The Long Arm
lay in. I can tell you the color of the blanket he pulled up over his face. It was a dirty brownish red.

"But my hand seemed to go through the blanket and grip Wolansky by the throat. First he sighed and turned his head to one side and tried to wriggle free. Then he raised his arms and tried to get hold of something that wasn't there. His sighs turned into groans, and the groans changed to a death rattle. He threw his arms and legs wildly around in the air, his body bent up like a bow. But my hand held his head down against the pillow. At last he quit struggling and dropped down limp on the bed. Then the arm came crawling back in to my body, and I came out of the trance—and went to sleep—or perhaps I fainted.

"The next morning the director came into our classroom and told us Wolansky had died in the night of some sort of attack. You remember that, I am sure——"

When Banaotovich began to tell me this story, he had looked away from me, and his eyes never met mine during the telling. He had begun with a painful effort, but as he went on he grew more and more excited and more and more inflamed with hatred of the malicious old Greek teacher, till it almost seemed as if he had forgotten me and was living the astounding experience through for himself alone. When he was through, his ecstasy of indignation left him and he sat dejected and apprehensive, studying me pitifully out of the corners of his deep gray eyes.

When he stopped speaking, there was a moment of silence. Then I said something. I think what I said was, "Very extraordinary!"

He smiled, a strained, sarcastic smile. "Extraordinary?" he repeated, with an interrogation point in his voice.

"Your nerves were strained to the breaking-point," I said. "Your trouble with the old rascal had driven you half distracted. Then there was all that occultistic hodgepodge with the old Hindoo. And you were overworked and run down, anyway. No wonder you dreamed dreams and saw visions. And it may have been that there was some telepathic contact between you and Wolansky, and when he had his apoplectic attack——"

The sarcastic smile deepened on Banaotovich's face. "So you have it all explained, and I'm acquitted?" he inquired.

"Acquitted?" I cried. "You were never even accused. If the state were to bring action against every man who had a feeling that he would be happier if someone else were out of the way, the state would have a big job on its 
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