[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, wasas gaunt as Karloff, as saturnine as Rathbone, as enigmatic as Lugosi.He was unique among Californians in professing absolutely no motionpicture ambitions. Once, it is true, a director had stopped him on thestreet and offered to test him for a featured role, but old Brattonhad refused with loud indignation when he heard that the role would bethat 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 reallyeighty years old, and he had been fooling with electricity ever sinceEdison put apparatus of various sorts within the reach of everyone.Studio rules imposed pretty strict age limits on the various jobs, andso he was demoted to a janitorship.
He accepted, grumbling, because he needed money for the pursuit hehad dreamed of when a boy and maintained from his youth onward. Inhis little two-room apartment he had gathered a great jumble ofequipment—coils, transformers, cathodes, lenses, terminals—some of itbought new, some salvaged from studio junk, and a great deal curiouslymade and not to be duplicated elsewhere save in the eccentric mind ofits maker. For old Bratton, with the aid of electricity, thought tocreate life.
"Electricity is life," he would murmur, quoting Dr. C. W. Roback, whohad been venerable when old Bratton was young. And again: "All theseidiots think that 'Frankenstein' is a romance and 'R.U.R.' a flight offancy. 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 mechanicalarrangements were wonderful and crammed with power. They could makedead frogs kick, dead birds flutter. They could make the metal figureshe 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 aloudbut 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 aregood, but the connections are wrong, somehow. Wish I knew anatomybetter. And a dead body, even a fresh one, has begun dissolution. Imust try and get—"
Haranguing himself thus one evening after the broadcast, he pushed hismop down a corridor to the open door of a little rehearsal hall, thenstopped and drew into a shadowy corner, for he had almost blunderedupon Ben Gascon in the act of proposing marriage.
Ben Gascon, it will be remembered, was at the time one of radio'shighest paid performers, and well worthy of his hire for the fun hemade. Earlier in life he had been a competent vaudeville artist. When,through no fault of his, vaudeville died, Gascon went into soundpictures 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 stagefrom medical school, he had constructed with his own skilful hands thesmall figure of wood, metal, rubber and cloth that had become known tomyriads as Tom-Tom. Tom-Tom the impish, the witty, the leering cynic,the gusty little clown, the ironical jokester, who sat on the knee ofBen Gascon and, by a seeming misdirection of voice, roused the world tolaughter by his sneers and sallies. Tom-Tom was so droll, so dynamic,so uproariously wicked in thought and deed, that listeners were proneto fo