"How many months, years, I stayed with them I do not know. But, true to my mechanical instinct, I rigged up a forge and improved many of the crude instruments of the natives, principally those of agriculture.
"But transcending every other feeling, I hated Brent. In my madness, I conceived the idea that I would construct an iron giant that, upon its completion, if I could only procure the brain of a man who had died of a lightning stroke or other electric agency, I could, by installing this brain in the brain cavity of the giant, give it volition, make it a superman without feeling or conscience. It was a mad idea--but I was mad.
"At about this time Balcom came to Madagascar. He found me and, knowing my intense hatred of Peter Brent, he cruelly added fuel to the fire. Already he must have known that Brent was coming to his senses and planning his great restitution to genius.
"He promised me that if I would come to New York with him he would secure an electrocuted brain so that I could perfect my steel automaton and obtain my revenge. I was easily persuaded and I sailed with Balcom, bringing the iron monster with me."
A strange light gleamed in the old man's eyes as he spoke, not the light of madness, but of kindliness now.
"Children," he said, at length, "I have, during these lucid moments, watched you all closely. Call it instinct if you will, but you, Zita, and you, Quentin, seem to be particularly dear to me now. To-day, returning from the scene of the explosion, with every faculty not only clear, but rather sharpened by long disuse, I pieced the years, the months, even the days together. I searched in an old trunk and I found--this."
It was a list of those rescued from the steamer _Magnifique_, and with amazement they read the names among the passengers:
There was a short note at the bottom of the list, to the effect that no trace of either the father or the mother of the two children had been found.
Paper after paper which Doctor Q had found, where they had been preserved by Balcom, proved the identification and the story.
Locke's head was in a whirl at the sudden change in relationships, but not more so than Zita's. Finally Zita could stand the strain no longer. What had been a hopeless love was now explained.
