None But Lucifer

Chapter XX

"YES, sir," Burke said with dogged persistence. "Just like a dream, it was, wasn't it, Molly?" His wife nodded abstractedly.

"Just like a dream," he repeated. "This guy Perry kicking the bucket and leaving us his whole fortune. Molly ... Mrs. Burke never even knew they were related, and here he cashes in —" Burke wagged his head. "You don't exactly look like you're starving, either. I wouldn't recognize you. You certainly looked mighty lou — bad, last time."

"I'm doing pretty well," Hale replied. There was an embarrassing silence. Hale took advantage of it to study the Burkes and their home. Something wasn't quite right. It certainly wasn't the apartment, which had obviously been furnished by a competent decorator. The Burkes sat stiffly, smiling with a faintly despondent air, in graceful, slightly upholstered frame chairs placed with artistic precision on the sides of a false ivory-and-gilt fireplace.

"You have a beautiful place, Mrs. Burke," Hale said at last.

For a moment she brightened. "Isn't it nice?" Then she lapsed back into her fixed, uncomfortable smile.

Burke looked at the rug and closed his perpetually dry mouth to swallow. "I don't know. Either it's too nice for some, or it ain't nice enough for others. I mean ... well, I hope you didn't get sore when Ada asked you if you were selling anything, did you?"

"Not at all," said Hale hastily.

Burke nodded gravely. "That's good. You know how it is. Some of your old friends come around to see how you're getting along. I mean they're all right. They're real friendly. Only —" He gestured feebly at the dainty room.

"They don't feel right," Hale supplied.

"That's it. They get kind of scared. Sit on the edge of their seats and get the hell out — sorry, Mrs. Hale — beat it first chance they get. Then there's the other kind —"

"Edgar!" Mrs. Burke protested.

"Well, I can't help it, Molly. They'll feel insulted if I don't tell them how come Ada asked them that. Folks we used to know, and strangers, too, trying to sell us all kinds of stuff. I don't know —"

"Don't listen to him," Mrs. Burke entreated. "He ain't used to having it nice. He keeps mooning around because he ain't ... hasn't got so many useless friends."

Burke slapped his thighs and smiled bravely. "Cut it out, Molly! We're sounding like a couple of funerals. Sure, Mr. Hale, it ain't all fun, but we're having a real fine time for once in our lives. Ain't we, Molly?"

"You bet! Going to the Met — the opera, you know; plays —"

"Them I don't care for so much," Burke said thoughtfully. "I like a good picture myself; don't have to listen so hard and you can see faces. But then there's the summer. One good thing about dough — you don't have to sweat in the city, begging your pardon, Mrs. Hale. We can go to one of these summer resorts. Like Rockaway."

"Oh, you wouldn't want to go there!" Gloria said, speaking for the first time. "It's so cheap and dirty."

The Burkes looked uneasy. Burke said: "Well, maybe you're right. It's Newport we'll probably wind up in."

"Newport!" Gloria exclaimed. "Why, nobody goes there now!"

Mrs. Burke nodded wisely. "I told you so."

Burke stood up and glowered. "That's the whole damn trouble. When you got dough, you got to know where to go and have the right friends —"

"Edgar!"

He subsided, grinning shamefacedly. "Yeah, it's right you are, Molly. But it's kind of tough at first. Your old friends don't come around, and I can't say I blame them. I knew a fella, got himself a big job. Before that we used to be real bosom pals. Then I didn't feel so good, seeing him. He had plenty of dough to spend, and I had to be kind of careful. That's how our old friends are now. The real ones, I mean. The others don't count. They're after what I feel like throwing them. And I ain't the throwing kind, so they stop showing up, too.

"The folks with our kind of dough" — he smiled resignedly —"we go around and say hello, and they don't return the visit. I guess they don't make friends as fast as poor folks, because they got to worry about who's out to trim them.

"But, hell, I'm having a swell time. I don't have to get up at five any more to go to work. Soon as we get to know the ropes we'll get along swell. When I get to feeling kind of low, all I got to do is think about all the things we got to make us happy, and I perk up."

Mrs. Burke asked: "How about some coffee? Ada can bring it in a jiffy."

"No, thanks," said Hale, rising. "We have to be running along."

"How about coming around some night?" Burke offered.

"I'd like to," Hale evaded. "You know how it is. I'm pretty busy these days. I'll try to make it."

The Burkes looked hurt. "Thanks," said Burke, with unconvincing heartiness. "It was real nice of you to drop in." Significantly, he didn't mention seeing them again.

"You'll get straightened out soon," said Hale despairingly. "The first chance we get, we'll drop in again. It'll be soon."

Everybody shook hands and grinned frantically, and finally the Hales escaped and fled.

Hale was too depressed to speak. Gloria was silent for a while; then she said: "I know they're your friends, Billie-willie; but aren't they rather ... common?"

"Don't call me Billie-willie!" he snapped. But it wasn't merely irritation. His new self-confidence had been smashed. He remembered Sisyphus and his boulder.

SITTING in the office, trying to avoid the sight of Gloria, he thought as courageously as he dared. He got nowhere, because he couldn't bring himself to attack the fundamental issue. That he should cause suffering he expected, for that was Lucifer's partner's function. But that he could also cause happiness had been the counterweight to his unpleasant role. More than he knew, he had depended on the existence of that power.

He wondered uneasily why the Burkes weren't happy, despite his having given them everything to make them so. They tried to convince themselves that they were, but they were obviously miserable. From the fact that he tried to find arguments based on the premise that their unhappiness was either his fault or theirs, he should have guessed that the answer was buried deep in the roots of his basic philosophy. Digging it out would require tearing up the foundation of his character. What that would lead to, if he ever tried it, even Johnson's facile imagination might have had trouble foreseeing. The ruler of the Western Hemisphere would find his acceptance of the philosophy of Hell fatally shaken. When Lucifer's partner loses faith in the rationalization that permits him to cause suffering — hell literally breaks loose.