The Asbestos Society of Sinners

Detailing the Diversions of Dives and others on the Playground of Pluto, with some broken threads of Drop-stitch History, picked up by a Newspaper man in Hades and woven into a Stygian Nights’ Entertainment.

BY

LAWRENCE DANIEL FOGG

MAYHEW PUBLISHING COMPANY 92-100 Ruggles Street Boston, Mass.

Copyright, 1906 by Lawrence Daniel Fogg All Rights Reserved.

Dedicated to JOHN KENDRICK BANGS Who first made Hades a pleasant place of abode and aroused in his reader a desire to go cruising on the Styx

Pleasantries in Passing.

JOHN KENDRICK BANGS, House-boat-on-the-Styx, care The Century Association, New York—Perhaps you, as self-elected jester at the court of the Son of the Morning, will wonder that a newspaper man should deliberately set out on a pilgrimage to Hades. I have often been told I ought to go there, but I pause on the banks of the Styx for reflection ere I rush in where all but fools fear to tread. Yet in mirroring forth the doings of the diocese of Bishop Beelzebub, I shall cast no reflections save on the dead, who can reflect no more, and like that other clown, more famous than I, will “use the devil himself with courtesy.” Having been an iconoclast, and as it is only a step from the breaking of idols to the smashing of trusts, I have had the temerity to dream of ending the monopoly of the particular section of the universe hitherto sacred to Lucifer and Bangs. As you have a copyright on Hades, you could make it hot for me if I invaded your territory without permission, so I ask you for a “dead head” pass. I don’t claim more than my

rightful share; there will still be room enough for both of us to roast chestnuts on the other side of the Styx.

Pardon this discomfiture of sense by nonsense, yet I am not going to make an excuse for this abuse of absurdities, for what is nonsense but the flower of sense, the wine of wit, the harmony of humor sounded by an organ crankless, the pipe of Pan replaced by one of briar wood? But as Princess Scheherazade might have said: “That’s another kind of a smoke as well as another kind of a story.” Even in this “Stygian Nights’ Entertainment,” I cannot hope to equal her record of a “Thousand Nights and One”—whether I mean spent in story-telling or smoking in Hades I leave to your imagination. But then, I am not a woman!

As Hell has ceased to have a place in theology, there is no reason why the devil should not get his due in fiction. Emigration will set his way as soon as the character of the Cimmerian climate becomes definitely ascertained, but my trip to Hades will be more than a climatological tour. While in the interest of science, my subterranean explorations ought to point a pun and tangle a tale.

Your “farthest south” was to the Styx. I shall not linger there, but if I can elude Cerberus, I shall slip through the gates where we are told to “abandon hope,” and take up my habitation in Hades, with daily commutation to New York. Methinks the inquisitor of the fountain pen ought to have as much fun from a frolic with the heroes of history in their present abode as the inquisitor of the fork and flame.

Nor do I fear that this Stygian sequel to “the history that is written” will be shunned as something sacrilegious, for the average American is so generous regarding bookmakers that he will buy anything, concerning anything, at any time and in any place. He will not even register a protest on the ledger of the Hotel Hereafter!

If you will permit a newspaper man to go on a second “Pursuit of the Houseboat,” I would like to dedicate this account of a trip to the playground of Pluto to the man who blazed the way to Hell. May I have a shady corner in Hades, with the degree—three above zero—of A. S. S., meaning, of course, member of the Asbestos Society of Sinners?

Till death do us unite beyond the Styx, and assuring you of a warm reception, weatherwise and otherwise, when you too shall get a summons from Satan, believe me, happy to go

After you, my dear Bangs, LAWRENCE DANIEL FOGG.

Castle Craig, The Hanging Hills, Meriden, Connecticut. All Fools’ Day (April 1).

My dear Mr. Fogg—Although many critics have given me Hades, I have never recorded any exclusive claim to its possession. You are therefore wholly at liberty to go there yourself—for literary purposes only, I hope—in so far as I am concerned. As for the dedication, I feel highly honored and send you my most cordial thanks for the compliment.

Faithfully yours, JOHN KENDRICK BANGS.

The Century Association, New York, N. Y. Moving Day (May 1).

[Pg 3]

THE SUMMONS FROM SATAN.

CHAPTER I. The Summons from Satan.

WHILE waiting for an assignment, in the local room of the New York Universe, I began to while away the time by reading the fulsome effusions of the press agent of Greater Luna Park. They aroused in me the spirit of covetousness—I envied the press agent his vocabulary, which put the supply of superlatives into bankruptcy; and I was jealous of the success of Thompson & Dundy, whom I hoped some day to rival. Their first success had come with “A Trip to the Moon;” why might not I—

“Go to Hell,” I read on the paper which the “copy” boy just then thrust into my hand. Before I could question him, the “devil” had gone.

I glanced suspiciously at my fellow-scribes to see who had perpetrated the joke, if such it was, but no one seemed to be watching what effect the command had upon me. I again examined the odd message. It was in the handwriting of Mr.[Pg 4] Burroughs, the city editor, so to him I went. Holding out the slip of paper, I said:

“I have just received an assignment to ‘cover’ a certain subterranean resort named after the box in which printers throw battered type, but as the route there is unfamiliar, I have come to you for instructions.”

The “czar” of the city room frowned, but on reading the missive the frown was succeeded by an amused smile.

“Who gave you this?” he asked.

“The ‘devil’.”

“That is evident from its contents. It must have been that new boy Jake, who took the slip off my desk when a telephone call interrupted me as I was writing. Had I completed the message it would have read ‘Go to Hellgate.’ A wreck has just occurred there and our marine reporter has telephoned for assistance. However, you are aware that I have made it a rule never to change an assignment. I make no exception in your case to-night.”

“What!” I gasped.

“Remember also that this paper never accepts an excuse. You must either hand in your story or your resignation. Perhaps I ought to explain further, though the Universe has no place for the newspaper man who cannot achieve the impossible or for the reporter who wants a reason for what he is told to do. We want men who can[Pg 5] carry ‘a message to Garcia’—or to Lucifer, if need be.

“The ting-a-ling of my desk telephone at the psychological moment when I had unconsciously consigned you to a colder climate than that of New York, was a summons from Satan. Why it didn’t come through the medium of the ‘printer’s devil’ is a mystery, unless His Majesty desired to show me that he is up-to-date in having a system of telephones installed by a famous electrician who recently crossed his wires and the Styx. I tried to transfer him to the managing editor by telling him that he had got a wrong connection, as my jurisdiction is limited, but he assured me that Hades is less than a hundred miles from New York, which makes me responsible for what happens there! Not a very pleasant thought, is it?

“Lucifer wants you to go to Cimmeria and interview Henry the Eighth. His much-married Majesty is angry at the liberties the historical novelists have taken with his wives and wants to divorce himself of his wrath through the columns of the Universe. Satan also wishes us to decide a dispute between Adam and Methuselah as to whom is the oldest inhabitant.”

“But how in the name of—”

“Don’t say it,” warned the city editor. “That word is always expressed by a blank in the paper, so you might as well leave it blank in your speech.[Pg 6] Besides, to say it would be justification for keeping you down there, and we want that interview without fail, even if you have to write it on asbestos and deliver it to mortals at a seance of the Society for Psychic Research. We want the work well done, so you will have to take your chances of being scorched.

“Discussions regarding Hades have waxed almost as hot as the subject of dispute itself. Most people believe it is built on the Turkish bath plan with departments of varying temperature. Those are the kind of people who swallow the thermometer of Dr. Doubt and die by degrees. If you find it as pleasant as John Kendrick Bangs did, you will want to stay and join the Stygian smart set, so I’ll transfer your insurance from the Equality to the Rock of Gibraltar and see to it that your sister does not starve or freeze, whatever may be the climatic fate of her brother.

“Don’t take the subway route to the under world, for then your chances of coming back would be grounded. You are to take the Twenty-third Street Ferry for the Jersey shore. New York and Hell are said to be convertible terms, but I’ve never before heard New Jersey given that distinction. However, Bangs says that’s the route, and as he plays golf with good intentions over there every summer, he ought to know.

“Don’t take any baggage, except perhaps your sister’s sunshade, as only shades and shady characters are permitted to cross the River Styx. You[Pg 7] more nearly come under the second category than any other member of the staff, so I have chosen you. As you may need ‘money to burn,’ call on the cashier for a ‘sinking fund’ before you start on your journey.

“By-the-by, while you are in Hades you might ask John Paul Jones whether he would prefer burial in New York, Washington, Annapolis, Philadelphia or Ocean Grove. That would be a ‘scoop’ worth more than the marital intemperance of the Mormon king. Get his signature so that if ‘our friends, the enemy,’ cry fake we can show them ‘what’s in a name.’ As Mr. Bangs, by the exercise of his imagination, was enabled to penetrate the Stygian regions, a newspaper man should have no difficulty in doing likewise by the exercise of his nerve; but if Charon bars the gate owing to your being still in the flesh, this will admit you. It’s a skeleton key.”

Half an hour later I stood on the deck of a ferryboat which was plowing the waters of the North River. Obedience to the commands of the “czar” of the city room soon becomes second nature to a newspaper man, and I had often boasted that I would go anywhere on earth or under the earth if sent there by Mr. Burroughs. I squared my shoulders to the breeze from the bay and resolved that I would not fail now that I had been put to the test, even if—A shudder finished the sentence; my mind stood palsied as I faced the Unknown.

[Pg 8]

It was a night of Stygian blackness, just the one to be chosen for such a dark mission. We were now nearing the Jersey shore and could hear the lap of the waves on the piling in the slip. A blaze of light astern showed that one of the boats was on its return trip. The hands of the clock on the ferry building pointed to midnight.

Out of the inky blackness suddenly loomed a great battleship which struck as much terror to our hearts as if it had been the Flying Dutchman. Had it been a merchantman we should have thought it was indeed the famous phantom ship, for it displayed no lights and the decks were deserted. Our captain signalled to reverse engines, but the order came too late. The two vessels collided with a mighty crash. There was a rending of timbers, an inrushing of water, a cry of despair from the passengers, then a stampede for the life preservers.

I had no sooner got a cork belt properly adjusted, as I thought, than the ferryboat sank. The suction drew me down and down and down; then I shot up to the surface again, feet foremost. I expected that the life belt would right me as soon as I came to the surface, but as I continued to hang head downward, the awful truth flashed over me—the belt had not been sufficiently tightened under my arms and had slipped down. Convulsively I struggled, but in the effort only succeeded in swallowing more water. The blur[Pg 9] of a thousand lights danced before my eyes in the floating bubbles of the phosphorescent water, a roar as of a mighty artillery thundered in my ears—then all became a blank; in newspaper parlance, I had ceased to be “live matter.”

That sinking fund with which I had provided myself before leaving the mundane earth must have carried me a long distance downward, for when I opened my eyes I was upon the banks of the River Styx. Presently Charon’s yacht came in sight. There was no one on board but Captain Charon himself, for with the exception of Lazarus, John Kendrick Bangs, and myself, no round trip tickets have ever been issued to Hades.

“Step lively, please,” yelled Charon, who had evidently been a Broadway trolley conductor earlier in his career. His success in knocking down fares had prompted Satan to employ him to transfer “fares” over the River Styx. The American invasion has extended downward as well as outward. To hear the motto of New York on the banks of the Styx made me feel quite at home, especially when Charon added: “Plenty of room up front.”

A number of shades had stepped aboard the yacht. I was following them when Charon halted me.

“Stop your whistling,” he commanded. “Do you think this is a Sunday school picnic or a political rally? I don’t believe you are eligible[Pg 10] for the journey, anyway. Hades is the only place within the fifty-mile limit that is not a side show for New York tourists. This yacht transports shades only.”

“Well, you see,” I began hesitatingly, “Lorimer says clothes don’t make the man, but that they make three-fourths of him, and this suit is of the very latest shade of blue.”

“I’ve been told gray is fashionable just now,” he commented, critically. “Everybody in Hades has the blues, so you won’t be off color,” he added, somewhat mollified.

“Then you know my ancestors are all shades,” I pleaded, “and our city editor says I have a shady reputation.”

“A newspaper man!” Charon gasped, his face growing pale. “I’ll have to let you come aboard, or you will go back and ‘roast’ me, and I get all the ‘roasting’ I can stand in Hades between trips. A newspaper man! “Nuff said. Jump aboard.”

“Where is the house-boat?” I asked, ever on the lookout for “copy.”

“Everyone nowadays asks that fool question,” Charon retorted, angrily. “I believe John Bangs, like George Eliot, is a woman, for he can’t keep a secret, while Harper & Brothers offer him royalties for it. Shortly after the ‘Pursuit of the House-boat’ that craft disappeared from the river and Sherlock Holmes with it. He went back to haunt Conan Doyle, I guess. I hope he won’t come[Pg 11] back again in a hurry, for he made no end of trouble with his inferences and his deductions.”

“What—”

“No more questions, if you please. I am not on the witness stand, nor will I consent to be interviewed. Besides, talking is an infraction of the rules of the Asbestos Society.”

“Do they seek to muzzle the press?” I asked indignantly.

“So few newspaper men come this way that that isn’t necessary,” returned Charon. “We have a free press. It is said that ‘the devil frequently becomes a publisher by way of diversion.’ This is the Styx, not the Delaware, and we are going to Hades, not to Philadelphia, thank goodness! The order was framed to muzzle some one more formidable than reporters or devils—woman!”

“The Asbestos Society is quite a suggestive name.”

“Its formation was quite recent. A learned scientist up on the earth, by tapping on the ground to invoke Pluto, discovered extensive deposits of asbestos in Hades. As soon as the news reached the Styx, nothing would satisfy ‘Boss’ Tweed but the formation of a society for the purpose of robbing cremation of its traditional terrors. As to wish is to have, every denizen of the domain of the departed is now wearing an asbestos suit. Dives must have his diversion, even if the devil is cheated out of his own.”

[Pg 12]

We had crossed over the Styx. Charon quickly made fast to a wharf and prepared to disembark. As I landed I noticed on the dock a legend which read: “All hope abandon, ye who enter here.”

At last I was in Hades!

[Pg 13]

[Pg 15]

SHADY SINNERS OF THE STYX.

CHAPTER II. Shady Sinners of the Styx.

I WAS in the region of Outer Darkness to which the dead are banished to await the judgment. All about me was a misty blackness so oppressive that one felt as if wedged between mountains. My feet sank in the soft earth, composed of those good intentions with which I had helped to pave the road to Hell. Voices of other days seemed to sound in my ears; out of the shadowy mist forms of ghostly men and women emerged and then were lost to sight, swallowed up in the darkness. Perceiving a glimmering light in the distance I hastened toward it. A phantom house barred my path, but I flitted through it as though it were not. A pale twilight now made objects discernible and I breathed more freely, for I no longer stumbled over the good resolutions, which, being broken, blocked the pavement.

A troop of spectres surrounded me and tried to stop my progress. Shades though they were,[Pg 16] their attentions were annoying and I tried to brush them aside. My hands passed through shadows and the phantoms laughed in derision.

“What’s the news?” they cried again and again.

I hadn’t come to Hades to be interviewed, and knowing from the inside some of its perils, I declined to relate what the upper world was doing. This enraged the shades, who gathered about me threateningly. Just then one of my companions on the Styx yachting trip came to my aid. His appearance seemed to inspire the spectres with terror, for they all fled. The newcomer was talkative.

“Did you recognize in the leader of that band our old friend, Diogenes?” he asked.

“No, I never met the gentleman. Up on earth when any one is looking for an honest man, he doesn’t come to a newspaper office: he goes to a detective agency.”

My companion gave a scarcely perceptible start.

“Diogenes is no longer looking for an honest man. Poor fellow, he knows it’s no use. He thought he had an honest man a few years ago in ‘Boss’ Tweed, but the politician fell from the high pedestal of the ‘man higher up’ when he consented to pose for a caricature of himself by Nast. Our friend of the tub and lantern has begun to wonder if when he finds an honest man it will prove to be a bachelor girl! Not long ago[Pg 17] President Harper sent a professor from the University of Chicago to tell Diogenes that he could have an honest man as soon as he had bled him for another hundred million. So the philosopher is waiting for—”

“John D. Rockefeller!”

“Your deduction, my dear journalist, does you credit.”

Somewhat piqued that I did not reply, the stranger said:

“Why don’t you express wonder that I knew you were a journalist? Watson always does.”

“There is only one Watson,” I protested. “Besides, it has always seemed to me that he was singularly obtuse. Unless you lent him your spectacles, Watson couldn’t hold down a job in the city room of a New York daily for twenty-four hours. I’m not a journalist, but I acknowledge that ‘newspaper man’ is written all over me, from the pencil in my pocket to my ‘nose for news,’ which is abnormally developed. It’s the easiest thing in the world to tell a newspaper man by his nose, an actor by his clothes and a detective by his cocaine syringe. For instance, you are—”