FOXAQUE BAMBOOZLES BÆÈLZEBUB, 1928. part 1.

Some say he sold his soul to the prince of darkness. And some say Foxaque bluffed him. Some say Foxaque was the Devil. The Devil says otherwise. And it is also said that the Prince of Darkness is a gentleman. A fine gentleman. And gentlemen don’t Welch on a wager.

But why would old Lois Cypher want Foxaque’s Brandy soaked soul?

Foxaque for one, was probably unaware that Lois was the devil and certainly not fully conscious of having wagered his soul over a game of cards.

Foxaque was of the opinion (and Foxaque’s opinions were usually worthless) that the Devil hadn’t much to do these days. Foxaque had survived the Great War by a whisker (though he still bore the scars from a German bayonet), and considered the war a great evil thrust upon the world by the hand of delusional politicians rather than Satan. Grinding poverty (the 1920s weren’t so roaring for common folk); unshaven Bolsheviks; the Spanish influenza – all these things he could rationalise and the cause of most of the world’s misery at any moment, Foxaque could boil down to human greed and exploitation. At no point could he see where the hand of Lucifer was actually doing any real harm. Not that Foxaque was in any way religious; he was a noted dissenter and “anti-Christ”. As such, Foxaque was certainly not convinced of the Devil’s existence either. But, reasoned Foxaque, if the Devil were to exist, he would be beastly drunk somewhere (probably on the Mediterranean somewhere between Barcelona and Genoa), having little else to do with his time except gamble and “indulge”…

Well, at that moment, it would happen that the Devil had decided to visit gas lit back streets of the old Hackney borough of London. There, amongst the degradation, prostitutes, dingy pubs, opium dens, immigrants and illegal gambling houses, lay an old stately mansion off a dark side street, thickly shrouded in wispy smoke, gnarled trees, unkempt bushes and wildly overgrown garden. A small gatehouse drew one into the decay. The keystone of the arch still had a semi-legible date on it, half besmirched by lichen and weathering – 16 sixty-something. Restoration for sure, although the foundations and layout could have been medieval – Roman perhaps. The building itself was supposedly to have been the sometime property of the notorious libertine, the third Earl of Rochester who treated the place as a debauched and private whorehouse and wine cellar. By all accounts, according to hushed and local opinion, nothing much was different by the 1920s.

Foxaque gingerly stumbled through the garden to the poorly lit front porch and tapped the door with the handle of his walking cane. The place had been recommended to Foxaque by an acquaintance who he had been entertaining in a private Mayfair champagne club not two days before. Foxaque hadn’t seen his sweetheart for a week now and she was nowhere to be found, unless she was in Paris as she had said – in which case, Foxaque reasoned, whatever Josephine Shaker was up to he would do to…

The beauty that opened the door pleased Foxaque greatly. Any guilty thoughts, unlikely to have been entertained, were certainly locked out by now.

“Come in Mr Foxaque”

“Don’t mind if I do” he murmured.

The glamorous usherette took Foxaque’s hat and overcoat and gestured him to proceed down the hallway. It had a high ceiling. A chandelier cast a strange glowing light. The wallpaper was seemingly a deep blood red velvet and there appeared to be no determinable shadows. What concerned Foxaque more, however, was the slumped body being carried out of one room by two servants.

“Don’t worry Mr Foxaque, this one’s had more than a skin full” said the exotic usherette.

“Ra-ther!” smirked Foxaque.

“It would appear, Sir, that a place at the poker table has opportuned itself. Please take your seat, Mr Foxaque”.

“Thanks awfully” he replied “Do you have the time? My watch appears to have stopped…” Foxaque inquired, mildly irritated.

“We have no concern for time in this establishment, good Sir”

Foxaque grinned a thirsty grin and entered the candlelit gloom…

Old Nick introduced himself as Crown Prince Lois Cypher of… somewhere or other. Eastern Europe or near Persia or some such, Foxaque wasn’t paying attention: his eye was distracted by Prince Lois’ exotic female entourage. A hunger welled inside him and Lois sensed Foxaque’s unfettered lust for pleasure and flesh. Lois spied a weakness, an opportunity. But, even for the Devil in such licentious times of material greed, failed to wholly grasp the extent of Foxaque’s covetousness or the half-witted simplicity of Foxaque’s clown-like misfortune that somehow leads him to such surprisingly (and consistently) top results. Why? Only last year, he’d managed (quite unawares) to seduce the deliciously aromatic Marlene Dietrich in a Berlin club called Paradise (Foxaque was rightly proud of himself, but had simply no idea how he’d done it).

Despite the gloom and flickering light, Foxaque had successfully made every effort to espy Prince Lois’ attractive attendants. He certainly wasn’t fully conscious of all the proceedings of the card game at hand. Prince Lois, ever the strategist, began to slowly make his manoeuvres to net Foxaque: he, with the merest gesture of a finger twitch, dispatched one of his Amazonian servants to keep Foxaque distracted and goodly toped up with fine wine. Foxaque had read about Redman Barry Lindon, and knew that it was probably a ploy to gather intelligence of his hand and convey the information by coded actions or a refill of wine from the right instead of the left, and all that, so he played it close. Not that Foxaque disapproved of the olive skinned belle in her flowing robes, seemingly naked beneath, tantalising his eye as much as his twitching cock. Her dark skin, elegant jaw line, full lips, high cheeks and oriental eyes that flashed with assertive, sexual violence. My kind of girl, thought Foxaque.

To the game:

Around the table were a few others. Aristocrats, manly, but one or two industrial nouveaux riche and political types, a high ranking military officer (Turkish or Bulgarian or some such) with a fez-like hat on – it gave Foxaque an idea for a stage outfit, just like that. The aristos could be clearly split into 2 groups: older ones (Masonic types, for sure) with lands and titles; and younger looking ones- too young to have served in the great war (the class of 1914-18 were conspicuous for their absence for obvious reasons. Foxaque was the only one at the table of an age to have fought.

Save for the older aristocrats who were playing for cash and sipping cognac, at ease in their surroundings, the other players seemed to have folded, hand written notes at the ready for play: I.O.U. notes of credit, presumably. Of all the protagonists, Foxaque observed, the young aristo chaps appeared to have the most at stake – they were nervy and pale and smoked furiously.

Now, Foxaque was known for fleecing people at card games (a skill he was never able to re-establish after his return). To play the Devil at cards was one thing. To bet your soul is another. And Beelzebub is known for collecting the souls of singers: Robert Johnson, Johnny Favourite, Frank Sinatra and (soon, we hope) Cliff Richard. And they certainly didn’t look like the sort of playing cards Foxaque was normally used to either…