“What’s the matter?” he finally shouted out.
Somebody was saying something on the outside, and at the same time the door handle moved up and down. He’d forgotten that he had locked the door and, despite his utterly confused state, he suddenly realized he was behaving like a madman; the dead man’s belongings were lying all over the chairs and strewn around on the floor. He picked some of them up quickly and stuffed them into the suitcases.
“Just a moment!” he called to the person on the other side of the door, smoothed his hair, looked in the mirror to straighten his tie, and was horrified by what he saw. A face stared back at him, for all the world like the dead man’s. Closing his eyes for a second, he smoothed his hair down once more, went to the door, unlocked and opened it, ready to slam it shut immediately if it turned out that he knew the person standing there.
The waiter who entered was, however, a complete stranger. He was a man of about thirty-eight or forty, clean-shaven, unruffled in appearance, and on the portly side. He asked how he could be of help.
“Cigarettes!” Sponer said.
“Khedive, Figaro, Dimitrino, Simon Arzt?” the waiter asked, and looked at Sponer.
Under the waiter’s gaze Sponer began once more to straighten his tie, and again brushed back his hair from his forehead, but when he looked up and saw the waiter still staring, he felt the blood rush to his head.
He was gripped by sudden fury.
“What are you looking at?” he asked the man.
“I beg your pardon?” the waiter enquired.
“What are you looking at?” Sponer shouted.
“Looking at?” the waiter stuttered.
“Yes, looking at!” Sponer shouted.
“Nothing,” the startled waiter stammered. “I’m not… looking at anything.”
“Well then!”
Sponer swung round and, infuriated, took a couple of steps towards the salon, tugged again at his tie, turned round, approached the waiter and looked at him intently. The man was now gazing at the floor.
“So what was it you said?” Sponer finally asked.
The waiter repeated the brands of the cigarettes.
“Khedive,” Sponer ordered. The others were unfamiliar to him.
The waiter bowed immediately and left.
Sponer watched him leave, swore under his breath, and returned to the salon.
When he entered, he saw the cigarette packet he had been looking for, lying on the table.
It was Mortimer’s.
He had no idea how it had got there. It might have dropped out of his pocket when he fell.
He pulled a cigarette from the packet and lit it.
It was honey-flavoured.
He took a couple of puffs and then went up to the mirror again. He was still as pale as a sheet. His pupils were fully dilated and his eyes shone with a black-blue lustre in the glass of the mirror, and everything else that was reflected behind him — the room and the lights — glittered and swam in a kind of vitreous haze. The cigarette smoke stung his eyes, he closed them and took another puff; at the same time, a tingling sensation in his hands began to travel up his arms, and when he opened his eyes again the reflection in the mirror had gone out of shape. Overcome by dizziness, he turned; there was a rushing sound in his ears, the roots of his hair felt as though they were frozen in ice, and the lights in the room faded. A ringing, like a multitude of bells took over, and bright flesh-coloured pinkish objects swam in and out of his field of vision, constantly changing shape; he suddenly felt the carpet rise to meet his hands and knees; he was not aware of collapsing, he just felt that someone had caught him under his arms, was dragging him across the floor and propping up in an armchair.
It was the waiter, returning with the cigarettes, who had seen him collapse.
Then followed an interval which he no longer remembered; finally he noted the waiter was saying something repeatedly; yet he understood nothing. At last it dawned on him that the man was asking whether he should fetch a glass of brandy.
Meanwhile something like an enormous cloud lifted from his consciousness.
“No, thank you, not brandy,” he murmured in answer to the repeated question.
It must have been the cigarette that had caused him to faint, he babbled. He hadn’t eaten anything for a long time… on the journey, he added.
The waiter asked whether he should bring him something from the bar, maybe a cutlet or fillet steak with sliced beans, and white wine and soda?
“Anything…” Sponer mumbled. The thought of food made him feel sick, but the waiter should bring something, no matter what; he then took his handkerchief from his breast pocket and wiped the sweat from his forehead. The waiter withdrew. Sponer stood up, felt himself swaying, stumbled towards a sofa, threw himself on it and closed his eyes.
He lay quite still.
He was no longer conscious of anything, he felt nothing, suddenly he was no longer afraid, he just lay there, his arms dangling lifelessly at his sides, and it felt good just to lie still. After a couple of minutes he even felt an edge of a cushion digging into the back of his neck. He turned over on his side and shut his eyes.
He felt completely indifferent to everything that happened or could still happen.
He might have been lying for about a quarter of an hour or even longer and perhaps been dozing off, when he again became aware of a noise. The waiter had opened the door and was now pushing a small food trolley into the room. Sponer sat up. The waiter, however, motioned to him that he should remain where he was, and that he would wheel the trolley up to the sofa.
“And how are you feeling now?” he asked.
At that moment the telephone rang.
Before Sponer’s brain could latch on to what was happening, the waiter had walked to the telephone, lifted the receiver, spoken a few words, and was now passing Sponer the receiver, adding that the call was for him.
Sponer automatically put out his hand, but withdrew it immediately. The waiter, thinking that Sponer was too weak to come to the phone, tried to help him stand up. He actually helped Sponer to his feet and, before the latter could work out how to communicate to the waiter that he didn’t want to take the call, the receiver was pressed into his hand, and the waiter stood by supporting him.
He heard a woman’s voice speak in English at the other end of the line.
She first of all said a few words in the manner of a question, repeated the question after a moment, but in a different word order. Then, after a short pause, the voice became more urgent, fired a brief question a couple of times, and then uttered a fairly long sentence that Sponer understood just as little as the preceding questions.
After waiting a little, he put the phone down without answering. The waiter looked at him in astonishment.
“Wrong number,” Sponer mumbled.
The waiter began serving food on a plate.
Sponer fell back again on the sofa.
“So!” he thought, but quite calmly. “So! Someone was phoning Mortimer.” Now he’d have to consider the consequences. However, all of a sudden he could no longer think. His thoughts dissolved before him, they eluded him. Like a paper ball at the end of a string that is thrown to a kitten to play with and is then jerked back at the last moment, he found himself unable to grasp any of them. He stared despondently at the meat and vegetables in front of him, and ate only a meringue pie. The waiter mixed some white wine and soda, moved the table a little closer, bowed, and walked to the door. He had not reached it, however, when the phone rang for the second time.
The waiter was about to pick it up, but Sponer motioned him aside, as if to say, “Leave it! I’ll get it myself.” The waiter was already about to walk away, but when he saw Sponer still sitting motionless, he approached him again. The telephone continued to ring. Sponer got up. The waiter quickly moved the table away from the sofa, and left the room while Sponer was walking to the phone.