The Investigation

VII

A SOUND LIKE AN OCEAN LINER’S SIREN — an enormous sound that shrieked for three or four seconds, stopped, and then began again — flung him out of his sleep. He sat up in the bed, searched in vain for a light switch, and struck his forehead against an object attached to the wall. The object fell with a great crash, the whooping of the siren immediately ceased, and then he heard a voice, a voice that was at once near and far.

“Hello! Hello? Hello, can you hear me …? Hello?”

The Investigator groped around in the dark and took hold of the telephone receiver, which was hanging at the end of its cord. “Yes, I can hear you.”

“Hello! Can you hear me?” the voice repeated anxiously.

“I can hear you,” the Investigator said again, a little louder this time. “Who are you?”

“Hello!!” the voice yelled. “Hello!!!”

“Go ahead! I can hear you! I can hear you perfectly!”

“Goddamn it! Is someone there or not? Answer me, please! I beg you, answer me! I’m locked in! I’ve been locked in!!! I can’t get out of this room!” The voice had taken on the accents of great despair.

“I’m here! I’m here,” the Investigator said. “I can hear you perfectly!”

At the other end of the line, the voice yelled one more time, there was a crackling sound, and then nothing more, except for an intermittent and unpleasant dial tone.

The Investigator ran both hands over the wall above the bed until he finally found the light switch. After a few hesitant blinks, the ceiling light came on. It was a circular neon tube that filled the room with a green glow and revealed it to be much bigger than the Investigator had thought. The bed he lay on seemed lost in the vast space, which measured at least thirty feet by twenty. He was stunned for a few seconds. Aside from the bed, the furniture consisted of a very small wardrobe wedged into one corner and a chair placed in the middle of the room, directly under the ceiling light. There was nothing else. No night table. No desk. The old parquet floor was covered here and there by faded Oriental rugs that had lost their colors and their patterns. On the back wall was a photograph, a picture of an old man with a mustache. The Investigator had the feeling he’d seen that face before, but he wasn’t certain. He looked around. This place certainly didn’t provide the décor and comfort of a four-star hotel!

The Investigator glanced at his watch: 6:45. That mistaken telephone call had been a good thing, after all. Without it, God only knew when he would have waked up! But the crazy person who’d called him — who could he have been?

He got out of bed. He’d slept for only a few hours. His head hurt, and his nose, which was swollen, hot, and bruised, wouldn’t stop running. He shivered as he realized that he hadn’t even taken off his raincoat, which was somewhat drier, though far from dry, and totally wrinkled. His crumpled suit gave off a strange odor of wild mushrooms, his shirt looked like a rag, and his tie had coiled itself three times around his throat. His shoes — he’d kept them on, too — were still soaked.

He undressed rapidly, placed his clothes, including undershirt and — pants, on the bed, and headed for a door that he supposed led to the bathroom. The proportions of this latter space left him dumbfounded: It was a narrow closet. As the Hotel room itself was uselessly large, so the bathroom was amazingly small, cramped, low-ceilinged, and of dubious cleanliness to boot. Hairs short and long in the washbasin bore witness to a previous guest whose traces no one had taken the trouble to erase. The Investigator bent forward slightly and entered the bathroom. Fear of never being able to open the door again kept him from closing it behind him. Moving sideways and with a great deal of effort, he managed to penetrate what served as a shower. Since he was unable to turn around, he slipped his left hand behind his back and turned on the faucet; a jet of icy water struck him between the shoulder blades. He couldn’t stop himself from crying out. Groping blindly behind him, he located the lever that adjusted the water temperature; the result of his manipulations was a barrage of scalding water, which turned icy again when he moved the lever in the opposite direction. The Investigator opted for cold, forcing himself to bear the torture for nearly thirty seconds before turning off the faucet and wriggling out of the shower.

He dried himself with the help of a minuscule hand towel and then gazed into the narrow mirror above the similarly narrow washbasin. The reflection he saw there was a deformed and monstrous version of himself. Apparently, when he banged into the base of the wall telephone, he’d opened a cut in his forehead more than an inch long. The cut had bled profusely. He cleaned away the blood, but he was left with a deep, open wound, an unsightly gash. One might have thought he’d been struck in a fight or someone had tried to knock him out.

Not without difficulty, he squeezed out of the bathroom, took his electric razor from his suitcase, slipped back into the narrow space, and got down on all fours in order to plug the razor’s cord into the outlet, which — and this was almost diabolical — was located behind the pedestal supporting the washbasin and almost level with the floor. At last, with the plug successfully inserted, he pressed the “on” button.

Nothing.

He made sure the cord was properly attached to the razor and tried again.

Nothing.

He looked around the Hotel room for another electrical outlet and ended up finding one, half hidden by the little wardrobe. This he pushed to one side, thereby exposing the outlet as well as several mounds of dust, a couple of cigarette butts, three used tissues, and an old dental retainer. He plugged in the razor and turned it on: still nothing. His razor refused to work. The Investigator remembered how, early in the previous evening’s long expedition, his suitcase had opened and spilled its contents on the sidewalk. The razor must have struck the ground, or perhaps its motor had gotten wet. He placed it on the radiator under the window. The radiator was working, but not very hard; it was barely warm.

From his supply of five shirts, he chose the least wet and then pulled on his other pair of trousers. Unfortunately, he had only the one suit jacket. He tried to smooth out its wrinkles with the flat of his hand, but without much success, and despite a pair of clean, practically dry socks, putting on his soggy shoes proved to be thoroughly disagreeable. He tied his tie, whose edges were curling up, and then raised his right hand to pat down his surviving wisps of hair. He was ready to go downstairs and get his breakfast.

But first, he wanted to let some air into his room and thus disperse the heavy odor of dampness and soaked leather that had permeated it. He pushed aside the double curtains, had a hard time pulling the window open, managed to draw the rusty metal latch that held the two shutters together, placed a palm on each one, and pushed them both at once; they moved no more than an absurd half-inch or so. The Investigator exerted more pressure, but the result was the same. It was incomprehensible. It felt as though the shutters were butting up against something harder than they were. He brought his face closer, peered between the slats, and discovered that large concrete blocks, carefully set in courses and mortared, prevented the shutters from opening.

The situation was obvious, and he had to face it: He was in a room with a walled-up window.