Steampunk Prime_ A Vintage Steampunk Reader - Mike Ashley [8]
“But I can be of use to you in a dozen other ways,” said the Faun. “I typed for Baxter, and I could do the same for you. Yours is a different instrument; but I could work it for you. Watch me.”
It pulled my machine forward, and commenced to tap the keyboard — at first slowly, but every second with “increasing” quickness and confidence. Once learnt it never forgot the position of a letter. The last line was typed as quickly as I could have done it myself.
“There,” it said coaxingly, handing me the sheet, “I’m sure I can be of use to you. Take me on trial, please.”
I took the Faun on trial. I dressed it up in some old clothes of my own, which fitted absurdly; but as I walked about the room dictating my novel, I was almost persuaded that my indefatigable and highly intelligent amanuensis behind the typewriter was a human being. Certainly no human being ever was half as useful to me.
Two days later a great idea occurred to me. It had always been my ambition to do a sound historical novel of the Stuart period, but this would necessitate research and reading, for which I had neither time nor inclination. But now I had as my assistant a being capable of working twenty-four hours a day, a being, moreover, that never forgot a word it read! The opportunity was unique, and I must take advantage of it. As soon as I had finished the novel on which I was engaged I must start my historical romance. I wired at once to town for Clarendon’s History of the Rebellion, on which the Faun could “browse from eleven at night until eight o’clock in the morning, and so be able to give me the setting for my tale.
It was, as I have said, a great idea, and I think it would have been the country’s gain as well as my own if the plan could have been carried out, for archaeologically and historically, at any rate, my novel would have been perfect. But it was not to be. The following day — yesterday, that is — I was taking my regulation two turns round my garden preparatory to starting the afternoon’s work. In a few minutes I should be describing the death-struggle in the roof-garden of a New York restaurant between Raymond Kneller, the multi-millionaire, and the man he had so cruelly wronged. I was arranging the situation in my mind, when suddenly a man came round the corner of the house — a big man in a fur-lined overcoat. I knew him in an instant. There was only one man in England with that leonine head, those deep-set eyes, that cruel mouth, that arrogant nose and chin.
It was Lord Baxter.
“Mr. Broadbent,” he said,” “I believe you have one of my automata on your premises, and will thank you for its return.”
So it had come at last. There was to be a fight for the possession of the Faun. I was not going to lose it without a struggle. It had already made itself invaluable to me, and without its aid I could not possibly tackle the Stuarts.
“I have no automaton in the house,” I replied firmly.
“Um,” he said quietly. “Perhaps we differ as to terms: I think you have in your possession a being resembling a Faun, with a mental capacity above its station in life. You surely do not deny that?”
“I neither affirm nor deny,” I answered. “I would simply point out to you that my house is beyond your authority. If I have such a being on my premises, there it stops.”
“Tut, tut, sir,” replied Baxter. “I have every authority over the creature. His whole mechanism is mine. I created him. If he doesn’t belong to me, pray who is his owner?”
“He belongs to himself.”
I am afraid we shall not agree on that point.”
“Possibly not, Lord Baxter, and upon very few others, I believe. Your wretched progeny has taken refuge here as you surmise, and I request you to leave it here where it is pursuing an industrious life in the peace and comfort which was wanting in your laboratory.”
“And if I do not, sir?” Inquired Lord Baxter acidly.
“If you do not, I shall place the whole matter before the world. I am a writer by profession, and have some influence with the