The Last of Philip Banter Read online

  The Last of Philip Banter

  John Franklin Bardin

  Copyright

  Diversion Books

  A Division of Diversion Publishing Corp.

  443 Park Avenue South, Suite 1008

  New York, NY 10016

  www.DiversionBooks.com

  Copyright © 1947 by John Franklin Bardin

  Copyright © renewed 1975 by John Franklin Bardin

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  For more information, email [email protected]

  First Diversion Books edition June 2014

  ISBN: 978-1-62681-306-9

  Also by John Franklin Bardin

  The Deadly Percheron

  Devil Take the Blue-Tail Fly

  To Estella M. Martin

  Terror can strike by day as well as by night.

  Although the frightful is, perhaps rightly, conjoined in our minds with the darkly coloured, the harshly dissonant - with bludgeon blows and the odours of decay - the most terrible experiences are often bereft of these properties of melodrama. The words ‘I love you’, spoken on a sun-streaked terrace during a joyous day, can cement a betrayal. The unchecked gratification of an impulse, conceived in sensation, can bear the bitter fruit of misery. And a prophecy can - by auto-suggestion or soothsaying? - deliver a man to evil.

  The First Instalment

  1

  ‘Philip Banter,’ he said to himself, ‘you are in a bad way.’

  He stood on the corner of Madison Avenue and Fiftieth Street blinking his aching eyes against the mild winter sunshine. He was trying to decide whether to cross the street or not. If he crossed the street, he would be confronted by the entrance to his office building and he would have to go through the revolving door and into the elevator and up to his office. But if he did not cross the street… if he turned right instead… and walked down the side street a few doors… he would find a bar and have himself a drink. Just one little drink, no more. That was what he needed. Just one little drink.

  He did not cross the street. He turned right and walked to the bar and went inside and sat in the rear booth and ordered a double shot of rye whisky when the waiter came. That was what he needed. That would get it over quickly. That would clear his head.

  In a few minutes the ache that had gripped his eyeballs had relaxed until it was only an occasional flickering, the slightest hint of pressure. He found he could think again – he could look straight at things – the bar mirror was what he was looking at right then – without flinching. Now everything would be fine if he could just remember what had happened last night.

  He was convinced that something terrible had happened last night. If he could remember one detail, one tiny circumstance which could give him a clue to the calamity that had befallen him, he would feel reassured. But he had no memory of the night before. He knew that he had been drunk, very drunk. And he did not know this because he recalled being drunk – no, he deduced his previous state from the way he had awakened, sprawled across the bed in his rumpled dinner suit, and from his monstrous head and brassy tongue. He also knew that he had hurt himself, or had been hurt, last night. There was the ravelling bandage on his wrist, the steady throb of pain in his arm, the ugly, deep cut he had found beneath the bandage. Putting fresh gauze and antiseptic on the wound, he had tried desperately to remember how he had suffered it. Had he been in a fight and, if he had, with whom and about what? Or was the slash self-inflicted? Had he tried to kill himself? There were no answers.

  When he had showered and dressed and come to breakfast, Dorothy, his wife, had not been at the table. The maid had served him sullenly, only bringing him his paper after he had called her twice. There was no doubt about it, he had done it again. But with whom had he gone off this time? If he could only remember how the evening had begun, whether Dorothy had been with him – she must have been or she would have been at the breakfast table – when he had started drinking…

  He hailed the waiter and ordered another double rye and sat there shaking his head until it came. His wrist still throbbed steadily and he had to resist continually the desire to lift the bandage and inspect the wound. Luckily, he had been able to find a shirt with full, soft cuffs this morning; he could pull his cuff over the bandage to hide it from the curious. Otherwise he would have to answer question after question as best he could. If he could only remember what had happened!

  After about five more minutes of introspection, he threw a couple of dollars on the table and walked out of the bar. This time the sun did not hurt his eyes nearly as much as before. He did not hesitate when he reached Madison Avenue but, since the light was green, walked directly across the street. As he went through the revolving door that had seemed such a hazard so recently, the sudden darkness of the building’s lobby was marvellously refreshing. And as he entered the elevator, the quick smile of Sadie, the operator, was a welcome challenge. ‘Philip Banter,’ he said to himself, ‘you’ve still got what it takes.’

  Sadie, he saw, was eyeing him. ‘How was the love-life last night, Sadie? Satisfactory?’ They were alone in the car. By ten o’clock even the late rush was over.

  ‘Mr Banter! What makes you go on like that?’ Sadie brushed at her rusty hair provokingly. She was obviously pleased at his sally, indeed she had invited it, yet she felt she should pretend to be shocked and her pretence came off badly – awkwardly and self-consciously. Philip smiled to himself. She acted this way every morning, accepting and responding to his easy familiarity. Their exchange of knowing witticisms had become a ritual.

  ‘Why, I’d think a healthy girl like you would need a little relaxation now and then. Nothing wrong in that.’

  Sadie turned away from him to watch the tiny ruby lights wink on and off on the indicator as the elevator sucked itself upward. She played at being embarrassed.

  ‘I’m not going to talk to you any more, Mr Banter, if you must go on like that. It’s not nice for a nice girl to hear such talk!’ The car subsided at Philip’s floor; the automatic doors whispered open.

  ‘You’re not a “nice girl”, Sadie.’ Philip flipped her backside lightly and left the elevator. This was something new in the ritual.

  He heard her voice. ‘Misss-ter Banter!’ She sounded rather pleased at this added attention. He would have to remember that. Not that Sadie was the type to be considered seriously… but you never could tell. There might come a time when she would fit in nicely.

  He walked down the hall, his lips pursed, whistling sourly. It was exactly five minutes after ten when he pushed open the door of Brown and Foster, Inc., Advertising.

  The house goddess of the agency, Miss Campbell, turned swiftly in her chair to grant him a tight-lipped smile of good morning. Philip smiled back at the receptionist, feeling – if anything – a little more undone than usual as long as he remained within the orbit of her formal cordiality; he pushed open the swinging gate and ushered himself through it as quickly as possible. He had never considered Miss Campbell either, nor would he… she was indubitably frigid. He walked down the inner corridor to his office, no longer whistling, fighting a sudden desire to turn around and leave the office, to go back to that friendly bar on the side street and have another little drink.

  As he entered his secretary’s office – through which he must trespass to reach his own – Miss Grey, his secretary, looked up at him from a
copy of Tide, said, ‘Good morning, Mr Banter’, and watched him cross to his own door. Although he did not see her do it (he shut his door on the sight), Philip knew that as soon as his back was turned she had gone back to Tide. This annoyed him. Not that he would say anything – she was so damnably efficient – but did she always have to make such a point of doing nothing when she had nothing to do? The other men’s secretaries usually managed to seem busy, why couldn’t his Miss Grey? And that awful complexion! Why, in God’s name, didn’t she do something about that?

  As he hung up his hat and coat, Philip was still grumbling to himself and feeling put upon. This being so, it is not surprising that his subconscious aided him in prolonging his martyrdom: he grasped the hanger clumsily and it slipped out of his hands and clattered to the floor; he stooped for it awkwardly and caused a momentary twinge in his side – the protest of a muscle that had grown too used to lax habits – and when he finally managed to hang his topcoat, he discovered a spot on the lapel. Even after he turned around and faced the desk, he did not at first notice that his typewriter was lying open upon it; his mind was too occupied with vague resentments and too inclined to gloat over personal suffering to be quickly observant.

  When he did discover the typewriter on his desk, it caused no break in the flow of his inner discourse. Had he left it like that again? If he kept that up, it would need another cleaning, since dust got in it overnight. Here was something else Miss Grey could attend to if she really cared about her job! She could come in after he left each night to see if he had put the machine away. He would want to make a note of that so he would be sure to speak to her about it. She would soon learn to do more to earn her money than burying her nose in the latest issue of Tide or the New Yorker! Philip did not see the manuscript until he sat down at his desk, then he could not avoid seeing it. There, placed next to the offending typewriter, was a neat pile of pages, double-spaced, well-typed. Why, there was a sheet in his machine that had typing on it, too! Who had been using his typewriter?

  He reached for the button that would summon Miss Grey to ask her whom she had let use his machine, when he noticed that it was his own name and address that were typed in the upper, left-hand corner of the first page of the sheaf. He did not press the button. A new idea occurred to him: it might be better to read the pages first before he mentioned their existence to anyone. Someone might be playing a joke on him, trying to make a fool of him…

  So Philip leaned back, lighted a cigarette and began to read. He was a large man in his middle thirties with a long, good-looking face. His mouth was disproportionately broad, enough so as to be almost disfiguring when he grinned. Yet this horizontal slash added a kind of distinction to his otherwise even features – it unbalanced the narrowing lines of his nose and jaw, suggesting a latent violence, a brooding force. Philip’s fond opinion was that women found his face both likeable and disquieting. One of them had been foolish enough to confide this ambivalence.’ Philip,’ she had said, ‘your face is so innocent and your mouth is so evil.’

  But, although Philip frequently remembered this remark and had, on occasion, used it himself at the proper point in a flirtation, he was not thinking of his good looks now. Instead, his attention was focused on the typed page he was reading; and after he had laid it aside and gone on to the second, and then the third, sheets of the pile, he underwent a subtle change. Where before he had been sitting erect in his swivel chair, now he began to slump. Where before he had let the manuscript lie on his desk while he read it from a distance, he now held the pages progressively closer to his eyes. He forgot about the lighted cigarette clenched in his dry lips and let it burn until it scorched him. Then he dropped the smouldering butt onto the floor, impatiently grinding it out with his heel.

  There were only fifteen pages of the manuscript, but Philip read them slowly – and then he read them over again.

  Philip Banter

  21 East 68th St.

  New York

  Confession

  I

  I thought I was done with that sort of thing. I thought I had settled down, that I would spend the rest of my days being a model husband.

  It isn’t that I don’t love Dorothy. I even respect her. Although I can imagine life without her (I am not a romantic), if I had to choose I would prefer life with her. I cannot explain my need to be unfaithful to her.

  I know the risk I run. Last night, as on all the similar nights before, I gauged the full extent of my jeopardy by the look of sheer hate she threw at me as I left our apartment with my ‘latest’. I know how jealous Dorothy can be. I know, too, that some day I shall try her jealousy beyond the self-erected barriers of her admirable restraint. Then it will be too late.

  Knowing this, why do I continue the way I do?

  Sometimes, most times, I must admit, I have brought it on myself; but not last night. When I left the agency at five, I intended a slippered evening: a good dinner with Dorothy, some brandy and a little talk afterwards, then the radio or a book until time for bed. A new flirtation? Impossible! I loved my wife last night when I left work. I loved her all the way home on the subway, and on the short walk to the East River. I was never a more normal American husband than when I fitted my key into the lock of our door, threw my hat and coat on the table in the foyer, went into our room where she was dressing and after kissing her, asked:

  ‘What’s for dinner?’

  She wrinkled her eyes at me in the mirror, but kept on working the rouge into her cheeks, patting at them with an absurdly large puff, a pink plush blob.

  ‘Something you like.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Guess!’

  ‘Must I? A roast of some sort?’

  ‘Darling, we had a roast just the other day…’

  ‘A rarebit?’

  ‘No. Try again.’

  ‘No, you tell me. I’ll never guess.’ I do not like guessing games and though I realized that Dorothy, like all other women, must be coy at times, I was not inclined to encourage her on these occasions. It was tiresome.

  ‘We’re having chicken and rice, the Spanish way. You’ve always liked it so much. But there’s something else, too.’

  ‘For dinner?’

  She turned halfway around on her vanity stool, throwing her dark hair back, smiling at me. She had just been putting her lipstick on; one lip was smudged vividly like a child playing at being grown-up.

  (I tell you I loved her then. I meant no infidelity. I contemplated no sin… not that I believe in sin.)

  ‘Yes, in a way, for dinner,’ she said.

  ‘Oh, come out with it, Dottie,’ I said. ‘Stop teasing me!’

  She tossed her shoulders and affected to ignore me. But she returned my stare by way of the mirror – her eyes never left mine.

  ‘Jeremy called. He’s coming around to dinner and bringing a friend.’

  ‘Jeremy? Jeremy Foulkes?’

  ‘The very same. I thought you’d be pleased. Why, Philip, whatever is the matter? You look positively sick!’

  I passed my hand over my damp forehead. I was breathing wildly, my thinking was blurred. What could I say?

  ‘Pleased? Of course I’m pleased. I’m always glad to see Jeremy. You know that. And any friend of his is always welcome.’

  ‘I didn’t mean to startle you, darling,’ Dorothy said. ‘I just thought I’d make it a pleasant surprise.’

  That was last night, Tuesday, 1 December 1945. A few short hours ago. So much has happened since then.

  I am confused. I simply cannot understand my own motives. Motives? Drives? Insane urges? Was I wholly sane last night?

  It may help to clear my mind if I put down a few facts about myself, Dorothy, my friends.

  I am in the advertising business, an account executive. Occasionally, I write a little copy.

  Before I drifted into advertising, I was a newspaperman: first in Indianapolis, my home town, and then in New York.

  Philip’s hand
shook as he laid down the manuscript. The pain in his bandaged wrist had been increasing as he read the typed pages. He pressed his wrist against his mouth. What was the meaning of this ‘Confession’? Why did it refer to Tuesday, 1 December – today – as ‘last night’. Was he supposed to have written it, or was someone kidding him? He would have to read further to find out.

  He picked up the manuscript, slouched down in his chair and propped it against his knee so he would not have to use his injured wrist. He began to read again. His forgotten cigarette smouldered in the ashtray.

  I met Dorothy during my newspaper days in this city. Jeremy introduced her to me at a party. It was one of those intellectual gatherings Jeremy was always sponsoring in those days; perhaps he still does, I don’t know.

  I had never thought I’d marry. There was always another woman. Any one woman’s individual attractions dulled for me and became enervatingly habitual after a few weeks’ intimacy. Matrimony was a fisherman’s hook with a fancy lure, and I was a wise old fish who admired the bright, twirling feathers but refused to rise and be impaled…

  Unless, of course, the woman had money, besides intelligence and beauty. A starved fish will on occasion chance snatching the bait from a hook, if the bait is exceptionally tempting. For that matter, fish have been caught with three or four rusty hooks imbedded in their mouths.

  I had never met an intelligent, beautiful girl with money until I met Dorothy. I married her.

  It wasn’t quite as cold-blooded as all that. I fell in love with her, as might be expected. I still love her. But I am honest with myself: if her father hadn’t been a partner in one of the larger, more affluent advertising agencies, if Dorothy hadn’t had considerable money in her own name, I can scarcely believe our relationship would have lasted.