by Franz Nabl
Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the OnlineDistributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
The Long Arm
By FRANZ HABL[1]
[Transcriber Note: This etext was produced from Weird Tales October1937. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S.copyright on this publication was renewed.]
[Sidenote: _Creeping, writhing, insidiously crawling and groping, thelong arm reached out in its ghastly errand of death_]
I had been out of Germany for thirty-five years, drawn hither andthither by various glittering of will-of-the-wisps. When I returned tomy native country, I was as poor in pocket as when I left, and muchpoorer in illusions.
The Berlin insurance company which I had represented with such mediocresuccess in Switzerland, Austria and Belgium agreed to let me sell forthem at home, and by a curious coincidence there was an opening in thequaint old Bavarian city in which I had been born and bred.
I will pass over the strangely mingled feelings with which I rode in aTwentieth Century railroad train past the thousand-year-old walls of oneof the most curious ancient cities in Europe, a town moreover whoseevery winding narrow street and sharp-gabled building had been thecompanion of my infancy and childhood. No one seemed to know me, and Irecognized no one. For several days I made no attempt to sell lifeinsurance, but wandered in a dream, the bewildered ghost of my formerself, about the spots which I had known in happier days.
One dull rainy afternoon I took refuge from the weather in a dingylittle coffee-house in which, at the age of fourteen or fifteen, I alongwith certain boon companions, had learned the gentle art of billiards.It seemed as if every article of furniture was just as I had walked awayfrom them, well toward half a century before. It was raining outside,and I sat alone in the gloomy, smoky old place, pondering the sweet andbitter mysteries of life.
While I sat thus, staring out with unseeing eyes at the rain which wasby this time beating down smartly on the pavement, I became consciousthat someone in the room was staring at me. I had not noticed that therewas anyone else in the dark, low-ceilinged place except the obsequiousproprietor who had served me my cigar and coffee. Now I realized that aman who sat in the corner diagonally across from me was studying mecuriously from over his newspaper. His face was one that I had seenbefore. Suddenly, across all the years, I remembered him. And in thatsame moment he rose and came toward me with his hand held out.
We had been in school together, in the Gymnasium. He had been a strangefellow with few friends, but had enjoyed the reputation of being thebest student in his class. But in his last year in the Gymnasium he had,for what reason I never knew, excited the animosity of a cantankerousold professor who had publicly declared that Gustav was not the kind ofboy who should have a Gymnasium diploma and that he, the professor, wasdetermined never to give him a passing grade. My father had admired theboy very much, and at one juncture when my marks looked perilously low,he had employed Gustav to tutor me. Gustav had been so successful thatFather was delighted and made him a present of a silver cigarette casewith Gustav's initials and mine engraved on it. I remembered all thisvery distinctly as we shook hands, but I was doing fast thinking,because for the life of me I couldn't remember his strange last name. Ihad a feeling that it was a very foreign name, Polish or Croatian orsomething of the sort. As he mentioned this and that, I fear I answeredhim a little absently and incoherently. The name was almost there. Thesyllables flitted tantalizingly just out of my reach. But I was sure thename began with a B. Wasn't it a Bam- or a Ban-something? Ah! I had it.Banaotovich!
From that moment the conversation went more easily. I was surprized andpleased when Banaotovich drew his silver cigarette-case out of hispocket to prove to me how highly he thought of my poor deceased father.We were soon launched on a cordial exchange of childhood memories.Banaotovich seemed a good-hearted fellow after all, and I wondered whyin my childhood I had never been quite comfortable in his company. Iremembered that other boys of the group had admitted to meconfidentially that they were more than a little afraid of him.
* * * * *
The longer we talked the more intimate, the more in the nature of amutual confession, our conversation became. I admitted to Banaotovichthat the hifalutin fashion in which I had left the town to win fame andfortune years before, had been asinine in the extreme, and that itserved me just right to have to sneak back unknown and penniless.Banaotovich rejoined that for all his pride in his school marks he hadremained a person of no importance, and that the pot had not theslightest intention of making itself ridiculous by calling the kettleblack. He seemed almost painfully inclined to run himself down. I couldfeel in his manner a sort of pathetic reaching out for sympathy andconsideration. And it began to seem as if he were about to tell mesomething or ask me for something. But whatever he had to tell seemedhard to say, and it was slow in coming over his lips.
Banaotovich ordered two bottles of the heavy native wine. I dranksparingly of it, because it goes to my head. But Banaotovich swallowedtwo or three glassfuls in hasty succession, and his cheeks grew flushed.There was a pause. Suddenly he leaned across the table toward me andspoke in a hoarse, excited whisper.
"Modersohn," he said anxiously, "I want to make a confession to you--aterrible confession. It may turn you against me completely. Maybe youdon't want to hear it. If you don't, say so, and I'll go home. But itseems as if I've got to tell somebody about it. It seems as if I've gotto find somebody who understands me and can excuse me, or it will killme. Shall I tell you? Shall I?"
I was startled. I was reasonably sure that Banaotovich was no criminal,since he had lived half a century in his native city, undisturbed andfrom all he had told me solvent and respected. I had always known thathe was a queer fish, a brooding, solitary sort of person, and I settledmyself to listen to some harmless bit of psychopathy which meant nothingexcept to the unfortunate subject.
"My dear fellow," I said, no doubt a little patronizingly, "I am sureyou haven't anything to confess that will make you out an outrageousrascal, but if it will do you any good to tell me your troubles, I amready to listen to them."
"Thank you," said Banaotovich in a trembling voice. "I've done nothingthat they can put me behind the bars for. But I--I----"
He stared at me sternly.
"But I've done worse things," he said solemnly, "than some poor fellowsthat have been strung up by the neck and choked to death!"
I laughed, a little nervously. "Tell me your story, if you like," Isaid, "and let me decide just how black you are. But I haven't a greatdeal of apprehension. We're all of us poor miserable sinners, as far asthat's concerned. I could tell you things about myself----"
Banaotovich was not listening to me at all. He had fallen suddenly intoa fit of black brooding. After a minute or two, he looked up and askedsharply:
"Do you remember Wolansky?"
Wolansky was the Greek professor who had threatened to vote againstBanaotovich when he was finishing his course at the Gymnasium.
"Of course," said I. "And I remember well how he abused you that lastyear. If there ever was a cantankerous old scoundrel, Wolansky was justthat identical individual!"
"Maybe," he said absently; then after another pause:
"Do you remember that Wolansky died suddenly, just a little while beforethe end of the school year?"
I nodded. "I imagine that was a great piece of good luck for you," Isaid.
"Yes," said Banaotovich. "If he had lived, I should never have had mydiploma. As it was, I finished with honors. If Wolansky hadn't died whenhe did, I'd have been ruined. Don't forget that--ruined!"
I was puzzled at his insistence. "Yes, you would have been seriouslyhandicapped," I agreed. "Ruine
d is the word, perhaps."
Banaotovich's face was purple with wine and some strange kind ofsuffering. "Do you remember another thing?" he said thickly. "Do youremember an old Hindoo who had a dark little hole away back of the shopsand the beer depot and the livery stables between the Old Market and theriver?"
"The old fellow that had love charms and told fortunes and helped peopleto health and wealth and happiness?" I said in a tone of slightly forcedcheerfulness. It was hard to be cheerful with those somber eyes boringinto you. "Yes, I remember him, all right. I wanted to go and see himonce, when I was about fifteen or sixteen, but Father told me thatmeddling with the black art had sent more people to hell than it hadhelped. And Father was so terribly earnest about it that he frightenedme. I never went. As a matter of fact it was only a