Locke impulsively threw his arms about her and kissed her as they related their narrow escapes.
Locke resolved to follow the trail of the Automaton and to rescue Zita. Also he had hopes of rescuing Eva's father at the same time. Eva wished to accompany him, but he would not think of it, and insisted that she return to Brent Rock and keep all the doors barricaded. In fact, he followed her almost to the house and saw that she entered safely, then hurried back to the beach.
With the aid of Eva's electric torch, which she had given him, it was no difficult task to trace the huge footsteps of the Automaton, though, one by one, the footprints of the emissaries took divergent directions, probably for the very purpose of confusing just such a pursuit.
He followed the main track, however, until he came to the banks of a small stream, and there the trail was completely lost, for the monster had stepped into the water. Locke waded to the other bank and hunted for further tracks, but there were none to be found. The Automaton had undoubtedly waded up-stream to the point where he had decided to dispose of Zita.
Nothing daunted, Locke started wading upstream. This stream ran in a gully between the rocks and the cliffs on either side, which were very high. Time and time again Locke thought of turning back for more searchers. But he hated to return to Eva without at least some news, and therefore he persisted.
He was at last rewarded, for just as he was about to turn to the right where the stream made a bend, he thought he heard a low laugh. He stopped dead in his tracks. Again the sound of the broken laughter came to him.
Cautiously Locke moved slowly forward until he could see around the bend.
It was a strange sight that met his gaze. Under an enormous overhanging rock he saw about fifteen men standing, while against the cliff he could distinguish the form of a girl. It was undoubtedly Zita. Sitting on a rock and quite close to her was Peter Brent.
The emissaries were clustered around the central figure, which was waving its arms of steel and indicating what they should do. As the Automaton gesticulated, tiny points of fire gleamed from its eyes.
Seen in the light of the lanterns held by the emissaries, the Automaton never looked more terrifying. Even Locke himself, who had encountered the monster so often, felt a cold chill as he watched him and his men.
Locke turned noiselessly, for well he knew that alone he could do nothing. He started to retrace his steps to Brent Rock, and no sooner had he arrived there than he told Eva that her father still lived and was uninjured, and that Zita was safe in the new den of the Automaton which he had discovered. Then he telephoned to his chief to send officers immediately to Brent Rock.
After the explosion that had killed Balcom and had come so near to killing Locke, when he had finally rescued himself and had drawn himself out of the hole, there was one who watched him.
It was none other than that mysterious being, Doctor Q. What twist of that disordered brain had brought him to the spot was not at once evident. However, as soon as Locke had left to go toward Eva, Doctor Q came from his hiding-place, madly smiling and wagging his head. He peered into the hole and, seeing nothing, lighted a match and thrust it far down into the darkness.
There was a sharp intake of his breath, for the match revealed to him the dead face of Herbert Balcom.
Doctor Q drew back and stood erect.
"Dead!" he muttered, as he ran his fingers through his hair dazedly.
"Dead!"
A strange thing happened. The mad light fled from the eyes of Doctor Q and the twisted brain seemed to become clear.
Suddenly in the very field the old man knelt down and prayed a thankful prayer for his recovery.
What was the strange power which Balcom had wielded over him, which death had snapped?
The officers arrived at Brent Rock and Locke was ready. The party left immediately to go to the rescue of Brent and Zita, and it took them only a short time to reach the spot which Locke had located.
Disposing some of his force below the hanging rock, Locke and some others went farther upstream. The two parties looked at their watches, waiting a certain time agreed on.
Then the two parties moved toward each other. As they came in sight of the spot, Locke experienced a keen disappointment. He could see no one. Advancing farther, he discovered Brent still on the same rock. Guarding him were three emissaries. That was all. Zita, the Automaton, and the other emissaries were gone.
The three emissaries, seeing the numbers opposed to them, did not even offer to resist. They were placed under arrest, but nothing could induce them to tell where the others had gone.
To fail Zita after she had so nobly saved his life in the lair of the hypnotist was an unwelcome thought to Locke, and he resolved to rescue her at any risk. But first he felt he must restore Brent to his daughter, and therefore the party returned to Brent Rock.
Eva was beside herself with joy at the safe return of her father, and led him tenderly to his room and sent immediately for the doctor in order that he might not suffer from his exposure.
While this was going on at Brent Rock, Paul Balcom was rifling his father's papers in the apartment where Balcom had lived. He had unceremoniously thrown letters and documents all over the floor in his mad search for something. Finally he found what he was looking for, and, smiling triumphantly as he read the paper, he thrust it into his pocket and hurriedly left the place, not stopping even to pick up the papers scattered all about.
Zita had evidently been watching the house, for no sooner had he left than she ran up the front steps of the Balcom apartment.
In some way she had procured a key and let herself in. Then began a feverish search very similar to that which Paul had instituted. Only, this time Zita picked up all the papers, arranging them and placing them back in the drawers, after scanning their contents.
She had almost finished when a small book lying in a distant corner of the room caught her eye.
At a glance she saw that it was a diary. Turning the pages rapidly, she finally came to one over which she fairly gloated, for its information, sold to the proper parties, might make her independent for life.
Even as she was gloating over her find there came the sound of many feet in the front hallway. Zita had no time to run out of the room before the door opened, giving entrance to six emissaries, surrounding her.
The emissaries locked all the doors and tramped out. Only their leader remained for a moment to throw a parting shot.
"Remember," he threatened, "this house is watched. See that you act accordingly. You will, if you know what's good for you."
Then he slammed the door and locked it behind him.
For a long time Zita sat there, too despairing to move. Then her ear caught the sound of stealthy footsteps in the hall, and she ran and hid behind the portières. The door opened slowly and Paul stole again into the room.
Having nothing to fear from him, Zita came from her hiding-place and confronted him. Paul was startled for a moment at her sudden appearance, but recovered himself on seeing that it was Zita.
The paper that he had stolen from his father's desk had proved to him that Zita had become highly desirable, and he was not one to miss such an opportunity.
As he questioned her, Zita told him briefly her story, or, rather, such portions of it as she thought it desirable for him to know. Paul, in turn, assured her of his undying friendship and something more. His earnestness almost made it seem true, and he talked in his most fascinating and attractive manner. He finally ended his conversation with a direct proposal of marriage. But he had overstepped the mark and Zita was not to be fooled.
"Paul"—she laughed scornfully now—"you should be on the stage. It needed only this proposal to prove to me that I am really Peter Brent's daughter."
"Peter Brent's daughter!" he exclaimed. "No, not his daughter—the daughter of Doctor Q."
"Impossible!" recoiled Zita, astounded at the assertion.
"True, Zita," he asserted, "absolutely true. Here, look at this paper."
With hands that trembled, Zita took the paper and read an amazing table. Unless the paper lied, she was indeed the daughter of Doctor Q.
There was only one thing to do and that was to confront Doctor Q at once and force him to a full explanation.
In order not to antagonize Paul, Zita was now particularly nice to him. Her object was to get him to consent to her escape, so that she could inform Locke and Eva of her discovery and all three confront Doctor Q and wrest from him the story.
At first Paul would not let her go unless she consented to marry him, but Zita played him skilfully, so that finally he unlocked the door.
Then Zita flew down the stairs and to a telephone around the corner, where she called up Locke, to whom she told as much as she dared over the wire.
Locke told her that he and Eva would meet her within an hour in the lobby of one of the city's largest hotels, and Zita hastened there, where she waited impatiently until they arrived.
Doctor Q admitted them immediately, and they noticed with astonishment the wonderful change for the better that had taken place in the man. For with the restoration of his mind all the evil lines of his face had been obliterated, as it were, and in the place of the doddering half-imbecile they found a genial, kindly, and distinguished gentleman who, with the utmost hospitality, brought chairs and begged them to be seated.
Zita, in her anxiety to know the truth, could hardly contain her impatience. Tossed from pillar to post, dominated once by the strong, evil mind of Balcom, Zita had run the gamut of human emotions before she had barely passed her girlhood.
Seeing her agitation, Locke undertook to interrogate the doctor.
"Doctor Q," he began, "I believe you know the perpetrator of the crimes to which we have all been subjected, and we have come to you in all friendliness to ask you to clear this mystery up for us. Balcom is dead," added Locke, pointedly.
"Yes, I know that," interrupted Doctor Q.
"You know?" all asked. "How do you know?"
The doctor told of having seen Balcom's body. But at first he could not explain why he was in the spot at the time.
Then Locke went on to tell him of the document that Paul had shown to Zita.
Doctor Q sank heavily into a chair.
"That document that Paul Balcom showed Zita," he exclaimed, after a moment, "told the truth."
All were startled. Zita would have risen with a cry had not Locke gently touched her arm.
"Tell us the story," demanded Locke of Q.
For some moments Doctor Q seemed to be collecting his scattered thoughts, as though still a haze hung over his mind. Then he began to speak, becoming more certain of his strange story.
"It was many years ago," he began, as all drew closer about him, listening breathlessly to his narrative, "and all these years I have been quite mad. The man now lying dead, Balcom, was the cause of all these years of misery."
The old man passed his hand over his head as though to wipe away a recollection of hate and fear, then resumed:
"I was an inventor in those days, and very successful. I had built up a great fortune, had built a great house, and in that house I had a beautiful wife and two of the loveliest children, a boy and a girl, that ever man had."
He paused again, then went on:
"One day, a man entered my life and proposed to put my inventions on the market very advantageously. He was suave, polished, and apparently a gentleman. At any rate, I trusted him. You all knew him. It was Herbert Balcom.
"At the time I did not know that in order to give my inventions a clear field the inventions of hundreds of poor inventors were to be suppressed. I know now, Miss Brent, that your own father was led along in the scheme, even as I was. Balcom possessed the master mind and we were all as children in his hands."
Doctor Q stopped a moment. It was evident that he was speaking with restraint when it came to Peter Brent, perhaps glossing over what the man had done. Though he did not say so, the mere fact that at last Brent had seen the light and had planned a wholesale restitution weighed supremely in Doctor Q's mind.
"One day," he resumed, "Balcom came to me in what I know now was merely feigned excitement and fear. 'They're after us!' he cried. 'Brent and I have done our best—but the government is after you, and we can't protect you any longer.'
"Then for the first time Balcom told me of the real purposes of the company, told me that he had been drawn into it by Brent. It was all a tissue of lies—lies that drove me from my home and country. I hated your father with an undying hate, Miss Brent.
"Well, to make the sad story short, I took my wife and children and sailed secretly for the farthermost parts of the world. Off the coast of Madagascar, in the Straits, a typhoon came up. The vessel was driven on the rocks and wrecked. I was cast ashore, and I vaguely remember how, for days and weeks, I patrolled that beach, subsisting on shell-fish, imploring God, day and night, to restore my wife and children to me. Then my mind gave way.
"The natives took me in, thinking me a god. They took me many miles inland. Savages, the world over, are superstitious about the demented, and so they treated me kindly. They installed me in a thatched hut of my own and made me a leader.
"How many months, years, I stayed with them I do not know. But, true to my mechanical instinct, I rigged up a forge and improved many of the crude instruments of the natives, principally those of agriculture.
"But transcending every other feeling, I hated Brent. In my madness, I conceived the idea that I would construct an iron giant that, upon its completion, if I could only procure the brain of a man who had died of a lightning stroke or other electric agency, I could, by installing this brain in the brain cavity of the giant, give it volition, make it a superman without feeling or conscience. It was a mad idea—but I was mad.
"At about this time Balcom came to Madagascar. He found me and, knowing my intense hatred of Peter Brent, he cruelly added fuel to the fire. Already he must have known that Brent was coming to his senses and planning his great restitution to genius.
"He promised me that if I would come to New York with him he would secure an electrocuted brain so that I could perfect my steel automaton and obtain my revenge. I was easily persuaded and I sailed with Balcom, bringing the iron monster with me."
A strange light gleamed in the old man's eyes as he spoke, not the light of madness, but of kindliness now.
"Children," he said, at length, "I have, during these lucid moments, watched you all closely. Call it instinct if you will, but you, Zita, and you, Quentin, seem to be particularly dear to me now. To-day, returning from the scene of the explosion, with every faculty not only clear, but rather sharpened by long disuse, I pieced the years, the months, even the days together. I searched in an old trunk and I found—this."
It was a list of those rescued from the steamer Magnifique, and with amazement they read the names among the passengers:
There was a short note at the bottom of the list, to the effect that no trace of either the father or the mother of the two children had been found.
Paper after paper which Doctor Q had found, where they had been preserved by Balcom, proved the identification and the story.
Locke's head was in a whirl at the sudden change in relationships, but not more so than Zita's. Finally Zita could stand the strain no longer. What had been a hopeless love was now explained.
"My—my brother!" she sobbed, as she buried her head on Quentin's shoulder.
Both turned to Doctor Q—Doctor Q no longer, but really Quentin Locke, senior, whence had come the "Q."
His eyes filled with tears and his voice choked.
"My—children," he murmured, "I see that it is not too late for me to find happiness, after all. Our enemy is dead. It was Balcom, of course, who was in that frame of armor, who used that terrible poison that stole away Brent's mind. The iron monster will walk no more. Henceforth Peter Brent and Miss Eva and you, Quentin—will—"
Doctor Q had not time to finish the sentence.
The door burst inward.
The Automaton, its eyes aflame, stalked in among them!
CHAPTER XXV
As the Automaton crashed its way into the room all sprang back terrified, aghast.
For this monster, they had felt sure, was now nothing but an inanimate shell of armor, since Balcom was dead.
Yet here it was, stalking toward them and evidently as bent on destruction as ever.
What did it mean?
In an instant Locke had helped Eva through an open window and turned to assist Zita. But Doctor Q forestalled him and had already taken her in his arms and had fled with her into another room.
For the moment Locke was surprised to see that the Automaton totally ignored him. Instead, it stalked to the door and wrenched it open. There, cowering in the hall, in abject terror, was De Luxe Dora.
How and why she had come there was a mystery. But the Automaton did not hesitate. It raised its hands and, as it did so, long flashes of blue flame leaped from the steel finger-tips toward the unfortunate woman. Once she shrieked, then crumpled and fell dead.
The monster then turned its attention to Locke, striding toward him with a menacing gesture. But the diversion due to Dora had given all just the time they needed to make good their flight. Locke threw a chair to impede the progress of the monster, and then, as he saw that all the others were safe, he lightly vaulted out of the window himself, to find them waiting for him in the little yard below.
"What do you make of it now—father?" asked Locke of Doctor Q. "Balcom is dead. Who is now in the iron man?"
Doctor Q shrugged. It was a mystery to him as much as ever, and he seemed unable to throw any light on it.
"But De Luxe Dora," queried Zita. "What had she come for? Why was she struck down—first?"
Again Doctor Q shook his head.
From the yard they could hear the Automaton's heavy tread in the room and, as there was nothing to be gained by remaining, they left the yard and hurried away out of the neighborhood.
They had not gone far, however, when Doctor Locke came to a full stop.
"I must go back," he exclaimed.
For a moment all thought he had again taken leave of his senses. Yet he was obdurate.
"Miss Brent—Eva," he explained, "you know that a grievous wrong has been done your father through me. He lies ill of that most terrible of diseases, the laughing madness. I alone possess the antidote, and it is in the laboratory that we have just left. I pray that that iron beast has not destroyed it."
At the mere words Locke turned as if to go back for it.
"No, Quentin," remonstrated his father. "You must remain to guard Eva."
"Then I will go," insisted Zita. "I am not afraid now. Even when the monster carried me off I overcame my fear, watched my chance, and escaped from his den, where he left me. I will go."
Finally Doctor Locke agreed that Zita might return with him, remain outside, and give the alarm if anything happened to him. Thus, after many remonstrances, it was agreed, and Eva and Quentin went on to Brent Rock.
No one had molested Brent in the mean time. The terror caused by the explosion, as well as the loss of Balcom, for the time, at least, had evidently cowed the emissary band.
While Eva made Brent comfortable, Locke went immediately to the laboratory, where he had something which he considered very important.
"Quentin," remarked Eva, as she joined him, "your father spoke the truth, I believe, when he said that it was Balcom in the Automaton, But if that was the case, who is in it now?"
Locke shook his head dubiously. "I give it up," he replied. "It's too deep for me. But whoever it is, he won't trouble us long, I'll wager. I've been perfecting a special gun and an explosive-gas bullet. No one can shoot the monster. Nothing seems to stop it. But this weapon, I think, will at last prove a match for it."
Eva, who had always had the deepest interest in Quentin's work, listened attentively as he explained in detail the working of the new weapon.
"And now we come to the actual loading of these asphyxiating-poison bullets," concluded Quentin. "I really must ask you, Eva, to go into another room, for it is dangerous work and you must not risk your life here."
"But, Quentin," remonstrated Eva, "we've risked our lives so often together that I have ceased to be afraid of anything."
Quentin was insistent, and finally Eva agreed.
As Doctor Q and Zita neared the former's laboratory, they saw that all the lights in the house were out. Doctor Locke, against Zita's advice, insisted on going in, and told his daughter to wait outside. It was then that Zita disobeyed her father for the first time, for she flatly refused to be left behind.
"No," she insisted. "I found a father to-night and what we must risk we risk together. It is no worse than the peril from which I once escaped."
There was no reasoning with Zita, and they let themselves into the little yard and went up the back steps. When they came to the door of the laboratory they listened intently.
There was no sound. Then they mustered up courage and cautiously entered the room. For a long time they stood quite still, not daring to move. Finally Doctor Q suddenly lighted a match.
The room was in terrible confusion, as though cyclone-swept.
Doctor Locke turned on an electric bulb and the room was flooded with light.
Everywhere there were traces of the Automaton. But the monster itself had left the place. Doctor Locke crossed to the other door. There was a sight that made them shudder. The body of De Luxe Dora was still huddled in a heap on the floor. She was quite dead.
But Doctor Locke had no time now to waste. Moments were precious. At any instant they might again be attacked. Feverishly he began to search for the bottle containing the antidote.
At last he found it, carefully hidden, and in a bottle fortunately not broken.
They left everything as it was and hurriedly left the place, on their way to Brent Rock.
Meanwhile, in one of the worst quarters of the city, down in the cellar of a huge warehouse, a mob of emissaries were gathered. They were discussing the things that had led up to the explosion in the Automaton's den, Balcom's death, and the arrest of their three pals. Plans for the future they discussed, but, with their leader gone, these hardened men were still as helpless as children.
Suddenly above the din of voices a strange, familiar sound was heard, a sound as of clanking chains, and the blood froze in the veins of every man present. Then with wild shouts of terror they scattered in every direction, for the Automaton was stalking toward them.
Balcom, the man who had given the iron man life, was dead. And yet the Automaton was among them!
That night, in the holds of many vessels and on the brake-beams of many trains pulling away from the city, emissaries who once were slaves of the Automaton were fleeing the city in every direction.
When Zita and her father arrived at Brent Rock, Locke was still working at his new gas-gun. Eva was in the library, but when she heard the voices in the hallway she ran to welcome them.
"Oh, I'm so glad you've both returned safe," she cried. Then, unable to withstand the suspense longer, she asked, "Have you brought it—the antidote?"
When Doctor Locke told her that the bottle that contained it was safely stowed in his pocket Eva sank, overwrought, into a chair and cried with simple relief and joy.
In a moment, however, she had gained control of herself, dashed the tears from her eyes, and almost seized the bottle from Doctor Locke.
"Bring him down here, my dear," cautioned the doctor, still holding the bottle. "You would not know how to administer it."
Eva ran to her father's room, stopping only long enough to summon Quentin, then together they led Brent down-stairs.
Brent's condition was still pitiable. His mind was a total blank. These people—Doctor Q, Zita, Quentin, even his own daughter—meant nothing to him. He lived and breathed. But no ray of light entered the poor brain.
They guided his halting steps into the library as if he had been something less than a child, and placed him in the same big armchair on which he had sunk the fatal morning that the fumes from the candles had overcome him.
Doctor Q drew out the bottle and, telling Zita to bring a glass of water, measured out a few drops of the antidote, pouring them into the glass. Then he moved over to Brent and tried to get him to drink it. For a long time Brent merely clenched his teeth, but, once he was induced to taste the mixture, he drank it eagerly.
For ages, it seemed to those watching, Brent sat as before, vacantly gazing straight ahead of him—so long, in fact, that a terrible fear entered Eva's heart that, perhaps, after all, the antidote would fail and that her father would remain without reason until the day of his death.
Then slowly a change was noticeable in his eyes, and all leaned forward with overpowering intentness. What they were watching was like a miracle. Slowly, very slowly, they saw the soul creep back into those poor, mad eyes.
Brent had been staring directly at his daughter as she watched him anxiously. Now a puzzled look came over his face and, raising a hand, he rubbed his forehead.
Then a wonderful light seemed to shine from his eyes and he held out his arms to Eva.
With a sob of excited happiness Eva rushed to embrace him.
As Locke stood behind him, Zita and Doctor Q walked to the other end of the room, turning sidewise to the group.
Suddenly Brent turned his eyes away from Eva and noticed Doctor Q for the first time.
"Who is that?" he asked Eva.
"Why, father, that is—"
At the sound of voices Doctor Q had turned around.
"You!" gasped Brent, as he sank back into his chair.
The look on his face was strange, perhaps half fear, half shame.
Doctor Q came no nearer for a moment, while Eva hastened to explain what had happened. Then unsteadily Brent rose and walked over to the doctor.
"You are alive!" he exclaimed. "You have come again into my life so that at last I can make restitution. My daughter has explained to me all that you have suffered. Believe me it was through my own weakness. It seems incredible that any man could be so infamous, so utterly without moral scruples, as was Balcom. I believed the villain implicitly. That is, and can be, my only excuse."
The doctor placed his hand on Brent's shoulder.
"I can understand only too well," he remarked, "for I, too, believed in Balcom. You were a reticent man and so my dealings were all with him. I was gullible, an inventor, not a business man. I should have come to you before I fled the country, I suppose. Say no more about it, for I forgive you from the bottom of my heart."
But Brent insisted on explaining that at least he had had a desire to right the great wrongs.
"I can remember it all now," he continued. "I was about to make restitution when a man connected with the company—I am sure now that he was an adventurer, a crook, in the pay of Balcom, although Balcom probably tried to hide it—came to me. His name, as I remember it, was Flint. I was about to write a letter that showed that it was my intention to right a wrong, when—something interrupted me and—the rest I can't remember."
Quentin, who had been standing behind the chair, now drew from his pocket a piece of paper which he handed to Brent.
"Yes—that is it," cried Brent, excitedly, taking it, and spreading it out before them. "See!"
It was a note addressed to Quentin Locke and read:
I have done you a great wrong about which you know nothing, but for which I will make amends—
"It was broken off," exclaimed Brent, making a sad effort to recollect what had happened. "I don't remember how. But this Flint had been telling me something about an iron monster. He had a model—said he had seen the real thing in Madagascar, that it had a human brain, that it walked and fought, that it had strength and life—but no conscience. He hinted that the thing would do me harm if I persisted in a course that I had determined for myself of giving back to inventors we had robbed the things of which we had robbed them. I did not believe him. I thought the thing absurd, and started to write the note, going a step farther than I had ever threatened Balcom."
Quentin, Doctor Q, and Zita exchanged glances as Eva's father resumed his narrative.
"Then I felt a choking sensation at my throat. I remember the effrontery of Flint's laughing at me, in a maudlin sort of way, and then—a blank. The next I recall was just now—Eva gazing at me with a worried expression in her dear eyes. I called to her and kissed her, tried to comfort her. Then I saw you, Locke, and Zita."
Peter Brent, from the time he and Flint had been overcome by the fumes from the candelabra until he received the antidote and recognized his daughter, had not known a thing!
As they talked there were many matters the two aged men discovered while they pieced together the happenings of years.
Each had been duped by the same man. Each had suffered great trouble through this man's machinations and duplicity.
As they talked, the attention of both turned to the younger Quentin Locke, who seemed overjoyed at the recovery of his former employer.
Brent had a very great feeling of affection and respect for the younger man, for had he not really brought him up?
As all questioned one another, they asked Brent much about the past, and he told them all.
He told how he had become finally suspicious of Balcom, of how he insisted upon instituting a search for the doctor, his wife, and children. He told how Balcom had opposed him up to the last moment. Then he described his sailing half the world over in search of them, how at times he found a trail, only to lose it again.
Finally he told how at last he had found that the mother had been lost, but the children saved.
"I was in Bombay," he continued, "in despair that I would ever find any of you. At that time I was an old man before my time, for my conscience gave me no rest. I went down to the quay to purchase a ticket for my return to New York, and, true to the habit I had formed, I asked the ticket-seller if he had ever heard anything of the survivors of the steamer Magnifique.
"'Do I know anything of it?' repeated the ticket-seller. 'No, but there's a man working on this dock now who never talks of anything else. He was a sailor on the ship and one of the few who survived.'
"You can believe me when I tell you that I ran down that dock and found the man. He remembered you all well, remembered you children when you were taken up with some other survivors, and he said he thought that some family had taken you to Hong-Kong.
"I canceled my passage to Liverpool and immediately sailed for China. Still, my troubles were not over, for it was weeks before I finally located you babies, Quentin and Zita.
"I won't burden you with the difficulties I encountered before the English family, the Danes, with whom I found you, would consent to give you up. Nor will I take time to tell of our return to New York through San Francisco.
"Let it suffice for you to know that we arrived safely after I had completely circled the world. I sent you to good schools, and when Zita was old enough I made her my secretary so that I could watch over her. Quentin, being older, I had not dared to have around at first. I feared he might question me too closely. And what answer could I give him? Could I tell him that International Patents had driven his father into exile, that I had been partly the cause, the indirect cause, it is true, but still the cause of his mother's death? I never found the courage to do that and so I sent him to a preparatory school and later to college. Years wiped out his childhood recollections and when he came here he came as a stranger employed in the company's laboratory. I make no defense, but I assure you all that my own sufferings have atoned for all the wrongs I have done."
Brent broke down and was almost weeping, when Quentin and Eva moved over to his side and reassured him.
As soon as Brent had recovered from his weakness he wanted to know all that had happened since he had been unconscious under the drug, and as he listened he was aghast at the Automaton and Balcom's villainy.
"I've something here that will stop him, though," added Quentin, as he showed the new gas-gun he had invented and explained its deadly properties. "Bring him on again—I'm ready."
"Quentin—please don't joke about that terrible monster," shivered Eva. "It has injured us so often—I don't even want to talk about it—or about the government that asked you to come here and set things right. Let us forget—now that all is right."
Quentin smiled at her and his quick mind saw that the time had come to guide the conversation into pleasanter channels. He moved close to Brent.
"It looks, Mr. Brent," he said, quietly, "as though we all were at about the end of our troubles. But there are two of us here who are not quite happy—yet. Mr. Brent, I am going to claim a reward."
"Anything, my dear Locke, anything I have is yours."
"Then I may as well tell you that Eva and I love each other and I want your consent to our marriage."
Brent beamed.
"That, Quentin, is the dearest wish my heart can have."
Quentin turned to Eva to take her in his arms when there was a terrific crash of glass in the conservatory, the splintering of wood, and the Automaton, arms swinging like flails, charged like a mad thing into the room.
Its terrorizing eyes were agleam, its one desire destruction. A large table stood in its way and it demolished it as though it were matchwood.
The interruption came so abruptly that Brent, who in his right mind had never seen the fiend and was now seeing it for the first time, was paralyzed with horror. He tried to rise from his chair, but in his weak condition fell back, helpless.
Quentin made a flying leap over the demolished table and placed himself directly in front of Brent and in the path of the monster. Doctor Q, Zita, and Eva started for Locke's side, but he waved them back frantically.
Locke reached into his pocket and drew out his gas-pistol. The Automaton was almost upon him when he raised his arm and fired.
There was a blinding flash and a dull report. The Automaton stopped in his tracks and, raising one mighty hand to its chest, staggered backward. Again Quentin fired, and the Automaton slowly crumpled, sinking to one knee. There was no need to fire again, for suddenly the monster crashed to the floor and lay still.
Locke started forward, but Eva shrieked for him to stand back. She had not forgotten that once she had thought the monster dead and it had suddenly seized her and almost crushed out her life.
There was, however, nothing to fear this time. Quentin reassured her that the gas fumes had passed away, then knelt by the iron terror. He tried to remove the steel headpiece, but before he could accomplish it the doctor came forward and in a moment had unfastened the bolts.
As they were doing so a thick voice from inside could be distinguished, muttering words about the capture of Brent and Zita just before Balcom was killed, the escape of Zita, the rescue of Brent, the killing of Dora, who had evidently come to betray something in jealousy. It was all incoherent and Doctor Q and Quentin hastened to uncasque the man within.
They lifted off the helmet and there was the contorted and dying face of Paul Balcom, who had, in desperation, taken his father's place in a vain hope to secure the fortune for himself.
The poison was too strong, and as the girls turned, sickened, away, the evil features froze, more evil than ever they had been in his evil life.
A few days later a brilliant wedding took place at Brent Rock, which itself was a present to the bride and groom.
After the guests had thinned out, Quentin and Eva strolled into the garden, no longer in fear of attack from the steel Automaton.
Eva glanced at her ring, musing.
"After all the things from which you have escaped, dear," she murmured, a bit timidly, "I am afraid nothing in the world can hold you."
Quentin drew her into his arms, while her hand rested on his shoulder, and kissed the little golden ring that encircled her finger.
"Nothing but that band of love," he smiled.
the end