It was the following day that the old butler handed Locke a letter addressed to International Patents, Incorporated, from the Diving and Salvage Company. Locke was about to read it, when Eva entered and they read it together.
"We are reliably informed," read the letter, "that the Under Seas Corporation is trying to obtain possession of the self-liberating diving-suit which you control in our interest. This must be prevented."
Locke was immediately interested. At once it occurred to him that here was a patent which the company had suppressed which might prove of incalculable value.
"This suit might be very valuable to the government," he exclaimed to Eva. "I am going to try it myself."
"Please don't," pleaded Eva. "It isn't worth it. It's not worth the risk."
Locke, however, realized that here was something of extreme importance, and as he visualized to Eva the helplessness of a deep-sea diver, his air-line cut, struggling in vain to release himself and rise to the surface, he began to win her over.
At the moment when Quentin and Eva were in the library, Zita was taking advantage and was ransacking Locke's laboratory, not with any definite purpose in mind, but searching in every nook for some clue which might tell her what he was about.
The speed with which she worked was extraordinary. Yet, before she moved an instrument, a retort, a book, its position was minutely studied, so that she could restore it to its former place without any one suspecting that it had ever been moved.
It was while she was thus occupied that her eye fell upon an instrument which aroused in her an excited interest. It was very like the headpiece used by operators of telephones, and she hastened to adjust it. In a moment it was as though she were in the library. She could hear Locke's earnest laugh and in it Zita could detect an undercurrent of tenderness. Her lips compressed and her eyes hardened as she listened. Locke was speaking about a letter and it seemed to be something important. Zita was all ears.
But Locke's next words which she heard were his decision to test the diving-suit, and as she listened she became tense, for this information she knew was important. The continued note of tenderness in Locke's voice more infuriated Zita. She removed the headpiece of the dictagraph, slammed it back into the desk drawer from which she had taken it, and hurried out.