There was no more light than before.
Shutters, perhaps? Maybury's arm stretched out gingerly. He could feel neither wood nor metal.
The light switch. It must be found.
While Maybury fell about in the darkness, the screaming stopped on a ghoulish gurgle: perhaps as if the sufferer had vomited immensely and then passed out; or perhaps as if the sufferer had in mercy passed away altogether. Maybury continued to search.
It was harder than ever to say how long it took, but in the end he found the switch, and the immediate mystery was explained. Behind the drawn-back curtains was, as the children say, just wall. The room apparently had no window. The curtains were mere decoration.
All was silent once more: once more extremely silent. Bannard's bed was turned back as neatly as if in the full light of day.
Maybury cast off Bannard's pyjamas and, as quickly as his state permitted, resumed his own clothes. Not that he had any very definite course of action. Simply it seemed better to be fully dressed. He looked vaguely inside his pocket-book to confirm that his money was still there.
He went to the door and made cautiously to open it and seek some hint into the best thing for him to do, the best way to make off.
The door was unopenable. There was no movement in it at all. It had been locked at the least; perhaps more. If Bannard had done it, he had been astonishingly quiet about it: conceivably experienced.
Maybury tried to apply himself to thinking calmly.
The upshot was that once more, and even more hurriedly, he removed his clothes, disposed of them suitably, and resumed Bannard's pyjamas.
It would be sensible once more to turn out the light; to withdraw to bed, between the sheets, if possible; to stand by, as before. But Maybury found that turning out the light, the resultant total blackness, were more than he could face, however expedient.
Ineptly, he sat on the side of his bed, still trying to think things out, to plan sensibly. Would Bannard, after all this time, ever, in fact, return? At least during the course of that night?
He became aware that the electric light bulb had begun to crackle and fizzle. Then, with no further sound, it simply failed. It was not, Maybury thought, some final authoritative lights-out all over the house. It was merely that the single bulb had given out, however unfortunately from his own point of view: an isolated industrial incident.
He lay there, half in and half out, for a long time. He concentrated on the thought that nothing had actually happened that was dangerous. Ever since his schooldays (and, indeed, during them) he had become increasingly aware that there were many things strange to him, most of which had proved in the end to be apparently quite harmless.
Then Bannard was creeping back into the dark room. Maybury's ears had picked up no faint sound of a step in the passage, and, more remarkable, there had been no noise, either, of a turned key, let alone, perhaps, of a drawn bolt. Maybury's view of the bulb failure was confirmed by a repetition of the widening and narrowing column of light, dim, but probably no dimmer than before. Up to a point, lights were still on elsewhere. Bannard, considerate as before, did not try to turn on the light in the room. He shut the door with extraordinary skill, and Maybury could just, though only just, hear him slithering into his bed.
Still, there was one unmistakable development: at Bannard's return, the dark room had filled with perfume; the perfume favoured, long ago, as it seemed, by the lady who had been so charming to Maybury in the lounge. Smell is, in any case, notoriously the most recollective of the senses. Almost at once, this time, Bannard not merely fell obtrusively asleep, but was soon snoring quite loudly.
Maybury had every reason to be at least irritated by everything that was happening, but instead he soon fell asleep himself. So long as Bannard was asleep, he was at least in abeyance as an active factor in the situation; and many perfumes have their own drowsiness, as Iago remarked. Angela passed temporarily from the forefront of Maybury's mind.
Then he was awake again. The light was on once more, and May-bury supposed that he had been awakened deliberately, because Bannard was standing there by his bed. Where and how had he found a new light bulb? Perhaps he kept a supply in a drawer. This seemed so likely that Maybury thought no more of the matter.
It was very odd, however, in another way also.
When Maybury had been at school, he had sometimes found difficulty in distinguishing certain boys from certain other boys. It had been a very large school, and boys do often look alike. None the less, it was a situation that Maybury thought best to keep to himself, at the time and since. He had occasionally made responses or approaches based upon misidentifications: but had been fortunate in never being made to suffer for it bodily, even though he had suffered much in his self-regard.
And now it was the same. Was the man standing there really Bannard? One obvious thing was that Bannard had an aureole or fringe of red hair, whereas this man's fringe was quite grey. There was also a different expression and general look, but Maybury was more likely to have been mistaken about that. The pyjamas seemed to be the same, but that meant little.
'I was just wondering if you'd care to talk for a bit, ' said Bannard. One had to assume that Bannard it was; at least to start off with. 'I didn't mean to wake you up. I was just making sure.'
'That's all right, I suppose,' said Maybury.
'I'm over my first beauty sleep,' said Bannard. 'It can be lonely during the night.' Under all the circumstances it was a distinctly absurd remark, but undoubtedly it was in Bannard's idiom.
'What was all that screaming?' enquired Maybury.
'I didn't hear anything,' said Bannard. 'I suppose I slept through it. But I can imagine. We soon learn to take no notice. There are sleepwalkers for that matter, from time to time.'
'I suppose that's why the bedroom doors are so hard to open?'
'Not a bit,' said Bannard, but he then added, 'Well, partly, perhaps. Yes, partly. I think so. But it's just a knack really. We're not actually locked in, you know.' He giggled. 'But what makes you ask? You don't need to leave the room in order to go to the loo. I showed you, old man.'
So it really must be Bannard, even though his eyes seemed to be a different shape, and even a different colour, as the hard light caught them when he laughed.
'I expect I was sleepwalking myself,' said Maybury warily.
'There's no need to get the wind up,' said Bannard, 'like a kid at a new school. All that goes on here is based on the simplest of natural principles: eating good food regularly, sleeping long hours, not taxing the overworked brain. The food is particularly important. You just wait for breakfast, old man, and see what you get. The most tremendous spread, I promise you.'
'How do you manage to eat it all?' asked Maybury. 'Dinner alone was too much for me.'
'We simply let Nature have its way. Or rather, perhaps,
'But it's not
'That's all you know,' said Bannard. 'What you are old man, is effete.' He giggled as Bannard had giggled, but he looked somehow unlike Maybury's recollection of Bannard. Maybury was almost certain there was some decisive difference.
The room still smelt of the woman's perfume; or perhaps it was largely Bannard who smelt of it, Bannard who now stood so close to Maybury. It was embarrassing that Bannard, if he really had to rise from his bed and wake Maybury up, did not sit down; though preferably not on Maybury's blanket.
'I'm not saying there's no suffering here,' continued Bannard. 'But where in the world are you exempt from suffering? At least no one rots away in some attic — or wretched bed-sitter, more likely. Here there are no single rooms. We all help one another. What can you and I do for one another, old man?'
He took a step nearer and bent slightly over Maybury's face. His pyjamas really reeked of perfume.
It was essential to be rid of him; but essential to do it uncontentiously. The prospect should accept the representative's point of view as far as possible unawares.
'Perhaps we could talk for just five or ten minutes more,' said Maybury, 'and then I should like to go to sleep again, if you will excuse me. I ought to explain that I slept very little last night owing to my wife's illness.'
