Barter's face was now a mask of uncanny shrewdness. In a few words he had pierced through Ellen's secret of why she had deliberately placed herself in the way of Barter's minions in order to be taken, and now he had used the words of her own questions to form a weapon against her. Ellen gasped in terror. Had she made a hideous mistake? Had she, by failing to wait for word from Bentley, ruined all his well laid plans? Barter now stood before her, his eyes almost shooting fire. "Tell me quickly," he began, and for a second she thought he would put his hands on her, "what sort of plan is he making to betray me into the hands of my enemies, who are the enemies of super-civilization because they are my enemies?" "I know of nothing," said Ellen stoutly, hoping that she had not, after all, betrayed the fact that she knew Bentley had started to work out an unusual scheme. The details she didn't know, for Lee hadn't told her. "But I do know, what all the world knows, that he was helping the police against you. Naturally, then, when he vanished I thought of you. Besides you had already warned him that you would remove him in your own good time. He caused you the loss of two of your puppets and I thought, naturally enough, that you would try to remove him to some place where he could not operate so successfully against you." "That's all?" queried Barter eagerly. "You don't know of some special scheme that has been worked out to trap me?" "I know of no scheme. Now that I am in your hands, Professor, what do you intend doing with me?" Barter stared at Ellen for several minutes. "I haven't captured Bentley ... yet," he said at last, slowly, "but I shall--no doubt about that. It is inevitable--as inevitable as Caleb Barter. I can use him in my labors for humanity. How I treat him after he is taken depends somewhat on you. You may therefore consider yourself a sort of hostage. I have much medical work to perform. Have you ever been a nurse?" - - - Ellen recoiled in horror. "You don't mean you would ask me to help you perform those horrible--" She stopped abruptly before her sudden tendency to hysterics should make her say things to anger Barter too far. "So," he said quickly, "you think my brain operations are horrible, eh? Well, you shall see that they are not horrible; that Professor Barter, the greatest scientist the world has ever produced, is really preparing to prevent civilization from utterly decaying." "And afterward?" asked Ellen. "I know that eventually you will be taken and that the people will destroy you, tear you limb from limb. But you will never believe that. Tell me, then, what you plan to do with me." For a brief time he considered the matter.