THE MAN WHO FORGOT (Thriller). Hay James
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went toward Sullivan.
"What can we do for you?" the old man asked brusquely, disliking the brilliant eyes.
The stranger, a grotesque flattened against the door, licked his lips twice and tried to speak. When he did so, it was in a rattling whisper, and he moved his neck curiously as if his throat hurt him.
"Help me," he said, and there was in the whisper something that sounded unpleasantly like a whine.
"All right!" Sullivan, having pulled himself together, assured him. "Come over here."
The visitor trembled as if invisible, irresistible hands had hold of him, and again his burning eyes surveyed the room blindly. He came away from the door with an infinity of caution, his breath audible in his nostrils. He came slowly, his knees half giving way beneath him. As he walked, half of the sole of his right shoe fell away from his foot and flapped against the floor. His arms hung loose at his sides.
"Will you"—he said, whispering, when he almost had reached the desk—" will you help—help me?"
Although the whine of appeal was still in the whisper, there was, back of that, something which sounded like a new definition of despair. It announced that he had no hope of finding help.
"Sure!" Sullivan answered him breezily.
The stranger lurched against the desk and fell forward, the hardness of his bony elbows making a knocking noise. With his head bowed, his nose mashed against the hard wood, he flung up his right arm, his hand shaking, the fingers moving through the air with the slow, crawly motion, and screamed aloud, one prolonged note.
"Ee-ee-ee!"he lamented shrilly. "I'm afraid of it!"
He lifted his head so that it was flung far back on his shoulders, and stared at Sullivan.
"I've run through the streets," he said in a whisper, "through the streets and through the fields—a thousand miles! And it was always—always behind me. It held on to my shoulder."
He clapped his left hand to his right shoulder, hesitated a moment, and grinned sheepishly, trying to cover up his failure to capture that which threatened him.
"Nearly got it then!" he declared.
The whisper, more than the burning eyes, made Sullivan all sympathy. He held forward a pen and spun the register around.
"Can you sign your name?" he inquired kindly.
The stranger. took the pen and pushed the torn piece of coat-sleeve out of the way, preparatory to writing. He paused, the pen wobbling in his hand, while a new and grayer horror spread over his face. Then, with the new ugliness upon him, he began to laugh in a silly, scarcely audible, fashion.
"My name?" he giggled. "Somebody's stolen it!" Then, slowly, the words coming one by one through his vacuous laughter: "I—don't—know— my—name. Sortof a joke. I don't know who I am."
"All right," Sullivan said lightly, taking the pen from the other's palsied fingers. "I'll sign for you." He wrote it down and spoke it: "John Smith. There you are. That all right?"
"Yes."
John Smith laughed vacantly and began to look round the room furtively. The tramp Simpson, who had been watching him with absorbed interest, thought that every bit of the man's personality had been concentrated into the uncanny fire of the terror-stricken eyes. But apparently they saw nothing. They entirely ignored Simpson's steady, searching glance.
"Here, you, Simpson!" old Sullivan suddenly called out. "Get to your bunk! Don't bother this man!"
The tramp went out through the other door, but, as he went, he looked back over his shoulder at John Smith, and whistled softly to himself, expressing his amazement.
The stranger had let his head go down against the desk again. Sullivan, watching the shaking shoulders, saw that he was sobbing.
"How about you now, John Smith?" he asked cheerily. "Feel better?"
"Do I?" the other returned, bewildered, and lifted his head, resting his chin in the cup of his two hands.
He kept that attitude while Sullivan, recognizing the extremity of the man's suffering, unlocked a small cabinet back of the desk and brought forth a flask of whisky and a glass. Smith, watching him, sobbed once or twice convulsively while terror made new furrows in his features. His eyes grew in brilliance.
Sullivan, pouring some of the whisky into the glass, extended it toward him, with the pleasant invitation:
"Take this drink. It's medicine now."
Smith, his face writhing, his whole body jerking and contorted, fought against the agony of his fright. Then, by a supreme effort, he drew himself to his full height, like a man about to be shot, and put out a tremulous hand toward the glass. He tried to grin, but succeeded only in drawing his lips away from his teeth as if they had been moved by strings manipulated from the back of his head.
"Go ahead!" urged Sullivan.
Smith took the glass in his right hand and immediately transferred it to his left.
"Look," he said timidly. "I've got it—right here —right here in my hand." He spoke now in a hoarse, deep voice, and put eagerness into his tone. "Fve got hold of it—haven't I?"
"Sure!" agreed Sullivan. "Drink it!"
From somewhere strength came back to John Smith. There was in his eyes force enough to compel the gaze of Sullivan, and there was in his backbone strength enough to hold him erect. His big, bass voice boomed like thunder.
"Old man," he said, the glass entirely steady in his left hand, "I've come down from high, awful places —places so high that the peals of thunder sounded no louder than a robin's call—so high that the pale ends of lightning whips cracked harmless against my eyeballs—so high that escaping souls went by me like thin, white flames!"
He stood a moment rigid, his ardent glance holding Sullivan.
"Old man," he swept on, "I've come up from the blackest depths of deepness, where there was no life, not a bit, and yet worlds crawled in slimy, sickly motion, forever—where there was no light, and yet millions of miseries swelled into my eyes—where there was no sound, and yet the passing of every thought was a screaming curse. Ah! that's a thing you'll know some day, that thoughts have tongues— shrieking tongues that lash and burn and shrivel up the heart."
He accomplished a smile, patronizing Sullivan.
"Old man, you've never been where I've been. I've seen dead souls shrouded in dreams denied—poor, still souls. I've heard dying souls sob and shriek when they were cast over the edges of eternity. I've learned that spirits die. Consider that! Spirits sometimes die."
He paused to set the glass on the desk, and the terror that had let him alone caught him up again, straining his limbs and making curious patterns on his face.
"And I've come back—come back down long corridors that lead to nowhere," he mourned, flinging his arms wide. "I came because they drove me. They drove me with fear. They scourged me with terror. They whipped me with shame. A million bayonets always within a hair's-breadth of my back—a thousand swords, heavy as horror, dangling in the sunlight at the end of a silken thread—just above my ears!"
The strength returned to his backbone. He stood erect.
"They showed me no mercy," he explained, the ghost of pride in his voice. "I asked none. I did not look back or up. Without looking, I could see the bayonets and the swords. Old man, for at least a thousand years I've fled—fled with all the furies of hell at my heels."
He crumpled up on the desk, his misery-marked face in the cup of his two hands, and fixed the flame of his eyes on the wondering Sullivan.
"For God's sake!" the old man cried out. "Drink the whisky! Here!"
Smith began to laugh foolishly, a sound devoid of mirth or cheer, and, his shoulders sagging, backed away from the desk and the drink. He stood so a long moment, pointing a weak hand at the glass.
"And,"