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.
