appear that it was K. who was exaggerating. She would find that she was deceived, K.
wished to exaggerate nothing, he knew that Fräulein Bürstner was an ordinary little typist
who could not resist him for long. In coming to this conclusion he deliberately left out of
account what Frau Grubach had told him about Fräulein Bürstner. He was thinking all this as he quitted the room with a curt word of leave-taking. He made straight for his own
room, but a slight titter from Fräulein Montag, coming from the dining room behind him,
put it into his head that perhaps he could provide a surprise for the pair of them, the
Captain as well as Fräulein Montag. He glanced round and listened to make sure that no
interruption was likely from any of the adjacent rooms, all was still, nothing was to be
heard but a murmur of voices in the dining room and the voice of Frau Grubach coming
from the passage leading to the kitchen. The opportunity seemed excellent, and K. went
over to Fräulein Bürstner door and knocked softly. When nothing happened he knocked
again, but again no answer came. Was she sleeping? Or was she really unwell? Or was she
pretending she wasn’t there, knowing that it could only be K. who was knocking so softly?
K. assumed that she was pretending and knocked more loudly, and at last, as his knocking
had no result, cautiously opened the door, not without a feeling that he was doing
something wrong and even more useless than wrong. There was nobody in the room.
Moreover it had scarcely any resemblance now to the room which K. had seen. Against the
wall two beds stood next to each other, three chairs near the door were heaped with dresses
and underclothes, a wardrobe was standing open. Fräulein Bürstner had apparently gone
out while Fräulein Montag was saying her piece in the dining room. K. was not very much
taken aback, he had hardly expected at this stage to get hold of Fräulein Bürstner so easily,
he had made this attempt, indeed, mainly to annoy Fräulein Montag. Yet the shock was all
the greater when, as he was shutting the door again, he saw Fräulein Montag and the
Captain standing talking together in the open door of the dining room. They had perhaps
been standing there all the time, they scrupulously avoided all appearance of having been
observing him, they talked in low voices, following K.’s movements only with the
abstracted gaze one has for people passing when one is deep in conversation. All the same,
their glances weighed heavily upon K., and he made what haste he could to his room,
keeping close against the wall. Chapter 5
The Whipper
A FEW evenings later K. was passing along the Bank corridor from his office to the main
staircase — he was almost the last to leave, only two clerks in the dispatch department were
still at work by the dim light of a glow lamp — when he heard convulsive sighs behind a
door, which he had always taken to be the door of a lumber-room, although he had never
opened it. He stopped in astonishment and listened to make sure that he had not been
mistaken — all was still, yet in a little while the sighing began again. At first he thought of
fetching one of the dispatch clerks, he might need a witness, but then he was seized by
such uncontrollable curiosity that he literally tore the door open. It was, as he had correctly
assumed, a lumber-room. Bundles of useless old papers and empty earthenware ink bottles
lay in a tumbled heap behind the threshold. But in the room itself stood three men,
stooping because of the low ceiling, by the light of a candle stuck on a shelf. “What are
you doing here?” asked K., in great haste and agitation, but not loud. One of the men, who
was clearly in authority over the other two and took the eye first, was sheathed in a sort of
dark leather garment which left his throat and a good deal of his chest and the whole of his