Never having gone to the devil before, Mr. Epps was somewhat perplexed
in mind as to the direction he should take. But a moment's reflection
convinced him that Greenwich Village was the most promising place for
such a pilgrimage. He had never been there before; he had been afraid to
go there. Startling stories of the gay profligacy rampant in that angle
of old New York had reached his ears. He believed firmly that if the
devil has any headquarters in New York they are somewhere below
Fourteenth Street and west of Washington Square.
Mr. Epps debouched from a bus in Washington Square and started westward
along West Fourth Street with the cautious but determined tread of an
explorer penetrating a trackless and cannibal-infested jungle. He
glanced apprehensively to right and left, his eyes wide for the sight of
painted sirens, his ears agape for gusts of ribald merriment. At each
corner he paused expectantly, anticipating that he might come upon a
delirious party of art students gamboling about a model. He traversed
two blocks without seeing so much as a smock; what he did see was an
ancient man of Italian derivation carrying a bag of charcoal on his
head, and a stout woman wheeling twins stuffed uncomfortably into a
single-seater gocart, and a number of nondescript humans who from their
sedate air might well have been Brooklyn funeral directors. He owned,
after a bit, to a certain sense of disappointment. Going to the devil
was more of a chore than he had fancied.
As he trekked ever westward a sound at length smote his dilated ears and
made him catch his breath. It was issuing from a dim-lit basement, and
was filtering through batik curtains stenciled with strange, smeary
beasts. He had heard the wild, dissipated notes of a mechanical piano. A
lurid but somewhat inexpertly lettered sign above the basement door
read,