With a crash the trap was sprung, with the pit yawning beneath it.
Struggling, striking, grappling with his assailants, Locke managed to
hurl three of them to their deaths in the underground river below.
Horror-stricken at the fate of their companions, the other emissaries
stepped back, when, to add to their confusion, Zita, with remarkable
strength for so frail a girl, lifted the stand of mirrors and hurled it
among them.
Locke somersaulted to the floor and, seizing the broken stand, used it
as a weapon with deadly effect.
The emissaries turned and fled.
An instant later Locke started to the panel through which Eva had been
dragged, when he heard steps from the other side. It was the emissaries
who had seized Eva, coming back to see what all the rumpus was about.
Locke, forewarned, slipped close to the wall, and, as they passed
through the panel, one at a time, he was able to fell them to the floor.
Then he rushed through the panel just in time to see Eva, pursued by the
Automaton, running toward him.
The very strangeness of her terrible adventure had brought Eva out of
the hypnotic state into which she had been thrown and she clung to Locke
as though she were a child.
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