But at midnight there was no sign
of him. The servants were asleep. I sat alone, and every pounding
hoof-beat on the road matched my heart.

"Then I went into the garden. There was a dim moon in and out of the
clouds. It was hot, like to-night. I mean, why it _was_ to-night. It's
so strange--"

* * * * *

In the silence of Alten's living room we could hear the hurried
ticking of his little mantle clock, and from the street outside came
the roar of a passing elevated train and the honk of a taxi. This was
New York of 1935. But to me the crowding ghosts of the past were here.
In fancy I saw the white pillars of the moonlit Atwood home. A garden
with a dirt road beside it. Red-coated British soldiers passing....
And to the south the little city of New York extending northward from
crooked Maiden Lane and the Bowling Green....

"Go on, Mistress Mary."

"I sat on a bench in the garden. And suddenly before me there was a
white ghost. A shape. A wraith of something which a moment before had
not been there. I sat too frightened to move. I could not call out. I
tried to, but the sound would not come.

"The shape was like a mist, a little ball of cloud in the center of
the garden lawn. Then in a second or two it was solid--a thing like a
shining cage, with crisscrossing white bars. It was like a room; a
metal cage like a room. I thought that the thing was a phantom or that
I was asleep and dreaming. But it was real."

Alten interrupted. "How big was it?"

"As large as this room; perhaps larger. But it was square, and about
twice as high as a man."

A cage, then, some twenty feet square and twelve feet high.

She went on: "The cage door opened. I think I was standing, then, and
I tried to run but could not. The--the _thing_ came from the door of
the cage and walked toward me. It was about ten feet tall. It
looked--oh, it looked like a man!"

* * * * *

She buried her face in her hands. Again the room was silent. Larry was
seated, staring at her; all of us were breathless.

"Like a man?" Alten prompted gently.

"Yes; like a man." She raised her white face. This girl out of the
past! Admiration for her swept me anew--she was bravely trying to
smile.

"Like a man. A thing with legs, a body, a great round head and swaying
arms. A jointed man of metal! You surely must know all about them."

"A Robot!" Larry muttered.

"You have them here, I suppose. Li