"I've seen apes swing into trees like that," Bentley thought. While the car plunged on, the creature stood up on the doomed limousine, and in spite of the fact that the wind of the car's passing must have been terrific, the ghastly hybrid jumped up and down on the top like a delighted child viewing a new toy or riding a shoot-the-chutes. Suddenly the creature's right leg went through the top's fabric. It struggled to regain its footing as an ape might struggle to regain position on a limb in the jungles. At that moment the fleeing car crashed mercilessly into the two nearest police cars ahead. The men inside had expected the driver to slow down to avoid a collision. How could they know what sort of brain lurked within the driver's skull? They couldn't ... and three policemen paid with their lives for their lack of knowledge as their bodies were hurled beneath a mass of twisted wreckage, crushed out of human semblance. - - - The hybrid atop the fatal car was hurled through the air like a thunderbolt. His body passed over the railing of the subway entrance before the Flatiron Building and Bentley knew he had crashed to his death on the steps. The police car had already come to a stop, and Bentley was running toward the subway entrance. The shapeless bleeding bundle on the steps no longer even resembled a man. Fortunately nobody had been struck by the hurtling body; and, miraculously enough, Barter's pawn was not yet quite dead. Moans of animal pain came through his bleeding lips. The eyes scarcely noticed Bentley, though there was a slight flicker of fear in them. Then, in the instant of death, even that slight expression passed from them. Bentley saw the scarline about the skull. And now Bentley knew that Barter was missing no slightest move, that he saw everything.... For the ghastly hybrid on the steps raised his right hand in meticulous salute ... and died. It was an ironic, grotesque gesture. Plain-clothes men gathered around. "Take his fingerprints," said Bentley quickly. "Then telegraph the fingerprint section, U. S. Army, at Washington, for this man's identity." An ambulance was taking aboard the three mangled policemen as Bentley stepped back into his car for the ride down to Washington Square to see what dread thing had happened to Ellen Estabrook. CHAPTER VI _High Jeopardy_ Ellen Estabrook was almost in hysterics when Bentley reached her. She had been immediately picked up by plain-clothes men and had thought herself captured by minions of Barter. She had been panic-stricken for a moment, she told Bentley, and it had taken her some little time to be persuaded that she was in the hands of police.