Balcom, as he read the top letter, showed great agitation.  As Locke took the package from Eva, Balcom interrupted: 

“That’s very dangerous,” he said.  “If it gets out, the corporations are ruined.”

Locke scarcely replied.  Instead, he very ostentatiously replaced the document in the safe, refusing to intrust it either to Balcom or to Paul, who withdrew sullenly, leaving Eva alone with Locke in the library as Locke whirled the combination of the closed safe door.

It was perhaps half an hour later in the secret den of the Automaton in the rock-hewn foundation of Brent Rock that the emissaries were watching the arched and dark passage.  Suddenly there was the warning clank, and the huge steel monster strode in.

For some time he stood before the table, giving his instructions by means of mysterious, cryptic motions.

Meantime, above in Brent Rock, Locke had been busy, for he had conceived an entirely new plan to capture the Automaton.  It was nothing short of an electric trap, and deadly in its simplicity.

From the wall switch Locke had led wires carrying the house current.  Already, also, he had let Eva in on his secret plan, and she was all eagerness as he planted his trap.

Before the safe, now, Locke paused, and there for a moment twisted the combination so that he could get his correct position.  That done, he noted the place where he had been standing, and removed a mat from the floor in front of the safe.  At that place he set in on the floor a fairly large iron plate.  To this iron plate he attached a wire, then replaced the rug, but in such a way that a part of the plate was exposed, though it would never be noticed.

“If the Automaton attempts to open the safe,” he remarked to Eva, as he worked, “he will complete the electric circuit and it will hold him until we capture him.”

“How clever!” Eva exclaimed, involuntarily.

“Now for making my signaling connection to the laboratory,” continued Locke.  “Then I must get some of my men up here from the department.”

However, while Locke and Eva were busy arranging this electric trap, they did not notice that they were being watched by Zita, who had stolen into the conservatory and was eying them eagerly from the protection of the fronds of a palm.  Zita, moreover, was greatly excited, as she gathered with her quick perception just what it was that they were doing.  Nor did she wait to see the work finished, but stole out of the door and away hurriedly.

Locke had finished his preparations, and as he and Eva were discussing the possibilities of what he had devised, he remarked, in answer to her eager inquiry about his suspicions, “I am sure we shall prove that there is a man inside the terrible machine that attacks us.”

“Then you don’t think it is really an automaton?” asked Eva, with great respect for Locke’s opinion, though it was sufficiently in evidence that she was not at all convinced that the monster was not really of steel and controlled by something that resembled a human brain.