Achmed Abdullah

“ Bibi the Killer he was, at the heyday of his career, to his girl, his pals, his gang, his enemies, the police, certain inquisitive and fearless newspaper reporters, the wine merchants and restaurant keepers of the neighborhood, and the white-haired, absinth-sodden, bleary-eyed, old harridan who sold fried potatoes in a postern of the Rue de Turbigo, and who every night gave him a generous twisted paper full of her deliciously crisp, golden-brown, salty wares, free of charge, because he reminded her of a lover guillotined forty years earlier. ”

“ And he sniffed greedily when the shore wind brought the warm reek of New York out to the low-flung drab of Sandy Hook, where the ship was riding to both sea-anchors waiting for the impertinent chug-chug-chugging of the customs launch, and remarked to a fellow stoker, a Frenchman like himself, that he expected to gut this transatlantic town of gold and diamonds and pearls as a fish-woman in the Halles Centrales guts a mackerel. ”

“ BIBI L'TEUR. IT will always remain a moot point if the inner, driving power which gave the final impetus to the man's deed was his animal instinct, his congenital desire to take life, or a result, brutal and crafty, yet eminently great, of that complicated emotion called patriotism. ”