DAMNED
DAMNED
_The Intimate Story of a Girl_
ANONYMOUS
NEW YORK
THE MACAULAY COMPANY
Copyright, 1923
By THE MACAULAY COMPANY
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
TO THE DEVIL
IN EVERYMAN THAT HAS ROUSED ME
TO THE WRITING OF THIS BOOK.
The Author
DAMNED
DAMNED
CHAPTER I
An air of apprehension pervaded the throne room.
The most imperfect day known for ages in the Court of Gehenna was
drawing to a close. The seven Tartarean courtiers had effaced
themselves as far back in the auditorium as the folds of its black and
red electric hangings would permit. Each held eyes and ears intent,
realizing far too well that his particular tenure of preferment hung
upon the mood of the moment. Even the prime minister, Old Original
Sin, who had weathered so many Apollyon storms that he well might have
considered himself immune, sat ill at ease in his chair of honor upon
the dais.
His Satanic Majesty leaned forward from the throne chair, imposing in
its effect of onyx and gold. His head drooped as though from weight
other than the voltage of his crown. His elbows pressed upon the
chair-arms, that both his strong, long hands might stroke in turn his
pointed, copper-colored beard. About the room, as lightning plays in
advance of thunder, flashed his gray-eyed glances. When he spoke,
although in a mild voice, each auditor quivered through taut nerves.
“Draw the night curtains. Throw on every switch. I dislike this pale,
abiding light.”
Without awaiting the attendants, the courtiers sprang to do the
royal will. Sin himself operated the electric switch-board. At his
touch, a design in heraldry blazed from the wall behind the dais. In
pseudo-seeming, bands of ebony and of beryl formed the setting for a
golden crown in bas relief, its points pricked out with emeralds.
Projecting from its headband, three horns of power suspended from their
tips the ruby-writ words “Japheth,” “Shem” and “Ham.” The crown itself
looked to rest upon a sword that dripped all jewels known, like tears
of every agony, from those of water to those of blood. Beneath, through
letters transparent as thin sardonyx, flamed this caption:
SATAN the FIRST and LAST.
Outcast of Paradise
Heir-apparent to Earth
Monarch of Greater Gehenna
His Highness glanced back at this elaborate conceit and a gratified
expression crossed his face. He signed a page to spread out his
crackling mantle of gold-bordered black; slanted a self-respecting look
at the splendid proportions revealed through his easy-fitting body
garment of opaque red light; matched his long-nailed finger-tips in
pairs.
The seven waited with increased perturbation. They knew that calm,
considering look to presage some diabolical idea; realized that no
flattery might blind that super-keen sight; appreciated that the day
had run too unevenly for hope of a restful end.
From the moment of the royal rising that early morn, the King had
seemed of malevolent mind. The attendants in his private suite insisted
that he had quit the royal bed from the right side. Yet he had seemed
to assimilate perversity from his static shower, declaring the current
hot when, in fact, it was cold as refrigeration could make it. In a
passion he had unwound the small dynamo of a new costume considered
by his chief tailor a creation; later had hurled his breakfast
filectric-mignon at the first chef, asserting that it bore no
resemblance, either in appearance or gastronomic satisfaction, to the
beefsteaks of men.
The inadequate light cast by his pet device, an imitation of Sol, had
provoked a personally conducted investigation of the mammoth power
plant in the lower badlands. Disregarding the affairs which awaited
his personal direction, he had spent the noon hour tinkering at the
mechanism of his sun, moon and flock of stars.
At the General Assembly of Demons his ill-temper had gained momentum.
After listening for a time in sneering impatience to suggestions
offered as amendments to the general proposition of standardizing
crime, he had hurled upon that august body a very cataclysm of
political overthrow. One by one he had assailed the ministry, down to
the most faded of those angel plotters cast out with him at The Fall.
Announcing that he would run the nether world alone and unaided, he had
dissolved the cabinet, assigning its members to labors futile as their
protests.
In view of his treatment of those who had served him so long and so
infernally, what was in store for mere courtiers, sycophants of a few
recent centuries?
When he straightened in the throne-chair, each of the seven
straightened with him. When, tilting his crown at an easier slant,
he glanced speculatively about, all crowded back against the highly
charged curtains and tried to look indifferent at the shock.
His gaze settled upon the prime minister.
“Sin, you aborigine, a word!”
Old Original--so called because his visability, like the King’s own,
never had dimmed--made obvious effort to assume the sang-froid of one
who knows himself to be indispensable; sauntered to the steps; bent in
an obeisance of elaborate mockery.
“Future of the Universe, I await your will,” he remarked with nasal
twang.
Satan looked contemptuous of his handyman’s forced effrontery.
“I know you do. You’ve taken to awaiting my will entirely too much
for your own good. There was a time when you were full of vile ideas.
But you’ve lost your ingenuity of late. Since when have you designed
a sin-mask that would deceive the least suspicious of earthlings or
invented a new form of torture with which to demonstrate our canons of
damnation?”
The aged demon, forced on the defensive, eyed the Master with reproach.
“Æons agone there ceased to be anything new beneath the sun and I----”
“And you,” His Highness interrupted, “may be dispensed with if that
is true. I am proficient in all the old tricks myself. However, I am
disposed to give you a chance to disprove it, being ever kind and just.
Is that not true?” The lightning of his look threatened the seven
sycophants. “Am I not ever kind and just?”
“As the hope of Hell!”
“Oftener than ever!”
“In our best-worst interests, Sire!”
The medley whined from the shimmering shadows.
Sin’s voice gained in assurance, even as his mind lost at the trend of
Satanic argument.
“But, my King, haven’t I had the whole mortal world at war? Didn’t I
trick all peoples into slaughter of each other as you planned?”
“I notice you use the past-perfect tense in speaking of that late
little unpleasantness. As a matter of fact we lost out on it--lost our
one best bet since Noah and the Flood. How did you make the mistake of
assuming that any scrapper who falls fighting for his country could be
condemned by his fellow men? The worst of them is guaranteed a passport
to Abraham’s bosom. As for the leaders--the brains of the drive--most
of them were lost to us through that meanest of mortal weaknesses, fear
for the integrity of their own hides. They all want to live. That is
what’s wrong with conquerors. When earth-wars are such good training
for----”
His Highness’ teeth bit the sentence in two. His saber-like gaze
slashed suspiciously from face to face.
“You do your own army an injustice to compare its morals with that
of any on earth,” soothed the old toady. “I’ll acknowledge that I am
somewhat used up. Even Sin might get brain-fag, you know.”
“That excuse is antedated. You have had ample time to recuperate.”
The royal digits made a crackling sound as they touched. “You failed
egregiously on every important specification of the big fight. Did you
keep them at it until the world was engulfed in one red sea of gore?
Did you inoculate hate until it over-ruled every gentler human impulse?
Did you overcome the too-young at home and the too-old who were to
instruct them and the women who were to bear the spawn to continue the
slaughter? With all the possibilities of modern wholesaleness, that war
was not half what it should have been.”
“Admitting all you say,” the prime minister defended, “I don’t see
cause for your august dissatisfaction over our progress with the mortal
world.”
“You don’t? What you need is an oculist.”
His Majesty descended the steps and began to pace the great room.
“I have had a day of realization,” he continued in lifted voice.
“Something must be done. Things are too slow to suit my purposes. We
are not getting our share of those who enter Shadow Land. Entirely too
many are ticketed through to the Fields by Mors.”
“You know, Sire, something of my efforts to buy that stubborn old
keeper of the outer gate,” interpolated Sin. “Nothing I offer seems to
have any value to him. He is polite enough, but drones always the same
reminder that for the present he must abide by the records of Earth.”
“The trouble is not with Mors, fool fiend,” Satan snapped. “It is
with that book of his--with the ‘Judgments of Men.’ The feelings of
mortals do soften sickeningly toward their dead. They say the good die
young. Certainly we try to see to it that the bad die old. That’s why
everything has seemed to depend upon our new searchlight summoning
towers. Mors is able, with only two such towers ranged on either side
the Mystery Gate, to make his lists, set his automatic finders and
turn on his power. What results? Every evening and all night long
they come at his call. There’s certainly nothing attractive about the
patriarch. He is grim as the first law of mortality and looks it. Yet
every witness he subpœnas _comes_. Nothing stops them, the long, drear
journey, the fear of the unknown, the hissing belly-crawlers along the
way. What happens when _I_ build a dozen searchlight towers to his two?
I make my selected list of earthlings for whom no modern Ananias could
pass a good word. I set my alleged finders and turn on all the power we
can generate. With what result?”
Glaringly though he challenged reply, none who knew his latest scheme
to add to the population of his kingdom dared remind him of its
failure. Of necessity he answered himself.
“For a week now our tower tops have been shafting calls to Earth. Has
one of the nominated accepted? I am forced to admit that there is
something more to this death business than searchlighting. I’ve never
been so disappointed since Pontius Pilate double-crossed me.”
“Wait until Mors summons the choice crowd of leaders you mention who
started the world war,” Sin suggested.
“Wait? That seems to be your persistent idea. I tell you we can’t
afford to wait.”
Halting before the lesser fiend, Satan seared him with a look.
“I don’t expect you even to suggest where the Associated Electricians
of Gehenna have failed. And in other respects your title and office are
jeopardized. I offer you a last chance to save them. If overnight you
invent some new feasible scheme for conscripting earthlings into our
standing army, your job is saved. If not----”
“The feasible idea already is invented and its workings under way, O
King. Compared with it, all our past schemes are limited and crude.
Camouflaged under propaganda of universal appeal, it cannot fail to
start a whirlpool which will, in time, suck every man, woman and child
into moral death.”
“You refer to Bolshevism, I suppose? Not a good idea--not good at all.
The germ of it has lain in my mind for centuries. I’d suggest that you
saunter to the outer gates and quiz the evening’s grist. You might
happen upon a Red recruit with cheering news.”
“The very thing I was about to propose,” Old Original made reply on his
way to the door.
The ruler frankly sneered. “Great minds, eh? Are you trying to flatter
yourself or me? While you are going, take the wall decorations with
you.” He included the courtiers in his gesture. “How many centuries do
you obsoletes need to rise to the worst that’s in you? Do you suppose
for one split-second--mortal time--that I’d work with evil natures as
I have done since that fracas up in Paradise just for the company of
the evilest of them through eternity? By to-morrow I shall have decided
what to do with such choice parasites. Out with you, or I’ll fit my
skeleton key to the trap-door of the bottomless pit and throw you in
before your time.”
With alacrity which showed their relief at this temporary escape, the
seven followed the prime minister through the separating rays of the
rear curtain.
Satan looked to share their relief that they were gone. For a space
silence reigned with him in the throne room except for the snap of his
heels upon the floor and the swish of the royal robe. His reflection
in one of the mercurized panels of the side walls caused him to halt.
For long he studied his face, then, straightening, appreciated his
magnificent outlines. A look of satisfaction cleared the frown of evil
affairs from his brow. Lifting his crown, he bowed into the mirror.
A voice from behind the curtain also saluted him:
“‘_No wonder that thy heart was lifted up, that thy wisdom was
corrupted by reason of thy brightness._’”
“Step out, caitiff. Be as apparent as your flattery. Why do you linger
to spy upon me when I order the court cleared?”
A Balial glare fixed upon the returned minister’s ingratiating grin.
“Not to spy upon you, Sire. Rather, to admire you. You certainly are
the Boss of Below for looks.”
His Highness, never having outlived his first fault of vanity, gave
benefit of doubt to the compliment, as also to the glass-like tumbler
bewhiskered with crisp-crackling green held toward him.
“I thought Your Majesty’s harassed spirit might feel in need of
refreshment, so made bold to have this quaff mixed. It is as near as
may be like those they have voted too strong for the United States of
America, suh. Here you are--a frappé low-bolt!”
Sin proffered both explanation and cup with that irrepressibility which
so far had made, but at any moment might break him. With sympathy sips,
he watched the sampling of the liquidized current concocted by the
first royal bartender, a past-master indeed of the art before it was
amended off Forty-second Street and Broadway, New York.
“Get the kick?” he asked, fearing as much as hoping that the julep
would fail of its effect.
Satan threw the goblet on the floor, where it snapped and flashed, but
did not break.
“If I didn’t, you would.”
Sin believed him. From experience he had learned the difficulty of
gauging the moods of m’lord after a few such applications had filed or
smoothed the edges of his tooth-sharp temper. For safety’s sake he gave
a side glance into the sensitized panel.
“Notice the size of you as compared with me--and I am supposed to be
well-developed from my criminal calisthenics.”
His Highness frowned. He also “noticed.”
“Where is the value in good looks,” he conceded, “if there’s none
around whom you admire to admire you?”
Old Original was quick to follow the advantage. “A word on that very
subject is what I returned to say, a word of condolence and advice.”
“_You_ offer condolence and advice to _me_?” The King of Evil glared at
the most malapert fiend of his kingdom.
“Condolence, Sire, over your state of solitariness. Advice as to how
to ease it. From my hurting envy of your appearance I realize one
littleness in my largeness. Absolute admiration may endure only where
envy may not spring. Why does not Your Majesty seek that companionship
which is not born to jealousy? Isn’t there a complete assortment of
rags and bones and hanks of hair in Gehenna’s bargain basement?”
“You suggest for me the companionship of--” Satan paused briefly to
sneer--“of a female shade? Don’t you suppose, if I cared for the sex,
that I’d be running a harem of all nations, stocked with every famed
siren, from Helen of Troy forwards and back? You should know by this
time, old weakling, that your spirit in women doesn’t appeal to me any
more than to mortal profligates. And the pulchritude of most has gone
by the time they get here.”
“But there are the dewy-looking souls loitering about the Fields. Why
not break the rule that there may be no transference between Elysium
and the Lower Land before the Call? Aren’t you the exception to all
rules? Why not an adventure for Your Excellency such as often we have
seen in the cinemized episodes of modern villains--an abduction, say,
of the most visible and fair before the guards can interfere? Don’t
despise my idea, generated from a conviction that the chief lack in
your life is loneliness.”
“An angel for me?” Mirthlessly His Highness laughed. “Sir Sin, they
bore me limp as a summer-resort collar. To be sure that a she-soul is
going to be eternally good is a fraction worse than to be sure she’ll
be eternally bad. No, philanderer, you’ll have to do better than that.
There is not a female, quick or dead, for whose absolute admiration I’d
give a plugged nickel.”
The click of the door-knocker punctuated this assertion. Satan strode
to the throne; replaced his crown; signaled the minister to respond.
Soon Sin bowed low before his Master, a look of evil animation on his
face.
“Already the Seven have returned, Sire. They report that a goodly
number of bad ones were crowding through the gates. Among others, they
interviewed a couple who, they thought, may interest Your Majesty. They
await your pleasure without.”
“May divert My Majesty from complaint of them, you mean. Yet I suppose
that they, as well as you, should have that proverbial last chance
due evil intenders. By no means make any diverting shade await my
displeasure. Page, bid them enter The Presence.”
Royal tolerance fled, however, at sight of the candidates.
“A crippled old soldier and a woman with a suckling babe! It behooves
me to find some way of revising the current notion of what constitutes
My Majesty’s diversion.”
He relapsed into silence as the new-comers were half led, half dragged
toward the dais by a pair of the scrub-oak dwarfs who ushered inside
the Gehennan gates. By light of the dynamo that is within each soul,
they were clothed as in the habiliments they had worn in their late
estate on earth, he in a rusty uniform, she in nun’s gray. With
his crutch the cripple resented their intent to be rough, but his
travel-mate stumbled forward without resistance, her head drooped so
low that her long, loose hair swaddled the whimpering infant shade in
her arms.
The kingly choler increased when, at the steps, she sank as though from
exhaustion rather than reverence to her knees. One last, promising
glare he shot at Old Original and the seven, then spoke in a voice
quiet, yet more dire to those who knew him than any thunder-clap.
“To swoon, madam or miss, is out of date down here. I pray you postpone
the attempt for some less sophisticated audience.”
Sin, leaning forward from his especial chair just back of the throne,
dared to insinuate: “And I pray you, Damnity, do not sentence her until
you have considered her. There is something exceptional about her. She
may have been sent to prove that idea of mine.”
Satan scorned to notice the suggestion.
“Come,” he ordered the woman soul, “show your passport.”
As though from shame, she crumpled against her breast a scarlet slip.
Shaking back her hair, she looked up at him.
His Highness, startled, returned her look. He did not heed or hear
Sin’s gasp of anticipation. He forgot the seven, the pages and the
dwarfs. Leaning lower, he looked and looked.
Truly he, who had been the fate of most fair women since Eve, never had
beheld one of a face of such appeal.