E. R. Punshon, The Little Red Devil (1904)
“ The editor went on up the stairs and, knocking, entered a bare and draughty room, containing nothing except a heap of straw and rags on which Rogers lay, and a rickety table which stood before an upturned box, and on it—as the editor noticed at once—a roll of manuscript. On the broken mantelpiece was a small and hideously ugly figure shaped in the conventional form of a devil, with hoof, horns and tail, and colored a brilliant red. ”
E. R. Punshon, The Little Red Devil (1904)
“ The grosser signs of the tragedy had been already removed, but the editor went very pale and breathed hard in his throat as though he were strangling, and he pointed to the head of the bed, where, perched on the iron rails, was the little figure of a fiend, colored a brilliant red, on the small face a leer of abhorrent and disgusting content, the chin resting now again on its hollowed palm in an attitude of renewed waiting. ”
E. R. Punshon, The Little Red Devil (1904)
“ As soon, however, as he returned to his office he read the story; which he found more strange and weirdly fascinating, with its half-hinted glimpses of another world and a more profound philosophy, than even the others had been. Then he devoted himself to trying to decipher the scribbled sentence which ran all over and through this manuscript, as it had through the other three. He even got a magnifying-glass to help him, and at last he convinced himself that it bore no meaning at all, that it was probably just some nervous trick Rogers had got into. ”
