note the Invisible Master had promised to make use of his power of invisibility to make himself supreme in the great city! The police had been nonplussed. They had searched far and wide for Gray, the assistant of Grantham whom all held to be the daring thief of the projector, but they had found no trace of him. But the public was interested only in the Invisible Master, whether he was Gray or another. Was there actually such a man as that walking New York's streets unseen? And if there was would he carry out his threat to make himself ruler of the city by his power? Those had been questions of supreme interest in those two days. The newspapers carried pages concerning the Invisible Master and what he might do. He could steal, slay and burn with impunity. Nothing was safe from him, no treasure and no life. A thousand absurd methods were suggested for capturing him, but when nothing had been heard of him in the two days, a great part of the city doubted his existence, despite Grantham's warnings. But there seemed few doubters now, Carton grimly told himself, as he fought his way through the crowd to the great bank's doors. There his badge let him through the circle of sweating policemen who were holding back the excited crowds. He hurried on into the great bank's lobby. Blue-clad figures were stationed everywhere at its doors. The many cages along the marble and brass counters were empty of their occupants now, but in front of one cage was gathered a group of men. There were some of the bank's officials, elderly, anxious-looking men, two or three police officers among whom Carton recognized Sergeant Wade's sleepy-eyed and gum-chewing countenance, and, somewhat to his surprise, Dr. Grantham, whom he was later to learn had been summoned with the police at the robbery's occurrence. Vanished Money Carton saw that the center of interest of the group of officials and police and reporters was a young, immaculately-dressed man whose face was flushed and who was ejaculating excitedly.