Stanislaw Lem - The Chain of Chance

The next case to come under review was that of Ian E. Swift, English-born, U.S. citizen, fifty-two, manager of a large furniture company in Boston, who landed by ship in Naples in early May, paid for a series of baths at the Adriatica, and stopped showing up after a week of visits; he stayed for a while at a cheaper hotel called the Livorno, then moved into the more luxurious Excelsior the same day he quit the baths. Witnesses were questioned in each of the hotels, but the testimony seemed to revolve around two different persons. The Swift at the Livorno spent most of the time in his room slaving over business correspondence, was an all-day boarder because it was cheaper, and occasionally went to the movies at night. The Swift at the Excelsior toured the local nightclubs in a hired, chauffeured car, traveled around in the company of a private detective, insisted on having his bed changed every day, had flowers sent to his hotel room, accosted girls on the street with invitations to join him for a ride and for supper, and went on periodic shopping sprees. He kept up this boisterous routine for four days. On the fifth day he left a note for the detective at the reception desk. When the detective finished reading the note in astonishment, he tried to reach Swift on the phone, but Swift refused to answer, even though he was in his room. He kept to his room the whole day, skipped lunch, and ordered dinner through room service. When the waiter appeared at the door, he found the room empty and heard Swift talking to him through a crack in the bathroom door. The same scene was repeated the following day—as if he couldn’t stand the sight of the waiter. He kept up these antics until one day another man checked into the hotel, a man named Harold Kahn, an old friend and former business partner of Swift’s who happened to be en route to the States after a long stay in Japan. Learning by chance that Swift was registered in the same hotel, he decided to pay him a visit, and forty-eight hours later they were both aboard a Pan Am jet bound for New York.

Though it lacked a fatal epilogue and therefore seemed to be an exception, Swift’s case was nonetheless included in the series, since Swift really had Kahn to thank for his lucky trip home. The private detective testified that Swift had struck him as being not all there, that he was constantly talking about his negotiations with a terrorist organization called “The Terror of the Night,” which he said he was prepared to finance if he was promised protection against a killer hired by one of his competitors in Boston. The detective was supposed to be a witness to these negotiations and act as a bodyguard. The whole thing sounded so preposterous that the detective’s first impression was that his client must be on drugs. Swift’s laconic note, in which a hundred-dollar bill had been enclosed, was in effect a letter of dismissal. He made no mention of his enemies except to say that they had come to pay him a visit at the Livorno, though in fact he had not received a single visitor there.

It was extremely hard to get any information out of Kahn concerning his meeting with Swift in Naples. Nor did the Americans have any reason to launch an investigation, since neither Swift nor Kahn had committed any crime. Both had returned to the States without incident, and Swift had gone back to his manager’s Job. Still the Italians persisted, in the hope that Kahn was in possession of certain facts that could possibly shed light on recent events. At first Kahn refused to talk; not until he was briefed on the case and given assurances of absolute confidentiality did he agree to make a deposition. His testimony proved disappointing to the Italians. It seems that Swift had welcomed Kahn in the most cordial manner but only after checking through the door to make sure it was he. He admitted with some embarrassment to having played a few “gags” and blamed it on the fact that he’d been drugged. Though outwardly calm and rational in Us behavior, he refused to leave his room, because he said he’d lost all confidence in his detective and suspected him of having “gone over to the enemy.” He had shown Kahn part of a letter in which someone had threatened to poison him unless a demand for twenty thousand dollars was met. When the letter was first sent to Swift at the Livorno, he had ignored the death threat, though rashly so, because the day after the deadline he felt so weak he could hardly get out of bed. For the better part of the day he was bothered by hallucinations and dizzy spells, so he wasted no time in packing and moving into the Excelsior. Realizing there was no easy way out of the extortion plot, he hired a private investigator, though without immediately divulging the purpose, because he first wanted to look him over and test him while living it up in the manner already described. The whole thing was somehow beginning to make sense, though it still didn’t explain why Swift simply hadn’t left town, especially when there was nothing keeping him in Naples. As Swift explained it, the mineral baths had proved so beneficial for his rheumatism that he was eager to complete the treatment.

At first Kahn was inclined to believe him, but after thinking over everything Swift had told him he began finding his friend’s story less and less credible. The stories he had heard earlier from the hotel staff only confirmed his doubts. Had Swift been testing the detective that time he fired a gun at some flies during an orgy with several ladies of the night?—Kahn asked him straight out. Swift admitted it was true but repeated that the poison had left him temporarily deranged. Almost certain now that his friend had been stricken with some mental illness, Kahn decided to get him back to the States as fast as he possibly could. He settled Swift’s hotel bill, bought plane tickets, and didn’t leave Swift’s side until they were both packed and on their way to the airport. Certain inconsistencies in the record suggest that Swift did not accept his friend’s Samaritan kindness passively. The hotel staff testified that shortly before their departure the two Americans had had a serious quarrel. Whether or not Kahn had used physical force as well as verbal arguments, he would not volunteer any further information helpful to the inquiry, and the only solid piece of evidence, the letter, had disappeared. Kahn had seen only the first page, which had been typewritten—the illegible type made it look like one of a number of carbon copies—and full of grammatical mistakes in English. Back in the States, when he asked Swift what had happened to the letter, Swift broke out laughing and started opening a desk drawer as if he meant to show it to him, only to find it gone. The experts treated this latest evidence as a combination of the plausible and the implausible, Typing an extortion letter through several sheets of thick paper is a common practice, since once the individual letter traits have been obliterated in this way, it is next to impossible to trace the machine used. The fact that this was still a relatively recent practice unknown to most laymen seemed to argue in favor of the letter’s authenticity. On the other hand, Swift’s behavior all seemed inappropriate. A man who is being extorted doesn’t react the way Swift did, not if he believes that the threats made on his life are actually going to be carried out. The experts finally concluded they were dealing with two overlapping factors: real coercion in the form of a shakedown attempt, apparently the work of a local resident (judging at least by the letter’s poor English), and Swift’s temporary insanity. If that was so, then the Swift case, when viewed within the context of the investigation’s previous findings, only confused matters, since his apparent insanity otherwise conformed to the typical pattern.

The next one involved a Swiss by the name of Mittelhorn who arrived in Naples on May 27. His case differed from the others in that he was a familiar sight at the hotel, where he was an annual guest. The owner of a large secondhand bookshop in Lausanne and a well-to-do bachelor, he was a man given to certain eccentricities of behavior that were tolerated because he was considered such a desirable guest. He always occupied two adjoining rooms—one serving as an office, the other as a bedroom. Because of a food allergy, he always ordered specially prepared dishes and would carefully inspect the tableware before every meal. Whenever his face showed signs of swelling, a symptom commonly associated with Quincke’s edema, he would summon the cook into the dining room and reprimand him severely. Yet the waiters claimed he was in the habit of eating between meals in some of the cheaper places downtown, where, although it was strictly against his diet, he would indulge his craving for fish soup, and then later take it out on the people at the hotel. During his most recent stay he had revised his habits somewhat. On his doctor’s advice he had begun taking mud baths at the Vittorini spa, after suffering all winter long from rheumatism. In Naples he had his own private barber come regularly to the hotel, using no tools but those supplied by Mittelhorn himself, who refused to be touched by any blade or comb that had already been used on someone else. When hearing on his arrival this time that his barber had gone out of business, he became furious and never stopped complaining until he finally found another one he could trust.