“To my indecent proposition that you organize the vice of womanhood. Are you going to take that Low Priestess job?”
“I have until to-morrow to decide.”
“True. And you hope meantime that your love-hound will come barking at our Avernian door. Oh, don’t deny it! Why else should you be hanging ’round the gates? Why else should I?”
“But you said the judgments of men would never send a hero here.”
Stooping to recover his electric lash, Satan used it to punctuate his reply. “I’m hoping against hope, just as you are. If only he would be sent this way—ah! My latest wireless from Earth, however, leads me to fear not. The newspapers are headlined with his heroism. Imbecile earthlings are going to erect a memorial to him. And, would you believe it, that hunting parson of yours has used your friend’s death as a stepping-stone out of the muddle-puddle of his ecclesiastical disrepute? With Cabot as his text, he preached to thousands in Central Park, exampling himself through the viciously attacked philanthropist who, although proved guilty of weakness of the flesh, rose to the moral strength of a god in an emergency. Get the idea? His plea is for all men who have been dragged down by women. Should not he know that Cabot was too greatly tried, since the same she-devil ruined him with his church? You recognize the allusion? The prayers he sent up for the soul of his fellow victim were indirectly for himself. As a result he is to head the new Church of the Broad-Minded. Could you beat it—or him?”
At her consternation, he chuckled enjoyably.
“How the people of Earth like to bunk themselves! But you look fogged. Is your faith getting cured? Care to come into the receiving room and sit while you wait? I left some unfinished business.”
As they mounted the steps of the stone-like structure, he added a mental lash to her punishment.
“You remember, of course, the lawyer who lost Mrs. Cabot’s divorce case? Last you saw of him, in ‘The Turn-Turtle,’ he was being thrown out of his profession for mal-practicing that delicate art called ‘double-crossing.’ The timely birth of your ill-begot, with fatherhood pinned on John Cabot by Seff’s testimony and the guilty admission of your suicide, was a-plenty and to spare to ruin Rufus Holt. But along comes that judge you tricked, Roscoe Strang, of the good-sport tie. He has Holt’s case re-opened and carries through a daring example of man-to-man friendliness.”
From his belt he took the paper-like slip on which wireless messages were sent down by Gehennan operators.