“Well,” said Curlie, hesitatingly, “there really isn’t much that I can tell. I got the idea first from a thing I saw in Chicago. The advertisement said that a mechanical man would wash clothes, sweep the floor, light the lamps and all that.
“The man I found there was a joke. He had legs and arms of sheet steel. His face was painted on steel. He couldn’t move a muscle, so to speak. But the things the operator did interested me. Simply by blowing whistles of different pitch into a telephone he could make his mechanical man start and stop a washing machine, a vacuum sweeper, and a lot of other electrical appliances. Then, one day in New York, while I was waiting for the boat to sail for Haiti, I came upon old Mike himself. Some foreign fellow had brought him over from Europe. Hoped to make a lot of money with him in vaudeville. The thing had been a flop. The fellow was broke. I had some money I had made on rubber in South America, so I bought old Mike and brought him along. Glad I did. Thought he would be a lot of fun.”
“He was more than that,” said Johnny quietly. “He saved our lives, without a doubt.”
“I tried substituting drums for whistles,” Curlie went on, “but it wouldn’t work. Remember when you and Pompee saw the ghost of the black king and his telescope bearer walking on the wall?” he asked turning to Dorn.
Dorn nodded.
“That was Mike and yours truly. I was trying him out.”
“That,” said Doris, “explains the donkey tracks we saw up there.”
“Exactly. And you can’t imagine what a time I had getting the donkeys to carry all that load up those steps,” Curlie laughed. “But I did it. And Mike did his bit, wonderfully well even then. Mike is a marvel!”
“You have seen him perform,” he said turning to Johnny, “but these other people,” he reached for a telephone receiver at his side, “haven’t had the pleasure.”
With that he blew a shrill note into the telephone. At once there sounded from a dark corner the clank-clank of metal striking on stone.