“That is evident from its contents. It must have been that new boy Jake, who took the slip off my desk when a telephone call interrupted me as I was writing. Had I completed the message it would have read ‘Go to Hellgate.’ A wreck has just occurred there and our marine reporter has telephoned for assistance. However, you are aware that I have made it a rule never to change an assignment. I make no exception in your case to-night.” “What!” I gasped. “Remember also that this paper never accepts an excuse. You must either hand in your story or your resignation. Perhaps I ought to explain further, though the Universe has no place for the newspaper man who cannot achieve the impossible or for the reporter who wants a reason for what he is told to do. We want men who can carry ‘a message to Garcia’—or to Lucifer, if need be. “The ting-a-ling of my desk telephone at the psychological moment when I had unconsciously consigned you to a colder climate than that of New York, was a summons from Satan. Why it didn’t come through the medium of the ‘printer’s devil’ is a mystery, unless His Majesty desired to show me that he is up-to-date in having a system of telephones installed by a famous electrician who recently crossed his wires and the Styx. I tried to transfer him to the managing editor by telling him that he had got a wrong connection, as my jurisdiction is limited, but he assured me that Hades is less than a hundred miles from New York, which makes me responsible for what happens there! Not a very pleasant thought, is it? “Lucifer wants you to go to Cimmeria and interview Henry the Eighth. His much-married Majesty is angry at the liberties the historical novelists have taken with his wives and wants to divorce himself of his wrath through the columns of the Universe. Satan also wishes us to decide a dispute between Adam and Methuselah as to whom is the oldest inhabitant.” “But how in the name of—” “Don’t say it,” warned the city editor. “That word is always expressed by a blank in the paper, so you might as well leave it blank in your speech. Besides, to say it would be justification for keeping you down there, and we want that interview without fail, even if you have to write it on asbestos and deliver it to mortals at a seance of the Society for Psychic Research. We want the work well done, so you will have to take your chances of being scorched. “Discussions regarding Hades have waxed almost as hot as the subject of dispute itself. Most people believe it is built on the Turkish bath plan with departments of varying temperature. Those are the kind of people who swallow the thermometer of Dr. Doubt and die by degrees. If you find it as pleasant as John Kendrick Bangs did, you will want to stay and join the Stygian smart set, so I’ll transfer your insurance from the Equality to the Rock of Gibraltar and see to it that your sister does not starve or freeze, whatever may be the climatic fate of her brother.