"But the ancient Greeks were the ones who had really studied life. Instead of a lot of childish brimstone, bats, and eternal coal shoveling, they pictured Hell as a place of psychological torment.
"There's Sisyphus, eternally pushing his boulder up a hill. Every so often he tires, and the boulder rolls down to the bottom, and he has to start over. There is no summit to the hill, but Sisyphus doesn't know that. Nor has he thought about what it'll be like if he does get to the nonexistent top. In real life some rare Sisyphus does sometimes perch his boulder on the peak of some hill. Then he either realizes what a stupid waste of effort it was, or, worse, he sees other, bigger hills with even more magnificent boulders to roll up them. Those, he thinks, will be success at last."
"Yeah!"
"Then there's Tantalus, starving and dying of thirst, up to his neck in a pool of cool, clean water, with a gorgeous cluster of fruit just in reach. He bends over to drink, and the water recedes. He reaches for the fruit, and the bough sways just far enough away to keep it out of reach. Sometimes he actually touches it; that keeps him trying. At last, when he's close enough to death, he succeeds!
"The fruit, of course, is dry, tasteless pulp."
Johnson fidgeted silently with a stack of paper for a minute. "How does that concern me?"
"Well, you can see the analogies. All of us suffer like Sisyphus and Tantalus, either in the realization of the meaninglessness of success, or in not attaining it. In short, the earth we're living on is Hell. We don't have to die; we're already there. I don't know what we're paying for, nor where we committed the remarkable sins that seem to require such vicious punishment.
"All I know is that if this is Hell, it's a damnably efficient one. From the time we're born until we die, we suffer unbearable tortures — physical, mental, and spiritual; but most of all fiendishly ingenious psychological tortures. For instance, when we're young we have health and strength and sharp senses. But we haven't the knowledge to use them properly. By the time we've learned to make something of them, we're getting old and losing them, and we know that our knowledge comes too late. Too late — and we know there's no going back; that we'll just get older and feebler until we die. Yet we cling to life.
"That's the greatest psychological torture of all; the instinct of self-preservation, the urge to live at all costs, no matter how much we've suffered or how much we'll continue to suffer as long as we live."
Johnson shook his head. "There's always hope," he said piously.
"Right! You saw to that. First a blind young hope. A few failures blunt that quickly enough, don't they? Then that eager hopefulness becomes a cowed, hopeless hope that maybe things will turn out all right after all. If they don't — there's always hope. If success comes and turns out futile and tasteless, there's always hope that it'll be better next time. So we keep on trying and inviting more disappointments.
"There was the oil magnate who hoped to live to a hundred — and died just short of it. There was the aluminum magnate who quit business at seventy, dashed off his memoirs quickly before he died — and then sat on his porch every day for twenty years, waiting for the death he hoped for. Pleasant, isn't it? A fit invention of Lucifer."
"I still don't see how that concerns me."
"Don't you? A Hell as efficient as this needs an organizing genius. It could never run so well without a manager."
Johnson returned Hale's thin smile with a troubled exposure of obviously false teeth. "And you think I'm the — manager, eh?"
"I don't think so. I know you're Lucifer!"
Johnson relapsed into apprehensive silence.
"You don't deny it, do you?" Hale accused.
Johnson strangled in an agony of indecision. "I would if you weren't insane! Of ... of course I deny it!"
"I came prepared for that," said Hale quietly. He stood up slowly and took out the gun. Johnson looked incredulous, jumped up, and tried to disappear behind the desk. The chair was jammed against the wall. There wasn't space.
"Don't! Don't! Please —"
He couldn't get his head down. It was impossible to miss. Hale took careful aim at the white, bobbing head. If the scrupulously cleaned and oiled mechanism hadn't jammed, he'd have blown that head right off.
Hale grinned and threw the gun away. "I was prepared for that, too. Now, just to make sure it wasn't an accident —" He took out the hunting knife. He wasn't even slightly nervous as he leaned over the desk, behind which Johnson was shrieking. Holding the sheath in his left hand, he tried to draw the blade with his right. At least a dozen vulnerable points were exposed.
— if the knife hadn't stuck in its sheath.
Just to be certain, Hale yanked again, with all his strength. He didn't expect it to come out. It didn't. Still grinning, he tossed the knife on the floor.
"There," he said. "That's my proof. That gun has never jammed before. It couldn't. With the safety catch off, you could practically shoot it by blowing on the trigger. And who ever heard of a knife sticking in a clean sheath a couple of sizes too big?"
Alexander P. Johnson straightened up. The puffs of white flesh crinkled into a genial network. "I admit it," he said in his hearty businessman's voice. "I'm Lucifer. What's your game, young fellow?"
"That's pretty obvious. I want to go into partnership with you."
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.