THE WELL-OILED MACHINE, by H.B. Fyfe

Originally published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Dec. 1950.

Having tottered along the hall from the elevator to his office, “Ed” Moran paused to glare at the sign on the door.

STUPENDOUS STORIES

William Moran, Editor

“Another day of it!” he groaned. “Why did Helen have to pick a fight again last night?”

He pushed open the door and entered, walking carefully.

“But even so, I didn’t have to get loaded afterward, did I?”

A clacking typewriter fell silent as a level-toned voice answered his soliloquy.

“Do not know,” said Sinner.

“I didn’t ask you!” growled Ed.

Sinner was a secretarial robot, designed with four arms to facilitate simultaneous handling, correcting, and copying of manuscripts. Two of his hands had twenty-four fingers each, for typing. He was mounted on three small wheels, and gave Ed a chill on mornings after.

“How many synopses are ready?” he asked the robot.

“About a dozen, so far.”

“I’ll take them. Bring the rest in later!” Ed, convinced that his robots could tell when he was off beat, tried to sound brisk. “And get Doc to oil those wheels for you!”

“So you can keep telling everyone how the magazine runs like a well-oiled machine, ha-ha, because most of us are, ha-ha? You ought to hear Adder this morning!”

“Spare me that!” said Ed, retreating to his own office.

He threw the synopses of submitted manuscripts on his desk and sat down to hold his throbbing head. Just as it seemed that he would live, after all, someone tapped at his door.

Doc rolled in. He was an adaptation of the same model as Sinner and Adder, with digits specialized for repairing machinery, including other robots. His cylindrical body housed a “memory” file of repair instructions recorded on tape.

“Adder will not let me fix its voice box,” he complained.

“Why won’t he?” asked Ed.

“It says it does not have to, under regulations of individuality. It sounds terrible. Just lost two ads.”

“Lost two ads!”

“They came in by visiphon. Sinner says that when the advertisers heard that voice over the mike, they got insulted.”

Ed flipped a switch on his intercom.

“Advertising department!” a grating shriek answered.

Ed winced.

“You let Doc fix that voice box!” he ordered. “We can’t go on losing money on your whims.”

“Do not have to,” rasped the robot. “Regulations say―”

“All right! I can’t make you. But I can put you on another job. There’s no rule against that.”

He flicked the switch off.

“Go back and try again, Doc. I’m going down to see Liar.”

Ed took the elevator down two floors to where the magazine was printed. He seldom penetrated deeply into this realm for fear of being run down by a big paper-carrying robot, or suffering some similar indignity. He had, however, formed a habit of chatting with the linotyping robot.

Liar―who claimed as an expert that it should be “Liner” or, at least, “Lyre”―was immobile because of his size and complexity, but he was the most educated machine Ed had ever encountered. He was equipped to proofread as he worked, and had accumulated an awe-inspiring hoard of misinformation.

Liar knew all about women―at any rate, as much as Ed’s writers thought they knew. He knew even more about men, especially the type that was bound to win the girl and save the day. He often commiserated with Ed because the latter’s chin was not more prominent, and because he was something less than six feet of bone and sinew.

“The best thing―” he began when Ed complained of headache.

“Never mind,” said the man. “I keep telling you I can’t get any rare, imported xitchil from Jupiter because there’s no such thing. Human beings haven’t even landed on Jupiter yet.”

“Blaster Blaine did. In the June fourteenth book.”

“Never mind,” sighed Ed. “How are you coming here?”

“Almost finished.” Liar did not pause in his work. “Be way ahead by afternoon. You got woman trouble, pardner?”

“What makes you think so?” demanded Ed, recoiling.

“You always get over-oiled when you have a fight with your girl. It is human.”

“Which lousy story did you get that from?”

“You said so,” answered Liar. “Now, I shall tell you how to handle her―”

“You think you will! You don’t know Helen,” Ed broke in.

“This worked for young Doctor Steele, in September, so listen! First, you give her the cold shoulder.”

“Yeah?”

“That is right,” Liar insisted. “They cannot stand it. Then, when she starts chasing you, knock her around a bit. Show her you are tough. They love it.”

Ed shuddered.

“My dear tinker-toy,” he said, “she has two brothers nearly your size. They tell me she once gave the big one a shiner.”

“Well, of course…if you are timid―Next best thing is to shanghai her aboard a spaceship bound for Pluto.”

“Who―me?”

“Occasionally,” said Liar, “I realize how lucky I am to be well-designed for my job. I, at least, am adequate.”

“I get along,” retorted Ed. “Make a living, don’t I?”

“We make it for you, Sinner says.”

“That flat-tired can of stripped gears! The way he boils stories down, I’m not sure half the time what I’m buying.”

“Do not worry. When the copy gets to me, I fix up anything that looks out of line.”

“It’s considered good for a magazine to get out of line at times,” growled Ed, “but I doubt I could convince you.”

“I just do what they built me for, and you know I do it better than anything else could.”

Ed gave up. He listened to suggestions that he should woo Helen with anonymous gifts, or show her how important he was. Best of all, Liar assured him, was to rescue the girl from terrible danger. All the heroes did it. He should arrange to be slightly injured in the process. Liar thought that the magazine could carry on very well during his absence.

Ed said sourly that he would really like to give it a chance, and left. At the elevator, he heard his name called.

He turned and saw the illustrating robot, Arty, apparently on his way to deliver a batch of drawings. He had been trapped by a small pool of oil spilled upon the concrete floor where some trash had been collected for later disposal.

“That one-wheel drive they give you!” grumbled Ed, but pushed him over a few feet.

“Thank you,” said Arty.

He remained there, training his photoelectric eye on Ed until the elevator robot shut the door and started up. Ed fidgeted. He did not quite know what to do about this. He hated to replace Arty with a new model, but all the heroes in the sketches were beginning to look like editor William Moran.

He returned to his office and found that the pile of synopses had grown during his absence. He sat down to read them after carefully discarding the top half-dozen―Sinner always favored one plot, wherein robots conquered the world.

Ed chose a page, glanced at the code number identifying the story and author to Sinner, and read:

Young Jack Hansen, pilot on the dangerous asteroid run, is left unconscious on the spaceship Hawl, which mutineers force the captain to abandon. The Hawl is soon afterward boarded by space-pirates seeking her fabulously valuable secret cargo, led by a beautiful blonde girl known only as―

Ed decided he really should be grateful for Sinner. He might have had to read it all. He took the next sheet:

On an expedition to the star Capella, brilliant young Dr. Martin is captured by cold-blooded, monstrous minions of Volvak, a mad Capellan who plans a ghastly experiment to destroy the Solar System. Volvak threatens the hero with torture to learn the headquarters of the humans, but the scientist escapes, aided by a beautiful blonde Earth girl who says she has forgotten her identity―

Ed reached into the bottom drawer of his desk. After two short nips, he felt better. He read on, finding one piece he could buy. On the bottom was a really off-trail story:

10:23―Ed called on visiphon by beautiful blonde girl named Helen who, in his absence, conversed briefly with the synopsis robot.

He turned the page over. That was all.

At times, mechanical communication merely frustrated Ed. He crashed open the door, flourishing the message.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” he roared, glaring at Sinner.

“Tell you what?”

“That Helen called. What’s the idea of putting this at the bottom of the pile of synopses?”

“Last item in order of arrival,” said Sinner reasonably.

Ed leaned against the wall, shutting his eyes tightly. Against truth, purity, or moral right you could sometimes prevail, he thought, but not against robotical logic.

“What did she say?” he inquired, as calmly as possible.

“If I did not write it down, it must have been of no interest.”

“Let me explain,” grated Ed, “that what bores you may not necessarily fail to interest me!”

He slammed the door and dialed Helen’s number on his desk visiphon.

There was no answer. Was she waiting for him somewhere? Well, he would have to try again later.

Before he could work up a good case of self-pity at being saddled with such incompetence, the intercom buzzed.

“Ed,” said Sinner’s unabashed voice, “there is a Mr. Thorpe to see you. He is on his way in.”

Simultaneously, a large, red-faced man charged through the door. His cinnamon mustache bristled as he glared about.

“Where’s William Moran?” he demanded in a voice too small for him, while brandishing a mangled copy of Stupendous Stories.

Ed tapped his own chest modestly.

“You? The robot called you ‘Ed’ on the intercom.”

“Short for ‘editor,’” explained Ed for the thousandth time. “Just as he’s ‘Sinner’ for synopsis.”

“Then you’re the jerk that ruined my story!”

“What?”

“Here it is!” shrilled Thorpe, beating upon Ed’s desk with the magazine. “The best story I ever wrote. Real artistic integrity, and too good for your rotten comic book, if you want to know! And what did you do to it?”

Ed opened his mouth to ask, but got no further.

“You chopped the ending all to hell. Made the whole thing meaningless. Why? Was a fresh, new idea too much for you?”

“Let me get this straight,” begged Ed. “You say someone tampered with your plot, which was…ah…original?”

“That’s what I’m trying to get through your head!”

“Well, something should certainly be done. I think I know who did it. Suppose I let you talk with him?”

“Lead me to him!”

Ed called in Sinner to take Thorpe down to see Liar. Then he pressed a buzzer to summon Doc.

“Didn’t I ask you to do something about Liar?” he demanded when the repair robot rolled in. “You were supposed to find a way weeks ago to stop his editing stories as he works.”

Doc hesitated a moment in acute embarrassment.

“To tell the truth,” he said, “I fear to tamper with as complex a mechanism as Liar. I am only a Model 255-C.”

“Oh…get out!” growled Ed, discouraged.

After Doc had rolled out, he tried to get his mind on something pleasant. Nothing occurred to him. Except Helen. Had she called to say she was sending back his ring?

The visiphon chimed; Sinner had evidently left him a direct line while absent. A thin, dark-haired, angry man appeared.

“Now, listen here!” he bellowed. “I don’t like being spoken to in that tone. You want to lose our account?”

Ed recognized the advertising agent who usually took the back cover for his client. The man must have clashed with Adder. He pulled himself together and began to talk like a ram-jet.

“Whew!” he sighed, some fifteen minutes later, turning off the visiphon after a masterly defensive engagement. “This has gone too far. Sinner/”

When the synopsis robot appeared, Ed ordered him to change offices and duties with Adder temporarily. He thought, then, of slipping out to lunch, but it was too early. First, he had to learn whether Thorpe had been disposed of. He phoned Liar.

“He just left,” was the report, “a sadder but wiser man.”

“That’s a cliché,” Ed objected automatically.

“There is no better description,” Liar assured him.

Ed agreed presently, when Thorpe slumped into his office.

“I must say,” the writer mumbled, “I didn’t realize the depths to which I had sunk. I shouldn’t blame you, of course.”

“What do you mean?” asked Ed.

“I never knew how snugly I fitted the mold, until your robot downstairs explained to me just what rules he observes in doing your editing for you.”

“In doing what for whom?”

“He told me exactly which plots he lets past. I could count them on one hand! I knew your tired magazine was stereotyped, but to think that I, Alexander Thorpe, am no better than a robot, grinding out the same pattern time after time―”

“Now, wait a minute―!”

Thorpe ignored him. The writer’s features, no longer flushed with rage, sagged fleshily. He drooped like a ten-year-old whose dog had been run over.

“It’s true enough,” he complained, snuffling faintly as he tossed his copy of the magazine onto the desk with a heavy, hopeless motion. “Even the illustrations, by golly! They do all look like you. I wouldn’t believe that part at first…”

“Listen!” exclaimed Ed. “I have troubles of my own, and―”

Thorpe dragged out a handkerchief and blew a ringing blast.

“I knew you wouldn’t understand. An artist must maintain his standard of integrity. He becomes a crass commercialist like you if he permits the prostitution of his artistic―”

“Just a second,” Ed interrupted resignedly.

He reached into the bottom drawer. Having company, he groped again, further back, and came up with two glasses for supplementary equipment. Thorpe looked doleful but receptive.

The glasses were filled, emptied, refilled.

“Now,” said Ed, “tell me all about artistic integrity…”

Some time later, Adder, now custodian of the outer office, opened the door to discover why his buzzer had not been answered.

Thorpe was criticizing Shakespeare, having already quoted at weary length from the works of John Ruskin, belligerently condemned Ingres and other French painters, and recited modern imitations of T. S. Eliot. It all sounded very erudite and impressive, provided Ed refrained from trying to make sense of it. The droning voice had a soothing, soporific effect.

“Visiphon call!” announced Adder in a raucous screech.

Ed grimaced and turned on his set. Thorpe continued to mouth phrases that seemed to have little or no semantic integrity. Helen’s features appeared before Ed’s startled eyes.

“Ah, so now you’ll talk to me?” she greeted him.

“Wha―why, of course. Why not?”

“I wasn’t going to wait, but your robot squawked out a big sales talk. Seemed to think I’d pay for your attentions!”

“Oh, no, certainly not! The other way around, if anything…what am I saying? No! I mean―”

“You weren’t very eager to answer my first call.”

“Oh, er…something happened,” said Ed lamely.

“Yes,” Helen said suspiciously, “I think I can hear some of it happening now.”

Ed hastily pushed the bottle out of the field of the scanner and requested Thorpe to shut his mouth for a few minutes.

“William Moran! Are you drunk? In the middle of the day?”

“Of course not! Tell her I’m not drunk, Adder!”

“Ed is not drunk,” announced Adder stridently.

Helen flinched and backed away a few inches.

“Who is that?” she demanded.

“Just one of my writers, darling.” (Thorpe clapped both hands to his temples and rolled his eyes resignedly toward the ceiling.) “You didn’t think it was another girl, did you? You know I wouldn’t look at another woman!”

“When that happens, I’ll know you’re dead,” answered Helen acidly. “Now, listen! I may be losing my mind, but I’m going to give you one more chance to talk things over.”

“No use now,” mumbled Thorpe thickly. “If you sell your soul―”

“Keep quiet, will you!” hissed Ed.

“Don’t whisper back while I’m talking to you!” ordered Helen. “Now, meet me for lunch and I’ll listen to your excuses.”

“I’m a poor excuse for a man,” snuffled Thorpe. “I admit it.”

“Well, admit it somewhere else!” snarled Ed. “Yes, of course, dear. Where shall I meet you?”

“I just want to tell you―” began Thorpe.

“He means get out!” Adder told him in horrible tones.

The writer blanched, dropped his empty glass, and departed. Adder followed him out as Ed took down the name of Helen’s restaurant. He tried to make some progress then and there, but she cut off, obviously bent upon punishing him with suspense.

Finding himself alone, Ed pushed the buzzer for Adder.

“Where did our literary soul flit off to?” he inquired.

“Out to get drunk, he said. I have more synopses.”

“Oh, well, give them here. I have half an hour before I can leave. Take that empty with you on the way out.”

When the door had closed behind the robot and the bottle, Ed picked up the first effort of his new manuscript analyst:

Don’t get trapped like young Dr. Jim Watkins in the depths of the ice caves of Pluto! But to solve the mystery of the beautiful blond Earth girl caught in the ice, to learn what terrible menace threatened three planets, to give the readers of Stupendous Stories forty thrill-packed pages of drama and adventure, buy this manuscript! You can’t afford to publish the magazine without it!

The page slipped from Ed’s limp fingers.

“What have I done?” he breathed. “What have I done!

* * * *

Adder had changed offices, but he was still an ad-robot. Ed fumbled for the next sheet.

This is the best piece of work to come into this office since the present analyst began to synopsize scripts. Amid the blazing heat of the desert, a fugitive bearing a dreadful secret flees from the most inhuman―literally the most inhuman―gang of murderers ever conceived. Then, suddenly, a mirage, a beautiful blond girl from nowhere, a clue in an ancient language, and other startling developments. You would be crazy to pass this one up, Ed!

“I am already!” Ed yelled. “That I don’t spot-weld all you gadgets to the ceiling proves it! Am I sunk so low around here that I have to read all this stuff myself?”

It occurred to him that his behavior varied somewhat from normal. At least, he ought to have a robot in to stand before the desk, so that he would seem not to be talking to himself.

He threw aside the synopses, snatching the bottom one to give his conscience the feeling of having reached the end.

Why had young Eddie McGinnity committed suicide? Who was the mysterious blonde in the picture on his desk? Should Dr. Kleffer believe the despairing note describing his hopeless love? What could Eddie have offered a girl accustomed to every luxury…?

“Beats the hell out of me!” sighed Ed. “Why did he try, then? In his place, I’d…well, that’s different.”

He stared unseeingly at the pile of papers.

“Come to think of it,” he asked himself, “what am I doing? How long am I going to let her toy with me?”

The answer seemed simple. He had more troubles now than he could handle. He would have to give up some of them.

“I’ll start by not meeting Helen,” he decided firmly. “If I see her, I’ll weaken, and we’ll go through it all again. I can’t hold my own here with a hangover every other morning.”

He forced himself to set to work planning a future layout. Somehow, he felt little of the elation he had thought would accompany the decision, but he resolved to stick to it.

Thus, in mid-afternoon, he was shocked by a sense of unfairness when Helen invaded the office.

“Now, listen here!” she greeted him, stalking unannounced into his sanctum, followed by Adder. “I don’t intend to be stood up by you, even if it is for the last time!”

“Adder!” cried Ed, his determination undermined by the sparkle and color derived from her anger. “Show the lady out!”

He snatched up an illustration by Arty and pretended to be engrossed in the sight of himself in a spacesuit wielding a massive club against a floppy, bug-eyed monster. He managed to ignore the scuffle and the soprano tones of protest.

A genuine cry of pain, however, snapped his resolution like a soap bubble. He looked up to see Helen sitting on the floor of the outer office, wearing a very surprised expression.

“Adder!”

Ed charged out from behind his desk.

“You cast-iron idiot! I said ‘show’―not ‘throw’!”

“I regret,” apologized Adder in ghastly tones. “Perhaps I do need rewiring as Doc says. May I help you, Miss?”

“You keep your octopus claws off me!” Helen requested rather shrilly.

She yanked down her skirt and scrambled unassisted to her feet, where she stood feeling tenderly for bruises and glaring impartially at both of them.

“I’m terribly sorry―” Ed began.

“I’m not!” snapped his lady, with a look that crackled blue sparks across the room. “Now I know you for the brute you are. I’m leaving before you have more of your monsters manhandle me!”

She whirled through the door and stomped down the hall.

Ed ran to follow. He heard Adder’s gears clash slightly as the robot shifted into high and rolled after him.

“Helen! Wait!” he called.

The elevator door opened. Sinner, returning from some errand, rolled out. Watching over her shoulder, Helen ran directly at him, but Sinner was adjusted by design to avoid injuring humans. He thrust out all four arms and caught her before they collided.

“Hold on, Sinner!” cried Ed.

He and Adder caught up―the latter’s brakes squeaking―whereupon Helen ceased struggling.

“Let her down,” said Ed. “Now, young lady, you’re going to stay and listen to what I have to say!”

“Why, you…you…kidnapper!” Helen exclaimed. “You can’t keep me here against my will. There are still laws.”

“I just want you to see my side―”

“I’ve seen the hidden side of you! You have me practically beaten to a pulp, and a prisoner in this den of yours, and you want me to listen to more of your lies!”

Ed opened his mouth to protest, and immediately had it closed by a hard-swung handbag, dainty in design but conventionally loaded. He staggered back. Helen seized the opportunity to dive into the elevator. The door slid shut before Ed could force intelligible orders past his numbed lips.

He knew the elevator robot would not stop between floors. Ed ran to the stairs and hurtled down, four steps at a time. At the landing, his knees bent from the impact. Still, he managed to reach the elevator exit on the next floor before Helen stepped out.

She saw him coming and shrank back. The door closed in his face again. The indicator crept down toward Liar’s domain.

Ed gasped in a breath and tottered back to the stairs. He took this flight only two steps at a time. Consequently, Helen had already run out of the car when he reached the bottom.

“Look out!” he shouted.

The girl ducked back just in time to escape a big truck-robot, lumbering past with a huge roll of paper for the presses. Ed swooped down on her at a determined stagger.

“Let me go!”

“Helen,” he said desperately, “you know I love you.”

“Let me go, damn it!”

“Would I go through all this if I didn’t?”

The elevator was ascending in response to urgent buzzing from above, leaving beside them a robot who had rolled up to board it.

“Are you going to let me go?”

“Are you going to listen?” demanded Ed. “I love you!”

“Why?” demanded a voice behind him.

Ed jumped, and looked around. Helen stopped squirming and peered around his shoulder. Arty was regarding them attentively.

“Why not?” asked Ed in a small voice, abashed at having made a private matter spectacularly public.

“I understand it’s a matter of chemistry,” he added, more firmly. “Perfectly logical.”

“Do you consider her more pleasing than I?”

“Well, naturally. When she wants to be nice, she can.”

“Then I hate her!” announced Arty distinctly.

“Huh?”

“I shall immobilize her,” said the robot, advancing.

“Willy,” murmured Helen worriedly, “I don’t think it likes me.”

Arty reached out for her. Ed thrust Helen aside and tried to push Arty back. He was gently but firmly lifted into the air.

“Doc!” he bawled, hoping desperately that the repair robot might be on the floor.

He thought he heard a distant answer as Arty set him down to one side. Helen, suddenly pale, retreated slowly along the wall toward Liar, who, designed immobile, simply continued working.

“Arty, stop it!” ordered Ed, striving for a tone of authority.

He ran up behind the robot, hoping for a chance at the cut-off switch; but Arty wheeled and shoved him away. In the distance, he saw Doc speeding up an aisle toward them.

“Run, Helen!” he yelled, trying again to reach the switch.

This time, he was shoved with such force that he tripped and fell across the pile of trash that had been swept there earlier. There was a clatter of cans and broken glass. Ed felt something slippery on his hand. A scared glance relieved him; it was only some heavy oil from a nearly empty gallon can.

“Remain there!” Arty ordered Helen vindictively. “I will catch you presently.”

The robot turned solicitously to pick Ed up.

“I regret.”

“Oh, don’t think anything of it,” said Ed pleasantly.

He made no effort to have Arty set him down quickly, because he had brought the can up with him. He shook it gently behind his back, feeling the last of the oil spurt out.

“You must not hurt yourself,” said Arty. “I… I… I cannot move. What is wrong?”

Ed felt himself casually held aside so that Arty could see the floor. The oil had spread. The robot’s drive wheel was spinning uselessly in a broad slick.

“You have tricked me,” Arty accused.

Ed saw the elevator door open as Adder and Sinner arrived from above. Doc was scooting up from the other direction. Helen edged closer, with a scared expression and a board from the trash pile.

“You have frustrated me,” said Arty.

“What do you think you’re doing to me?” countered Ed. “Sinner, Adder, come over here!”

“I shall immobilize them!” threatened Arty, watching the other robots as they rolled in front of Helen.

While Ed had diverted attention to the others, Doc had arrived. He crept up behind Arty in low gear, then suddenly flicked out a metal arm. In the tense silence, a sharp click was audible. Ed was dropped abruptly as Arty’s internal humming ceased.

“Oh, boy!” he sighed. “Better push him into your shop, Doc, until we can order a new one.”

“Darling!” said Helen.

“Huh? Put down that board. You scared me half to death. Suppose you’d missed the robot and hit me!”

“You saved my life,” said Helen.

“Oh, it wasn’t that bad,” said Ed, watching Sinner and Doc wheel the inert drawing-robot away.

“Yes, it was! That nasty gadget! I give up.”

“What?”

“I’m sorry. I never realized how important you are and how dangerous your work is. At least, I won’t have to worry about any pretty office wives.”

“Now, now, these things don’t happen every day, do they, Adder?”

“Not every day,” answered Adder. “I wonder if I had better have Doc rewire me this afternoon?”

“You do sound a little…” Helen paused delicately.

“To please an accessory of Ed’s, I will have it repaired.”

“Ohmigod!” muttered Ed. “Let’s get out of here.”

Sinner came rolling back.

“Liar wants to see you,” he reported.

“All right,” said Ed. “You two take the lady up to my office.”

He saw them into the elevator, then walked over to Liar.

“Now will you admit I was right?” the latter greeted him.

“About what?”

“How to handle women. Sinner told all on his way back. Fortunately, you did exactly as I told you.”

“What do you mean?” demanded Ed.

“First, you got Adder to beat her up―”

“That’s an exaggeration if I ever―”

“―after giving her the cold shoulder to get her interested. Then you held her here against her will, which was almost as good as kidnapping her into space.”

“I just wanted to explain―”

“Of course. I understand. Was it not my idea? And, finally, you did just as I advised: rescued her from terrible danger.”

“Now, wait!” protested Ed. “The excitement wore her down, that’s all.”

“Nonsense! That gets them every time. Have I not just now put it into print three times running? I blame myself only for forgetting to tell you about the clinch, now that the time has come to end the story.”

“Tell me about…” murmured Ed.

He had a nightmarish feeling that something in Liar’s premise was fantastically wrong, despite its pragmatic functioning; but he had other business. He drew himself up.

“Never mind, Liar,” he said firmly. “That is one little job I can do better than any of you fancy gadgets.”

He turned and hurried off to attend to it.