“Ah, that band!” repeated Dragonfel, with a shudder. “I can’t get their notes out of my ears yet. But what have we here?”
A huge creature resembling an octopus, with great, staring eyes popping from his head, and hundreds of fuzzy tentacles protruding in all directions from his grotesque body, came crawling toward him. Straightway Dragonfel sprang up from the throne, while Wolfinger, Mandrake, Boundingbore, and Snoutpimple, who had assumed respectful positions at his sides, drew back in alarm.
But the Demon Usher gave a cackle of a laugh, and gleefully rubbed his hands together as though he were washing them with invisible soap.
“Have no fear, kind master!” said a thin, piping voice from somewhere within the horrid creature’s hulk. “Is not this a pretty disguise?”
“The Red Spirit, as I live!” cried Dragonfel, in a tone of admiration not unmixed with relief. “You rascal, why have you chosen this masquerade?”
“But is it not a clever one?” persisted the Red Spirit. “See, kind master, I can either compress or expand myself at will.”
As he spoke he shrank to practical insignificance, and then almost immediately afterward swelled out until it seemed that he would burst.
“Capital!” said Dragonfel encouragingly. “You can be of great assistance to me. I have a mean task for you to do.”
“The meaner the better, kind master!”
Dragonfel raised his arm, and pointed toward a window that gave a vista of the far-off, smiling sea.