“You see!” he gloated. “You understand! Evil is open to us, and all the unutterable pleasures of the damned, who cry out in transports of joy at the bite of the flames of Hell. Do you see?”
The girl made no answer, sobbing in a chaotic mingling of pain and excruciating pleasure. She was incapable of speech or connected thought; the alcohol beat against her brain with a persistence that defied resistance. After a moment, she stirred, struggling erect to a sitting posture.
“Evil!” she said dizzily. “Evil and good—what’s difference? All in a lifetime!”
She felt a surge of tipsy elation, and then the muffled music of the mechanical piano, drifting through the closed door, penetrated her befuddled consciousness.
“I want to dance!” she cried. “I’m drunk and I want to dance! Am I drunk?” she appealed to her companion.
“Yes,” he said.
“I am not! I just want to dance, only it’s hot in here. Dance with me, Nicholas—show me an evil dance! I want to dance with the Devil, and I will! You’re the Devil, name and all! I want to dance with Old Nick himself!”
She rose unsteadily from her chair; instantly the room reeled crazily about her and she fell sprawling. She felt the grasp of arms beneath her shoulders, raising her erect; she leaned against the wall and heard herself laughing wildly.
“Funny room!” she said. “Evil room—on pivots!”
“You’re still to learn,” came the toneless voice of Nicholas Devine. “Do you want to see the face of evil?”
“Sure!” she said. “Got a good memory for faces!”
She realized that he was fumbling with the catch of her dress on her left shoulder; again some remnant, some vestige of sanity deep in her brain warned her.
“Mustn’t,” she said vaguely.
Then suddenly the catch was open; the dress dropped away around her, crumpling to a shapeless blob of cloth about her diminutive feet. She covered her face with her hands, fighting to hold that last, vanishing vestige of sobriety, while she stood swaying drunkenly against the wall.
Then Nicholas Devine’s arms were about her again; she felt the sharp sting of his kisses on her throat. He swung her about, bent her backwards across the low table; she was conscious of a bewildered sensation of helplessness and of little else.
“Now the supreme glory of evil!” he was muttering in her ear. She felt his hands on her bare shoulders as he pressed her backward.
Then, abruptly, he paused, releasing her. She sat dizzily erect, following the direction of his gaze. In the half open door stood the nondescript bartender leering in at them.
X
Rescue from Abaddon
Pat slid dizzily from her perch on the table and sank heavily to a chair. The interruption of the mustached keeper of this den of contradictions struck her as extremely humorous; she giggled hysterically as her wavering gaze perceived the consternation in his sharp little face. Some forlorn shred of modesty asserted itself, and she dragged a corner of the red-checked table cloth across her knees.
“Get out!” said Nicholas Devine in that voice of rasping metal. “Get out!” he repeated in unchanging tones.
The other made no move to leave. “Yeah?” he said. “Listen, Bud—this place is respectable, see? You want to pull something like this, you go upstairs, see? And pay for your room.”
“Get out!” There was no variation in the voice.
“You get out! The both of you, see?”
Nicholas Devine stepped slowly toward him; his back, as he advanced upon the bartender, was toward Pat, yet through the haze of intoxication, she had an impression of evil red eyes in a chill, impassive face. “Get out!”
The other had no stomach for such an adversary. He backed out of the door, closing it as he vanished. His voice floated in from the hall.
“I’m telling you!” he called. “Clear out!”
Nicholas Devine turned back toward the girl. He surveyed her sitting in her chair; she had dropped her chin to her hand to steady the whirling of her head.
“We’ll go,” he said. “Come on.”
“I just want to sit here,” she said. “Just let me sit here. I’m tired.”
“Come on,” he repeated.
“Why?” she muttered petulantly. “I’m tired.”
“I want no interruptions. We’ll go elsewhere.”
“Must dress!” she murmured dazedly, “can’t go on street without dress.”
Nicholas Devine swept her frock from its place in the corner, gathered her wrap from the chair, and flung them over his arm. He grasped her wrist, tugging her to an unsteady standing position.
“Come on,” he said.
“Dress!”
He snatched the red checked table cloth from its place, precipitating bottles, ashtray, and glasses into an indiscriminate pile, and threw the stained and odorous fabric across her shoulders. She gathered it about her like a toga; it hung at most points barely below her waist, but it satisfied the urge of her muddled mind for a covering of some sort.
“We’ll go through the rear,” her companion said. “Into the alley. I want no trouble with that rat in the bar—yet!”
He still held Pat’s wrist; she stumbled after him as he dragged her into the darkness of the hall. They moved through it blindly to a door at the far end; Nicholas swung it open upon a dim corridor flanked by buildings on either side, with a strip of star-sprinkled sky above.
Pat’s legs were somehow incapable of their usual lithe grace; she failed to negotiate the single step, and crashed heavily to the concrete paving. The shock and the cooler air of the open steadied her momentarily; she felt no pain from her bruised knees, but a temporary rift in the fog that bound her mind. She gathered the red-checked cloth more closely about her shoulders as her companion, still clutching her wrist, jerked her violently to her feet.
They moved into the gulch of the alley, and here she found difficulty in following. Her tiny high-heeled pumps slipped at every step on the uneven cobbles of the paving, and the unsteady footing made her lurch and stumble until the dusty stretch of the alley was a writhing panorama of
