A liveried porter came up to him.
Sponer said, “My name’s Jack Mortimer.”
The porter bowed immediately. “We had been expecting you about seven, sir.” And straight away he added something else in English, which Sponer failed to understand.
“I was held up,” Sponer muttered.
Another man, in a suit, suddenly stood before him.
“Mr Mortimer?” he asked. “This way please!” And he noiselessly hurried towards a lift door. Sponer followed. They entered the lift. A bellboy was suddenly at his side to take the overcoat from his arm. The lift started, then stopped. They got out. They walked along carpeted, glittering marble corridors. A door was swung open, a chandelier lit up, mirrors of a salon gleamed all round, a bedroom with brocade bed covers was illuminated, snow-white walls, nickel and chrome fittings shone in a bathroom, and the soft-spoken manager — addressing him now in English, now in German, eager to explain and recommend — bowed again, taking a step backwards to allow a second small boy to hand Sponer his mail, comprising a few letters and two telegrams.
“Would Sir require anything else,” Sponer heard the manager ask.
Sponer shook his head. If there was anything else he wanted he’d ring, he muttered; and the manager, the man who brought the luggage, and the two boys bowed and disappeared.
He was left standing in the middle of the room, in Mortimer’s room, in Mortimer’s clothes, in Mortimer’s life. And in his hand he held Mortimer’s letters. He planned to spend a night in the dead man’s life and be gone the next morning, no matter where, disappear, become himself again, Sponer, the taxi driver who had delivered Mortimer alive and well at the Bristol, and whom no one could accuse if he was later asked, “Where is he? Where’s Jack Mortimer?” Hadn’t he arrived at the Bristol with his luggage, spent a night, and left the following day? — Where to? — None of my business! How should I know? Go and ask someone else! He left my cab and went into the hotel; how should I know what he did after that?
For one night only he would live Mortimer’s life, and the next morning he’d return to his own. Because otherwise people might turn up who knew Mortimer, or who had business to discuss that only Mortimer could handle, or a question to put to him to which only Mortimer knew the answer.
But he, Sponer, wouldn’t be there any more. The dead man’s life into which he had stepped would be over in a few hours.
But that’s not how things turned out. It was no longer a question of hours. One doesn’t step into anyone’s life, not even a dead man’s, without having to live it to the end.
He, Sponer, was now Jack Mortimer, the living. And that’s how he would have to stay, right up to Mortimer’s death.
5
HE KEPT STARING at the floor, and only after the people had left, did he dare raise his eyes, fixing them on the closed door and listening for every sound. He waited until the door to the corridor had fallen shut, for only then did he imagine he’d be safe till morning. Then, suddenly, he heard a noise which told him they were still on the other side of the door; he even heard the manager issuing an instruction and one of the bellboys answering him. The manager said something further, and this time it was the porter who answered; then a couple of voices spoke simultaneously. All of a sudden, however, they stopped as if by command, or rather, continued in a whisper; he heard it clearly even though he couldn’t understand what they were saying. But the whispering continued.
While he was listening, his heart went on beating faster and faster, and in the end he couldn’t stand it any more. He rushed noiselessly to the door and pressed his ear against it, but he still couldn’t understand anything. Finally his nerves snapped and he threw the door open.
He saw the manager, the bellboys and the porter standing in the hallway, looking at a picture in a gilt frame, which took up a large part of the wall.
It was an old oil painting depicting a battle scene.
A suite of furniture — a silk-covered sofa and two armchairs, which had stood under the painting — had been pushed aside.
As Sponer flung the door open, he saw them stare back in terror. The manager immediately began to apologize. “It wasn’t hanging straight,” he said, motioning towards the picture. At the same time, at a nod from him, the suite was pushed back where it belonged, and they quickly left the room, bowing.
After the door had closed, Sponer wiped his brow with his sleeve. Then he suddenly threw the letters that he was still holding in his hand onto the sofa, ran to the door, opened it, tore the key out of the lock, double locked the door from inside, turned round, and was about to take a deep breath and say to himself, “Now I’m safe till the morning…”
Instead, from the moment he locked the door, he had the overwhelming feeling that he was in a trap and that everywhere people were lying in wait and eavesdropping on him.
His nerves, which had held firm for six hours, and which had endured the car journey through the city with the dead man on board, the sinking of the body, and the desperate risk of adopting Mortimer’s identity, finally snapped the moment when there was nothing else to do but wait for the next morning.
First of all, however, he tried to suppress his anxiety. He walked slowly up to the painting, looked at it and fingered the frame, causing it to sway slightly. He lifted it away from the wall and let it fall back with a slight clatter. He even knelt on the sofa to examine it in more detail.
A large body of cavalry and foot soldiers clad in clothes of antiquity were marching through dark clouds of smoke. The baroque motif of a white charger with a swanlike neck and a huge crupper pointing towards the foreground caught his attention in particular. Staring fixedly — to block out all other thoughts — at the shooting, stabbing and the general mêlée portrayed in the painting, he pulled off his overcoat and threw it aside. He was feeling unbearably hot. He gulped two or three times, as if to swallow something that had become lodged in his throat. The black, piercing, mouselike eyes of the rider, looking over his shoulder, on the pirouetting white charger, stared out at him penetratingly from the small, weather-beaten face; also, when he got up from the sofa and stepped back, they appeared to follow him everywhere, and he had the feeling he was suffocating in this over-richly decorated, but relatively small room. Everything was eerily silent; the plush carpets absorbed every sound. He drew his hand once again over his forehead, went back to the salon, but then, after a quick look round, returned immediately to the bedroom, from there went to the bathroom, and found himself once again in the hallway. However, he didn’t stay there but walked, or rather ran, again into the salon and bedroom, into the bathroom and hallway, and repeated this mad circuit three or four times, each time faster and faster; the furniture and lights swam in front of his eyes, forming a swirling pattern, until he tripped over the edge of a rug and fell with a crash.
He remained lying there utterly still for a few moments, then turned over with a groan, let his head drop back, and stared wide-eyed about the room as if unaware of what had happened.
Lying on his back, it seemed as if something had snapped inside him, for he suddenly felt easier and also felt the coolness of the floor doing him good. He now perceived everything with unusual clarity, probably on account of his posture, each object making a greater and more powerful impression upon him than before.
The room was sumptuously decorated, mainly in the First Empire style, though in other styles as well, and all around him he could see highly polished furniture, caryatides adorned with lights, and wallpaper reaching up to the ceiling. A greenish bronze chandelier with three tiers of light bulbs swayed overhead, and the wooden ceiling was divided into uniform diamond-shaped figures, each displaying a fantastic, lavishly painted, gilt and silvered coat of arms. Leopards, eagles and lilies intertwined to form an overbearing ornamentation that would have been more appropriate as a feature in a funeral parlour.