He motioned Bentley to a seat. Bentley sat back. Suddenly Thomas Tyler was around his desk and had pushed back the hair from Bentley's temples. He drew in his breath with a sharp hiss when he saw the white line which circled Bentley's skull. "It's not exactly proof," he said, as though he and Bentley had been in the midst of a discussion of that awful operation Barter had performed on Bentley, "but I'd take your word for it." "The story, in the main, was true," said Bentley. "I thought so. What made you come here?" "I saw that naked man run across Fifth Avenue from the door of the Flatiron Building. I saw the officer subdue him, helped him do it in fact, and saw the man die. Since there was no detective there, I took the liberty of removing these from the fingers of the dead man." Bentley gave Tyler the coarse hair, stained with blood. Tyler looked at it grimly for a moment or two. "Not human hair," he said, as though talking to himself. "Not like any I know of. But ... ah, you know what sort of hair, eh? That's what sent you here!" "It's the hair of an ape or a gorilla." "How do you know, for sure?" "Once," said Bentley grimly, "for several horrible hours ... I was a giant anthropoid ape." - - - Tyler's chair legs crashed solidly to the floor. "I see," he said. "You think this thing has some connection with your own experiences. How long ago was that?" "Slightly over two months." "You think the same man...?" "I don't know. But who could want, as a newspaper story I just read says, to steal the brains of men? What for? It sounds like Barter. I've never heard of anybody else with such an obsession. I'm putting two and two together--and fervently hoping they'll add up to seven instead of four. For if ever in my life I wanted to be wrong it's now." Tyler pursed his lips. Bentley saw that his eyes were glinting with excitement. "But there's a possibility you're right. Do you know what the Mind Master's first manifesto said? It was published by a tabloid newspaper as a sort of gag--a strange crank letter. Here it is." Tyler tossed Bentley a newspaper clipping a week old. Bentley read quickly: "The white race is deteriorating physically at a dangerous rate. In fifty years, if nothing is done to prevent it, the world will be filled with men whose bodies are so soft as to be almost worthless. But I shall take steps to prevent that, as soon as I am ready. I need a week. Then I shall begin my crusade to make the white race a race of supermen, whom I alone shall rule. They shall keep the brains they have, which shall be transferred to bodies which I shall furnish. (Signed) The Mind Master." - - - Tyler squinted at Bentley again.