CHAPTER IXThe Captain of the Hartlepool
“Lucifer Zull!” repeated Simon Stannard bewilderedly. He looked at me dumbly. “And who the devil,” he grunted, “might Lucifer Zull be? Of all the unusual names—” He broke off.
“Lucifer Zull,” I said wrathfully, “was a devil. He—”
“A devil, eh?” Simon Stannard made a curious gesture with the palms of his two hands, and his shoulders, signifying that something about the matter was self-evident. “Why wouldn’t he be? Now take the science of numerology. Here you’ve a perfect example of it. Name a child Lucif—”
“Wait, Unc!” I said. “Name a child Percival—or Clarence—and he’ll be a prizefighter! Your numerology is all squew-gee. No, Lucifer—so I came to understand later—later, that is, than my first meeting with him—never got baptized, or officially nam
