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I’ve already taken the liberty of having one calibrated to your individual settings.”
     
    “Have you?” With, of course, no idea what he meant, until I remembered the barrage of questions earlier.
     
    “I don’t often leave the factory, but, in your case, I’d be more than happy see to the delivery myself —”
     
    “Daddy,” chirped Gertrude, coming to my rescue at that point, “I’m sure Cyril can take care of that. You’ve so much to do.”
     
    “Hrm, well, yes …”
     
    I stifled a gulp when it struck me he’d been scheming for an invitation to the lordly estate and abode, which might have been stretching the ruse a bit further than was strictly comfortable. Thanks to Gertrude and her timely interruption, I was able to escape before getting in any deeper.
     
    Don’t get me wrong; I live well. My flat is top-notch, under the clutter. But, being adequate to my needs, it lacks many of the amenities old Plimsby would be expecting. Whenever I find myself craving those, I can pop over to the ancestral rock-pile for a fortnight or so. My aunts are regularly after me to move back on a more permanent basis, of course, claiming that my habits (deplorable) and my housekeeping (slovenly) will land me in hospital with some disease or another. I agree that fresh air is fine and well in its place, but after about ten or twelve days at a run, I’ve had as much peace-and-quiet country living as I can take for a while.
     
    No, give me the steam-city, the bustling metrop, any day.
     
    I went home, did something of a slapdash wash-and-dress, and headed out for a night on the town with the warm knowledge of having helped a chum bolstering the spirits. Soon, I’d nearly forgotten all about the whole affair.
     
    A few days later, Moggy turned up and brought Brassworth with him.
     
    I was, I must admit, flabbergasted. Stunned on sight wouldn’t be an exaggeration. How often do you open your door and find standing there a full-size automaton, in the likeness of a man, but made completely of metal?
     
    Yes, completely! Even the clothes, a rather natty suit-looking getup, were metal … from the top of the bowler hat to the tips of the shine-polished shoes! A brass mask of facial features … impeccable wire hair … jointed-finger hands that would have done credit to a concert harpsichordist …
     
    I mean to say!
     
    “Hullo, Reggie,” Moggy said. “Going to invite us in, or stand there and gawp?”
     
    I invited them in. Manners must, and what else was I to do?
     
    “Well,” I said. When it seemed I had nothing more to add to it, I said it again. “Well.”
     
    “Well indeed,” said Moggy. “This is Brassworth. Your new valet.”
     
    “My what?” Stunned, now I
did
gawp.
     
    “Your new valet. Your gentleman’s gentleman. Your manservant.”
     
    I directed the gawp toward the automaton, which had come into the flat without the sort of clanking, spring-sproinking and gear-grinding you might imagine. Instead, it moved with a sort of gliding stride so smooth I half wondered if there were wheels set into the bottoms of those shined metal shoes.
     
    Brassworth, having come in, doffed the hat — I thought it might attach by magnets — and held it watch-chain level in the best deferential fashion. I saw that the eyes were not metal, but a kind of tint-glass, smoked amber in color.
     
    And they moved. Side to side in their sockets like ball-bearings, none of that straight-ahead fixed stare like a statue. The eyes bloody
moved
… they even blinked with mechanized regularity! The more I stared into them, the more I felt the uncanny sense of an intelligence staring back.
     
    Moggy kept prattling on, and it gradually dawned on me what the whole ‘Lord Bramsford’ business had been about.
     
    “Another Fine Plimsby Product?” I blurted.
     
    “Dash it all, Reggie, weren’t you paying
any
attention?”
     
    “I remember some drivel to do with mod cons this and revolutionary advances in that.