Locke seized his hat, and Hadwell redoubled his efforts to fathom the toxic secret.
At Brent Rock, in the mean time, everything was in confusion, Eva was almost distracted, and, to add to her discomfort, Paul took occasion to call.
In the past few days her distrust of him, for she could call it by no other name, had grown, and the furtive glances which he exchanged with Zita, little trouble-maker, were not reassuring. But when Eva's maid, motioning her aside, told her that she had been a witness to the departure of Zita and Flint, Eva's suspicions from a vague misgiving became a stern reality. She longed for Locke's return and protection from the very man to whom she was engaged.
As Locke left the chemist's he noticed a light runabout across the street, half hidden in the shadows. But he failed to notice the evil face of De Luxe Dora peering at him from beneath the rim of a well-pulled-down hat.
"Huh!" she muttered. "We'll get his number and here's where I go after it."
Locke hailed a passing taxicab, gave a hurried direction to the chauffeur, and jumped in. The taxi snorted, cut out open, and jumped forward as the driver clumsily shifted the worn gears. But out of the shadows there glided a low-hung runabout with a purling motor that without effort kept Locke's taxi just in sight without seeming to be following.
At the time that the emissaries abducted Flint he had been roughly handled and some of his clothing had been torn. But as he had been incapable of the slightest degree of real self-defense, the thugs had soon desisted beating him up, with the result that he had escaped bodily injury except for a few slight scratches.
The emissaries of the Automaton led him by devious winding paths down to the shore, and, half walking, half running, pressing close to the high cliffs, they urged him forward.
Soon they came to a cleft in the rock, and, with one hand using a well-hooded electric torch to light the way, they dragged the poor unfortunate into the cave entrance to the den.
This cave was a marvel of nature, hewn out of the solid rock by countless tides, its dome lost in the darkness. It gave an impression of immensity, while in many directions passageways gave off from what might be called a main chamber.