Nydia. And even if you do have her gold-plated, you may not keep her, for she is mine."
"Well, if you have told the truth about your studious natures, and can tell me things I do not yet know, you may live through this meeting and go your way when you have read the collection. But if you lie about yourselves, I will wash my hands of you, and I assure you that the rest of this menage are not as well-natured as myself, and let few go from here alive that I do not protect." He waved a hand to some gold and scarlet demon masks decorating the wall behind the throne. "Know you at what rites those are used?"
Solaris spoke up, laughing a little forcedly. He had figured that he understood this lonely man upon the throne.
"We shall keep you interested, never fear. I have assisted at some such rites to the Dark One myself. Thrilling, but apt to be dangerous to strangers."
"You have been held by Satanists before? And how did you escape the usual fate?"
"In the only way possible. The altar took a liking to me."
"Aye, you were young, and she fell in love with you. Yes, that is one way of surviving. Methinks you will not have that chance here. You see, except for me, you are now in the hands of Satanists. And I, of course, am also supposed to be an enthusiastic servant of the Dark One. But, of course, you children could be my guests if I so willed. But will I say you are my invited guests, or will I let my besotted and mindless, cruel and half-mad retainers and relatives have their will of you? I know not myself why I should be kind to anyone. It never got me much in this world to be kind."
Nydia answered.
"It got you what friends you have, I am sure. They are often valuable, are friends. A friend can stop a knife from your back or a ray from your heart—if he is a true friend." Nydia's little nose wrinkled, she was playing his game, and feigning fear.
"Yes, if he be not over-avaricious and put the ray on the heart himself. There is that about it! But do not worry overmuch; if they do manage to kill you, I will manage to make it not too painful in ways you know. I may have inherited more of my mother's weak emotions than my father's will to destroy. You never know."
Suddenly the figure on the throne scowled down wildly upon us, and a rage with no cause passed over his face. His fists clenched and he raved at us.
"Who do you think you are, to come in here and tell me what to do in my own holding? You shall die a thousand deaths, you dogs!"
As swiftly, the causeless rage passed from him and his face resumed its tired, cynical half-smile.
"Don't be frightened, my guests. 'Tis but a blood-thirsty and wholly mad relative trying to dream himself me over his ray-control mech. If he could remember what he was doing he would be dangerous. But as it is he has forgotten what he started to do with me, and has returned to his antique toys upon the floor. There have always been mad Mephistos; I suppose there always will be. It is what has given the line such a bad name. But there are not so many any more. We are few."
At the side of him crouched a huge dog, or what I thought was a dog, its great head on his foot. But when it arose to stand beside its master, I stifled a gasp of horror. It was distinctly not a dog! It was scaled, its hind quarters web-footed and huge, and its back maned with queer spines. I stepped back in alarm, but the thing was intent on scratching its ear on the great carved arm of the throne.
"Be not startled, Dick," said Solaris, clapping me on the shoulder. "I have seen them before. They, too, are a relic of the far past, still to be found in some of the southern caverns. Once the ancients bred all manner of fearful beasts, as the old pictures tell you. Still some of them exist. On the surface, men have their theories of evolution, but down here we know where animals and man, too, came from. Is that not right, Master?" and Solaris turned to the Dark One's servant on the trone.
As the lean, old face studied its answer to Solaris, I recalled the children's tales I had read of alchemists and sorcerers and their "magic" books, with which they produced such fabled beasts from their test tubes and alembics as the "cockatrice." It could be those books came from these caverns, and that the cockatrice was but one of the simpler beginner's experiments in the magic of life's chemistry that they taught. Then this descendent of Mephisto's made his answer:
