Avon Fantasy Reader No. 8 — page 50: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

46 ~ FRANK BELKNAP LONG, FR I studied him curiously. He was apparently an extraordinary young man. His forehead was high and broad, his nose was curved like a scimitar, and his lips were so tightly compressed that only a thin line indicated his mouth. - I waited for him to speak, but silence enveloped him like a rubbe? jacket. “I shall have to break the ice somehow,” I reflected; and then suddenly I heard myself asking: “You have. something to tell me—some confession, perhaps, that you wish to make to me?” : | My question aroused him. His shoulders jerked, and he leaned forward, gripping both arms of his chair. “I havé been robbed of my birthright,” he said. “J am a man of genius, and once, tor a brief moment, I had power— tremendous power. Once I projected my personality before vast multitudes of people, and every word that I uttered increased my fame and flattered my . vanity.” 3 He was trembling and shaking so violently that I was obliged to rise and lay a restraining hand upon his shoulder. “Delusions of magnificence,” I murmured, “undoubtedly induced by a malignant inferiority-complex.” “It is not that,” he snapped. “I am a poet, an artist, and I have within me a tremendous force that must be expanded, The world has denied me self- — expression through legitimate channels and now I am justified in hating the - world. Let society beware!” ) , He threw back his-head and laughed. His hilarity seemed to increase the tension that had somehow crept into the room. “Call me a madman if you will,” he exclaimed, “but I-crave power. I can. ot rest until my name is on a million lips.” “A conservative course of treatment I began. , “I want no treatment,” he shouted, and then, in a less agitated voice, “You would be surprised, perhaps, if I told you my name!” “What zs your name?” I asked. “Arthur St. Amand,” he replied, and stood up. : I was so astonished that I dropped my cigar. I may even add that I was a “momentarily awed. Arthur St. Amana! : “Arthur St. Amand,” he repeated. “You are naturally amazed to discover that the pale, harassed and half-insane youth that you see before you was once called the peer of Newton and Leonardo Da Vinci. You are amazed to discover that the starving lad with an inferiority-complex was once feted _, by kings and praised by men whose lightest words will go thundering down Time. It is all so amazing and so uproariously funny, but the tragedy remains. Like Dr. Faustus I once looked upon the face of God, and now I’m less than any schoolboy.” | “You are still very young,” I gasped. “You can’t be more than twenty-four.” “I am twenty-three,” he said. “It was precisely three years ago that I pub- lished my brochure on etheric vibrations. For six months I lived in a blaze im) "com Ebooks: com