The Chinese Room

by Vivian Connell

  “Hello.”

  “Hello. Is that the Dormouse?”

  “In person.”

  “Just got your note.”

  “Yes. I’ve got my eyes opened this weekend.”

  “Well, I want you about something else.”

  “Yes?”

  “Would you like to buy something?”

  “If Miss Coleman is for sale...”

  Nicholas chuckled. “She’s not. And don’t try to buy her off me with baskets of flowers.” Nicholas paused. “Would you like to buy a bank?”

  “A bank? What do you mean?”

  “I mean this bank.”

  “Well, go on, explain.”

  “I want to give up banking.”

  “Good Lord! Why?”

  “Well, I’m getting tired of running a slate club for you and the Colonial Office.”

  Old Dorman laughed. “I must tell that to Cluricawn! What’s happened?”

  “It’s a long story, and I want you to lunch with me.”

  “I can’t...” Dorman paused. “If you think it necessary, I’ll put off my engagement and lunch with you.”

  “I’d like you to.”

  “Very well.” Dorman paused. “I hope, whatever this is, you are not doing anything before you see me.”

  “I am not. But I’ve got to get out of this bank, sell it, put in a board, or some damn thing, and I want your advice.”

  “All right. I’ll be at your club at one.” Dorman paused. “It all sounds—damned odd.” Now a kindness came into his voice.

  “Nothing wrong—Nicholas?”

  “No.”

  Human old man, thought Nicholas. So long as he didn’t let anything go cold, he could make all his decisions today. Damn Strood. He had no confidence in him.

  Nicholas was lost in introspection when Miss Coleman came in. She woke him up. “What are you thinking about?”

  “Strood. Just wondering if there’s anything at all. in him.” Nicholas paused. “I must talk to him, try and get at his mind, if he’s got one. Now what the hell can you invent for me to see Strood about....No, I’ll ‘ wait until tomorrow.” He looked up at her. “Can you dine with me tonight?”

  “Dine with you?”

  “Yes. Let’s dine at the Ritz and talk. I’ve got something on my mind—about the bank. It’s serious. I’m lunching with Dorman about it—remind me to leave here at ten to one—and I want you to dine on it.” He smiled. “Strictly a business engagement! If I can’t damn well get you out to dinner any other way, I’m ordering you now to work overtime, at the Ritz.”

  “Very well.”

  “Now, let’s go ahead.”

  Suddenly she seemed very young and lonely as she bent her head over her notebook. Sometimes, too, old Dorman looked very old and lonely, making a decision about millions, with his mind on his crippled son. Nicholas put his hand in his pocket to get his cigarette case and found it enclosing the deer’s hoof.

  In the afternoon, when Mr. Elder came in, Nicholas was in good humor. Dorman had surprised him at lunch by taking his decision for granted and had confessed that he too was resigning at the end of the year. The importance of the India loan made it necessary to avoid a public change in Bude’s Bank, and Dorman and he had worked out a satisfactory plan. Nicholas felt that at last he was a free man, and now even Mr. Elder noticed at once the change in him. Mr. Elder, remembering the nerve storm of last Friday, was both anxious and distant, but Nicholas put him at ease.

  “Mr. Elder,” he said in a forthright way, “I owe you an apology for last Friday.” He smiled. “My nerves were in pieces, I’m afraid.”

  “That was easy to see.” Mr. Elder paused. “I take it the cause of your—disquiet has been removed?”

  “Well, the letters have stopped. But—“ Nicholas paused—“I don’t think it would have mattered much if one had come today. I—well, I think I managed to get it out of my system over the week end.”

  Mr. Elder noticed his hands and smiled. “There’s nothing like a good sweat to get anything out of your system.”

  “Yes. I—ahm, I had a bit of exercise over the weekend.” Nicholas could see the water running bright and clean in the drain and taking the poison he had sweated out of his mind down to the sea. “Well, what have you got for me?”

  Nicholas signed the documents and, making a blurred signature on one, turned it hastily onto his blotting pad. Mr. Elder smiled.

  “That’s the first time I’ve seen you use that blotting pad, Mr. Bude!”

  Nicholas laughed. He remembered that Mr. Elder’s use of the desk pad had caused the explosion on last Friday. What the hell of a long way back last Friday seemed! He could hardly explain to Elder that until today he had used that pad as a mirror in which to see faces. He said in a casual way: “Just a kink of mine, to keep that pad clean. Suppose everybody gets these kinks.”

  “Yes.” Mr. Elder paused. “They usually signify something more important, though, than the kink itself.”

  “Hum, yes. Well, Mr. Elder, that’s all, I think.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Bude.” Mr. Elder paused. “Well, I’m glad to know that the letters business is no longer worrying you. I was very surprised to know of it. I don’t suppose you are making any inquiries, but if you are, and you happen to find out who took that paper from my house, I would be grateful if you let me know.”

  “I will, Mr. Elder. But I am not making any inquiries. That kind of thing only flatters the fool or the blackguard who is sending them.” Nicholas paused. “He seems to have got tired at last.”

  Mr. Elder looked thoughtful as he remarked: “He—or she.”

  Nicholas looked up sharply. “Why did you say that?”

  “Well, there’s no reason why it shouldn’t be a woman.”

  Nicholas discovered to his annoyance that his hands were restless under the desk. “No,” he said. “Do you suspect anybody?”

  Mr. Elder looked him in the eyes but showed nothing in his. “Well, you suspected me, didn’t you?”

  “Yes, but...Well, the facts rather pointed to you, and I was upset last Friday, and I was ready to suspect anybody.”

  “But you suspected me long ago—the night you visited me, for instance.”

  “Yes. I was uneasy. I am sorry. But you can hardly blame me.”

  “No. It is reasonable to suspect anybody who could get hold of that Elder Bank paper.” Mr. Elder paused.

  “Well, I’m glad you are not letting it worry you any more.” He paused again. “I hope those crests and seals I lent you are being of some use in getting out that history of the bank?”

  “Yes, thank you, Mr. Elder. I’ll let you have them back when I’m done with them.”

  “There’s no hurry, Mr. Bude. Well, good afternoon, Mr. Bude.”

  “Good afternoon, Mr. Elder.”

  When Elder went out, Nicholas thought: “Damn it. He knew I was lying about that bank history.” Nicholas frowned. “Good God, does he suspect Sidonie? After all, she could have taken the paper out of his room. God, I just can’t believe that!” Poor old Elder had probably got a shock when he had been fool enough to let him guess last Friday that Sidonie was his mistress. Since then Elder probably felt he could trust nobody. Hell, here he was thinking back to the letters again. He must get them out of his mind. Suddenly he got an idea. He opened the shutter and told Miss Coleman to get him a Bond Street sweetshop. As he waited for the call, he felt certain Miss Coleman would not listen in, although it was seldom he made a call of this kind. And realizing how certain he was of this, he knew that it was impossible to suspect her of sending anonymous...God, here he was still thinking about them. Ah, here was the call.

  “I want a five-guinea box of the Madame Pompadour to be delivered at Barrington Hall by seven o’clock.”

  “Certainly, Mr. Bude. A card with them?”

  “Just address them to Mrs. Bude.”

  He put down the telephone. He knew the chocolates would be there, even if they had to hire a car.

&nbs
p; Bond Street was expensive, but they got things done. He chuckled, as he realized that his body was actively thinking about Muriel. She had shown him a sweet and tantalizing way to eat slices of peach on Sunday evening. She might have another idea about chocolates. He chuckled again. It was interesting to speculate about whether she had been taught the tendresse about the peach, or had invented it, or perhaps read about it. He did not care very much. All he knew was that it was exciting to have a wife like Muriel. By God, when one came to think of it, he was on honeymoon! He would be darned glad to get a warm brine on his skin in some tropical bay and get bronzed to match her color. He’d have to be pretty good to keep Muriel.

  Suddenly he had glided away into a daydream of golden seas and blue glooms of dusk and dawns in green leaves, and pausing in his vision he knew why he felt so happy. He was no longer alone. Somehow the realization was a shock. And then he knew why it was a shock. The shock lay in the fact that he had found out that he had always been alone. And all at once loneliness seemed a desolation more horrible to contemplate than being lost in the Sahara. If anything happened to Muriel now, he would feel like a man turned alone into the wilderness again, there to be haunted by the wolves in his mind, those wolves that haunted the nocturnal caves of his sleep. Only in Muriel, somehow, could he make a home. By heavens, in the end, it must all come down to the fact that he loved her, had always loved her. My God, what fools they had been! Suddenly he felt in a violent spasm that he wanted to get her away. He would like to pack up this very moment and go down to the docks and get on a ship and sail out into the new world they had found on last Saturday night. God, he had nearly missed it all. If he had not gone into that field and worked and somehow found himself so that Muriel was able to give herself to him, he might have gone on forever sitting in this bank.

  He felt a shiver in him, and then, as if he had cast it all away like an outworn skin, he gave a sudden laugh, and put his hand to the shutter to call Miss Coleman and get on with the business of the afternoon.

  “I’m just coming in,” she said.

  Nicholas had a smile ready on his mouth to greet Miss Coleman, but it died when he saw her face. She looked white and empty, as if everything had suddenly gone out of her, and he felt everything go out of himself. She paused as if to collect herself, then came over and said as calmly as she could: “Nothing in the mail except acknowledgments.” She laid down the letter. “This came out of the bank letter box.”

  Nicholas nodded. She hesitated, as if to say something, then went out, and, in the sunshine, as she turned, Nicholas saw the glint of sweat on her forehead.

  Nicholas looked down at the envelope. It had no stamp. But there was no mistaking it. For a moment there was a complete gap in his mind. He could not make his hands function and pick the letter up. When at last he got in the paper knife to slit the envelope, his hands were numb, and he could not feel the knife or paper even on the sore skin. The letter opened in his fingers as by itself. The message read:

  THERE IS A WILL TO DEATH IN YOUR

  HANDS. WHOSE DEATH? WHEN? NOW?

  For a few seconds, his head was like an empty skull. His mind was numbed like his hands. From somewhere outside he felt that his heart had stopped. And then it began to thump. His left hand went out by itself and turned over the flap of his case on the desk, and he saw the other letters neatly filed in the pouch. As if his thought had suddenly found a point of beginning again, his mind began to work, moving slowly like limbs coming out of sleep. The first coherent thought was a question. Whose death? Somehow he wanted to know that. It would help him. Now there was another blank in his mind again. Then, suddenly as if one had dropped a coin into an automatic gramophone, there was a clash of noise in his head. Thoughts seemed to be banging like cymbals and glittering as they struck. Clap! And lightnings and sparks flew between the cymbals. And then he realized that his hands had clapped together and seized each other and were trying to murder this panic in their hold.

  “Christ, the bastard!” His tongue had whispered the thought. Now he had begun to fight it. A fearful hate of the sender of these letters possessed him. He saw the diabolical skill behind this delayed message. His mind had been lulled into peace all the morning and then leaped at suddenly in this letter. Now sweat began to pour out of him and relieve him, and he put his hand into his pocket to get out his handkerchief and felt the hard thing. He pulled it out and threw it on the desk. Somehow the sight of the hoof upset him. The curious thing, he knew, was that it was upsetting his blood, not his mind. It seemed to act in some queer way. He stared at it in horror. He felt an itching on his skin, and knew that it was fear and hate. It was the hair rising on the dog. Then his hate began to gnaw his stomach. He felt an acid eating into his mind. By God Almighty, if he could know the sender at this moment! He wiped the sweat off his face on his sleeve. Then his mouth closed like a pincers. He opened the second drawer in the desk and took up the pistol. The cold steel burned into his sweating palm. He liked the scorching. It embodied his anger. His thumb clicked on the catch. His finger softly closed about the trigger, as gently as it might curl into a ringlet of gold hair. He pulled the shutter with his other hand and spoke into the cabinet. “Come in.”

  When she came in, he watched her as carefully as a polecat might watch a snake. Her face was like the globe of a lamp when the wick has gone out. It had no color, no light. He pulled her over slowly with his eyes, like a huntsman drawing a hound. She was so held in his eyes that she walked into the desk and stopped at the contact. His eyes continued to search into her until, he felt, she was on the point of screaming. Then he said: “Who sent that letter?”

  “I don’t know.”

  There was a kind of cold agony on her face. She knew that his question meant: “Did you send it?” He looked at her for a moment and then said: “I am sorry.”

  She nodded and turned to go. Then her eye caught on the hoof on the desk. She seemed to leap away in horror, although she did not move. He thought she would faint, but she walked out like somebody walking away from a deathbed. When she went out, his mind collapsed.

  He knew it was not she. If it had been, he would have killed her. But he was being attacked by a ghost. The gun in his hand was useless. The gun was scorching his hand, stuck to the palm like a stamp to an envelope. It might be the pain of the steel that made his mind want to shriek out through his forehead. There were stabs like needles in his eyes. His mind must escape from this transfixion. Where? How...

  The pad!

  Christ! How could he see faces with that damned inkstain on the pad! He could not let the gun go that was stuck to his skin and he held the edge of the pad between his teeth and tore away the blotted sheet with his left hand and exposed a new clean sheet. He saw that his teeth had bitten nearly through the leather edge. God, he was drawn out like wires that sang in the wind. And now there was a kind of whistle through his mind that became a screeching.

  He could see nothing on the pad. It was white and empty. My God, if he could only see those faces and occupy himself by watching them. He could not stand this intolerable whining in his mind. Then suddenly the pad was a pane of glass, and Sarah Fuidge looked out the window. He felt a gasp in his mind, as if the air had got in again. Now it was all right. The faces had returned. They came one by one, and then came faster, and suddenly began to spin up like shining dishes from a juggler’s hand. They whirled up through the pad and into his eyes and they made a slight whining noise and suddenly he wanted to stop them. God, if one of them would only fall and make a wham, this mad Catherine’s wheel might stop. Now they were moons, empty. Then they were moons with a shadow of Sarah’s face on them. Then they were gongs, gongs that whanged up noiselessly, and fell through a long space in his mind down on Elder’s carpet that was silent in the bottom of his head. Ah, they were back into faces again. Sarah, Jock, Muriel, Sidonie, Elder, Saluby, the old man in the drain on Saturday, Dorman, people he did not know or had lost in his memory. And then, his own face, at last, for the first
time, lonely, aghast, shining like a fungus in the moonlight...

  My God, his mind must be going. He was alone, with a gun clung to his hand, and he was inside the blotting pad, and looking out at himself, and wanting to know whom he had to kill. He had to kill somebody. The letters said so. Who? He felt that he was spinning away out from himself, like a spider on his line, and that he must get back. He must get back to somebody. He wanted company...

  He heard the click in his mind and was astonished not to hear the noise of a shot. He thought it must be the trigger, but he looked down at the gun and knew that he had not pulled the trigger. The click was in his mind. And suddenly he had got back to his desk, was thinking, knew what to do. He must ring Muriel, talk to her on the telephone, and that would make him feel safe again. Then he would go home at once by a hired car and fall on her with kisses and comfort his hands on her bosom and be healed. And then immediately they would pack and go away. He was alone with everybody but her. He sweated again in relief. He had just got back in time and knew what to do. He pulled open the shutter of the cabinet to ask Miss Coleman for the Barrington number. She was talking to somebody. Nicholas listened.

  “Yes, Mr. Strood? Oh, perhaps it had better wait until the morning. Mr. Bude is very busy. Very well, Mr. Strood.”

  Hum, she was saving him from Strood because she knew he was upset. He heard the buzz on her desk and realize that she was taking another call. Damn! He listened to her.

  “Hello? Oh, hello, Mrs. Bude!”

  Nicholas gave a start. What a queer chancel Or had Muriel guessed him in trouble by some telepathy? She had never called him at the bank before. He reached his hand for the receiver, expecting Miss Coleman to put Muriel through. But Miss Coleman was going on talking.

  “Oh, I’m very well.”

  Very sociable conversation, Nicholas thought, considering Muriel had never before rung up Miss Coleman. Miss Coleman was still going on.

  “Yes?”

  There was a pause.

  “I understand.”