“My God!” he exclaimed, starting up.  “The Madagascar madness!”

Brent looked about wildly.  He rushed to Flint and shook him.  But Flint only laughed.  He turned and moved toward the candles, reaching out for them.  But even as he did so his hand faltered.

He stopped and passed his hand across his tightening forehead.  Slowly over his face came a stupid expression.  He felt himself going, without power of retraining himself.  His lips twitched and he swayed.

Then he began to laugh uncontrollably.

Flint rose and clapped him on the shoulder.  Then both laughed foolishly, loudly.

They were beyond help.  It was the laughing madness.

Outside, in the hall, Eva and Locke had been standing, talking for a moment, when suddenly, below, they heard a terrific noise in the cellar.  Involuntarily Eva’s hand clutched Locke’s arm.  Locke drew a revolver and, in spite of Eva’s fearsome caution, hastened down the cellar stairs.

About in the blackness of the cellar he groped until his foot touched something soft, a mass on the floor.  He bent over.  It was the butler, in a heap, unconscious, but still breathing.

There was not a sound, not another being in the cellar.

Together Eva and Locke helped the now half-conscious man to his feet and pushed and pulled him up the stairs; as slowly he recovered his power of speech.

“What was it—­tell us?” urged Locke.

“I—­I went down to fix the fuses—­as the master ordered,” muttered the butler, incoherently.  “A huge figure—­steel hand—­it flung me across the floor—­the last I remember.”

He passed his hand over his head as though recollection even was too horrible for description.

Locke listened a bit doubtfully, then sent the butler on his way to bed, while Eva could scarcely restrain her fears.

Over to the dining-room door Locke strode and listened.  There was nothing but the sound of merriment inside, of uncontrollable laughter.  Could it be that Brent and Flint were drinking?  He dared not betray a fear to Eva.  Instead he knocked.

At that moment he could hear the sound of some heavy body falling; then more laughter as Brent in his hysteria struck the model of the automaton to the floor.

With the model, unnoticed by Brent, now fluttered to the floor the letter he had been writing.  But the madman paid no attention to that now as it sifted through the air and fluttered under the sideboard.

“Mr. Brent,” called Locke, “please open the door.”

Instead of an answer came a loud and insulting laugh, followed by an incoherent mouthing of words.  Eva looked startled, blanched.  It was so unlike her father.  For the moment Locke was piqued.  But he tried not to show it as he turned away from the door.

“I am your father’s employe,” he said, sadly, “and it is his privilege, I suppose, to laugh at me.”  He hesitated.