“It was broken off,” exclaimed Brent, making a sad effort to recollect what had happened.  “I don’t remember how.  But this Flint had been telling me something about an iron monster.  He had a model—­said he had seen the real thing in Madagascar, that it had a human brain, that it walked and fought, that it had strength and life—­but no conscience.  He hinted that the thing would do me harm if I persisted in a course that I had determined for myself of giving back to inventors we had robbed the things of which we had robbed them.  I did not believe him.  I thought the thing absurd, and started to write the note, going a step farther than I had ever threatened Balcom.”

Quentin, Doctor Q, and Zita exchanged glances as Eva’s father resumed his narrative.

“Then I felt a choking sensation at my throat.  I remember the effrontery of Flint’s laughing at me, in a maudlin sort of way, and then—­a blank.  The next I recall was just now—­Eva gazing at me with a worried expression in her dear eyes.  I called to her and kissed her, tried to comfort her.  Then I saw you, Locke, and Zita.”

Peter Brent, from the time he and Flint had been overcome by the fumes from the candelabra until he received the antidote and recognized his daughter, had not known a thing!

As they talked there were many matters the two aged men discovered while they pieced together the happenings of years.

Each had been duped by the same man.  Each had suffered great trouble through this man’s machinations and duplicity.

As they talked, the attention of both turned to the younger Quentin Locke, who seemed overjoyed at the recovery of his former employer.

Brent had a very great feeling of affection and respect for the younger man, for had he not really brought him up?

As all questioned one another, they asked Brent much about the past, and he told them all.

He told how he had become finally suspicious of Balcom, of how he insisted upon instituting a search for the doctor, his wife, and children.  He told how Balcom had opposed him up to the last moment.  Then he described his sailing half the world over in search of them, how at times he found a trail, only to lose it again.

Finally he told how at last he had found that the mother had been lost, but the children saved.

“I was in Bombay,” he continued, “in despair that I would ever find any of you.  At that time I was an old man before my time, for my conscience gave me no rest.  I went down to the quay to purchase a ticket for my return to New York, and, true to the habit I had formed, I asked the ticket-seller if he had ever heard anything of the survivors of the steamer Magnifique.

“‘Do I know anything of it?’ repeated the ticket-seller.  ’No, but there’s a man working on this dock now who never talks of anything else.  He was a sailor on the ship and one of the few who survived.’