you have
planned to perish with us. Is it not so?"

"Certainly," was his cold reply. "Am I an assassin? Would you expect me
to live, knowing you to be perishing?"

I stared aghast. Such resolve, such sacrifice of self to an idea was
beyond my comprehension.

"Why--what?" I stammered. "Why kill us, why kill yourself----"

The answer overwhelmed me.

"Remember Evelyn!" shrilled a voice, and I paused, struck dumb with a
superstitious horror I had never believed myself capable of
experiencing. For it was not Felix who spoke, neither was it any
utterance of my own aroused conscience. Muffled, strange, and startling
it came from above, from the hollow spaces of that high vault lit with
the golden glow that henceforth can have but one meaning for me--death.

"What is it?" I asked. "Another of your mechanical contrivances?"

He smiled; I had rather he had frowned.

"Not exactly. A favorite bird, a starling. Alas! he but repeats what he
has heard echoed through the solitude of these rooms. I thought I had
smothered him up sufficiently to insure his silence during this
interview. But he is a self-willed bird, and seems disposed to defy the
wrappings I have bound around him; which fact warns me to be speedy and
hasten our explanations. Thomas, this is what I require: John
Poindexter--you do not know where he is at this hour, but I do--received
a telegram but now, which, if he is a man at all, will bring him to this
house in a half-hour or so from the present moment. It was sent in your
name, and in it you informed him that matters had arisen which demanded
his immediate attention; that you were on your way to your brother's
(giving him this address), where, if you found entrance, you would await
his presence in a room called the study; but that--and here you will see
how his coming will not aid us if that steel plate is once started on
its course--if the possible should occur and your brother should be
absent from home, then he was to await a message from you at the Plaza.
The appearance of the house would inform him whether he would find you
and Eva within; or so I telegraphed him in your name.

"Thomas, if Bartow fulfils my instructions--and I have never know him to
fail me--he will pass down these stairs and out of this house in just
five minutes. As he is bound on a long-promised journey, and as he
expects me to leave the house immediately after him, he has drawn every
shade and fastened every lock. Consequently, on