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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Long Arm, by Franz Habl
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Long Arm
+
+Author: Franz Habl
+
+Release Date: May 30, 2010 [EBook #32610]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LONG ARM ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                            The Long Arm
+
+                          By FRANZ HABL[1]
+
+[Transcriber Note: This etext was produced from Weird Tales October
+1937. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S.
+copyright on this publication was renewed.]
+
+
+[Sidenote: _Creeping, writhing, insidiously crawling and groping, the
+long arm reached out in its ghastly errand of death_]
+
+
+I had been out of Germany for thirty-five years, drawn hither and
+thither by various glittering of will-of-the-wisps. When I returned to
+my native country, I was as poor in pocket as when I left, and much
+poorer in illusions.
+
+The Berlin insurance company which I had represented with such mediocre
+success in Switzerland, Austria and Belgium agreed to let me sell for
+them at home, and by a curious coincidence there was an opening in the
+quaint old Bavarian city in which I had been born and bred.
+
+I will pass over the strangely mingled feelings with which I rode in a
+Twentieth Century railroad train past the thousand-year-old walls of one
+of the most curious ancient cities in Europe, a town moreover whose
+every winding narrow street and sharp-gabled building had been the
+companion of my infancy and childhood. No one seemed to know me, and I
+recognized no one. For several days I made no attempt to sell life
+insurance, but wandered in a dream, the bewildered ghost of my former
+self, about the spots which I had known in happier days.
+
+One dull rainy afternoon I took refuge from the weather in a dingy
+little coffee-house in which, at the age of fourteen or fifteen, I along
+with certain boon companions, had learned the gentle art of billiards.
+It seemed as if every article of furniture was just as I had walked away
+from them, well toward half a century before. It was raining outside,
+and I sat alone in the gloomy, smoky old place, pondering the sweet and
+bitter mysteries of life.
+
+While I sat thus, staring out with unseeing eyes at the rain which was
+by this time beating down smartly on the pavement, I became conscious
+that someone in the room was staring at me. I had not noticed that there
+was anyone else in the dark, low-ceilinged place except the obsequious
+proprietor who had served me my cigar and coffee. Now I realized that a
+man who sat in the corner diagonally across from me was studying me
+curiously from over his newspaper. His face was one that I had seen
+before. Suddenly, across all the years, I remembered him. And in that
+same 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 strange
+fellow with few friends, but had enjoyed the reputation of being the
+best 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 cantankerous
+old professor who had publicly declared that Gustav was not the kind of
+boy who should have a Gymnasium diploma and that he, the professor, was
+determined never to give him a passing grade. My father had admired the
+boy very much, and at one juncture when my marks looked perilously low,
+he had employed Gustav to tutor me. Gustav had been so successful that
+Father was delighted and made him a present of a silver cigarette case
+with Gustav's initials and mine engraved on it. I remembered all this
+very 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. I
+had a feeling that it was a very foreign name, Polish or Croatian or
+something of the sort. As he mentioned this and that, I fear I answered
+him a little absently and incoherently. The name was almost there. The
+syllables flitted tantalizingly just out of my reach. But I was sure the
+name 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 and
+pleased when Banaotovich drew his silver cigarette-case out of his
+pocket 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 why
+in my childhood I had never been quite comfortable in his company. I
+remembered that other boys of the group had admitted to me
+confidentially that they were more than a little afraid of him.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The longer we talked the more intimate, the more in the nature of a
+mutual confession, our conversation became. I admitted to Banaotovich
+that the hifalutin fashion in which I had left the town to win fame and
+fortune years before, had been asinine in the extreme, and that it
+served me just right to have to sneak back unknown and penniless.
+Banaotovich rejoined that for all his pride in his school marks he had
+remained a person of no importance, and that the pot had not the
+slightest intention of making itself ridiculous by calling the kettle
+black. He seemed almost painfully inclined to run himself down. I could
+feel in his manner a sort of pathetic reaching out for sympathy and
+consideration. And it began to seem as if he were about to tell me
+something or ask me for something. But whatever he had to tell seemed
+hard to say, and it was slow in coming over his lips.
+
+Banaotovich ordered two bottles of the heavy native wine. I drank
+sparingly of it, because it goes to my head. But Banaotovich swallowed
+two or three glassfuls in hasty succession, and his cheeks grew flushed.
+There was a pause. Suddenly he leaned across the table toward me and
+spoke in a hoarse, excited whisper.
+
+"Modersohn," he said anxiously, "I want to make a confession to you--a
+terrible confession. It may turn you against me completely. Maybe you
+don't want to hear it. If you don't, say so, and I'll go home. But it
+seems as if I've got to tell somebody about it. It seems as if I've got
+to find somebody who understands me and can excuse me, or it will kill
+me. 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 and
+from all he had told me solvent and respected. I had always known that
+he was a queer fish, a brooding, solitary sort of person, and I settled
+myself to listen to some harmless bit of psychopathy which meant nothing
+except to the unfortunate subject.
+
+"My dear fellow," I said, no doubt a little patronizingly, "I am sure
+you haven't anything to confess that will make you out an outrageous
+rascal, but if it will do you any good to tell me your troubles, I am
+ready to listen to them."
+
+"Thank you," said Banaotovich in a trembling voice. "I've done nothing
+that 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 fellows
+that have been strung up by the neck and choked to death!"
+
+I laughed, a little nervously. "Tell me your story, if you like," I
+said, "and let me decide just how black you are. But I haven't a great
+deal of apprehension. We're all of us poor miserable sinners, as far as
+that's concerned. I could tell you things about myself----"
+
+Banaotovich was not listening to me at all. He had fallen suddenly into
+a fit of black brooding. After a minute or two, he looked up and asked
+sharply:
+
+"Do you remember Wolansky?"
+
+Wolansky was the Greek professor who had threatened to vote against
+Banaotovich when he was finishing his course at the Gymnasium.
+
+"Of course," said I. "And I remember well how he abused you that last
+year. If there ever was a cantankerous old scoundrel, Wolansky was just
+that identical individual!"
+
+"Maybe," he said absently; then after another pause:
+
+"Do you remember that Wolansky died suddenly, just a little while before
+the end of the school year?"
+
+I nodded. "I imagine that was a great piece of good luck for you," I
+said.
+
+"Yes," said Banaotovich. "If he had lived, I should never have had my
+diploma. As it was, I finished with honors. If Wolansky hadn't died when
+he did, I'd have been ruined. Don't forget that--ruined!"
+
+I was puzzled at his insistence. "Yes, you would have been seriously
+handicapped," I agreed. "Ruined is the word, perhaps."
+
+Banaotovich's face was purple with wine and some strange kind of
+suffering. "Do you remember another thing?" he said thickly. "Do you
+remember an old Hindoo who had a dark little hole away back of the shops
+and the beer depot and the livery stables between the Old Market and the
+river?"
+
+"The old fellow that had love charms and told fortunes and helped people
+to health and wealth and happiness?" I said in a tone of slightly forced
+cheerfulness. It was hard to be cheerful with those somber eyes boring
+into you. "Yes, I remember him, all right. I wanted to go and see him
+once, when I was about fifteen or sixteen, but Father told me that
+meddling with the black art had sent more people to hell than it had
+helped. And Father was so terribly earnest about it that he frightened
+me. I never went. As a matter of fact it was only a passing fancy, and I
+soon forgot all about him."
+
+"That Hindoo," said my old school-fellow thoughtfully, "knew things
+about the secret forces in the universe that made him almost a god. And
+he taught me things that the wisest philosopher in the world doesn't
+suspect. Still, your father may have been right. I think it very likely
+that what he taught me may send me to hell!"
+
+I shivered. I looked up nervously to make sure that the way was clear to
+the door. I began to suspect that my friend Banaotovich, though he was
+certainly not a criminal, might be a dangerous lunatic.
+
+My _vis-à-vis_ rubbed absently at a protuberance on his left side. I had
+noticed it when he first came across the room to speak to me. A
+deformity--I was sure it had not been there when he was a boy--or
+perhaps a tumor or some such thing as that.
+
+"I kept very quiet about what the Hindoo taught me, because I knew most
+people felt about such things much as you say your father did. And I
+wanted to get on in the world. But I had an idea the Hindoo could help
+me get on. Perhaps he _has_----"
+
+And he stared gloomily at space.
+
+"Perhaps he has. And perhaps he hasn't."
+
+He brooded. Then he took up the thread of his story.
+
+"Wolansky nearly drove me to suicide. I read and studied and crammed,
+day and night. I tried everything I could think of to overcome the man's
+antagonism. I crawled in the dust before him like a whipped cur! Nothing
+did any good. And when I saw he hated me and was determined to smash me,
+I began to hate _him_, too. I came to hate him worse than I hated the
+devils in hell. There was a time when I had to hold myself back with all
+my strength to keep from sticking a knife into him or braining him with
+a chair. But the Hindoo and I made some experiments with telepathy, and
+I discovered that there are other ways of killing a man besides stabbing
+him or giving him poison.
+
+"I learned how to make a man in front of me on the street turn around
+and look at me. I learned how to make _you_ dream about me and come and
+tell me the dream the next morning," (when he said that, I jumped, for I
+remembered having done exactly that thing!). "I learned how to bring out
+a bruise on Wolansky's face although he lived on the other side of town;
+so that he went around asking people how he could have bumped his
+forehead without knowing it. And at last I went to bed one night, set my
+mind on Wolansky, and said over and over to myself a thousand times:
+Die, you dog! You've _got_ to die! I _order_ you to die!
+
+"I said it over till I fell into a sort of trance. It wasn't sleep, I
+tell you. You can't sleep when you are in a state like that. And in my
+trance, I could feel another arm grow out of my side here and grow
+longer and longer, and grow out through the window although the window
+was closed, and grow out across the street and down the street and right
+through the walls and across the river.
+
+"I had never known where Wolansky lived. But that night I knew. I had
+never known the street or the house number. I had never been there in my
+life. But I can tell you just exactly how his bedroom looked. The
+wash-stand between the two windows, the work-table against the west
+wall, the wardrobe, the old divan against the north wall. In a corner
+the blue-gray tiled stove with some of the tile chipped off. And against
+the south wall--the bed he lay in. I can tell you the color of the
+blanket he pulled up over his face. It was a dirty brownish red.
+
+"But my hand seemed to go through the blanket and grip Wolansky by the
+throat. First he sighed and turned his head to one side and tried to
+wriggle free. Then he raised his arms and tried to get hold of something
+that wasn't there. His sighs turned into groans, and the groans changed
+to a death rattle. He threw his arms and legs wildly around in the air,
+his body bent up like a bow. But my hand held his head down against the
+pillow. At last he quit struggling and dropped down limp on the bed.
+Then the arm came crawling back in to my body, and I came out of the
+trance--and went to sleep--or perhaps I fainted.
+
+"The next morning the director came into our classroom and told us
+Wolansky had died in the night of some sort of attack. You remember
+that, I am sure----"
+
+When Banaotovich began to tell me this story, he had looked away from
+me, and his eyes never met mine during the telling. He had begun with a
+painful effort, but as he went on he grew more and more excited and more
+and more inflamed with hatred of the malicious old Greek teacher, till
+it almost seemed as if he had forgotten me and was living the astounding
+experience through for himself alone. When he was through, his ecstasy
+of indignation left him and he sat dejected and apprehensive, studying
+me pitifully out of the corners of his deep gray eyes.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When he stopped speaking, there was a moment of silence. Then I said
+something. I think what I said was, "Very extraordinary!"
+
+He smiled, a strained, sarcastic smile. "Extraordinary?" he repeated,
+with an interrogation point in his voice.
+
+"Your nerves were strained to the breaking-point," I said. "Your trouble
+with the old rascal had driven you half distracted. Then there was all
+that occultistic hodgepodge with the old Hindoo. And you were overworked
+and run down, anyway. No wonder you dreamed dreams and saw visions. And
+it may have been that there was some telepathic contact between you and
+Wolansky, and when he had his apoplectic attack----"
+
+The sarcastic smile deepened on Banaotovich's face. "So you have it all
+explained, and I'm acquitted?" he inquired.
+
+"Acquitted?" I cried. "You were never even accused. If the state were to
+bring action against every man who had a feeling that he would be
+happier if someone else were out of the way, the state would have a big
+job on its hands!"
+
+"Very true," Banaotovich assented icily. "I see I haven't got very far
+with you yet. You are forcing me to continue my not very edifying
+autobiography.--Did you know my father?"
+
+I remembered his father, and I remembered that he had not enjoyed the
+best possible reputation.
+
+"I think I knew him," I said hesitantly. "He was a--a money-lender,
+wasn't he?"
+
+"Don't spare my feelings," said Banaotovich bitterly. "He was a usurer,
+and a cruel one. I had a feeling for years that his business was a
+disgrace to the family, and I made no bones about telling him so. There
+were ugly scenes. I thought several times of leaving home. Finally,
+Father told me one day that since I didn't approve of the way he got his
+money, he was doing me the favor of disinheriting me. I told him that
+was all right with me, that I'd rather starve than live on money that
+was stained with the blood of poor debtors.
+
+"I thought at the time that I meant it. But about that time I had become
+interested in a young woman. I had never had much to do with the girls,
+and very few of them seemed at all interested in me. But this one
+appeared to like me, and when I made advances to her, she didn't repel
+me. I am no connoisseur of female beauty, but I think she was unusually
+attractive, and at that time I was half mad about her. Still waters run
+deep, you know.
+
+"Well, she had me under her spell so completely that I changed my mind
+about Father's money. I began to truckle to him, much as I had truckled
+to Wolansky. I began to feel him out to find whether he had made a will.
+He was very cold and non-committal. Finally I asked him outright if he
+would reconsider his decision to leave me penniless. He told me it was I
+that had made the decision, not he, and that he had no use for
+wishy-washy people that changed their minds like weather-cocks. He was
+very sarcastic. I lost my temper and answered him back. We had a
+terrible quarrel, and finally he--he struck me. I was twenty years old
+and a bigger man than he. And I think no man ever had more stubborn
+pride, at bottom, than I have.
+
+"It was the Wolansky thing all over again. The humiliation, the effort
+at ingratiation, the failure, the long, eating, gnawing, growing hatred.
+And it--it ended the same way. The night of brooding that hardened into
+a devilish decision, the vision of the long arm, growing, stretching,
+crawling--but not so far this time, only through two walls and across
+our own house. You remember that Father died of an apoplectic stroke,
+just as Wolansky had done a year or two before."
+
+"Yes, I think I remember," I said in considerable embarrassment. The
+thing _did_ begin to look uncanny. I was thoroughly sorry for the poor,
+cracked fellow, but I would just as soon not have been alone with him in
+that solitary drinking-place in the twilight.
+
+"Well?" he said, almost sharply.
+
+"Well, Banaotovich," I answered with a show of confidence, "you have had
+a great deal of unhappiness, and you have my sympathy. This strange
+faculty you have of anticipating deaths, like the night-owls and the
+death-watch that ticks in the walls, has made these bereavements an
+occasion of self-torment for you. I think you should see a
+psychiatrist."
+
+"Anticipating--anticipating?" Banaotovich had gone back and was
+repeating a word I had used, and as he repeated it he drummed madly on
+the table with his fingers. "It's a curious coincidence that
+'anticipating' is just the word my wife used when I told her about it."
+
+"You--told--your wife--what you have just told me?" I stammered. "Do you
+think that was wise?"
+
+"I couldn't help it," he said with a catch in his throat. "I thought I
+loved her, and I had to talk to somebody. I was miserable, and I had a
+feeling that she might understand and be brought closer to me by
+sympathy. Now that I think of it, I can see that I was an egregious
+idiot, but I discovered long ago that we aren't rational beings after
+all. We are driven or drawn by mysterious forces, and we go to our
+destination because we can't help it.
+
+"My wife had always seemed a little timid with me. I never seemed to
+have the gift of attracting people. And I don't know whether she would
+ever have been interested in me at all if I hadn't used a little--a
+little charm the Hindoo taught me. Perhaps that didn't have much to do
+with it--but I had never been happy with her. However that may be, one
+evening when she seemed unusually approachable, I had just the same
+impulse that I had when I met you here tonight, and I told her about
+Wolansky and Father. She pooh-poohed it all just as you did. But she was
+afraid. I could see that. She was more and more afraid of me as the days
+went by. For a long time she tried to be cordial and natural in my
+presence, but it was a sham and the poor thing couldn't keep it up. Each
+of us knew as well what was in the mind of the other as if we had talked
+the situation over frankly for hours. We reached the point where we
+couldn't look each other in the face. No solitude could have been as
+ghastly as that solitude of two people who shared a revolting secret.
+For I had convinced her that I was guilty. I had succeeded in doing what
+I had set out to do, and I had ruined two lives in doing it. I have the
+faculty, it seems, of poisoning whatever I touch. Only today, my wife
+said to me----"
+
+I started to my feet with a great rush of relief and thankfulness. "Ah,
+your wife is alive, then?" I cried.
+
+"My wife is alive. That is--my _second_ wife is alive," he said, with a
+horrible forced smile.
+
+I sank back gasping. "What did you do with your first wife, you dirty
+hound?" I moaned in helpless indignation.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He closed his eyes, and a wave of bitter triumph played about the
+muscles of his mouth. "Have I convinced _you_ too, at last?" he said.
+
+Then I realized that I had been an insulting idiot. At worst, the man
+before me was a pathological case, and he certainly belonged in an
+asylum rather than in a prison.
+
+"Forgive me, Banaotovich," I panted. "I don't know what made me----"
+
+He looked at me sadly, almost compassionately. "There is nothing to
+forgive," he said, very quietly. "I am all you called me and a thousand
+times worse. Now let me finish my story."
+
+"You don't need to," I said hastily. "I know all the rest of it."
+
+All interest, I am afraid nearly all sympathy, had gone out of me. What
+I wanted most of all was to get away from this melancholy citizen with
+power and madness in his gray eyes.
+
+"No, you don't know quite all of it yet," he insisted. "Perhaps if I
+tell you the whole story, even if you can't excuse me--and I don't
+deserve your excusing, I don't _want_ your excusing--you can understand
+me a little better, and think of me a little more kindly.
+
+"There was another woman. I couldn't help it, any more than any of us
+can help anything. A fine, sympathetic young woman, who loved me because
+she knew I was unhappy. I had been married to the other woman for four
+years. We were completely estranged. We could scarcely bear to speak to
+each other. I couldn't be easy one moment in the same house with her. I
+had a cot in my office out in town because I couldn't even sleep soundly
+at home. It was hell. The terror in her eyes made me physically sick. My
+wife learned about the other woman. My wife was a devout Catholic, and
+there was no possibility of a divorce. I could read in my wife's face
+just what went on in her mind. She knew the other woman had become my
+only reason for living. And one day I read in her eyes, along with the
+terror, a glint of desperate determination. She knew she was in danger,
+she knew I had a power that I could exercise when I chose in spite of
+all the courts and police and jails in the country. She knew her life
+was in danger, and her eyes told me that mine was in danger for that
+very reason. I didn't blame her. Half my grief through all the years had
+been grief for _her_. But the instinct of self-defense in me was
+strong--and--she went--too--like----"
+
+[Illustration: "And she went, too, like the other."]
+
+He never finished his sentence. He dropped his head on the table and
+began to sob hysterically. I laid a gingerly hand on his shoulder.
+
+"Banaotovich," I said unsteadily, "I'm sorry for you----"
+
+He sat up and supported his chin in both hands. "I haven't been as--as
+bad as all this sounds like," he said after a while. "Before I was
+married a second time, I went to the chief of police and gave myself up.
+The chief listened to my story--I didn't try to explain it all, as I've
+done with you, but just blurted out the main facts; but the longer he
+listened the uneasier he became, and when I got through he asked me
+nervously if I didn't think I ought to go into a sanitarium for a while.
+Then he bowed me out in a big hurry. Perhaps if I had told him all the
+ins and outs of it, it might have been different----"
+
+"But don't you think he's right about the sanitarium?"
+
+"Right? I'm as sane as you are. I've killed three people, a crazy
+scoundrel, a hard man, and a pure, innocent woman. But I did it all
+because I had to. A sanitarium wouldn't do me or anyone else any good,
+and it would be a heavy expense. I have taken the responsibility for
+another pure, innocent woman, and I must support her. The war and the
+depression swept away my father's fortune, and my present business has
+dwindled away till I am making only the barest living. I have applied
+for the agency for a big Berlin insurance company, and if I can get it,
+along with my other business, I shall be fairly comfortable. But I
+understand there is some talk of their sending in a representative from
+outside. If they do that, if they take the bread out of my mouth like
+that, it won't be good for the outsider!"
+
+He was drunk, and his drunkenness was working him into an ugly mood. He
+was dangerous, and physical courage was never my strong point.
+
+"What is the name of the Berlin company?" I asked timidly.
+
+He named the firm I myself worked for. Then he fumbled for his bottle,
+and with stern and painful attention set about the difficult and
+delicate task of filling his glass again. I muttered something about
+being back in a moment, and made for the door. He was too busy to pay
+any attention to me.
+
+When I had the door safely shut behind me, I sprinted through the rain
+to my hotel as if the devil himself were after me....
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was a long time before I got over waking up in the middle of the
+night with the feeling that an icy, iron-muscled hand was clutching at
+my throat. I don't have the experience often any more, but I have never
+seen the city of my birth since that awful night. I got out on the
+midnight train, and my company obligingly gave me territory on the other
+side of Germany.
+
+Some time ago I happened to see a notice in the paper to the effect that
+a certain patient named G. Banaotovich had died suddenly in the
+Staatliche Nervenheilanstalt in Nuremberg. But I have met the name
+rather frequently of late, and I think it is a fairly common one. I
+didn't investigate.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Footnote 1: Adapted by Roy Temple House from the German.]
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Long Arm, by Franz Habl
+
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+      The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Long Arm, by FRANZ HABL.
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+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Long Arm, by Franz Habl
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Long Arm
+
+Author: Franz Habl
+
+Release Date: May 30, 2010 [EBook #32610]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LONG ARM ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/cover.jpg" alt=""/>
+</div>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+
+
+
+
+<h1>The Long Arm</h1>
+
+<h2>By FRANZ HABL<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a></h2>
+
+
+<p>[Transcriber Note: This etext was produced from Weird Tales October
+1937. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S.
+copyright on this publication was renewed.]</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>Creeping, writhing, insidiously crawling and groping, the
+long arm reached out in its ghastly errand of death</i></div>
+
+
+<p>I had been out of Germany for thirty-five years, drawn hither and
+thither by various glittering of will-of-the-wisps. When I returned to
+my native country, I was as poor in pocket as when I left, and much
+poorer in illusions.</p>
+
+<p>The Berlin insurance company which I had represented with such mediocre
+success in Switzerland, Austria and Belgium agreed to let me sell for
+them at home, and by a curious coincidence there was an opening in the
+quaint old Bavarian city in which I had been born and bred.</p>
+
+<p>I will pass over the strangely mingled feelings with which I rode in a
+Twentieth Century railroad train past the thousand-year-old walls of one
+of the most curious ancient cities in Europe, a town moreover whose
+every winding narrow street and sharp-gabled building had been the
+companion of my infancy and childhood. No one seemed to know me, and I
+recognized no one. For several days I made no attempt to sell life
+insurance, but wandered in a dream, the bewildered ghost of my former
+self, about the spots which I had known in happier days.</p>
+
+<p>One dull rainy afternoon I took refuge from the weather in a dingy
+little coffee-house in which, at the age of fourteen or fifteen, I along
+with certain boon companions, had learned the gentle art of billiards.
+It seemed as if every article of furniture was just as I had walked away
+from them, well toward half a century before. It was raining outside,
+and I sat alone in the gloomy, smoky old place, pondering the sweet and
+bitter mysteries of life.</p>
+
+<p>While I sat thus, staring out with unseeing eyes at the rain which was
+by this time beating down smartly on the pavement, I became conscious
+that someone in the room was staring at me. I had not noticed that there
+was anyone else in the dark, low-ceilinged place except the obsequious
+proprietor who had served me my cigar and coffee. Now I realized that a
+man who sat in the corner diagonally across from me was studying me
+curiously from over his newspaper. His face was one that I had seen
+before. Suddenly, across all the years, I remembered him. And in that
+same moment he rose and came toward me with his hand held out.</p>
+
+<p>We had been in school together, in the Gymnasium. He had been a strange
+fellow with few friends, but had enjoyed the reputation of being the
+best 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 cantankerous
+old professor who had publicly declared that Gustav was not the kind of
+boy who should have a Gymnasium diploma and that he, the professor, was
+determined never to give him a passing grade. My father had admired the
+boy very much, and at one juncture when my marks looked perilously low,
+he had employed Gustav to tutor me. Gustav had been so successful that
+Father was delighted and made him a present of a silver cigarette case
+with Gustav's initials and mine engraved on it. I remembered all this
+very 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. I
+had a feeling that it was a very foreign name, Polish or Croatian or
+something of the sort. As he mentioned this and that, I fear I answered
+him a little absently and incoherently. The name was almost there. The
+syllables flitted tantalizingly just out of my reach. But I was sure the
+name began with a B. Wasn't it a Bam- or a Ban-something? Ah! I had it.
+Banaotovich!</p>
+
+<p>From that moment the conversation went more easily. I was surprized and
+pleased when Banaotovich drew his silver cigarette-case out of his
+pocket 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 why
+in my childhood I had never been quite comfortable in his company. I
+remembered that other boys of the group had admitted to me
+confidentially that they were more than a little afraid of him.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>The longer we talked the more intimate, the more in the nature of a
+mutual confession, our conversation became. I admitted to Banaotovich
+that the hifalutin fashion in which I had left the town to win fame and
+fortune years before, had been asinine in the extreme, and that it
+served me just right to have to sneak back unknown and penniless.
+Banaotovich rejoined that for all his pride in his school marks he had
+remained a person of no importance, and that the pot had not the
+slightest intention of making itself ridiculous by calling the kettle
+black. He seemed almost painfully inclined to run himself down. I could
+feel in his manner a sort of pathetic reaching out for sympathy and
+consideration. And it began to seem as if he were about to tell me
+something or ask me for something. But whatever he had to tell seemed
+hard to say, and it was slow in coming over his lips.</p>
+
+<p>Banaotovich ordered two bottles of the heavy native wine. I drank
+sparingly of it, because it goes to my head. But Banaotovich swallowed
+two or three glassfuls in hasty succession, and his cheeks grew flushed.
+There was a pause. Suddenly he leaned across the table toward me and
+spoke in a hoarse, excited whisper.</p>
+
+<p>"Modersohn," he said anxiously, "I want to make a confession to you&mdash;a
+terrible confession. It may turn you against me completely. Maybe you
+don't want to hear it. If you don't, say so, and I'll go home. But it
+seems as if I've got to tell somebody about it. It seems as if I've got
+to find somebody who understands me and can excuse me, or it will kill
+me. Shall I tell you? Shall I?"</p>
+
+<p>I was startled. I was reasonably sure that Banaotovich was no criminal,
+since he had lived half a century in his native city, undisturbed and
+from all he had told me solvent and respected. I had always known that
+he was a queer fish, a brooding, solitary sort of person, and I settled
+myself to listen to some harmless bit of psychopathy which meant nothing
+except to the unfortunate subject.</p>
+
+<p>"My dear fellow," I said, no doubt a little patronizingly, "I am sure
+you haven't anything to confess that will make you out an outrageous
+rascal, but if it will do you any good to tell me your troubles, I am
+ready to listen to them."</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you," said Banaotovich in a trembling voice. "I've done nothing
+that they can put me behind the bars for. But I&mdash;I&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>He stared at me sternly.</p>
+
+<p>"But I've done worse things," he said solemnly, "than some poor fellows
+that have been strung up by the neck and choked to death!"</p>
+
+<p>I laughed, a little nervously. "Tell me your story, if you like," I
+said, "and let me decide just how black you are. But I haven't a great
+deal of apprehension. We're all of us poor miserable sinners, as far as
+that's concerned. I could tell you things about myself&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Banaotovich was not listening to me at all. He had fallen suddenly into
+a fit of black brooding. After a minute or two, he looked up and asked
+sharply:</p>
+
+<p>"Do you remember Wolansky?"</p>
+
+<p>Wolansky was the Greek professor who had threatened to vote against
+Banaotovich when he was finishing his course at the Gymnasium.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course," said I. "And I remember well how he abused you that last
+year. If there ever was a cantankerous old scoundrel, Wolansky was just
+that identical individual!"</p>
+
+<p>"Maybe," he said absently; then after another pause:</p>
+
+<p>"Do you remember that Wolansky died suddenly, just a little while before
+the end of the school year?"</p>
+
+<p>I nodded. "I imagine that was a great piece of good luck for you," I
+said.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said Banaotovich. "If he had lived, I should never have had my
+diploma. As it was, I finished with honors. If Wolansky hadn't died when
+he did, I'd have been ruined. Don't forget that&mdash;ruined!"</p>
+
+<p>I was puzzled at his insistence. "Yes, you would have been seriously
+handicapped," I agreed. "Ruined is the word, perhaps."</p>
+
+<p>Banaotovich's face was purple with wine and some strange kind of
+suffering. "Do you remember another thing?" he said thickly. "Do you
+remember an old Hindoo who had a dark little hole away back of the shops
+and the beer depot and the livery stables between the Old Market and the
+river?"</p>
+
+<p>"The old fellow that had love charms and told fortunes and helped people
+to health and wealth and happiness?" I said in a tone of slightly forced
+cheerfulness. It was hard to be cheerful with those somber eyes boring
+into you. "Yes, I remember him, all right. I wanted to go and see him
+once, when I was about fifteen or sixteen, but Father told me that
+meddling with the black art had sent more people to hell than it had
+helped. And Father was so terribly earnest about it that he frightened
+me. I never went. As a matter of fact it was only a passing fancy, and I
+soon forgot all about him."</p>
+
+<p>"That Hindoo," said my old school-fellow thoughtfully, "knew things
+about the secret forces in the universe that made him almost a god. And
+he taught me things that the wisest philosopher in the world doesn't
+suspect. Still, your father may have been right. I think it very likely
+that what he taught me may send me to hell!"</p>
+
+<p>I shivered. I looked up nervously to make sure that the way was clear to
+the door. I began to suspect that my friend Banaotovich, though he was
+certainly not a criminal, might be a dangerous lunatic.</p>
+
+<p>My <i>vis-à-vis</i> rubbed absently at a protuberance on his left side. I had
+noticed it when he first came across the room to speak to me. A
+deformity&mdash;I was sure it had not been there when he was a boy&mdash;or
+perhaps a tumor or some such thing as that.</p>
+
+<p>"I kept very quiet about what the Hindoo taught me, because I knew most
+people felt about such things much as you say your father did. And I
+wanted to get on in the world. But I had an idea the Hindoo could help
+me get on. Perhaps he <i>has</i>&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>And he stared gloomily at space.</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps he has. And perhaps he hasn't."</p>
+
+<p>He brooded. Then he took up the thread of his story.</p>
+
+<p>"Wolansky nearly drove me to suicide. I read and studied and crammed,
+day and night. I tried everything I could think of to overcome the man's
+antagonism. I crawled in the dust before him like a whipped cur! Nothing
+did any good. And when I saw he hated me and was determined to smash me,
+I began to hate <i>him</i>, too. I came to hate him worse than I hated the
+devils in hell. There was a time when I had to hold myself back with all
+my strength to keep from sticking a knife into him or braining him with
+a chair. But the Hindoo and I made some experiments with telepathy, and
+I discovered that there are other ways of killing a man besides stabbing
+him or giving him poison.</p>
+
+<p>"I learned how to make a man in front of me on the street turn around
+and look at me. I learned how to make <i>you</i> dream about me and come and
+tell me the dream the next morning," (when he said that, I jumped, for I
+remembered having done exactly that thing!). "I learned how to bring out
+a bruise on Wolansky's face although he lived on the other side of town;
+so that he went around asking people how he could have bumped his
+forehead without knowing it. And at last I went to bed one night, set my
+mind on Wolansky, and said over and over to myself a thousand times:
+Die, you dog! You've <i>got</i> to die! I <i>order</i> you to die!</p>
+
+<p>"I said it over till I fell into a sort of trance. It wasn't sleep, I
+tell you. You can't sleep when you are in a state like that. And in my
+trance, I could feel another arm grow out of my side here and grow
+longer and longer, and grow out through the window although the window
+was closed, and grow out across the street and down the street and right
+through the walls and across the river.</p>
+
+<p>"I had never known where Wolansky lived. But that night I knew. I had
+never known the street or the house number. I had never been there in my
+life. But I can tell you just exactly how his bedroom looked. The
+wash-stand between the two windows, the work-table against the west
+wall, the wardrobe, the old divan against the north wall. In a corner
+the blue-gray tiled stove with some of the tile chipped off. And against
+the south wall&mdash;the bed he lay in. I can tell you the color of the
+blanket he pulled up over his face. It was a dirty brownish red.</p>
+
+<p>"But my hand seemed to go through the blanket and grip Wolansky by the
+throat. First he sighed and turned his head to one side and tried to
+wriggle free. Then he raised his arms and tried to get hold of something
+that wasn't there. His sighs turned into groans, and the groans changed
+to a death rattle. He threw his arms and legs wildly around in the air,
+his body bent up like a bow. But my hand held his head down against the
+pillow. At last he quit struggling and dropped down limp on the bed.
+Then the arm came crawling back in to my body, and I came out of the
+trance&mdash;and went to sleep&mdash;or perhaps I fainted.</p>
+
+<p>"The next morning the director came into our classroom and told us
+Wolansky had died in the night of some sort of attack. You remember
+that, I am sure&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>When Banaotovich began to tell me this story, he had looked away from
+me, and his eyes never met mine during the telling. He had begun with a
+painful effort, but as he went on he grew more and more excited and more
+and more inflamed with hatred of the malicious old Greek teacher, till
+it almost seemed as if he had forgotten me and was living the astounding
+experience through for himself alone. When he was through, his ecstasy
+of indignation left him and he sat dejected and apprehensive, studying
+me pitifully out of the corners of his deep gray eyes.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>When he stopped speaking, there was a moment of silence. Then I said
+something. I think what I said was, "Very extraordinary!"</p>
+
+<p>He smiled, a strained, sarcastic smile. "Extraordinary?" he repeated,
+with an interrogation point in his voice.</p>
+
+<p>"Your nerves were strained to the breaking-point," I said. "Your trouble
+with the old rascal had driven you half distracted. Then there was all
+that occultistic hodgepodge with the old Hindoo. And you were overworked
+and run down, anyway. No wonder you dreamed dreams and saw visions. And
+it may have been that there was some telepathic contact between you and
+Wolansky, and when he had his apoplectic attack&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>The sarcastic smile deepened on Banaotovich's face. "So you have it all
+explained, and I'm acquitted?" he inquired.</p>
+
+<p>"Acquitted?" I cried. "You were never even accused. If the state were to
+bring action against every man who had a feeling that he would be
+happier if someone else were out of the way, the state would have a big
+job on its hands!"</p>
+
+<p>"Very true," Banaotovich assented icily. "I see I haven't got very far
+with you yet. You are forcing me to continue my not very edifying
+autobiography.&mdash;Did you know my father?"</p>
+
+<p>I remembered his father, and I remembered that he had not enjoyed the
+best possible reputation.</p>
+
+<p>"I think I knew him," I said hesitantly. "He was a&mdash;a money-lender,
+wasn't he?"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't spare my feelings," said Banaotovich bitterly. "He was a usurer,
+and a cruel one. I had a feeling for years that his business was a
+disgrace to the family, and I made no bones about telling him so. There
+were ugly scenes. I thought several times of leaving home. Finally,
+Father told me one day that since I didn't approve of the way he got his
+money, he was doing me the favor of disinheriting me. I told him that
+was all right with me, that I'd rather starve than live on money that
+was stained with the blood of poor debtors.</p>
+
+<p>"I thought at the time that I meant it. But about that time I had become
+interested in a young woman. I had never had much to do with the girls,
+and very few of them seemed at all interested in me. But this one
+appeared to like me, and when I made advances to her, she didn't repel
+me. I am no connoisseur of female beauty, but I think she was unusually
+attractive, and at that time I was half mad about her. Still waters run
+deep, you know.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, she had me under her spell so completely that I changed my mind
+about Father's money. I began to truckle to him, much as I had truckled
+to Wolansky. I began to feel him out to find whether he had made a will.
+He was very cold and non-committal. Finally I asked him outright if he
+would reconsider his decision to leave me penniless. He told me it was I
+that had made the decision, not he, and that he had no use for
+wishy-washy people that changed their minds like weather-cocks. He was
+very sarcastic. I lost my temper and answered him back. We had a
+terrible quarrel, and finally he&mdash;he struck me. I was twenty years old
+and a bigger man than he. And I think no man ever had more stubborn
+pride, at bottom, than I have.</p>
+
+<p>"It was the Wolansky thing all over again. The humiliation, the effort
+at ingratiation, the failure, the long, eating, gnawing, growing hatred.
+And it&mdash;it ended the same way. The night of brooding that hardened into
+a devilish decision, the vision of the long arm, growing, stretching,
+crawling&mdash;but not so far this time, only through two walls and across
+our own house. You remember that Father died of an apoplectic stroke,
+just as Wolansky had done a year or two before."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I think I remember," I said in considerable embarrassment. The
+thing <i>did</i> begin to look uncanny. I was thoroughly sorry for the poor,
+cracked fellow, but I would just as soon not have been alone with him in
+that solitary drinking-place in the twilight.</p>
+
+<p>"Well?" he said, almost sharply.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Banaotovich," I answered with a show of confidence, "you have had
+a great deal of unhappiness, and you have my sympathy. This strange
+faculty you have of anticipating deaths, like the night-owls and the
+death-watch that ticks in the walls, has made these bereavements an
+occasion of self-torment for you. I think you should see a
+psychiatrist."</p>
+
+<p>"Anticipating&mdash;anticipating?" Banaotovich had gone back and was
+repeating a word I had used, and as he repeated it he drummed madly on
+the table with his fingers. "It's a curious coincidence that
+'anticipating' is just the word my wife used when I told her about it."</p>
+
+<p>"You&mdash;told&mdash;your wife&mdash;what you have just told me?" I stammered. "Do you
+think that was wise?"</p>
+
+<p>"I couldn't help it," he said with a catch in his throat. "I thought I
+loved her, and I had to talk to somebody. I was miserable, and I had a
+feeling that she might understand and be brought closer to me by
+sympathy. Now that I think of it, I can see that I was an egregious
+idiot, but I discovered long ago that we aren't rational beings after
+all. We are driven or drawn by mysterious forces, and we go to our
+destination because we can't help it.</p>
+
+<p>"My wife had always seemed a little timid with me. I never seemed to
+have the gift of attracting people. And I don't know whether she would
+ever have been interested in me at all if I hadn't used a little&mdash;a
+little charm the Hindoo taught me. Perhaps that didn't have much to do
+with it&mdash;but I had never been happy with her. However that may be, one
+evening when she seemed unusually approachable, I had just the same
+impulse that I had when I met you here tonight, and I told her about
+Wolansky and Father. She pooh-poohed it all just as you did. But she was
+afraid. I could see that. She was more and more afraid of me as the days
+went by. For a long time she tried to be cordial and natural in my
+presence, but it was a sham and the poor thing couldn't keep it up. Each
+of us knew as well what was in the mind of the other as if we had talked
+the situation over frankly for hours. We reached the point where we
+couldn't look each other in the face. No solitude could have been as
+ghastly as that solitude of two people who shared a revolting secret.
+For I had convinced her that I was guilty. I had succeeded in doing what
+I had set out to do, and I had ruined two lives in doing it. I have the
+faculty, it seems, of poisoning whatever I touch. Only today, my wife
+said to me&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>I started to my feet with a great rush of relief and thankfulness. "Ah,
+your wife is alive, then?" I cried.</p>
+
+<p>"My wife is alive. That is&mdash;my <i>second</i> wife is alive," he said, with a
+horrible forced smile.</p>
+
+<p>I sank back gasping. "What did you do with your first wife, you dirty
+hound?" I moaned in helpless indignation.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>He closed his eyes, and a wave of bitter triumph played about the
+muscles of his mouth. "Have I convinced <i>you</i> too, at last?" he said.</p>
+
+<p>Then I realized that I had been an insulting idiot. At worst, the man
+before me was a pathological case, and he certainly belonged in an
+asylum rather than in a prison.</p>
+
+<p>"Forgive me, Banaotovich," I panted. "I don't know what made me&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>He looked at me sadly, almost compassionately. "There is nothing to
+forgive," he said, very quietly. "I am all you called me and a thousand
+times worse. Now let me finish my story."</p>
+
+<p>"You don't need to," I said hastily. "I know all the rest of it."</p>
+
+<p>All interest, I am afraid nearly all sympathy, had gone out of me. What
+I wanted most of all was to get away from this melancholy citizen with
+power and madness in his gray eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"No, you don't know quite all of it yet," he insisted. "Perhaps if I
+tell you the whole story, even if you can't excuse me&mdash;and I don't
+deserve your excusing, I don't <i>want</i> your excusing&mdash;you can understand
+me a little better, and think of me a little more kindly.</p>
+
+<p>"There was another woman. I couldn't help it, any more than any of us
+can help anything. A fine, sympathetic young woman, who loved me because
+she knew I was unhappy. I had been married to the other woman for four
+years. We were completely estranged. We could scarcely bear to speak to
+each other. I couldn't be easy one moment in the same house with her. I
+had a cot in my office out in town because I couldn't even sleep soundly
+at home. It was hell. The terror in her eyes made me physically sick. My
+wife learned about the other woman. My wife was a devout Catholic, and
+there was no possibility of a divorce. I could read in my wife's face
+just what went on in her mind. She knew the other woman had become my
+only reason for living. And one day I read in her eyes, along with the
+terror, a glint of desperate determination. She knew she was in danger,
+she knew I had a power that I could exercise when I chose in spite of
+all the courts and police and jails in the country. She knew her life
+was in danger, and her eyes told me that mine was in danger for that
+very reason. I didn't blame her. Half my grief through all the years had
+been grief for <i>her</i>. But the instinct of self-defense in me was
+strong&mdash;and&mdash;she went&mdash;too&mdash;like&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/illus.jpg" alt=""/>
+</div>
+
+<h3>"And she went, too, like the other."</h3>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<p>He never finished his sentence. He dropped his head on the table and
+began to sob hysterically. I laid a gingerly hand on his shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>"Banaotovich," I said unsteadily, "I'm sorry for you&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>He sat up and supported his chin in both hands. "I haven't been as&mdash;as
+bad as all this sounds like," he said after a while. "Before I was
+married a second time, I went to the chief of police and gave myself up.
+The chief listened to my story&mdash;I didn't try to explain it all, as I've
+done with you, but just blurted out the main facts; but the longer he
+listened the uneasier he became, and when I got through he asked me
+nervously if I didn't think I ought to go into a sanitarium for a while.
+Then he bowed me out in a big hurry. Perhaps if I had told him all the
+ins and outs of it, it might have been different&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"But don't you think he's right about the sanitarium?"</p>
+
+<p>"Right? I'm as sane as you are. I've killed three people, a crazy
+scoundrel, a hard man, and a pure, innocent woman. But I did it all
+because I had to. A sanitarium wouldn't do me or anyone else any good,
+and it would be a heavy expense. I have taken the responsibility for
+another pure, innocent woman, and I must support her. The war and the
+depression swept away my father's fortune, and my present business has
+dwindled away till I am making only the barest living. I have applied
+for the agency for a big Berlin insurance company, and if I can get it,
+along with my other business, I shall be fairly comfortable. But I
+understand there is some talk of their sending in a representative from
+outside. If they do that, if they take the bread out of my mouth like
+that, it won't be good for the outsider!"</p>
+
+<p>He was drunk, and his drunkenness was working him into an ugly mood. He
+was dangerous, and physical courage was never my strong point.</p>
+
+<p>"What is the name of the Berlin company?" I asked timidly.</p>
+
+<p>He named the firm I myself worked for. Then he fumbled for his bottle,
+and with stern and painful attention set about the difficult and
+delicate task of filling his glass again. I muttered something about
+being back in a moment, and made for the door. He was too busy to pay
+any attention to me.</p>
+
+<p>When I had the door safely shut behind me, I sprinted through the rain
+to my hotel as if the devil himself were after me....</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>It was a long time before I got over waking up in the middle of the
+night with the feeling that an icy, iron-muscled hand was clutching at
+my throat. I don't have the experience often any more, but I have never
+seen the city of my birth since that awful night. I got out on the
+midnight train, and my company obligingly gave me territory on the other
+side of Germany.</p>
+
+<p>Some time ago I happened to see a notice in the paper to the effect that
+a certain patient named G. Banaotovich had died suddenly in the
+Staatliche Nervenheilanstalt in Nuremberg. But I have met the name
+rather frequently of late, and I think it is a fairly common one. I
+didn't investigate.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> Adapted by Roy Temple House from the German.</p></div>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Long Arm, by Franz Habl
+
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+</pre>
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+</body>
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Long Arm, by Franz Habl
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Long Arm
+
+Author: Franz Habl
+
+Release Date: May 30, 2010 [EBook #32610]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LONG ARM ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                            The Long Arm
+
+                          By FRANZ HABL[1]
+
+[Transcriber Note: This etext was produced from Weird Tales October
+1937. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S.
+copyright on this publication was renewed.]
+
+
+[Sidenote: _Creeping, writhing, insidiously crawling and groping, the
+long arm reached out in its ghastly errand of death_]
+
+
+I had been out of Germany for thirty-five years, drawn hither and
+thither by various glittering of will-of-the-wisps. When I returned to
+my native country, I was as poor in pocket as when I left, and much
+poorer in illusions.
+
+The Berlin insurance company which I had represented with such mediocre
+success in Switzerland, Austria and Belgium agreed to let me sell for
+them at home, and by a curious coincidence there was an opening in the
+quaint old Bavarian city in which I had been born and bred.
+
+I will pass over the strangely mingled feelings with which I rode in a
+Twentieth Century railroad train past the thousand-year-old walls of one
+of the most curious ancient cities in Europe, a town moreover whose
+every winding narrow street and sharp-gabled building had been the
+companion of my infancy and childhood. No one seemed to know me, and I
+recognized no one. For several days I made no attempt to sell life
+insurance, but wandered in a dream, the bewildered ghost of my former
+self, about the spots which I had known in happier days.
+
+One dull rainy afternoon I took refuge from the weather in a dingy
+little coffee-house in which, at the age of fourteen or fifteen, I along
+with certain boon companions, had learned the gentle art of billiards.
+It seemed as if every article of furniture was just as I had walked away
+from them, well toward half a century before. It was raining outside,
+and I sat alone in the gloomy, smoky old place, pondering the sweet and
+bitter mysteries of life.
+
+While I sat thus, staring out with unseeing eyes at the rain which was
+by this time beating down smartly on the pavement, I became conscious
+that someone in the room was staring at me. I had not noticed that there
+was anyone else in the dark, low-ceilinged place except the obsequious
+proprietor who had served me my cigar and coffee. Now I realized that a
+man who sat in the corner diagonally across from me was studying me
+curiously from over his newspaper. His face was one that I had seen
+before. Suddenly, across all the years, I remembered him. And in that
+same 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 strange
+fellow with few friends, but had enjoyed the reputation of being the
+best 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 cantankerous
+old professor who had publicly declared that Gustav was not the kind of
+boy who should have a Gymnasium diploma and that he, the professor, was
+determined never to give him a passing grade. My father had admired the
+boy very much, and at one juncture when my marks looked perilously low,
+he had employed Gustav to tutor me. Gustav had been so successful that
+Father was delighted and made him a present of a silver cigarette case
+with Gustav's initials and mine engraved on it. I remembered all this
+very 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. I
+had a feeling that it was a very foreign name, Polish or Croatian or
+something of the sort. As he mentioned this and that, I fear I answered
+him a little absently and incoherently. The name was almost there. The
+syllables flitted tantalizingly just out of my reach. But I was sure the
+name 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 and
+pleased when Banaotovich drew his silver cigarette-case out of his
+pocket 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 why
+in my childhood I had never been quite comfortable in his company. I
+remembered that other boys of the group had admitted to me
+confidentially that they were more than a little afraid of him.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The longer we talked the more intimate, the more in the nature of a
+mutual confession, our conversation became. I admitted to Banaotovich
+that the hifalutin fashion in which I had left the town to win fame and
+fortune years before, had been asinine in the extreme, and that it
+served me just right to have to sneak back unknown and penniless.
+Banaotovich rejoined that for all his pride in his school marks he had
+remained a person of no importance, and that the pot had not the
+slightest intention of making itself ridiculous by calling the kettle
+black. He seemed almost painfully inclined to run himself down. I could
+feel in his manner a sort of pathetic reaching out for sympathy and
+consideration. And it began to seem as if he were about to tell me
+something or ask me for something. But whatever he had to tell seemed
+hard to say, and it was slow in coming over his lips.
+
+Banaotovich ordered two bottles of the heavy native wine. I drank
+sparingly of it, because it goes to my head. But Banaotovich swallowed
+two or three glassfuls in hasty succession, and his cheeks grew flushed.
+There was a pause. Suddenly he leaned across the table toward me and
+spoke in a hoarse, excited whisper.
+
+"Modersohn," he said anxiously, "I want to make a confession to you--a
+terrible confession. It may turn you against me completely. Maybe you
+don't want to hear it. If you don't, say so, and I'll go home. But it
+seems as if I've got to tell somebody about it. It seems as if I've got
+to find somebody who understands me and can excuse me, or it will kill
+me. 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 and
+from all he had told me solvent and respected. I had always known that
+he was a queer fish, a brooding, solitary sort of person, and I settled
+myself to listen to some harmless bit of psychopathy which meant nothing
+except to the unfortunate subject.
+
+"My dear fellow," I said, no doubt a little patronizingly, "I am sure
+you haven't anything to confess that will make you out an outrageous
+rascal, but if it will do you any good to tell me your troubles, I am
+ready to listen to them."
+
+"Thank you," said Banaotovich in a trembling voice. "I've done nothing
+that 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 fellows
+that have been strung up by the neck and choked to death!"
+
+I laughed, a little nervously. "Tell me your story, if you like," I
+said, "and let me decide just how black you are. But I haven't a great
+deal of apprehension. We're all of us poor miserable sinners, as far as
+that's concerned. I could tell you things about myself----"
+
+Banaotovich was not listening to me at all. He had fallen suddenly into
+a fit of black brooding. After a minute or two, he looked up and asked
+sharply:
+
+"Do you remember Wolansky?"
+
+Wolansky was the Greek professor who had threatened to vote against
+Banaotovich when he was finishing his course at the Gymnasium.
+
+"Of course," said I. "And I remember well how he abused you that last
+year. If there ever was a cantankerous old scoundrel, Wolansky was just
+that identical individual!"
+
+"Maybe," he said absently; then after another pause:
+
+"Do you remember that Wolansky died suddenly, just a little while before
+the end of the school year?"
+
+I nodded. "I imagine that was a great piece of good luck for you," I
+said.
+
+"Yes," said Banaotovich. "If he had lived, I should never have had my
+diploma. As it was, I finished with honors. If Wolansky hadn't died when
+he did, I'd have been ruined. Don't forget that--ruined!"
+
+I was puzzled at his insistence. "Yes, you would have been seriously
+handicapped," I agreed. "Ruined is the word, perhaps."
+
+Banaotovich's face was purple with wine and some strange kind of
+suffering. "Do you remember another thing?" he said thickly. "Do you
+remember an old Hindoo who had a dark little hole away back of the shops
+and the beer depot and the livery stables between the Old Market and the
+river?"
+
+"The old fellow that had love charms and told fortunes and helped people
+to health and wealth and happiness?" I said in a tone of slightly forced
+cheerfulness. It was hard to be cheerful with those somber eyes boring
+into you. "Yes, I remember him, all right. I wanted to go and see him
+once, when I was about fifteen or sixteen, but Father told me that
+meddling with the black art had sent more people to hell than it had
+helped. And Father was so terribly earnest about it that he frightened
+me. I never went. As a matter of fact it was only a passing fancy, and I
+soon forgot all about him."
+
+"That Hindoo," said my old school-fellow thoughtfully, "knew things
+about the secret forces in the universe that made him almost a god. And
+he taught me things that the wisest philosopher in the world doesn't
+suspect. Still, your father may have been right. I think it very likely
+that what he taught me may send me to hell!"
+
+I shivered. I looked up nervously to make sure that the way was clear to
+the door. I began to suspect that my friend Banaotovich, though he was
+certainly not a criminal, might be a dangerous lunatic.
+
+My _vis-a-vis_ rubbed absently at a protuberance on his left side. I had
+noticed it when he first came across the room to speak to me. A
+deformity--I was sure it had not been there when he was a boy--or
+perhaps a tumor or some such thing as that.
+
+"I kept very quiet about what the Hindoo taught me, because I knew most
+people felt about such things much as you say your father did. And I
+wanted to get on in the world. But I had an idea the Hindoo could help
+me get on. Perhaps he _has_----"
+
+And he stared gloomily at space.
+
+"Perhaps he has. And perhaps he hasn't."
+
+He brooded. Then he took up the thread of his story.
+
+"Wolansky nearly drove me to suicide. I read and studied and crammed,
+day and night. I tried everything I could think of to overcome the man's
+antagonism. I crawled in the dust before him like a whipped cur! Nothing
+did any good. And when I saw he hated me and was determined to smash me,
+I began to hate _him_, too. I came to hate him worse than I hated the
+devils in hell. There was a time when I had to hold myself back with all
+my strength to keep from sticking a knife into him or braining him with
+a chair. But the Hindoo and I made some experiments with telepathy, and
+I discovered that there are other ways of killing a man besides stabbing
+him or giving him poison.
+
+"I learned how to make a man in front of me on the street turn around
+and look at me. I learned how to make _you_ dream about me and come and
+tell me the dream the next morning," (when he said that, I jumped, for I
+remembered having done exactly that thing!). "I learned how to bring out
+a bruise on Wolansky's face although he lived on the other side of town;
+so that he went around asking people how he could have bumped his
+forehead without knowing it. And at last I went to bed one night, set my
+mind on Wolansky, and said over and over to myself a thousand times:
+Die, you dog! You've _got_ to die! I _order_ you to die!
+
+"I said it over till I fell into a sort of trance. It wasn't sleep, I
+tell you. You can't sleep when you are in a state like that. And in my
+trance, I could feel another arm grow out of my side here and grow
+longer and longer, and grow out through the window although the window
+was closed, and grow out across the street and down the street and right
+through the walls and across the river.
+
+"I had never known where Wolansky lived. But that night I knew. I had
+never known the street or the house number. I had never been there in my
+life. But I can tell you just exactly how his bedroom looked. The
+wash-stand between the two windows, the work-table against the west
+wall, the wardrobe, the old divan against the north wall. In a corner
+the blue-gray tiled stove with some of the tile chipped off. And against
+the south wall--the bed he lay in. I can tell you the color of the
+blanket he pulled up over his face. It was a dirty brownish red.
+
+"But my hand seemed to go through the blanket and grip Wolansky by the
+throat. First he sighed and turned his head to one side and tried to
+wriggle free. Then he raised his arms and tried to get hold of something
+that wasn't there. His sighs turned into groans, and the groans changed
+to a death rattle. He threw his arms and legs wildly around in the air,
+his body bent up like a bow. But my hand held his head down against the
+pillow. At last he quit struggling and dropped down limp on the bed.
+Then the arm came crawling back in to my body, and I came out of the
+trance--and went to sleep--or perhaps I fainted.
+
+"The next morning the director came into our classroom and told us
+Wolansky had died in the night of some sort of attack. You remember
+that, I am sure----"
+
+When Banaotovich began to tell me this story, he had looked away from
+me, and his eyes never met mine during the telling. He had begun with a
+painful effort, but as he went on he grew more and more excited and more
+and more inflamed with hatred of the malicious old Greek teacher, till
+it almost seemed as if he had forgotten me and was living the astounding
+experience through for himself alone. When he was through, his ecstasy
+of indignation left him and he sat dejected and apprehensive, studying
+me pitifully out of the corners of his deep gray eyes.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When he stopped speaking, there was a moment of silence. Then I said
+something. I think what I said was, "Very extraordinary!"
+
+He smiled, a strained, sarcastic smile. "Extraordinary?" he repeated,
+with an interrogation point in his voice.
+
+"Your nerves were strained to the breaking-point," I said. "Your trouble
+with the old rascal had driven you half distracted. Then there was all
+that occultistic hodgepodge with the old Hindoo. And you were overworked
+and run down, anyway. No wonder you dreamed dreams and saw visions. And
+it may have been that there was some telepathic contact between you and
+Wolansky, and when he had his apoplectic attack----"
+
+The sarcastic smile deepened on Banaotovich's face. "So you have it all
+explained, and I'm acquitted?" he inquired.
+
+"Acquitted?" I cried. "You were never even accused. If the state were to
+bring action against every man who had a feeling that he would be
+happier if someone else were out of the way, the state would have a big
+job on its hands!"
+
+"Very true," Banaotovich assented icily. "I see I haven't got very far
+with you yet. You are forcing me to continue my not very edifying
+autobiography.--Did you know my father?"
+
+I remembered his father, and I remembered that he had not enjoyed the
+best possible reputation.
+
+"I think I knew him," I said hesitantly. "He was a--a money-lender,
+wasn't he?"
+
+"Don't spare my feelings," said Banaotovich bitterly. "He was a usurer,
+and a cruel one. I had a feeling for years that his business was a
+disgrace to the family, and I made no bones about telling him so. There
+were ugly scenes. I thought several times of leaving home. Finally,
+Father told me one day that since I didn't approve of the way he got his
+money, he was doing me the favor of disinheriting me. I told him that
+was all right with me, that I'd rather starve than live on money that
+was stained with the blood of poor debtors.
+
+"I thought at the time that I meant it. But about that time I had become
+interested in a young woman. I had never had much to do with the girls,
+and very few of them seemed at all interested in me. But this one
+appeared to like me, and when I made advances to her, she didn't repel
+me. I am no connoisseur of female beauty, but I think she was unusually
+attractive, and at that time I was half mad about her. Still waters run
+deep, you know.
+
+"Well, she had me under her spell so completely that I changed my mind
+about Father's money. I began to truckle to him, much as I had truckled
+to Wolansky. I began to feel him out to find whether he had made a will.
+He was very cold and non-committal. Finally I asked him outright if he
+would reconsider his decision to leave me penniless. He told me it was I
+that had made the decision, not he, and that he had no use for
+wishy-washy people that changed their minds like weather-cocks. He was
+very sarcastic. I lost my temper and answered him back. We had a
+terrible quarrel, and finally he--he struck me. I was twenty years old
+and a bigger man than he. And I think no man ever had more stubborn
+pride, at bottom, than I have.
+
+"It was the Wolansky thing all over again. The humiliation, the effort
+at ingratiation, the failure, the long, eating, gnawing, growing hatred.
+And it--it ended the same way. The night of brooding that hardened into
+a devilish decision, the vision of the long arm, growing, stretching,
+crawling--but not so far this time, only through two walls and across
+our own house. You remember that Father died of an apoplectic stroke,
+just as Wolansky had done a year or two before."
+
+"Yes, I think I remember," I said in considerable embarrassment. The
+thing _did_ begin to look uncanny. I was thoroughly sorry for the poor,
+cracked fellow, but I would just as soon not have been alone with him in
+that solitary drinking-place in the twilight.
+
+"Well?" he said, almost sharply.
+
+"Well, Banaotovich," I answered with a show of confidence, "you have had
+a great deal of unhappiness, and you have my sympathy. This strange
+faculty you have of anticipating deaths, like the night-owls and the
+death-watch that ticks in the walls, has made these bereavements an
+occasion of self-torment for you. I think you should see a
+psychiatrist."
+
+"Anticipating--anticipating?" Banaotovich had gone back and was
+repeating a word I had used, and as he repeated it he drummed madly on
+the table with his fingers. "It's a curious coincidence that
+'anticipating' is just the word my wife used when I told her about it."
+
+"You--told--your wife--what you have just told me?" I stammered. "Do you
+think that was wise?"
+
+"I couldn't help it," he said with a catch in his throat. "I thought I
+loved her, and I had to talk to somebody. I was miserable, and I had a
+feeling that she might understand and be brought closer to me by
+sympathy. Now that I think of it, I can see that I was an egregious
+idiot, but I discovered long ago that we aren't rational beings after
+all. We are driven or drawn by mysterious forces, and we go to our
+destination because we can't help it.
+
+"My wife had always seemed a little timid with me. I never seemed to
+have the gift of attracting people. And I don't know whether she would
+ever have been interested in me at all if I hadn't used a little--a
+little charm the Hindoo taught me. Perhaps that didn't have much to do
+with it--but I had never been happy with her. However that may be, one
+evening when she seemed unusually approachable, I had just the same
+impulse that I had when I met you here tonight, and I told her about
+Wolansky and Father. She pooh-poohed it all just as you did. But she was
+afraid. I could see that. She was more and more afraid of me as the days
+went by. For a long time she tried to be cordial and natural in my
+presence, but it was a sham and the poor thing couldn't keep it up. Each
+of us knew as well what was in the mind of the other as if we had talked
+the situation over frankly for hours. We reached the point where we
+couldn't look each other in the face. No solitude could have been as
+ghastly as that solitude of two people who shared a revolting secret.
+For I had convinced her that I was guilty. I had succeeded in doing what
+I had set out to do, and I had ruined two lives in doing it. I have the
+faculty, it seems, of poisoning whatever I touch. Only today, my wife
+said to me----"
+
+I started to my feet with a great rush of relief and thankfulness. "Ah,
+your wife is alive, then?" I cried.
+
+"My wife is alive. That is--my _second_ wife is alive," he said, with a
+horrible forced smile.
+
+I sank back gasping. "What did you do with your first wife, you dirty
+hound?" I moaned in helpless indignation.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He closed his eyes, and a wave of bitter triumph played about the
+muscles of his mouth. "Have I convinced _you_ too, at last?" he said.
+
+Then I realized that I had been an insulting idiot. At worst, the man
+before me was a pathological case, and he certainly belonged in an
+asylum rather than in a prison.
+
+"Forgive me, Banaotovich," I panted. "I don't know what made me----"
+
+He looked at me sadly, almost compassionately. "There is nothing to
+forgive," he said, very quietly. "I am all you called me and a thousand
+times worse. Now let me finish my story."
+
+"You don't need to," I said hastily. "I know all the rest of it."
+
+All interest, I am afraid nearly all sympathy, had gone out of me. What
+I wanted most of all was to get away from this melancholy citizen with
+power and madness in his gray eyes.
+
+"No, you don't know quite all of it yet," he insisted. "Perhaps if I
+tell you the whole story, even if you can't excuse me--and I don't
+deserve your excusing, I don't _want_ your excusing--you can understand
+me a little better, and think of me a little more kindly.
+
+"There was another woman. I couldn't help it, any more than any of us
+can help anything. A fine, sympathetic young woman, who loved me because
+she knew I was unhappy. I had been married to the other woman for four
+years. We were completely estranged. We could scarcely bear to speak to
+each other. I couldn't be easy one moment in the same house with her. I
+had a cot in my office out in town because I couldn't even sleep soundly
+at home. It was hell. The terror in her eyes made me physically sick. My
+wife learned about the other woman. My wife was a devout Catholic, and
+there was no possibility of a divorce. I could read in my wife's face
+just what went on in her mind. She knew the other woman had become my
+only reason for living. And one day I read in her eyes, along with the
+terror, a glint of desperate determination. She knew she was in danger,
+she knew I had a power that I could exercise when I chose in spite of
+all the courts and police and jails in the country. She knew her life
+was in danger, and her eyes told me that mine was in danger for that
+very reason. I didn't blame her. Half my grief through all the years had
+been grief for _her_. But the instinct of self-defense in me was
+strong--and--she went--too--like----"
+
+[Illustration: "And she went, too, like the other."]
+
+He never finished his sentence. He dropped his head on the table and
+began to sob hysterically. I laid a gingerly hand on his shoulder.
+
+"Banaotovich," I said unsteadily, "I'm sorry for you----"
+
+He sat up and supported his chin in both hands. "I haven't been as--as
+bad as all this sounds like," he said after a while. "Before I was
+married a second time, I went to the chief of police and gave myself up.
+The chief listened to my story--I didn't try to explain it all, as I've
+done with you, but just blurted out the main facts; but the longer he
+listened the uneasier he became, and when I got through he asked me
+nervously if I didn't think I ought to go into a sanitarium for a while.
+Then he bowed me out in a big hurry. Perhaps if I had told him all the
+ins and outs of it, it might have been different----"
+
+"But don't you think he's right about the sanitarium?"
+
+"Right? I'm as sane as you are. I've killed three people, a crazy
+scoundrel, a hard man, and a pure, innocent woman. But I did it all
+because I had to. A sanitarium wouldn't do me or anyone else any good,
+and it would be a heavy expense. I have taken the responsibility for
+another pure, innocent woman, and I must support her. The war and the
+depression swept away my father's fortune, and my present business has
+dwindled away till I am making only the barest living. I have applied
+for the agency for a big Berlin insurance company, and if I can get it,
+along with my other business, I shall be fairly comfortable. But I
+understand there is some talk of their sending in a representative from
+outside. If they do that, if they take the bread out of my mouth like
+that, it won't be good for the outsider!"
+
+He was drunk, and his drunkenness was working him into an ugly mood. He
+was dangerous, and physical courage was never my strong point.
+
+"What is the name of the Berlin company?" I asked timidly.
+
+He named the firm I myself worked for. Then he fumbled for his bottle,
+and with stern and painful attention set about the difficult and
+delicate task of filling his glass again. I muttered something about
+being back in a moment, and made for the door. He was too busy to pay
+any attention to me.
+
+When I had the door safely shut behind me, I sprinted through the rain
+to my hotel as if the devil himself were after me....
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was a long time before I got over waking up in the middle of the
+night with the feeling that an icy, iron-muscled hand was clutching at
+my throat. I don't have the experience often any more, but I have never
+seen the city of my birth since that awful night. I got out on the
+midnight train, and my company obligingly gave me territory on the other
+side of Germany.
+
+Some time ago I happened to see a notice in the paper to the effect that
+a certain patient named G. Banaotovich had died suddenly in the
+Staatliche Nervenheilanstalt in Nuremberg. But I have met the name
+rather frequently of late, and I think it is a fairly common one. I
+didn't investigate.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Footnote 1: Adapted by Roy Temple House from the German.]
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Long Arm, by Franz Habl
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