Bratton's Idea
Date: 2021-03-11T00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Science fiction; Man-woman relationships -- Fiction; Robots -- Fiction; Inventions -- Fiction; Los Angeles (Calif.) -- Fiction

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Title: Bratton's Idea

Author: Manly Wade Wellman

Illustrator: John Giunta

Release date: March 11, 2021 [eBook #64789]
Most recently updated: October 18, 2024

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/64789

Credits: Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BRATTON'S IDEA ***

BRATTON'S IDEA

By MANLY WADE WELLMAN

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Comet December 40.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

Old Bratton, janitor at the studios of Station XCV in Hollywood, was as gaunt as Karloff, as saturnine as Rathbone, as enigmatic as Lugosi. He was unique among Californians in professing absolutely no motion picture ambitions. Once, it is true, a director had stopped him on the street and offered to test him for a featured role, but old Bratton had refused with loud indignation when he heard that the role would be that of a mad scientist. Old Bratton was touchy about mad scientists, because he was one.

For a time he had been a studio electrician, competent though touchy; but then it developed that he had lied about his age—he was really eighty years old, and he had been fooling with electricity ever since Edison put apparatus of various sorts within the reach of everyone. Studio rules imposed pretty strict age limits on the various jobs, and so he was demoted to a janitorship.

He accepted, grumbling, because he needed money for the pursuit he had dreamed of when a boy and maintained from his youth onward. In his little two-room apartment he had gathered a great jumble of equipment—coils, transformers, cathodes, lenses, terminals—some of it bought new, some salvaged from studio junk, and a great deal curiously made and not to be duplicated elsewhere save in the eccentric mind of its maker. For old Bratton, with the aid of electricity, thought to create life.

"Electricity is life," he would murmur, quoting Dr. C. W. Roback, who had been venerable when old Bratton was young. And again: "All these idiots think that 'Frankenstein' is a romance and 'R.U.R.' a flight of fancy. But all robot stories are full of truth. I'll show them."

But he hadn't shown them yet, and he was eighty-two. His mechanical arrangements were wonderful and crammed with power. They could make dead frogs kick, dead birds flutter. They could make the metal figures he constructed, whether large or small, stir and seem about to wake. But only while the current animated them.

"The fault isn't with the machine," he would say again, speaking aloud but taking care none overheard. "It's perfect—I've seen to that. No, it's in the figures. They're too clumsy and creaky. All the parts are good, but the connections are wrong, somehow. Wish I knew anatomy better. And a dead body, even a fresh one, has begun dissolution. I must try and get—"

Haranguing himself thus one evening after the broadcast, he pushed his mop down a corridor to the open door of a little rehearsal hall, then stopped and drew into a shadowy corner, for he had almost blundered upon Ben Gascon in the act of proposing marriage.

Ben Gascon, it will be remembered, was at the time one of radio's highest paid performers, and well worthy of his hire for the fun he made. Earlier in life he had been a competent vaudeville artist. When, through no fault of his, vaudeville died, Gascon went into sound pictures and radio.

He was a ventriloquist, adroit and seasoned by years of performance, and a man of intelligence and showmanship as well. Coming to the stage from medical school, he had constructed with his own skilful hands the small figure of wood, metal, rubber and cloth that had become known to myriads as Tom-Tom. Tom-Tom the impish, the witty, the leering cynic, the gusty little clown, the ironical jokester, who sat on the knee of Ben Gascon and, by a seeming misdirection of voice, roused the world to laughter by his sneers and sallies. Tom-Tom was so droll, so dynamic, so uproariously wicked in thought and deed, that listeners were prone to forget the seemingly quiet, grave, Ben Gascon who held him and fed him solemn lines on which to explode firecracker jokes—Ben Gascon, who really did the thinking and the talking that Tom-Tom the dummy might be a headliner in the entertainment world.

Not really a new thing—the combination of comedian and stooge may or may not have begun with Aristophanes in ancient Greece—but Ben Gascon was offering both qualities in his own person, and in surpassing excellence. Press agents and commentators wrote fascinating conjectures about his dual personality. In any case, Tom-Tom was the making of him. It was frequently said that Gascon would be as lost without Tom-Tom as Tom-Tom without Gascon.

But tonight Ben Gascon and Tom-Tom were putting on a show for an audience of one.

Shannon Cole was the prima donna and co-star of the program. She was tall, almost as tall as Gascon, and her skin was delectably creamy, and her dark hair wound into a glossy coronet of braids. Usually she seemed stately and mournful, to match the songs of love and longing she sang in a rich contralto; but now she almost groaned with laughter as she leaned above the impudent Tom-Tom, who sat on the black broadcloth knee of Ben Gascon and cocked his leering wooden face up at her. Above Gascon's tuxedo his slender, wide-lined face was a dusky red. His lips seemed tight, even while they stealthily formed words for Tom-Tom.

"Oh, Shanny," it seemed that Tom-Tom was crooning, in that ingratiating drawl that convulsed listeners from coast to coast, "don't you think that you and I might just slip away alone somewhere and—and—" The wooden head writhed around toward Gascon. "Get away, Gaspipe! Don't you see that I'm in conference with a very lovely lady? Can't you learn when you're not wanted?"

Shannon Cole leaned back in her own chair, sighing because she had not enough breath to laugh any more. "I never get enough of Tom-Tom," she vowed between gasps. "We've been broadcasting together for two years now, and he's still number one in my heart. Ben, how do you ever manage—"

"Shanny," drawled the voice that was Tom-Tom's, "this idiot Ben Gascon has something to say. He wants me to front for him—but why do I always have to do the talking while he gets the profit. Speak up, Gaspipe—who's got your tongue this time, the cat, or the cat?"

Shannon Cole looked at the ventriloquist, and suddenly stopped laughing. Her face was pale, as his had gone red. She folded her slender hands in her lap, and her eyes were all for Gascon, though it was as if Tom-Tom still spoke:

"I'll be John Alden," vowed Tom-Tom with shrill decision. "I'll talk up for this big yokel—I always do, don't I, Shanny? As Gaspipe's personal representative—engaged at enormous expense—I want to put before you a proposition. One in which I'm interested. After all, I should have a say as to who will be my—well, my step-mother—"

"It won't work!" came the sudden, savage voice of Ben Gascon.

Rising, he abruptly tossed Tom-Tom upon a divan. Shannon Cole, too, was upon her feet. "Ben!" she quavered. "Why, Ben!"

"I've done the most foolish thing a ventriloquist could do," he flung out.

"Well—if you were really serious, you didn't need to clown. You think it was fair to me?"

He shook his head. "Tom-Tom's done so much of my saucy talking for me these past years that I thought I'd use him to get out what I was afraid to tell you myself," he confessed wretchedly.

"Then you were afraid of me," Shannon accused. She, too, was finding it hard to talk. Gascon made a helpless gesture.

"Well, it didn't work," he groaned. "I'm sorry. You're right if you think I've been an idiot. Just pretend it never happened."

"Why, Ben—" she began once more, and broke off.

"We've just finished our last program for the year," said Ben Gascon. "Next year I won't be around. I think I'll stop throwing my voice for a while and live like a human being. Once I studied to be a doctor. Perhaps once more I can—"

He walked out. The rush of words seemed to have left him spiritually limp and wretched.

Shannon Cole watched him go. Then she bent above the discarded figure of little Tom-Tom, who lay on his back and goggled woodenly up at her. She put out a hand toward him, and her full raspberry-tinted lips trembled. Then she, too, left.

And old Bratton stole from his hiding, to where lay the dummy. Lifting it, he realized that here was what he wanted. Again he spoke aloud—he never held with the belief that talking to oneself is the second or third stage of insanity:

"Clever one, that Gascon. This thing's anatomically perfect, even to the jointed fingers." Thrusting his arm through the slit in the back, he explored the hollow body and head. "Space for organs—yes, every movement and reaction provided for—and a personality."

He straightened up, the figure in his arms. "That's it! That's why I've failed! My figures were dead before they began, but this one has life!" He was muttering breathlessly. "It's like a worn shoe, or an inhabited house, or a favorite chair. I don't have to add the life force, I need only to stimulate what's here."

Ben Gascon, at the stage door, had telephoned for a taxi. He turned at the sound of approaching footsteps, and faced old Bratton, who carried Tom-Tom.

"Mr. Gascon—this dummy—"

"I'm through with him," said Gascon shortly.

"Then, can I have him?"

Tom-Tom seemed to stare at Gascon. Was it mockery, or pleading, in those bulging eyes?

"Take him and welcome," said Gascon, and strode out to wait for his taxi.

When old Bratton finished his cleaning that night, he carried away a bulky bundle wrapped in newspapers. He returned to his lodgings, but not to eat or sleep. First he filled the emptiness of Tom-Tom's head and body with the best items culled from his unsuccessful robots—a cunning brain-device, all intricate wiring and radiating tubes set in a mass of synthetic plasm; a complex system of wheels, switches and tubes, in the biggest hollow where a heart, lungs and stomach should be; special wires, of his own alloy, connecting to the ingenious muscles of rubberette that Ben Gascon had devised for Tom-Tom's arms, legs and fingers; a jointed spinal column of aluminum; an artificial voice-box just inside the moveable jaws; and wondrous little marble-shaped camera developments for eyes, in place of the moveable mockeries in Tom-Tom's sockets.

It was almost dawn before old Bratton stitched up the slit in the back of Tom-Tom's little checked shirt, and laid the completed creation upon the bedlike slab that was midmost of his great fabric of machinery in the rear room. To Tom-Tom's wrists, ankles, and throat he clamped the leads of powerful terminals. With a gingerly care like that of a surgeon at a delicate operation, he advanced a switch so as to throw the right amount of current into play.

The whole procession of wheeled machinery whispered into motion, its voice rising to a clear hum. A spark sprang from a knob at the top, extended its blinding length to another knob, and danced and struggled there like a radiant snake caught between the beaks of two eagles. Old Bratton gave the mechanism more power, faster and more complicated action. His bright eyes clung greedily to the little body lying on the slab.

"He moves, he moves," old Bratton cackled excitedly. "His wheels are going round, all right. Now, if only—"

Abruptly he shut off the current. The machinery fell dead silent.

"Sit up, Tom-Tom!" commanded old Bratton harshly.

And Tom-Tom sat up, his fingers tugging at the clamps that imprisoned him.

The Los Angeles papers made little enough fuss over the death of old Bratton. True, he was murdered—they found him stabbed, lying face down across the threshold of his rear room that was jammed full of strange mechanical junk—but the murder of a janitor is not really big crime news in a city the size of Los Angeles.

The police were baffled, more so because none of them could guess what the great mass of machinery could be, if indeed it were anything. But they forgot their concern the following week, when they had a more important murder to consider, that of one Digs Dilson.

Digs Dilson was high in the scale of local gang authority. He had long occupied a gaudy apartment in that expensive Los Angeles hotel which has prospered by catering to wealthy criminals. He was prudent enough to have a bedroom with no fire escape. He feared climbing assassins from without more than flames from within. In front of his locked room slept two bodyguards on cots, and his own bedside window was tightly wedged in such a fashion that no more than five inches of opening showed between sill and sash. The electric power-line that was clamped along the brickwork just outside could hardly have supported a greater weight than thirty or forty pounds.

Yet Digs Dilson had been killed at close range, by a stab with an ordinary kitchen knife, as he slept. The knife still remained in the wound, as if defying investigators to trace finger-prints that weren't there. And the bodyguards had not been wakened and the door had remained locked on the inside.

The blade of the knife, had anyone troubled to compare wounds, could have been demonstrated to be the exact size and shape as the one that had killed old Bratton. His landlord might have been able to testify that it came from old Bratton's little store of kitchen utensils. But nobody at police headquarters bothered to connect the murders of a friendless janitor and a grand duke of gangdom. After considerable discussion and publicity, the investigators called the case one of suicide. How else could Digs Dilson have received a knife in his body?

Hope was expressed that the Dilson mob, formerly active and successful in meddling with film extras' organizations and the sea food racket, would now dissolve. But the hope was short-lived.

A spruce lieutenant of the dead chief, a man by the name of Juney Saltz, was reputed to have taken command. He appeared briefly at the auction of old Bratton's effects, buying all the mysterious machinery at junk prices and carting it away. After that, the organization, now called the Salters, blossomed out into the grim but well-paid professions of kidnapping, alien-running and counterfeiting.

The first important kidnapping they achieved, that of a very frightened film director, gained them a ransom of ninety thousand dollars and the attention of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

The victim, once released, told of imprisonment in a dank cellar, blind-folded and shackled. Once, fleetingly, he saw a captor who looked like the rogue's gallery photographs of Juney Saltz, but that person was plainly not the one in authority. In fact, he seemed to listen with supple respect to a high but masterful voice that gave orders. And the owner of that high voice once came close to the chair where the prisoner sat bound; the point from which the voice seemed to issue was very, very close to the cellar floor, as though the speaker was no more than two feet high.

An individual short and shrill! Did a child rule that desperate band? The sages of the law were more apt to consider this a clever simulation, with the order-giver crouching low and squeaking high lest he be identified. A judicious drag-netting of several unsavory drinking places brought in one of the old Dilson crowd, who was skilfully, if roughly, induced to talk.

He admitted a part in the kidnapping and ransom collection. He described the cellar hideout as being located in a shabby suburb. He implicated several of his comrades by name, including Juney Saltz. But he shut up with a snap when his interrogators touched on the subject of the Salters' real chief. No, it wasn't Juney Saltz—Juney was only a front. No, nobody on the police records but, he insisted pallidly, he wouldn't say any more. Let them kill him if they wanted to, he was through talking.

"I'd rather die in the chair this minute than get my turn with the boss," he vowed hysterically. "Don't tell me you'll take care of me, either. There's things can get between bars, through keyholes even, into the deepest hole you got. And you can smack me around all week before I'll pipe up with another word."

His captors shut him in an inside cell generally reserved for psychopathic cases—a solidly plated cubicle, with no window, grating, or other opening save a narrow ventilator in the ceiling that gave upon a ten-inch shaft leading to the roof. Then they gathered reenforcements and weapons and descended on the house with the cellar where the kidnapped director had been held for ransom.

Stealthily surrounding that house, they shouted the customary invitation to surrender. Silence for a few seconds, then a faint-hearted member of the Salters appeared at the front door with his hands up. He took a step into the open, and dropped dead to the accompaniment of a pistol-report from inside. And the besiegers heard the shrill voice about which they had been wondering:

"Come in and take us. This place is as full of death as a drug store!"

Followed a loud and scientific bombardment with machine guns, gas bombs and riot guns. The mobster who had been placed on guard at the back door showed too much of himself and was picked off. A contingent of officers made a quick, planned rush. More fighting inside, with three more Salters dying in hot blood in the parlor and kitchen. What seemed to be the sole survivor fled to the cellar and locked himself in a rear compartment. The walls were of concrete, the one door of massive planking. The chief of the attacking force stood in front of this door and raised his voice:

"Hello, in there! You're Juney Saltz, aren't you?"

Gruff was the reply: "What if I am? Don't try to crack in here. I'll get the first copper shows me his puss, and the second and the third."

"You can't get us all, Juney. And we've got more men out here than you've got bullets in there. Come out with your hands up while you still have the chance to stand a fair trial."

"Not me," growled Juney Saltz from within. "Come in and catch me before you talk about what kind of a trial I'll get."

There was a keyhole, only partially blocked by the turnkey. One of the G-men bent and thrust in the point of something that looked like a fountain pen. Carefully he pressed a stud. The little tube spurted a cloud of tear gas through the keyhole into Juney Saltz's fortress. The besiegers grinned at each other, and all relaxed to wait.

The waiting was not long, as it developed. Juney Saltz spoke up within, his voice a blubber: "Hey! I—I'm s-smothering—"

"But I'm not," drawled the same high voice that was becoming familiar. "Sit back, Juney, and put your head between your knees. You'll stand it better that way."

"I'm—done for!" wailed Juney Saltz. "If they crack in, I—I can't s-see to shoot!"

"I can see to shoot." The shrill voice had become deadly. "And you'll be the first thing I shoot at if you don't do what I tell you."

A strangled howl burst from Juney Saltz. "I'd rather be shot than—" And next moment he was scrabbling at the door. "I surrender! I'll let you bulls in!"

He had turned the key in the lock just as the shot that killed him rang out. A rush of police foiled an attempt from within to fasten the door again. Sneezing and gurgling, two of the raiders burst into the final stronghold, stumbling over the subsiding lump of flesh that had been Juney Saltz.

Blinded by tears from their own gas, they could not be sure afterward of what the scurrying little thing was that they saw and fired at. Those outside knew that nothing could have won past them, and the den itself had no window that was not bricked up. When the gas had been somewhat blown out, an investigator gave the place a thorough searching. Yes, there was one opening, a stovepipe hole through which a cat might have slipped. That was all. And the place was empty but for the body of Juney Saltz.

"Juney was shot in the back," announced another operative, bending to examine the wound. "I think I see what happened. Squeaky-Voice was at that stovepipe hole, and plugged him from there as he tried to let us in. Then Juney tried to lock up again, just as we pushed the door open."

Upstairs they went, and investigated further. The hole had joined a narrow chimney, with no way out except the upper end, a rectangle eight inches by ten. Even with six corpses to show, the agents returned to their headquarters with a feeling of failure. "In the morning," they promised one another, "we'll give that one Salter we're holding another little question bee."

But in the morning, the jailer with breakfast found that prisoner dead.

He had been caught with a noose of thin, strong cord, tightened around his throat from behind. Suicide? But the cord had been drawn into the little ventilator hole, and tied to a projecting rivet far inside and above.

On the same day, police, federal agents, newspapers and the public generally were exercised by the information that Shannon Cole, popular contralto star of stage, screen and radio, had been kidnapped from her Beverly Hills bedroom. No clues, and so the investigation turned to her acquaintances, among whom was Ben Gascon, recently retired from stage, screen and radio.

Benjamin Franklin Gascon left the office of the Los Angeles chief of detectives, where he had spent a most trying forenoon convincing his interrogators that he had no idea why he should be brought into the case. He knew nothing of the underworld. True, he knew Miss Cole professionally, but—and his face was rueful—had no reason to count himself a really close friend of hers. He had not seen her since the termination of their latest radio assignment. His personal affairs, meanwhile, were quite open to investigation; he had grown weary of ventriloquism, and had retired to live on the income from his investments. Later, he might resume his earlier profession, medicine. He was attending lectures now at the University of California in Los Angeles. And once again, he had no idea of how he was being brought into this case, or of who could have kidnapped Miss Cole.

But, even as he departed, he suddenly got that idea.

"Tom-Tom!"

It took moments to string together the bits of logic which brought that thought into his mind.

Things had happened to people, mostly gangsters, at the hands of a malevolent creature; that is, if the creature had hands—but it must have hands, if it could wield a gun, a slip-cord, a knife! It must also be notably small and nimble, if it really traveled up chimneys, down ventilator shafts, along power-lines and through stovepipe holes. Gascon's imagination, as good as anyone's, toyed with the conception of a wise and wicked monkey, or of a child possessed by evil like the children of old Salem, or a dwarf.

But the point at which he coupled on his theory was the point at which police had paused, or rather begun.

Digs Dilson had been killed with a knife. So had old Bratton.

He, Ben Gascon, had given old Bratton the dummy that people called Tom-Tom. And old Bratton was forthwith murdered. Gascon had meant to go to the funeral, but something had turned up to interfere. What else concerned the janitor? What, for instance, had the younger electricians and engineers teased him about so often? "Electricity is life," that was old Bratton's constant claim. And he was said to have whole clutters of strange machinery at his shabby rooms.

Bratton had taken Tom-Tom. Thereafter Bratton and others had been killed. In the background of their various tragedies had lurked and plotted something small, evil, active, and strange enough to frighten the most hardened of criminals. "Electricity is life"—and Bratton had toiled over some kind of electrical apparatus that might or might not be new and powerful in ways unknown to ordinary electricians.

Gascon left the rationalization half completed in the back of his mind, and sought out the shabby street where the janitor had lodged.

The landlord could not give him much help. To be sure old Bratton had made a nuisance of himself with his machines, mumbling that they would startle the world some day; but after his death, someone had bought those machines, loaded them upon a truck and carted them off. The landlord had seen the purchase, and later identified the purchaser from newspaper photographs as the late Juney Saltz.

And Juney Saltz, pondered Gascon, had been killed by something with a shrill voice, that could crawl through a stovepipe hole.... "You saw the sale of the goods?" he prompted the landlord. "Was there a dummy—a thing like a big doll, such as ventriloquists use?"

The landlord shook his head. "Nothing like that. I'd have noticed if there was."

So Tom-Tom, who had gone home with old Bratton, had vanished.

Gascon left the lodgings and made a call at a newspaper office, where he inserted a personal notice among the classified advertisements:

T-T. I have you figured out. Clever, but your old partner can add two and two and get four. Better let S.C. go. B.F.G.

The notice ran for three days. Then a reply, in the same column:

B.F.G. So what? T-T.

It was bleak, brief defiance, but Gascon felt a sudden blaze of triumph. Somehow he had made a right guess, on a most fantastic proposition. Tom-Tom had come to life as a lawless menace. All that he, Gascon, need do, was act accordingly. He made plans, then inserted another message:

T-T. I made you, and I can break you. This is between us. Get in touch with me, or I'll come looking for you. You won't like that. B.F.G.

Next day his telephone rang. A hoarse voice called him by name:

"Look, Gascon, you better lay off if you know what's good for you."

"Ah," replied Gascon gently, "Tom-Tom seems to have taken up conventional gangster methods. It means that he's afraid—which I'm not. Tell him I'm not laying off, I'm laying on."

That night he took dinner at a restaurant on a side street. As he left it, two men sauntered out of a doorway and came up on either side of him. One was as squat and bulky as a wrestler, with a truculent square face. The other, taller but scrawny, had a broad brow and a narrow chin, presenting the facial triangle which phrenologists claim denotes shrewdness. Both had their hands inside their coats, where bulges betrayed the presence of holstered guns.

"This is a stickup," said Triangle-Face. "Don't make a move or a peep, or we'll cut down on you."

They walked him along the street.

"I'm not moving or peeping," Gascon assured them blandly, "but where are you taking me?"

"Into this car," replied the triangle-faced one, and opened the rear door of a parked sedan. Gascon got in, with the powerful gunman beside him. The other got into the front seat and took the wheel.

"No funny business," he cautioned as he trod on the starter. "The boss wants to talk to you."

The car drew away from the curb, heading across town. Gascon produced his cigarette case—Shannon Cole had given it to him on his last birthday—opened it, and offered it to the man beside him. Smiling urbanely at the curt growl of refusal, he then selected a cigarette and lighted it.

"Understand one thing," he bade his captors, through a cloud of smoke. "I've expected this. I've worked for it. And I have written very fully about all angles of this particular case. If anything happens to me, the police will get my report."

It was patently a bluff, and in an effort to show that it did not work both men laughed scornfully.

"We're hotter than a couple wolves in a prairie fire right now," the triangle-faced one assured him. "Anyway, no dumb cop would believe the truth about the boss."

That convinced Gascon that he was on his way to Tom-Tom. Too, the remark about "a coupla wolves" showed that the driver thought of only two members of the gang. Tom-Tom's following must have been reduced to these. Gascon sat back with an air of enjoying the ride. Growling again, his big companion leaned over and slapped him around the body. There was no hard lump to betray knife or pistol, and the bulky fellow grunted to show that he was satisfied. Gascon was satisfied as well. His pockets were not probed into, and he was carrying a weapon that, if unorthodox, was nevertheless efficient. He foresaw the need and the chance to use it.

"Is Miss Cole all right?" he asked casually.

"Sure she is," replied Square-Face.

"Pipe down, you!" snapped his companion from the driver's seat. "Let the boss do the talking to this egg."

"Your boss likes to do the talking, I judge," put in Gascon, still casually. "Do you like to listen? Or," and his voice took on a mocking note, "does he give you the creeps?"

"Never mind," Square-Face muttered. "He's doing okay."

"But not his followers," suggested Gascon. "Quite a few of them have been killed, eh? And aren't you two the only survivors of the old Dilson crowd? How long will your luck hold out, I wonder?"

"Longer than yours," replied the man at the wheel sharply. "If you talk any more, we'll put the slug on you."

The remainder of the ride was passed in silence, and the car drew up at length before a quiet suburban cottage, on the edge of town almost directly opposite the scene of the recent fight between police and the Salters.

The three entered a dingy parlor, full of respectable looking furniture. "Keep him here," Triangle-Face bade Square-Face. "I'll go help the boss get ready to talk to him."

He was gone. His words suggested that there would be some moments alone with Square-Face, and Gascon meant to make use of them.

The big fellow sat down. "Take a chair," he bade, but Gascon shook his head and lighted another cigarette. He narrowed his eyes, in his best diagnostician manner, to study his guard.

"You look as if there was something wrong with your glands," he said crisply.

"Ain't nothing wrong with me," was the harsh response.

"Are you sure? How do you feel?"

"Good enough to pull a leg off of you if you don't shut that big mouth."

Gascon shrugged, and turned to a rear wall. A picture hung there, a very unsightly oil painting. He put his hand up, as if to straighten it on its hook. Then he glanced toward a window, letting his eyes dilate. "Ahhhh!" he said softly.

Up jumped the gangster, gun flashing into view. "What did you say?" he demanded.

"I just said 'Ahhhh,'" replied Gascon, his eyes fixed on the window.

"If anybody's followed you here—" The giant broke off and tramped toward the window to look out.

Like a flash Gascon leaped after him. With him he carried the picture, lifted from where it hung. He swept it through the air, using the edge of the frame like a hatchet and aiming at the back of the thick neck.

The blow was powerful and well placed. Knocked clean out, the gangster fell on his face. Gascon stooped, hooked his hands under the armpits, and made shift to drag the slack weight back to its chair. It took all his strength to set his victim back there. Then he drew from his side pocket the thing he had been carrying for days—a wad of cotton which he soaked in chloroform. Holding it to the broad nose, he waited until the last tenseness went out of the great limbs. Then he crossed one leg over the other knee, poised the head against the chair-back, an elbow on a cushioned arm. Clamping the nerveless right hand about the pistol-butt, he arranged it in the man's lap. Now the attitude was one of assured relaxation. Gascon hung the picture back in place, and himself sat down. He still puffed on the cigarette that had not left his lips.

He had more than a minute to wait before the leaner mobster returned. "Ready for you now," he said to Gascon, beckoning him through a rear door. He gave no more than a glance to his quiet, easy-seeming comrade.

They went down some stairs into a basement—plainly basements were an enthusiasm of the commander of this enterprise—and along a corridor. At the end was a door, pulled almost shut, with light showing through the crack. "Go in," ordered Triangle-Face, and turned as if to mount the stairs again.

But it was not Gascon's wish that he find his companion senseless. In fact, Gascon had no intention of leaving anyone in the way of the retreat he hoped to make later. With his hand on the doorknob, he spoke:

"One thing, my friend."

Triangle-Face paused and turned. "I'm no friend of yours. What do you want?"

Gascon extended his other hand. "Wish me luck."

"The only luck I wish you is bad. Don't try to grab hold of me."

The gangster's hand slid into the front of his coat, toward that bulge that denoted an armpit holster. Gascon sprang upon him, catching him by the sleeve near the elbow so that he could not whip free with the weapon. Gascon's other hand dived into his own pocket, again clutching the big wad of chloroform-soaked cotton.

He whipped the wad at and upon the triangular face. The man tried to writhe away but Gascon, heavier and harder-muscled than he, shoved him against the wall, where the back of his head could be clamped and held. Struggling, the fellow breathed deeply, again, again. His frantic flounderings suddenly went feeble. Gascon judged the dose sufficient, and let go his holds. The man subsided limply and Gascon, still holding to his sleeve, dragged the right hand out of the coat. Dropping his wad of cotton, he took up the big pistol.

"I'm afraid, Gaspipe," said a shrill, wise voice he should know better than anyone in the world, "that that gun won't really help you a nickel's worth."

Gascon spun around. A moment ago he had put his hand on the doorknob. When he had turned to leap at the triangle-faced man, he had pulled the door open. Now he could see inside a bare, officelike room, a big sturdy desk and a figure just beyond; a figure calm and assured, but so tiny, so grotesque.

"Come in, Gaspipe," commanded Tom-Tom, the dummy.

Tom-Tom did not look as Gascon had remembered him. The checked jacket was filthy and frayed, and in the breast of it was a round black hole the size of a fingertip. The paint had been flaked away from the comical face, one broad ear was half broken off, the wig was tousled and matted. And the eyes goggled no more in the clownish fashion that had been made so famous in publicity photographs. They crouched deep in Tom-Tom's wooden face and glowed greenly, like the eyes of a meat-eating animal.

"You're the only man I ever expected to figure me out, Gaspipe," said Tom-Tom. "And even you can't do much about it, can you? Put away the gun. I've been shot at and shot at, and it does nothing but make little holes like this."

He tapped the black rent in his jacket-front with a jointed forefinger.

"As a matter of fact, I was glad to see your notice in the agony column. I think I'd have hunted you up, anyway. You see, we make a fine team, Gaspipe. There are things we can still do for each other, but you must be reasonable."

"I'm not here to let you make fun of me," said Gascon. "You're just a little freak, brought to life by the chance power evolved by a cracked old intelligence. Once I puzzled it out, I knew that I needn't be afraid. You can't do anything to me."

"No?" said Tom-Tom, with what seemed a chuckle. "Let me show you something, Gaspipe."

His wooden hand moved across the desk-top and touched a button. A section of the wall slid back like a stage curtain, revealing an opening the size of a closet door. The opening was fenced in with a metal grating. Behind it stood Shannon Cole, her long black hair awry, her face pale, her cloth-of-gold pajamas rumpled.

"Ben!" she said, in a voice that choked. "Did he get you, too?"

"How about it, Gaspipe? Are you working with me? We were a good pair once."

Gascon exclaimed, and turned as if to spring toward the grating. But at the same instant, with a swiftness that was more than a cat's, Tom-Tom also moved. He seemed to fly across his desk as though flung by a catapult. His hard head struck Gascon's stomach, doubling him up, and then Tom-Tom's arms whipped around Gascon's ankles, dragging them sidewise. Down fell the ventriloquist, heavily and clumsily. The gun flew from his hand, bouncing on the floor like a ball. Tom-Tom caught it in mid-bounce, and lifted it with both hands.

"I won't kill you, Gaspipe," he announced, "but I'll most emphatically shoot off your kneecap, if you try anything sudden again. Sit up. Put your back against that wall. And listen."

"Do what he says, Ben! He means business!" Shannon Cole urged tremulously from behind her bars.

Gascon obeyed, trying to think of a way to grapple that imp of wood and fabric. Tom-Tom chuckled again, turned back to his desk and scrambled lightly upon it. As before he touched the button, and Shannon was instantly shut from sight.

"Good thing I kidnapped her," he observed. "Not only is she worth thousands to her managers, but she brought you to me. Now we'll have a dandy conference. Just like old times, isn't it, Gaspipe?"

Gascon sat still, eyeing the gun. He might have risked its menace, but for the thought of Shannon behind those bars. Tom-Tom, so weirdly strong, might fight him off even if disarmed, then turn on his captive. The dummy that was no longer a dummy seemed to read his mind:

"No violence, Gaspipe. I tell you, it's been tried before. When the Dilson mobsters were through laughing at the idea of my taking over, one or two thought that Digs Dilson should be avenged. But their guns didn't even make me blink. I killed a couple, and impressed the others. I put into them the fear of Tom-Tom." Again the chuckle. "I'm almost as hard to hurt as I am to fool, Gaspipe. And that's very, very hard indeed."

"What do you want of me?" blurted Gascon, scowling.

"Now that's a question," nodded Tom-Tom. "It might be extended a little. What do I want of life, Gaspipe? Life is here with me, but I never asked for it. It was thrust into me, and upon me. My first feeling was of crazy rage toward the life-giver—"

"And so you killed him?" interrupted Gascon.

"I did. And the killing gave me the answer. The only thing worth while in life is taking life."

Tom-Tom spread his wooden hands, as though he felt that he had made a neat point. Gascon made a quick gesture of protest, then subsided as Tom-Tom picked up the gun again.

"You're wrong, Tom-Tom," he said earnestly.

"Am I? You're going to give me a moral lecture, are you? But men invented morals, so as to protect their souls. I don't have a soul, Gaspipe. I don't have to worry about protecting it. I'm not human. I'm a thing." Sitting on the desk, he crossed his legs and fiddled with the gun. "You've lived longer than I. What else, besides killing, is worth while in life?"

"Why—enjoyment—"

The marred head waggled. "Enjoyment of what? Food? I can't eat. Companionship? I doubt it, where a freak like me is concerned. Possessions? But I can't use clothes or houses or money or anything like that. They're for men, not dummies. What else, Gaspipe?"

"Why—why—" This time Gascon fell silent.

"Love, you were going to say?" The chuckle was louder, and the glowing yellow eyes flickered aside toward the place behind the wall where Shannon was penned up. "You're being stupid, Gaspipe. Because you know what love is, you think others do. Gaspipe, I'll never know what love is. I'm not made for it."

"I see you aren't," Gascon nodded solemnly. "All right, Tom-Tom. You can find life worth living if you try for supremacy in some line—leadership—"

"That," said Tom-Tom, "is where killing comes in. And where you come in, too."

He laid down the gun and put the tips of his jointed fingers together, in a pose grotesquely like that of a mild lecturer. "I've given my case a lot of time and thought, you see. I realize that I don't fit in—humanity hasn't ever considered making a place for me. I don't have needs or reactions or wishes to fit those of humanity."

"Is that why you turn to criminals? Because they don't fit into normal human ethics, either?"

"Exactly, exactly." Tom-Tom nodded above his poised hands. "And criminals understand me, and I understand them better than you think. But," and he sounded a little weary, "they're no good, either.

"You see, Gaspipe, they scare too easily. They die too easily. Just now you overpowered one. They're not fit to associate with me on the terms I dictate. If I'm going to have power, it will turn what passes for my stomach if I have only people—people of meat and bone—under me." He made a spitting sound, such as Gascon had often faked for him in the days when the two were performing. "As I say, this is where you come in."

"In heaven's name, what do you mean?"

"You're smart, Gaspipe. You made me—the one thing that has been given artificial life. Well, you'll make other things to be animated."

"More robots?" demanded Gascon. "You want a science factory."

"I am the apex of science come true. Oh, it's practical. A couple at first. Then ten. Then a hundred. Then enough, perhaps, to grab a piece of the world and rule it. Don't bug out your eyes, Gaspipe. My followers bought up the life-making machinery and other things for me. I have lots of money—from that ransom—and I can get more."

Gascon was finding the idea not so surprising as at first, but he shook his head over it. "I won't."

"Yes, you will. We'll be partners again. Understand?"

"If I refuse?"

Tom-Tom made no audible answer. He only turned and gazed meaningly at the place where Shannon was shut up.

Gascon sighed and rose. "Show me this machinery of yours."

"Step this way." Monkey-nimble, Tom-Tom hopped to the floor. He had taken up the gun again, and gestured with it for Gascon to walk beside him. Together they crossed the office to a rear corner, where Tom-Tom touched what looked like a projecting nail head. As with the door to Shannon's cell, a panel slid back. They passed into a corridor, and the panel closed behind them.

"Straight ahead," came the voice of Tom-Tom in the darkness. "Being mechanical, I have a head for mechanics. I devised all these secret panels. Neat?"

"Dramatic," replied Gascon, who could be ironical himself. "Now, Tom-Tom, if I do what you want, what happens to me and to Miss Cole?"

"You both stay with me."

"You won't let them ransom her?"

A chuckle, and: "I'll take the ransom money, but she's seen too much to go free. Maybe I'll make the two of you a nice suite of rooms for house-keeping—barred in, of course. Didn't you use to carry me around in a little case, Gaspipe? I'll take just as good care of you, if you do what I want."

The little monster did something or other to open a second door, and beyond showed the light of a strong electric lamp. They passed into a big windowless room, with rough wooden walls, probably a deep cellar. It held a complicated arrangement of electrical machinery.

Hopping lightly to a bench the height of Gascon's shoulder, Tom-Tom seized a switch and closed it. There were emissions of sparks, a stir of wheels and belts, and the hum of machinery being set in motion.

"This, Gaspipe, is what brought me to life. And look!" The jointed wooden hand flourished toward a corner. "There's the kind of thing that was tried and failed."

It looked like a caricature of an armored knight—a tall, jointed, gleaming thing, half again as big as a big man, with a head shaped like a bucket. There were no features except two vacant eyes of quartz, staring through the blank metal as through a mask. Gascon walked around it, his doctor-mind and builder-hands immediately interested. The body was but loosely pinned together, and he drew aside a plate, peering into the works.

"The principle's wrong," he announced at once. "The fellow didn't understand anatomical balance—"

"I knew it, I knew it!" cried Tom-Tom. "You can add the right touch, Gaspipe. That's the specimen that came closest to success before me. I'll help. After all, my brain was made by the old boy who did all these things. Through it, I know what he knew."

"Why didn't you save him to help you?" demanded Gascon. He picked up a pair of tapering pincers and a small wrench, and began to tinker.

"I told you about that once. I was angry. My first impulse was a killing rage. The death of my life-giver was my first pleasure and triumph. I hadn't dreamed up the plan I've been describing."

Anger was Tom-Tom's first emotion. Not so different from human beings as the creature imagined, mused Gascon. What had the lecturer at medical school once quoted from Emmanuel Kant:

"The outcry that is heard from a child just born was not the note of lamentation, but of indignation and aroused wrath."

Of course, a new-born baby has not the strength to visit its rage on mother or nurse or doctor, but a creature as organized and powerful in body and mind as Tom-Tom—or as huge and overwhelming as this metal giant he fiddled with—

Gascon decided to think such thoughts with the greatest stealth. If Tom-Tom could divine them, something terrible was due to happen. Stripping off his coat, he went to work on the robot with deadly earnestness.

Morning had probably come to the outside world. Gascon, wan and weary, stepped back and mopped his brow with a shirt sleeve. Tom-Tom spoke from where he sat cross-legged on the bench beside the controls.

"Is he pretty much in shape, Gaspipe?"

"As much as you ever were, Tom-Tom. If you are right, and this machine gave you life, it will give him life, too."

"I can't wait for my man Friday. Get him over and lay him on the slab."

The metal man was too heavy to lift, but Gascon's hours of work had provided his joints with beautiful balance. An arm around the tanklike waist was enough to support and guide. The weight shifted from one big shovel-foot to the other and the massive bulk actually walked to the table-like slab in the midst of the wheels and tubes, and Gascon eased it down at full length. Now Tom-Tom approached, bringing a spongy-looking object on a metal tray, an amorphous roundness that sprouted copper wires in all directions. He slid it into the open top of the robot's bucketlike head.

"That's a brain for Friday," explained Tom-Tom. "Not as complex as mine, but made the same way. He'll have simple reactions and impulses. A model servant."

Simple reactions—and Tom-Tom had sprung up from his birthcouch to kill the man who brought him to life. Gascon's hands trembled ever so slightly as he connected the brain wires to terminals that did duty as nerves. Tom-Tom himself laid a plate over the orifice and stuck it down with a soldering iron.

"My own brain's armored inside this wooden skull," he commented. "No bullet or axe could reach it. And nobody can hurt the brain of Friday here unless they get at him from above. He's pretty tall to get at from above, eh, Gaspipe?"

"That's right," nodded Gascon, and in his mind rose a picture of the big metal thing bending down, exposing that vulnerable soldered patch. Tom-Tom and he clamped the leads to wrists, ankles and neck.

"Get back to the wall, Gaspipe," commanded Tom-Tom bleakly, and Gascon obeyed. "Now watch. And don't move, or I'll set Friday on you when he wakes up."

Gascon sat down on a long, low bench next to the open door. Tom-Tom noticed his position, and lifted the gun he had carried into the chamber.

"Don't try to run," he warned, "or I'll drill you—maybe in the stomach. And you can lie there and die slowly. When you die there'll be nobody to help Shanny yonder in her little hole in the wall."

"I won't run," promised Gascon. And Tom-Tom switched on more power.

Sparks, a shuddering roar, a quickening of all parts of the machine. The shining hulk on the slab stirred and quivered, like a man troubled by dreams. Tom-Tom gave a brief barking laugh of triumph, brought the mechanism to a howling crescendo of sound and motion, then abruptly shut it down to a murmur.

"Friday! Friday!" he called.

Slowly the metal giant sat up in its bonds.

The bucket-head, with its vacant eyes now gleaming as yellow as Tom-Tom's, turned in that direction. Then, with unthinkable swiftness, the big metal body heaved itself erect, ripping free of the clamps that had been fastened upon it. Up rose two monstrous hands, like baseball gloves of jointed iron. There was a clashing, heavy-footed charge.

Sitting still as death, Gascon again recalled to mind what Tom-Tom had said, what he had heard at medical school.

Tom-Tom gave a prolonged yell, and threw up the gun to fire. The explosions rattled and rolled in the narrow confinement of the room. Bullets spattered the armor-plated breast of the oncoming giant. One knocked away a gleaming eye. The towering thing did not falter in its dash. Tom-Tom tried to spring down too late. The big hands flashed out, and had him.

Gascon, now daring to move, dragged the bench across the doorway. From a corner he caught up a heavy wrought-iron socket lever, as long as a walking stick and nearly as thick as his wrist. All the while he watched, over his shoulder, a battle that was not all one-sided.

After his final effort to command the newly animated giant, Tom-Tom had not made a sound. He concentrated on freeing himself from the grip that had fastened upon him. Both his wooden hands clutched a single finger, strained against it. Gascon saw, almost as in a ridiculous dream, that immense finger bending backward, backward, and tearing from its socket. But the other fingers kept their hold. They laid Tom-Tom on the floor, a great slab of a foot pinned him there. The two metal hands began to pluck him to pieces, and to throw the pieces away.

First an arm in a plaid sleeve flew across the room—an arm ripped from Tom-Tom's little sleeve, an arm that still writhed and wriggled, its fingers opening and closing. It fell among the wheels that still turned, jamming them. Sparks sprang up with a grating rattle. Then a flame of blueness. Gascon turned his back toward the doorway that he had blocked with the bench, to see the thing out.

With a wanton fury, the victorious ogre of metal had shredded Tom-Tom's body, hurling the pieces in all directions. To one side, the machinery was putting forth more flame and more. The blaze licked up the wall. The giant straightened his body at last, holding in one paw the detached head of its victim. The jaws of Tom-Tom snapped and moved, as though he was trying to speak.

"Look this way!" roared Gascon at the top of his voice.

The creature heard him. Its head swiveled doorward. It stared with one gleaming eye and one empty black socket. Gascon brandished the socket lever over his head, as though in challenge, then turned and sprang over the bench into the dark corridor.

A jangling din as the thing rushed after him. Hands shot out to clutch. Its shins struck the bench violently, the feet lost their grip of the floor, and the clumsy structure plunged forward and down, with a noise like an automobile striking a stone wall. For a moment the huge head was just at Gascon's knee.

He struck. The solder-fastened patch flew away under the impact of his clubbed lever-bar like a driven golf ball. The cranium yawned open, and he jabbed the bar in. Something squashed and yielded before his prodding—the delicate artificial brain. Then the struggling shape at his feet subsided. From one relaxing hand rolled something round—the head of Tom-Tom.

It still lived, for the eyes rolled up to glare at Gascon, the jaws snapped at his toe. He kicked the thing back through the door, into the growing flames. The fire was bright enough to show him the way back along the corridor. He did not know how Tom-Tom had arranged the panel to open and close, nor did he pause to find out. Heavy blows of the bar cleared him a way.

Out in the office, he fairly sprang to the desk, located the button on its top, and pressed it. A moment later, Shannon was staring out at him through her grating.

"Ben!" she gasped. "Are you all right? Tom-Tom—"

"He's finished," Gascon told her. "This whole business is finished." With his lever he managed to rip the grating from its fastenings, and then dragged Shannon forth. She clung to him like a child awakened from a nightmare.

"Come, we're getting out."

In the second corridor he stooped, searched the pockets of the senseless triangle-faced one and secured the keys to the car outside. Then he shook the fellow back to semi-consciousness.

"This house is on fire!" Gascon shouted. "Get your pal upstairs on his feet, and get out of here."

Leaving the fellow standing weakly, Gascon and Shannon got into the open and into the car. Driving along the street, they heard the clang of fire-engines, heading for the now angry fire.

Shannon said one thing: "Ben, how much can we tell the police?"

"It isn't how much we can tell them," replied Gascon weightily. "It's how little."

When Autumn returned, Ben Gascon was on the air again after all. His sponsors feared that his marriage to Shannon Cole might damage their popularity as co-stars, but radio fans showed quite the opposite reaction. Gascon introduced a fresh note in the form of a new dummy, which he named Jack Duffy, a green-horn character with a husky voice instead of a shrill one and rural humor instead of cocktail-hour repartee.

Sometimes people asked what had become of Tom-Tom; but Gascon always managed to change the subject, and eventually Tom-Tom was forgotten.

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