None But Lucifer

Chapter VI

Lucifer sat down, laughing. He didn't roar with diabolical amusement; he used a spasmodic chuckle, as if he were merely laughing at a story at a businessmen's luncheon. "I must give you credit," he gasped. "You do have a remarkable amount of nerve."

"Why?"

"Well, the idea of coming to Lucifer with a proposition of that sort. You know who I am, yet you dare ask me for a partnership. It takes blind, insane courage —"

"Oh, no!" Hale grinned rather smugly. "I hold the whip hand, Lucifer. When you do that you don't really need courage."

"Really?" Lucifer leaned forward interestedly. "You have the whip hand over me?"

"Precisely, Lucifer."

"I wish you wouldn't call me that. It makes me think of the medieval conception of me, which you described so nastily. I'm not like that at all, really. Please call me Mr. Johnson. And please explain what you mean by that remark about the whip hand."

"Very well, Mr. Johnson. I happen to have the key to your defeat. I can get anything I want any time I want it, and you can't stop me. Moreover, anybody can use my system. If you turn me down, I'll pass the system along to as many people as I can. In a little while everybody would be using it and getting anything they wanted. Then where would you be?"

Alexander P. Johnson took out a box of cigars, offered one to Hale, who declined, and lit one himself before answering.

"Well," he finally said, "that's a problem. Yes, sir. Where would I be? Frankly, I don't know. It would upset my careful plans, as you say. But what is your system? Unless, of course, you don't care to show your hand."

Hale shook his head good-humoredly. "I don't mind. You can take a look at the cards, but you can't tell how I'll play them. Get what I mean?"

"I think I do." Johnson tapped the ash off the cigar with a pompous flourish. "You keep me guessing whether you're breaking a pair to fill a straight or going after a full house. Is that it?"

"Well, if you like metaphors, that's my system. I go after what I want obliquely, by seeming to aim at something else, but grabbing sideways at what I actually want. You see?"

"Can you give me a concrete example?"

"I don't know if I should," Hale replied doubtfully.

"That's up to you." Johnson spread his elbows on the desk and twinkled at Hale. "After all, how do I know you really have me cornered?"

That was the question, Hale thought; or rather, that was how this very undiabolical Lucifer had chosen to trap him. He'd have to reveal his secret, which might make it worthless as an instrument of blackmail. But would he have to reveal it? That posed the question of whether Lucifer was the insidious mind reader he was supposed to be.

Here were the facts: During the antics that had led up to his calling on Lucifer, he had kept his mind off his ultimate objective as much as possible. But he couldn't help an occasional gloat as he saw how his plan was working according to schedule. Still, until he had bluntly told Lucifer his terms, Lucifer had not known his objective. Which meant that Lucifer was not a mind reader, and had to judge men by their words and acts. So Hale felt confident in parrying:

"Well, I lay out a systematic campaign. I can be aiming at money, fame, love, an easy life, or influence — but I wouldn't show which one I really wanted. You'd have to guess. The only way you could stop me would be by keeping me headed away from all of them."

"I see," said Johnson. "Such as apparently wanting to marry Gloria Banner, but actually going after a job. Or it could be vice versa. Quite clever, I must admit. But doesn't it take more planning than most people would be capable of?"

"Not much. The main thing is to keep your mouth shut about what you really want. The next most important thing is to get out of your social class. You can depend on your own class or the one just above it to defeat you — like the way I was kept out of a job because I didn't have a deposit, and then given one I couldn't keep. But if you break out of your class, the one you're crashing isn't sure of your aims, and can't crush you so effectively.

"If you're trying to get a job as a clerk, your objective is pathetically simple to figure out. You want to eat. But if you go after a hundred-thousand-a-year position, with a crack at the boss' daughter, it gets tougher to analyze your goal. You may want social position, or a soft life on the family income, or a big name, or the money itself. In the first case, you'll work under conditions that aren't much better than no job at all, except for the Tantalus hope of a raise. So you'll be made suitably unhappy. But in the second, maybe you won't be ecstatic, but at least you'll have security and decent surroundings, and you can arrange your routine the way you like."

Johnson put his thumb in his vest. "Do you really think so?"

"Oh, the rich probably suffer, too. In Hell nobody can be entirely happy. But that isn't the point. My system is good enough to force a partnership out of you."

"Well, I'll admit one thing," said Johnson. "The world is much too large for even my extremely efficient organization to follow every single person. Like you, I lay out a plan and depend on the social forces operating on the more influential individuals of the various classes to carry it through. If a detail goes wrong, I correct the detail, and the plan goes through pretty much as I want it.

"With you, though — my design was seriously upset. My statistical department found an upturn in employment, a phenomenon we check carefully. First, you were given a ten-thousand-a-year job-the equivalent of perhaps ten annual wages. Then, at least twenty people were given employment through you: your servants, a replacement order on the display car you ... uh ... bought, the apartment, which had been vacant for over a year, and so forth. Mostly through the medium of credit — since you deferred payment — a sizable quantity of money was set in circulation. That had to be investigated.

"My admirable detective bureau discovered that you were the cause. I also learned about your leaving the rooming house, and your difficulties in trying to get a job, and that directly from a transient hotel of the worst sort, with an extremely unprepossessing appearance, you had gotten that position from Banner, and the new clothes, the car, and all the rest, all of which you abandoned in the most unusual circumstances.

"Frankly, I was puzzled. You could have lived under those pleasant conditions indefinitely, yet you chose not to. It disturbed my plans unbearably. The number of people you influenced would amaze you. I admit I was bewildered, for once in centuries."

Hale sat back, feeling very pleased with himself. It is not given to every man to baffle Lucifer.

"Because of that," Johnson continued, "I'm afraid you've made me suspicious. What troubles me is your goal."

Hale smiled confidently. "Just what I said: a partnership."

"Ah!" Johnson cocked his head. "But is it? Up to now you've used your system of indirection to keep me guessing. Don't tell me you're reversing and really saying what you're after?"

"Why not?"

"Well, since I know your method and your objective, I might trick you."

"Not a chance! I don't have a thing to be afraid of."

"Why are you so certain?"

"Because I have you by the throat, that's why. You could concentrate on holding me, alone, down; but what would you do about a hundred, or a hundred thousand, people using my system? You couldn't run the rest of the world!"

Johnson rested his cheeks against his fists. Of all the unsatanic poses he could have struck, this was the most absurdly human. The pressure pushed his mouth into a naive little rosebud. "That's true. Yes, I suppose that is true. Still, abandoning your system of indirection —"

Hale wondered uneasily why Lucifer kept harping on his system. Was he implying something? But Hale was too near his objective to worry much. What could Lucifer do? Nothing! "Well?" Hale demanded brusquely. "Yes or no?"

Johnson stirred. "I was thinking. You're quite right in taking the bold course. I am helpless — against your system!" He stood up and held out his fat hand. "I give in. Before you change your mind, I insist on making you my partner, to share control of Hell!"

Hale sprang to his feet and seized the hand. They grinned like a couple of salesmen who have just sold each other a million dollars' worth of goods at fifty percent commission.

The simile was apt. In his triumphant confusion, Hale neglected to analyze Lucifer's concluding speech. If he had, he would have discovered that they had both sold each other a bill of goods.

But especially Lucifer.