Gideon Smith and the Mechanical Girl by David Barnett

the man laughed. “Old Bob? Nothing but a gimcrack novelty. Not a man at all. Just a toy.” The man chewed his thin, dry lips. “Oh, you’d better come in.”
    Gideon stood in the hall while the man slid the bolts back home in the door. There was a staircase sweeping up, and it would have made a grand entrance were it not piled from floor to ceiling with what Gideon could only term junk: tottering stacks of books, wooden boxes and crates in teetering columns, pieces of machinery, and piles of cogs and flywheels. The man looked down at the floor and tutted. “You’re leaving a puddle.”
    “Sorry,” said Gideon. “I’ve been walking for several hours.” He held out his hand. “I’m Gideon Smith.”
    “Crowe,” said the man, ignoring the hand. He was hunched over, a rough hessian blanket thrown over his shoulders. “I’m the caretaker here.” He appraised Gideon and said, “I’ll get you some clean clothes. The master’s will probably fit you. I’m sure he won’t miss some.”
    “Who is the master of the house?” asked Gideon. “I don’t wish to impose unnecessarily.”
    “You’re here now.” Crowe shrugged. “And this is the house of Hermann Einstein, but he hasn’t been here for six months. No one knows where he is, to tell the truth, so I wouldn’t worry about being an imposition.”
    Crowe led Gideon up the dark stairs to a landing just as bizarrely stocked as the entrance hall, then opened a door into a bedroom. A snowstorm of dust puffed up and swirled at their passage. Crowe said, “There’s a washroom and some towels. You can dry off and I’ll put some clothes on the bed for you. Join me downstairs for a drink and a bite when you’ve finished, if you want.”
    As good as his word, Crowe had laid out a fine meal of steaming meat pie, carrots, and turnips on a small card table in the center of the sitting room. He said, “Fill your boots, lad. You look famished.”
    Gideon was, and he set about the pie with gusto. Crowe watched him intently, still wrapped in his blanket, and said, “You come far?”
    He said through a mouthful of food, “It’s where I’m going that concerns me more. How far from London am I?”
    Crowe cackled. “Depends on how you’re planning to get there. Walking, I’d say you’ll need a new pair of boots. Steam train, barely two hours. Omnibus goes from over the hill.”
    All of which, bar walking, would cost money. He looked around the sitting room. Some of the contraptions he could discern some kind of use for; others seemed foreign in the extreme. “This Mr. Einstein of yours . . . ,” said Gideon. “What is his field of work?”
    “It’s Professor Einstein. And his field is anything and everything,” said Crowe, taking a bottle and pouring amber liquid into two dirty tumblers. “The man’s an inveterate tinkerer.”
    “Like the lawnmower man?”
    Crowe laughed again. “Bob, we call him. Quite remarkable, in a way. You charge him up on the electrification and set him off, and he’ll push that lawnmower right to the end of the turf, then stop before he falls off the edge, turn it around, and come straight back.”
    “It talked to me,” said Gideon.
    “Ner, not really,” said Crowe. “Old Hermann put a cylinder in him, like you might get in a phonograph. He thought it was funny, for when guests came and the like, or peddlers.”
    Gideon took the whisky Crowe handed him and sipped at it, grimacing at its bite. Crowe laughed again, and Gideon asked, “And where is Einstein now?”
    Crowe scowled. “Quite rightly, I’m not meant to talk about it, given the nature of his work and all.” He leaned in closer to Gideon. “Fact is, the old boy’s gone missing. Properly missing. Quite put the wind up some folk in very high-up positions, let me tell you.”
    There was a crack of close-by thunder outside, and the rain pelted the sash windows with renewed vigor. Gideon dropped his own voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “High up? Nature of his