The Long Arm - Franz Habl (read more books TXT) 📗

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.]

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Publication Date: 11-12-2014

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