Title: Bratton's Idea
Author: Wellman, Manly Wade
Language: English
As this book started as an ASCII text book there are no pictures available.


*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "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?"

[Illustration: "_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.



*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Bratton's Idea" ***

Copyright 2023 LibraryBlog. All rights reserved.