ves me the impression of an evil soul attached to a lot
of metallic gears. Personally I should be glad to have the opportunity
of tearing it to pieces and seeing it scattered on the ground--a heap of
red cotton rags, hair stuffing, and broken levers."

My earnestness, however, only caused her to tilt her rounded chin in
air and laugh as only she can laugh. Having persuaded the girl at the
ticket office that the dog with us would do no harm, we had already
entered and were passing through the exhibit of figures.

"Possibly you feel the same way toward this waxy Bismarck who looks so
much more like a brewer than a general," said she, "or toward this
Catherine of Russia who, I understand, was not a very refined queen, and
who here shows it by wearing a ruff that should have gone to the laundry
a year ago or more."

"No," I replied. "If they let me alone, it matters not to me when they
are melted down for candles. My enemy is the fellow in the corner there
with the group of country persons around him. Perhaps we shall not have
a chance to play a game with him this afternoon."

Fortunately, however, just as we came up toward the gloomy corner, there
was a shout of bantering laughter from those whom, offhand, I should
have called Aunt Lou, Cousin Becky, Brother Bob, and Milly Snagg, and we
saw that the automaton had just dispatched his opponent--the fifth
member of the party, a well-bronzed countryman, with a shaved neck and
prominent ears. The mechanical eye had drawn down its brown lid in a
hideous wink, much to the discomfiture of the champion of some rural
village.

For the second time I deposited the coin in the slot, whereupon
Julianna, with great delight, watched the opening of the front of the
box, the exposure of the internals of the figure, and the jerky motions
of the Sheik as he extended his mechanical arm over his lifeless legs to
make the first move.

"I like him," she said, and stepped forward toward the chessboard.

Thereupon a strange thing happened. Some part of the contrivance gave
forth a sound as if a wheel had been torn from its socket; a whirring
sound continued for a moment, then finally the air was filled with a
ghastly shriek.

I defy any man to say whether that shriek came from the rasp of an
unoiled metal bearing or from a human throat. That it proceeded from the
automaton there was no question.

It was followed by a stillness not only of the automaton itself, but
also of ourselves.

"