Part 2

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?"

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.