Deals With The Devil - Basil Davenport

[jkdunham]

Deals With The Devil - edited by Basil Davenport, Ballantine, 1959
Cover art: Richard Powers


Sir Dominick's Bargain by J. Sheridan Le Fanu
Enoch Soames by Max Beerbohm
Deal With The Devil by Lord Dunsany
Satan and Sam Shay by Robert Arthur
The Devil and Simon Flagg by Arthur Porges
The Devil and The Old Man by John Masefield
Threshold by Henry Kuttner
Nellthu by Anthony Boucher
Threesie by Theodore R. Cogswell
Hell Bent by Ford McCormack
The Devil, George and Rosie by John Collier
The Devil Was Sick by Bruce Elliott

Abridged version of an anthology originally published by Dodd Mead in 1958 and containing 25 stories. Apparently ghosted by Allen Degraeff (Albert P. Blaustein).

[Craig Herbertson]

That looks like a beauty - i love these deal with the devil tales

[dem bones]

Thanks for posting, Ex Private Steve! Below are the cover and contents of the UK edition which has been padded out with allegedly 'humorous' folk tales, shaggy dog stories and offerings from Magazine Of Fantasy & Science Fiction. A very patchy affair: the Devil is outwitted way too many times for my liking.

Basil Davenport (ed.) - Deals With The Devil (Faber, 1959)

Introduction - Basil Davenport

Isaac Asimov - The Brazen Locked Room
Miriam Allen DeFord - Time Trammel
Theodore R. Cogswell - Impact With The Devil
Anon - Doctor Faustus
Charles Dickens - The Devil And Mr. Chips
J. S. Le Fanu - Sir Dominick’s Bargain
Max Beerbohm - Enoch Soames
Lord Dunsany - A Deal With The Devil
Robert Arthur - Satan And Sam Shay
Guy De Maupassant - The Legend Of Mont St. Michel
Seumas MacManus - The Tinker Of Tamlacht
Arthur Porges - The Devil And Simon Flagg
John Masefield - The Devil And The Old Man
Frederick Beechers Perkins - Devil-Puzzlers
Henry Kuttner - Threshold
Vance Randolph - The Three Wishes
Anthony Boucher - Nellthu
Theodore R. Cogswell - Threesie
Moses Schere - A Bargain In Bodies
L. Sprague De Camp & Fletcher Pratt - Caveat Emptor
Ford McCormack - Hell-Bent
Stephen Vincent Benet - The Devil And Daniel Webster
Anon - The Countess Kathleen O’Shea
John Collier - The Devil, George And Rosie
Bruce Elliott - The Devil Was Sick

tiny taster:

Moses Schere - A Bargain In Bodies: Mason Oliver, mad scientist and dark occult dabbler arrives in Paleyville accompanied by a dapper gent - "Just call me Nicky" - who is in a state of constant amusement over his companion's hunched and breathless disposition. Along with his colleague Ames, Oliver once tried to create a super-brain by combining both their powerful minds in just the one body - his. The Devil allowed them to have some Frankenstein-style fun in their lab during a lightening storm before intervening, and the prank he played upon them was particularly ghastly for Oliver who is doomed to carry the invisible corpse of fatty Ames on his back until he dies. Thoroughly good egg Miss Thomkin of the local store takes pity on the wretched Oliver who slips her a note pleading for her help, and, once she's got her hands on the magic compact mirror you prepare yourself for disappointment as the demon agrees to rid the scientist of his burden until midnight so he can reverse the experiment.

Isaac Asimov - The Brazen Locked Room: Under the bizarre terms of their compact, Isadore Welby will enjoy ten years of whatever he pleases - within reason - before the amiable Shapur whisks him off to the ultimate locked room. If Welby can escape within half an hour, he'll become Shapur's fellow demon, if not, he'll be just another lost soul for him to torment. Isadore doesn't relish either fate and humiliates Shapur with the Sci-fi equivalent of the old "with one bound he was free!" tactic.

Vance Randolph - The Three Wishes: A starving old man and his wife take pity on a stranger in a pointy hat and offer him a hot potato in return for which he grants them etc., etc. The wife thinks it's all a big joke and frivolously asks for a nice side of ham which dutifully appears. Her husband is enraged at her impetuousness promptly wishes it down her throat.

David Stone (Fantastic, March-April 1953).

John Collier - The Devil, George And Rosie: George Postlethwaite meets the Devil in the Horseshoe Bar along Tottenham Court Road. George isn't a particularly bad man but he hates women on the grounds that he's an ugly bastard and they snigger at his advances. When he proclaims "I speak of the fires of Hell - I wish they existed in reality, so that these harpies and teazers might be sent there, and I myself would go willingly, if only I could watch them frizzle and fry", the Devil realises he's just the man to supervise the new annex he's reserved just for women (the original fiery pit is now too over-populated to manage). George enjoys himself immensely for two years - he's very proud of his innovations: "a stocking ladderer and an elastic that would break in the middle of any crowded thoroughfare" - but one day Charon ferries in the saintly, beautiful seventeen-year-old shop-girl Rosie Dixon (surely not The Rosie Confessions Of A Night Nurse Dixon, by all that's sacred!) due to an administrative error and George is smitten. How can he get them both back to the land of the living before Satan can consign George to every torture his infinitely evil mind can demise?

Anthony Boucher - Nellthu: Alisa summons forth a demon, an amiable fellow who allows her the traditional three bites at the cherry. She messes up the first two, but her third demand is pure genius.

[dem bones]

Frederick Beechers Perkins - Devil-Puzzlers: This time it's Dr. Hicok, Scottish, theology-suss and not such a bad chap, who's wangled twenty years of whatever he fancies from 'Mr. Lyon', and we meet them on the dread day when the demon arrives to collect. Being such a shrewdie, the Doctor insisted on a get out clause: he can ask three questions of Mr. Lyon, and if the fiend is unable to answer one of them, then Hicok is allowed to keep his soul and continue with his life, no harm done. The trouble is - and he only realises this now - the old villain has planted the questions in his head. It's all looking rather grim until Mrs. Hicok arrives home early from a hard day's bonnet shopping. Delighted with her purchase - an extraordinary contraption altogether: feathers, flowers, sparkly bits, you name it - she's in a flighty mood and insists on joining in with the men's little game when she really should be doing her little dusting. Knowing that he's doomed, Hicok gives her the dubious honour of providing the final question. So guess what she's gonna ask about?

From his 1877 collection of the same title.

Henry Kuttner - Threshold: "I'll put three doors in your path. Doors each of a different colour. The first one will be in blue, and beyond it is one wish. When you pass the second door, which will be yellow, your second wish will come true. And beyond the third door - I shall be waiting to eat you."

Haggard's wants are simple: $1 million and his detested wife Jean out of the picture, and for that to happen he'll gladly trade his soul. Haggard has always prided himself on his superb brain and when he summons forth Baal, he - rightly - identifies the angry little fiend as his intellectual inferior. It shouldn't be too difficult to trick the colour of the dreaded third door from him. Aside from that there's a further stipulation to remember. After his two wishes are granted, Baal will deprive Haggard of some trifling physical power, but that shouldn't give him too much grief ....

Theodore R. Cogswell - Threesie: Joseph puts a small ad in the local newspaper: "Soul in good condition, available at usual terms." He soon learns that the soul-trading industry is big business these days, with stacks of form-filling and a dreaded 'de-souling' (underplayed but queasy torture chamber sequence) before he can get down to some wish-making. Having secured wealth and immortality, he tries to play it clever with his third demand.