Chapter VI

Locke struggled with superhuman effort to release himself from the strait-jacket in which he was held prisoner. The throat-straps pressed against the neck muscles and the strain on the straps could be heard like pistol-shots as the leather stretched under his prodigous efforts.

With every nerve keyed up and his reflexes answering his keen brain, he swayed backward and forward, rolled from side to side until his shoulder-blades were thrown completely out of joint. The pain was intense, but he summoned every ounce of strength at his command and finally succeeded in getting one of his arms free by gradually working his body toward a settee, where, with his elbow on the seat, he pushed his disjointed arm over his head.

Agony was written all over his face as at last with a final effort he extricated his arms and was in a position to loosen the straps which bound them, with his teeth.

Nor was his labor over now. The canvas jacket cut into his flesh and the buckles bruised his muscles. His body ached with weariness, yet he clung to his task. Like a thing incarnate he toiled as he realized the danger that confronted Eva.

Up-stairs, the monster was pursuing Eva. The heavy oaken doors were as straws to him, and he plunged through them as a mad elephant dashes through a canebrake. Destruction lay in his wake as he crashed through the improvised barriers which Eva had constructed to delay his onslaught. A crouching, desolate figure, she waited for what she knew to be her end. There was only one barrier left between her and this engine of destruction. It was only a moment now when she would be a crushed, mangled mass. With terror in her heart she waited for the thing to crash through the last remaining barrier, and even now she could hear his ponderous step as he crossed the room toward the door which would only momentarily stay his progress. Her lips moved in prayer as she waited and the dread moments seemed eons to her.

Suddenly she heard a crash, and she could see the panels of sturdy oak in the door give way as though they were egg-shells. The gigantic fist of the monster crashed through and she could discern the dim outline of the enormous head, and the glaring eyes of fire looking toward her. With a shrill shriek she raised her arms above her head and fell swooning to the floor just as a pistol-shot rang out.

Locke, disheveled and weak, had released himself from the strait-jacket, and with the speed of a panther had ascended the stairs. He saw the monster crashing through the last remaining barrier, and without hesitation he fired at the thing as he closed in. His one thought was to delay it or make it swerve in its course momentarily, with the hope that by some chance Eva might have time to escape. Could he only accomplish this, he thought his mission successful, regardless of the outcome as far as he himself was concerned.

He pulled the trigger of his automatic again and again as he rushed forward. By some strange trick of fate the figure reeled for a second and one of its arms dropped swinging to its side. The bullet had entered a joint. Had it in some way deranged the mechanism, causing the Automaton to turn in its tracks and confront Locke as he charged forward? Or was some human being concealed in the armored creature and wounded?

Eva, in her semi-conscious state, saw the mass of metal charge toward Locke, and clo