Zita's hand went out again and grasped the handle of the switch.
Would she, for love of Locke, who had not returned her love, save him?
Could she bring herself to save this man--for a woman she hated, who had won him from her?
If she saved him it would be only to lose him to the other woman.
With a great creaking the massive elevator was within only a few short inches of Locke.
Every fiber of Zita's body was galvanized into action as she threw the whole weight of her body against the elevator emergency-control switch.
There was a sputtering of blue flame as the connection was made, and Zita closed her eyes. With a shudder she heard the great elevator strike the cellar floor and then rebound.
She dared not open her eyes. The last thing that she had seen was Locke struggling frantically to escape from under the elevator that was only a few inches above him and seemed destined to crush out his life.
Slowly, fearfully, she opened her eyes. Locke's body lay motionless at her feet, separated almost literally by only the breadth of a hair from the shaft.
The relief, the reaction from her terrible emotions, made Zita half hysterical. Trembling in every limb, she made her way to Locke and fell on her knees by him. She wrapped her arms about him and held his head up.
It was thus that she was holding him when his eyes slowly opened and gazed questioningly into her own, his brow knitted in perplexity.
Then, with a rush, it all came back to him--the descending elevator, Zita standing at the switch, while his life hung in the balance, his last frantic effort to escape just before the descending elevator had grazed his head, rendering him unconscious. That Zita, at the last moment, had attempted to save his life he did not know, nor why she now gazed at him frankly with eyes of love.
Another instant and he had wrenched himself loose from Zita's arms and was struggling with the ropes that still bound him even after he had managed to roll out from under the elevator in the last nick of time.
He had suddenly realized that the sight of Eva being carried off by the emissaries had not been a hideous dream, but a terrible actuality, and that at this very moment she was probably in the most imminent danger.