The Little Red Devil

by E. R. Punshon

The Little Red Devil

 

By E. R. Punshon

 

EVEN the office-boy grinned as he handed in the slip of paper bearing Hugh Rogers's name, and the editor frowned and sighed as he saw it, and was tempted to refuse to see him.

“Oh, well,” he said, at last, “show him in—show him in,” and then, as the boy went out, he muttered to himself: “After all, we were at school together, and Rogers has more brains than any man I know—if only he could have kept straight.”

He leaned back in his chair, and got ready the two half-crowns he supposed it was the object of this visit to borrow, but when Rogers actually entered he hastily exchanged them for a sovereign. Never before had he seen his old school-fellow present such a miserable aspect. His boots were out at the toes, the rim of his hat flapped loosely, he appeared to have no waistcoat at all, and with a keen regret, the editor noticed how wild and wandering was the expression of his eyes.

“Rogers,” he said, “you've been at it again—why in thunder, man,” he asked, with exasperation, “can't you keep away from it?”

Rogers made no answer, but he sat down on a chair and smiled to himself, and then, drawing a manuscript from his pocket, still sat and smiled, stroking it softly between his yellow, claw-like hands.

“Ned,” he said, suddenly, “do you remember lending me five shillings a month ago?”

“Why, yes,” answered the editor, for that transaction was the ordinary termination to his interviews with his old friend. “Why?” he asked.

“Because,” said Rogers, “that is the reason—” he paused, and once again he stroked the manuscript with a long, caressing gesture of affection—“the reason—the reason,” he muttered, vaguely, while the editor began to fear he was still under the influence of some recent carouse, “the reason why I've brought this to you,” he concluded, with sudden briskness, “rather than to any other paper in London.”

“Oh, I see,” said the editor, pleased that Rogers should really appear to have done some work at last. Lately he had completed very little, content to drowse and dream away his time, putting upon paper mow and again some striking line, perhaps, some isolated fragment of wonderful description or some haunting dozen words of exquisite melody, but never completing anything that the most accommodating paper or publisher could print. “You let me have it, and I'll give you a guinea on the spot,” promised the editor.

“And when,” asked Rogers, still hugging his manuscript as though loath to part with it, “will you undertake to publish?”

The editor made an impatient gesture. That was just like Rogers, he thought, always making some impracticable condition whenever one tried to benefit him. Besides, remarkable as Rogers's poetry often was, occasionally it was not quite suitable for publication, and occasionally, too, it would be a mere commonplace jingle. Rogers had no faculty of self-criticism, and his work, always either very good or very bad, ranked equally high in his own estimation. The editor felt no inclination to bind himself in the matter, but he was perfectly willing to pay over the guinea on the spot—though it would very likely have to come out of his own pocket in the end.

“Well,” said Rogers, “will you promise to publish in October?”

“My dear fellow,” gasped the editor, taken altogether aback at this audacious demand, “surely you must know October is made up by now?”

“Well, November will do,” said Rogers; “but no later.”

“Oh, no later, eh?” exclaimed the editor, considerably annoyed; and then, giving way to a feeling of pity again, he remarked: “Now, Rogers, you must know as well as I do how poetry——”

“This isn't poetry,” replied Rogers; “this is a story.”

“Oh, well, that's worse still,” said the editor, decidedly. “I might find room for a short poem—but stories—” He waved his arm impressively in the air. “My dear Rogers,” he said, “we are full up with stories for months—for months, I do assure you.”

He paused to watch the effect of this announcement, and Rogers laid the manuscript on his desk.

“My price,” he said, “is twenty pounds.”

The editor repressed a strong inclination to pitch the thing into the waste-paper basket. He put his hand on the bell to have Rogers shown out, then he said: “Oh, come now, that's absurd, you know.”

“Well, you just read it, Ned Neale,” answered Rogers. Quite suddenly he leaned forward, his hands on the desk, his head thrust forward with bulging eyes that seemed ready to start from their sockets, his heavy and foul breath coming in quick gasps. “You just read it, you just read it.”

For a moment, the editor half imagined that the man's mind had given way, that at last his way of life had overthrown his brain. But, as quickly as he had risen, Rogers sank back on his chair, gasping and panting, his hands pressed to his heart.

“You read it,” he muttered again. “Five shillings you lent me—but this is the little red devil, you know—you lent me five bob, so I brought it to you to read.”

“Oh, of course, I'll read it,” said the editor, not without a little inward sigh as he thought of all the work he was neglecting.

He picked the manuscript up and began to read, and the ensuing silence was broken only by the rustle of the leaves as he turned them over. At last he finished, and putting the pages down, peered hard at Rogers. Then he picked it up once more, and read it all over again.

“Well,” said Rogers, “what do you think of it?”

“I don't know,” said the editor. “Good Lord, I don't know!”

“Will you publish in November, then?”

“I'll publish in October,” said the editor; “I'll have to upset all my arrangements, but I'll publish in October all the same.”

“I thought so,” said Rogers, gravely, rising from his seat.

“But one moment,” said the editor; “don't go. Hang it, man, how did you come to write this? It's quite different from your ordinary work.”

“Don't you recognize the style?” asked Rogers. He did not seem at all elated, only tired and a little anxious to be away. “I thought all you people knew my style.”

“Oh, style!” said the editor. He waved style away with a gesture. “Of course, I would know it for your work anywhere, what with those dots you are so fond of, and 'piquant' and 'tenebrious,' and all your other pet words. No, it's the idea; where did you get that from?”

“Why,” said Rogers, slowly, “I—I got it—that's all.”

“Well, it's a rum bit of work,” commented the editor; “what's this mean?”

He pointed, as he spoke, to an incoherent spluttering with the pen that ran all around the ample margin it was Rogers's invariable custom to leave on his work. It bore perhaps an indistinct resemblance to writing, but yet contained no distinguishable letters, while at the same time it seemed to be repeated too frequently, and too exactly in the same form, to be mere idle scribbling. It appeared also two or three times in the body of the manuscript, though without any apparent relation to the context. Leaning over the editor's shoulder, Rogers examined it closely.

“I don't know,” he said, in a whisper; “what does it mean?”

“Well; you ought to know that, oughtn't you?” answered the editor, staring.

Rogers stretched out a trembling hand.

“Don't say that,” he implored; “don't—it's the little red devil,” he said, in a whisper, and thereupon slipped from the room and disappeared, leaving the editor staring blankly after him.

About half an hour afterward it occurred to the editor for the first time that Rogers had gone without either receiving any money or leaving an address. “He'll be back soon,” the editor assured himself; but in this he proved mistaken, for the year crept on, and the November number was issued, and the attention the story attracted was almost forgotten before Rogers made his appearance at the office again. The moment his name was sent in, the editor came hurrying out.

“Come in, Rogers,” he said, hastily. “I've been expecting you for months.”

Rogers drifted noiselessly, aimlessly, as it seemed, into the room, and at last came to a rest in a chair by the fire, above which he spread his thin and shivering hands. If he had looked ill before, he looked dying now; and, if his clothes had seemed rags before, now it was a wonder how they clung on him at all.

“I've brought you another manuscript,” he said, suddenly, over his shoulder.

“I'm glad to hear it,” replied the editor. “Do you know, Rogers,” he added, slowly, “I almost believe that last thing of yours affected the circulation?”

The editor spoke in tones of awe, for this was a feat he had almost lost faith in the power of any story to perform, but Rogers did not seem at all impressed. He only grunted and went on warming his hands, and then, taking a manuscript from his pocket, he threw it on the table. The editor picked it up, and at once became absorbed in its perusal.

“I owe you twenty pounds for that other story,” he said, when he had finished; “I'll give you thirty for this. Shall I give it you in cash? And, by the way, there are a lot of letters for you here—about that last story, I suppose.”

“In cash,” said Rogers, greedily; “yes, in cash,” and with an impatient gesture he threw the whole lot of letters the editor had given him into the fire. “Yes, I'll take it in cash.”

The editor wrote a cheque and sent out to get it cashed, and then he observed, still bending over the story, which he thought even more remarkable than the first one: “There's that odd scribble again all up and down the margin; what does it mean, Rogers?” He looked at it attentively, and gradually he seemed to distinguish a far-away resemblance to words, so that he became convinced it represented a sentence of some kind, though the meaning and even the language he was quite unable to make out. “Can't you read it, Rogers?” he asked.

“No!” screamed Rogers, and, looking up with a start, the editor saw him regarding him with such an expression of awful fear as human features have seldom worn. “No!” he screamed again; “I can't, I can't, I can't!” and, so crying, he rushed from the room; and though the editor followed him at once, he was unable to overtake him.

“He must be mad, I think,” muttered the editor to himself; “but what made him look so scared? And, by Jove, he has gone without his money again.”

This time, however, the editor had not to wait so long for news of his contributor, for this second story was still in the press when a post-card arrived, addressed from a remote part of the East End, and bearing a request from Rogers that the editor would come to see him without delay. Within half an hour the editor was on his way, and soon arrived at a squalid side street, where the appearance of his hansom was evidently an almost unprecedented event. The untidy woman who answered his knock directed him to the top floor, and added the information that he would find the gentleman pretty bad.

“He is ill, then?” asked the editor.

“Oh, just starving,” answered the woman, with quiet acquiescence in the familiar; “he has pawned everything, too, except his little red devil.”

“His what?” asked the editor, starting.

“Oh, a figure he has that he says talks to him at night. It's terrible ugly, and Mrs. Briggs offered him a tenner for it to stop her baby screaming so, but he wouldn't part with it.”

The editor went on up the stairs and, knocking, entered a bare and draughty room, containing nothing except a heap of straw and rags on which Rogers lay, and a rickety table which stood before an upturned box, and on it—as the editor noticed at once—a roll of manuscript. On the broken mantelpiece was a small and hideously ugly figure shaped in the conventional form of a devil, with hoof, horns and tail, and colored a brilliant red. The moment he entered the room this thing caught his eye, and he noticed with a shiver of repulsion the horrid leer pictured on the small face which was supported on its hollowed palm; the whole attitude being one of brooding and sinister patience. An odd but very strong desire seized the editor to knock it down and see it break to pieces on the floor, but instead he went and stood by the sick man's side.

“Well, Rogers, here I am, you see,” he said; “and how are you, old chap?”

“Pretty bad,” murmured Rogers; “but there's another story for you,” and he pointed feebly toward the table.

“I see,” said the editor, taking possession of it; “but wait a moment.”

He went down-stairs again, and by the offer of liberal payment soon had one messenger flying for a doctor and another for a nurse and food, and another with a telegram to a nursing-home he knew of to arrange for Rogers's admission. Then he went back and told him what he had done, but the sick man's only comment was a fretful demand to know if he had read the story yet.

“Well, I will now,” said the editor, to soothe him, and, going over to the window, he stood there and became lost to everything, till he suddenly came to himself, with a loud exclamation, to find the doctor already in the room, bending over Rogers.

“What's the matter?” asked the doctor, turning sharply.

“Oh, nothing,” replied the editor, much ashamed of himself; “it was just an optical delusion in this wretched light, I suppose—but for the moment I could have sworn I saw that figure on the mantelpiece move.”

“Well, it's ugly enough,” agreed the doctor, meditatively. “Your friend is pretty weak, but I don't think he needs anything beyond good food and attention.”

“Well, he shall have that,” declared the editor, and just then Rogers opened his eyes and beckoned to him.

“Have you read the story?” he asked.

“Yes,” replied the editor; “I'll give you fifty for this one, so then I shall owe you a hundred altogether.”

Rogers nodded in a satisfied way.

“I would not mind so much,” he muttered, “if he wouldn't come and sit on the table.”

“Wandering,” observed the doctor; and then, to the nurse who appeared, he gave directions what to do until arrangements could be made to move the patient. While they were talking the editor went back to look at the story again, and he now noticed that the incoherent scribbling which had puzzled him on the two former manuscripts was repeated on this. The marks seemed on the whole to be a little plainer now and had certainly been made more firmly, with less hesitation in the lines, but were still, for all that, quite illegible.

“I wonder what it means?” mused the editor, curiously; “it doesn't seem to have any connection with the story, and yet——”

And, presently, he took an opportunity to ask Rogers what that illegible scribble on his manuscript meant, and with just one low cry of fear the sick man fainted away.

“Now,” interposed the doctor, angrily, seeing what had happened, “you have made him faint. Couldn't you see how weak he was, and how unfit to stand worrying questions?”

“But,” said the editor, defending himself, “it was quite a trivial remark—nothing of any importance.”

“Well, what did he faint for, then?” asked the doctor.

The editor retreated in disgrace, and a day or two later called again to see Rogers, now safely ensconced in the nursing-home.

“He's much better,” the nurse, who was showing him up-stairs, assured him; “he only needed rest and care. But he still talks at night to himself. I had to go in last night on purpose to ask him to be quiet;” and then she ushered him into an airy, comfortable room, where Rogers, already appearing much better, lay in bed.

However, the editor did not look at him, but, staring and gaping on the threshold, gazed in blank amazement at the mantelpiece, where stood that little figure of a fiend, which he had seen before, colored a brilliant red.

“Isn't it hideous?” said the nurse, in a whisper; “but Mr. Rogers will have it by him.”

“Quite so,” said the editor, moistening his dry lips.

Though the figure was undoubtedly the same, he saw with a strange terror that in some mysterious way its position and attitude had become slightly changed. The abhorrent and disgusting leer on the small shin remained as before, but the chin no longer rested on the hollowed) hands, for they were now held with bent fingers in front of the body, giving an idea of movement suddenly arrested. Indeed, the whole attitude of the figure seemed now to convey not the idea of secret and brooding patience, but of instant readiness for action. Once again the editor had an impulse to throw it on the floor, that it might break into ten thousand pieces which he could trample into dust, but instead he sat down by Rogers's side.

“Well, how are you now?” he asked; “feeling better?”

“Oh, much better,” answered Rogers, loudly, and then added, in a whisper: “I have another manuscript for you.”

“Another already?” exclaimed the editor; “but, my dear fellow, you are not fit to do any work yet.”

“I finished it last night,” continued Rogers, in the same whisper; “in spite of interruptions,” he added.

“Interruptions?” repeated the editor; and he remembered how the nurse had spoken of some midnight talk she had overheard. A sense of uneasiness, of a heavy and an evil oppression, weighed him down with vague apprehensions. “Look here,” he said, angrily, “you've just got to stop working or I'll speak to the doctor, by Jove!”

“You see,” said Rogers, whispering again, “here there is no table near, so that he has to cling to the bed-rails. And that's so awkward.”

“What do you mean?” asked the editor, and his glance wandered toward the little red image on the mantelpiece.

“Here's the manuscript,” said Rogers, abruptly. “Don't read it now.”

“All right,” answered the editor, and then he once more caught sight of that odd splutter of incoherent and apparently meaningless scribbling which seemed now to distinguish all Rogers's writing. “What on earth makes you tack that scribble to all you do?” he asked, crossly. “What does it mean?”

“Do you wish me to die,” said Rogers, in a low and terrible voice, “that you ask me that?”

The editor stared, but, seeing the other's agitation, he said nothing. As soon, however, as he returned to his office he read the story; which he found more strange and weirdly fascinating, with its half-hinted glimpses of another world and a more profound philosophy, than even the others had been. Then he devoted himself to trying to decipher the scribbled sentence which ran all over and through this manuscript, as it had through the other three. He even got a magnifying-glass to help him, and at last he convinced himself that it bore no meaning at all, that it was probably just some nervous trick Rogers had got into. Then a new idea struck him, and he called in his office-boy, a rosy-cheeked little lad, who had been with him only a day or two.

“Here,” he said, “can you make out what this means?”

“Huh, yes, sir,” answered the lad, contemptuously; “that's, 'Take now your razor or a knife, and sever quickly your throat from ear to ear.'”

“It says—what?” cried the editor; but now when he bent above the manuscript again these marks seemed to him to bear that meaning so plainly that he could not understand how he had ever failed to read them. “What does it mean, though?” he muttered to himself again.

Late as it was, he took his hat and was soon on his way back to the nursing-home, which he reached close on midnight, and found all lighted up and in a state of much agitation and confusion.

“Oh, have you got my telegram already?” said the resident doctor, meeting him in the hall. “A terrible affair—I assure you such a thing has never happened here before—a terrible, a most terrible affair—and quite unprecedented.”

“Indeed?” said the editor, and he did not ask what had happened, for in his clamorous brain echoed unceasingly like thunder the words the office-boy had read to him, “Take now your razor or a knife, and sever quickly your throat from ear to ear;” “Take now your razor or a knife, and sever quickly your throat from ear to ear.”

“And there was no motive,” complained the doctor, as he led the way up-stairs; “no motive at all—the happiest, most cheerful patient in the house, and improving so rapidly. You know no motive, sir?”

“Motive?” repeated the editor; and then, the doctor opening a door, they entered the room where Rogers lay dead on his bed, his throat, severed by his own hand, gaping from ear to ear.

The grosser signs of the tragedy had been already removed, but the editor went very pale and breathed hard in his throat as though he were strangling, and he pointed to the head of the bed, where, perched on the iron rails, was the little figure of a fiend, colored a brilliant red, on the small face a leer of abhorrent and disgusting content, the chin resting now again on its hollowed palm in an attitude of renewed waiting.

“What's—that?” asked the editor, trembling violently.

“Oh, an ornament the poor fellow seemed fond of,” answered the doctor, and then he looked puzzled. “But how did it get there?” he asked, “and how has it got balanced on the rail like that? I don't understand.”

“I do,” said the editor, and with his hand he struck the figure down so that it fell on the floor and shattered into ten thousand pieces. “I do,” said the editor again, and he stamped upon each fragment till there was nothing left but a handful of white powder. “I do,” he said, for the third time; “but come away—come away into God's clear air outside.”