The Last of Philip Banter

by John Franklin Bardin

  When he opened his eyes, he saw the same small room that he had visited once before, the same cheap maple furniture. He was lying on the studio couch and across the room on a chair lay his brown tweed suit, his brown snap-brim felt hat and his brown brogues. But the suit he had been wearing the night before was his grey urquhart plaid, his hat had been grey and his shoes black! If this were Brent’s apartment – and he was sure it was – how did a change of clothes happen to be ready for him? He sat up, clutching the blanket about himself. A sound of dishes being rattled in the next room prompted him to call Brent’s name.

  ‘So you’re up?’ she answered matter-of-factly. ‘The bathroom is across the hall. I put a towel out for you.’

  Philip pulled on his trousers. ‘How did I get here?’ he asked.

  ‘That was one of the things I was going to ask you.’

  Philip tried to remember the events of the previous night. What had happened during the afternoon, especially his nightmarish experience in the theatre, came back to him with great clarity and a sense of immediacy – as if it had just occurred. He could also remember leaving the theatre and going into a bar to have a few drinks. He had met a soldier who had talked very queerly… but what had happened after that?

  ‘I don’t remember,’ he admitted. ‘Was I drunk?’

  Brent came out of the kitchen alcove. She was wearing a house dress and her dark hair was done up on top of her head like a little girl’s. But her eyes were not those of a child’s; they flashed with suppressed rage. ‘You were drunk,’ she said flatly. ‘You rang my doorbell and you managed to get up the stairs. I found you in the hall. You were being very sick all over yourself.’

  Philip blushed. He looked away from Brent and, as he did, he felt a wave of nausea rise inside him. He fought to keep it down, swallowing desperately. Then he rushed out of the door and across the hall to the bathroom. He thought he could hear Brent laughing.

  Later, after he had finished dressing, he went into the small kitchen. Brent was having breakfast; she poured him some black coffee and offered him some toast. Philip drank a little of the coffee. ‘I’m afraid you’ve been terribly inconvenienced,’ he said.

  ‘That is an understatement,’ she said coldly.

  ‘I don’t know what made me do it.’

  ‘The only reason I did not call the police when I found you in the hall is because I did not want the neighbours to know what had happened. I took you in, put you on the couch and took your keys from your pocket. You had ruined your clothes, so I went to your apartment – letting myself in with your key – and got you a change. When I came back here, you had managed to undress yourself and get into bed. I had to sleep on the floor.’

  ‘What can I do by way of apology?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  Philip had never before experienced so thoroughgoing a rebuff. Brent’s contempt was coldly magnificent. She regarded him steadily with concentrated animosity that was almost warlike.

  ‘I want you to understand something, Philip,’ she said. ‘I never want to see you again. What I did last night, I did in my own interests. I should have called the police, but had I done that I would have awakened the house. Everyone would have known that a man had tried to force his way into my apartment, a besotted fool who could not even hold his liquor. So I took you in, and what I did you might mistake for kindness, Philip. It was not kindness. If I got you fresh clothes, it was only to keep some of my friends from seeing you leave my apartment the way you would have looked in those rags.’ She pointed to a bundle that lay next to the refrigerator. Philip recognized the suit he had been wearing the day before. It was badly stained and still odorous.

  Brent had not finished. ‘When you are through with your coffee, I want you to leave. I want you to take that with you. I do not know where you got the idea that you could act this way with me. I do not care to listen to any excuse you might make or any apology you might offer. I only want you to get out of my house. And, please, stay away from me hereafter!’

  Philip stood up. His action was automatic, a will-less response. He felt inert and nerveless, as if he were a thing, not a person. Brent’s anger had turned to quiet tears. Her face was pale with emotion and her lips trembled.

  Philip picked up the bundle of clothes and left the apartment. When he reached the street, he threw it in the nearest trash can. He began to walk uptown. After he had gone a few blocks, he realized that, although Brent had said that she had visited his apartment in the middle of the night, she had not mentioned seeing Dorothy. Did that mean that Dorothy had not been at home? Philip searched his pockets for a nickel to make a telephone call. In the last pocket he found a nickel and a dime. He would make a telephone call with the nickel and use the dime to pay his bus fare uptown.

  He went into the first drugstore he encountered to telephone Dorothy. There was no response. He hung up and dialled the same number again, thinking that in his haste he might have made a mistake. But there was still no answer. He looked at his watch. It was not yet nine o’clock. Knowing Dorothy’s liking for sleeping late, he found it probable that she had been out all night and had not yet returned.

  He left the drugstore and walked along twisting Village streets to Fifth Avenue. He hailed an open-deck bus and climbed the stairs to the top deck. It was a beautiful morning. The sky was wholly clear of clouds and of the deepest blue. The sun was strong for December, and it was even unseasonably warm. Yet Philip noticed none of these things. His mind was on the many-faceted problem he faced and which he seemed impotent to solve. If Dorothy had not spent the night at home, where had she been? Had she already left him? Wouldn’t he be given a chance to explain his actions?

  But one question, of far greater significance than any of the others, was present continually, was, in fact, so well known to him that he scarcely needed to formulate it. When he reached the office, would he find another instalment of the ‘Confession’? And if he did, what would it predict this time?

  Philip descended from the bus at Fiftieth Street and went to his bank in Radio City to a cash a cheque. Then he had another cup of coffee at a Whelan’s. He smoked several cigarettes and contemplated not going to the office, so intense was his desire to avoid finding a third section of the ‘Confession’ on his desk. But, in the end, some part of his will remained to make him face up to what he had come to consider his fate. He left the drugstore and, walking slowly and with great hesitance, headed for Madison Avenue.

  The desperate confusion that had marked all of his actions of the day before had passed away; in its place was a superficial calm. The despair he felt no longer showed itself in his actions, except, perhaps, in the subdued unsteadiness of his gait. To the casual eye, if it had paused to inspect him, he might have seemed to have been suffering from a bad hangover – which, of course, he was. A more critical appraisal, such as George Matthews might have made had he met him at this time, would have considered his state an exaggeratedly neurotic and depressed condition. Philip, when he entered the lobby of his building, was walking with the measured, yet sometimes faltering, strides of a condemned man marching to the place of his execution.

  Sadie, the elevator operator, did not say good morning to him, although they were alone in the car. She kept her eyes fixed on the ruby lights of the indicator so that all Philip saw of her was her back. He took this as an omen, deriding himself for being superstitious even as the thought occurred to him. Something was badly wrong about him – this he was sure of by now – if a girl who had always been flirtatious and friendly in the past should now make a point of snubbing him. As the elevator doors opened at his floor, he tried to catch her eye. If she would only smile at me, he thought, it would be encouraging! But, whether her indifference was due to a change in himself or not, he did not succeed. Sadie paid no attention to his wink.

  It was the same with the receptionist. Her smile, and her way of saying good morning, had always affected Philip adversely; but this time her mien was so bleak as to be
frightening. He felt that she must have discovered some part of what was going on and had grown thoroughly contemptuous of him because of it. As he walked down the corridor to his own office and Miss Grey, it seemed to him that all the girls in the office were watching him, pointing at him behind his back and saying things to each other about him. With his hand on the knob of his door, he stopped and tried to make himself turn around to face their derision; but he did not have the courage. He opened the door and went through it hurriedly.

  ‘Good morning, Miss Grey,’ he said as soon as he was inside the door and before he had looked at her. She was seated at her desk, her pocketbook lying open on her typewriter, busily filing her nails. She barely nodded to him.

  ‘Good morning, Miss Grey,’ he snapped again. He was not going to allow such impertinence.

  She glanced up at him. ‘Good morning,’ she said, and she smiled briefly. But she went on filing her nails.

  Philip hesitated. His anger had flared momentarily, but now he was unsure of himself. Miss Grey was the one person in the office who was closest to him – the person who might logically know most about the ‘Confession’. She could have seen it on his desk on the other two mornings. She undoubtedly knew what was on his desk now. Was it because she had read the latest chapter of the ‘Confession’, that she acted so casually indifferent to him as he stood before her? Was she secretly smiling and waiting to see what he would do when he went into his office and read it himself? Philip turned his back on her and opened the other door. His heart was pounding violently…

  At first he thought there was nothing on his desk. His typewriter was not open on it. There was no neat pile of manuscript. He sighed and hung up his hat. Then he walked around and sat down. He checked all the articles that belonged on his desk top: the blotter, the fountain-pen set, the calendar, the file boxes, the clock, the buzzer buttons. He saw that he had been wrong, that there was one new thing lying on his desk – a blank piece of paper.

  He picked it up in his hands and stared at it. Good bond paper, he noted, watermarked. He turned it over, held it up to the light. No, there was no marking on it whatsoever. He might have left it here himself the day before. Or it might have been here a long time and he had not noticed it. He laid it down again. A blank piece of paper signified nothing. The main thing to remember was that there was no manuscript on his desk. Which meant, of course – he was absolutely sure of it! that what had been happening to him had come to an end. He leaned far back in his swivel chair and laughed loudly, so great was his relief.

  ‘Mr Banter?’

  Philip had swerved around in his chair so that he faced the window. Now Miss Grey’s voice cut his laugh short. He turned around and saw that she was standing in the doorway that connected their offices. She had her hat and coat on.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘I wanted to tell you, Mr Banter, that I’m leaving. I’ve got another job. I’ve already told Miss Rossiter.’ (Miss Rossiter was the assistant cashier who also acted as supervisor over the secretaries and stenographers in the office.)

  Philip gaped. The girl was smiling at him, openly showing her pleasure at being able to speak these words. All Philip could say was, ‘B-but I-I thought you were ha-happy here?’ And he cursed himself silently for stammering.

  Miss Grey looked down. She fiddled with her gloves for a moment before she answered. When she did, she looked up, her eyes wide, her mouth trembling. ‘I didn’t want to tell you my real reason, Mr Banter. I thought I might hurt your feelings, and I know how sensitive you are – I didn’t want to make you feel bad.’

  She paused, Philip waited quietly. She is going to tell me that she has read the ‘Confession’, he thought.

  ‘You’ve been so queer lately, Mr Banter. You look at me in such a funny way, when you look at me at all. It’s as if you weren’t seeing me, as if you were looking through me at something behind me. Then you get angry at the least thing – like the other day when you implied that I had been using your typewriter. You make me feel uncomfortable all the time.’

  Philip did not know what to say. She was embarrassed, too, and stood twisting a glove that was half-off one of her hands. Then Philip remembered that he had promised himself to ask her some questions the next time he saw her.

  ‘I’m sorry you feel that way, Miss Grey,’ he began. ‘But if you’re not happy here, you had better leave. Before you go – since you have referred to the episode of the typewriter – I would like to ask you a few questions.’

  Miss Grey stripped her gloves from her hands. ‘I’ll answer what I can,’ she said.

  ‘Both yesterday and the day before, when I came into my office I found my typewriter open on my desk. But that’s not all.’ He stooped and fitted the key to the bottom drawer of his desk into the lock, opened the drawer and withdrew the two sections of the ‘Confession’. ‘I also found these manuscripts on my desk, Miss Grey. Have you any idea who put them there?’

  The girl did not step forward to inspect the thick sheaf of manuscripts Philip held. Instead, she put her hand to her mouth and began to whimper. ‘I don’t know anything about it. You keep accusing me of things I didn’t do. I don’t know.’

  Philip shook his head. ‘I’m not accusing you of anything. I’m simply asking you for information. Do you know how these manuscripts could have gotten on my desk? Could they have been put there at night – or early in the morning before anyone’s at work? Is the main door to the office kept closed and locked, and, if so, who has a key?’

  Miss Grey leaned against the jamb of the door. Philip could see she was frightened. Good God, did he have this effect on everybody? What was the matter with him?

  ‘I don’t know who put those papers on your desk, Mr Banter,’ the girl said weakly. ‘I’m sure I didn’t. And I don’t think anyone in the office did. Are you sure you didn’t put them there yourself, and then forget about it?’

  ‘I am certain I did nothing of the sort,’ Philip said.

  ‘Well, the door to the office is left open for the cleaning women. They’re supposed to lock it, and they usually do. Although some of the girls who get here earliest say that on some mornings the door is unlocked. We all have keys, of course.’

  ‘What would I do if I wanted to get into the building late at night, and I had forgotten my key?’

  ‘You could ask the watchman for one. You’d have to sign the register, but he’d lend you one.’

  ‘So anyone could procure a key to our offices and walk right in and steal anything, I suppose?’ Philip asked sarcastically.

  Miss Grey shook her head. ‘The watchman wouldn’t give just anyone a key. He would have to know you.’

  ‘I suppose the watchman knows all the tenants of this building?’ Again Philip’s voice was heavy with sarcasm. Miss Grey began to cry. ‘Oh, I don’t know, Mr Banter – I just don’t know. I don’t see why you keep after me like this. I didn’t put those old papers on your desk!’

  Philip realized that he was not succeeding. He sat down and regarded the pile of manuscript bitterly. Miss Grey started to speak, then thought better of it. Still sniffling, she left the room.

  Philip continued to stare at the sheaf of papers. Until now he had been looking at it, not reading it. But, without being fully aware of what he was doing, he began to read it. He started reading about the middle of the first page.

  Dermo not only cleanses clothes faster – people tell us a day’s laundry takes only half a day when they use Dermo – but it actually makes clothes brighter, cleaner, than old-fashioned bar soaps. Dermo – spelled D-E-R-M-O – is the modern way of washing clothes, the economical way. Ask your grocer for the big, family-size today. Don’t forget, get Dermo – spelled D-E-R-M-O – today!

  Philip looked at the next page. What he read was also part of a radio script for one of his clients – a script for which he had written the commercials weeks ago. Quickly he thumbed through the entire pile of paper. They were all the same! He threw them on t
he floor in disgust.

  He jerked the bottom drawer of his desk out and shuffled through its contents. He did not find the ‘Confession’. He pulled out all the other drawers of his desk and searched them all. Still he did not find it. He went to the file cabinet and spent a good fifteen minutes disrupting its orderly rows of folders – without success. Finally, he had to admit the fact that the ‘Confession’ was gone.

  Had it ever existed? Philip sat and stared at the blank piece of paper that he had found on the top of his desk that morning. There was no doubting the reality of this – he was touching it, he could feel it – although he could doubt its significance. Well, there was one good use for it. He took a pen from the stand and began to scribble on it. He put down all of the events of the past two days from the moment he walked into his office and found (or thought he found) the ‘Confession’ on his desk until a short time before when he had discovered its theft and the substitution of several old scripts in its place. Or had he discovered only that he had been deluding himself?

  By the time he had finished writing, he had covered both sides of the sheet of paper with fine writing. He had it all down on paper, concisely – and yet the puzzle remained. Who was writing the ‘Confession’? Who had placed that sheet of blank paper on his desk?

  He opened his drawer and withdrew another sheet of paper. He held it up to the light and matched its watermark with that of one he had found. The marks were the same. He took his pen again and wrote down these names:

  Steven Foster

  Miss Grey

  Dorothy Banter

  Jeremy Foulkes

  He studied them for many minutes, then read both sides of the other sheet of paper again. Then he underlined the last name on the list like this:

  2

  Dorothy and Jeremy had attempted to recapture their past, and had failed. The irresponsible holiday, that had begun the day before at lunch in the Three Griffins and had continued with a drive up the Hudson, dinner at a roadside inn and a night together in one of the inn’s upstairs rooms, was ending gloomily with each feeling dislike for the other. Yesterday, their high spirits had scarcely outlasted the effects of the martinis they had drunk at lunch. The stiff river breeze – the only car Jeremy had been able to rent was a shabby, well-ventilated convertible coupé – had been sobering. They had first quarrelled about where to stop, Jeremy being all for pushing on to the next place, and the next, while Dorothy felt headachy and hungry and favoured each roadhouse they encountered. When they did drive up to an inn, it was late and the dinner they were served was bad. They ate cold ham, canned peas and soggy boiled potatoes and drank lukewarm coffee. After dinner they managed to patch up their injured feelings briefly, taking a walk along the wooded cliffs that overlooked the river until the gale forced them back inside. They went up to their room as a last resort and played at being lovers like actors reading their parts for the first time, each aware of the other’s fumblings as well as his own inadequacy.