beam, suspended over the vat of acid.

They were about to drop him into it when one, more alert and more
fiendish than the rest, cried out, "Look!"

Through a window now they could see Eva, and back of her the terrible
figure of the Automaton, stalking. She had walked directly into the
trap, but the fight with Locke had delayed the emissaries. Wildly now
Eva was running over the lawn, full in the direction of the acid-room
from the Cliff House.

"Quick!" directed the emissary. "She'll come in that door. Fasten the
rope on it. Then his own sweetheart will drop him into the acid!"

It was only a matter of seconds, as the screams of Eva came closer and
closer, for the emissaries to carry the rope and jam it into the door
through which pretty soon Eva would run to take refuge from the pursuing
Automaton. Then they slunk back through a rear door, with muttered
taunts to Locke, who struggled in the tangle of rope as he felt the
stinging fumes of the acid below.

Outside, Eva, who had realized at last that it was a trap and had no
thought that Locke might be anywhere about, fled toward the acid-room,
while the emissaries hid, ready to seize her as she opened the door
which was to plunge her lover into a horrible death in the acid seething
below him.

CHAPTER XII

Locke's case seemed at last hopeless. The cruel ropes bit into his flesh
and increased his agony, while the acrid fumes from the seething acid
were slowly stupefying that keen brain of his.

Backward and forward like a huge pendulum his body swayed, and in an
agony of suspense he watched the fatal rope. With writhing body he
swayed far out, and then he saw just one chance.

The emissaries had thrown the rope over a beam which was far above
Locke, and it seemed an impossibility for him to reach it. For one less
resourceful or with a physique less perfectly developed, even to try
would have been useless. But there was one chance in a thousand, and he
grasped it eagerly.

Alternately contracting and relaxing his muscles, Locke succeeded in
swinging himself in an ever-widening arc. Nearer he swung--back--and
again nearer. Could he make it? Back again and a terrific effort. He was
gaining.

There came to him the sound of running feet. In his fear and agony he
could have shrieked, but from his parched throat there issued no sound.
Friend or foe, for him it meant the same fate--one touch on that knob
and a torturing death by fire.

With bursting muscle