The tears started to come to Eva’s eyes as she saw her father’s plight, and she knelt down beside him and took his hand in hers.  She stroked it with her own hand and bent over and kissed it.  As she knelt, crying softly, she sobbed half-aloud: 

“Why can’t I confide in you, father?  Why can’t you advise me?  I don’t love Paul Balcom and could never marry him.  I know I love Quentin Locke—­I do—­I do—­”

As she sobbed she bent over his hand and pressed it to her lips.

Peter Brent sat staring into space, staring like a graven image.

CHAPTER VII

After her brief encounter with Balcom in the hallway Zita stealthily mounted to Flint’s room.

Flint’s condition was unchanged.  He lay sprawled out in a huge arm-chair, his head swaying from side to side, as he muttered and mumbled incoherently, while his leering smile caused even Zita to shudder.

She was, however, alive to the importance of her mission.  Steeling herself, she raised Flint from the chair and steadied him with one hand while she tried to smooth out the wrinkles of his clothing so that his mad condition would not be too apparent when they went outdoors.  It was a hard task, but Zita soon accomplished it and, half supporting, she led him through a door on the farther side of the room.  They crept down a back stairway and so away from the house.

At times Flint stumbled and almost fell, and once that insane laugh startled a passer-by, who started after them, then changed his mind and proceeded on his way.  It was then that Zita’s heart almost stopped beating.  She realized that the situation would be unexplainable to a stranger and she urged the insane Flint on faster.

Renewed hope came to her with each step.  She had almost relaxed her precautions when, suddenly, from a clump of bushes, several men leaped out.  They seized Flint, who merely started babbling afresh.  Zita, ignorant of what was really happening, struck out right and left in the hopeless encounter, until one of the men with a grin seized her wrist in his powerful grasp and twisted it until she screamed with pain.  Then she realized for the first time that she had fallen into the hands of the emissaries of the Automaton.  Had Balcom planned it, or had that mechanical monster taken advantage of what Balcom had ordered?

In the mean time, the other thugs, with Flint between them, made off hurriedly.  With a last push that almost threw Zita to the ground, the last of them dashed into the shrubbery, and for several moments Zita dazedly stood there as he crashed through the underbrush, making good the escape and capture.  Then she turned and ran back to Brent Rock.

Locke, in the mean time, had arrived at the laboratory of his old friend Hadwell, the chemist, where he was warmly welcomed.

It was the usual dusty workshop of one devoted to one idea—­science—­with no touches of comfort.  Hadwell fairly lived amid retorts, Bunsen burners, and reagents.