“Well?”
“No man can do the things Parson Lolly is said to do.”
I made a complete break in my toilet and scrutinized my friend, who was visibly shaken. He said, “It’s no use trying to describe how it feels to be a host in the midst of such a hullabaloo. It’s the very devil. And I can’t do anything to stop it. Helplessness is a terrible thing.”
“Now tell me some of this nonsense,” I urged. “And first of all, why ‘Parson’? It’s creepy.”
“It certainly is,” he agreed. “That designation adds oddness, sinister, too, to the whole portrait of him.”
“What else is there in his portrait?”
“He’s old, several hundred years old at the most conservative estimate of the servants. His business is general mischief and bedevilment and, I surmise, thievery.”
“What does he look like?”
“He has the face of a demon, red with hell-fire, and streaked with smoke. He has the likeness of a man otherwise, but he wears a great flowing robe of black; there’s where the ‘Parson’ part comes in, I suppose. The robe is vaster than any prelate’s of earth, though there again you have the sinister touch. He—he flies in it, Bannerlee, like an enormous crow! He’s been seen flying away over the Bach Hill.”
“How far is Bach Hill from here?”