The president stepped forward, extending his hand. An arm emerged from beneath the desk, shook Kipp’s, and quickly vanished.
Nothing further happened. Young tenaciously remained in his sanctuary. Kipp realized that, short of dragging the man out bodily, he could not hope to view an entire Kenneth Young for the present. With an admonitory cough he withdrew.
The miserable Young emerged, wincing as his cramped muscles relaxed. A pretty kettle of fish. How could he entertain Devlin while he wore a halo? And it was vitally necessary that Devlin be entertained, else the elusive vice presidency would be immediately withdrawn. Young knew only too well that employees of Atlas Advertising Agency trod a perilous pathway.
His reverie was interrupted by the sudden appearance of an angel atop the bookcase.
It was not a high bookcase, and the supernatural visitor sat there calmly enough, heels dangling and wings furled. A scanty robe of white samite made up the angel’s wardrobe-that and a shining halo, at sight of which Young felt a wave of nausea sweep him.
“This,” he said with rigid restraint, “is the end. A halo may be due to mass hypnotism. But when I start seeing angels—”
“Don’t be afraid,” said the other. “I’m real enough.”
Young’s eyes were wild. “How do I know? I’m obviously talking to empty air. It’s schizo-something.
Co away.”
The angel wriggled his toes and looked embarrassed. “I can’t, just yet. The fact is, I made a bad mistake. You may have noticed that you’ve a slight halo—”
Young gave a short, bitter laugh. “Oh, yes. I’ve noticed it.”
Before the angel could reply the door opened. Kipp looked in, saw that Young was engaged, and murmured, “Excuse me,” as he withdrew.
The angel scratched his golden curls. “Well, your halo was intended for somebody else-a Tibetan lama, in fact. But through a certain chain of circumstances I was led to believe that you were the candidate for sainthood. So—” The visitor made a comprehensive gesture.
Young was baffled. “I don’t quite—”
“The lama… well, sinned. No sinner may wear a halo. And, as I say, I gave it to you through error.”
“Then you can take it away again?” Amazed delight suffused Young’s face. But the angel raised a benevolent hand.
“Fear not. I have checked with the recording angel. You have led a blameless life. As a reward, you will be permitted to keep the halo of sainthood.”
The horrified man sprang to his feet, making feeble swimming motions with his arms. “But…
but… but—”
“Peace and blessings be upon you,” said the angel, and vanished. Young fell back into his chair and massaged his aching brow. Simultaneously the door opened and Kipp stood on the threshold. Luckily Young’s hands temporarily hid the halo.
“Mr. Devlin is here,” the president said. “Er… who was that on the bookcase?”
Young was too crushed to lie plausibly. He muttered, “An angel.”
Kipp nodded in satisfaction. “Yes, of course… What? You say an angel… an angel? Oh, my gosh!” The man turned quite white and hastily took his departure.
Young contemplated his hat. The thing still lay on the’ desk, wincing slightly under the baleful stare directed at it. To go through life wearing a halo was only less endurable than the thought of continually wearing the loathsome hat. Young brought his fist down viciously on the desk.
“I won’t stand it! I… I don’t have to—” He stopped abruptly. A dazed look grew in his eyes.
“I’ll be… that’s right! I don’t have to stand it. If that lama got out of it… of course. ‘No sinner may wear a halo.” Young’s round face twisted into a mask of sheer evil. “I’ll be a sinner, then! I’ll break all the Commandments—”
He pondered. At the moment he couldn’t remember what they were. ‘Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife.’ That was one.
Young thought of his neighbor’s wife-a certain Mrs. Clay, a behemothic damsel of some fifty summers, with a face like a desiccated pudding. That was one Commandment he had no intention of breaking.
But probably one good, healthy sin would bring back the angel in a hurry to remove the halo. What crimes would result in the least inconvenience? Young furrowed his brow.
Nothing occurred to him. He decided to go for a walk. No doubt some sinful opportunity would present itself.
He forced himself to don the shako and had reached the elevator when a hoarse voice was heard haloing after him. Racing along the hall was a fat man.
Young knew instinctively that this was Mr. Devlin.
The adjective “fat,” as applied to Devlin, was a considerable understatement. The man bulged. His feet, strangled in biliously yellow shoes, burst out at the ankles like blossoming flowers. They merged into calves that seemed to gather momentum as they spread and mounted, flung themselves up with mad abandon, and revealed themselves in their complete, unrestrained glory at Devlin’s middle. The man resembled, in silhouette, a pineapple with elephantiasis. A great mass of flesh poured out of his collar, forming a pale, sagging lump in which Young discerned some vague resemblance to a face.
Such was Devlin, and he charged along the hall, as mammoths thunder by, with earth-shaking tramplings of his crashing hoofs.
“You’re Young!” he wheezed. “Almost missed me, eh? I was waiting in the office—” Devlin paused, his fascinated gaze upon the hat. Then, with an effort at politeness, he laughed falsely and glanced away. “Well, I’m all ready and r’aring to go.”
Young felt himself impaled painfully on the horns of a dilemma. Failure to entertain Devlin would mean the loss of that vice presidency. But the halo weighed like a flatiron on Young’s throbbing head.
One thought was foremost in his mind: he had to get rid of the blessed thing.
Once he had done that, he would trust to luck and diplomacy. Obviously, to take out his guest now would be fatal insanity. The hat alone would be fatal.
“Sorry,” Young grunted. “Got an important engagement. I’ll be back for you as soon as I can.”
Wheezing laughter, Devlin attached himself firmly to the other’s arm. “No, you don’t. You’re showing me the town! Right now!” An unmistakable alcoholic odor was wafted to Young’s nostrils. He thought quickly.
“All right,” he said at last. “Come along. There’s a bar downstairs. We’ll have a drink, eh?”
“Now you’re talking,” said the jovial Devlin, almost incapacitating Young with a comradely slap on the back. “Here’s the elevator.”
They crowded into the cage. Young shut his eyes and suffered as interested stares were directed upon the hat. He fell into a state of coma, arousing only at the ground floor, where Devlin dragged him out and into the adjacent bar.
Now Young’s plan was this: he would pour drink after drink down his companion’s capacious gullet, and await his chance to slip away unobserved. It was a shrewd scheme, but it had one flaw-Devlin refused to drink alone.
“One for you and one for me,” he said. “That’s fair. Have another.”
Young could not refuse, under the circumstances. The worst of it was that Devlin’s liquor seemed to seep into every cell of his huge body, leaving him, finally, in the same state of glowing happiness which had been his originally. But poor Young was, to put it as charitably as possible, tight.
He sat quietly in a booth, glaring across at Devlin. Each time the waiter arrived, Young knew that the man’s eyes were riveted upon the hat. And each round made the thought of that more irritating.
Also, Young worried about his halo. He brooded over sins. Arson, burglary, sabotage, and murder passed in quick review through his befuddled mind. Once he attempted to snatch the waiter’s change, but the man was too alert. He laughed pleasantly and placed a fresh glass before Young.