The demon was skittering along ahead, paying very little attention to Chisholm, who was following along meekly enough. Presently a large building loomed ahead. As they approached Chisholm could see that it was an auditorium of some kind. He could also see that the mob of shades were close behind and that they had no guiding demon with them. Evidently they were following blindly in his own tracks.
The demon turned into the door of the building and led the way up to its stage. It was an auditorium. By the time they had reached the platform, the crowd of ghosts behind were crowding into the place. They soon filled it from wall to wall.
"You must have been a pretty popular fellow," remarked the demon, looking them over, "or the reverse. Notorious, you know."
Chisholm didn't know. He had a reputation, he knew, as a go-getter and a good fellow, but it was a modest one—restricted to his customers, his salesmen, and people he met casually. He hardly expected this turn-out. Moreover, he couldn't recognize anybody in the hall. As he looked them over he was struck with one singularity of the crowd. Many of them bore a family resemblance to him, some rather close, others fantastically distorted. The majority looked like three-dimensional, animated caricatures of him. One especially obnoxious one kept trying to climb up onto the stage. He was far fatter than Chisholm himself had ever been or could ever have been even if he had skipped the gym workouts.
The demon observed the look of profound distaste on Chisholm's face, but only grinned a little and picked up a gavel. He rapped sharply on the table.
"Come to order, please," he said. "The convention is assembled."
There was a momentary hush, and then pandemonium broke out. It was a very disorderly crowd and an opinionated one, from the jeers that were hurled up at the stage. It was hard to pick out what they were saying, but the trend of it seemed to be that practically everyone there wanted to preside or was full of hot ideas that demanded immediate and full expression. The demon was unperturbed. He was an old hand. At intervals he would bang with the gavel. At last he got a tiny bit of silence.
