The Last of Philip Banter

by John Franklin Bardin

  Jeremy might have written it. Jeremy had always been a little jealous of him, especially since he had married Dorothy. But why should Jeremy come forward with such a preposterous device as this now? He had not seen Jeremy in a year or more. And was Jeremy that subtle? No, Jeremy could bluster – he had once in the past – he could try to bully, but he would never think of planting a ‘Confession’ on a man’s desk. A ‘Confession’! Why, the very idea!

  What the hell was it all about?

  Philip stood up. His face was very red and he had run his hand through his hair again and again. Now he seized the sheaf of manuscript and, turning the pages quickly, re-read a line here, a paragraph there. It was a strange sensation, that of reading an account of actions that were supposed to be his – a sensation that left him with an emptiness in the viscera and a heady feeling of pleasure, much as he supposed he might experience if, upon the completion of a dangerous exploit, he had heard himself praised for his daring. Even while he was first reading it, he had been particularly pleased by certain passages and significantly disturbed by others, although why he should feel either pleased or frightened he could not say. The whole thing was ingenious, and surprisingly accurate, in places. Of course, most of it was nonsensical. He knew no one who fitted the description of the mysterious woman and it was fantastic to predict that he would meet such a person. For the ‘Confession’ did predict… the day it concerned itself with was today… the events it described had not happened yet. And wouldn’t, if he had anything to say in the matter!

  But who had placed it on his desk? Suddenly, he thought of Miss Grey, and, as he did, his face grew livid. He tossed the ‘Confession’ violently aside and jabbed the button that would call her. While he waited for her to appear at the door, he cursed her under his breath.

  When she came into the room, her pencil and notebook in her hand, he asked, ‘Did you put anything on my desk this morning, Miss Grey?’

  ‘Just the mail, Mr Banter.’

  ‘Nothing else? No papers, or anything like that?’

  ‘No, Mr Banter, just the mail.’

  Philip hesitated. He felt he could not refer openly to the ‘Confession’. He did not want anyone else to know about it. But he did want to discover who had put it on his desk.

  ‘Did anyone else come into my office this morning before I arrived?’ he asked.

  ‘No, Mr Banter, not while I was here.’

  ‘Or last night – after I had left?’

  ‘Nobody’s been near your office, Mr Banter. Is there something wrong?’

  Philip thought quickly. ‘It’s just that someone else has been using my typewriter, that’s all!’

  The girl look puzzled. ‘Nobody has used your typewriter, Mr Banter. I know.’

  ‘I found it open this morning, Miss Grey!’ He felt himself growing angrier. She was playing innocent. He knew she was. She had to be!

  ‘Why, Mr Banter, is that what’s the matter? That doesn’t mean someone else has been using it. That just means that you left it open last night yourself. I remember noticing it.’

  Although the girl’s blotchy face was wholly earnest, Philip felt she was laughing at him. She wanted to make a fool of him, did she? He would show her a thing or two!

  ‘You’re sure of that, Miss Grey?’

  ‘Yes, Mr Banter, I remember you left it open.’

  ‘Why didn’t you cover it up then? Isn’t that one of the duties of a good secretary? To see that my desk is in order before you leave?’

  ‘But, Mr Banter –’

  ‘Don’t “but” me, I mean it! And another thing, from now on you can spend your spare time cleaning out the correspondence files or helping Miss Campbell. You’re not to sit around all day long with your nose in a magazine as if I didn’t give you enough to do!’

  The girl looked as if she might cry. Philip felt foolish now that his anger was spent. What had been the good of that? Not that he had not been justified, but had he learned anything?

  ‘I’ll ring when I need you, Miss Grey.’ He watched her leave the room. He was right about it; she had been growing awfully slack of late. Still, he could have gone about it more successfully. He was convinced that she knew more than she said. But what could he do about it?

  Someone had to write that story, someone had to put it on his desk. The only possible times this could have happened were after he left the previous afternoon, and that morning before he came in. Miss Grey had said she had been in the office both times. She had to be lying… unless he had written it himself. And then forgotten about it… impossible!

  Philip thought he heard the door to his office click. He did not look up. He waited for the door to open… for the person who was there to step into the room. But the door never opened… instead, his vision grew dull, the light grew grey and scummy, there was a faint… but persistent… ringing in his ear. And he felt as though he were breathing cobwebs…

  He tried to get up, and he could not. He tried to cry out, and he could not. And then he heard the voice… a familiar voice… one he had heard many times before… although he never recognized it as his own until it had stopped… his voice when he had been a child… a petulant, whining; coaxing voice…

  ‘Philip,’ the voice said, ‘why can’t you remember last night? I want you to remember, Philip. We had so much fun.’

  Philip buried his head in his hands to shut out that foggy light. He knew that if he opened them before the tinkling in his brain went away, he would still see the light that soiled every object in the room. For a month or more he had been having these spells – that was why he got drunk so often. He never saw the light when he had been drinking, never heard that voice…

  There it was again. ‘Philip, why can’t you remember? It was just last night, Philip.’

  He clenched his teeth and forced himself to stand erect. Despite the vague fuzziness of his vision, he found the calendar pad and began to check off the day’s appointments. Lunch with Peabody at one. Copy conference at two-thirty. Mr Foster’s office about the new campaign at four. He looked at his watch – it was a few minutes to twelve. Time enough to have a quick drink and then catch a taxi for the ride downtown.

  He stumbled across the room, grabbed his hat and coat and plunged blindly out of his office. ‘Philip, why can’t you remember?’ the voice was saying. As he waited for the elevator in the corridor, he shut his eyes and listened for the voice again. It did not come. By the time he had reached the street his vision had begun to clear and the tinkling sound was fading. The sun was still bright and he had to blink his eyes to see anything. Then he saw a taxi pull up across the street, an empty taxi.

  As he stepped forward, the dull, black truck turned out of the next side street – moving with clumsy rapidity. It bore down on him. Philip did not see it. His eyes were intent on the taxi. The taxi driver saw it and shouted at Philip. At the same moment, a woman screamed. The great, dully painted truck swerved – in an attempt to miss Philip, or to make sure of hitting him? Philip looked up and saw the looming headlights, the tarnished radiator grill, the kewpie doll on the front of the hood.

  He jumped, sprawled, stretched himself forward and down. A great blast of wind tore at him as he hit the hard pavement. The woman screamed again – and again.

  Then the cab-driver was standing over him, helping him up. Automobile horns were honking and a policeman’s whistle shrilled. ‘Gripes, that was a close one, buddy!’ the cabby was saying. ‘He looked like he was out to get you – like he swerved right at you! And he kept on goin’, didn’t even stop for the cop! Are you all right?’

  Philip smiled weakly and thanked the driver. He climbed into the cab and told him to get away as fast as he could. ‘I’m already late to my appointment,’ he explained.

  In reality, he wanted some time to think about what had just happened. Was the cabby’s hunch correct? Had someone aimed that truck deliberately at him? Was this near-accident and the ‘Confession’ all part of a sche
me – a scheme either to kill him or to drive him out of his mind?

  Philip just did not know.

  2

  Dr George Matthews was looking at his appointment book. ‘11 a.m., Mr Steven Foster and Mrs Philip Banter,’ he read. Mrs Philip Banter? – that would be Phil’s wife, Dorothy, wouldn’t it? And Steven Foster – wasn’t he Dorothy’s father? Dr Matthews was surprised to find their names in his book, but then his appointments were usually made six or more weeks in advance and during the interval he often forgot them. He lighted a cigarette and tried to remember when and why he had made this one. Phil and he had had lunch together a few weeks before – they had kept up their college friendship and they liked to talk over old times. Had Philip asked him to see his wife and her father then? George Matthews doubted it. He made a policy of not accepting his friends as patients and if he had broken this rule, he would remember why he had broken it. No, he had not made this appointment. He picked up his telephone and buzzed Miss Henry, his nurse. She might remember…

  Miss Henry did remember. ‘I made it for you only yesterday, doctor,’ she said. ‘Mrs Campbell called to say she could not keep her eleven o’clock today. Then Mr Foster called right afterwards and said he wanted to see you as soon as possible. So I squeezed him in today.’

  ‘Thank you, Miss Henry. Will you ask them to come in now?’

  Matthews hung up, and ground his cigarette out in the ashtray. Miss Henry had no way of knowing that Mrs Philip Banter was an old friend, but he wished she had checked with him before making the appointment. Dr Matthews did not like analysing his friends or his friends’ friends. Psychoanalysis and friendship belonged in different worlds. But there was little he could do about this now.

  The door opened and Miss Henry ushered a beautiful, dark-haired woman and a tall old man into the office. Matthews stood up and shook hands with Steven Foster, while smiling warmly at Dorothy Banter. She acknowledged his greeting. He saw at once that Dorothy was tense and unnaturally excited. She kept glancing back to her father (they had come into the room separately, Dorothy with Miss Henry, her father a discreet distance behind). Now Dorothy sat down and as she did, jerked open her purse, spilling its contents. Matthews came around his desk and stooped to help her pick up the money, powder and cigarettes that had scattered over the carpet. He saw that she was embarrassed, her face flushed as she stammered her thanks, and he wondered at this because Dorothy had always before had remarkable poise.

  But if Dorothy’s behaviour was puzzling, Steven Foster’s attitude was even more interesting. Dorothy’s father had not spoken a word. He had nodded his head and smiled grimly when Matthews had shaken hands with him, but he had said nothing. Rather than sit in a comfortable chair, he had walked to the other end of the large, book-lined office and sat on the couch – he was sitting on the edge of it, his cane imprisoned between his knees, his gloves entangled in his fist. It was as if he wanted himself considered a spectator, not a participant.

  And yet Dorothy looked at her father and waited until he nodded his head again before she began to explain their presence. ‘We have come to see you about Philip,’ she said, smiling apologetically. ‘You have known Philip as long as I have, and you are a psychiatrist. We thought you might be able to help us.’

  Steven Foster thwacked his fist against his thigh. Dorothy, nettled by the unexpected sound, glanced at him. But still he said nothing.

  ‘You see, my husband has been behaving strangely lately,’ she added a moment afterwards.

  ‘I saw Philip last month,’ Matthews said. ‘We had lunch together. He struck me about the same as usual. Although, as I remember, he didn’t have much to say. But then I don’t think about my friends the same way I do about my patients.’

  Dorothy smiled at that, and for an instant regained some of her normal composure. She leaned forward and spoke eagerly. ‘You don’t expect to find psychoses in your friends, you mean?’

  ‘I don’t seek them in my friends.’

  ‘Then, perhaps, you can understand how unnerved I am. I didn’t expect to find my husband psychotic. But little by little that is the conclusion that is being forced on me…’

  Dr Matthews made a tent of his hands and peered through it. He was a well-proportioned man in his middle thirties with a face that had once been handsome but had suffered a scar that made it saturnine. Yet there was a kindness in his eyes, a gentleness about his mouth, that told you that here was a man to whom you could talk and he would listen.

  ‘What does your husband do that seems psychotic to you?’

  Dorothy fretted with her necklace. ‘There are so many things I’ve noticed, it’s hard to decide which to tell you about at first. I suppose I should tell you that he drinks. He drinks a terrible lot. The way an alcoholic drinks.’

  ‘Have you any idea why he drinks?’ Matthews asked.

  Dorothy shook her head. Her dark eyes were half-closed and her full lips were tightly compressed. She seemed to have to fight down a desire to withdraw before she could speak. ‘He is unhappy. I can tell that, although he never says so.’

  ‘Do you know why he is unhappy?’

  ‘I thought he might be worried about business. But Dad tells me that he seldom comes into the office any more – and that he’s losing all his accounts.’

  Dr Matthews turned to Steven Foster. ‘Has he talked to you about this?’

  The old man pulled at his stick, ‘I have talked to him. I told him he was a loafer. I warned him that if he lost another account, he was out of a job.’

  ‘And what was Philip’s reaction to your warning?’

  Foster tossed his head in disdain. ‘He begged me to give him another chance. He said that he had not been himself.’

  ‘Did he say he was ill?’

  The old man snorted. ‘Ill? Do you call hitting the bottle being ill? If so, Banter’s dying!’

  Matthews smiled to himself and turned back to Dorothy. He could see that Steven Foster had no wish to cooperate, and he surmised that his antagonism for Philip had deeper roots than he would admit.

  ‘So far, you have told me nothing about your husband’s behaviour that would support your fear of insanity, Dorothy. Hasn’t he other symptoms that have alarmed you?’ Matthews asked. Or else, why are you here? he added to himself.

  ‘The scoundrel has been seen with other women,’ growled old Foster.

  ‘That, even when coupled with chronic alcoholism, is not necessarily psychotic,’ Matthews said drily. ‘Although such men are often neurotic enough.’

  Dorothy smoothed her dress, looked at her father and then at Matthews. ‘It’s been going on a long time. A long, long time. Since before we married, perhaps. And I have never known until recently…’

  This was growing more and more embarrassing, Matthews thought. If only Philip were here to defend himself! ‘Are you sure of what you’re saying?’ he asked.

  Dorothy nodded her head.

  ‘I would think you needed a lawyer instead of a psychiatrist.’

  ‘You don’t understand.’ Dorothy stood up and walked around her chair, stood holding on to it. ‘There is no “other woman”. There have been scores – hundreds for all I know. I found his address book. It was full of … of their names.’

  ‘The scoundrel!’ fumed Steven Foster.

  George Matthews was shocked. Philip had been a gay enough blade in college; in fact, he had a reputation then for this sort of thing. But he had seemed to settle down, to be in love with Dorothy. It was difficult to be professional about his wife’s confidences: as a friend, he felt he should spring to Philip’s defence; as a doctor, he felt his interest should be strictly clinical, probing. He solved this dilemma by straddling.

  ‘Promiscuity is relative,’ he said. ‘It can be a sign of arrested adolescence, of perpetual self-love, narcissism. Or it can be the end result of a driving fear of impotency. However, by itself, it can hardly be regarded as a sign of insanity – unless it attains the proportions
of satyriasis.’

  ‘Of what?’ asked Dorothy.

  ‘Satyriasis. Abnormal, excessive sexuality. Fortunately very rare.’

  Dorothy thought for a moment. ‘There are other signs, too.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Philip disappears.’

  ‘Disappears. What do you mean?’

  ‘He did it only last night. We had dinner together. Afterwards, we sat together for a while, then Philip discovered that he hadn’t any cigarettes. He said he was going down to the corner to get some. I waited a half hour for him to come back – and then an hour. He did not return. I went down to the drugstore. He had not been there. I went to the bar across the street. The bartender knows us. Philip had been in, he said. He had had several drinks and then had left with a woman he met there. The bartender was reluctant to tell me this, but I wheedled it out of him. He said he thought Philip had picked her up…’

  ‘I see,’ said Dr Matthews. He did not know what else to say. He knew that he did not want to have anything to do with this. Philip had been his friend for a long time. If his actions were peculiar, who was he to say they were amoral – let alone that they were evidence of insanity? And Matthews did not like the way old Steven Foster sat on the couch and glared at him without saying a word.

  ‘This isn’t the first time this has happened,’ Dorothy was saying. ‘Philip disappears like that often – increasingly often. Once he left me at the theatre. Just said he was going out for a smoke. I didn’t see him until the next morning. He was drunk and he smelt of cheap perfume. I asked him where he had been and he said he didn’t remember. I pressed him, and he began to tell me a wild story. He said he kept seeing a “dingy light” and hearing a “persistent ringing as if a tiny bell was tinkling somewhere far off”. He also said that he heard a voice – he asked me if I heard it! – that repeatedly chided him for not remembering what he had done the night before. And that was all I could get out of him.