"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.

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