“Then you know my ancestors are all shades,” I pleaded, “and our city editor says I have a shady reputation.”
“A newspaper man!” Charon gasped, his face growing pale. “I’ll have to let you come aboard, or you will go back and ‘roast’ me, and I get all the ‘roasting’ I can stand in Hades between trips. A newspaper man! “Nuff said. Jump aboard.”
“Where is the house-boat?” I asked, ever on the lookout for “copy.”
“Everyone nowadays asks that fool question,” Charon retorted, angrily. “I believe John Bangs, like George Eliot, is a woman, for he can’t keep a secret, while Harper & Brothers offer him royalties for it. Shortly after the ‘Pursuit of the House-boat’ that craft disappeared from the river and Sherlock Holmes with it. He went back to haunt Conan Doyle, I guess. I hope he won’t come back again in a hurry, for he made no end of trouble with his inferences and his deductions.”
“What—”
“No more questions, if you please. I am not on the witness stand, nor will I consent to be interviewed. Besides, talking is an infraction of the rules of the Asbestos Society.”
“Do they seek to muzzle the press?” I asked indignantly.
“So few newspaper men come this way that that isn’t necessary,” returned Charon. “We have a free press. It is said that ‘the devil frequently becomes a publisher by way of diversion.’ This is the Styx, not the Delaware, and we are going to Hades, not to Philadelphia, thank goodness! The order was framed to muzzle some one more formidable than reporters or devils—woman!”
“The Asbestos Society is quite a suggestive name.”
“Its formation was quite recent. A learned scientist up on the earth, by tapping on the ground to invoke Pluto, discovered extensive deposits of asbestos in Hades. As soon as the news reached the Styx, nothing would satisfy ‘Boss’ Tweed but the formation of a society for the purpose of robbing cremation of its traditional terrors. As to wish is to have, every denizen of the domain of the departed is now wearing an asbestos suit. Dives must have his diversion, even if the devil is cheated out of his own.”