



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!"