The Red Book Magazine/Volume 46/Number 1/The D Box

by Richard Connell

 

THE D BOX

By Richard Connell

NO other young man of our immediate day has wrought more worthily in short fiction than Mr. Connell. Critical attention was first drawn to him by the engaging post-war tales of the French peasantry that a few years ago began to appear after his name. Latterly he has concerned himself with very brief and poignant tales in the French manner, of which the present story is an example.

EVERY evening when his work was done, Francis Dawson entered the wide, hotel-like lobby of the Standish Club. He nodded to Dan, the doorman, who nodded back and said, “Good evening, Mr. Dawson,” and then put a small peg in the big board opposite the name “Dawson, Francis” to indicate that the owner of that name was in the club. Dan remembered Francis Dawson's name because it was Dan's job to remember the names of the three thousand members of the club and the faces that went with them. Dan did not know that his recognition of Francis Dawson always gave Dawson a glow of pleasure.

On his way to the coat-room Francis Dawson always stopped in front of the bulletin-board to read the notices there. He read carefully the names of men proposed for membership, the names of men posted for not paying their bills, and the names of men—these on small, black-bordered cards—who had recently died.

Malcolm Wentworth Munro
Class of 1906
Died April 3, 1925.

Dawson would shake his head, sadly.

“Poor Munro!” he would say.

He had not known Munro. He had never been aware of Munro's existence. One cannot knew all the members of the Standish Club. It is a big club and anyone may join it who lives in New York and who has attended Standish University for a year. Dawson had gone to Standish for a year to study mathematics. He had gone there from a little Vermont town, a cold, quiet town, where aloofness and reserve were deemed the first of all virtues. In college he had buried himself in his work and had made few acquaintances, and these, as it happened, did not live in New York. So he knew no one in the club. The Standish Club takes pride in the fact that it is not a back-slapping institution. It is a Standish tradition that members shall respect each other's privacy, unless formally introduced, so in the three years he had been a member Dawson had intruded on no one's privacy, and no one had intruded on his, except for an occasional request to pass the salt, please, when he was dining, alone, at one of the long tables in the great paneled dining-hall.

Before he went in to his dinner, Francis Dawson stopped for his mail. This was the high point of his day. There are some members of the Standish Club who have private mail boxes with their names stenciled on them, but many others, whose correspondence is not so large, have their mail placed in common boxes under their initial. It was always a somewhat breathless moment for Francis Dawson when he swung open the glass door of the “D” box.

Some evenings he found a letter there; rather more often he did not. He played a game with himself as he walked to the club from his office downtown, a small office in a sunless building where from nine to five he applied himself assiduously to his work as an accountant. He bet with himself whether he'd get a letter. If he won, and did get a letter, he treated himself to the dollar-and-a-half table-d'hôte dinner, instead of the dollar dinner, his customary fare.

He did get letters, sometimes. There would be a long envelope containing an urgent invitation to buy some 4³⁄₄% Sinking Fund Bonds of Biggerton County, Maine. He always took such letters to a quiet corner of the club smoking-room and read them with furrowed brow as if he contemplated buying up the whole issue, then shook his head, sighed, and threw the letters into a wastebasket. There were letters offering him, at an absurdly low cost per month, handsome bound sets of the works of Dickens. “Secret Memoirs of the Russian Courts” (in nine volumes, half calf), a “History of the World” (profusely illustrated), or the works of Balzac who was described as a great French novelist, with the “French” in red capitals so that he might glean the idea that M. Balzac was very French indeed. There were artfully worded letters from life-insurance agents asking him if in the event of his sudden demise, that very day, his wife and little ones would not be left in DIRE STRAITS. Dawson had no wife and no little ones, no near relatives at all, in fact, but such letters always disturbed him a little. Now and then a letter came with the address in handwriting and “Personal” written across the corner. Experience never seemed to teach him that such letters were usually from some crafty merchant who wished to sell him shoes or hats or automobile tires. Such letters he tore open eagerly, for he was so anxious to get a letter he was not hard to fool. Sometimes he got letters from steamship companies containing gay-colored folders suggesting that he yield to the lure of the Orient and spend a care-free six months in Java, Burma, Egypt. These letters he saved.

He always riffled through the letters in the “D” box twice to be sure he had not missed any.

Dawson had been a member of the club about two years when he discovered Doan. It became his custom to think about Doan at dinner. Sometimes Dawson was still thinking of Doan when Dawson fell asleep in the furnished room he had in West Twenty-second Street. Dawson admitted to himself that he envied Doan, the fortunate, the gifted, the entirely enviable Henry Cunningham Doan.

Doan was Dawson's creation. That a real Henry Cunningham Doan existed in the flesh there could be no doubt. He, too, received letters in the “D” box, where Dawson fingered them daily, and as these letters were from time to time removed, there must be an actual Henry Cunningham Doan. But Francis Dawson did not know him, had never seen him. For Francis Dawson, Doan existed solely as a name on an envelope—and a symbol. Doan was everything that Francis Dawson wished to be.

To begin with, Doan was rich. Francis Dawson was sure of that. Doan wasn't uncomfortably rich, of course, but he had a decent income, which Dawson had fixed at twenty thousand a year. Of course Doan added to this largely by his practice as a lawyer, for he was a lawyer, and a good one. He often received letters bearing on the corner of the envelope the names of well-known law firms. Once a month, Dawson knew, Doan received a letter from a bank. This was the check for the interest on his investments; that was obvious.

Then, too, Doan was handsome, a big fellow with dark hair and keen, humorous eyes and an easy smile. Dawson was short, thickly built; his hair was sandy, his eyes behind their spectacles not noticeably keen nor humorous and his smile more embarrassed than easy.

Doan was engaged to be married. She was a charming and intelligent girl, slender and with auburn hair. It was unquestionably she who sent Doan those notes in cream-colored envelopes, postmarked “Poughkeepsie, N. Y.” Dawson looked up Poughkeepsie in a gazetteer: “—and is the seat of Vassar College,” he read. Why, of course. That was it. She was still in Vassar. They would be married as soon as she graduated. Dawson let his fingers rest on those notes when he encountered them in the “D” box. How had she begun them, he wondered. What terms of endearment had she used? He tried to imagine. But his data on such matters were extremely limited. They were confined to the synthetic love letters he sometimes found in the romantic novels he read when his head was too full of figures to hold any more.

Doan had a busy social life. He had many friends. They called him “Harry,” like as not. Dawson thought often of Doan's friends. He thought of the parties Doan went to, the dinners, the balls, the amusing, restful week-ends. He thought of the parties Doan gave in his pleasant rooms which must be on the upper East Side, respectably near Park Avenue. Here one met all sorts of interesting people—a young explorer just back from the fastnesses of Tibet; that scientist and his wife who were engaged in some fascinating research; a poet who read his own poems, and read them well; a broker who could discuss modern music as intelligently as he could municipal bonds; lawyers full of stories of curious cases; and there would be ladies there too—débutantes, witty women of the world, actresses even. Sometimes Francis Dawson ventured to think of himself as going to those parties. “A quiet chap, but with a lot of good stuff in him. So sympathetic and likable.” This, he hoped, would be the verdict in his case of Henry Cunningham Doan and his friends. But Dawson indulged this fancy only in his most optimistic moods. After all, what had he in common with Doan—but a letter box?

FRANCIS DAWSON helped to make pass many a long evening down in his furnished room by fantasying ways and means of meeting Henry Cunningham Doan and winning his friendship.

There would be a holdup. Doan would be sauntering back to his rooms after the opera some night when, at the corner of Park Avenue and Fifty-third Street, Doan would be confronted by a crook who would thrust a revolver against Doan's shirt-front and rasp: “Stick 'em up! Make a false move, and I'll drill you.” Then a cool, quiet voice would say, “Not so fast, Mr. Yegg,” and the crook would feel something cold and round pressing against the back of his neck. The voice, of course, would be the voice of Francis Dawson and the cold, round object would be the mouth of the medicine bottle in which Dawson carried his anti-insomnia pills. Such clear-headed courage could not fail to impress Henry Cunningham Doan. They would leave the discomfited crook in the hands of the police and would go to Doan's rooms for a cigarette and a chat.

“Oh, yes, of course,” Henry Cunningham Doan would say. “I know, your name. I've seen it often in the, mail-box at the club. Often wondered who you. were. Look here, Dawson, could you have lunch with me tomorrow?”

Another and less dramatic version of their meeting, as conceived by Francis Dawson, was that Doan found himself facing an extremely intricate problem in accounting in the course of his legal work. Its solution was vital to Doan's success and happiness. He was in despair. So Doan took his problem to the firm for which Francis Dawson worked. “There's only one man who can do this job,” they said to him. “Our Mr. Dawson.” After that— But how get that far? Francis Dawson thought of ways, many ways, but they all depended on circumstance, on coincidence, and he had never learned how to bend circumstance and coincidence to his will.

THEN, one day, Francis Dawson saw Doan. Dawson had finished going through the mail in the “D” box and had carefully replaced it, as there was none for him that evening, when he became aware that another man was waiting for his turn to examine the mail. There had been a letter for Henry Cunningham Doan, one of those cream-colored notes addressed in a feminine hand. As Dawson turned away he saw the man take from the box a cream-colored envelope. The man pocketed it, turned, and was gone. But Francis Dawson had had a glimpse of him. Doan was exactly as he had pictured him—tall, dark, handsome but not too handsome. Francis Dawson was so excited that he ordered the more expensive dinner, although, since he had received no letter that evening, he was not entitled to it.

Dawson saw Doan again in the club three days later. Doan was in the writing-room, bent over one of the desks, writing a letter. He looked up at Francis Dawson as Dawson passed. Dawson hurried on to a desk and sat down as if he too were going to write a letter. It occurred to him as he dipped the pen in the ink that there was nobody to write one to. He looked up, but Doan was gone. He saw Doan two days later. Doan was dining at one of the long tables. Francis Dawson slipped into the next seat. Doan was reading a letter. Dawson studied intently the financial page of an evening newspaper, wrinkling his brow at the discovery that Unadulterated Petroleum had gone up six points although he had neither money nor any interest in the rise or fall of Unadulterated Petroleum or anything else. Dawson put down the paper and saw that Doan had finished reading his letter and was taking an active interest in a dish of curried mutton. Dawson ordered curried mutton, too. But he did not speak to Doan. What would a man like Doan think of him if he did? That sort of thing simply wasn't done in the Standish Club. They silently finished their dinners. Dawson walked back to his room in West Twenty-second Street. Another time—

It seemed to Dawson, as he thought it over, that he had seen Doan frequently in the club before he knew who he was. He became convinced of this a few evenings later when he saw Doan sitting in the club library, a thick book on his knee, deep in reading.

“He's working on some difficult case,” Dawson decided. Once, looking up from his own book, he saw Doan staring at him.

“Perhaps he wants to borrow a match,” thought Dawson, and was on the point of offering Doan one, when Doan dropped his eyes to his book again.

THEY met one evening at the mail box. Doan was going through the mail and several of the letters dropped from his hand to the floor. Dawson, who was standing near by, waiting for his turn, stooped, picked them up, handed them to Doan. Doan bowed his thanks; his attention was focused on the letters in his hand. Dawson sought desperately for something to say. But what could he say? It was futile to remark that the weather was fine, for it was singularly nasty, a damp, raw night. So Dawson said nothing.

He walked home in the rain and awoke next morning feeling queer. His head buzzed and he felt hot. At the office he could not get down to work. The columns of figures ran together in a blur. At three o'clock they sent him to St. Margaret's Free Hospital. There they put him in a bed in a ward and told him he had an attack of influenza. He lay there, his head buzzing with the fever.

He was thinking, “Just about this time I'd be going into the club and looking at the mail. Wonder if I drew anything tonight?” when they brought in another patient and put him in the bed next to Dawson's. The man's head was bandaged, and Dawson heard one of the nurses saying something about a taxi-accident. The man had not been seriously hurt for he very shortly went to sleep. Dawson could see his face. It was Doan.

They came to take the temperatures an hour later. They took Dawson's and then they woke up Doan and took his. The two men lay staring at each other. Dawson wanted to say something but he didn't know what to say. No, it was better to let Henry Cunningham Doan begin the conversation. Then it would not look as if he, Dawson, was trying to scrape an acquaintance. That would be contrary to all his training, and to the Standish tradition. He thought he saw a look of recognition in the eyes of Doan.

“I'll speak to him in the morning, no matter what he may think,” resolved Francis Dawson. “I'll be feeling better then.”

Henry Cunningham Doan, with only the last vestige of a bandage on his head, came into the Standish Club three days later. He stopped at the bulletin board, read the names of men proposed for membership, the names of men posted for not paying their bills and then the little black-bordered cards. There was a new one there:

Francis Dawson
Class of 1916
Died May 9, 1925.

He read the name again and a slightly puzzled expression came to his face. There was something vaguely familiar about it. Where had he seen it? He gave it up.

“Must have been about my age,” he thought.

Then Henry Cunningham Doan went to the row of mail boxes. Expectantly he swung open the glass door of the “D” box. Hastily he riffled through the letters. There were letters for Davenport, Drake, Daniels, Drew, Doyle, Dickerman, Dawson, Dyck. He skimmed through them absently till he came to his own name. There were three letters that evening for Henry Cunningham Doan.

He took his letters into the great dining-hall and sat alone at the head of one of the long tables. He ordered the dollar dinner and then opened his mail. There was a letter from a firm of lawyers saying that unless he paid immediately the installment of twelve dollars due on the encyclopedia he was buying, something drastic would be done; there was a letter from his bank pointing out the fact that his account was overdrawn seven dollars; there was a cream-colored note from his aunt in Poughkeepsie, complaining about her rheumatism, as usual.

Doan ate his dinner in silence, his eyes straying idly over the sporting page of an evening paper; he read twice the report of a baseball game, although he had no interest in baseball. Then he walked back to his home—a furnished room in a decrepit building in East Fifty-seventh Street, far east, almost at the East River. He closed the door on the smell of cooking that followed him up the stairs, lit the gas, took out a worn pack of cards, spread them out on the old brass bed and began to play solitaire.