I was shocked into something like a cataleptic state, and sat dazed for a while. Either this or the strong cigar, or something, so affected me that, as he passed the flask to me for the fourth time, the smoking compartment seemed to swim about me as the train rolled thunderously onward through the night. To steady myself I gazed fixedly at my extraordinary fellow traveler as he sat, his now well-nigh empty bottle before him, peering into it from time to time as if for some potent servant of his own. Suddenly he leaned back and laughed more diabolically than ever.
"Ha, ha, ha!" he roared. "You ought to have been with us last night in his library! Aldrich and Depew and some of the others were there, and we were checking over our list of sure votes in the House. The old man had the grip, as I said a while ago, and privately, I'll state I think he's scared stiff; for every fifteen minutes we got a bulletin from his doctors and messages from him to rush S. F. 41144 to its passage, regardless, or he'd accept a bid he'd got for the Bottle Imp from Sir Thomas Lipton, who wants it for some crazy scheme regarding lifting the Cup. All the while, there stood the Bottle with the Imp in it. When the grip news was coming in there was nothing doing with his Impship. But whenever we began discussing his transfer to the Company, the way business picked up in that bottle was a caution! Why, you could hear him stabbing the stopper with his tail, and grinding his horns against the sides of the bottle, and fighting like a weasel in a trap, in such a rage that the Bottle glowed like a red-hot iron. It was shameful! One of the lawyers took the horrors, and had to be taken home in a carriage—threw a conniption fit every block! Ha, ha, ha! Ha, ha, ha! Oh! it was great stuff!"
"I don't see—" I began.
"No? Don't you?" he queried, between the satanic chuckles. "Well, by George, the Imp saw, all right! He saw that modern financial ingenuity has found a way to flimflam the devil himself. He saw, Sir (here his voice assumed an oratorical orotund, and the capital S came in again), that our corporation lawyers have found a spoon long enough so that we can safely sup with Satan! Why, let me ask you once, what did the Imp go into the Bottle deal for in the first place? To get the aforesaid soul. You can see how he'd feel, now that the price is down to the last notch but one, to have it sold to a corporation, with no more soul than a rabbit! If—that—don't beat the—the devil, what does?"
It all dawned upon me now. The reasonableness of the entire story appealed to me. I reached for the paper. There it was: "Federal Imp Company: Charter powers very broad, taking in almost the entire field of business." I looked at the lobbyist. He had dropped asleep with his head on the table beside the empty cocktail bottle. Again things seemed to swim, and I lapsed into a state of something like coma, from which I was aroused by some one shaking me by the shoulder.
"Berth's ready, suh," said the porter, and passed to my companion.
"Hyah's Devil's Gulch Sidin', suh," said he, rousing the slumbering lobbyist. "You get off, hyah, suh!"
He passed out of the door with a Chesterfieldian bow and good night. I passed a sleepless and anxious night. The shock, or something, made me quite ill. I have not yet recovered my peace of mind. An effort which I made to place the matter before Doctor Byproduct, the president of the university of which I am an alumnus, led to such a stern reproof that I was forced to subside. The doctor said that the story was a libel upon a great and good man who had partially promised the university an endowment of ten millions of dollars. I am ready, however, to appear before any congressional committee which may be appointed to investigate the matter, or before the Interstate Commerce Commission, and to testify to the facts as above written, if it costs me my career.
"By gad, sir!" shouted the Colonel, breaking a long silence. "That infernal scheme would work!"