"I'm Margaret Spencer," she began abruptly, "former secretary to His Royal Highness, Brookings of Steel. They swindled my father out of an invention worth millions and he died, broken-hearted. I got the job to see if I couldn't get enough evidence to convict them, and I had quite a lot when they caught me. I had some things that they were afraid to lose, and I had them so well hidden that they couldn't find them, so they kidnapped me to make me give them back. They haven't dared kill me so far for fear the evidence will show up after my death--which it will. However, I will be legally dead before long, and then they know the whole thing will come out, so they have brought me out here to make me talk or kill me. Talking won't do me any good now, though, and I don't believe it ever would have. They would have killed me after they got the stuff back, anyway. So you see I, at least, will never get back to the earth alive." "Cheer up--we'll all get back safely." "No, we won't. You don't know that man Perkins--if that is his name. I never heard him called any real name before. He is simply unspeakable--vile--hideous--everything that is base. He was my jailer, and I utterly loathe and despise him. He is mean and underhanded and tricky--he reminds me of a slimy, poisonous snake. He will kill me: I know it." "But how about Doctor DuQuesne? Surely he isn't that kind of man? He wouldn't let him." "I've never met him before, but from what I heard of him in the office, he's even worse than Perkins, but in an entirely different way. There's nothing small or mean about him, and I don't believe he would go out of his way to hurt anyone, as Perkins would. But he is absolutely cold and hard, a perfect fiend. Where his interests are concerned, there's nothing under the sun, good or bad, that he won't do. But I'm glad that Perkins had me instead of 'The Doctor,' as they call him. Perkins raises such a bitter personal feeling, that anybody would rather die than give up to him in anything. DuQuesne, however, would have tortured me impersonally and scientifically--cold and self-contained all the while and using the most efficient methods, and I am sure he would have got it out of me some way. He always gets what he goes after." "Oh, come, Miss Spencer!" Dorothy interrupted the half-hysterical girl. "You're too hard on him. Didn't you see him knock Perkins down when he came after me?" "Well, maybe he has a few gentlemanly instincts, which he uses when he doesn't lose anything by it. More likely he merely intended to rebuke him for a useless action. He is a firm Pragmatist--anything that is useful is all right, anything that is useless is a crime. More probably yet, he wants you left alive. Of course that is his real reason. He went to the trouble of kidnapping you, so naturally he won't let Perkins or anybody else kill you until he is through with you. Otherwise he would have let Perkins do anything he wanted to with you, without lifting a finger."