People of such various types, those who wheedle the Devil for no particular purpose, those who assume the defensive when the poor fellow wasn’t looking at them, and those who call him down from his study to answer the bell and then make a bolt for sanctuary, are examples of a class whom the Evil one leaves to his subordinates.
A promising young assistant of his works, disguised as a waiter, at one of the supper clubs to which we have supposed the naughty ladies to be so contemptuously relegated. I caught his eye one night when he was cynically winding up the strands of coloured paper that are sometimes thrown about at the end of the proceedings. “Another evening wasted!” he exclaimed with uncontrollable displeasure, “They might be a lot of blooming anarchists for all the harm they’ve done to-night. And here am I, who have waited on the House of Commons from its earliest years, and put ’em up to all their best tricks, literally throwing myself away.” He stopped to brush aside a yellowish tear. “Mr. Satan himself,” he continued, “won’t come down here at all; he says they’re not worth it. Look at that there innocent mother of a family a-dancing the Tango! We’ll never do any good with her, yet she likes to come here and waste my time a-calling for cigarettes. Look at her and her party now, Miss—turn your head so—now then you see? One of our clients is there, with the bald head, behind the pillar. We’d have had him anyhow, without the club, so it doesn’t even pay us that way. Hair, did you say, Miss? No, the gentlemen with a good deal of hair aren’t as a rule much good to us, and they encourage the women.”
“Encourage them in what?” I asked.
“Toasting their toes at the mouth of hell, they thinks, Miss, though it’s nothing of the kind really; it’s just pestering Mr. Satan something awful.”
“Then where does your real work lie?” I asked. “Where is hell?”
It was some moments before I could get an answer, as the noise suddenly became terrific. A negro at the piano had begun to play, accompanied by guitars, tambourines, and a howling chorus of tired-looking equatorials of some sort. Three or four scandalous old women, with transformations on their heads, and trophies from the bargain sales on their backs, were joylessly smoking and applauding in a frightful state of nerves. They looked fish-out-of-wool-shops, and my heart ached to pop them gently back behind the counter and draw down the blinds while they had a little nap. My friend was very busy opening bottles of champagne. Presently he stood beside me once more, napkin on arm.
“What was that you asked me just now, Miss?” he said.
“I asked you where hell was,” I replied.
“Well, I couldn’t say exactly, Miss. Mr. Satan, like, he takes the interesting cases—very quiet folk mostly; you’d hardly believe what a powerful lot of harm they do in a lifetime. A different lot altogether from these ’ere naughty cards, Miss. They ain’t no manner of good to us.”