The color returned to her pale cheeks with a rush, and she straightened herself, and turned away in some confusion, her hands instinctively going to her hair, the gesture that women have ever used when at a loss for words.
In the meantime, Ralph's two assistants had found the ultra-wave machine by the very simple method of feeling about the spot where the girl had been discovered. When their hands disappeared they knew that they had it, and Ralph ordered some water thrown upon it, which had the twofold result of stopping its activity and of bringing it into view.
Having assured himself that Alice was unharmed and recovering from the shock resulting from her misadventure, the scientist made a minute examination of the instrument. It was a complicated machine and one totally strange to him. As he studied it he felt a growing conviction that this was no earth-made machine, but one conceived and made by a Martian. Undoubtedly it was the work of some master of science, a true mental giant.
Then where, he asked himself, did Fernand—if it was Fernand—secure it, and how? His object, of course, was obvious. He was evidently prepared to go to any lengths to secure the girl for himself. Had he not so threatened her? His method of attack had been ingenious—fiendishly ingenious. Here was no mean antagonist, no petty enemy, but one whose cunning would tax Ralph's resourcefulness to the utmost.
When he finally turned away from his inspection he found Alice quite herself again. She was listening to the store proprietor's version of the affair, a story that, under the stimulus of Alice's dark eyes, lost none in the telling, for where facts failed him, imagination did not.
"—flew open before my very eyes," he was saying when Ralph turned around, "as if by unseen hands. And then this terrible sound—I can't scarcely describe it, more like (his eye fell on the ultra-ray apparatus), more like a great machine than anything else. I says to myself, says I, 'There's something strange about this,' I says, 'I'd better be on the lookout, I might be needed, for it looks to me,' I says, 'as though someone was up to something'."
As a matter of fact, he had thought the opening of the door due to a passing wind, and the hissing of the machine, which has already been likened to the buzz of an insect, the humming of a bee, let in by the same agency.
"And then that black man, he gave me a fright for fair," he went on.
"What about him? What was he like?" asked Ralph sharply.
"Ah," said the proprietor, swelling with importance, "that's just what I've been asking myself. Strange we should hit on the same thoughts ain't it?"