The Master Mystery | Page 5

footsteps of Locke, approaching, had caught her quick ear and she had fled.
"Locke!" called Brent, hearing his laboratory, manager. "Under no circumstances allow me to be disturbed to-night."
"Very well, sir," responded Locke.
Just then the light step of Eva was heard on the stairs.
"What's the matter, father?" she asked, still upset by the events of the afternoon. "Is there anything wrong?"
"No, my dear, nothing," hastily replied Brent. "In the morning I shall have something to say to you. Now run along like a good girl."
Dutifully Eva turned. Brent watched her out of sight. Then with a keen look at Locke he pulled out a paper from his pocket and handed it to the young scientist, who read:
BRENT,--This is my last warning. If you persist in your course you will be struck down by the Madagascar madness. Q.
Locke looked up from the scrawl in alarmed perplexity.
"What does this mean?" he queried.
Brent merely shook his head cryptically.
"Study this message. I shall have something very important to tell you in the morning."
As Brent turned back into the library he paused a moment and looked after Locke, hesitating, as if he would call him back. Then he decided not to do so, turned, and carefully locked the door from the dining-room into the hallway.
Eva was waiting at the head of the stairs as Locke, perplexed by the strange actions of his employer, came up.
"What is the trouble?" she repeated, anxiously. "Please tell me. Is there anything wrong?"
"No--nothing," reassured Locke, in spite of his own doubt. "Everything is all right."
"I hope so." Eva lingered. "Good night."
Locke bowed admiringly. But there was the same restraint in his look that had been shown in the afternoon.
"Good night," he murmured, slowly.
Eva quite understood, and there was a smile of encouragement on her face as she turned away and flitted down the hall to her room.
Outside, Zita had hurried from the house to the nearest public telephone-booth and was frantically calling Balcom at his apartment.
"Mr. Balcom," she repeated, breathlessly, as the junior partner answered, "Flint has returned. I have seen him."
"The devil!" exclaimed Balcom, angrily, then checked himself before he said any more. "Keep me informed."
Abruptly he hung up.
It was scarcely a moment later that Paul Balcom entered the Balcom apartment, admitted by a turbaned black suggestive of the Orient.
Paul was surly and had evidently been drinking, for he shoved the servant roughly out of the way as he strode toward his father.
Apparently outside Paul had overheard and had gathered the drift of what Balcom had been saying. Or perhaps, from his own sources of information, he already knew. At any rate, as Balcom turned from the telephone, father and son faced each other angrily.
"Brent's lying," exclaimed Paul. "That marriage to me must take place to-morrow."
Talking angrily, sometimes in agreement, at others far apart, the two left the room.
Back in the dining-room by this time Brent had rejoined Flint and now watched him eagerly as he took the last wrappings from the package which he had carried so carefully.
As the last wrapping was stripped from it, on the table before them lay a small steel model, perhaps three feet high--a weird-looking thing in the miniature shape of a man, designed along lines that only a cubist could have conceived--jointed, mobile, truly a contrivance at which to marvel.
Brent gazed incredulously at the strange thing. "An automaton!" he exclaimed.
"More than that," replied Flint, calmly.
Flint unrolled a chart of the human nervous system and spread it out on the table. Pointing to the brain, he leaned over tensely, and whispered:
"This model is merely a piece of mechanism. But the real automaton possesses a human brain which has been transplanted into it and made to guide it."
For a moment Brent listened incredulously, then sat back in his chair and laughed skeptically. But even Flint recognized that there was a hollowness in the laughter.
"Do you mean to tell me," demanded Brent, "that a human brain has been made to control a thing of no use except as a terrible engine of destruction?"
"Not only possible," reiterated Flint, "but it is true."
"Oh, Flint," rallied Brent, with a sort of uneasiness, "you can't tell me that!"
"Believe it or not," insisted the adventurer, "I have been in Madagascar and I know."
For a moment Brent paused at the vehemence of Flint's answer. What had Flint to gain by misrepresentation? A thousand images of the past flitted through Brent's brain. Then slowly a look of terror came over Brent's face. Suppose it were indeed true--this Frankenstein, this conscienceless inhuman superman? Brent gripped himself and composed his features and his voice.
"But this thing," he rasped. "What does this prove?"
"Oh, this is merely automatic--a piece of mechanism--a model which I stole. It works when it is wound up--not like the real one. Look."
Flint put a pencil in the little steel hand of the