From their Limbian “Information” he inquired the name of the personal
devil of John Cabot. Upon learning that an imp named Okeh attended the
banker, he demanded instant connection by wireless telephone. This
he got with a promptness that might be commended to the attention of
mortal systematizers.
“That you, Okeh?” he asked. “I hear that you’re responsible for the
evil impulses of a Mr. John Calvin Cabot.... You speak as if you
were proud of the fact. You needn’t be.... What say?... But I have a
perfectly bad right to insult you.... A chance at me is just what I’m
going to give you--a chance to prove your efficiency. I want the Cabot
program for the immediate future. Quick, now. I am not used to waiting.”
Amid sulphuric anathemas at his informant, Satan noted the report.
Sailing for Europe in half an hour on a trans-Atlantic air-liner, was
he? And enemy wife, all unknowing as yet, was blimping it along? In the
old nick of time, as usual, was he to wish the undevoted couple _mal
voyage_. So the Marquis d’Elie, too, was to be on board? After all, the
“Turn Turtle” must think more of the Trent girl’s battered reputation
than of his own pleasure.
If the big blimp was to sail in a few minutes, what was Mr. Cabot
doing in the morasses of Brooklyn, only half way to the flying field?
The agate-eyed personal devil was ready with explanations. The
gentleman’s wife was reopening a suit for divorce on the strength of
an illegitimate child whom circumstantial evidence proved to be his.
The air trip was to celebrate all but the actual verdict in her favor.
Cabot had started late that he might board at the last moment, thereby
giving her an unhappy surprise. His car unfortunately had run into a
jam around an open-air evangelist--a sensational religionist who was
enthralling crowds everywhere, the Rev. Dr. Alexander Willard by name.
Scarcely could Satan restrain his risibilities. What a contretemps!
Here was the deposed divine, forced to the Free Church of Outdoors by
the siren Grief, with his eloquence delaying her last victim’s flight
from the scandal she had brought upon him. How delightfully diabolic!
For sake of his own recent experiment at popularizing the once tedious
sermon, His Augustness had Okeh short-mouth for him certain of
“Nimrod’s” shots.
“I used to hunt birds and beasts. Now I hunt the hearts of men. God
is my guide, Hallelujah! So what care I that I am shut out from the
temples of those who call themselves the righteous? The world is too
small a church for me. Through the tall timbers of humanity I hunt
immortal souls. Look out for me, you quaking quail of a woman! Look
out for me, you running rabbit of a man! You can’t escape me through
the underbrush of your hypocrisy. I don’t miss, once I take aim.
Hallelujah, I am gunning for _you_!”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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