The Chinese Room

by Vivian Connell

  She was too disgusted to be annoyed. “That is a stupid question. You know it is my business to note everything in detail.” She paused. “I have paid attention to this letter because after it comes on each Monday you don’t seem to be able to concentrate on what you have to do.” She paused again. “Besides, you brought it up yourself by asking me if I knew anything about it.”

  “Yes. I wasn’t thinking of what I was saying. It doesn’t matter. If you don’t mind, I think we might get on with the mail.”

  “I’m sorry.” She took up the letters. “But I think if you are making this experiment on yourself, and this is the letter, that you ought to stop it.” She opened her pad. “Will you take the New York mail first?”

  Nicholas found difficulty in dealing with a tricky mail, and as soon as she got out of the room, he drank another glass of water. So she had noticed the letters and the effect on him! He lighted a cigarette and through the blue smoke saw faces looking at him from the white pad. He tried to keep his brain cool. Was her curiosity a blind? She was clever enough to put up an alibi of ignorance in this way. But, my God, it was out of character with that clean intelligent mind and that flat she had with good paintings and fine books and her genius for mathematics. But what did that opium smoking signify? Was it possible that she became another person when she went away in that smoke from the pipe? But, even it it was, she could not write letters in her sleep and would be her normal self when she came back from that Asia of dream. Suddenly his mind became very acute. Was it possible that she could write the letters under the hypnosis of opium? By God, Elder had paper in that very room! What was that kind of writing mediums were supposed to do in a trance? But how could she be capable of movement under a drug that could only liberate the mind by stopping the functioning of the body? He knew that he had not enough knowledge to know if all this was possible and thought suddenly that he might consult a book or a doctor. The whole damn thing was getting him down. All he had to understand it was the colossal encyclopedic ignorance of the average man. But he would do something about it. He might see old Hames in Harley Street and consult him with discretion. Also he might mention this curious habit of seeing these faces on the blotting pad,

  Nicholas sighed and picked up the Personal envelope. Somehow the S. W. I. postmark made the whole thing as actual and near as the sound of the traffic outside in the street. In a way it became less frightening as it came close. He remembered that in France when one got used to the Germans in a trench a hundred yards away, they somehow felt less dangerous than when more distant. Well, he had better look at the damn thing. It would of course be the same as usual....

  Nicholas got a shock. It was not the same as usual. One word had been added to make it read now:

  YOU HAVE A WILL TO DEATH IN

  YOUR HANDS. WHOSE DEATH? WHEN?

  The word when was like the clang of a bell in his mind. Suddenly his vague imaginative fear of the letters became an actual sense of physical danger. By God, he was dealing with somebody to be feared. Was this person intending to kill him. Something hardened in Nicholas. He felt his mind tautening to the danger as his muscles used to tauten for a spurt in the boat race. By heavens, was this something he could fight? Now it seemed more concrete, not an intangible suggestion coming from somewhere or anywhere. It was a live message from somebody who had posted it in this very district of London. But what had he to arm himself against this psychological weapon?

  He considered again whether he ought to call in a detective agency. But he feared a disclosure would turn out to be something ridiculous. Moreover, this person was clever enough to have left no fingerprints on the paper. It would be easy to get the fingerprints of Elder and Sidonie from the documents they handled. .Whose else? Muriel’s? My God, he could not allow somebody to take the fingerprints of these people simply because he was afraid of these damn letters. Why was he afraid? Was this person trying to get him to kill himself? He wished to God that he had not mentioned the idea to Elder or Sidonie. If he had not, the letters would be located in Muriel or Saluby, and it would be easier to investigate the affair. He considered the four of them again, and there seemed to be a good reason against each of them as the sender. Then was it somebody outside? But who? He had not, so far as he knew, a single enemy. It couldn’t be anybody like Charndale. It couldn’t be anybody like old Fuidge....Damn it, the fact was, it could only be somebody who could get hold of this paper.

  He picked up the letter again and put it away in his case with the others. He felt that he must do something concrete about it. Action of any kind was better than waiting in a negative way. There was one obvious thing he could do anyway, in case it was a physical threat. On his way to lunch he would go along to St. James to buy himself a pistol. Deciding that, he suddenly felt better. He put his hand into his pocket to get his cigarette case. He felt a hard shell. He took it out and looked at it. It was the small hoof of the deer he had picked up in the moonlight last night. All at once the whole damn thing was mysterious again, and he felt the pistol was about as much use as it would be when that yellow fog of gas crept along to you while the moonlight was still in the dawn and death was not something that hit you in the chest but was breathed in the very air. Nevertheless, he was going to buy the pistol.

  In some way the pistol in his pocket reassured him when he came back from lunch, and for a moment forgetting about the letters, he faced the other problem. He was looking at Sarah’s face on the white pad and thinking how like a long hoof was her yellow tooth that rooted in her underlip, and found that his hand in his pocket was rubbing the deer’s hoof around the palm. And, any moment now, Miss Coleman was going to come in, and he would have to force himself to ‘ say what he did not want to say. She came in with the afternoon mail, and he had an extraordinary feeling that she was overhearing everything that he was saying to himself in his mind. They dealt with the few letters, and then he paused, trying to keep his eyes frank and his voice calm: “Oh, Sidonie, about tonight...”

  When he paused, he knew, she had decided to lessen the embarrassment for him, and she said quickly: “Oh, I meant to tell you, I’ve got to go out this evening.”

  “Well, I’ve got myself tied up too, so”—he laughed uneasily—“it will have to wait until next Monday.”

  “Yes.”

  When she went out he discovered that he had some sweat on his face. He was ashamed of himself, but he could not do anything about it. He knew that it was some kind of animal reflex in him that made him recoil from a deformity that, after all, did not affect her beauty or her mind—unless, of course, she was writing the letters. But what he could not bear was the emptiness of death in her face just now when her generosity had made it easy for,him. He saw her face on the blotting pad now and it was only a faint shadow upon the white. Always he saw faces either in color or with a sense of color such as the eye always has on a face. Even Sarah’s face had a kind of phosphorescent mildew on it that was like a tinge of color, but Sidonie’s face now was only a shadow on the pad. In some way, she seemed to be going away from him, and he did not like the feeling.

  The pistol in his pocket irked his leg, and he changed it into his coat pocket. It reminded him that he was perhaps facing an actual danger, and suddenly he felt that he ought to see his family solicitor. He had made up his mind to leave Sidonie an income and now quickly he decided on the amount. He would leave her fifteen hundred a year. She would never marry. She liked fine things and would do good to artists and people like that. He opened the cabinet and told her he was leaving at four o’clock. He would go round and get a codicil inserted in his will. After that, he would have an early dinner and go to a theater and try to forget about it all.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  Nicholas had eaten hardly anything at dinner, and Muriel, who had tried to make a conversation, based on Therese, who had stayed at Barrington last night, found herself becoming more annoyed each moment.

  She realized that in ten years of life together she and Nicholas had never s
ucceeded in having a thorough conversation about anything. The influence of Therese, and the sudden flowering of her own life, enabled her to see clearly that they had come through life together with little more contact between them than was forced between two guests in a hotel. Often she had wondered why they got married. Now she was beginning to wonder why they stayed married. Nicholas was obviously obsessed by some worry and had no more notion of communicating it to her than he would to a fellow guest at a hotel. By the time they got into coffee, she had almost decided to broach the whole question and see if something could not be done to reconstruct their lives. But he was so distraught in himself that she felt it was an unhappy moment to force an important subject upon his mind. At last, having spilled his coffee and got into a temper about it, as if to calm his nerves he went over to his desk and opened his case.

  She watched his face above the desk as it became unguarded in his poring over whatever he had taken out of his personal case, and she realized that he had the hunted look of somebody who could not escape in any corner of the world from whatever haunted his mind. Whatever this worry was, it was like a ghost that never left him, waking or sleeping. Lately there had seemed to be nothing else at all in his face but this unknown ghost. He shut up the case in a baffled way and left the key in it, as if he knew he must return to it later. He came back and sat by the fire and looked into the red glow and left the cigarette in his mouth burn on to his lip until he jumped up and smacked it away with his hand. He used a fearful oath and apologized to her.

  In a moment she said: “Nick, what is on your mind? Your nerves seem to be in pieces.”

  “Good Christ, can’t I burn myself with a cigarette, without being considered a nervous wreck!”

  “I didn’t mean the cigarette. I mean—everything.”

  “You’re just imagining things.”

  “Perhaps you are.” She paused. “Are these letters still going on?”

  She saw that he immediately became on guard. “Letters? What letters?”

  “The ones Saluby suggested.”

  “Ahm, yes.”

  There was a pause, and he seemed to have gone away by himself again. She was trying to feel her way into him.

  “Are they worrying you?”

  He pulled himself back again. “Worrying me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Lord, no!”

  He was going away and coming back, and her instinct told her that she would force him off guard by taking it slowly. She paused again before she spoke. “Well, I think they must be. Something is, anyway.”

  He was annoyed at being called back again out of his introspection. “Oh, don’t talk damned nonsense!” She knew that she was making him angry and understood that her best chance was to make him angry.

  “Why don’t you stop them?”

  Now she had got his tortured mind in the middle of its seesawing away and back, and his anger jumped out at her.

  “Good Christ, what do you want me to do! Employ a bloody detective.”

  He saw her eyes on his face and he realized what he had done. He thought it an hour before she spoke again.

  “Employ a detective? What on earth do you mean?”

  “Oh, nothing. I was thinking of something else.”

  She waited again. Then said in a persisting way: “Good heavens, has it got to the state when you must employ a detective to stop you writing letters to yourself? If it has, Saluby was right, and you are taking them seriously.”

  “Look here, I wish you wouldn’t go on nagging me with silly questions. I’m tired of...”

  Oxinham came in. “A trunk call, sir, from Northumberland. Will I put it...”

  “I’ll take it outside.”

  Nicholas got up as if glad to be rid of the conversation. Muriel almost was tempted to pick up the telephone in the room, to listen, if the line was open. The room bells never rang, as the servants had to inquire before passing a call. Now she wondered if this Northumberland call had anything to do with his worry. Perhaps he only wanted an excuse to get out of the room. When he had done talking, he would probably go out for a walk. His unguarded remark about the detective had astonished and puzzled her. What on earth did he mean? It did not make any sense. She must...

  Nicholas came in with a bustled and yet relieved look on his face.

  “It’s my uncle, Christian. He’s dying. He’s asking for me.” Nicholas paused. “I must go. I’m the last Bude.” He spoke almost bitterly. “My God, he had to be on the edge of the grave before he wanted to see me. 1 must go.”

  “Of course. When?”

  “Now.”

  She got up. Obviously he was glad of something to do, to get his mind off his worry.

  “Well, what am I to do?”

  “Telephone Blake. Tell him to get that village taxi and come round at once. Ring Dorminster and see can I make a connection with the night train to the North. If I can’t, Blake must take me on. Tell him to bring his sleeping things. If he can’t get a taxi, fetch him. I’ll shove in a few things.”

  He went upstairs, and she quickly got things in hand. There was a sporting chance of making the train connection. She rang Nicholas in his room and told him Blake would be up in ten minutes and that he must be ready. She ordered a picnic basket of food from the kitchen and ran out to fill up the car with petrol and found the tank full. That was like Blake. She came back to the house, having pulled out the car, and Nicholas was ready with his suitcase. He was excited by the prospect of doing something different. He told her to ring Mr. Strood at the bank in the morning. She gave him all the money she had in the house. God knows what it would be like up in that peasant’s cottage in Northumberland. He could hardly understand what his uncle’s wife had been saying...

  Ah, here was Blake. Nicholas looked at his watch. “Blake, will I drive? Or can you make it?”

  “Sir, what this car can do, I can do in her.”

  “Very well. I leave it to you.”

  He jumped in, and Muriel watched Blake going down the avenue with some surprise. She realized that Blake could meet an emergency. She paid off Blake’s taxi and went back into the house.

  She sat down to consider things. She could not understand the mystery that lay behind his remark about the detective. All she knew was that the clue was in his case...Heavens, had he left his easel She went over to the desk.

  Muriel sat down at the desk and felt a slight flush in her face. She would not dream of looking at anybody’s letters or of interfering in anything somebody wished to keep private. But this, she felt, was something that Nicholas could not handle himself. She took a long breath and turned the key in the case.

  It took Muriel a long time to puzzle it out. She recognized the unposted envelope as Barrington note-paper and realized it must be the letter she saw him writing on that Sunday evening Saluby had been here. Though the address was in inked capitals, she knew it was his writing. Therefore he had not posted that first letter. Then, as she took up the file of letters, postmarked from various parts of Scotland and England, she remembered that he had said that he had decided to dictate the letters to his secretary. But it was remarkable that he should have gone to so much trouble to get them posted from so many places. Then she came on the two marked strips that he had got compared under the microscope, saw that one strip was cut off one of the letters. Good Lord, this was extraordinary! Why should he have gone to so much trouble about these letters that had such a strange implication in the wording? She sat in thought and then remembered how he had questioned her about the Elder Bank notepaper. An idea struck her, and she opened the drawer of the desk and found the Elder Bank paper. It was the same paper obviously as in the anonymous letters. But what did this signify? Unable to comprehend it, she opened other drawers in the desk, and then in the well of the large middle drawer found the microscope. Good heavens, had he bought that microscope in connection with these letters? She examined the letters and saw from the dates how they had been systematically getting closer to London. And th
en she saw with a shock that the word when was added to the last one, posted in S. W. I.

  She lighted a cigarette and began to reason it out.

  At last it dawned on her that Nicholas might not be writing these letters himself. That would explain the remark about employing a detective. She felt an unpleasant shock going through her. There was something ominous about the wording of these letters. She wondered if she ought to steam open the unposted letter that she knew for certain Nicholas had written himself, and then considered the microscope and the care with which Nicholas was watching this affair and decided that it was too risky. Besides, she felt, the letter he had written himself had nothing at all to do with these letters that were written on Elder Bank paper. But who was writing them, and why? Who knew of his original idea to try the experiment? Herself, Saluby, and, according to Nicholas, Miss Coleman, his secretary. Were these letters prompted by the original suggestion? If they were, either Miss Coleman or Saluby was writing them, unless, of course, somebody else knew about it. Obviously, Nicholas did not know, since it looked as if he was trying to trace the sender. Then she recalled his question about the Elder Bank paper, and she realized that he might be suspecting her...

  Heavens, this matter was going beyond a joke. She, must do something about it. But where was she to begin? She thought it over for a minute, and then knew that the first step must be to find out if he were dictating these letters to Miss Coleman or not. She would go to London tomorrow. She would have to take a chance on being able to handle Miss Coleman. She wondered what she was like. She sounded fairly grim, from the way Nicholas had spoken of her...

  Muriel looked out the window at the noise of a car. Saluby! What on earth did he want? Or perhaps he was just dropping in. She had not seen him since that unpleasant last day at Dorminster. Well, she would be civil. Barrington was too small a place for a feeling of unpleasantness between the doctor and the Hall. She closed up the desk and the case and waited until he came in.