gasped. Recognizing the stern voice, he tried to focus
his bleary eyes. "'Scuse it, Your Majesty. I've come a long way and
alone. Your substitute, Pudzy, gimme a bottle 'fore he returned to
Ameriky, and it's durn cold up there in Musk-Cow, and so I took a few
nips, and I felt so goldurned glad to git back I polished off what was
left, so I didn't recognize Your Majesty when you came zoomin' along,
and if you'll sort of overlook--"

Nick patted the frightened old fellow's scrawny shoulder. "Better
check in and sleep it off, Char."

"Gosh, stoppin' _you_!"

"You let everybody in till I tell you different. Forget the toll
charge too, you old conniver."

"Yeah, and look!" Chortling with glee, Charon tottered back to his
station and put one hand across the beam of a photo-electric eye. The
ponderous gate slid silently upward. "It weighs fifteen hundred tons,
Mulcie says, and I don't even push a button."

"You still smell like a Communist, Char," Nick said, sniffing the good
sulphurous air. "How come you're on the job as bridgekeeper if you've
just returned from Moscow?"

"Orders from Beelzebub, and it's nigh a half hour by now since this
fella came across the bridge. I'm sauntering home, friends with
everybody, I am--"

"What fellow?"

Charon scratched his grisly thatch. "Come to think of it, I never see
'im afore this. I'm standing back there, looking down at my old skiff
and wondering about my job, when this fella comes up. 'This is for
you, Charon,' he says, and held out your official incombusterible
letterhead with the cross-bones and dripping blood--"

"Yeah, yeah. What does this stranger look like? What's his name? Who
signed the paper?"

"Beelzebub signed it. I guess I know the John Henry of your Number Two
devil even if I am a dumb ferryman." Perhaps sensing he had blundered,
Charon almost wept. "This paper appoints me head bridge-tender from
now to the _end_ of eternity, and, bein' worried about my job, I
hopped right to it. You're the first--"

"Which way did he go? What's he look like?"

Charon almost said "Thataway," as he shook his head and pointed a
trembling finger to the distant shore. "Lemme see. He wore neat
clothes about like mine, and he zoomed off like the upper crust shades
do when in a hurry--which ain't often. He has mean little eyes, sort
of pale blue, is built wide and short, and talks American good as I
do. Now't I think of it, he had an impederiment in his speech, and he
smelt li