The Ex-Celebrity

By STRIX

THE Labrador, curled up under my desk, gave a low growl.

'What's the matter with you?' I muttered absently. Then my nostrils recog- nised, tardily, the acrid, old-fashioned smell of brimstone. I looked up, and there he was.

Pardon my intrusion,' said the Devil. His tone was, as usual, one of bantering, debonair con- descension; it always puts me in mind of a moderately talented amateur playing Sir Percy Blakeney in The Scarlet Pimpernel. But today he sounded a bit off colour.

'My dear chap!' I said, 'take a pew. What's cooking?'

I don't normally use such expressions, but I saw the Devil wince twice: a right and left. He mastered his emotions, if such they can be called, and began : 'I am going to be absolutely frank with you.' (It struck me that he must have picked up a new, technique from somewhere or other. His eyes blazed with sincerity. His voice, bereft now of theatrical overtones, had the quality of grated dandruff. It required a considerable mental effort to „dismiss the possibility that this ageless ungulate might at any moment invoke the spirit of. Dunkirk.) 'I'm worried,' the Devil went on, 'about my image.'

'Which one?' I asked. My grasp of scriptural

history is infirm, but 1 was under the impression that my visitor had at one time enjoyed a vir- tual monopoly of the image-industry. Graven images. . . . Perhaps there had been a demar- cation dispute—the Navel-Borers' Union at loggerheads with the Tit-Sharpeners? 'Which image?' I repeated.

'My own,' snapped the Devil. 'I'm slipping, I know I'm slipping. Its like that soppy Vic- torian ballad— Oh no, we never mention him, His name is never heard.

My lips are now forbid to speak That once familiar word.'

I found myself vaguely wanting to console him. 'I have some friends in Dumfriesshire,' I said, 'with whom I occasionally play bridge. We always refer to the cards as the Devil's Picture- books. Always.'

`Do you really?' The Devil seemed dispro- portionately gratified : but only for a moment. 'That's all very well,' he went on, 'but what did you say to your dog when I came in?'

'I don't remember.'

'You said, "What's the matter with you?"' 'Yes, so 1 did. What's wrong with that?'

`Fifty years ago a crusty old buff—I mean, a gentleman in your position would have said, "What the devil's the matter with you?"'

'Oh well,' I said. 'Fashions change.'

'That's what I'm complaining about,' cried the Devil. `Take show business. There was a time when I appeared in every single production— smashing good parts, too. Then they stopped writing morality plays, and now I simply don't get a look in at all.'

I murmured something about Punch and Judy, but I don't think he heard me. Just as well, perhaps.

'And those damned clergy!' snorted the Devil. 'The pulpit used to be my greatest stand-by- -free plugs once a week, and a coast-to-coast network. Now I've been dropped. How long is it since you heard me mentioned in a sermon?'

1 told him I couldn't remember. 'Perhaps,' I suggested, 'what you need is a PRO? Couldn't you buy his soul, or something? I believe they work out quite cheap.'

'Funny you should say that,' said the Devil in an ominously smarmy voice. 'I was thinking along the same lines myself. As a matter of fact, the chief reason I dropped in here was to see if you'd be interested in the job:

'I don't know that it's quite in my line,' I said.

'Nonsense!' cried -the Devil, and embarked on a long rigmarole about how well we had always got on, what a delightfully co-operative chap he had invariably found me, and so on and so forth: he also mentioned a number of guilt-edged incentives, the nature of which I can hardly dis- close without doing further harm to his image.

He looked so crestfallen when I turned him down that I partially relented. 'I'll tell you what I will do,' I said. '1 would never make you a satisfactory PRO, but I'll let it be known that you need one.'

'Spendid!' exclaimed the Devil, perking up a a lot. 'You do just that.'

And just that I have done.