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."

For a moment Brent listened incredulously, then sat back in his chair
and laughed skeptically. But even Flint recognized that there was a
hollowness in the laughter.

"Do you mean to tell me," demanded Brent, "that a human brain has been
made to control a thing of no use except as a terrible engine of
destruction?"

"Not only possible," reiterated Flint, "but it is true."