Achmed Abdullah

“ Would you believe that I have never had as much as an automobile accident, that I have never missed a train, that I have never trumped my partner’s ace? Success comes. In big things and in small. Always! But it comes with the bloom rubbed off—flat, stinking, sickening, like dregs. Why, Macdonald, I have even lost the faculty of desiring!”
The doctor rose.
“Angus Kerr,” he said solemnly, “I have it. I can cure ye.”
“How?”
“Ye need fear.”
“Nonsense. I need hope.”
“Hope is only the result of fear—and fear is the most humanizing thing in the world. It’s fear ye need, man. Go out and hunt it. ”

“ All his life, Angus Kerr had had the trick of being able to separate interest from inclination and emotions from business; he had decomposed success into a few simple elements as he would decompose a force in a question of abstract dynamics; and so when, brooding, melancholy, he found on his return to his office that his presence in Paris was needed to wind up an important financial deal, he took ship. ”

“ He decided that the best thing for him to do would be to get off this train at the first station, to catch a Northbound train back to Paris, and to seek legal aid before his case became complicated beyond hope of disentanglement.
He lit a cigar. But this time he did not enjoy it. He was smoking against time. He was smoking against despair, against the invasion of panic, against the thought reflection might bring that he was in a helpless situation—against anything, in fact, rather than allow his inmost fear to assume control. ”

“ Charity is a form of selfishness—and selfishness, to be worth while, must be big—” He thumped the table with his clenched fist. “Such selfishness—such charity—must be massive—gigantic!”
“And ye have never come upon a thing that demanded such charity—such selfishness, as ye are pleased to miscall it? Ye have never come upon a thing that cried out to ye in the wilderness, as it were—that made it incumbent on ye to right the cursed wrong of it with every ounce of your dour grey matter, with every last dollar of your worldly goods?” ”

“ He tore up the scraps of paper, the visiting cards, and the railway ticket and threw the pieces out of the window where the wind sucked them into the dark.
He was about to do likewise with the purse and the watch when he reconsidered. After all, his mind worked on a logical basis, even in a hypothetical and imagined situation. If murder had happened, since he had not known the dead man personally and could not have been influenced by reasons of vengeance, he must have committed it for motives of robbery.
So he dropped the valuables into his trousers pocket. ”

“ Even at this moment he remembered Doctor Macdonald’s advice—he wondered if the Scotchman had meant it mockingly: “Don’t sidestep it. Help it along if ye can,” and then he saw that, in rubbing against the dead man’s fur coat, which had caught the blood like a sponge, he had smeared his light gray trousers. Blood, too, stained his shirt cuffs.
He knew that he looked like a murderer, and he thought of the fly-specked glass slab above the bench which topped the wall that divided his compartment from the next. ”

“ Why, man, success is at the very root of the thing which I’m asking you to cure. I am sick of success—sick of luck. Everything happens just as I wish it—often even before I have had a chance to formulate the wish. ”

“ At that moment all seemed terribly clear to Kerr. He had been shadowed ever since he had left the train at Lapalisse. The gate keeper there—the hotel porter—the gentleman from the Judiciary and the police agent—the conductor—and now this man who was following him! It dovetailed completely.
He had played with the gamut of human emotions. He had played a ghoulish comedy. ”

“ Gradually surging from the secret recesses of his being, then coming to the top of his greater subliminal consciousness, there came the haunting, dark obsession that he had not played at killing, but that he had really taken a human life, that he was a fugitive from his own conscience and from avenging justice. ”

“ Perhaps, after all, it would be better to get rid of the purse and the watch. They seemed to burn the skin of his thigh. But it was too late. The train had come to a halt. He could not drop them in the compartment. They, too, bore his finger prints.
Five minutes’ stop!
Angus Kerr, master of his nerves—but master with an effort, not through instinct—stood in front of the compartment door, shielding the body that sprawled grotesquely on the bench. ”

“ He seemed to be watching the American as a bird watches a snake, and Angus Kerr smiled at the thought that the stranger was perhaps afraid of him, possessed perhaps that power, quality rather, of fear—and hope—for prescribing which the old Scotch doctor had tried to charge him five hundred dollars. ”

“ Or should he go to Carter Vanbrugh of Morgan Harjes, his Paris bankers? No. Vanbrugh would gossip at the clubs. ...
What should he do?
He stopped for a moment. Then he felt a human eye stab him straight between the shoulder blades. He turned and looked. Directly behind him walked the plump, jovial bourgeois who had tried to engage him in conversation aboard the train.
The man raised his hat when he recognized Kerr. He bowed. He smiled.
“Ah, Monsieur—we meet again—” he began as he hastened to catch up with the American. ”

“ He waited a minute—two—three—four—five—and he opened the door and jumped on the platform just as the station master blew the whistle for departure.
III
Grip in hand, he hurried to the gate.
“Votre billet, Monsieur!” demanded the gate keeper; and Kerr gave him his ticket which read: “Paris—Clermont, Puy de Dôme.”
“You have made a mistake, Monsieur,” said the gate keeper, “you are bound for Clermont. This is Lapalisse.”
“I know. I have decided to stop off here.”
“But this is a through ticket. It carries no stop-over privilege.” ”

“ I want what the others have—what all the world has, neither more nor less. My friends have unlucky love affairs, business troubles, family quarrels. They have fights and rows and failures. People hurt them and attack them and cheat them. ”

“ He stepped across, bent, and slipped his right hand between the man’s neck and fur collar to lift his head to a more comfortable position.
At once he withdrew his fingers. Something cold and sodden had touched them. ”

“ The paper speaks of another letter which the poor beggar wrote to his mother before he boarded the train. Asking her forgiveness—ill health ... what are you looking for?” he continued as he saw Kerr’s eyes roam over the desk.
“Pen and ink. Got to write a cheque.”
“Here you are. Going to send a cheque to the man’s family? Knew him, I suppose?”
“No. This is for my doctor in New York. I owe him five hundred dollars. Just thought of it”—and he signed the little pink slip.
He had passed through the gamut of human emotions—the elation of fear and—yes! a hope. ”