At any rate, as Balcom turned from the telephone,
father and son faced each other angrily.
"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.
"More than that," replied Flint, calmly.
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.
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