Achilles—for it is as such he is to be referred to forever hence—did not come along quietly. He did not come along. In point of fact, he went his own way. The three grim young men of the FBI bitterly contested his going, and, since, as everyone knows nowadays, to touch Achilles Maravain was to undergo collapse, disintegration, and death, the results were unfortunate.
This was the first and perhaps most important incident in his history. It was the acorn from which sprouted that large and aberrant oak-tree that was Achilles Maravain.
The next important incident—a scene perhaps even more diverting than the last—was the Lincoln Heights scene. As the odds are against it that the reader of this is either an archeologist or some pervertedly informed devotee of ancient Los Angeles topography, it is excusable to mention that Lincoln Heights was the jail of the city, an institution comparable in purpose to our modern concentration camps, but differing in that it was merely a squat, few-story cement structure abundantly furnished with steel bars, locks, chains, gyves, paraphernalia, and policemen. Its architecture was thus ideal for Achilles' purposes. His purposes being to imprison the prison, purposes in which he succeeded.
His remarkable feat first manifested itself when Sergeant Leery crashed titanically into nothingness. Not actual nothingness—as was evidenced by its palpability—but a substance that, for all practical purposes, was nonexistent; all practical purposes that is except that of preventing exit or entry in regards to the Lincoln Heights jail. Sergeant Leery withdrew his nose a few paces, vigorously rubbing that injured member, and stared quizzically at this absurd tangibility. He stared for a long and ponderous time and then began shouting. Minions of the law popped miraculously into view at this point, as if conjured there by the magic of Leery's stentorian voice. Miraculously they popped and popping, equally miraculously popped no more. The invisible barrier restrained them; it framed their popping faces, their popping eyes. It kept them within the building, sealing the doors, the windows, the walls. It was, in fact a prison; Achilles Maravain had imprisoned the prison.
Had he stopped there, there's a shade of a ghost's super-attenuated chance that all might have been forgotten, except perhaps by the infuriated gendarmerie and prisoners who were left permanently to their own devices within the Lincoln Heights jail. But Achilles didn't stop. He visited the First Street Headquarters Jail and imprisoned it. He visited all the jails. Likewise the insane asylums and the hospitals. Personal appearance tour, it was; an interstate tour. He went to Salt Lake City and there gave a repeat performance. Jails, hospitals, etc. Thence to Denver; thence to Topeka; thence to Kansas City. Followed by St. Louis. Followed by Indianapolis. And on all the way to the East Coast.
It is not to be supposed that he was uncontested in this progression. Very much to the contrary. He was shot at. Often and with the utmost accuracy was he fired upon. Apparently, however, with no effect for he seemed invulnerable.
Not elusive was our Achilles, not wily, not adroit. Not even clever. He was merely invulnerable and clumsily so to boot. He would wade into a mass of stalwart police or soldiers—the militia tried cannons on him—and projectiles would simply bounce away from him. They would explode in the conventional manner. Only no fragments or concussion waves apparently could reach him. After this, the opposition would be scattered like the proverbial chaff.
It was a melee, a very horrifying and immensely entertaining mess. Chaos there was and wildness and fantasy and even fanaticism. Yes, even the latter. This last was instanced the time a group of misdirected fans of Achilles misconstrued him, and, in the belief that he was the Almighty, surrounded him in the midst of the pursuit of one of his more stirring enterprises. He misconstrued them, too. They still remain, so far as is known, in the housing he provided their zeal.