THE THIRD ACT
The same room as before, and immediately following the preceding situation—not even a few seconds later, for the Detectives and the Constable are just putting away their revolvers.
Doll Blondin, her admiration for The Devil growing, looks triumphant as he irritably disengages Fanny’s embrace. Some hope is revived in Doll of being rid of her.
Fanny’s look is grimly determined.
Agnus, relieved from a terrible situation, looks for the first time gratefully at The Devil.
Schwartzenhopfel, feeling his power as Magnus and enjoying it, has assumed an air of enormous importance—by the simple method of flattening his jowls on the collar and clearing his throat, thus deepening his voice.
Judge Critty is divided between his desire to serve Magnus and his horror at open defiance of the Law—when he knows Magnus is aware that the Law could have been circumvented secretly. He has the air of saying, “Why didn’t you tell me, and I’d have arranged it.” Also his manner is extra-apologetic and anxious, for he has blundered, and he fears the loss of Magnus’s good offices.
The three detectives are blankly dismayed at having crossed the path of one so powerful as Magnus. They are anxious to retreat, but realize that some concessions must be made to the conventions.
St. Elmo Peattie, the Sheriff, is simply confounded: for he is an honest villager, fearing God, and, consequently, no man. He is shocked at The Devil daring to put any man—Magnus, Taft, Wilson, Morgan, Rockefeller, or even Roosevelt—above the Law. Though he has no authority in the matter—the warrants being in the Lieutenant’s hands—Peattie feels called upon to protest in the name of civic dignity, and to uphold the faith of his fathers—the faith in which Jefferson wrote; on which Burr, a Vice-President, was convicted of treason; for which Washington fought and Nathan Hale died.