FIRST PRIZE

New Zealand Listener, Volume 3, Issue 65, 20 September 1940, Page 11

FIRST PRIZE

(Elizabeth Parsons) T was dark-and as the darkness dropped, Mr. Potts’s anger rose. A vicious little grunt winged his stones, and his small eyes gleamed with some peculiar, hitherto unsuspected savagery when a howl of pain and wrath assured him of a deadly accuracy. For with the night had come courage, and with the elation of his comparative success had come determination-deter-mination to prove himself. To wipe from his tortured little mind the ignominy of his former retreats. To vindicate his manhood, To attack-to fight-if necessary to kill. Kill! He shivered in a strange excitement. That was it. Men killed. To killto be a man. "There is a tide in the affairs . of men 75.6% The quotation beat through the hot little brain of the hot little man. "Which taken on the full. . . ." Mr. Potts grasped at a length of rusty iron standard and pattered down the road. The big man was moving quickly. He didn’t understand the strange behaviour of the little man behind him, and because he didn’t understand, he feared. And because he feared, he hurried, and turned often in his tracks. And it was while he was hastening, and peering uneasily over his shoulder, that he tripped. And he fell-and lay still. Mr. Potts stopped. "There is a tide in the affairs of men, which taken on the full. . . ." His eyes were narrowed, and the fingers clenched about his weapon were tense. To strike-To kill-To vindicate his manhood. He crept forward. The big man lay still in the dust. Strangely sprawled to the night, his long neck twisted grotesquely to the left, his lids flared back to let the mist film the glassiness of his eyes. It was his eyes that first prompted Mr. Potts to grope fearfully for his pulse. But it was his pulse, or rather the ces-

sation of it, that goaded Mr. Potts into an umreasoning hatred towards the big man-towards Destiny. What right had the fellow to be dead -what right had destiny to maliciously interfere in the vindication of Mr. Potts. He bowed his head-his fingers clawed spasmodically, almost rhythmically to the waves of disappointment and self pity that moved him. And then he wept. Desolation descended upon Mr, Potts’s resentful little soul. It was a motor horn that first roused the little man from his apathy. He stood mulishly on planted legs, and blinked into the glare of the headlights. Mr. Potts refused to move. The car stopped. The driver spoke laconically. " Trouble?" Mr. Potts said nothing. He was thinking, and as he thought a strange smile caught the corners of his pink mouth, and spread till his whole round pink face became illumined with inner purpose. He turned and faced the driver now kneeling anxiously over the still form. He still smiled as the man turned horrified eyes from the body. "He’s cold," said the driver. Mr. Potts stood straight, and ready. But not yet, not yet. His moment was not at hand. "He’s dead," persisted the driver. The little man raised his head exultantly to his cavalcade of lost opportunity and failures. ... "JT killed him," he said.