-all I can tell you."

She had evidently held herself calm by a desperate effort. She broke
down now, sobbing without restraint.

CHAPTER III

_Tugh, the Cripple_

The portals of this mystery had swung wide to receive us. The tumbling
events which menaced all our world of 1935 were upon us now. A
maelstrom. A torrent in the midst of which we were caught up like tiny
bits of cork and whirled away.

But we thought we understood the mystery. We believed we were acting
for the best. What we did was no doubt ill-considered; but the human
mind is so far from omniscient! And this thing was so strange!

Alten said, "You have a right to be overwrought, Mistress Mary Atwood.
But this thing is as strange to us as it is to you. I called that iron
monster a Robot. But it does not belong to our age: if it does I have
never seen one such as you describe. And traveling through Time--"

He smiled down at her. "That is not a commonplace everyday occurrence
to us, I assure you. The difference is that in this world of ours we
can understand--or at least explain--these things as being scientific.
And so they have not the terror of the supernatural."

Mary was calmer now. She returned his smile. "I realize that; or at
least I am trying to realize it."

What a level-headed girl was this! I touched her arm. "You are very
wonderful--"

Alten brushed me away. "Let's try and reduce it to rationality. The
cage was--is, I should say, since of course it still exists--that cage
is a Time-traveling vehicle. It is traveling back and forth through
Time, operated by a Robot. Call it that. A pseudo-human monster
fashioned of metal in the guise of a man."

Even Alten had to force himself to speak calmly, as he gazed from one
to the other of us. "It came, no doubt from some future age, where
half-human mechanisms are common, and Time-traveling is known. That
cage probably does not travel in Space, but only in Time. In the
future--somewhere--the Space of that house on Patton Place may be the
laboratory of a famous scientist. And in the past--in the year
1777--that same Space was the garden of Mistress Atwood's home. So
much is obvious. But why--"

"Why," Larry burst out, "did that iron monster stop in 1777 and abduct
this girl?"

"And why," I intercepted, "did it stop here in 1935?" I gazed at Mary.
"And it told you it would return?"

"Yes."

* * * * *

Alten was pondering. "There must be some connection