"No," echoed Alten. "I have no intention of doing it. I'm not so foolish as that." He stopped before Mary. "What do you want to do? You're obviously an exceptionally intelligent, level-headed girl. Heaven knows you need to be." "I--I want to get back home," she stammered. A pang shot through me as she said it. A hundred and fifty years to separate us. A vast gulf. An impassible barrier. "That mechanism said it would return!" "Exactly," agreed Alten. An excitement was upon us all. "Exactly what I mean! Shall we chance it? Try it? There's nothing else I can think of to do. I have a revolver and two hunting rifles." "Just what do you mean?" I demanded. "I mean, we'll take my car and go to Tugh's house on Patton Place. Right now! And if that mechanical monster returns, we'll seize it!" Alten, the usually calm, precise man of science, was tensely vehement. "Seize it! Why not? Three of us, armed, ought to be able to overcome a Robot! Then we'll seize the Time-traveling cage. Perhaps we can operate it. If not, with it in our possession we'll at least have something to show the authorities; there'll be no ridicule then!" Our inescapable destiny was making us plunge so rashly into this mystery! With the excitement and the strange fantasy of it upon us, we thought we were acting for the best. Within a quarter of an hour, armed and with a long overcoat and a scarf to hide Mary Atwood's beauty, we took Alten's car and drove to Patton Place. CHAPTER IV _The Fight With the Robot_ Patrolman McGuire quite evidently had not passed through Patton Place since we left it; or at least he had not noticed the broken window. The house appeared as before, dark, silent, deserted, and the broken basement window yawned with its wide black opening. "I'll leave the car around on the other street," Alten said as slowly we passed the house. "Quick--no one's in sight; you three get out here." We crouched in the dim entryway and in a moment he joined us. I clung to Mary Atwood's arm. "You're not afraid?" I asked. "No. Yes; of course I am afraid. But I want to do what we planned. I want to go back to my own world, to my Father." "Inside!" Alten whispered. "I'll go first. You two follow with her." I can say now that we should not have taken her into that house. It is so easy to look back upon what one might have done! We climbed through the window, into the dark front basement room. There was only silence, and our faintly padding footsteps on the carpeted floor. The furniture was shrouded with cotton covers standing like ghosts in the gloom. I clutched the loaded rifle which Alten had given me. Larry was similarly armed; and Alten carried a revolver. "Which way, Mary?" I whispered. "You're sure it was outdoors?" "Yes. This way, I think." We passed through the connecting door. The back room seemed to be a dismantled kitchen. "You stay with her here, a moment," Alten whispered to me. "Come on, Larry. Let's make sure no one--nothing--is down here."