Journey into Mystery #15

Synopsis

When a man enters a bar and, as a gag, offers a skeptic a contract for his soul for one million dollars the skeptic signs it. No one sees the stranger leave, but a coincidence leaves the signer one million dollars from a will. As time goes by, the contract worries away at him distorting his personality from likable to hostile. His employees hate him and his family leave him. One day he receives a visitor and it turns out to be the man with the contract looking for work. The skeptic is so angered that his life has been changed so dramatically by a practical joke that he seizes a heavy candlestick and kills the stranger. Now he feels that he has sold his soul to the Devil in actuality and walks out into the dark for Satan to claim him.