"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.
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 model and pressed a lever as he held a piece of paper under the pencil. Brent leaned over, fascinated.