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.]
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