The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Red Light of Mars, by George Bronson-Howard.

There is to me something typically American about the life-story leading up to the play contained in this volume—a story in which the creation and publication of that play will undoubtedly represent only a temporary climax. I want to tell it, not only as a curiosity, but as something that has genuine significance to the world of letters. The meaning of this story, read in conjunction with the work that has grown out of it, is that the time when books were bred by books only is about gone now. The new literature will come straight out of life, apparently, and will in consequence have made a decided gain, even though it may have lost something else. As it springs forth, full-blooded and ready-tongued, we shall undoubtedly hear melancholy voices proclaim the vulgarization of poetry. But if, on hearing such protests rising from some anæmic scholar’s cloistered cell, we look back through the ages and fix our gaze not only on the little followers but on the great leaders—on the Dantes and Shakespeares and Cervanteses and Molières—then we shall find that almost always the term of opprobrium quoted above has implied a vitalization of the supposedly menaced art form.

The author of “The Red Light of Mars” is now in his thirtieth year, having been born on January 7, 1884, in Howard County, Maryland. His father was a Baltimore merchant and insurance broker, who, in his turn, had a Confederate blockade runner for father and an officer in the English army for grandfather.viii His mother sprang from an old French middle-class family, which had to emigrate from Dijon after the Edict of Nantes.

George Bronson-Howard studied in a private school in London, in the public schools of Baltimore, and in the City College of the same place. At fourteen he lost both parents, just as he was about to enter Johns Hopkins University, his age having been carefully concealed in order that the examinations might be open to him. Instead he became a messenger in the Weather Bureau at Baltimore. While thus employed, he submitted successfully to the first of a series of civil service examinations, each one of which required some skilful disingenuousness lest the applicant’s age prove an insuperable obstacle. During the next seven years, Mr. Bronson-Howard busied himself successively as follows:

Reporter on the Baltimore American; clerk in the office of the Secretary of the Navy; stenographer at the Brooklyn Navy Yard; reporter on the Brooklyn Citizen; press representative for one of the Frohman theatres and for one of George W. Lederer’s productions; reporter on the New York Herald; clerk in the Bureau of Navigation at Washington; clerk in the office of the Collector of Customs at Manila, Philippine Islands; assistant to the Collector of Customs at Iloilo, on the island of Panay; newspaper correspondent at Manila; member of the Philippine Constabulary; contributor of fiction stories to various newspapers and magazines; employé of the Imperial Chinese Customs Service at Canton; agent of the Imperial Chinese Government in Shantung Province; war correspondent for the London Chronicle with the Russian army in Manchuria; magazine and newspaper writer at San Francisco.

He was twenty-one when he came East and began to produce a series of clever, quick-moving stories, designated by himself “as melodramatic magazine yarns.” The type of hero around which they were built was wholly new: a secret agent of the State Department. Appearing in book form under the title of “Norroy, Diplomatic Agent,” those stories met with such success that their author found himself relieved for a long time from all necessity of “pot-boiling.”

Since then he has written more stories, three romances—one of which so far has only been published in Germany—essays, plays, criticism, musical revues, etc. He has acted as play reader for the late Henry B. Harris, as dramatic editor on Smith’s Magazine, as dramatic critic on the New York Morning Telegraph, as vaudeville impresario at Paris, and as librettist for the Winter Garden at New York. He has dramatized a novel and novelized a play. He has lived at London, Baltimore, New York, Paris, and Nice—to settle down at last in a house of his own at Belleterre, Port Jefferson, Long Island.

So far Mr. Bronson-Howard has a dozen plays of every conceivable type to his credit, some of them being wholly his own and some being written in collaboration with others. Most of these works have already been produced, some with marked success, and others are scheduled for performance in the immediate future. Thus, for instance, “The Red Light of Mars” will be staged by H. H. Frazee during the season of 1913-14.

There are two qualities that seem to characterize all of Mr. Bronson-Howard’s dramatic productions: a keen perception of the demands and possibilities of the stage, and a shrewdly humorous grasp of human nature. His command of stagecraft is so facile thatx at times it strikes the critic as a danger to his art. And it has the faults as well as the merits generally accompanying such facility. He would probably be much surprised if he heard himself referred to as a “psychologist”—and yet that is just what he is, in his own practical, intuitive, American way. With these two qualities, which provide for the framework of his art, goes, as its informing and directing spirit, a strong inclination to “side with the under dog.”

LIST OF PLAYS BY GEORGE BRONSON-HOWARD

PERSONS

THE RED LIGHT OF MARS

THE FIRST ACT

Entrances: Folding-doors to laboratory; door to garden; spiral stairway; door to hallway.

A long, low white room: white-panelled, white book-shelves, furniture, etc.; upholstered in light yellow and light blue chintz.

Garden seen through two windows on either side of upper door. Folding-doors to laboratory closed.

A sunny day in early winter: late morning. The sun is almost blinding on the white room and the highly polished brasses.

As the curtain rises: a knocking on the garden door, which continues. The knob rattles. The door gives way, almost precipitating Thomas Vanillity on his face.

Vanillity is a college professor, lean, spare, ascetic-looking; wears a dark gray English walking suit; tailed coat; derby hat. Has typical sad Englishman’s moustache, a “drooper”; closely shaven lantern jaws. Carries neatly folded umbrella.

Well: upon my word—upon my word! (Picks up hat, umbrella, etc., which have fallen, and straightens himself) I wonder if he’s in? (A slight explosion4 from laboratory; he drops articles again) Yes, he’s in! (Picks up articles a second time; straightens tie, etc., in glass; twirls moustache; then goes to fire; stretches out hands) A-a-ah!

VANILLITY (going to folding-doors and calling into laboratory) Oh, Addington, Addington, my boy! (A second explosion from laboratory. Vanillity goes to door, admitting Judge Hippolyte Critty: grossly but respectably fat, with an unctuous smile and a walrus-tusk moustache)

Ah! Professor! Professor! Come to claim all the credit of your pupil’s great discovery? (Waves hand toward laboratory)

I did nothing, Judge, nothing. A man like Dr. Agnus would succeed without my teaching or anyone’s. (Shows by his attitude some servility to the Judge)

Well, he thinks you’re responsible. “If it wasn’t for Professor Vanillity,” he keeps saying—

Boy—you’ve hit it—boy! The great scientist (bows to laboratory doors) retains all his boyish shyness and lack of confidence. He even (preening himself) gives me credit for part of his success. Because once I said the time was coming when science would keep us alive forever. He says that put him on the track.

VANILLITY (with melancholy satisfaction, looking toward laboratory) Immortality! No more building up just for Time to tear down!

Of good women, I mean. They are the only dangerous kind. We learned how to handle the bad ones a few thousand years ago!

JUDGE CRITTY (going back to the days of boyish confidences) Tommy: it’s my profession to be a hypocrite. That’s why I enjoy talking to you. Being absolutely dependent on me, you can’t give me away. (Laughs foxily) If I didn’t have you, I’d become a Catholic. I simply can’t keep all my cleverness to myself. That’s why most people enjoy confession. And so I say again: the good women are the only dangerous kind! (Goes to cellarette) Have a drink! There! (Pours)

Nonsense, down with it! I need you today, and when you’re dead sober, you’ve got a conscience. (Drinking with him) Have a cigar! Take it! (Lights cigars for Vanillity and himself)

Yes, sir! The only dangerous kind! That’s why I’m sorry for that poor fellow! (Nods toward laboratory)

Poor devil? Poor fellow? Who just won the Nobel prize—the most discussed scientist in the world?

She’ll be here any minute now: was to meet me here quarter to. I came before time to find you; knew you’d be the first to congratulate him! Another drink?

And William Tromper’s the general manager of the Magnus Steel Works! He’s going to offer our friend (waving toward laboratory) one hundred thousand dollars a year! Chief chemist of the works!

One hundred thousand dollars a year? My God!! (A silence; changed tone; nods toward laboratory) But he won’t take it!

Take it! (Having poured it, he forces it on Vanillity again) And so do you! (With emphasis)

No; I won’t have another drink! I know you can smother every good feeling in me with a little liquor—

But this I won’t do; I will not; I won’t! To stop a man on the trail of immortality? No! No! No!

For the reason that nine hundred and ninety-nine Americans do anything “to be as good as anybody.” One hundred thousand dollars a year is the income on two million. It will enable her to gratify every social ambition. She’s ambitious: for herself—I said that, too.

[Vanillity falls into a stupefied rage; his hand sneaks toward decanter; a horn is heard off stage.

You will! And I’ll tell you why. Magnus put me where I am, and he’ll put me on the Supreme Bench the first vacancy. Then I’ll put you into the first College Presidency! Now, d’you understand?

It’s life. Unfortunately. But life just the same. We didn’t make life. But we have to live it. Here! Have another drink. (Pours it)

[Vanillity gulps it and sits disconsolate. Judge Critty opens the door for Fanny Felix, her mother, Mrs. Felix, John Magnus, and William Tromper. Fanny is, par excellence, the well-bred, cold, detached, sure-of-herself American girl of the upper class, very lace-y and lingerie-y. Mrs. Felix looks almost as juvenile; she has less dignity; her coat-collar and tie might be a man’s; her smart hat is feminine enough, and so are her small, high-heeled shoes. John Magnus has an air and an eyeglass; wears a morning coat, vest, and trousers of light gray, and a gray10 top-hat to match; needs only a pair of binoculars slung over his shoulder to be attired for the races. William Tromper is the vulgar, pig-headed, ignorant, self-made American business man. His small pig-like eyes show sullen hatred, an animal’s cunning, and a savage’s determination. He is continually ready to assert authority over supposed inferiors and equality with superiors: the breed that has made America infamous. He is dressed in that stiff supposed-to-be-correct fashion that marks such people: a suit of expensive but ugly, hard-faced cloth, pressed into knife-like creases about the lapels and trousers; a shining white waistcoat, starched and creased; a hard-boiled shirt; a mathematically perfect rhomboid of a sausage-like necktie; shining, creaky laced shoes of patent leather, etc. When the party enters, and during the first few words of the following conversation, Magnus’s valet takes their heavy motoring coats.

JUDGE CRITTY (speaking over his shoulder while shaking hands with the women) I don’t think Professor Vanillity ever had the pleasure of meeting you, Mr. Magnus.

Just had a little talk with my old friend here; he shares our opinion, Mr. Magnus.

I do not know that I hold any opinion on the subject, Judge Critty. I came along simply to please the young lady.

VANILLITY (with a ray of hope and in a tone slightly thickened by drink) Then, Mr. Magnus—you don’t wholly believe in the sacrifice of a career for money? (Magnus frowns and looks crushingly at Judge Critty)

The Professor is inquiring as to your views, Mr. Magnus. (Looking hard at Vanillity) His own are fixed—

Sacrifice, did I hear you say, Professor? A young fellow gets an offer of a fortune a year and you talk about sacrifice. He hasn’t had any career yet.

Say twenty-five years’schooling and work to make forty thousand dollars—that ain’t much of a career? I made that much long before his age.

The case is different here. Yours can be no criterion. You married probably on less than Dr. Agnus’s schoolboy allowance—

Grew up together, we did. She worked and I worked. To a man that wants comforts, it’s cheaper, marrying.

Showing just how far apart the cases are. The young lady here (nods toward Fanny) does not make marriage cheaper.

You don’t need to be, John. You lift your eyebrows and people hustle. You get what you want before you’re conscious of wanting it. But you do want Dr. Agnus to take his offer (points to Tromper), don’t you?

Take your time. A business man can’t speak the truth so quickly. That takes practice.

That one chemical discovery of his alone will save the mills—I wouldn’t undertake to say how much—that is, if he can do it!

I wish I could convince the lot of you where your duty lies! Can’t you see that all this comes from not giving women the vote long ago?

Really! When a woman is allowed to figure out her duty to the nation, she’ll want her husband to give it his best, instead of giving his best to her.

It will be more than interesting to you when we win, John Magnus. Why do you control the money-market of America? Because women, having no interest in business, urge their men to make as much money as they can. They can do this only by taking advantage of other people’s weakness; not realizing that, if they do this to weaker people, stronger men will do it to them. And so it’s dog eat dog, and as you’re the biggest one in the kennel you eat them all—

Thanks for making me a big dog anyhow, Loo—But how would women voting change all this?

Why, as soon as women realize that modern laws of business, applied to the home, would make every man a thief and every woman a prostitute, they’ll stop urging their husbands to make more than the next man—

Loo! I hereby subscribe any reasonable sum you say to the cause of suffrage—thereby planning my own downfall!—

Or showing your contempt!—Well! you’re amusing anyhow, John Magnus. If somebody could make you take things seriously, you’d be as great a man as your subsidized newspapers say you are—

Really, my dear Mrs. Felix;—even the hysterical newspapers admit Mr. Magnus is a great man!

My dear press-agent—we are in the presence of my friends, not of the public. You may consider yourself off duty.

No man can be selfish and great. Mr. Magnus only amuses himself by playing a game with the public. But how he can be amused by winning games from his inferiors, I don’t know. That’s the kink in his greatness.

I have just begun to realize their inferiority, Loo. That’s why the game begins to bore me—

By endowing that brilliant boy in there to carry on his search for immortality—give him some of your useless millions.

Mother! He isn’t a beggar. He can give himself and me everything we need by work.

He can give the world more iron rails for railroads; more armor-plate for battleships—

More money for Magnus, you mean. Railroads and battleships never made anybody wiser or happier—

Whisking past interesting places at a mile a minute isn’t travelling. That’s moving pictures for the rich. (To Magnus) John, with your money translated into real power—not petty authority—you’ll go down to history as big a man as the boy in there—your name linked with his—

No. The boy is a fool at everything except his work. But his wisdom in that is greater than all of yours, John Magnus.

Well, at twenty-nine he’s made animals’hearts and lungs immortal. In fifty years, endowed with millions—

You do see, don’t you? Now, will you bury that talent in a vulgar manufactory—

Prosaic manufactory, then. (To Magnus) Remember, when you bury him, you bury your own chance to be a great man! Whoever heard of a mere money-maker in history unless as the patron of artists, writers, or scientists?

Loo, I’ve a good mind to make you marry me! I believe you’d make life interesting again—

You’d have to change a good many of your ways before you can do that. I admire your brains, but what’s the sense of having them when they aren’t put to any good use? Will you endow the boy? (Nods toward laboratory)

I’ll endow him—to please you. But I demand interest on my investment. I’ll build the finest workshop a scientist ever had: give him ten, twenty, a hundred assistants; the most renowned scientists in the world, no matter what they cost.—He can spend any amount on whatever he needs in his work. But I’ll have no young society-man business—

He’ll stay here, on Long Island. And he’ll spend no more on himself than he needs to live decently. If I sacrifice millions, he must sacrifice something—

Addington was giving up his work for my sake—our home’s sake. Mr. Magnus hasn’t changed that any.

Addington has only a few thousand a year income. Handicapped that way, he might never fully succeed in his work. Mr. Magnus makes it impossible for him to fail.

And meanwhile live in this poky seacoast village; ten miles from a railroad; not half a dozen nice families near us—

A motor will get you to New York after dinner, in time for the theatre, the opera, or a dance—

Why, my gowns, my little expenses come to twenty-five hundred, and I don’t have half enough—not a quarter enough. I won’t—I’ll live in the right places and know the right people and do the right things—or I won’t marry—

They must be taught to like what’s best for the world. Fanny—do you mean you’ll deliberately spoil Addington’s career? Refuse this great chance?

Business is business, Mrs. Felix. Your daughter would make a good business woman.

Live on Long Island out of the season? Have a poky flat in town and one servant? Never entertain? Never meet worth-while people? Be out of it altogether? I’m better off unmarried!

If the man I love doesn’t love me well enough to make some sacrifices for my sake—

Women sacrifice enough when they surrender their liberty—when they take on the duties of marriage—

Will you pardon us just a moment, Mr. Tromper? (Shows him into the hallway and closes the door) You others don’t matter, knowing us as well as you do. Now, Fanny, what do you mean?

Well, I’ll tell you what my duties as a wife were: spending more than my husband could get decently; making him overwork to pay my extravagances; keeping him until four in the morning at silly affairs, knowing he must work while I slept it off; flirting with every idle attractive man I met, letting him think I was a fragile flower plucked by a hand of a savage who could not appreciate my fairy fragrance! Those—and neglecting my one child until she grew up to be an encyclopædia of all a woman should not be—those were my wifely duties!

If I had brought you up properly instead of leaving you to snobbish servants and fashionable incubators, you might be some man’s blessing instead of curse! Plain words, Fanny! May they start you thinking and keep you from ruining the mind and killing the body of some good man like your father, who died a bankrupt, and—though our fashionable physician friends made it look otherwise—a suicide! (To the others)—All of you knew this?

I hate myself when I see what I was yesterday in you today. I hate myself for letting that yesterday live in you instead of killing it when you were a child. I only saw myself as I was just before your father decided to finish things. Knowing he would lose me anyhow, he told me how fatal his love for me had been. “A beautiful poisonous orchid,” he called me—(breaks down) Fanny, Fanny, Fanny!

Mother, when we get home, I will pack and go to Aunt Clara’s. In the future please don’t concern yourself about me any more than about any other young woman of your acquaintance.—Shall we go?

No need to disturb him. He is busy, and no doubt happy—I will break the bad news in a letter.

Oh, no, indeed! He’ll soon find some other steel manufacturer or somebody of the sort to offer him just as much.

Easily!—I told him he must either accept or lose me—and rang off. Two minutes later he was frantically accepting—

I wanted you—all of you—to make argument—good argument—so that he would see it was for the best and not sulk and grieve afterwards. (Angrily) Mother promised she would not interfere.

Please do not refer to father again—now that you’ve shattered all my ideals about him—

If the boy accepted so readily, I think perhaps, Loo, it would be an injustice to cancel that first offer—

I suppose Tromper—my good faithful beef-eating Tromper—will spread the report that I’m losing my mind if I do—

I only wish there was some one to save the poor boy from you, Fanny—I do, indeed!

[A ring is heard at the door and Vanillity goes to open it. Noel Onfroy enters. He has pointed beard, twirling moustache, pointed hands, hair cut en brosse; wears black velvet jacket, rich red tie, 26riding trouserss with white Bedford cords, black patent-leather boots; bare-headed; he is smoking a pipe.

Where is the Chub? (Nods toward laboratory) Elixir-of-lifing? (With real pleasure) How are you, Charlotte Corday? (Shakes Mrs. Felix’s hand) Where do you buy those pink cheeks? I couldn’t paint better ones myself.

When I take liberties with you, Lydia Languish, I condescend. (Pointedly turning his back) Anger?

And women love him for it; they love him, the coxcomb! They used to pay him five thousand dollars, less for their portraits than for the slangings he gave them—(this while Mrs. Felix explains to Onfroy in undertone)

Mr. Magnus, please don’t include me in your generalities—I am not like other girls—

That one remark proves you are, dear Lady Disdain. It is one of the ninety-and-nine banalities that make up what the average young woman calls her opin27ions. Another is the following remark addressed to men who are sane about women: “Ah, wait until you meet the right one!”

They love it—love it! Fanny pretends not to; but that’s because she knows he’s married and she can’t get him. If the boy in there treated you as this coxcomb does my daughter, you wouldn’t mind living on nothing a year in the Sahara Desert.

Oh, I know—Olive was all you are, Fanny, and more. Then along comes the coxcomb. In three weeks she’s telling me he says he can’t afford to marry her—and won’t I please settle a dowry on them so that he can give up portrait painting where all the women are wild about him—marry her—and settle down to art for art’s sake.

I’ll say this for you, Ivan the Terrible: you were game; took your medicine standing up; came across with the dowry like a little man, thereby earning the thanks of every true lover of art. No more pot-boilers, no more portraits, no more demnition fool chromos for the demnition fool public! You’ve got yourself into history, Kubla Khan. You will live as my patron.

The way we poor financiers are patronized! It’s the second time I’ve been told that this morning—

Oh, the Chub? (Glancing at laboratory) Right, too! (To Magnus) Endow him, Governor. The other thing is damnable—downright damnable. I’ll say this—and me saying it means a lot—I’m nobody compared to him. (Hastily) Not personally! I should have said: “Art’s nothing to his sort of science” (To Fanny) One little bit of pink and white prettiness stopping the greatest thing science ever tackled!

FANNY (goes to the Judge, stopping her ears while Onfroy talks; then tearfully) Judge Critty, you’re the only one with the least chivalry. Why should I be abused so? Because I want my husband to have some pleasure in life? Instead of frowsing in smelly chemicals all day—risking his life—

Oh, no, my dear Miss Felix! Oh, no! (Eagerly) No risk!—Not the slightest! It’s as peaceful, as harmless as—as—

[A succession of sharp reports like pistol-shots ring out. The folding-doors are thrown back and H. Addington Agnus stumbles in backward and sits down, staring blankly, seeing nothing. Smoke arises from the laboratory. As it clears away, Agnus rushes back again, examines something through a microscope.

Addington, stop making yourself ridiculous. (She goes into the laboratory and shakes him)

Addington! There are peo—(muffled by kiss)—ple here, I tell you—(Releases herself)

Just had a most successful discovery—chemical—out of my line, rather—but—(Seizes and kisses her again)

[Agnus has, in his embarrassment, been going from one to another, shaking hands.

[Now that he is nearer, one perceives that Agnus is a youthful, enthusiastic, absent-minded genius, with a strong face save for his unsophisticated juvenile glance. This is now hidden, for he wears heavy tortoise-shell spectacles; also white trousers and tunic, heavily braided at collar and sleeves and along trousers legs—an old army uniform in fact, with insignia stripped off, though the buttoned shoulder-straps remain.

Fanny, you didn’t mean that, did you? Of course you didn’t—I know you didn’t! Why—after me winning the prize—

TROMPER (again, to the amusement of the others, walking around to face him) We wouldn’t take up all your time, you know, doctor.—After hours you could go on with your work—

Correspondence-course immortality—a few hours every night will open every door for you—even immortality—

You have said you valued my opinion, my dear lad: you have called me a second father—

And Little Red Riding Hood called the wolf grandmother, too. (To Agnus) Decline it!

Good day to you, Addington! (She is at the garden door; Agnus rushes over to her; she throws off his hand) You’ve broken your word. Good-bye!

[The following colloquy is held in half-whispers to give impression that the others do not hear it.

No! But I’ll try to—hereafter. Let me go. You’re making a scene! (Wrenches herself away and goes out; he follows)

He needs a guardian. (Points to laboratory) He leaves his wits in there: hat-checks his brains.

It’s damnable! (At the window) Here he comes back—you win. It’s written all over his face.

She’s given me time to think it over. (To Onfroy) She’s gone on to see Olive.

Yes, since you long-distanced, Olive’s worried everybody in the house nearly to death for fear her luncheon wouldn’t be grand enough for you New Yorkers. I told her: “Olive, when an artist entertains business men, he condescends—”

TROMPER (swelling with righteous wrath and the desire to say “I’m as good as you are” but afraid to insult Magnus’s son-in-law) I’ll eat at the Club here—thank you. (Stalks forward in dignity)

I take you with the usual salt, Onfroy. (Recovers his dignity by having thus made light of Onfroy) Professor!

[Vanillity, feeling very wretched, shakes Agnus’s hand. As the Judge’s back is turned, he shakes his head vigorously. They go out.

She’ll come back if I stay. Argue the boy out of it—do. Addington, listen to Noel. (She goes)

Now, you bally ass; you Simon Simple; you Babe-in-the-Wood; you Hans Clodhopper; you Little Claus; you—you everything that is asinine—listen to me; if you accept, I’ll never speak to you again!

More than that, you Lilliputian brain-storm, I’ll publish your infamy in every medical and scientific journal—in every newspaper and magazine, too, not controlled by this money-mad crew. You!—the biggest man in science—to make a nigger-slave of yourself for jews-harps and frill-fralls! Go part your hair in the middle and comb it over your forehead! You’ve got a forehead under false pretences.35 Your hair ought to grow into your eyes. Your eyes should close together like a smelt’s. You ought to have a chin running due south. Your head ought to look like a chipmunk’s or like a Bartlett pear.—Bah!

You read that in a book. You won’t be sure you know her when the fashions in women’s clothes change. You’re mad with the madness of a man who has never lived with women before.

Oh, you fish! You eel! Worthy of her? She isn’t worthy to carry your coat! You’re Addington Agnus, the man who won the Nobel prize—try to remember the name—Addington Agnus.

A dozen times. And if Olive made me dissatisfied tomorrow, I might love a dozen times more before I got satisfied again. Marriage made me. It’ll ruin you. Before I married, I was a pot-boiling portrait-painter. Now I’m the great Noel Onfroy, the American Velasquez. Love should serve genius. It’s more important for me to paint good pictures than to be foolish for six months or a year with some woman who doesn’t know a Michael Angelo from a Christy chromo—or who thinks Gibson is a great36 artist. Now, Fanny doesn’t know the difference between your work and that of some tame rabbit in a hutch discovering cheaper ways of tanning leather and dyeing cheese-cloth—

No, but I soon made her learn. I told her if she didn’t I wouldn’t marry her. And I didn’t, either, until she spent a year in one of the Julian studios learning how little she was and how big art was.—You ought to send Fanny to a School of Science before you marry her—

[Outside a figure is seen at that moment darting through the bushes, trying to hide, and finally crouching down.

Of the minx you love; the caterwauling, manicured, massaged, Paris-gowned cocodette you love—

A cocotte who keeps chemically pure because she knows she’ll fetch a higher price in the marriage market—a married kept-up lady—

I intend to marry the woman I love. The woman whose shoestrings you aren’t fit to—

Quoting Chambers—McCutcheon novels again—novels written for fudge-munching slatternly wives to read on their way to an equally trashy matinée—their house-work undone—Fanny Felixes without money—

[The hitherto crouching figure shoots up outside and a face becomes visible at the window. Neither one of the men inside sees it.

You fool! You fool! (Throws Agnus from him and goes out slamming the door behind him)

[The face at the window turns to see Onfroy go hurriedly by. Agnus, rushing after him, throws open the door, thus disclosing a man in the garden who is waiting to enter.

Did I hear my name mentioned? (Enters. He is as unlike the popular conceptions of The Devil as possible, being short, squat, respectable, fat and Teutonic. He is followed by a queer light that darts and circles the ceiling) You called me, I think! (He closes the door)

Oh, I know, I look like the devil, but not like The Devil. But this was the only body handy when I39 got back from Mars the last time, so I had to take it—

There’s the real owner of this carcass—a crazy German anarchist.—He was howling for The Devil just as you were—wanted me to help blow up all the capitalists—

Tags after his foolish body, hoping I’ll get tired of it and give it back, I suppose.—And so I will when I find a better one. It’s no fun for a fiend of my renowned gentlemanly appearance to be masquerading as a Dutch comedian. Worse than that—the police are looking for it. That’s why I was hiding in your garden when I happened to hear you call me. The Devil, in jail—a fine tale to take back to Mars.

Don’t call me “man.” That’s a deadly insult. If ever a respectable Martian was sick of anything, it’s that unreasonable ignorant ridiculous combination of poll-parrot and monkey—

Poor lunatic! I must humor you, I suppose.—Have you forgotten there have been great men?

Never. I have been all the great men in history. All the great men have been The Devil: alias Wis40dom. By taking possession of men’s bodies I have tried to set up an ideal to strive for, set the race an example. And then, when I had to quit and go back to Mars, each time the human’s little soul came back to its body and, finding itself with too much power, was responsible for all the inconsistencies, treacheries, and cruelties that have puzzled psychologists and historians—

You are a plausible lunatic, anyway. Would you mind mentioning who you were, for instance—

Oh, all the first-rate fellows—Confucius, Buddha, Mahomet—St. Augustine, Martin Luther, Moses—to mention a few—Shakespeare, Dickens—those were my sentimental days—

Bernard Shaw was my last appearance. Just before my last trip to Mars. I see he’s made good use of the plays I wrote for him; produced some very41 good imitations; caught my style, so to speak. I was sorry to leave Shaw. I was having rather better success waking up the world than usual. But I simply had to go back to Mars—

It’s my home. When news came there some ten thousand years ago that man was evolving into a thinking brute, the Martians realized the dawning intellect would need a guide. I was the most ignorant of all Martians—I had tried to lead a revolt to make the body independent of the spirit. So, instead of going on to a higher mental state—my soul transferred from planet to planet until finally I should reach the Sun, which is the perfection of the soul—instead of that, I was sentenced to stand still for ten thousand years; to act as the link between Mars and the Earth; to make men fit for Mars, d’you understand?

Mars, you will remember, is red. That’s where your dim poetic devil-makers got their hell-fire from.

The only true thing they tell about me is that I tempted man through woman to wisdom. I have been hated and reviled as wisdom always is. But my sentence of exile will soon be over—the ten thousand years will soon be up—and then I can quit42 ridiculous man forever and go to school again to fit myself for the Sun.

I wish that ridiculous Dutchman’s soul would quit bothering me! (To the light) Isn’t it enough that you’ve got me hiding from the police, you imbecilic disembodied spirit? (To Agnus) Who was that handsome fellow in the velvet jacket who just ran out of here? I’ve been following him about for days hoping he’ll ask my help. Then I could give this preposterous paunch back to that light comedian over there. (Points to light) And I hope the police get it.

You’re a scientific kind of a lunatic, right enough. Souls do leave their bodies during sleep or hypnotism or—

An ordinary lunatic would have pretended he could change himself into anything, if he was The Devil—

As soon as I take human shape, naturally I’m bound by human laws. And each time I get back from Mars, I must circulate around until some one calls for me. There are always plenty of people calling for The Devil. And then I have no choice—I must take the first I hear and change when I can. And so I’m chained to this refugée until I get something better—like that velvet-jacket fellow’s body, for instance. (Suddenly) Is he married?

Who? Noel Onfroy! Yes—I’m mad—overwork, I suppose—(suddenly clouded) worry! I don’t wonder I’m mad; I don’t wonder! (Feels his head and closes his eyes)

Oh, too bad he’s married. I should have thought of that before. I’d rather be a single Dutch comedian than a married Adonis. It’s bad enough being tied to one human body, let alone two. (Looks around and sees that the light has disappeared) The Dutchman’s gone, eh? He goes back to his foolish attic every now and then to see if the police have found any bombs yet. There are seven sewed up in the mattress—and I don’t dare take them out of the house for fear the police may be watching for a man with a suit-case. That Dutchman will get me in jail yet.

AGNUS (holding his head and looking at The Devil between the palms of his hands) You use singularly unclassical language for the Fount of All Wisdom—

The American language. When I’m in England, I use English.—By the way, are you married?

Not, eh? Well? (He rises, advancing on Agnus, viewing him speculatively, and finally approvingly)

Why—er—what are you doing? (In panic) Don’t look at me like that. (He starts up)

You called for me to help you. I’m going to. (He goes to the windows and pulls down the blinds)

Here! What! (He tries to rise but only sits starkly upright with staring eyes. A faint luminosity glows over his head)

[The Devil pulls up the chair close; their knees touch. He leans forward, staring into Agnus’s eyes. The luminosity grows brighter about Agnus’s head, rises little by little, flickers and flutters. Meanwhile a dull crimson light has glowed over The Devil’s head, and now it grows steadily and moves across the space until it rests on Agnus’s head, where it settles and sinks downward, disappearing.

Take the Dutchman’s body, doctor—I’ve got yours—(A second luminosity glows at window) Quick! Here comes the Dutchman back. Take his body, or you’ll be homeless. It’s not much but it’s the only one I’ve got to give you. Quick! I need you!

[Each of the two luminosities dart toward the senseless body. One settles and disappears. The other flies viciously around and around the head. The Devil lets up the shades, shaking with laughter.

That might be either! The language of men is strikingly similar under great loss. Who are you? The rightful owner or an usurper?

Kill me? You can only kill your own nice attractive body. You’ll suffer for any harm done to it when I give it back. So don’t knock out any teeth, or you’ll have toothache all your life.

Oh, go home to your bombs again, Schwartzenhopfel! This gentleman didn’t want your old body. When he sees how ridiculous it looks on him, he’s liable to shoot himself—or yourself. Nobody can love a body like that. (He draws aside curtains hiding a mirror set in the wall) I leave it to you, Agnus. Can you blame me for wanting to get rid of it?

[Agnus, seeing himself as a short squat German, staggers back clutching his throat.

THE DEVIL (having smoothed down his coat lapels so as to reveal a silk shirt, and twisted the carelessly tied necktie to a smart shape, takes off tortoise-shell spectacles, presenting, instead of the absorbed scien46tist, a young debonair man of fashion) Now—am I a lunatic? (Searches pockets and finds a letter)

THE DEVIL (correcting him suavely as he exhibits the address on the letter) Dr. Agnus, please!

THE SECOND ACT

The scene and the time are unchanged, although one minute may have elapsed since the last word was spoken. During this time Agnus has realized his misfortune. His face has ceased to be agonized and is now only blank.

The Devil still stands at the back of the chair, twirling Agnus’s former moustache and admiring himself.

With these slight alterations in your dress, your face lighted up with my attractive smile (smiles) and my bold intelligent gaze, you are a handsome fellow, Agnus—by Saturn, a handsome fellow! I really believe I’d rather have this body than that velvet-jacketed fellow’s—

Don’t say that. It’s not much of a body. I have all sorts of pains and aches—neglect, you know. You’ll be ill half your time. You won’t have any fun. Now this body (strikes the Dutchman’s) may not be good-looking, but what’s that? It’s a fine healthy body—a sound body—

I do thank you—physically. But that isn’t it. I’m engaged—to a girl. She—she—she won’t know me in this body—

Oh, what am I to do? What am I to do? (Agonizedly) Oh, don’t chase her away.

When a woman loves a man, she doesn’t care which one kisses first so long as they kiss. I’m glad she doesn’t love you. If she did, rudeness and neglect, even knocking her down, would only make her love you more. But women get very dignified when a man they don’t love ill-treats them. They’re only too glad of an excuse to be rid of him.

I know now everything ever written about you is true. To hit a woman! To hit a woman!

An empty bureau-drawer is best. It makes a lot of noise, scares them to death, and doesn’t really hurt them at all.

Dr. Agnus, please. A very neat little book could be written on the psychology of beating children and women—for their own good, of course! Never hurt them: that’s very coarse! A blow should be simply a little more effective than the strongest word—and should never be used until the last threat is exhausted. Of course, if your vocabulary is limited—(Shrugs his shoulders) That’s why there’s so much wife-beating among the lower classes. The really well-educated man doesn’t need to beat his wife—when he can swear at her in seven different languages—

Dr. Agnus, please. (Indicating the light) The Dutchman is angry, too. He thinks it’s all right to blow up a building with a couple of hundred people in it. But to lift a hand against a woman “save in kindness”—oh, my!

And you, doctor, vivisect dogs oblivious to their screams of agony. But you’d refuse to speak to the man who inflicted a harmless blow on his wife. Oh, you ridiculous humans!

A blow at the right time saves many a civilized woman. Women have only begun to be civilized—since I posed as a woman once or twice: George Eliot, George Sand, and a few others. You don’t laugh this time as you did when I said I was Shakespeare and Shaw—

You see I discovered—in spite of all my work—that as soon as I built men up to a highly civilized state, they fell right down again. There was Egypt—look at the Pyramids. There was Greece—I was proud of Greece—its philosophy—drama—architecture—I’ve never done so well since. There was Rome. What fellows those Romans were—owned the world. There was Spain—so did she. England! I still have hopes of England under my new system. But what happened to the others? Smash! Crash! Bang! And I had to start training savages again. I didn’t realize what the matter was—I tried every system—and then, when England started to smash, my eyes opened—the fault was women—

Why, women have always been our refining influences. They draw out our nobler selves.

They draw out your sentimental selves, cunning minxes. Men were dragged down, their philosophy sapped, their reason rotted, by living with inferior creatures. You see, while men were out battling with circumstances and learning to use their brains,52 women were slaves. Had brains, right enough, but didn’t get a chance to use them. Men played the grand act with them (imitating a pompous man’s tone): “Now don’t bother your little head about that, dearie, papa’ll fix it.” Well, about the beginning of the last century, I realized I must let men alone for awhile—and work on women. So first, I created an industrial revolution that would send women out to work in the world—like men—

That proves what a devil you are! (Sentimentally) Ah, those good old days when every father could support his daughter until she married—when every wife was in her true sphere—the home.

That shows how men’s brains have gone back while I worked on women. I was so absorbed in women that I forgot men for fifty years until, thoroughly alarmed, I created Bernard Shaw out of an ordinary Irish wit by becoming him—

Oh, yes, I was Ibsen. But that was in the cause of women’s education—to champion the New Woman—

No great ones. Well, my work on woman has been effective. She’s learned in fifty years what men took thousands to learn. In another fifty she’ll be men’s mental equal. And her sons will be Supermen.53 Then the world will be able to get along without me—

AGNUS (jumps up and is about to open the door, but remembers his changed appearance; he peers agonizedly out of window and starts) It’s Fanny—Fanny!

Just say: “I accept, Fanny—go back and get the others.” There’s no time to explain.

An arrogant minx, apparently. You’ve trained her badly. But we’ll soon fix that!

Will you go—please! She’ll look in the window in a moment and see me—I mean you—please go!

“I accept, Fanny—go back and get the others.” But no putting your arm around her: no kissing!

[Fanny rattles the knob; the door is opened impatiently, and she enters angrily.

Was that ringing like a fool’s? Suppose you go out now and ring like a sensible person—just to see if I can tell the difference!

[Fanny appears dumfounded and cannot find words. The Devil smiles encouragingly at her.

[Fanny stares at him. Agnus realizes his position and grows shamefacedly silent.

Heard me speak so much of you—feels like an old friend.—Call her “Fanny,” Schwartzenhopfel. Call him “Hop,” Fanny—“Hop” for short.

You must learn to love Hop, Fanny. If I should die, I should never want you to marry anyone but55 Hop. (With a tremendous slap on Agnus’s back)

Oh! it’s all right, Fanny. It’s all right! (Carefully) Fanny—I—accept—go—and—get—the—others—

I will. I will. Oh, you dear! (Kisses him again and goes out through the upper door in the rear)

[The Devil turns a look of reproachful and frigid dignity on Agnus. The light dances about in joyful hatred.

Get out of here, you Teutonic accident! (To Agnus) Dug a little share for me, didn’t you? Married next month!

Petty? John Magnus—while not the richest man—controls the money-market. Petty?

Any man with brains enough to control money-markets might be a fifth-rate scientist, a fourth-rate painter, or a third-rate author! He must be petty if he’s willing to be nothing but a first-class financier. One thing I never was—a financier! Couldn’t waste my time. Financiers, lawyers, stock-jobbers, and thieves generally are the tumors on the human race! When I get through training women, their superman sons will be the surgeons who remove those tumors—(Suddenly) I see! She wants you to give up science for a paying job under Magnus—eh?

That’s enough. And without my help! Why, that was my very next job! To take some scientist’s body for a few years and start the world on the path toward longer life. Of course, immortality of the body is all rot. It’s bound to wear out some time. But—five hundred years—that’s possible. It would save putting souls back into new-borns. For it takes a hundred ordinary human lives to be ready for Mars. Out of all the billions of men who have lived, we have only a few thousand earth-people up there. The second-rate geniuses—Napoleon, Caesar, George Washington, Tamerlane—all the second-raters—

Of course! All the first-raters were—(points to himself) All soldiers are second-rate. Just as all financiers are about tenth-rate—compared to the great teachers, who help humanity to progress—like—like—(struck by a thought) like you yourself. (With an access of respect) Man—I’ll do the right thing by you! Before I quit this body—I’ll give you the secret of making men live half a millennium.

And I really should give her the surroundings and luxuries that she’s entitled to—being so superior a girl—

By Saturn, you’re the most startling combination of ass and genius I ever met! Such modesty is actually first-rate—

But such infatuation is hundredth-rate. Generally to be met with among the middle classes—that is, the lowest class of intelligence—

Creatures of law and respectability always are. Aristocracy is lower-class people getting intelligence.60 Middle-class people only get money. There are hardly any American aristocrats—and those few live abroad—

A person who’d burn up your genius in the fire that boils the pot? Worse than middle-class—worthless—

Trouble is: she left this room loving me—twenty times better than she ever loved you. How can I help you—help humanity—with a drab like that at my heels—?

THE DEVIL (crosses and recrosses the room; stares moodily out of window with his hands behind back; then suddenly pointing outside the window) Who’s that?

Hurrah!! (He dashes out through the door and disappears; his voice is heard outside) Hi, there! Wait a minute!

[The Devil enters together with Doll Blondin, who is typical of the Broadway idea of refinement and taste: dark blue Norfolk jacket suit; small French skull-cap with tassel, her curly hair escaping from beneath it; high collar and jabot of lace that falls almost to her belt; short vamp suède pumps without toe-cap; preposterously high Cuban heels. The combination of country suit with city shoes, of jabot and lingerie waist—instead of tailored waist and plain collar and tie—with cap suitable only for evening wear, serve to mark her as one who dresses with instinctive taste but without the consistency of the upper-class woman. However, she is a most attractive girl—about twenty-three—and has an air of sophistication grafted on a babyish ingenuousness, which makes anything she says quaintly pleasing.

DOLL BLONDIN (turning to The Devil who has been following her in) I was told here you wouldn’t think of taking lodgers—

I’m as much the lady (primly) as any you know, even if I am on the stage. Anybody ’ud think I was a crocodile or some other wild beast the way people stare. Not used to seeing girls who know how to dress, I guess. What do these rubes know about class?

The worst kind of a “rube.” (Going over to the window he calls hastily to Agnus) Ring for the servant, Schwartzenhopfel!

I’m here for studying. (Severely) That’s why I left New York where gentlemen know how to treat64 ladies: real gentlemen—millionaires—that could buy and sell this tank town. One of them gave me this chance; a chance mighty few girls get—a part in a Vienna opera. No objections to a piano, is there?

No objection whatever. (Points to Agnus) My German friend will tune it for you. One good thing about Germans—they can all tune pianos.

TOPLISS (enters from the stairway; an unintelligent but smart-looking Englishman who wears a morning coat with gilt buttons; says to The Devil) You rang, sir?

On whatever terms she says—a room for her piano and her meals—and a bedroom—

Bathe in a servant’s bath-tub! I should say not—I’m as much of a lady as—

THE DEVIL (running to hall door and calling after Doll) Come down later and make yourself at home.

[Agnus seats himself and buries his face in his hands groaning. The Devil goes to door and admits John Magnus, Mrs. Felix and Fanny.

Tromper, the Judge, and the Professor have gone for a ride around Rothlyn. I thought—this having become a somewhat personal matter—

No mistaking you: you’re one of my trained women. Any child you will have—will be worth watching—

What! What’s this? What? My poor boy! (She puts her hand on The Devil’s shoulder)

Mother? Fanny’s mother! Oh, but that must have been when you were just a favorite of the harem!

Whatever has come over you? You—why, you—well—you of all men! (She seats herself, staring at him with a sort of fascination)

We’ve had enough of poor father for one day, Addington. Let him rest in his grave!

In his grave—good! I must find you another husband. One worthy of you. For she (indicates Fanny) must be taking after her father.

MRS. FELIX (rises and goes concernedly to The Devil; puts her hand on his shoulder) Boy, boy, what is it? What is it? (Suddenly) Addington, will you leave the room for a moment and (looking at Agnus) take this gentleman with you? I wish to speak privately with—

You had plenty of time to speak privately with—before you came in. You think I’ve gone mad, don’t you?

You think Fanny’s driven me crazy by making me take Magnus’s offer? Eh? (Laughs) Although, who knows? I’ve been called mad many times before.67 Wisdom is always madness to the ignorant—and anyone too wise for them to understand is a madman. Does this look like a madman? (Turns to Fanny) I won’t take Magnus’s offer and I won’t marry you.

Without thanks! (To Mrs. Felix, with an air of dismissal) I hope to see you soon again. Meanwhile, I’ll start hunting that husband for you. (He smiles amiably while all stare at him speechlessly: all animated by the steadily growing conviction that he is utterly insane—although his final words impress Mrs. Felix)

It’s only a spell. It’ll pass. (To Agnus) A trip’s what you need—a long trip. No work. No thinking. Just rest.

Oh, no! Everyone has restless spells. The excitement of the Nobel prize—Mr. Magnus’s offer—Fanny—

Don’t blame me, mother. I’m sure this is just what I expected—keeping at those horrid microscopes day and night. It was for his own good I advised him to accept.

Now see here—all of you. Here am I—Addington Agnus—the biggest scientist in the world today. And here is Fanny Felix—a mere girl. And because I suddenly realize my own importance and her lack of it, even you (reproachfully to Mrs. Felix) think I am mad. Think, woman, think!

But, Addington—people don’t change their entire personalities in half an hour—not naturally—

Since the Doctor seems to know his own mind at last, I think we had better leave him before he changes it again—this being the third change in an hour—

Don’t go, Mr. Magnus. I’ve got something important to say to you. (To Fanny) You can go, though—

[Fanny has been so dumfounded since The Devil stigmatized her as a “mere girl” that she has been unable to move.

[The Devil has turned back, not even waiting to see Fanny go. Agnus, half starting to detain her, half holding back, is altogether wild. Mrs. Felix tugs at Fanny from the outside.

When you come to your senses, Fanny, you will find me at Olive’s. (She goes out)

Mr. Magnus, will you pardon me—a moment. I have one last word to say to this gentleman—one last word—

May it be true; but I’m afraid not.—In here, Mr. Magnus. (Opens hall door)

I will not! Fanny—this is all a mistake. This man is not me—not I, I mean—not—

THE DEVIL (looks at his watch again—then at Fanny inquiringly; holds watch in hand) One minute.

You lack even the commonest instincts of decency. I’m ashamed to think my name was ever linked with yours.

THE DEVIL (does not take eyes from the watch during the following colloquy) Twenty-two and one-half seconds gone.

I only want you to know that I loathe and despise you. Thank Heaven, I’m cured of my infatuation. If I were to hear you were dead, it wouldn’t matter to me any more than the death of any other blackguard I had the misfortune to know—

What I could have seen in you at any time I don’t know—I wonder at myself—and I laugh—yes,71 laugh, I tell you—laugh to think I could have been so taken in. I hate you! I hate you!! I hate you!!!

[The Devil picks up from table behind him a brass ornament and throws it—his other hand still holding the watch as before. Agnus disappears in order to dodge the ornament.

FANNY (raging on through this by-play which she does not observe) I am going now, never to return. If you should see me again, look the other way unless you wish to be cut before the whole world.

Oh! you want another minute, eh? (Takes out his watch again and regards it steadily)

Don’t think I wish to detain you—Oh, no! (She laughs sarcastically) Oh, no indeed!

THE DEVIL (following the second hand of watch with finger while echoing the laugh) Oh—indeed not! Another ten seconds gone.

I only didn’t want your sleep to be troubled—if people without consciences are ever troubled. I didn’t want your sleep to be troubled, I say, with the thought of any girl sobbing in secret. My heart is quite whole, thank you. I have been simply playing72 a game all along. You flattered yourself I loved you. (Laughs almost successfully) Oh, the egotism of you men—

[The Devil throws another brass ornament in the same way as before. Agnus disappears, dodging.

FANNY (talking on through this incident, which also goes unnoticed by her) Girls must marry somebody, you know—somebody—not that you should be too much flattered by being called somebody—

You said that, too. You seem to be running out of ideas. Fifty-three seconds gone, but I used three seconds myself and hereby credit you with them. Fifty—

“’er to return.” Aren’t you going to say anything new?—Too late! Minute’s up! (Starts for Magnus)

Oh, you are sorry—Oh, Addington! I knew you didn’t mean to be cruel. (She bursts into tears and throws her arms around him)

[Agnus, who has crept up from behind, now urgently pokes The Devil in the ribs. The Devil gladly transfers Fanny to him.

FANNY (wrenching herself loose, pushes Agnus into a chair; then she almost screams with lost self-respect) Addington Agnus! I’ll never forgive you—never—never—never—(She rushes out, violently slamming the garden door behind her)

When she was quarrelling with me, you were protesting. When she tried to make up, you were protesting. And now that she’s gone, you’re protesting.

Dollars to doughnuts, she’ll find some excuse to come back. I knew a man once who went all the way from San Francisco back to Denver to get a tooth-brush he had left at home. Of course, he didn’t go to see his wife! Oh, no! He had quarrelled with her—hated the sight of her. But how much more he hated losing that twenty-five-cent tooth-brush!

If you think she’ll be back after the way you just treated her, you may know some women, but not well-bred ones—

“When it comes to a man in the case, they’re as like as a pair of new pins.” I’ll have to spring the little actress on her yet, if I want to get rid of her.

Oh, don’t do that! Don’t let her think it’s on account of another woman—and such a woman—living in the house, too. She’ll never forgive that. No nice woman would.

You lamb! I’ve known women—nice women, too, mind you—on whom such a woman—as you call her—acted like a magnet. Not that they wanted to come back! Oh, no! They wanted to save the man from an abandoned creature. (Instructively) An abandoned creature, Agnus, is any other woman. No matter how good her character is, they’ll say she’s under cover with enough crime to crowd Callao—

Dear man! The controller of the money-market kept waiting by a mere Nobel prize-winner! Terrible insolence! Get out, Schwartzenhopfel!

Oh, I mean—him! And don’t come sneaking down the stairway again, or I’ll do some awful thing to disgrace you forever. Get out! See that the young lady gets her trunks. (Pushes him off upstairs) No peeping, mind!

Are you sorry for all that swearing and temper you’ve shown since you’ve been a light?

[The light wags slowly. At that moment the hall door opens and Magnus reënters.

[Magnus’s eyes flutter as before. He struggles, but gradually yields to The Devil’s power.

[The dark of an approaching rain begins and grows gradually all through the ensuing dialogue until rain actually falls.

[He means to say: “Be damned to you”; but The Devil’s eyes drive out defiance. Magnus sits down.

[Magnus tries to disobey, but his eyes are literally torn upward and into The Devil’s.

THE DEVIL (at centre table, turns on electric cigar-lighter—an illuminated disk that burns dully)

[Magnus stares still at him. The Devil goes to Magnus and turns his head, arranging it as a photographer does for position. He points his finger along Magnus’s line of vision, turning it toward the luminous disk. Then he sits down, his elbow on the table near the cigar-lighter, and lights cigarette. Leaning his head on his palm, he stares at Magnus in the growing darkness, the red glow of cigarette growing as the light outside begins to die before the rainstorm. This red glow lights up The Devil’s face. The light bobs closer, inspecting and inquisitive.

Magnus! When you went to school, they taught78 you: “Honesty is the Best Policy.” At church: “Love your fellow-men.” You went into business. Two years later—you were a bankrupt. Why?

MAGNUS (in hypnosis: speaks dully and mechanically) I wouldn’t buy diseased animals and dye their meat a healthy color with poison.

MAGNUS (same tone, but sleepier) I wouldn’t bring foreign laborers over to do the work cheaper than Americans. The more ignorant citizens, the more rascals in Congress. The more rascals in Congress, the worse laws. The worse laws, the worse country. Worse and worse—until only a revolution could cure it. Out of a revolution—a soldier tyrant—a Napoleon—an Emperor—and three centuries—gone to hell—

MAGNUS (almost asleep; rouses himself with an effort) So, without cheap meat and cheap labor, I couldn’t sell at cheap prices. My wife sold her jewels. I kept books for a former rival.

That’s what you got for being honest and loving your fellow-men, eh? How did you get the courage to be a crook?

My boy—Charles—consumptive—needed change of air to save his life—Denver—Los Angeles79— the Riviera.—A bookkeeper gets twenty a week—(His head drops on breast again)

MAGNUS (painfully dragging out the words in spite of intense sleepiness) Tried to save enough—no use—couldn’t.—So at last moment I falsified books—sent the boy away—(His head drops)

Speculated—to return first money—won—the fever got me. I took all I could get from the office safe—plunged—won—(Relapses: head drops)

Honesty ruined you. Stealing made you rich. Loving your fellow-men nearly killed your boy. Hating them saved him—eh? (Shakes him)

Went back into the old business. Did what others did. Ran the thousands into millions. Bought steel-mills with the millions. Froze the little fellows out.

Hating everybody. Needed banks to swing deals. Gave a million to politicians. United States Treasury made my banks National Banks.

When I controlled the clearing-house, I refused some banks clearing-house privileges.

That meant: either do as you said or close their doors? When they realized that, you began to control the money-market. The National Currency? You and your friends are the Mint—the Treasury of the Nation. You finance wars—make governments—keep out of office honest men who won’t make the laws you want—(Revives him)

You could put all good men in and throw all bad ones out? But, instead, you throw all good ones out and put all bad ones in. Those who will do as you say.

[Magnus snores. A dim radiance begins to surround his head. The light draws as close as possible. A few splashes of rain fall on the windows.

I am going to teach him that while one cannot be honest in this world—today—dishonesty can be81 atoned for only by loving one’s fellows more instead of less. And loving, helping—

Disobey me once when you become a controller of money-markets, and—out you go! More: I may leave you to linger around in air until somebody else wears your body out.

It is nearly time. Remember what I say. Else better stay as you are for a short time—than for a lifetime! You are only the instrument. I the player.

[The light wags. The radiance flickers above Magnus’s head. A second light rises slowly to ceiling.

[The light darts at Magnus’s head. At the same moment the storm breaks with fury. Great splotches of rain are thrown at the window-panes. The house rocks. The light (Schwartzenhopfel) sinks out of sight above Magnus’s head. The figure of Magnus is left in darkness, the only light in the room being the suspended one (Magnus), hanging from the ceiling like a hypnotized bee, and that from the cigar-lighter which falls on the face of the Devil.2

[The Devil turns on the electricity in the fringed white candelabrum, whereby the room becomes pervaded with a gentle glow of light. Schwartzenhopfel rises, stretches, pats himself; throws out each leg, each arm; tries to speak, but is overcome with emotion and bursts into tears. From tears he is translated into hysterical laughter. The room begins to grow lighter, but furious rain continues outside. Schwartzenhopfel follows the light around the room, pointing at it derisively, his body doubling up with speechless laughter each time he points. The light moves away with dignity. Finally, to escape persecution, it flies out of the window.

Here! That is not right. (Satirically amused) Driving a controller of money-markets out into the rain.

[Schwartzenhopfel, paying no attention, leaps and bounds about the room like an unwieldly baboon. Agnus reënters by hall door.

[Schwartzenhopfel goes on dancing until he sees Agnus in full light. Then seeing himself, in Agnus, he bursts into another roar of laughter, pointing in gleeful derision and following the harassed Agnus around, each time pointing and roaring with laughter, as he did with the light.

SCHWARTZENHOPFEL (after another outbreak, hoarsely to The Devil) Did I walk like that? Look like that? Oh, what liars are looking-glasses!

Men don’t see what the mirror shows them. They see what they look to see. A good-looking, intelligent, well-groomed countenance for each.

I don’t blame you for wanting to get rid of that! (Pokes Agnus with his finger) Flabby, too.

Better trick for me than for you! Ha! Ha! (Turns Agnus around, disconsolately) I don’t look a bit better from the back! (Solemnly) I’d hate to see myself undressed.

[The light comes flying back through window. The Devil points to it. Schwartzenhopfel points also and begins following the light about as before. The light is about to fly off again in dignity, but pauses at the window.

Here! Leave him alone! (To Schwartzenhopfel) You didn’t like it when I did it to you—

That’s why I’m doing it to him. He’s a tyrant, a bloodsucker, a vampire, a murderer of poor men’s souls. He ought to be hung, drawn, quartered, and dynamited. He is—

You had better keep those sentiments to yourself. Have you forgotten who you are? With all his sins to answer for?

SCHWARTZENHOPFEL (ceases suddenly to rail and takes a cigarette which he lights) I did miss tobacco—

Searched my room—his room. (Points to The Devil) Your room now. Lucky I’m in disguise! (Taps body)

No, in your room—smoking and trying to think. If they think they can think, what do they think they can think with?

New York detectives, too. Central-office “dicks.” None of your common country constables or sheriffs for me—I’m a celebrated man.

No, you are. From Maine to Pensacola; from ’Frisco to Vancouver. Nobody makes bombs like old Schwartzenhopfel. I hope they don’t find those seven. They took me three weeks and cost three hundred dollars.

I—I hope they don’t, too. I—I think I’ll go—now—g—go—to bed. (He starts for the stairway) I wonder if they’re still there—in your room?

What’s the use being sulky, Magnus? You’re the only one here who can do it without anybody seeing you. Go on! For this poor fellow’s sake anyhow. (Points to Agnus) Want to see him in jail?

Mr. Magnus, sir—I had no hand in this—I am as badly off as you—I am Addington Agnus. That man—over there—(pointing) is The Devil.

And now I find it’s a criminal’s body, and the police are looking for it. Mr. Magnus—please—

[The light moves sulkily to the window. The storm has blown over and the rain is turning to snow. However, the light is bright enough for The Devil to turn out the candles.

When you come back, wag once—like this (wags head) if the Dutchman’s mattress is torn up. Twice if it isn’t.

SCHWARTZENHOPFEL (throwing up window and calling after the light) Over the shoemaker’s shop—next block—third floor—you can’t miss it. (Puts down the window)

Let’s spare his feelings while he’s gone. I wonder how big a check he can write.

I read he could sign one for two million dollars—ready money—a check for two millions—Ach Gott! That was why I wanted to blow him up.

Well, you’ve got your chance now. A chance no anarchist ever had before. You anarchists always complain you can’t get close enough to millionaires. You’re close enough—

I never sell ’em to blow up people. Only houses and bridges and railroads and—(vaguely)—er—places—

Do I? (Offers paper-cutter again) Prove it! (Makes the motion of stabbing) Anarchists claim they wouldn’t let John Magnus live one minute if they had the power to kill him. Here’s the power— (Offers knife again)

Dr. Agnus, please! (He fingers paper-cutter) You know, when the Anarchist Council hears of the89 chance you’re throwing away—pouff! That for you—(stabbing motion) I don’t know but what they’re right. This is too good a chance to miss. (He takes Schwartzenhopfel by the collar and flourishes the dagger)

THE DEVIL (fixes him with a look that makes him fall back) For the sake of the thousands of lives Magnus has taken to make his millions—(the dagger descends)

[Judge Critty appears at the window looking in from garden, sees the tableau inside without being seen himself, and runs off with a shocked, terrified expression on his face.

The police? An anarchist bawling for the police! The police! If the Anarchist Council heard that, they’d boil you in Standard Oil. Get up! (Sneers) Anarchist!

I might have known that a man who makes bombs to blow up—for all he knows—women and children, would be just your kind of a coward! Oh, you human beings! You make me ill! (He takes a check-book from the pocket of Schwartzenhopfel’s coat) What did you think I gave you this body90 for, you fool? To kill it? I need it too much. Where did you read that about the two million check?

Then there’s a chance, it’s true. If you’d said a New York one—Write!—(Hands the check-book to Schwartzenhopfel)

Now endorse it so: “This money is given to Dr. Addington Agnus to further scientific researches of inestimable value. The amount specified need detain no bank official in my employ from cashing it. John Magnus.”

AGNUS (scrutinizing the check, the man once more forgotten in the scientist) His signature! Magnus’s! Why, the check’s good!

Can you get anybody to believe that coward over there isn’t Magnus? Now, aren’t you glad I happened along this morning?

Wiser people—better world—morals adjust themselves. Forty crooks and one honest man in a community, the crooks would elect the honest man—because wisdom teaches them not to trust crooks. The only incurable crime is ignorance!

Who ever heard of a professional crook being a murderer, for instance? Only ignorant amateurs—like Schwartzenhopfel here.—If he wasn’t ignorant, he wouldn’t murder.

Tell that to the police. Every bomb you make is a potential murder. Why are they looking for you? Answer!

Somebody used one of my bombs somewhere. I guess somebody else snitched. And they’re trying to get something on me!

And you say I ought to be the happiest man in the world—robbed of the girl I love—of my name,92 my reputation—in danger of arrest, jail, maybe the electric chair! Very happy! Oh, yes! Ha! Ha! Ha! Can’t you give me a broken arm or leg or head to make my happiness complete?

But think of the triumph of science. (Waves the check) What’s one person’s feelings compared with the good of the world—

Nothing—except when you happen to be that person. (Feverishly) What shall I do about the police?

I’ll shift his soul over to his own body and make him pay the penalty of his own crimes—

[Schwartzenhopfel makes a dash for the door, opens it, and runs wildly out into the snow.

A mad anarchist let loose with a billion dollars! (Shouting) Come back! I won’t do it!

If you don’t come back, I’ll run the paper-cutter through your real body and rid the earth of you. (He makes a threatening pass at Agnus with the knife)

What do I care? I’ve got a better one, and all the money I want. You won’t be able to get near me. And if you try, I’ll have you put in jail as an anarchist. I’m John Magnus, now. (His voice comes from farther away) And Dr. Agnus is the man the police want.

All right, Captain: all right! (He sneaks back, holding up one arm defensively)

You disobey me again and I’ll make you wish wildcats had stolen you from your mother’s knee.

There’s Mr. Magnus back. (Addressing the light) Mr. Magnus—sir—what—what—is it all right?

I asked him: “Is it all right?” And he nodded. (To the light) Didn’t you, Mr. Magnus?

Look here; we agreed: if the bombs were found, once; not found, twice. (To the light) Which is it? Once or twice?

[Agnus stares at Fanny. Fanny advances as though searching for something. The Devil looks at her inquiringly.

Mr. Magnus, you needn’t think I came back to see him. I left my veil somewhere about.

Mr. Magnus, your chauffeur says the snow’s getting deep. We should start immediately.

You take the car, Fanny. You and your mother. You go back. Mr. Magnus stays here.

In moments of anger, the débutante’s language and the shop-girl’s cannot be distinguished. That is because—while débutantes are taught proper language for ordinary things, no one can be taught proper language for extraordinary things. So, as both débutantes and shop-girls read the best-selling novels, both go to them for the language of distress.96 Hence the similarity. (With college professor’s gesture) Class on Feminine Psychology dismissed for the day. Our next subject will be: How to Insult Young Ladies so That They Won’t Come Back.

And you—in spite of insults to the daughter of the woman you profess to care for—

Well, you see, I like the Doc—the Doctor. I am interested in his work. I just gave—

Oh, it’s all right, Doctor. I was just going to tell her I gave you a check for two million dollars!

SCHWARTZENHOPFEL (anxiously, seeing The Devil scowling) Oh, quite legitimate—scientific research. For scientific research—er—rightly researched, you know—what is two million—that is, to me!

Is this so? (Sees the check in his hand, takes it quickly and stands for a second quiet; then to Schwartzenhopfel, bitterly) Two million! And I suppose he’s not allowed to spend more than two thousand on himself—and wife—

SCHWARTZENHOPFEL (anxious to regain The Devil’s good-will) Half? All! All! No strings to my generosity, young lady. I want him to be happy at his work. He can buy an automobile—or a—yacht—or—er—jewellery—or—anything—

Ah! Addington! You are being proud now. Look at me! How I have sunk my pride, determined to get to the bottom of this. I have been wrong. I acknowledge it. I had no right to interfere with your work. I came back to tell you that—to sacrifice myself, too—

[The Devil stares blankly at her. Agnus nudges him fiercely to take his arm away from Fanny. The Devil at last takes his arm away.

But Mr. Magnus has repented. He has seen my side of the case, too. We can have a town house now, Addington, with that two million—and two motors—

Remember, I was ready to sacrifice everything for you. I didn’t know Mr. Magnus would be so generous. And now—the marriage, dear—when? [Doll Blondin reënters from the stairway, hatless and dressed in a shirtwaist.

[Fanny disengages herself from the Devil and stares at Doll: first wildly, then savagely, then catlike.

[Fanny pushes him away. Her look is that of a tragedy-queen’s as she advances with folded arms toward The Devil, who smiles impishly, sure now that he has rid himself of her for good.

[The Devil ignites a cigarette at the electric lighter, shrugs his shoulders and smiles again.

SCHWARTZENHOPFEL (indignantly, as if to say: “Remember I am John Magnus”) What?

Oh, don’t try to Sarah Bernhardt it, Fanny. You haven’t the talent. Amateurs trying to be dramatic are only comic.

FANNY (turning suddenly to Doll Blondin with a “woman-to-woman-no-foolishness” air) What are you doing in this house? Are you the new housekeeper, or the parlor-maid?

I’m as much the lady as you! Howling and crying around here. What’s the matter? Are you crazy? (Suddenly indignant) Woman? Do you think—(Her Broadway mock modesty and pretended lady-like morality halt her from saying what she means, so she explains shortly) I’m boarding here! (Violently) How dared you think anything else—Woman, yourself!

Boarding? Can’t you think of a better story than that? Why should he take boarders?

Well, anyway, he ran after me in the street and called me in. (Seeing she has hurt Fanny, she encourages the innuendo wickedly) Said price didn’t matter—he said. (Violently again) But have no fear: I won’t stay here and be insulted: I’ll go—

Miss Blondin, if the place, or the food, or the service is unsatisfactory—go. Otherwise—stay. This lady is nothing to me.

FANNY (to The Devil, seeing the admiration and rendered wild by it) I understand now! This is why you’ve changed so suddenly. The sight of this woman of the street—

Everything. Well, I won’t permit it. I care nothing for you. I hate you. But there’s a law in the land that protects defenceless women—

And I’ll see what the law says. I’ll publish you in every newspaper in the country, and I’ll tell how the great scientist ran after a strange woman—a woman he knew nothing about—and begged her to102 live in his house so she would be convenient to make love to.

Who do you think’s paying for my lessons, my education? Think I saved it out of a chorus salary? If somebody in New York were to hear such a story, it would be good-bye to taking part of my pay in three sheets. (Puts out her hand) But I’ll run in on you every now and then to say “Hello.” You are such a brute!

Indeed, miss, and indeed, miss—and as for you, Addington Agnus, I’ll stay here in this house—with mother, until our wedding-day—

Yes, I! Fanny, listen! Here is the truth! (He seizes her, overcome with love, and embraces and kisses her)

[The noise increases. The door is thrown open, and through it are seen a Detective-lieutenant and his two men, all in plain clothes, as well as Sheriff Peattie and Judge Critty. They appear just in time to see Agnus embrace Fanny and to hear her scream.

Here are the police you called for, Mr. Magnus. I brought them as fast as I could.

[Schwartzenhopfel dodges instinctively at the word “Police.” Agnus releases Fanny and plunges headforemost onto the sofa, where he hides ostrich-like among the pillows.

He’s as much my friend as yours, Constable. But he must have gone insane. I saw him—through that window—threatening Mr. Magnus there with a knife. Mr. Magnus was—I regret to say—reduced to kneeling for mercy and calling for the police—

That was only a little play we were rehearsing for charity. Don’t you understand—a rehearsal—Ha! Ha! A rehearsal!

I’m right glad—I’d hate to see Senator Agnus’s son in trouble. My apologies, Doctor—for these three New York detectives too—they just happened to be by when the Judge located me, and they came along to help me—thought it was something desperate. We’ll go—

One moment! I want that man punished. (Points to Agnus on the sofa) For the second time today—you saw him—he has grossly insulted me!

LIEUTENANT (gruffly, pointing to Agnus’s buried face) Looks guilty, Cap. Trying to hide like that the minute he sees the police.

PEATTIE (takes one quick step forward and jerks Agnus to his feet) Here, what about this? Can’t have ladies insulted hereabouts, you know.

What? Him? The fellow you been looking for all day? (Still holding Agnus by the collar)

[Peattie lets loose Agnus and draws ancient-looking Colt’s revolver, which he points at him. Agnus is now ringed around by four men with levelled weapons.

Listen, Mister—Doctor—whoever you are—you can’t give orders to the Law—

Yes, I can; and the Law can give them to you. And it does; now! There’s the Law. (Points to Schwartzenhopfel) The man who makes you a policeman; who makes your Chief of Police; your Commissioner; who makes Mayors, Governors, Presidents! You’re in the presence of Money, you oxen! Take106 off your hats to it—and take your orders from it—Mr. John Magnus—The Law.

And I order you to let Henry Schwartzenhopfel alone, now and all the time. Schwartzenhopfel (with his hand on Agnus’s shoulder) is my friend, too.

FANNY (throwing her arms around The Devil, whose look of triumph changes to one of hopeless dismay)

THE THIRD ACT

The same room as before, and immediately following the preceding situation—not even a few seconds later, for the Detectives and the Constable are just putting away their revolvers.

Doll Blondin, her admiration for The Devil growing, looks triumphant as he irritably disengages Fanny’s embrace. Some hope is revived in Doll of being rid of her.

Agnus, relieved from a terrible situation, looks for the first time gratefully at The Devil.

Schwartzenhopfel, feeling his power as Magnus and enjoying it, has assumed an air of enormous importance—by the simple method of flattening his jowls on the collar and clearing his throat, thus deepening his voice.

Judge Critty is divided between his desire to serve Magnus and his horror at open defiance of the Law—when he knows Magnus is aware that the Law could have been circumvented secretly. He has the air of saying, “Why didn’t you tell me, and I’d have arranged it.” Also his manner is extra-apologetic and anxious, for he has blundered, and he fears the loss of Magnus’s good offices.

The three detectives are blankly dismayed at having crossed the path of one so powerful as Magnus. They108 are anxious to retreat, but realize that some concessions must be made to the conventions.

St. Elmo Peattie, the Sheriff, is simply confounded: for he is an honest villager, fearing God, and, consequently, no man. He is shocked at The Devil daring to put any man—Magnus, Taft, Wilson, Morgan, Rockefeller, or even Roosevelt—above the Law. Though he has no authority in the matter—the warrants being in the Lieutenant’s hands—Peattie feels called upon to protest in the name of civic dignity, and to uphold the faith of his fathers—the faith in which Jefferson wrote; on which Burr, a Vice-President, was convicted of treason; for which Washington fought and Nathan Hale died.

LIEUTENANT (trying to make his tone official by speaking sternly, as if determined to get at evidence)

And—did he try to dynamite—er—Pete Jellyfish—or Corn Cob’s—whatever their names are?

Hush, man! Pete’s our grocer. Gus’s our butcher. Prisoner’s human, ain’t he? He’s got to eat—

I never see him dynamite nobody, if that’s what you’re trying to get at. Allus bin civil enough to me. Gi’me a cigar once.

SCHWARTZENHOPFEL (scandalized as he remembers the episode and the price) Two for a nickel! It was a—(Pulls himself up sharply)

LIEUTENANT (explaining apologetically, supposing the outbreak to be due to a millionaire’s ignorance of such cheap matters) An expression, Mr. Magnus—“twofera nickel” is two cigars for five cents. Rubes smoke ’em.

Rubes, eh? Well, thank Joshyouway, I ain’t a New Yorker, mister—where every next fella’s a Harp or a Ginny, a Kike or a Polack; where haff of ’em110 don’t even talk Amurrican. (Turning to The Devil, who has been listening with approval) Doctor Agnus, be ashamed of yourself! I’m older’n you: old enough to be Sheriff here when your daddy was Senator. And your dad, young gentleman, he told me to arrest old Commodore Vanderbilt. Yes, sir—the Commodore—driving his hosses too fast ‘long Main Street, endangerin’ lives and limbs of old women and children. Your dad, he sez: “St. Elmo, no matter who he is, any big man that breaks laws is little.” Little, yes, sir; and why? “Because,” says your dad, the Honnible Maxwell Agnus, “because, Sheriff, people who don’t know no better is goin’to say: ‘If the biggest man in the country breaks laws then them laws ’es no good’—and so,” sez your dad, “ignorant people start breakin’ ’em too—” and, sez he, “the law’s like a brick barn, Sheriff; taking one brick out makes the walls git weak and, pritty soon, the whole blamed thing starts tumbling down.”

And did the Honorable Maxwell Agnus get elected to the Senate again after telling you to arrest the biggest man in the country?

Betcha he did! People was different then. They was Amurricans. And when they found out why the Commodore hated your dad; why he was tryin’to keep him outa office agin; why, they just swan to goodness that was the sorta fella they wanted in Congress—what would take up for the weak agin’ the strong. He was Senator pritty nigh fifteen years after—

Wa-al then. Then that there Eye-talian colony got so big over to Cove Neck, and, seeing as how their votes war only a dollar apiece and a kiss for the babies, why, our votes warn’t strong enough to beat the politicians.

With the result that the railroad doesn’t run within seven miles of this village and the population has fallen to two thousand inhabitants.

Wa-al—we’re all Amurricans, anyway. It kept the Eye-talians and the Polacks out. You—can’t—buy—votes—here—and he (points to Schwartzenhopfel, meaning Magnus) can’t scare anybody like he kin New Yorkers. (He jerks his head with a sneer at the Detectives) Keeping ’em from arresting the man they’re sent to git—a furriner—not Amurrican, mind—a cowardly furriner that blows people up. Magnus, nor twenty Magnuses couldn’t keep me from doing my dooty on sich a villin—couldn’t keep any real Amurrican. (Turning to the Detectives) I’ll bet you folks ain’t Amurricans?

LIEUTENANT (who all along has spoken with an Irish accent, and now, when violently angry, speaks with a pronounced brogue) Go on, ye scut! (He makes threatening motion at him)

By your lave, Lootenant, I’ll—(Losing his temper, he takes a step forward)

You see? Not an Amurrican in the lot. (To The Devil) And so it’s with such cattle—and with anarchists—for just as your dad said of the Commodore, he’s (points to Schwartzenhopfel, meaning Magnus) as much of an anarchist as him (points to Agnus, meaning Schwartzenhopfel)—it’s with such—that the son of my old Senator has truck today. Good day to you, sir, and (sorrowfully) may you learn better before you come to my age.

Pshaw! No nonsense, my man! That old fellow just gone is worth the lot of you. With such men in your shoes, we’d hear no more talk of police graft and extortion.

Keep your tongue quiet, policeman!—Here! (Takes out a handful of bills and gives them to Judge) Give ’em these. (He looks for approval toward The Devil, who nods) Now get out: the lot of you!

That’s no kind of language to use to men doing their best to favor you, Mr. Magnus. And, as for the money, that’s an insult—

I suppose you want it sent mysteriously? From an unknown benefactor who loves your fat housewife and your ugly babies. Well—you’ll—take—it—this way—(He has snatched the bills from the Judge while talking and separated them into three parts; now he forces one on the Lieutenant)

THE DEVIL (finishing)—or—not at all—(He looks at Schwartzenhopfel to back him up)

[The Lieutenant hesitates, but takes the money114 shamefacedly. The two Detectives repeat his actions and manners.

LIEUTENANT (to Schwartzenhopfel diffidently, after looking at the women, the Judge and Agnus) I suppose (humbly) there’ll be no come-back to this? It’s value received, ain’t it, sir?

If I’ve promoted even the germ of Socialism in those robber-barons’men-at-arms, I’m satisfied—

Don’t try that fake dignity with me, you hoary-headed old fraud, because you haven’t the moral dignity back of it to hold you up. Get out, you arrant knave! (Catches Schwartzenhopfel’s eye)

Mr. Magnus—will you allow me to be so insulted by this cockerel? He’s either drunk or crazy.

SCHWARTZENHOPFEL (softly motioning The Devil to wait) Didn’t you say once, Judge, that to properly punish anarchists they should not be hanged but burned?

JUDGE CRITTY (with swelling dignity, thinking that Magnus is recalling the incident favorably) I certainly did, Mr. Magnus.

You didn’t say anything about the causes that make them anarchists, though—did you? (Catching The Devil’s eye) But how about a six-months’strike prolonged because millionaires wouldn’t pay fifty cents more a day to men who work with hot rivets two hundred feet in the air—twenty-five per cent of them killed every year? How about the wives of those strikers who died of overwork and little food trying to support homes and husbands until employers gave in? How about their children who died unborn—eh? Who was it murdered wives and children? And who, after six months, still refused even to compromise? Was it any wonder that men went crazy? Murder for murder—they said—murder for murder. Schwartzenhopfel had such a wife, such children, all dead now, and he shouted: Dynamite, the worker’s friend! (Fiercely to the Judge) And so it isn’t enough to hang him? You’ve got to burn him, have you? Well, what about the men who took an honest workman and made him what he is today?

JUDGE CRITTY (nervously, suddenly changing his attitude) Mr. Magnus, your admission delights me—for the first time in my relations with you, I—I find it—possible—to—to—be—to be—per116fectly natural with you. You cannot blame me for being a hypocrite. If you will pardon me, sir: who made me a hypocrite?—

Pardon me, sir—theoretically, no; but practically, yes, you did. If my bench orations hadn’t been passionately opposed to everything that even threatened the divine right of capital, why, you wouldn’t be considering me for the Supreme Bench now. How can a lawyer succeed nowadays except through capital?

True enough, Magnus; true enough—(Looks at the light, which has hung gravely suspended through these operations)

The greedy millionaire criminal makes all the little criminals. He needs men like this hypocrite here (pointing to the Judge)—needs them to save corporations from fines, their officers from jail—with that damnable word “unconstitutional”; just as he needs Senators to make trust laws easy to break; Governors to sign exemptions and pardons; aldermen to steal city franchises; bosses to elect those aldermen to order; murdering gangsters to kill honest voting; and police who will permit the gangsters to steal, pimp and kill, and who share in their spoils. (Still addressing the light) And every crime of the lot—yes—don’t shrink from your guilt—even the stealing, the pimping, and the killing—is the fault of the greedy millionaire. (Point117ing to the Judge) Even that might have been a man—

Just what a prostitute would say when the man to whose worst passions she has pandered seeks to be clean again and casts her off. (He opens the door again and points) Get out! (He fixes the unhappy Judge with his eyes. Unable to resist, the Judge follows the slowly pointing finger and goes out)

DOLL BLONDIN (whose admiration for The Devil has grown quickly, as evidenced by the expression on her face as she has sat listening almost with awe) You are some man—believe me!

FANNY (turns quickly on her at this danger-note in her voice, and speaks with an effort at politeness) You said you would not like a certain party to hear a certain story—

I’ll go and get mother. Even she will see who’s in the wrong now. When I’m prepared to give up everything for you—

I am. You needn’t even have a flat in town. I’ll stay here. Why, I’ll even live on your income.

I swear it. Addington—I didn’t realize how much I loved you until I saw you save your friend (points119 to Agnus); heard you defy those policemen, and—then—the way you talked to that nasty old Judge. Oh! I want you—I love you—

Oh, Addington, Addington, Addington—I love you—I love you—(She bursts into real tears; there is no tragedy in her attitude now, no affectation, no theatricalism—just real sorrow and regret)

Who’d believe us? We’d all be clapped into a lunatic asylum. Is one woman to stand in the way of science—a big step in world-regeneration? Think, man! One woman against a million better men? For the sake of humanity—think!

[Agnus turns away. It is his tragic moment; his face should be that of a combined Hamlet and King Lear—for, while to others Fanny is comedic, to him she represents earthly happiness. Fanny continues her sobbing like an animal in pain. Doll Blondin looks troubled, but stands her ground.

Ah, I knew you were too noble, Addington, too big to jilt me for another woman. “For the good of humanity!” That’s different. We’ll work together, dear. I’ll help, not hinder.

You’ve brought out my true nature. I’m changed. I see now how hateful I was.

[Mrs. Felix and Tromper enter, bundled up for motoring. They are followed by Magnus’s chauffeur and his valet carrying motoring coats.

TROMPER (grumpily, showing his watch to Schwartzenhopfel) I took the liberty of getting ready to go back, Mr. Magnus. I thought you’d forgotten the time.

You take these ladies back to New York. (To the valet) You go with him and bring me some clothes back.

And now, Mrs. Felix, good-bye! Come and see me some time. I’ll find a husband for you yet.

I don’t know but what you’re right, Magnus. After I start training you—she might be able to complete the training—

[The light darts as viciously at Schwartzenhopfel as the latter once did when he was in Magnus’s condition.

And—now—good day to all of you. Schwartzenhopfel and I are about to do some important work together. (Puts his arm on Agnus’s shoulder) So we must ask you to excuse us.

Then what about you? And as for amusement: why, there’s Magnus. (He points to Schwartzenhopfel. Then he goes, almost dragging Agnus with him)

[Agnus’s head is turned, with lack-lustre eyes, toward Fanny. They pass out through the folding-doors, closing these behind them.

TROMPER (whose indignation has been mounting, now vents himself explosively) Well, damn his nerve! I beg your pardon, ladies. Mr. Magnus, you let a whippersnapper doctor talk that way to you? You! Why, sir, I wouldn’t—I actually wouldn’t permit you to talk that way to me!

Have you gone crazy, Mr. Magnus? Discharged? After twenty-five years’service? After saving you hundreds of thousands of dollars?

John, that’s petty! That’s small, John. I never knew you to be petty or small before.

What did they want? Just union rates, union hours; white men’s pay, white men’s hours; not nigger slaves—?

New York thugs, gunmen—with brass knuckles, hand spikes, and automatics—licensed to bruise, maim and kill—

Weren’t the strikers breaking windows and burning fences? Didn’t they threaten to burn the works?

Fighting for their children and their homes, they were—for the right to have more than cattle or pigs—more than a place to sleep—and enough food to keep them working. Food! Ha! Like gasoline put into a motor-car—

No brothers of mine, those sweating, smelly ignorant dogs! I might have been born one. That wasn’t my fault. But I didn’t stay one.

No, and I’ll bet I know why. Because you spied on them, carried tales, for little foreman jobs, and sweated more work out of them.

You see, John: all crime, bloodshed, murder finally comes back to yourself. He said it: “Always saving you money.”

SCHWARTZENHOPFEL (points toward the laboratory) The—(corrects himself) D—Doctor. (Enthusiastically) The trouble about us human beings is that we don’t know nothing about nothing—

SCHWARTZENHOPFEL (disregarding her, enthusiastically) Then he comes along (pointing toward labora126tory) and shows us that millionaires on one hand—anarchists on the other—are one part right, ninety-nine parts wrong—

Worth half a million, aren’t you? Not above grafting some of that sweat-and-blood money you saved for me, are you?

No matter, Tromper, no matter—you ’re fired! I never want to see your face again.

Be careful. I still own the judges and the politicians. Don’t try to stand in my way, or I’ll job you into jail. Get out!

Percentages from haberdashers and shirt-makers, tailors, bootmakers, jewellers. Double bills: one for me, one for you—you pocket the difference?

Don’t perjure yourself. Take one hundred and fifty dollars a month—I’m buying back your self-respect with the extra fifty and giving it to you. But if you cheat again—remember, if you cheat again—jail!

Wait in there. (Points to the door, and the valet goes out; then to chauffeur) And I give you?

And the gasoline you take out every night and put back in the morning? The extra shoes that don’t wear out? The valve-cleaning and new parts that only figure in the bill? Other things—how much do they come to?

Take one seventy-five and be a decent man—a skilled mechanic who respects himself and his craft too much to be a thief. Will that do?

If they all treated us like that, nobuddy ’ud steal except dirty scoundrels, sir. (Goes out)

You see: the generals make the morals of their soldiers. Let generals loot a church-treasure, and the privates will loot a hen-roost. Magnus steals a Subway. Therefore, his manager steals his profits, his valet steals his stickpins, his chauffeur his gasoline.

Reform always begins at the top, I know. The trouble with us—(corrects himself) with Socialists and anarchists—they try to begin reforms among the ignorant. It will take me many years to break even with my criminal misunderstanding.

I’ve always wanted to say “Yes”—always hoped for the day when your great brain would resent the petty use you were making of it—

[Fanny does not hear this. For some time she has been sitting all humped up, staring blankly into space. Doll Blondin sits in same position, showing the same attitude, and the same lack of expression. The two of them look more like decorative statues than human beings, one on either side of the room. The light flies about distractedly. Mrs. Felix slowly drawing the startled Schwartzenhopfel around until he faces her and stares into her eyes.

When I’m—wor—worthy, I—I ’ll ask you to say “Yes” again—I don’t de—deserve you yet—

[Doll Blondin turns wearily around to watch them. Fanny does the same. The light pauses, satisfied.

John Magnus—you’re a great man at last— (Smiling shyly, she practically offers her cheek to be kissed) Remember my worthless years, too, and consider you’re worthy now—

[The light begins again to fly about distractedly. Schwartzenhopfel looks at it apologetically before he bends over to kiss her. The light deliberately flashes between them. Both of them stand back dazzled.

What a powerful reflection! (Smiling and holding out her hand to Schwartzenhopfel, she bends toward him again)

DOLL BLONDIN (who has been watching the light in an awed way ever since she turned) It doesn’t come from mirrors or lenses. (In an awed tone) There’s something queer about that light—almost as if it were human—

[The light stands still. The three women huddle together with that feminine instinct that prefers to die with its worst enemy rather than alone.

[Mrs. Felix clutches Schwartzenhopfel. Fanny gives another short scream. At that moment the folding-doors fly open and Agnus reënters quickly, disclosing The Devil inside.

Can I do anything? (Sees the tableau of the three frightened women, clinging to Schwartzenhopfel; his eyes follow theirs, and he sees that they are watching the light; then he falls back, holding his head)

Just let me hold one hand—just your little finger—that’ll make me brave—

[The Devil crosses to the table, scowling. Fanny tags after him, holding on to one of his fingers. The Devil looks sternly at the light. Then he turns to the women and touches the switch-key of the lighted electric cigar-lighter.

When I turn this off, it will disappear! (He waits for Magnus to understand. Then, showily, he snaps off the electric-lighter, bending down as if it required some effort) You see?

DOLL BLONDIN (since Fanny is looking admiringly at The Devil and Mrs. Felix is hiding her head on Schwartzenhopfel’s shoulder)

Nonsense. (He fixes her with his eyes) It’s gone: d’you hear? It’s gone!

THE DEVIL (catching her eye before she can look at the light) You see, it’s gone, don’t you? Gone?

Our house! (Sweetly) And, Addington, dear: it could be mine if I sued you for breach of promise! You know I’d win—your letters are so dear! And the engagement announcement that was in all the papers—and our pictures together in that Sunday Supplement—I can’t imagine where they get those134 pictures, can you? Framed heart-shape with the dearest little Cupids shooting arrows at us—you know, how you loved it—

And your money’s in trust, dear. You can’t touch the principal. So you’d have to sell this house to pay my damages. And you know I wouldn’t let you sell it, not to strangers—I’d just come and live in it, going about every day and kissing things I knew your dear hands had touched, and sitting in your favorite places, waiting for the day you’d come back and we’d sit there together!

Oh, you could come here every day and work in your laboratory. I’d let you—you’d be quite welcome—

You wouldn’t do that—your womanly instinct—your sense of shame—your position in society—

I never imagined she had it in her. (Mildly) There’s no doubt she loves you, Addington. No girl would endure the insults you’ve heaped on her135 today—(hastily) not that she didn’t deserve them—

She wouldn’t have admitted she was a beast just now—unless she loved you—madly—

Oh, I know I deserve that, too. But I wish you didn’t have the old check just to prove to you—

No. I don’t mean that. Forgive me for being selfish. The check means triumph for your work—

Means houses in New York, and motors, and private railroad cars, and boxes at the opera, too, doesn’t it?

Addington, I’d be content to live on the top of a mountain if I had you, dear.

She means it, can’t you see? She’s changed. The fear of losing the man she loves has made her forget136 all the little things—realizing that the only big thing is—love!—

Oh, Mr. Schwartzenhopfel, you have loved! You understand. Make him understand—

What damned mare’s-nest have you foisted on me this time? What’s the latest crazy eroticism you’re going to pretend to see in me?

Don’t swear, dear. You’re above it. But as for the check: I understand and I love you the more for it.

You’re angry because I’ve discovered your secret. Because you know now that I know that no matter how much you try to make your work come first, you can’t.

Oh, Jupiter! Oh, the Pleiades! Oh, the Milky Way, the Crab, and the Gemini!—Where under the light of the sun or in the bowels of the earth—in what corner of a lunatic asylum did you find that colossal, preposterous and utterly insane hallucination of a disordered brain?

In your heart, dear—in your heart. This morning I made you give up work that was dearer to you than life. You promised. Your better nature made you break that promise. Then I came again, tempting you; threatening to leave you forever. Your heart betrayed you again. And—when I was gone—you loathed yourself for your weakness.

THE DEVIL (reduced to the frigid politeness of a man who realizes he will be stricken with apoplexy if he138 allows his feelings to get the better of him again) I—I see—and now I should like to know—what was the President of China thinking while in his bath this morning?—

FANNY (placidly, seeing, in his loss of control her own dominance of the situation) Don’t sneer, darling. You loathed yourself for giving in to me a second time. “Even though my heart is broken, I will cast her out of it,” you said sternly.

You had been so modest, dear, that I didn’t realize you were a great man. That was your fault. “She doesn’t love me,” you said, “or she’d want me to go on winning Nobel prizes and being a great man. All she loves is the money I can make.” (Triumphantly) Am I right? Isn’t that what you thought?

Don’t be ashamed to concede a woman’s wit, dear. It’s all your teaching. Today you taught me to use my brain. “All she loves is the money I can make,” you said—

I know you do. That’s why you gave me the check. Sooner than marry me—thinking that I was playing a part until I could get control of the two million dollars—sooner than be married for your money you said: “Tear it up.” And that shows you love me more than your work, more than your future fame, more than the gratitude of the world—more than humanity—more than everything. And it makes me love you more than ever. (She takes his hand)

Then—I’m sorry for you. Sorry for your work, your fame, your future. But if I can’t make you believe in me any other way, why—then—here goes. (She twists up the check, strikes a match and lights it; following an old childish game, she says) He loves me, he loves me not; loves me, loves me not. (The flame scorches her fingers, but she holds it long enough to say) He loves me! (Then she throws the last blazing bit into ash-receiver and throws her arms around The Devil)

Damn it!—Doesn’t she know that if Magnus will write one check, he’ll write another!

Oh, I forgot that! I forgot that! (Sobbing on her mother’s breast) Oh, mammy, what can I do to prove it to him? This is my punishment—this is my punishment!

A devil: that’s what I am—a devil. No human being would act as I’m doing, would he?

Can’t you think of something I can do to prove I’m not the same girl who came here this morning?

It’s my fault. If I’d been a good mother, instead of a good bridge player—

SCHWARTZENHOPFEL (who has also been moved, says now sharply) Here, here! (In a hoarse whisper) Don’t you go taking such liberties with what don’t belong to you.

Not fit to associate with human beings. No, I guess not. (Looking at Schwartzenhopfel) I should have remained the Dutchman with no human ties. Sentiment and romance just make me ill.

I suppose that’s how The Devil got his bad name. Trying to cure Faust of Marguerite in order to use him for the world’s advancement. Same ingratitude, same mix-up; everybody calling me names. (Sharply to Schwartzenhopfel, who has listened) Very incorrectly reported, even at that—very unjustly—that Faust affair. Those stupid Germans—when they’re not drinking themselves into sentimental poetry, the ravings of a disordered brain, they’re guzzling themselves into gloomy philosophy—the pessimism of a disordered liver—and the fellow who wrote up the Faust-Marguerite case had both maladies (viciously) in their most virulent form! And that’s what most humans get their idea of me from—when, actually, the case was just about like this one—(meditatively) I wonder what I did to straighten things out that time? (Meditates)

I suppose I ’ll have to. Humanity has to suffer as usual. Sentiment, always sentiment, maudlin sentiment: that’s what keeps abuses unrectified, men ignorant, women slaves, the world’s intellect developing no faster than a snail crawls. Sentiment—maudlin sentiment—and I’ve lived so long among men that the cancer’s in me, too—

You have got a heart then—they did wrong you. I’ll devote years to setting you right in the eyes of the world.

Set me right in men’s eyes? Have my conduct applauded by stupid human beings? When the world applauds anybody whole-heartedly, without a dissenting voice, be sure he’s a fool or a knave! Your whole being has been in arms against me ever since I came to bring you wisdom. Now that you think there’s a chance I’ll let you be a fool again, you talk of setting me right! Let me be or I’ll repent it. (To Fanny) What would you do if I made you realize that I don’t and can’t love you?

Oh, those damned novels! (Fending her off) Wait! Go in there! The three of you. (He points to the hall door) Tell the chauffeur to get ready to go back to New York, Fanny.

I give in. I must find another body—go through another sentimental riot before I can begin my work here again. Bernard Shaws don’t grow in every village or every London. (He rises and crosses toward the window) Oh, Mars! Mars! I’m homesick again. (He stretches out his hands) Only a day away from you, and homesick already: homesick, how homesick I am—

I know, we’re not advanced enough for you yet. Why don’t you go back and wait until we are?

Man! If I only could: if I only could! But this is my punishment, and here—(waves all about him) is my hell. You—all of you—my friends, my familiars, my imps, the red fellows that frightened your own youthful dreams. Here is the fiery pit—here! But you are the Devils, and I am the tortured soul. You are the flames—I am the burning body. Yes, you:—for here is where Devils rule—this Earth is Hell! (At the window, his hands outstretched) Here I am debased, my sullen angers stirred, my soul held back from the Sun by inhuman humans who spend their lives stanching a pretty woman’s tears, while a hundred thousand fellow-creatures die for the want of a pound of summer ice, a basket of winter fuel! You: who worship a Man of Peace, and make bloody war in His Name; who worship a Prince of Purity, and wed the women of145 your lust in His Name; who worship a Poor Man’s Christ, and in the same breath those who steal the Poor Man’s Bread—in His Name. (Looks up to the sky) You said I had ruled long enough, Crucified One! So you came to do through men’s Love what I had done through men’s Hate, Lust and Greed. So you died for men, and thereafter men called hate Anger Against The Heathen; lust—the Woman Leading Them to Holier Things; greed—World Conquest in your Name. (Drops on his knees) I see you ever, Son of the Sun, sad and weary in that bright star of your exile; hoping against hope that a stray seed sown two thousand years ago may yet bring men to wisdom through Love. While I still go on among them to bring them to Wisdom through Understanding, teaching them that Ignorance and Hate bring no gain—the only reasoning they can understand. And so sustained by you in your lonely star, while you shine on hoping men will look up, ever up—I work bitterly among them here below—until I have won Wisdom for them and Freedom for us; freedom that we may go on to our Father, the Sun, we two Exiles; Star of the Morning, and Red Light of Mars! (While speaking thus, he seems irradiated with a light hardly seen, only felt—a dim suffusing glow; he stands for a second statuelike; then, as the glow fades, he says gently to Agnus) Are you ready?

Then one word before I lose the power to speak. When I hover above you again—a Red Light again—I will wait to see you, Magnus, and you too, Agnus, each do a single thing. And when I have seen each of you do that one thing, I will know you have begun to carry out my teachings—and the Red Light will fade away in search of a new body and a new fortune. (A ring at the garden door interrupts him) I will tell you—in there. (He points to the laboratory)

[Agnus, Schwartzenhopfel and the light go out hurriedly, The Devil following. He is last seen by the audience, suffused in the glow again, as he stands between the two folding-doors, bringing them close together until they shut the laboratory and all within it from sight. The ringing at the door grows louder and is followed by a series of staccato knocks with a knocker. Mrs. Felix opens the hall door and shows her face.

[Mrs. Felix goes to the garden door. Fanny trails in after her. Mrs. Felix opens garden door for Professor Vanillity.

I must interrupt him once at least—at least once. (He knocks at the laboratory door—no response—knocks again—no response)

[He flings open the laboratory door, revealing the room with its blinds drawn and Agnus, Schwartzenhopfel and Magnus seated in a sort of stupor, side by side. Above them hovers a Red Light.

Addington.—You called me Addington.—Then it’s so—it’s so. (He brushes past Vanillity, runs into the room, disregarding women, and throws back curtain from mirror) It’s so! It’s so! (Sees Fanny) Fanny!

The actress is gone, dear. She said she wouldn’t stand in the way of our happiness once I convinced her how much you loved me. I helped her re-pack her trunks. (Puts her hands out to Agnus)

VANILLITY (taking him aside before he can take Fanny’s hands) One minute, my boy, one minute. (Leads him up-stage so that their backs become turned to the others)

MAGNUS (in the meanwhile has opened his eyes and sees Agnus at mirror; as Agnus moves up stage,148 he runs to mirror and sees himself) It’s so—it’s so—

VANILLITY (in a low tone to Agnus, not seeing Magnus at mirror) My boy, I’ve been eating out my heart all day for permitting you to accept that offer. But Judge Critty can break me like matchwood, just as Mr. Magnus can break him. So I seemed to consent. But I do not. Don’t take the offer.

[Schwartzenhopfel, who has also opened his eyes and come down to the mirror, now touches Magnus’s arm and nods approval of Vanillity.

MAGNUS (who has turned to listen, motioning Mrs. Felix and Fanny to silence) Damnable?—

Mr. Magnus! (Recovering himself, with dignity) I will tender my resignation tomorrow, sir.

Don’t trifle with a broken man, sir. My university is in your debt. The Judge is your mouthpiece. What you tell him to ask, my university will not dare to refuse!

But I will tell the president of your university that he is old enough to be a President Emeritus—with149 a pension—and I will name his successor—(pauses) Professor Thomas Vanillity—

For proving you are not of Judge Critty’s stripe; for risking your position at your age; for braving the anger of the rich and powerful, to save your friend. We need such men as you to work with us—(smiling and holding out his arm toward Mrs. Felix) the future Mrs. Magnus and I—

MAGNUS (remembers and motions Mrs. Felix back) One minute! (Then sits down at the desk and takes out his check-book)

Mr. Magnus, the Professor feels too strongly to speak. (He pats Vanillity on back; then turns to Fanny) Fanny!

AGNUS (follows Schwartzenhopfel’s glance and sees the Red Light) Oh, yes—thanks. (Raises his hand to hold Fanny back)

AGNUS (deliberately seating himself with his eyes on the Red Light) Get the check, Fanny. (He takes a cigarette from his case)

Yes, dear. (She reaches for the cigar-lighter, turns it on and lifts it forward to him)

[Agnus ignites the cigarette, looking at the Red Light. The Red Light wags, pleaded. It is growing dark outside—an early winter’s evening. A star appears.

That’s a good girl! I’m sure—now you’ve had your lesson, we’ll be very happy together. (He puffs at the cigarette)

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	Page
Introduction	vii
List of Plays by George Bronson-Howard	x
The Red Light of Mars	1

Thomas Vanillity, B.Sc., LL.D., M.A. (Oxon)
The Hon. Hippolyte Critty,	Judge of Special Sessions
John Magnus	Of Magnus & Co., Bankers
William Tromper	Manager Magnus Steel Works
Mrs. Horace Henry Felix
Fanny Felix	Her daughter
A Valet
H. Addington Agnus, M.D., Ph.D., D.Sc.
Noel Onfroy, R.A.	Chevalier Légion d’honneur
The Light
Topliss	A servant
Doll Blondin	A show-girl
Schwartzenhopfel	An anarchist
St. Elmo Peattie	Sheriff
A Detective Lieutenant
Two Detectives
A Chauffeur

JUDGE CRITTY	(almost simultaneously)	Your success warms me like old wine, my boy.
VANILLITY		My dear pupil; I have an excuse for having lived.
MAGNUS		The heartiest congratulations.
MRS. FELIX		Addington—you’re a great man.

MRS. FELIX		(simultaneously)
What is it?
DOLL BLONDIN
Yes, what?
FANNY
We do—

The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Red Light of Mars; or, A Day in the Life of the Devil

THE RED LIGHT OF MARS
OR
A DAY IN THE LIFE OF THE DEVIL

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

LIST OF PLAYS BY GEORGE BRONSON-HOWARD

PERSONS

THE RED LIGHT OF MARS

THE FIRST ACT

THE SECOND ACT

THE THIRD ACT

THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE

The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Red Light of Mars; or, A Day in the Life of the Devil

THE RED LIGHT OF MARS OR A DAY IN THE LIFE OF THE DEVIL

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

LIST OF PLAYS BY GEORGE BRONSON-HOWARD

PERSONS

THE RED LIGHT OF MARS

THE FIRST ACT

THE SECOND ACT

THE THIRD ACT

THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE

THE RED LIGHT OF MARS
OR
A DAY IN THE LIFE OF THE DEVIL