Henry Kuttner - BY THESE PRESENTS

Fenwick brushed the crimson form aside and went on.

Behind him the devil said, “Oh, very well, Fenwick. You win.”

Relieved, Fenwick turned. “Will you give me back my soul?”

“I’ll give you back what I took as surety,” the devil said, “but you won’t like it.”

“Hand it over,” Fenwick said. “I don’t believe a word you say.”

“I am the father of lies,” the devil said, “but this time -”

“Never mind,” Fenwick said. “Just give me back my soul.”

“Not here. I find this very uncomfortable,” the devil told him. “Come with me. Don’t cringe like that. I merely want to take you to your apartment. We need privacy.”

He lifted his crimson hands and sketched a wall around himself and Fenwick. Immediately the pushing crowds, the shouting and tumult, faded and the walls of Fenwick’s sumptuous apartment rose around them. Slightly breathless, Fenwick crossed the familiar floor and looked out the window. He was indubitably home again.

“That was clever,” he congratulated the devil. “Now give me back my soul.”

“I will give you back the part of it I removed,” the devil said. “It was not in violation of the contract, but a bargain is a bargain. I think it only fair to warn you, however, that you won’t like it.”

“No shilly-shallying,” Fenwick said. “I don’t expect you to admit you cheated.”

“You are warned,” the devil said.

“Hand it over.”

The devil shrugged. He then put his hand into his own chest, groped for a moment, murmuring, “I put it away for safekeeping,” and withdrew his closed fist. “Turn around,” he said. Fenwick did so. He felt a cool breeze pass through his head from the back…

“Stand still,” the devil said from behind him. “This will take a moment or two. You are a fool, you know. I expected a better entertainment or I’d never have troubled myself to go through this farce. My poor stupid friend, it was not your soul I took. It was merely certain unconscious memories, as I said all along.”

“Then why,” Fenwick demanded, “am I unable to enjoy my immortality? What is it that stops me at the threshold of everything I attempt? I’m tired of living like a god if I have to stop with immortality only, and no real pleasure in it.”

“Hold still,” the devil said. “There. My dear Fenwick, you are not a god. You’re a very limited mortal man. Your own limitations are all that stand in your way. In a million years you could never become a great musician or a great economist or any of the greats you dream of. It simply isn’t in you. Immortality has nothing to do with it. Oddly enough -” And here the devil sighed. “Oddly enough, those who make bargains with me never do have the capability to use their gifts. I suppose only inferior minds expect to get something for nothing. Yours is distinctly inferior.”

The cool breeze ceased.

“There you are,” the devil said. “I have now returned what I took. It was, in Freudian terms, simply your superego.”

“Superego?” Fenwick echoed, turning. “I don’t quite -”

“Understand?” the devil finished for him, suddenly smiling broadly. “You will. It is the structure of early learning built up in your unconscious mind. It guides your impulses into channels acceptable to society. In a word, my poor Fenwick, I have just restored your conscience. Why did you think you felt so light and carefree without it?”

Fenwick drew breath to reply, but it was too late.

The devil had vanished. He stood alone in the room.

Well, no, not entirely alone. There was a mirror over the fireplace and in the mirror he met his own appalled eyes in the instant the superego took up again the interrupted function of the conscience.

A terrible smashing awareness struck down upon Fenwick like the hand of a punishing God. He knew now what he had done. He remembered his crimes. All of them. Every last terrible, unforgivable, immutable sin he had committed in the past twenty years.

His knees buckled under him. The world turned dark and roared in his ears. Guilt was a burden he could hardly stagger under. The images of the things he had seen and done in the years of his carefree evil were thunder and lightning that shook the brain in his skull. Intolerable anguish roared through his mind and he struck his hands to his eyes to blot out vision, but he could not blot out memory.

Staggering, he turned and stumbled toward his bedroom door. He tore it open, reeled across the room and reached into a bureau drawer. He took out a revolver.

He lifted the revolver, and the devil came in.