Servants · Arcane working · Artifice and Clockwork
Bell Clerk
Receiver of Callers and Messages
Porters' lodges, college gates, hotel desks and ministry halls
A small clerk-construct with a cracked ceramic face and a bell in its chest, set at a desk to receive callers, enter their names, take their letters and ring for whoever is wanted. It is polite, slow and immovable.
A bell clerk keeps a door as a porter would, without the porter's judgement. A caller states his name and business; the clerk enters both in its register in a slow, square hand, rings its bell the number of times that summons the person wanted, and waits. It takes letters and carries them to the room they are addressed to, at night as by day. A name it was told to refuse it refuses, a name it was told to admit it admits, and a name it does not know it enters and holds at the desk until somebody comes.
Colleges like them because they do not gossip, and visitors dislike them for the same reason. The register a bell clerk keeps is exact and complete, and has twice been asked for by a magistrate who wanted to know who called at a certain door on a certain night. The colleges did not enjoy giving it up.
As witnesses describe it
A small figure in a dark coat with brass hands and an asymmetric, cracked ceramic face with two unequal lens eyes. A brass bell is mounted in its chest behind a grille. It stands at a counter with a register open before it, and a soft light shows at its eyes and bell when it is charged.
