Chapter Five
The whip-man
ONE EVENING, A FEW DAYS LATER, K. WAS WALKING ALONG ONE OF THE corridors that separated his office from the main stairway—he was nearly the last one to leave for home that evening, there remained only a couple of workers in the light of a single bulb in the dispatch department—when he heard a sigh from behind a door which he had himself never opened but which he had always thought just led into a junk room. He stood in amazement and listened again to establish whether he might not be mistaken. For a while there was silence, but then came some more sighs. His first thought was to fetch one of the servitors, it might well have been worth having a witness present, but then he was taken by an uncontrollable curiosity that make him simply yank the door open. It was,
