His coffee table and the magazines stored under it, plus his bookcase and its contents, stayed put. Most of the publications were about the Devil, but Mr Jones did not intend to summon a dæmon so as to have a literary discussion; he hoped that when one did appear its entrance would be accompanied by an inexplicable wind that would tear the pages from the books and magazines and toss them in the air as it would leaves. His grandfather clock, upright piano and typewriter stayed too; he expected invisible fingers to start working on the keys of both the last two items when the dæmon came and the clock’s hands to spin round unaccountably. The final item of furniture he left was the drinks cabinet, which he stocked with alcohol; he had a hunch dæmons weren’t teetotal.

Once satisfied with all this, he drew some pentacles and other occult symbols on the floor. Then, at midnight, he stood in the middle, opened his beloved Devil-Summoning Commands of the Sixteenth Century, which had been his second choice from the Satanic reading list, and, as the grandfather clock chimed thirteen (he’d had to make a few adjustments there), solemnly recited some complete gibberish in bastardised Mediæval Latin.

Nothing happened.

Mr Jones waited a while, and recited the gibberish again.

Still nothing happened.

‘Hmm,’ said Mr Jones. Perhaps he wasn’t pronouncing the words correctly. After all, he hadn’t a clue what they meant, so it wouldn’t be surprising. He tried a few different versions, eventually falling into that mode of speech common to many who are trying to say something in a language they don’t understand: he raised his voice at the end of every sentence and turned it into a question.

Still nothing happened.

He decided to try some other commands, and repeated those several times, with different emphases.

No success there either.

‘Hmmph,’ said Mr Jones. ‘This book is useless. I’ve been had.’

He had several more in a similar vein. But he tried them all and still he could not manage to invoke even a little dæmon.

Eventually, he gave up and went to bed.

The next morning he decided to do what he probably ought to have done in the first place: enlist help from a witch.