“South of Canada,” he said to himself, “this sort of thing is vulgar and unnecessary. I don’t need it, any more than a cow needs a side-pocket. It’s too beastly hot for comfort at this moment. I’d carry it over my arm, only that I should feel how absurdly heavy it really is.”
Then he looked ahead through the thick snow, and, although he was a man of strong nerves, he started and stepped back like a woman who sees a cow.
“Great Cæsar’s Ghost!” said he.
He was justified in calling thus upon the most respectable spook of antiquity. The sight he saw was strange enough in itself: seen in the squalid, commonplace sub-suburban street, it was bewildering. There, ahead of him, walked Mephistopheles—Mephistopheles dressed in a red flannel suit, trimmed with yellow, all peaks and points; and on the head of Mephistopheles was an old, much worn, brown Derby hat.
Brant caught Mephisto by the shoulder and turned him around. He was a slight, undersized man of fifty, whose moustache and goatee, dyed an impossible black, served only to accentuate the meagre commonness of his small features.
“Who are you?” demanded Brant.
“Sh-h-h!” said the shivering figure, “lemme go! I’m Zozo!”
Brant stared at him in amazement. What was it? A walking advertisement—for an automatic toy or a new tooth-powder?
“It’s all right,” said the slim man, his teeth chattering, “lemme get along. I’m most freezing. I’m Zozo—the astrologer. Why—don’t you know?—on Rapelyea Street?”