"Mark! Quickly! I shall hold them!"
With a savage jerk, Elaine's fiance ripped aside the cloth that veiled the new time mirror. The reflection of Jerbette's painting sprang across its silver surface.
Mark's jaw went hard with tension. He glued his eyes to the figure of Jacques Rombeau, Elaine Duchard's lover.
Behind him, Adrian Vance charged down the laboratory, struggling to shake off the frail, tenacious figure of Professor Duchard. He brought up his heavy Magnum.
But Mark paid him no heed. Already his brain was spinning, his senses reeling. Yet still he concentrated on the lithe, tense figure of Jacques Rombeau holding the fuming Baron Morriere at bay. And through his mind the words kept ringing:
"I shall take over the brain of Jacques Rombeau! I shall save Elaine from her fate!
"I shall change history!"
"You dog!" said Baron Morriere in a voice that trembled with passion. "I'll see you drawn and quartered for this! You'll swing from the highest gibbet in all France—"
"Save your breath!" snapped Mark—and then nearly dropped the horse pistol he grasped as the sound of his voice struck his ears. For he spoke in the French of the late eighteenth century, and the voice was not his own, but that of Jacques Rombeau!