"Sainted Leopardi!" rapped the Devil, resuming natural size. "Is _that_ all you know? I'm proprietor of one of the largest Hells in existence--the Limbo of Lost Endeavor, where the souls of all the Characters go." "Characters? What Characters?" "All the characters that are drawn in books, painted in novels, sketched in magazine articles, thumb-nailed in _feuilletons_ or in any way created by anybody and everybody who has had the fortune or misfortune to put his or her writings into print." "That sounds like a quotation from a prospectus. What do you herd Characters for? Aren't there enough souls in the Universe?" "Who possess souls and who do not? For aught you can prove, man may be soulless and the creatures he writes about immortal. Anyhow, about a hundred years after printing became an established nuisance, the loose Characters used to blow about interplanetary space in legions which interfered with traffic. So they were collected, and their charge became mine by right. Would you care to see them? _Your own are there._" "That decides me. But _is_ it hotter than Northern India?" "On my Devildom, no. Put your arms round my neck and sit tight. I'm going to dive!" He plunged from the bed headfirst into the floor. There was a smell of jail-_durrie_ and damp earth; and then fell the black darkness of night. * * * * * We stood before a door in a topless wall, from the further side of which came faintly the roar of infernal fires. "But you said there was no danger!" I cried in an extremity of terror. "No more there is," said the Devil. "That's only the Furnace of First Edition. Will you go on? No other human being has set foot here in the flesh. Let me bring the door to your notice. Pretty design, isn't it? A joke of the Master's." I shuddered, for the door was nothing more than a coffin, the backboard knocked out, set on end in the thickness of the wall. As I hesitated, the silence of space was cut by a sharp, shrill whistle, like that of a live shell, which rapidly grew louder and louder. "Get away from the door," said the Devil of Discontent quickly. "Here's a soul coming to its place." I took refuge under the broad vans of the Devil's wings. The whistle rose to an ear-splitting shriek and a naked soul flashed past me. "Always the same," said the Devil quietly. "These little writers are _so_ anxious to reach their reward. H'm, I don't think he likes _his'n_, though." A yell of despair reached my ears and I shuddered afresh. "Who was he?" I asked. "Hack-writer for a pornographic firm in Belgium, exporting to London, you'll understand presently--and now we'll go in," said the Devil. "I must apologise for that creature's rudeness. He should have stopped at the distance-signal for line-clear. You can hear the souls whistling there now." "Are they the souls of men?" I whispered. "Yes--writer-men. That's why they are so shrill and querulous. Welcome to the Limbo of Lost Endeavour!"