"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.' "'Can he hear?' I asked. "'That will come,' he said. "He seemed so sure of himself that I was almost inclined to believe him until of course I remembered all the others who had been so sure of themselves. That seems to be a characteristic of my queer people--each one has an unlimited belief in his own particular delusion. "Well, Maugham put Herman through his paces and it was certainly novel to watch. He asked me not to write anything about Herman for publication and I didn't. I figured I owed him that courtesy. He had great plans for Herman, he explained--he meant Herman to be his general factotum and planned to perfect the robot as the housewife's dream. If I'd had to guess I'd have said he might accomplish as much. "Well, I examined Herman inside and out. It was uncanny, the resemblance he bore to a human being. It was Maugham's conceit to duplicate as nearly as possible the organs and characteristics of the human body. That still left room for the complicated machinery necessary. The skeleton was of steel with a plastic overlay carefully moulded into the shape of a man approximately six feet high and weighing about two hundred pounds. "Over the entire structure he had stretched a kind of plastic-rubber made to resemble human skin in color and texture. There were doors in both front and back of course--to allow Maugham to service his robot, inspect the machinery, charge and replace the batteries, oil the parts and so forth." "He could almost have patented that as a bachelor's companion," I suggested.