Indignantly she brushed past them and rushed up the stairs.  Locke called after her, but she refused to heed him.  He flung off the arms of Zita and dashed after her.  But Eva was too quick for him.  She opened the door to the inventor’s and went in, slamming it behind her.  The lock snapped.  In an instant Eva saw what she had fled into.  There was the Automaton, near him the emissary with the knife—­and on the floor their victim in a pool of blood.  She shrieked and tried to escape.  But the lock had snapped.  Besides, the emissary, now directed by the monster, blocked her retreat.

Outside, Locke pounded on the door, but could not open it.  It was of stout oak and would take some moments to break down.

The emissary circled in one direction.  Eva turned, and there was the Automaton advancing on her from the other side of the room.

On the table the clock-work bomb, delivered by Zita, whether with full knowledge or not, ticked out the last few seconds before its timing at precisely eight!

CHAPTER XIV

Eva flattened herself against the door at her back.  She could feel and hear Locke pounding on the other side.  She thought that she would die of sheer terror.

The Automaton raised his mighty fist, and Eva instinctively ducked under the monster’s arm.  There was an inner room.  Could she reach it in time?  Would the door be unlocked?  At most she could only try.

The emissary tried to catch her, but she proved too quick for him.  She reached the door.  It opened, and she flew into the room, slamming and bolting it behind her.

Now she could hear the thunderous blows of the Automaton raining against the door.  One huge fist of the monster crashed through the panel.  Eva crouched down in a far corner and closed her eyes.  At that instant the time bomb exploded and the house was rocked to its foundations.

Everything was demolished.  One entire side of the house was blown out.  The door leading to the workshop which a moment before Locke had been vainly striving to open crashed full upon him and felled him, half-stunned, to the floor.

The force of the explosion had dazed Eva.  As for the Automaton and the emissary, they had both been blown through a gaping aperture in the wall to land in the garden beneath.  Only Zita, in the lower hallway, was totally untouched by the catastrophe.

Locke, dazed, crawled from under the door and made his way into the demolished room in search of Eva, a cold fear gripping his heart.  How could any living thing have lived after such an occurrence?  But in another instant he saw her, as she half swooned and staggered into the room.

“Quentin!” she gasped.

He caught her in his arms.  But the next moment she remembered what she had witnessed in the hallway below and she drew herself away from him.

“Go to the girl you really love,” she scorned.