Otherwise, I won’t come down. A fist, my dear sir, is too ordinary an argument.’

‘For thick-headed opponents it’s the only one; nothing else can be as persuasive.’

‘I’ve been listening,’ the other drawled, returning to his old place, ‘I’ve been listening patiently for quarter of an hour to your utopian theories. Now listen a little to me.’

‘Utopian?!’ growled Szygon. ‘The motions I’ve mentioned are therefore fictitious?’

‘I don’t deny their existence. But of what concern are they to me? I’m only interested in the speed of my train. The only conclusive thing for me is the motion of engines. Why should I be concerned about how much forward I’ve moved in relation to interstellar space? One has to be practical; I am a positivist, my dear sir.’

‘An argument worthy of a table leg. You must sleep well, Mr. Station-master?’

‘Thank you, yes. I sleep like a baby.’

‘Of course. That’s easy to figure out. People like you are not tormented by the Motion Demon.’

‘Ha, ha, ha! The Motion Demon! You’ll fallen onto the gist of the matter! You’ve hit upon my profitable idea – actually, to tell the truth, not mine, but merely commissioned by me from a certain painter at our station.’

‘A profitable idea? Commissioned?’

‘Oh, yes. It concerns a just-issued prospectus for a couple of new railway branches – the so-called Vergnügungsbahn-linien. Consider this – a type of publicity or poster that would encourage the public to use these new lines of communication. And so some vignette, some picture was needed, something like an allegory, or a symbol.’

‘Of motion?!’ Szygon paled.

‘Exactly. The aforementioned gentleman painted a mythical figure – a magnificent symbol that in no time swept through the waiting rooms of every station, not only in my country, but beyond its borders. And because I endeavoured to get a patent and stipulated a copyright in the beginning, I haven’t done badly.’

Szygon raised himself from the cushions, straightening up to his full imposing height.

‘And what figure did your symbol assume, if its possible to know?’ he hissed in a choked, strange voice.

‘Ha, ha, ha! The figure of a genius of motion. A huge, swarthy young man balanced on extended raven wings, surrounded by a swirling, frenzied dance of planets – a demon of interplanetary gales, interstellar moon blizzards, wonderful, maddeningly hurling comets, comets and more comets … .’

‘You’re lying!’ Szygon roared, throwing himself toward the speaker. ‘You’re lying like a dog.’

The ‘station-master’ curled up, diminished in size, and vanished through the keyhole. Almost at the same moment the compartment door opened, and the disappearing intruder merged into the figure of the conductor, who was at the threshold. The conductor looked at the perturbed passenger with a mocking smile and began to hand him a ticket:

‘Your ticket is ready; the price, including the fine, is 200 francs.’

But his smile was his ruin. Before he got a chance to figure out what was happening, some hand, strong like destiny, grabbed him by the chest and pulled him inside. A desperate cry for help was heard, then the cracking of bones. A dull silence followed.

After a moment, a large shadow moved along the windows of an empty corridor and toward the exit. Somebody opened the coach door and pulled the alarm signal. The train began to brake abruptly … .

The dark figure hurried down a couple of steps, leaned in the direction the train was moving, and with one leap jumped between roadside thickets glowing in the dawn light … .

The train halted. The uneasy crew searched for a long time for the person who pulled the alarm; it wasn’t known from which coach the signal had come. Finally the conductors noticed the absence of one of their colleagues. ‘Coach No. 532!’ They rushed into the corridor and began to search through the cubicles. They found them empty, until in the last one, a first-class compartment at the end, they found the body of the unfortunate man.