"Oh, yes. It could be practical, too. After all, machines have been operated by mechanical men or mechanical brains for years. So Maugham's idea wasn't out of line. The operation didn't work out according to Hoyle, however. Maugham was one of those gaunt earnest men, a tall fellow with deep-set eyes and an habitually grim mouth. He took himself very seriously and you were always just a little embarrassed when he tried to explain something to you—you felt that he so badly wanted your understanding."
He paused and sipped his sherry, looking reflectively out over the silvery lake.
"Where'd you meet him?" I asked. "On assignment?"
"Oh, he'd invented a little gadget connected with the recoil mechanism for the military so I was sent over to his place for an interview—the usual thing. He lived in a nice old house in Oak Park, left him by his mother and he lived pretty well, if a little on the frugal side. He was considerate and courteous, which is a damned sight more than you can say for most of the people a reporter gets to see.
"He gave me everything I wanted to know and a good deal more besides. He wound up with a half apologetic question about his newest invention—would I like to see it? I said I would so he took me down into one of the most elaborate private laboratories I've ever seen and introduced me to Herman."
"Ah, another character," I said, pouring more sherry into his glass.
"Herman was his robot. A neat well-oiled scrupulously-clean mechanical man in the process of being born. He was run by electrical impulses and was a good deal more self-sufficient than the traditional pushbutton robot of an earlier day. Even though he wasn't quite 'born' yet Herman did a turn or two for us, up and down the laboratory, with a precision that was almost military.
"Unlike most robots of that day Herman had a physiognomy carefully moulded after a human face. He looked damnably real. He could blink his glass eyes, he could shake hands, he could nod and, because of the mobility of his plastic-rubber face, he could even smile after a fashion, though I always thought his smile a little grim.
"'The next step is to make him talk,' Maugham said. 'I believe it can be done.'