Title: The gadget had a ghost
Author: Leinster, Murray
Language: English
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*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The gadget had a ghost" ***


                        The GADGET HAD A GHOST

                             A Novelet by
                            MURRAY LEINSTER

           [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
                  Thrilling Wonder Stories June 1952.
         Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
         the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]



[Illustration: _Make sure of Mannard. To be killed._]



                                   I


This was Istanbul, and the sounds of the city--motor-cars and clumping
donkeys, the nasal cries of peddlers and the distant roar of a
jet-plane somewhere over the city--came muted through the windows of
Coghlan's flat. It was already late dusk, and Coghlan had just gotten
back from the American College, where he taught physics. He relaxed
in his chair and waited. He was to meet Laurie later, at the Hotel
Petra on the improbably-named Grande Rue de Petra, and hadn't too much
time to spare; but he was intrigued by the unexpected guests he had
found waiting for him when he arrived. Duval, the Frenchman, haggard
and frantic with impatience; Lieutenant Ghalil, calm and patient and
impressive in the uniform of the Istanbul Police Department. Ghalil had
introduced himself with perfect courtesy and explained that he had come
with M. Duval to ask for information which only Mr. Coghlan, of the
American College, could possibly give.

They were now in Coghlan's sitting-room. They held the iced drinks
which were formal hospitality. Coghlan waited.

"I am afraid," said Lieutenant Ghalil, wryly, "that you will think us
mad, Mr. Coghlan."

Duval drained his glass and said bitterly, "Surely I am mad! It cannot
be otherwise!"

Coghlan raised sandy eyebrows at them. The Turkish lieutenant of police
shrugged. "I think that what we wish to ask, Mr. Coghlan, is: Have you,
by any chance, been visiting the thirteenth century?"

Coghlan smiled politely. Duval made an impatient gesture. "Pardon, M.
Coghlan! I apologize for our seeming insanity. But that is truly a
serious question!"

This time Coghlan grinned. "Then the answer's 'No.' Not lately. You
evidently are aware that I teach physics at the College. My course
turns out graduates who can make electrons jump through hoops, you
might say, and the better students can snoop into the private lives
of neutrons. But fourth-dimension stuff--you refer to time-travel I
believe--is out of my line."

Lieutenant Ghalil sighed. He began to unwrap the bulky parcel that
sat on his lap. A book appeared. It was large, more than four inches
thick, and its pages were sheepskin. Its cover was heavy, ancient
leather--so old that it was friable--and inset in it were deeply-carved
ivory medallions. Coghlan recognized the style. They were Byzantine
ivory-carvings, somewhat battered, done in the manner of the days
before Byzantium became successively Constantinople and Stamboul and
Istanbul.

"An early copy," observed Ghalil, "of a book called the _Alexiad_, by
the Princess Anna Commena, from the thirteenth century I mentioned.
Will you be so good as to look, Mr. Coghlan?"

He opened the volume very carefully and handed it to Coghlan. The
thick, yellowed pages were covered with those graceless Greek
characters which--without capitals or divisions between words or any
punctuation or paragraphing--were the text of books when they had just
ceased to be written on long strips and rolled up on sticks. Coghlan
regarded it curiously.

"Do you by any chance read Byzantine Greek?" asked the Turk hopefully.

Coghlan shook his head. The police lieutenant looked depressed. He
began to turn pages, while Coghlan held the book. The very first
page stood up stiffly. There was brown, crackled adhesive around its
edge, evidence that at some time it had been glued to the cover and
lately had been freed. The top half of the formerly hidden sheet was
now covered by a blank letterhead of the Istanbul Police Department,
clipped in place by modern metal paper-clips. On the uncovered part
of the page, the bottom half, there were five brownish smudges that
somehow looked familiar. Four in a row, and a larger one beneath them.
Lieutenant Ghalil offered a pocket magnifying-glass.

"Will you examine?" he asked.

Coghlan looked. After a moment he raised his head.

"They're fingerprints," he agreed. "What of it?"

Duval stood up and abruptly began to pace up and down the room, as if
filled with frantic impatience. Lieutenant Ghalil drew a deep breath.

"I am about to say the absurd," he said ruefully. "M. Duval came upon
this book in the Bibliotheque National in Paris. It has been owned by
the library for more than a hundred years. Before, it was owned by the
Comptes de Huisse, who in the sixteenth century were the patrons of
a man known as Nostradamus. But the book itself is of the thirteenth
century, written and bound in Byzantium. In the Bibliotheque National,
M. Duval observed that a leaf was glued tightly. He loosened it. He
found those fingerprints and--other writing."

Coghlan said, "Most interesting," thinking that he should be leaving
for his dinner engagement with Laurie and her father.

"Of course," said the police officer, "M. Duval suspected a hoax. He
had the ink examined chemically, then spectroscopically. But there
could be no doubt. The fingerprints were placed there when the book was
new. I repeat, there can be no doubt!"

Coghlan had no inkling of what was to come. He said, puzzledly:

"Fingerprinting is pretty modern stuff. So I suppose it's remarkable to
find prints so old. But--"

Duval, pacing up and down the room, uttered a stifled exclamation. He
stopped by Coghlan's desk. He played feverishly with a wooden-handled
Kurdish dagger that Coghlan used as a letter-opener, his eyes a little
wild.

Lieutenant Ghalil said resignedly:

"The fingerprints are not remarkable, Mr. Coghlan. They are impossible.
I assure you that, considering their age alone, they are quite
impossible! And that is so small, so trivial an impossibility compared
to the rest! You see, Mr. Coghlan, those fingerprints are yours!"

       *       *       *       *       *

While Coghlan sat, staring rather intently at nothing at all, the
Turkish lieutenant of police brought out a small fingerprint pad,
the kind used in up-to-date police departments. No need for ink. One
presses one's fingers on the pad and the prints develop of themselves.

"If I may show you--"

Coghlan let him roll the tips of his fingers on the glossy top sheet
of the pad. It was a familiar enough process. Coghlan had had his
fingerprints taken when he got his passport for Turkey, and again when
he registered as a resident-alien with the Istanbul Police Department.
The Turk offered the magnifying-glass again. Coghlan studied the
thumbprint he had just made. After a moment's hesitation, he compared
it with the thumbprint on the sheepskin. He jumped visibly. He checked
the other prints, one by one, with increasing care and incredulity.

Presently he said in the tone of one who does not believe his own
words: "They--they do seem to be alike! Except for--"

"Yes," said Lieutenant Ghalil. "The thumbprint on the sheepskin
shows a scar that your thumb does not now have. But still it is your
fingerprint--that and all the others. It is both philosophically and
mathematically impossible for two sets of fingerprints to match unless
they come from the same hand!"

"These do," observed Coghlan.

Duval muttered unhappily to himself. He put down the Kurdish knife and
paced again. Ghalil shrugged.

"M. Duval observed the prints," he explained, "quite three months
ago--the prints and the writing. It took him some time to be convinced
that the matter was not a hoax. He wrote to the Istanbul Police to ask
if their records showed a Thomas Coghlan residing at 750 Fatima. Two
months ago!"

Coghlan jumped again. "Where'd he get that address?"

"You will see," said the Turk. "I repeat that this was two months
ago! I replied that you were registered, but not at that address. He
wrote again, forwarding a photograph of part of that sheepskin page
and asking agitatedly if those were your fingerprints. I replied that
they were, save for the scar on the thumb. And I added, with lively
curiosity, that two days previously you had removed to 750 Fatima--the
address M. Duval mentioned a month previously."

"Unfortunately," said Coghlan, "that just couldn't happen. I didn't
know the address myself, until a week before I moved."

"I am aware that it could not happen," said Ghalil painedly. "My point
is that it did."

"You're saying," objected Coghlan, "that somebody had information three
weeks before it existed!"

Ghalil made a wry face. "That is a masterpiece of understatement--"

"It is madness!" said Duval hoarsely. "It is lunacy! _Ce n'est pas
logique!_ Be so kind, M. Coghlan, as to regard the rest of the page!"

Coghlan pulled off the clips that held the police-department letterhead
over the top of the parchment page, and immediately wondered if his
hair was really standing on end. There was writing there. He saw words
in faded, unbelievably ancient ink. It was modern English script. The
handwriting was as familiar to Coghlan as his own--

Which it was. It said:

    _See Thomas Coghlan, 750 Fatima, Istanbul._

    _Professor, President, so what?_

    _Gadget at 80 Hosain, second floor, back room._

    _Make sure of Mannard. To be killed._

[Illustration: _Gadget at 80 Hosain, second floor, back room._]

Underneath, his fingerprints remained visible.

       *       *       *       *       *

Coghlan stared at the sheet. He found his glass and gulped at it. On
more mature consideration, he drained it. The situation seemed to call
for something of the sort.

There was silence in the room, save for the drowsy sounds of the night
outside. They were not all drowsy, at that. There were voices, and
somewhere a radio emitted that nasal masculine howling which to the
Turkish ear is music. Uninhibited taxicabs, an unidentifiable jingling,
an intonation of speech, all made the sound that of Istanbul and no
other place on earth. Moreover, they were the sounds of Istanbul at
nightfall.

Duval was still. Ghalil looked at Coghlan and was silent. And Coghlan
stared at the sheet of ancient parchment.

He faced the completely inexplicable, and he had to accept it. His name
and present address--no puzzle, if Ghalil simply lied. The line about
Laurie's father, Mannard, implied that he was in danger of some sort;
but it didn't mean much because of its vagueness. The line referring
to another address, 80 Hosain, and a "gadget" was wholly without any
meaning at all. But the line about "professor, president"--that hit
hard.

It was what Coghlan told himself whenever he thought of Laurie. He was
a mere instructor in physics. As such, it would not be a good idea for
him to ask Laurie to marry him. In time he might become a professor.
Even then it would not be a good idea to ask the daughter of an
umpty-millionaire to marry him. In more time, with the breaks, he might
become a college president--the odds were astronomically against it,
but it could happen. Then what? He'd last in that high estate until a
college board of trustees decided that somebody else might be better
at begging for money. All in all, then, too darned few prospects to
justify his ever asking Laurie to marry him--only an instructor, with
a professorship the likely peak of his career, and a presidency of a
college something almost unimaginable. So, when Coghlan thought of
Laurie, he said sourly to himself, "Professor, president, so what?" And
was reminded not to yield to any inclination to be romantic.

But he had not said that four-word phrase to anybody on earth. He was
the only human being to whom it would mean anything at all. It was
absolute proof that he, Thomas Coghlan, had written those words. But he
hadn't.

He swallowed.

"That's my handwriting," he said carefully, "and I have to suppose that
I wrote it. But I have no memory of doing so. I'll be much obliged if
you'll tell me what this is all about."

Duval burst into frantic speech.

"That is what I have come to demand of you, M. Coghlan! I have been
a sane man! I have been a student of the Byzantine empire and its
history! I am an authority upon it! But this--modern English, written
when there was no modern English? Arabic numerals, when Arabic numerals
of that form were unknown? House-numbers when they did not exist, and
the city of Istanbul when there was no city of that name on earth? I
could not rest! M. Coghlan, I demand of you--what is the meaning of
this?"

Coghlan looked again at the faded brown writing on the parchment. Duval
abruptly collapsed, buried his face in his hands. Ghalil carefully
crushed out his cigarette. He waited.

Coghlan stood up with a certain deliberation.

"I think we can do with another drink."

       *       *       *       *       *

He gathered up the glasses and left the room, but he did not find that
his mind grew any clearer. He found himself wishing that Duval and
Ghalil had never been born, to bring a puzzle like this into his life.
He hadn't written that message--but nobody else could have. And it was
written.

It suddenly occurred to him that he had no idea what the message
referred to, or what he should do about it.

He went back into the living-room with the refilled glasses. Duval
still sat with his head in his hands. Ghalil had another cigarette
going, was regarding its ash with an expression of acute discomfort.
Coghlan put down the drinks.

"I don't see how anyone else could have written that message," he
observed, "but I don't remember writing it myself, and I've no idea
what it means. Since you brought it, you must have some idea."

"No," said Ghalil. "My first question was the only sane one I can ask.
Have you been traveling in the thirteenth century? I gather that you
have not. I even feel that you have no plans of the sort."

"At least no plans," agreed Coghlan, with irony. "I know of nowhere I
am less likely to visit."

Ghalil waved his cigarette, and the ash fell off.

"As a police officer, there is a mention of someone to be killed;
possibly murdered. That makes it my affair. As a student of philosophy
it is surely my affair! In both police work and in philosophy it is
sometimes necessary to assume the absurd, in order to reason toward the
sensible. I would like to do so now."

"By all means!" said Coghlan dryly.

"At the moment, then," said Ghalil, with a second wave of his
cigarette, "you have as yet no anticipation of any attempt to murder
Mr. Mannard. You have no scar upon your thumb, nor any expectation of
one. And the existence of--let us say--a 'gadget' at 80 Hosain is not
in your memory. Right?"

"Quite right," admitted Coghlan.

"Now if you are to acquire the scar," observed Ghalil, "you will
make--or have made, I must add--those fingerprints at some time in the
future, when you will know of danger to Mr. Mannard, and of a gadget at
80 Hosain. This--"

"_Ce n'est pas logique!_" protested Duval bitterly.

"But it is logic," said Ghalil calmly. "The only flaw is that it is
not common sense. Logically, then, one concludes that at some time in
the future, Mr. Coghlan will know these things and will wish to inform
himself, in what is now the present, of them. He will wish--perhaps
next week--to inform himself today that there is danger to Mr. Mannard
and that there is something of significance at 80 Hosain, on the second
floor in the back room. So he will do so. And this memorandum on the
fly-leaf of this very ancient book will be the method by which he
informs himself."

Coghlan said, "But you don't believe that!"

"I do not admit that I believe it," said Ghalil with a smile. "But I
think it would be wise to visit 80 Hosain. I cannot think of anything
else to do!"

"Why not tell Mannard about all this?" asked Coghlan dryly.

"He would think me insane," said the Turk, just as dryly. "And with
reason. In fact, I suspect it myself."

"I'll tell him," said Coghlan, "for what it's worth. I'm having dinner
with him and with his daughter tonight. It will make small talk at
least." He looked at his watch. "I really should be leaving now."

       *       *       *       *       *

Lieutenant Ghalil rose politely. Duval took his head from his hands and
stood up also, looking more haggard now than at the beginning of the
talk. Something occurred to Coghlan.

"Tell me," he said curiously, "M. Duval, when you first found this
book, what made you loosen a glued-down page?"

Duval spread out his hands. Ghalil turned back the cover again, and
put the fly-leaf flat. On what had been the visible side there was a
note, a gloss, of five or six lines. It was in an informal sort of
Greek lettering, and unintelligible to Coghlan. But, judging by its
placement, it was a memo by some previous owner of the book, rather
than any contribution of the copyist.

"My translator and M. Duval agree," observed Ghalil. "They say it says,
'This book has traveled to the frigid Beyond and returned, bearing
writing of the adepts who ask news of Appolonius.' I do not know what
that means, nor did M. Duval, but he searched for other writings.
When he saw a page glued down, he loosened it--and you know what has
resulted."

Coghlan said vexedly, "I wouldn't know what an adept is, and I can
hardly guess what a frigid beyond is, or a warm one either. But I
do know an Appolonius. I think he's a Greek, but he calls himself a
Neoplatonist as if that were a nationality, and says he hails from
somewhere in Arabia. He's trying to get Mannard to finance some sort
of political shenanigan. But he wouldn't be referred to. Not seven
centuries ago!"

"You were," said Ghalil. "And Mr. Mannard. And 80 Hosain. I think M.
Duval and myself will investigate that address and see if it solves the
mystery or deepens it."

Duval suddenly shook his head.

"No," he said with a sort of pathetic violence. "This affair is not
possible! To think of it invites madness! Mr. Coghlan, let us thrust
all this from our minds! Let us abandon it! I ask your pardon for my
intrusion. I had hoped to find an explanation which could be believed.
I abandon the hope and the attempt. I shall go back to Paris and deny
to myself that any of this has ever taken place!"

Coghlan did not believe him, said nothing.

"I hope," said Ghalil mildly, "that you may reconsider." He moved
toward the door with the Frenchman in tow. "To abandon all inquiry at
this stage would be suicidal!"

Coghlan said:

"Suicidal?"

"For one," admitted Ghalil, ruefully, "I should die of curiosity!"

He waved his hand and went out, pushing Duval. And Coghlan began to
dress for his dinner with Laurie and her father at the Hotel Petra. But
as he dressed, his forehead continually creased into a scowl of somehow
angry puzzlement.

[Illustration: The book had come from the Thirteenth Century]



                                  II


All the taxicabs of Istanbul are driven by escaped maniacs whom the
Turkish police inexplicably leave at large. The cab in which Coghlan
drove toward the Hotel Petra was driven by a man with very dark skin
and very white teeth and a conviction that the fate of every Pedestrian
was determined by Allah and he did not have to worry about them. His
cab was equipped with an unusually full-throated horn, and fortunately
he seemed to love the sound of it. So Coghlan rode madly through narrow
streets in which foot-passengers seemed constantly to be recoiling in
horror from the cab-horn, and thereby escaping annihilation by the cab.

The cab passed howling through preposterously narrow lanes. It turned
corners on two wheels with less than inches to spare. It rushed roaring
upon knots of people who dissolved with incredible agility before its
approach, and it plunged into alleys like tunnels, and it emerged into
the wider streets of the more modern part of town with pungent Turkish
curses hanging upon it like garlands.

Coghlan did not notice. Once he was alone, suspicions sprang up
luxuriantly. But he could no more justify them than he could accept the
situation his visitors had presented. The two had not asked for money
or hinted at it. Coghlan didn't have any money, anyhow, for them to be
scheming to get. The only man a swindling scheme could be aimed at was
Mannard. Mannard had money. He'd made a fortune building dams, docks,
railroads and power installations in remote parts of the world. But he
was hardly a likely mark for a profitable hoax, even if his name was
mentioned in that memorandum so impossibly in Coghlan's handwriting.
He was one of the major benefactors of the college in which Coghlan
taught. He had at least one other major philanthropy in view right now.
He'd be amused. But there was Laurie, of course. She was a point where
he could be vulnerable, be hit hard.

Decidedly Mannard had to be told about it.

The cab rushed hooting down the wide expanse of the Grande Rue de
Petra. It made a U-turn. It eeled its way between a sedate limousine
and a ferocious Turkish Army jeep, swerved precariously around a family
group frozen in mid-pavement, barely grazed a parked convertible, and
came to a squealing stop precisely before the canopy of the Hotel
Petra. Its chauffeur beamed at Coghlan and happily demanded six times
the legal fare for the journey.

Coghlan beckoned to the hotel _Commissionaire_. He put twice the legal
fare in the man's hand, said, "Pay him and keep the change," and went
into the hotel. His action was a form of American efficiency. It saved
money and argument. The discussion was already reaching the shouting
stage as he entered the hotel's large and impressive lobby.

Laurie and her father were waiting for him. Laurie was a good deal
better-looking than he tried to believe, so he muttered, "Professor,
president, so what?" as he shook hands. It was very difficult to avoid
being in love with Laurie, but he worked at it.

"I'm late," he told them. "Two of the weirdest characters you ever saw
turned up with absolutely the weirdest story you ever heard. I had to
listen to it. It had me flipped."

A gleaming white shirt-front moved into view. A beaming smile caressed
him. The short broad person who called himself Appolonius the Great--he
came almost up to Coghlan's shoulder and outweighed him by forty
pounds--cordially extended a short and pudgy arm and a round fat hand.
Coghlan noticed that Appolonius' expensive wrist-watch noticeably made
a dent in the fatness of his wrist.

"Surely," said Appolonius reproachfully, "you found no one stranger
than myself!"

       *       *       *       *       *

Coghlan shook hands as briefly as possible. Appolonius the Great was
an illusionist--a theatrical magician--who was taking leave from a
season he described as remarkable in the European capitals west of the
Iron Curtain. His specialty, Coghlan understood, was sawing a woman
in half before his various audiences, and then producing her unharmed
afterward. He said proudly that when he had bisected the woman, the two
halves of her body were carried off at opposite sides of the stage.
This, he allowed it to be understood, was something nobody else could
do with any hope of reintegrating her afterward.

"You know Appolonius," grunted Mannard. "Let's go to dinner."

He led the way toward the dining-room. Laurie took Coghlan's arm. She
looked up at him and smiled.

"I was afraid you'd turned against me, Tommy," she said. "I was
practising a look of pretty despair to use if you didn't turn up."

Coghlan looked down at her and hardened his heart. On two previous
occasions he'd resolutely broken appointments when he'd have seen
Laurie, because he liked her too much and didn't want her to find it
out. But he was afraid she'd guessed it anyway.

"Good thing I had this date," he told her. "My visitors had me dizzy.
Come to think of it, I'm going to ask Appolonius how they did their
stunt. It's in his line, more or less."

The head-waiter bowed the party to a table. There were only the four
of them at dinner, and there was the gleam of silver and glass and
the sound of voices, with a string orchestra valiantly trying to make
a strictly Near-Eastern version of the _Rhapsody in Blue_ sound like
American swing. They didn't make it, but at least it wasn't loud.

Coghlan waited for the hors d'oeuvres, his face unconsciously
growing gloomy. Appolonius the Great was lifting his wine-glass. The
deeply-indented wrist-watch annoyed Coghlan. Its sweep-second-hand
irritated him unreasonably. Appolonius was saying blandly:

"I think it is time for me to reveal my great good fortune! I offer a
toast to the Neoplatonist Autonomous Republic-to-be! Some think it a
lie, and some a swindle and me the would-be swindler. But drink to its
reality!"

He drank. Then he beamed more widely still.

"I have secured financing for the bribes I need to pay," he explained.
All his chins radiated cheer. "I may not reveal who has decided to
enrich some scoundrelly politicians in order to aid my people, but I am
very happy. For myself _and_ my people!"

"That's fine!" said Mannard.

"I shall no longer annoy you for a contribution," Appolonius assured
him. "Is it not a relief?"

Mannard chuckled. Appolonius the Great was almost openly a fake;
certainly he told about his "people" with the air of one who does not
expect anybody to take him seriously. The story was that somewhere
in Arabia there was a group of small, obscure villages in which the
doctrines of Neoplatonism survived as a religion. They were maintained
by a caste of philosopher-priests who kept the population bemused by
magic, and Appolonius claimed to have been one of the hierarchy and
to be astonishing all Europe with the trickery which was the mainstay
of a cult. It sounded like the sort of publicity an over-imaginative
press-agent might have contrived. A tradition of centuries of the
development and worship of the art of hocus-pocus was not too credible.
And now, it seemed, Appolonius was claiming that somebody had put up
money to bribe some Arab government and secure safety for the villagers
in revealing their existence and at-least-eccentric religion.

"I'd some visitors today," said Coghlan, "who may have been using some
of your Neoplatonistic magic." He turned to Mannard. "By the way, sir,
they told me that I am probably going to murder you."

Mannard looked up amusedly. He was a big man, deeply tanned, and looked
capable of looking after himself. He said:

"Knife, bullet, or poison, Tommy? Or will you use a cyclotron? How was
that?"

       *       *       *       *       *

Coghlan explained. The story of his interview with the harassed Duval
and the skeptical Ghalil sounded even more absurd than before, as he
told it.

Mannard listened. The hors d'oeuvres came. The soup. Coghlan told the
story very carefully, and was the more annoyed as he found himself
trying to explain how impossible it was that it could be a fake. Yet he
didn't mention that one line which had most disturbed him.

Mannard chuckled once or twice as Coghlan's story unfolded.

"Clever!" he said when Coghlan finished. "How do you suppose they did
it, and what do they want?"

Appolonius the Great wiped his mouth and topmost chin.

"I do not like it," he said seriously. "I do not like it at all. Oh,
the book and the fingerprints and the writing ... one can do such
things. I remember that once, in Madrid, I--but no matter! They are
amateurs, and therefore they may be dangerous folk."

Laurie said, "I think Tommy'd have seen through anything crude. And I
don't think he told quite all the story. I've known him a long time.
There's something that still bothers him."

Coghlan flushed. Laurie could read his mind uncannily.

"There was," he admitted, "a line that I didn't tell. It mentioned
something that would mean nothing to anyone but myself--and I've never
mentioned it to anyone."

Appolonius sighed. "Ah, how often have I not read someone's inmost
thoughts! Everyone believes his own thoughts quite unique! But still, I
do not like this!"

Laurie leaned close to Coghlan. She said, under her breath, "Was the
thing you didn't tell--about me?"

Coghlan looked at her uncomfortably, and nodded.

"Nice!" said Laurie, and smiled mischievously at him.

Appolonius suddenly made a gesture. He lifted a goblet with water in
it. He held it up at the level of their eyes.

"I show you the principle of magic," he said firmly. "Here is a glass,
containing water only. You see it contains nothing else!"

Mannard looked at it warily. The water was perfectly clear. Appolonius
swept it around the table at eye-level.

"You see! Now, Mr. Coghlan, enclose the goblet with your hands.
Surround the bowl. You, at least, are not a confederate! Now...."

The fat little man looked tensely at the glass held in Coghlan's cupped
hands. Coghlan felt like a fool.

"Abracadabra 750 Fatima Miss Mannard is very beautiful!" he said in a
theatrical voice. Then he added placidly, "Any other words would have
done as well. Put down the glass, Mr. Coghlan, and look at it."

Coghlan put down the goblet and took his hands away. There was a
gold-piece in the goblet. It was an antique--a ten-dirhem piece of the
Turkish Empire.

"I could not build up the illusion," said Appolonius, "but it was
deceptive, was it not?"

"How'd you do it?" asked Mannard interestedly.

"At eye-level," said Appolonius, "you cannot see the bottom of a goblet
filled with water. Refraction prevents it. I dropped in the coin and
held it at the level of your eyes. So long as it was held high, it
seemed empty. That is all."

Mannard grunted.

"It is the principle which counts!" said Appolonius. "I did something
of which you knew nothing. You deceived yourselves, because you thought
I was getting ready to do a trick. I had already done it. That is the
secret of magic."

He fished out the gold-piece and put it in his vest pocket, and Coghlan
thought sourly that this trick was not quite as convincing as his own
handwriting, his own fingerprints and most private thoughts, written
down over seven centuries ago.

"Hm ... I think I'll mention your visitors to the police," said
Mannard. "I'm mentioned. I may be involved. It's too elaborate to be a
practical joke, and there's that mention of somebody getting killed. I
know some fairly high Turkish officials ... you'll talk to anyone they
send you?"

"Naturally." Coghlan felt that he should be relieved, but he was not.
Then something else occurred to him.

"By the way," he said to Appolonius, "you're in on this, too. There's a
memorandum that says the 'adepts' were inquiring for you!"

He quoted, as well as he was able, the memo on the back of the page
containing his fingerprints. The fat man listened, frowning.

"This," he said firmly, "I very much do not like! It is not good for my
professional reputation to be linked with tricksters. It is very much
not good!"

Astonishingly, he looked pale. It could be anger, but he was definitely
paler than he had been. Laurie said briskly:

"You said something about a gadget, Tommy. At--80 Hosain, you said?"

Coghlan nodded. "Yes. Duval and Lieutenant Ghalil said they were going
to make inquiries there."

"After dinner," suggested Laurie, "we could take the car and go look
at the outside, anyhow? I don't think Father has anything planned. It
would be interesting--"

"Not a bad thought," said Mannard. "It's a pleasant night. We'll all
go."

Laurie smiled ruefully at Coghlan. And Coghlan resolutely assured
himself he was pleased--it was much better for him not to be anywhere
with Laurie, alone. But he was not cheered in the least.

Mannard pushed back his chair.

"It's irritating!" he grunted. "I can't figure out what they're driving
at! By all means let's go look at that infernal house!"

       *       *       *       *       *

They went up to Mannard's suite on the third floor of the Petra, and he
telephoned and ordered the car he'd rented during his stay in Istanbul.
Laurie put a scarf over her head. Somehow even that looked good on her,
as Coghlan realized depressedly.

Appolonius the Great had blandly assumed an invitation and continued
to talk about his political enterprise of bribery. He believed,
he said, that there might be some ancient manuscripts turned up
when enlightenment swept over the furtive villages of his people.
Coghlan gathered that he claimed as many as two or three thousand
fellow-countrymen.

The car was reported as ready.

"I shall walk down the stairs!" announced Appolonius, with a wave of
his pudgy hand. "I feel somehow grand and dignified, now that someone
has given me money for my people. I do not think that anyone can feel
dignified in a lift."

Mannard grunted. They moved toward the wide stairs, Appolonius in the
lead.

The lights went out, everywhere. Immediately there was a gasp and a
crashing sound. Mannard's voice swore furiously, halfway down the
flight of curving steps. A moment ago he had been at the top landing.

The lights came on again. Mannard came storming up the steps. He glared
about him, breathing hard. He was the very opposite of the typical
millionaire just then. He looked hardboiled, athletic, spoiling for a
fight.

"My dear friend!" gasped Appolonius. "What happened?"

"Somebody tried to throw me down-stairs!" growled Mannard balefully.
"They grabbed my foot and heaved! If I'd gone the way I was thrown--if
I hadn't handled myself right--I'd have gone over the stair-rail and
broken my blasted neck!"

He glared about him. But there were only the four of them in sight.
Mannard peered each way along the hotel corridors. He fumed. But there
was literally nobody around who could have done it.

"Oh, maybe I slipped," he said irritably, "but it didn't feel like
that! Dammit--Oh, there's no harm done!"

He went down the stairs again, scowling. The lights stayed on. The
others followed. Laurie said shakily:

"That was odd, wasn't it?"

"Very," said Coghlan. "If you remember, I said I'd been told that I'd
probably murder him."

"But you were right by me!" said Laurie quickly.

"Not so close I couldn't have done it," said Coghlan. "I sort of wish
it hadn't happened."

They reached the lower floor of the hotel, Mannard still bristling.
Appolonius walked with a waddling, swaying grace. To Coghlan he looked
somehow like pictures of the Agha Khan. He beamed as he walked. He was
very impressive. And he'd been thinking as Coghlan had thought, for in
the lobby he turned and said blandly:

"You said something about a prophecy that you might murder Mr. Mannard.
Be careful, Mr. Coghlan! Be careful!"

He twinkled at the two who followed him, and resumed his splendid
progress toward the car that waited outside.

It was dark in the back of the car. Laurie settled down beside Coghlan.
He was distinctly aware of her nearness. But he frowned uneasily as the
car rolled away. His own handwriting in the book from ancient days had
said, "_Make sure of Mannard. To be killed._" And Mannard had just had
a good chance of a serious accident.... Coghlan felt uncomfortably that
something significant had taken place that he should have noticed.

But, he irritably assured himself, it couldn't be anything but
coincidence.



                                  III


Coghlan breakfasted on coffee alone, next morning, and he had the dour
outlook and depressed spirit that always followed an evening with
Laurie these days. The trouble was, of course, that he wanted to marry
her, and resolutely wouldn't even consider the possibility.

He drank his coffee and stared glumly out into the courtyard below his
windows. His apartment was in one of the older houses of the Galata
district, slicked up for modern times. The courtyard had probably
once been a harem garden. Now it was flagstoned, with a few spindling
shrubs, and the noises of Istanbul were muted when they reached it.

There came brisk footsteps. Lieutenant Ghalil strode crisply across the
courtyard. He vanished. A moment later, Coghlan's doorbell rang. He
answered it, scowling.

Ghalil grinned as he said, "Good-morning!"

"More mystery?" demanded Coghlan suspiciously.

"A part of it has been cleared up in my mind," said Ghalil. "I am much
more at ease in my thoughts."

"I'm having coffee," growled Coghlan. "I'll get you some."

He got out another cup and poured it. He had an odd feeling that Ghalil
was regarding him with a new friendliness.

"I have a letter for you," said the Turk cheerfully.

He passed it over. It was a neatly typed note, in English, on a
letterhead that Coghlan could make out as that of the Ministry of
Police--which is officially based in Ankara rather than Istanbul, but
unofficially has followed the center of gravity of crime to the older
city. The signature was clear. It was that of a cabinet minister, no
less. The note said that at the request of the American, Mr. Mannard,
Lieutenant Ghalil had been appointed to confer with Mr. Coghlan on a
matter which Mr. Coghlan considered serious. The Minister of Police
assured Mr. Coghlan that Lieutenant Ghalil had the entire confidence
of the Ministry, which was sure that he would be both cooperative and
competent.

Coghlan looked up, confused.

"And I thought you the suspicious character!" said Ghalil. "But you
surely did the one thing a suspicious character would not do--call in
the police at the beginning. Because you thought _me_ suspicious!" He
chuckled. "Now, if you still have doubts, I can report that you wish
to confer with a person of higher rank. But it will not be easy to get
anyone else to take this matter seriously! Or in quite so amicable a
manner, orders or no, in view of the implied threat to Mr. Mannard and
my comparative assurance that you are innocent so far--" he smiled
slightly--"of any responsibility for that threat."

Coghlan had been thinking about that, too. He growled:

"It's ridiculous! I'd just barely told Mannard about it last night,
when he had an accident and almost got himself killed, and a third
party who was along had the nerve to warn me--"

Ghalil tensed. He held up his hand.

"What was that?"

Coghlan impatiently told of Mannard's tripping on the stairs. "A
coincidence, obviously," he finished. Then, placing the defense before
any offense: "What else?"

"What else indeed?" agreed Ghalil. He said abruptly, "What do you think
of 80 Hosain? You saw it last night."

Coghlan shrugged his shoulders. The carload of them--Mannard, Laurie,
Appolonius the Great and Coghlan--had driven deep into the Galata
quarter and found 80 Hosain. It was a grimy, unbelievably ancient
building, empty of all life, on a winding, narrow, noisesome alleyway.
When the car found it, there were shabby figures gathered around,
looking curiously at police outside it. Ghalil himself came to ask
what the people in the car wanted. Then the whole party went into the
echoing deserted building and up to the empty back room on the second
floor.

       *       *       *       *       *

Coghlan could see and smell that room now. The house itself had been
unoccupied for a long time. It was so old that the stone flooring on
the ground level had long since worn out and been replaced by wide,
cracked planks now worn out themselves. The stone steps leading to the
second story were rounded in their centers by the footsteps of past
generations. There were smells. There was mustiness. There was squalor
and evidences of neglect continued for a millenium. There were cobwebs
and dirt and every indication of degradation; yet the door-lintels were
carved stone from a time when a workman was an artisan and did the work
of an artist.

The back room was empty of everything but the grime of ages. Plaster
had fallen, revealing older plaster behind it, and on the older
plaster there were traces of color as if the walls had been painted
in figures no longer to be made out. And there was one place, on
the western wall, where the plaster was wet. A roughly square spot
a foot-and-a-half by a foot-and-a-half, about a yard above the
floor-level, glistening with moisture.

In Coghlan's living-room, with Ghalil looking interestedly at him,
Coghlan frowned.

"There was nothing in the room. It was empty. There was no 'gadget'
there as Duval's book declared."

Ghalil said mildly:

"The book was of the thirteenth century. Would you expect to find
anything in a room after so long a time, so many lootings, the use of
twenty generations?"

"I was guided only by Duval's book," said Coghlan with some irony.

"You suspect that wet spot on the wall, eh?"

"I didn't understand it," admitted Coghlan, "and it was--peculiar. It
was cold."

"Perhaps it is the gadget," said Ghalil. He said in mild reproof,
"After you left, I felt it as you had done. It was very cold. I thought
my hand would be frost-bitten, when I kept it there for some time. In
fact, later I covered the spot with a blanket, and frost appeared under
it!"

Coghlan said impatiently, "Not without refrigerating apparatus, and
that's out of the question!"

Ghalil thought that over. "Yet it did appear."

"Would refrigerating apparatus be called a gadget?" Coghlan wondered.

The Turk shook his head. "It is peculiar. I learn that it is
traditional that a spot on the plaster in that room has always been and
will always be wet. It has been considered magical, and has given the
place a bad name--which is one reason the house is empty. The legend
is verifiable for sixty years. Refrigeration was not known in small
units so long ago. Would that coldness be another impossibility of this
affair?"

Coghlan said, "We talk nonsense all the time!"

       *       *       *       *       *

Ghalil thought, again. "Could refrigeration be a lost art of the
ancients?" he asked with a faint smile, "and if so, what has it to do
with you and Mr. Mannard and this--Appolonius?"

"There aren't any lost arts," Coghlan assured him. "In olden times
people did things at random, on what they thought were magical
principles. Sometimes they got results. On magical reasoning, they
used digitalis for the heart. It happened to be right, and they kept
on. On magical reasoning, they hammered copper past all sanity. It got
hardened, and they thought it was tempered. There are electroplated
objects surviving from a thousand years and more ago. The Greeks made
a steam turbine in the classic age. It's more than likely that they
made a magic lantern. But there could be no science without scientific
thinking. They got results by accident, but they didn't know what they
were doing or what they'd done. They couldn't think technically ... so
there are no lost arts, only redefinitions. We can do everything the
ancients could."

"Can you make a place that will stay cold for sixty years--let alone
seven hundred?"

"It's an illusion," said Coghlan. "It must be! You'd better ask
Appolonius how it's done. That's in his line."

"I would be pleased if you would examine again that cold place on the
wall at 80 Hosain," said Ghalil ruefully. "If it is an illusion, it is
singularly impenetrable!"

"I promised," said Coghlan, "to go on a picnic today with the Mannards.
They're going up along the Sea of Marmora to look at a piece of ground."

Ghalil raised his eyebrows.

"They plan a home here?"

"A children's camp," Coghlan explained with reserve. "Mannard's a
millionaire. He's given a lot of money to the American College, and
it's been suggested that he do something more. A camp for slum-children
is projected. He may finance it to show what can be done for
children's health by the sort of thing that's standard in the United
States. He's looking over a site. If he puts up the money, the camp
will be handled by Turkish personnel and the cost and results worked
out. If it's successful, the Turkish Government or private charities
will carry it on and extend it."

"Admirable," said Lieutenant Ghalil. "One would not like to see such a
man murdered."

Coghlan did not comment. Ghalil rose.

"But--come and examine this refrigeration-apparatus of ancient days,
please! After all, it is undoubtedly mentioned in a memorandum in your
handwriting of seven-hundred years ago! And--Mr. Coghlan, will you be
careful?"

"Of what?"

"For one, Mr. Mannard." Ghalil's expression was wry. "I do not believe
in things from the past any more than you do, but as a philosopher and
a policeman I have to face facts even when they are impossible, and
possibilities even when they are insane. There are two things foretold
which disturb me. I hope you will help me to prevent them."

"The murder of Mannard, of course. But what's the other?"

"I should regret that, and I guard against it," Ghalil told him. "But I
would be intellectually more disturbed if you should cut your thumb. A
murder would be explicable."

Coghlan grinned. "I won't. That's not likely!"

"That is why I dread it. Please come to 80 Hosain when you can. I am
having the room examined microscopically--and cleaned in the process. I
even have it garrisoned, to prevent any preparation of illusion."

He waved his hand and went away.

       *       *       *       *       *

An hour later, Coghlan joined the excursion which was to inspect a
site for a possible children's camp. An impressive small yacht lay
at dock on the shore of the Golden Horn. There was a vast confusion
everywhere. From Italian freighters to cabin-cruisers, from clumsy
barges to lateen-rigged tubs and grimy small two- and three-passenger
rowboats--every conceivable type of floating thing floated or moved or
was docked all about. The yacht had been loaned as a grand gesture by
its owner, so that Mannard would make a gift of money the yacht's owner
preferred to spend otherwise.

Laurie looked relieved when Coghlan turned up. She waved to him as he
came aboard.

"News, Tommy! Your friend Duval telephoned me this morning!"

"What for?"

"He sounded hysterical and apologetic," Laurie told him, "because he'd
been trying to reach Father, and couldn't. He said he could not tell
me the details or the source of his information, but he had certain
knowledge that you intended to murder my father. He nearly collapsed
when I said sweetly, 'Thank you so much, _M'sieur_ Duval! So he told us
last night!'" She grinned. "It wasn't quite the reaction he expected!"

"If he were an honest man," Coghlan mused, "that's just exactly what
he'd have done--tried to warn your father. But he couldn't say why he
thought a murder was in the wind, because that's unbelievable. Maybe he
is honest. I don't know."

Appolonius the Great came waddling down to the dock, in a marvelous
yachting costume. He beamed and waved, and the sunlight gleamed on
his wrist-watch. A beggar thrust up to him and whined, holding out
a ragged European cap. The beggar cringed and gabbled shrilly. And
Appolonius the Great paused, looked into the extended cap with apparent
stupefaction, and pointed; whereupon the beggar also looked into the
cap, yelped, and fled at the top of his speed, clutching the cap fast.
Appolonius came on, shaking all over with his amusement.

"You say?" he asked amiably as he reached the yacht's deck. "Indeed
I cannot resist such jests! He held out his cap, and I looked, and
feigned surprise--and there was a handful of jewels in the cap! True,
they were merely paste and trinketry, but I added a silver coin to
comfort him when he discovers they are worthless."

He waddled forward to greet Mannard. There was around the yacht that
pandemonium which in the Near East accompanies every public activity.
Men swarmed everywhere. Even the yacht carried a vastly larger crew
than seemed necessary, there being at least a dozen of them on a boat
that three American sailors would have navigated handily. Sailors
seemed to fall all over each other in getting ready for departure.

The party of guests was not large. There was a professor from the
College. A local politico, the owner of the proposed campsite. A
lawyer. The Turkish owner of the yacht glowed visibly as last-minute
baskets of food came aboard. He was not paying for them.

       *       *       *       *       *

Coghlan and Laurie sat at the very stern of the yacht when at last it
pulled out and went on up the Golden Horn. There was little privacy,
because of the swarming number of the crew, and Coghlan did not try
for greater privacy. He looked at the panorama of the city which had
been the center of civilization for a thousand years--and now was a
rabbit-warren of narrow streets and questionable occupations. Laurie,
beside him, watched the unfolding view of minarets and domes and the
great white palace which had been the Seraglio, and the soaring pile
of Hagia Sophia, and all the beauty of this place, notorious for its
beauty for almost two thousand years. There was bright sunshine to add
to it, and the flickering of sun-reflections on the water. These things
seemed to cast a glamor over everything. But Laurie looked away from it
at Coghlan.

"Tommy," she said, "will you tell me what was in that mysterious
message that you wouldn't tell last night? You said it was about me."

"It was nothing important," said Coghlan. "Shall we go up to the
pilot-house and see how the yacht's steered?"

She faced him directly, and smiled.

"Does it occur to you that I've known you a long time, Tommy, and I've
practically studied you, and I can almost read your mind--I hope?"

He moved restlessly.

"When you were ten years old," she said, "you told me very generously
that you would marry me when you grew up. But you insisted ferociously
that I shouldn't tell anybody!"

He muttered something indistinct about kids.

"And you took me to your Senior Prom," she reminded him, "even if I had
to make my father leave Bogota two months early so I'd be around when
it was time for you to pass out the invitation. And you were the first
boy who ever kissed me," she added amiably, "and until--well--lately
you used to write me very nice letters. You've paid attention to me all
our lives, Tommy!"

He said:

"Cigarette?"

"No," she said firmly. "I'm working up to something."

"No use talking," he said sourly. "Let's join the others."

"Tommy!" she protested. "You're not nice! And here I am trying to spare
you embarrassment!" She grinned at him. "You wouldn't want my father to
ask what your intentions are!"

"I haven't any," he said grimly. "If I were only a rich woman's husband
I'd despise myself. If I didn't, you'd despise me! It wouldn't work
out. And I wouldn't want to be just your first husband!"

Her eyes grew softer, but she shook her head reproachfully.

"Then--how about being a brother to me? You ought to suggest that, if
only to be polite."

Coghlan had known her a long, long time. Her air of comfortable teasing
would have fooled people. But Coghlan felt like a heel.

He muttered under his breath. He stood up.

"You know damned well I love you!" he said angrily. "But that's all!
I can't turn it off, but I can starve it to death! And there's no use
arguing about it! You'll be leaving soon. If you weren't, I wouldn't
come near you here! Nobody could be crazier about anybody else than I
am about you, but you can't wear me down. Understand?"

"I wouldn't want to break your spirit, Tommy," said Laurie reasonably.
"But I'm getting desperate!"

Then she smiled. He growled and strode irritably away. When his back
was turned, her smile wavered and broke. And when he looked back at
her a little later she was staring out over the water, her back to the
others on the yacht. Her hands were tightly clenched.

       *       *       *       *       *

The yacht steamed on up the Bosphorus. There were the hills on either
side, speckled with dwellings which looked trim and picturesque from
the water, but would be completely squalid at close view. The sky was
deepest azure, and this was the scene of many romantic happenings in
years gone by. But the owner of the yacht talked expansively to Mannard
in the thickest of Turkish accents. The professor from the American
College was deep in discussion with the lawyer on the responsibility of
the municipal government for the smell of decaying garbage which made
his home nearly uninhabitable. The owner of the site to be inspected
spoke only Turkish. That left only Appolonius the Great.

Coghlan brought up the subject of the cryptic and quite incredible
message in the _Alexiad_.

"Ah, it is a mystification," said Appolonius genially. "It is also, I
think, an intended swindle. But Mr. Mannard has spoken to the police.
They will inquire into those persons. It would be unprofessional for me
to interfere!"

Coghlan said shortly:

"Not if it's a scheme for a swindle."

"That," acknowledged Appolonius, "disturbs me. As you know, I have
recently received a large sum from a source that would surprise you,
to bribe my people to freedom. I do not like to be associated with
downright scoundrels! Therefore I stand aside--lest it be considered
that I am a scoundrel too!"

Coghlan turned away, considering.

This was not a cheerful day for him. He doggedly would not go back to
Laurie. It had cost him a great deal to make the decision he'd made.
He wouldn't change it. There was no use talking to her. Thinking about
her made him miserable. He tried, for a time, to put his mind on the
matter of 80 Hosain; to imagine some contrivance, possible to the
ancients, which would amount to apparatus to produce cold. In Babylonia
the ancients had known that a shallow tray, laid upon blankets, would
radiate heat away at night and produce a thin layer of ice by morning
on a completely windless and cloudless night. The heat went on out to
empty space, and the blanket kept more heat from rising out of the
earth. But Istanbul was hardly a place of cloudlessness. That wouldn't
work here. The ancients hadn't understood it, anyhow. He gave it up.

The yacht drew nearer to the shore as the Sea of Marmora expanded
from the Bosphorus. It tied up to a rickety wharf, with seemingly
innumerable sailors clumsily achieving the landing. Mannard went ashore
to inspect the proposed campsite. Sailors carted ashore vast numbers
of baskets, folding tables, and the other apparatus for an al fresco
luncheon. Coghlan smoked dourly on the yacht's deck.

Laurie went ashore, and he sat still, feeling as ridiculous as a
sulking child. Presently he wandered across the wharf and moved about
at random while the lunch was spread out. When the exploring party
came back, Coghlan allowed himself to be seated--next to Laurie. She
casually ignored their recent discussion and chatted brightly. He sank
into abysmal gloom.

The matter of the proposed children's camp was discussed at length in
at least three languages. Luncheon progressed, with sailors acting as
waiters and bringing hot dishes from the galley of the yacht. The owner
of the land rose and made a florid, perspiring speech in the fond hope
of unloading land he could not use, at a fancy pricen if he could. The
professor from the American College spoke warmly of Mannard, and threw
in a hint or two that his own specialty could use some extra funds.
Coghlan saw clearly that everybody in the world was out to get money
from Mannard by any possible process, and grimly reiterated to himself
his own resolution not to take part in the undignified scramble by
trying to marry Laurie.

The sailors brought coffee. Coghlan drank his while the speechmaking
went on. Mannard talked absorbedly to the lawyer, and to the owner of
the land. The children's camp seemed to be practically assured. That,
to Coghlan, was one bright spot in a thumping bleak day.

He saw Mannard start to drink his coffee, then feel the cup with his
hands and give it to a sailor to be taken back to the yacht to be
replaced with hot coffee. It had gotten cold.

Laurie chatted brightly with Appolonius. He beamed at her.

A sailor came back with Mannard's cup. He felt it, as he always did. He
lifted it toward his lips.

There was a violent cracking sound. Echoes rang all about. Voices
stopped.

Mannard was staring in stupefaction at the coffee-cup in his hand.
It was broken. It had been smashed by a bullet. Coffee was spilled
everywhere, and Mannard absurdly held the handle of the cup from which
he had been about to drink.

Coghlan was in motion even as he saw in his mind's eye the phrase in
his own handwriting on a yellowed sheepskin page:

"_Make sure of Mannard. To be killed._"



                                  IV


It was preposterous. Mannard stood up abruptly, raging, with the
smashed handle of the coffee-cup in his hand. He did not seem to
realize that by rising he became an even better target. There was an
instant's stunned immobility, on the part of everyone but Coghlan. He
plunged forward, toppling the flimsy table in a confusion of smashed
china and scrambled silverware.

"Get down!" snapped Coghlan.

He pushed Laurie's father back into his seat. All about was absolute
tranquillity save for the white-faced men who picked themselves up with
stiff, frightened movements after Coghlan's rush had toppled them. The
hillsides were green and silent save for the minor cries of insects.
The water was undisturbed. Some sailors began to run ashore from the
yacht.

"Everybody gather round here!" commanded Coghlan angrily. "The shot was
at Mannard! Get close!"

Laurie was the only one who seemed to obey. She was white-faced as the
rest, but she said:

"I'm here, Tommy. What do we do?"

"Not you, damn it! Somebody shot at your father! If we get around him
and get him to the yacht, they can't see him to shoot again. You get in
the center here too!"

He commanded the Turkish-speaking sailors with violent gestures, and
they obeyed his authoritative manner. He and Laurie and the sailors
fairly forced the sputtering, angry Mannard out the wharf and onto the
craft moored at its end. The other members of the picnic-party were
milling into action. The lawyer scuttled aboard. The owner of the land
was even before him. Only Appolonius sat where his chair had toppled,
his face gray and filled with an astounded expression of shock. The
professor from the American College went on board and disappeared
entirely. Coghlan went back and dragged at Appolonius. The fat man
scrambled to his feet and went stiffly out the wharf and on board.

"Somebody who can talk Turkish," snapped Coghlan, "tell the sailors
to help me hunt for whoever fired that shot! He's had a chance to get
away, but we can look for him, anyhow!"

A voice, chattering, said unintelligible things. Sailors went ashore,
Coghlan in the lead. They obeyed Coghlan's gestured commands and
tramped about with him in the brushwood, hunting industriously and
without visible timidity. But Coghlan fumed. He could not give detailed
commands. He couldn't be sure they were watching for footprints or
a tiny ejected shell which would tell at least where the would-be
murderer had been.

There were shouts from the yacht. Coghlan ignored them, searching
angrily but with an increasing sensation of futility. Then Laurie came
running ashore.

"Tommy! It's useless! He's gone! The thing to do is to get back to
Istanbul and tell the police!"

Coghlan nodded angrily, wondering again if the marksman who had missed
Mannard might not settle for Laurie. He stood between her and the
shore, and shouted and beckoned to the sailors. He led them back to the
yacht, in a tight circle around Laurie.

The yacht cast off with unseemly haste. It sped out from the shore and
headed back for Istanbul. Mannard sat angrily in a deck-chair, his eyes
hard. He nodded to Coghlan.

"I didn't see the point of protecting me," he admitted grimly, "not at
the time. But that crazy business you were telling me last night did
hint at this." Then he said with explosive irritation. "Dammit, either
they meant to kill me without asking for money, or they don't care much
whether they kill me or not!"

Coghlan nodded. "They might figure on being reckless with you," he
said coldly, "so if you get killed that'll be all the more reason for
Laurie to pay up if something happens. Or--they might figure that if
they're reckless enough with you, you'll pay up the more quickly if
they threaten Laurie."

"What's that?" demanded Mannard sharply.

"I don't know what the scheme is," Coghlan told him. "It looks crazy!
But though the threat seems directed against you, the danger may be
even greater for Laurie."

Mannard said grimly:

"Yes. That's something to watch out for. Thanks."

He ground his teeth audibly.

       *       *       *       *       *

The yacht ploughed through the water back toward Istanbul. The sun
shone brightly on the narrow blue sea. The hills on either side seemed
to shimmer in the heat. But the atmosphere on the yacht was far from
relaxed. The sailors bore high interest beneath a mask of discretion,
most of them managing to occupy themselves near the Turkish guests, who
huddled together and talked excitedly.

Laurie put her arm in Coghlan's.

"There's such a thing as courage, Tommy," she said, "and such a thing
as recklessness. You took chances, searching on shore. I wouldn't like
you to be killed."

"It could be," he said harshly, "that the whole idea is to scare
one or the other of you so completely--even if one of you had to be
killed--that you'll be ready to pay hugely at the first demand for
money."

"But how--"

He said fiercely: "If you were kidnapped, for instance! Be
careful--hear me? Don't go anywhere in response to a note of any kind."

He went impatiently away and paced up and down, alone, until the yacht
docked once more.

Then there was more confusion. Mannard was intent upon an immediate
conference with police. Coghlan and Laurie went with him to
headquarters, in a cab.

Presently, there was some embarrassment. Mannard could not bring
himself to tell so incredible a tale as that a book seven-hundred years
old had had a seven-hundred-year-old message in it which said he was
to be killed, and that the shot which had so narrowly missed him today
seemed to be connected with it.

He doggedly told only the facts of the event itself. No, he had no
enemies that he knew of. No, he had not received any message, himself,
that he could consider a threat. He could not guess what was behind the
attempt on his life.

The police were polite and deeply concerned. They assured him that
Lieutenant Ghalil would be notified immediately. He had been assigned
to a matter Mr. Mannard had mentioned before. As soon as it was
possible to reach him....

That affair, inconclusive as it was, took nearly an hour of time.
Mannard fumed, in the cab on the way back to the hotel.

"Ghalil's mixed up in this all the way through!" he said darkly. "It
could be on orders, or it could be something else."

"I know he has orders," said Coghlan briefly. "And I think I know where
he'll be. I'll hunt him up. Now."

The cab stopped before the Hotel Petra. Mannard and Laurie got out.
Coghlan stayed in. Laurie said:

"Take care of yourself, Tommy. Please!"

The cab pulled out into traffic and bounded for 80 Hosain with the mad,
glad disregard for all safety rules which is the lifeblood of Istanbul
taxicabs.

80 Hosain, by daylight, was even less inviting to look upon than it
had seemed the night before. The street was narrow and unbelievably
tortuous. It was paved with worn cobbles which sloped toward its center
in the vain hope that rain would wash street-debris away. Because of
its winding, it was never possible to see more than fifty feet ahead.
When the building at last appeared, there was a police-car before it
and a uniformed policeman on guard at the door. His neatness was in
marked contrast to his squalid surroundings--but even so this section
might have been a most aristocratic quarter in the times of the
Byzantine Empire.

Coghlan was admitted without question. There was already an extensive
process of cleaning-up underway. It smelled much less offensive
than before. He went up the stairs and into the back room which was
mentioned in the message he simply must have written, and simply hadn't.

       *       *       *       *       *

Duval sat on a campstool in one corner, more haggard than before. There
were many books on the floor beside him, and one lay open in his hand.
Ghalil smoked reflectively on a window-sill. The blank stone wall of
the next building showed half-a-dozen feet beyond. Only the grayest and
gloomiest of light came in the windows. Ghalil looked up and seemed
pleased when Coghlan entered.

"I hoped you would come after the boat-trip," he said cordially. "M.
Duval and myself are still exchanging mutual assurances of our lunacy."

"Up in the Sea of Marmora," said Coghlan curtly, "somebody tried to
kill Mannard. Since that's supposedly a part of this affair, it may be
crazy but it's surely serious! Did Headquarters tell you about it?"

"There was no need," said Ghalil mildly. "I was there."

Coghlan stared.

"I have believed Mr. Mannard in danger from the beginning," Ghalil
explained apologetically. "I underestimated it, to be sure. But after
you told me of the affair of last night--when even he believes he
tripped--I have taken every possible precaution to guard him. So of
course I went on the yacht."

Coghlan said incredulously, "I didn't see you!"

"It was stifling below-decks," said Ghalil wryly. "But most of the
sailors were my men. You must have noticed that they were not skilled
seamen?"

Coghlan found all his ideas churned up again.

"But--"

"He was in no danger from the bullet," Ghalil assured him. "I was
concerned about the luncheon. In Istanbul when we think of an impending
murder we think not only of knives and guns, but of poison. I took
great pains against poison. The cook on the yacht tasted every item
served, and he has a talent for detecting the most minute trace of the
commoner poisons. An odd talent to have, eh?"

"But Mannard was shot at!" protested Coghlan.

Lieutenant Ghalil nodded. He puffed tranquilly on his cigarette.

"I am an excellent marksman," he said modestly. "I watched. At the last
possible instant--and I am ashamed to say only by accident--it was
discovered that his coffee was poisoned."

Coghlan found suspicion and bewilderment battling for primacy in his
mind.

"You recall," said Ghalil carefully, "that Mr. Mannard talked
absorbedly and at length. When he went to drink his coffee, he found it
cold. He sent his cup to be refilled. I am disturbed," he interjected
vexedly, "because only by accident he is alive! The cook--my talented
man--poured aside the cooled coffee and refilled Mr. Mannard's cup.
And he has a fondness for tepid coffee, which I find strange. He went
to drink the coffee Mr. Mannard had returned--and something had been
added to it. More might remain in the cup. He told me instantly. There
was no time to send a message. Mr. Mannard already had the cup in his
hand. There was need for spectacular action. And I was watching the
dinner-party, prepared to intervene in case of such need. I am an
excellent marksman and there was nothing else to do, so I shot the cup
from his hand."

       *       *       *       *       *

Coghlan opened his mouth, managed to close it again. "You--shot the
cup.... Who tried to poison him?"

Ghalil pulled a small glass bottle from his pocket. It was unstoppered,
but there was a film of tiny crystals in it as if some liquid had dried.

"This," he observed, "fell from your pocket as you hunted in the
brushwood for the marksman who actually was on the yacht. One of my men
saw it fall and brought it to me. It is poison."

Coghlan looked at the bottle.

"I'm getting a little bit fed up with mystification. Do I get arrested?"

"The fingerprints upon it are smudged," said Ghalil. "But I am familiar
with your fingerprints. They are not yours. It was slipped into your
pocket--not fully, therefore it fell out. You do not get arrested."

"Thank you," said Coghlan, with irony.

His foot pushed aside one of the books on the floor beside Duval. They
were of all sizes and thickness, and all were modern. Some had the
heavy look of German technical books, and one or two were French. The
greater number were in modern Greek.

"M. Duval searches history for references which might apply to our
problem," said the Turk. "I consider this a very important affair.
That, in particular--" he pointed to the wet spot on the wall--"seems
to me most significant. I am very glad that you came here, with your
special knowledge."

"Why? What do you want me to do?"

"Examine it," said Ghalil. "Explain it. Let me understand what it
means. I have a wholly unreasonable suspicion I would not like to name,
because it has only a logical basis."

"If you can make even a logical pattern out of this mess," said Coghlan
bitterly, "you're a better man than I am. It simply doesn't make sense!"

Ghalil only looked at him expectantly. Coghlan went to the wet spot. It
was almost exactly square, and there was no trace of moisture above
it or on either side. Some few trickles dripped down from it, but the
real wetness was specifically rectangular. Coghlan felt the wall all
about it. Everywhere except in the wet spot the wall had the normal
temperature of a plaster coating. The change of temperature was exactly
what would have been apparent if a square-shaped freezing unit had been
built into the structure. The plaster was rotten from long soaking.
Coghlan took out a pocket-knife and dug carefully into it.

"What rational connection can this have with that stuff in the book,
and with somebody trying to kill Mannard?" he demanded as he worked.

"No rational connection," admitted Ghalil. "A logical one. In police
work one uses reason oneself, but does not expect it of events."

An irregularly shaped patch of wetted plaster cracked and came away.
Coghlan looked at it and started.

"Ice!" he said sharply. "There must be some machinery here!"

The space from which the plaster had come was white with frost. Coghlan
scraped at it. A thin layer of ice, infinitesimally thin. Then more
wet plaster, which was not frozen. Coghlan frowned. First ice, then no
ice--and nothing to make the ice where the ice was. A freezing coil
could not work that way. Coldness does not occur in layers or in thin
sheets. It simply does not.

Coghlan dug angrily, stabbing with the point of the knife. The knife
grew very cold. He wrapped his handkerchief about it and continued to
dig. There was wetness and rotted plaster for another inch. Then the
heavy stone wall of the building.

"The devil!" he said angrily. He stood back and stared at the opening.

       *       *       *       *       *

There was silence. He had made a hole through rotted plaster, and found
nothing but a thin layer of ice, and then more rotted plaster. He
looked at it blankly. Then he saw that though the frost had been cut
away, there was a slight mist in the opening he had made. He blew his
breath into the hole. He made an astonished noise.

"When I blew my breath there, it turned to fog when it went through the
place where the plaster layers joined!" His tone was unbelieving.

"There is refrigeration?" asked Ghalil.

"There's nothing!" protested Coghlan. "There's no possible explanation
for a cold space in the middle of air!"

"Ah!" said the Turk in satisfaction. "Then we progress! Things which
are associated with the same thing are associated with each other.
This associates with the impossibility of your fingerprints and your
handwriting and the threat to Mr. Mannard!"

"I'd like to know what does this trick!" said Coghlan, staring at the
hole. "The heat's absorbed, and there's nothing to absorb it!"

He unwrapped his handkerchief from the knife, and scrubbed the cloth
at the wall until a corner was set. He poked the wetted cloth into the
hole he'd made. A moment later he pulled it out. There was a narrow,
perfectly straight line of ice across the wetted linen.

"There's never been a trick like this before!" he said in amazement.
"It's something really new!"

"Or extremely old," said Ghalil mildly. "Why not?"

"It couldn't be!" snapped Coghlan. "We don't know how to do it! You can
bet the ancients didn't! It couldn't be anything but a force-field of
some sort, and there's no known force-field that absorbs energy! There
just isn't any! Anyhow, how could they generate a force-field that was
a plane surface?"

He began to dig again, nervously, at the edge of the wet spot. The
plaster was harder here.

Duval said hopelessly, "But what would such a thing have to do with the
history of the Byzantine Empire, and fingerprints, and M. Mannard--"

Coghlan jabbed at the plaster.

There was a sudden, brittle sound as the knifeblade snapped. The broken
end tinkled on the floor.

Coghlan stood frozen, looking down at his thumb. The breaking blade had
cut it. There was dead silence in the room.

"What is the matter?"

"I've cut my thumb," said Coghlan briefly.

Ghalil, eyes blank, got up and started across the room toward him. "I
would like to see--"

"It's nothing," said Coghlan.

To himself he said firmly that two and two are four, and things which
are equal to the same thing are equal to each other, and--

He pressed the edges of the cut together, closed his fist on it, and
put the fist firmly in his pocket.

"This business of the wall," he said casually--too casually--"has me
bothered. I'm going back to my place and get some stuff to make a
couple of tests."

Ghalil said quickly:

"There is a police-car outside. I will have the driver take you and
bring you back."

"Thanks," said Coghlan.

He thought firmly: two and two is always four, without exception. Five
and five is ten. Six and six is twelve.... There is no such thing as
a fingerprint showing a scar that does not exist, and then that scar
being made afterward....

They went down the stairs together. Ghalil gave instructions to the
driver. From time to time he glanced very thoughtfully at Coghlan's
face. Coghlan climbed in the car. It started off, headed for his home.

He sat still for minutes as the trim car threaded narrow streets and
negotiated sharp corners designed for donkey-traffic alone. The driver
was concerned only with the management of his car. Coghlan watched him
abstractedly. Two and two....

He took his hand out of his pocket and looked at the cut on his thumb
very carefully. It was probably the most remarkable cut in human
history. It was shallow, not a serious matter at all, in itself; but
it would leave--Coghlan could not doubt--a scar exactly like the one
on the print on the sheepskin page which chemical and spectroscopic
examination said was seven-hundred years old.

Coghlan put the impossible hand back in his pocket. "I don't believe
it!" he said grimly. "I don't believe it!"



                                   V


The driver had evidently been instructed to wait. When Coghlan got out
of the car he smiled politely, set his handbrake, and turned off the
motor. Coghlan nodded and went into the courtyard below his windows. He
felt a very peculiar dogged anger, and was not at all certain what he
felt it toward.

He headed for the stairway to his apartment. Across the flagstoned
courtyard, a plump figure came disconsolately out of that stairway.
It was Appolonius the Great. He was not twinkling as usual. He looked
desperately worried. But his expression changed at sight of Coghlan.

"Ah, Mr. Coghlan!" he said delightedly. "I thought I had missed you!"

Coghlan said politely:

"I'm glad you didn't. But I'm only here on an errand--"

"I need only a moment," said Appolonius, beaming. "I have something to
say which may be to your advantage."

"Come along," said Coghlan.

He led the way. Appolonius, a few hours back, had looked as deeply
concerned as any man could look. Now he appeared more nearly normal.
But he was still not his usual unctuous self. He came toiling up the
stairs with his customary smile absent as if turned off by a switch.
When Coghlan opened the door for him, however, the smile came back
as if the same switch had been turned again. Coghlan had a sudden
startled feeling that Appolonius might be dangerous.

"Just a moment," he said.

He went into the bath and washed out the small cut and put antiseptic
on it. It was not much deeper than a scratch, but he wanted to avoid
a scar if possible. A scar would mean that the fingerprint on that
seven-hundred-year-old page of sheepskin was authentic; was actually
his. And he was not willing for that to be true. He came back into the
living-room to find Appolonius sitting in a chair on the far side of
the room from the open windows.

"Now I'm at your service," said Coghlan. "That was a bad business
today--about Mannard."

Appolonius looked at him steadily, with a directness and force that was
startlingly unlike his usual manner.

"I have information," he said evenly. "May I show you my information?"

Coghlan waited.

"I am a professional illusionist," said Appolonius, that odd force now
in his voice. "Deceptions are my profession. My fame is considerable."

"So I've heard," agreed Coghlan.

"Of course," said Appolonius, "I do not use all my knowledge of
illusion on the stage. Much of it would be lost upon theatrical
audiences." His voice changed, became deliberately sarcastic.
"In my native country there is a superstition of evil spirits.
The Magi--the priesthood--the holders of the traditions and lore
of--ah--Neoplatonism, make use of this belief. They foster it, by
driving away numerous evil spirits. The process is visible. Suppose I
assured you that there was an evil spirit in this very room, listening
to our talk?"

"I'd be a trifle doubtful," said Coghlan gently.

"Allow me," said Appolonius politely, "to demonstrate."

He glanced about the room as if looking for some indication which only
he would see. Then he pointed a pudgy finger across the room, toward a
table near the open windows. His wrist-watch showed itself, indented
in his fat wrist. He uttered a series of cryptic syllables in a round,
authoritative voice.

There was a sudden roaring noise. Smoke rushed up from the table. It
formed a ghostly, pear-shaped figure inside the room. It hovered a
moment, looking alive and menacing, then darted swiftly out the window.
It was singularly convincing.

       *       *       *       *       *

Coghlan considered. After a moment he said thoughtfully:

"Last night you explained the principle of magic. You do something in
advance, which I know nothing about. Then, later, you do something else
which seems to produce remarkable results. And I am supposed to think
that what you do later produced the results which you had arranged
earlier."

"That is true. But this particular demonstration?"

"I'd guess," suggested Coghlan, "that you put a little smoke-squib on
the table there--I hope in an ashtray. It had a fuse, which you lighted
from your cigarette. You did this while I was bandaging my finger in
the other room. You knew how long the fuse would burn. And you have
a sweep-second watch on your wrist. Still, you must have had long
practise timing a conversation to lead up to your effect at just the
instant the fuse will set off the squib."

Appolonius' eyes grew intent. Coghlan added:

"And the table's by the window and there's a draft going out. It looked
like an evil spirit leaping up from my ashtray, and then flowing out
the window and away. Effective!"

"A compliment from you, Mr. Coghlan," said Appolonius, unsmiling, "is a
compliment indeed. But I penetrate your illusions as readily as you do
mine. More readily!"

Coghlan looked at his bandaged thumb, and then up. "Now, what do you
mean by that?"

"I think it would be well to consider," said Appolonius, harshly, "that
I can unmask you at any instant."

"Oh!" said Coghlan, in lively interest. "You think I'm in a conspiracy
with Duval and Lieutenant Ghalil to swindle Mannard out of some money?"

"I do," said Appolonius. "I could explain to Mr. Mannard. Shall I?"

Coghlan found himself amused.

"So you know everything! Tell you what, Appolonius. If you'll explain
the refrigeration business I'll let you in on everything else!" He
explained carefully: "I mean the refrigeration at 80 Hosain, where we
went last night. Elucidate that, and I'll tell you everything I know!"

Appolonius' eyes wavered. He said contemptuously:

"I am not to be trapped so easily! That is a foolish question!"

"Try to answer it!" Coghlan waited with a dry patience. "You can't? My
dear Appolonius! You don't even know what I'm talking about! You're a
faker, trying to cut in on a swindle by a bluff! Clear out!"

There were sounds out in the courtyard. Footsteps. Appolonius looked
more menacing still. Coghlan snapped:

"Clear out! You bother me! Get going!"

He opened the door. There were footsteps at the bottom of the stairs.
Appolonius said nastily:

"I have taken precautions! If anything should happen to me--you would
be sorry!"

"I'd be heart-broken!" said Coghlan impatiently. "Shoo!"

He pushed Appolonius out and closed the door. He went to the small
room in which he kept his private experimental equipment. As an
instructor in physics he worked on a limited budget at the college. He
had his classes build much of the apparatus used, both to save money
and because they would learn more that way. But some things he had to
build himself--again to save money, and for the plain satisfaction of
the job. Now he began to pack stray items. A couple of thermometers.
Batteries and a couple of coils and a headset that would constitute
an induction balance when they were put together. A gold-leaf
electroscope. He got out the large alnico magnet that had made a good
many delicate measurements possible. He was packing a scintillometer
when his doorbell rang.

He answered it, scowling. There stood Mannard and Laurie, studying the
scowl. They came in and Mannard said genially:

"Our little friend Appolonius is upset, Tommy. He's not himself. What'd
you do to him?"

"He thinks," said Coghlan, "that everything that's happened in the past
thirty hours is part of a scheme to extort money from you--the scheme
operating from the fourth dimension. He demanded a cut on threat of
revealing all. I put him out. Did he expose me as a scoundrel and a
blackmailer?"

Mannard shook his head. Then he said:

"I'm taking Laurie home. I wouldn't run away myself, but you may be
right--she may be the real target of this scheme when it gets in good
working order. So I'm taking her away. How about coming along?" He
added bluntly: "You could pick out some real equipment for the physics
laboratory at the college. It's needed, and I'll pay for it."

       *       *       *       *       *

It was transparent. Coghlan looked at Laurie. She protested
reproachfully:

"It's not me, Tommy! I wouldn't ply you with cyclotrons!"

"If you want to make a gift to the lab, I'll give you a whopping list,"
said Coghlan. "But there's a gadget over at 80 Hosain that I've got
to work out. It produces a thin layer of cold in air. I think it's a
force-field of some sort, but it's a plane surface! I've got to find
out what makes it and how it works. It's something new in physics!"

Laurie muttered to herself. Coghlan added:

"Ghalil's there now, waiting for me--he and Duval."

"I want to talk to that Lieutenant Ghalil," said Mannard, grumpily.
"The police were going to refer this morning's shooting business to
him, but I guess he wasn't too concerned! He hasn't tried to get in
touch with me!"

Coghlan opened his mouth and then closed it. It would hardly be tactful
to tell Mannard who had shot the cup out of his hand. If he heard
that news before he got the full story, it might create a certain
indignation. And it was Ghalil's story to tell. So he said:

"I'm headed back with this stuff now. You can pile in the police-car
with me and talk to him right away. He'll see you get back to the
hotel."

Mannard nodded. "Let's go."

Coghlan packed his equipment into a suitcase and headed for the door.
As they went out, Laurie caught his arm. She said breathlessly:

"Tommy! You cut your thumb! Was it--will it--"

"Yes," he told her. "It was in the place the scar showed, and I'm
afraid it will leave that scar."

She followed him down the stairs, was silent on the way across the
courtyard. Her father went to dismiss the car that had brought them
here. Laurie said in a queer voice:

"That book came from the thirteenth century, they said. And your
fingerprints are in it. And this gadget you're talking about ... could
it take you back to the thirteenth century, Tommy?"

"I'm not planning to make the trip," he told her dryly.

"I don't want you to go back to the thirteenth century!" she said
fiercely. She was even a little bit pale. "I know it's ridiculous. It's
as impossible as anything could be! But I don't want you to go back
there! I don't want to have to think of you as--dead for centuries, and
buried in some mouldy old crypt--just a skeleton--"

"Stop it!" he said harshly.

She gulped. "I mean it!"

"I wish things were different," he said bitterly.

Then she grinned, still pale.

"I'll wear you down," she promised. "Won't that be nice?"

Then her father came back from the other car and they got into the
police-car. It headed back for 80 Hosain.

       *       *       *       *       *

In the room on the second floor, Ghalil was painstakingly pulling down
plaster. He had not touched the wall on which the wet spot showed. That
remained as Coghlan had left it. But there had been places on the other
walls where bits of plaster had fallen away. Dim colors showed through.
It was becoming clear, from Ghalil's work, that the original plaster
of the room had been elaborately decorated, with encaustic, most
likely--wax colors laid on the wall and melted into the plaster. He had
already uncovered a fragment of what must have been a most spirited
mural. It appeared to deal with nymphs and satyrs, from the irregular
space so far disclosed. Duval was agitatedly examining each new portion
of the scene as the removal of the overlying plaster showed it. But
Ghalil stopped his labor when Coghlan and the others arrived. He'd met
Mannard the night before, of course.

"Ah, Mr. Mannard!" he said cordially. "We perform archaeological
research!"

Mannard bristled at him.

"I've been trying to reach you to tell you about an attempt on my life
today! At Police Headquarters they said they'd try to find you. They
implied that all my affairs were in your lap!"

Ghalil glanced at Coghlan.

"Your affairs have at least been on my mind," he admitted. "Did not Mr.
Coghlan explain the measures I took?"

"No," said Coghlan dryly. "I didn't. I'm going to work on this
refrigeration affair. You tell it."

He went over to the incredible patch of moisture on the wall. Laurie
went with him. Behind them, Ghalil's voice droned as Coghlan opened the
suitcase of apparatus, began to fit together the induction balance.
Suddenly Mannard said explosively:

"What? _You_ shot the cup out of my hand?"

Laurie reared up in amazement.

"Go listen," commanded Coghlan. "I'm going to work here."

Laurie went away.

Coghlan got busy with the induction balance. There was, he soon
discovered, no metal behind the wet spot on the wall. Nor above it.
Nor below or on either side. There were no wires running to the
place that had stayed cold "since always." There was no metal of any
sort in the wall. Coghlan sweated a little. There could not be a
refrigeration-apparatus without metal.

He put the induction balance away. He stuck a thermometer into the
hole he'd made earlier. He moved it carefully back and forth, watching
the mercury shrink. He swallowed when he saw its final reading. He
hooked up the thermocouple--infinitely thin wires, of different metals,
joined at their tips. He hooked on the microvoltometer. He soon found a
particular spot. It was a very particular spot indeed. The tips of the
wires had to be at an exact depth inside the hole. A hundredth of an
inch off made the microvoltometer sway wildly. He changed a connection
to get a grosser reading--millivolts instead of microvolts--and found
that exact depth in the hole again. He went pale.

Laurie said:

"Tommy, I'm back."

He turned and said blankly, "A hundred and ninety millivolts! And it's
below the temperature of dry ice!"

Laurie said wistfully, "I can't even raise the temperature of that, can
I, Tommy?"

He didn't notice. He put down the thermocouple and brought out the
alnico magnet. He wrestled the keeper off its poles.

"This doesn't make sense," he said absorbedly, "but if it is a field of
force...."

He turned again to the wall and the hole he'd made in it. He put the
heavy, intensely strong magnet near the opening.

The opening clouded. It acquired a silvery sheen which had the look of
metal as the magnet neared it. Coghlan pulled the magnet away. The look
of metal vanished. He put the magnet back, and the silvery appearance
was there again.

He was staring at it, speechless, when Mannard came over with Ghalil
and Duval. Mannard carried the thick, ancient volume with the battered
ivory medallions in its cover--and Coghlan's seven-hundred-year-old
fingerprints on its first page.

"Tommy," said Mannard uncomfortably, "I don't believe this! But put one
of your fingerprints alongside one of these, dammit!"

Ghalil matter-of-factly struck a match and began to make a deposit of
soot on the scraping-tool which he'd used to pull down plaster. Coghlan
ignored them, staring at the hole in the plaster.

"What's the matter with him?" demanded Mannard.

"Science," said Laurie, "has reared its ugly head. He's thinking."

Coghlan turned away, lost in concentrated thought. Ghalil said mildly:

"A finger, please." He took Coghlan's hand. He paused, and then
deliberately took the bandage off the thumb. He pressed the thumb
against the sooted scraper. Mannard, curious and uneasy, held up the
book. Ghalil pressed the thumb down.

It hurt. Coghlan said: "Wait a minute! What's this?" as if startled
awake.

Ghalil took the book to a window. He looked. Mannard crowded close.
In silence, Ghalil passed over his pocket magnifying-glass. Mannard
looked, exhaustively.

"That's hard to explain," he said heavily. "The scar and all...."

Coghlan said:

"All of you, look at this!"

He moved the alnico magnet to and fro. The silvery film appeared and
disappeared. Ghalil looked at it, and at Coghlan's face.

"That silvery appearance," said Coghlan painfully, "will appear under
the plaster wherever it's cold. I doubt that this magnet alone will
silver the whole space at once, though--and it's twenty times as strong
as a steel magnet, at that. Apparently a really powerful magnetic field
is needed to show this up."

The silvery film vanished again when he pulled back the magnet.

"Now," said Ghalil mildly, "just what would that be? A--what you would
call a gadget?"

Coghlan swallowed.

"No," he said helplessly. "There's a gadget, all right, but it must be
back in the thirteenth century. This is--well--I guess you'd call this
the gadget's ghost."



                                  VI


It grew dark in the room, and Coghlan finished clearing away the
plaster from the wet spot by the light of police flashlights. As he
removed the last layer of plaster, frost appeared. As it was exposed
to view it melted, reluctantly. Then the wall was simply wet over
colorings almost completely obliterated by the centuries of damp.
At the edges of the square space, the wetness vanished. Coghlan dug
under its edge. Plaster only. But there were designs when he cleared
plaster away back from the edge. The wall had been elaborately painted,
innumerable years ago.

Duval looked like a man alternately rapt in enthusiasm at the discovery
of artwork which must extend under all the later plaster of this
room, and hysterical as he contemplated the absolute illogic of the
disclosure.

Mannard sat on a camp-chair and watched. The flashlight beams made an
extraordinary picture. One played upon Coghlan as he worked. Laurie
held it for him, and he worked with great care.

"I take it," said Mannard after a long silence, and still skeptically,
"that you're saying that this is a sort of ghost of a gadget that was
made in the thirteenth century."

"When," said Ghalil, from a dark corner, "there were no gadgets."

"No science," corrected Coghlan, busy at the wall. "They achieved
some results by accident. Then they repeated all the things that
had preceded the unexpected result, and never knew or cared which
particular one produced the result they wanted. Tempering swords, for
example."

Duval interposed: "The Byzantine Empire imported its finer swords."

"Yes," agreed Coghlan. "Religion wouldn't let them use the best process
for tempering steel."

"Religion?" protested Mannard. "What did that have to do with tempering
swords?"

"Magic," said Coghlan. "The best temper was achieved by heating a
sword white-hot and plunging it into the body of a slave or a prisoner
of war. It was probably discovered when somebody wanted to take a
particularly fancy revenge. But it worked."

"Nonsense!" snapped Mannard.

"Some few cutlers use essentially the same process now," said Coghlan,
absorbed in removing a last bit of plaster. "It's a combination of
salt and nitrogenous quenching. Human blood is salt. Steel tempers
better in salt water than in fresh. The ancients found that human
blood gave a good temper. They didn't think scientifically and try
salt water. And the steel gets a better surface-hardening still, if
it's quenched in the presence of nitrogenous matter--like human flesh.
Cutlers who use the process now soak scrap leather in salt water and
plunge a white-hot blade in that. Technically, it's the same thing as
stabbing a slave--and cheaper. But the ancients didn't think through to
scrap leather and salt water. They stuck to good old-fashioned magic
tempering--which worked."

He stood back. He brushed plaster dust off his fingers.

"That's all we can do without more apparatus. Now--"

He picked up the alnico magnet and moved it across all the cleared
space. An oblong pattern of silveriness appeared at the nearest part of
the wet place to the magnet. It followed the magnet to the edge, and
ran abruptly off into nothingness as the magnet passed an invisible
boundary.

"At a guess," said Coghlan thoughtfully, "this is the ghost, if
you want to call it that, of what the ancients thought was a magic
mirror--to look into the future with. Right, Duval?"

Duval said tensely:

"It is true that all through the middle ages alchemists wrote of and
labored to make magic mirrors, as you say."

"Maybe this one started the legend," said Coghlan.

"The flashlight battery's getting weak--" Ghalil's voice from the
darkness.

"We need better light and more apparatus," said Coghlan. "I doubt if we
can do any more before morning."

His manner was matter-of-fact, but inside he felt oddly numb. His thumb
stung a little. The cut had been irritated by plaster-dust and by the
soot that got into it when Ghalil took a fresh thumbprint to show
Mannard. In the last analysis, he'd cut his thumb investigating the
ghost of a gadget because presently he must write a memorandum and have
it delivered yesterday, which memo would be the cause of the discovery
of the ghost of a--

He felt the stirring about him as the others made ready to leave. He
heard Mannard say irritably:

"I don't get this! It's preposterous!"

"Quite so," said Ghalil, "so we shall have to be very careful. My
Moslem ancestors had a saying that the fate of every man was writ upon
his forehead. I hope, Mr. Mannard, that your fate is not writ upon the
sheepskin page I showed you just now."

"But what's it all about?" demanded Mannard. "Who's back of it? What's
back of it?"

Ghalil sighed, voicing a shrug.

       *       *       *       *       *

They descended the stairs. The dark, narrow, twisty street outside
looked ominous. Ghalil opened the door of the waiting police-car. He
said to Mannard, in a sort of humorous abandonment of reason:

"Unfortunately, Mr. Coghlan was--or has not yet been--very specific
in the memorandum which began this series of events. He said only--"
he repeated the last line of Coghlan's handwriting in the sheepskin
book--"'Make sure of Mannard. To be killed.'" Mannard said bitterly:
"That's specific enough!"

He and Laurie and Coghlan got into the back of the car. Lieutenant
Ghalil climbed into the front seat, beside the driver. The car's motor
roared as it got the car into motion.

"Your message, when you do write it, Mr. Coghlan," he said over his
shoulder as the car moved toward a bend in the winding alleyway, "will
be purposefully unclear. It is as if you will know that a clear message
would prevent what you will wish to have happened. Thus it appears that
you will write that message to bring about exactly what has already
happened and will continue to happen up to the moment you write it--"

Then he snapped an explosive Turkish word to the driver. The driver
jammed on the brakes. The car came to a screaming stop.

"One moment," said Ghalil politely.

He got out of the car. He looked at something in the headlight beams.
He touched it very cautiously. He waved the car back, and whistled
shrilly. Men came running from the house they had just left. Ghalil
spoke crisply, in Turkish. They bent over the object on the cobbles
of the lane. The flashlight beams seemed insufficient and they struck
matches. Presently Ghalil and a policeman picked up the thing gingerly
and moved it with exquisite care to the side of the alley. They put it
down against a wall. There Ghalil knelt and examined it again by the
light of other matches.

He got up and brushed off his hands. He came back to the car, got in.
He spoke to the driver in Turkish and the car moved on again, more
slowly. At the next curve it barely crawled.

"What was that?" demanded Mannard.

Lieutenant Ghalil hesitated.

"I fear it was another attempt upon your life," he said apologetically.
"A bomb. My men did not see it placed because of the many curves in the
street."

For a short while there were only breathing sounds in the car.

The car came to a slightly wider highway and moved more swiftly.
Presently Ghalil went on:

"I was saying, Mr. Mannard, that when Mr. Coghlan writes the memorandum
we showed him yesterday, he will wish things to happen exactly as they
will have happened. For that reason he will not be explicit in his
message. He will not mention rifleshots or bombs, times or locales.
Knowing this, I trust that you will survive until the affair is
concluded. I am making every effort to bring it about."

Coghlan found his voice. He said savagely:

"But you can't risk lives on crazy reasoning like that!"

"I am taking every sane precaution," Ghalil said tiredly. "Among them,
I shall ask you to remain at the Hotel Petra tonight, with my men
guarding you as well as Mr. Mannard and Miss Mannard."

"If there's any risk to her, I'm certainly staying!" growled Coghlan.

       *       *       *       *       *

The car emerged into still wider streets. There were more people about,
now. Here, in the modern section, all lights were electric. Here were
motion-picture theatres, and motor-cars, and people in wholly European
dress instead of the compromises between Eastern and Western costume
to be found in the poorer quarters. The Hotel Petra loomed up,
impressively illuminated.

The police-car stopped before it. Ghalil got out and looked casually
about him. A lounger, nearby, signalled inconspicuously. Ghalil nodded.
The lounger moved away. Ghalil opened the car-door for the others to
emerge.

"I impose myself upon you also," he said politely. "I shall stay on
watch until affairs mature."

They entered the lobby, went toward the lift, only slightly reassured
by bustle and bright lights. Coghlan said suddenly:

"Where's Duval? He's in this too!"

"He remains at 80 Hosain," said Ghalil briefly. "Poor man! He is wedded
to logic and in love with the past. He is sorely tempted to a crime of
passion! But I have left men with him."

They crowded into the lift. It rose. There was a man polishing woodwork
in the hall outside Mannard's suite. He looked like an hotel employee,
but nodded to Lieutenant Ghalil.

"One of my men," the Turk said. "All is well so far. There are other
guards."

They went into the suite. Mannard looked definitely grim.

"I'm going to order something to eat," he told Ghalil. "It's nearly ten
o'clock, and we all missed dinner. But we're going to get this thing
thrashed out! I want some straight talk! If that's the truth about
somebody leaving a bomb on the street--and if gadgets have ghosts--"

He was in a state of mind in which consecutive thought was not easy.
There were too many inexplicables, too many tag ends of fact. From
Coghlan's tale of an impossible book with an impossible message--which
Mannard had seen now--to a preposterous shot smashing a coffee-cup to
keep him from drinking an incredibly poisoned drink, and to a physical
phenomenon of frost without refrigeration and a look of silvery metal
which was not matter....

Mannard was an engineer. He was hard-headed. He was prepared to face
anything which was fact, and worry about theory afterward. But he was
not able to adjust to so many facts at once, each of them contradicting
any reasonable theory. He looked at once irritable and dogged and a
little frightened.

"When I try to think this thing over, I don't believe even what I tell
myself!" he said angrily. "Things happen, and I believe 'em while
they're happening, but they don't make any damned sense afterward!"

He stamped out of the room. They heard him telephoning an order for
dinner for four sent up to the suite at once. Then he snapped: "Yes,
that's all. What? Yes, she's in--who wants her? Who? Oh. Send him on
up."

He came back. "What the hell does Appolonius want to see you for,
Laurie? He was down-stairs asking if you'd see him when I phoned. He's
coming up." Then he went back to his former subject, still fuming. "I
tell you, there's something wrong about the whole approach to this
business! It seems that somebody is trying to kill me. I don't know why
they should, but if they really want to it ought to be a simple enough
job! It shouldn't call for all these trimmings! Nobody would set out to
kill somebody and add in a seven-hundred-year-old book and a forgery
of Tommy's fingerprints and a gadget's ghost and all the rest! Not if
a plain, ordinary murder was back of it--or a swindle either! So what
in--"

The buzzer sounded at the door of the suite. Coghlan went to answer it.

       *       *       *       *       *

Appolonius the Great started visibly when he saw Coghlan. He said with
great dignity:

"I had a note from Miss Mannard. She asked me to befriend her in this
tragic time--"

Mannard's voice came from behind Coghlan.

"Dammit, we've got to look for a simple scheme! A simple purpose!
There's a mix-up here! We're linking things that just don't belong
together!"

Appolonius gasped.

"That is--Mr. Mannard!"

"Why not?" said Coghlan.

There was a chattering sound. The teeth of Appolonius the Great seemed
to be its source. He leaned against the door.

"Pardon! Let me recover myself! I do not wish to be faint. This
is--incredible!"

Coghlan waited. The small fat man's face was in shadow. He took several
deep breaths.

"I--think I can act naturally now."

Coghlan closed the door behind him. And Appolonius walked into the
sitting-room of the suite with his usual strutting waddle--but his
usual beaming smile simply could not jell. He bowed elaborately to
Mannard and to Laurie, with sweat shining on his face. Mannard said:

"Appolonius, this is Lieutenant Ghalil of the police. He thinks I'm in
some danger."

Appolonius the Great swallowed. He said to Mannard:

"I came because I thought you were dead."

A rather thoughtful silence followed. Then Lieutenant Ghalil cleared
his throat to ask the obvious questions--and paused, looking exceeding
alert, as Appolonius' pudgy right hand went into his coat pocket--

Only an envelope came out. A Hotel Petra envelope. His fat fingers
shaking, Appolonius drew out the single sheet it enclosed and handed it
to Mannard. Mannard read. He flushed, speechless with anger. He handed
it to Ghalil.

Ghalil read, and said slowly:

"But the letter is dated tomorrow!" He passed it politely to Laurie. "I
do not think you wrote this, Miss Mannard."

He returned his gaze to the shaken, uneasy, almost trembling figure of
that small magician who called himself Appolonius the Great.

Coghlan moved to be beside Laurie as she read. Her shoulder touched
his. The note said:

    "_Dear Mr. Appolonius;_

    _You are the only person I know in Istanbul to ask for help in the
    tragic circumstances of my father's death. Will you help me,
    please?_

                                                     _Laurie Mannard._"

"I have heard of post-dated checks," said Ghalil. "I think that is an
American custom. But pre-written letters...."

Appolonius seemed to shiver.

"I--did not notice that," he said unsteadily. "But it--would seem to be
like the message of which Mr. Coghlan told us--with his fingerprints."

"Not quite," said Ghalil, shaking his head. "No, not quite!"

Mannard said furiously: "Where'd you get this, Appolonius? It's a
forgery, of course. I'm not dead yet!"

"I had been--away from my hotel. I returned and that--letter awaited
me. I came here at once."

"It is dated tomorrow," Ghalil pointed out. "Which could be an error of
timing, or a confusion in time itself. But I do not think so. Certainly
it seems to imply, Mr. Mannard, that you are to die tonight, or surely
tomorrow morning. But on the other hand, Mr. Coghlan will not write
with certainty of your death when he does write in that book. So there
is hope--"

"I have no intention of dying tonight," said Mannard angrily. "No
intention at all!"

"Nor," said Lieutenant Ghalil, "have I any intention of forwarding such
a project. But I can think of no precautions that are not already in
force."

Appolonius sat down abruptly, as if his knees had given way beneath
him. His sudden movement drew all eyes.

"Has something occurred to you?" asked Ghalil mildly.

Appolonius shivered. "It--occurs to me--" he paused to moisten his
lips--"to tell of my visit with Mr. Coghlan today. I--accused him of
mystification.

"He admitted that there _was_ a conspiracy. He--offered to admit me to
it. I--I now accuse Mr. Coghlan of designing to murder Mr. Mannard!"

The lights went out. There was dead blackness in the room.

Instantly there was an impact of body against body. Then groaning,
gasping breaths in the darkness. Men struggled and strained. There were
thumpings. Laurie cried out.

Then Ghalil's voice panted, as if his breathing were much impeded:

"You--happen to be strangling me, Mr. Coghlan! I think that I
am--strangling him! If we can only hold him until the lights--he is
very strong--"

The struggle went on in the darkness on the floor.



                                  VII


There was a frantic scratching of a pass-key in the door to the suite.
Flashlight beams licked in the opening. Men rushed in, their lights
concentrating on the squirming heap of bodies on the floor. Mannard
stood embattled before Laurie, ready to fight all comers.

The men with flashlights rushed past him, threw themselves upon the
struggle.

They had Appolonius the Great on his feet, still fighting like a
maniac, when the lights flashed back into brightness as silently and
unreasonably as they had gone out.

Coghlan stood back, his coat torn, a deep scratch on his face.
Lieutenant Ghalil bent down and began to search the floor. After a
moment he found what he looked for. He straightened with a crooked
Kurdish knife in his hand. He spoke in Turkish to the uniformed police,
against whom fat little Appolonius still struggled in feverish silence.
They marched him out. He still jumped and writhed, like a suitful of
fleshy balloons.

Ghalil held out the knife to Coghlan.

"Yours?"

Coghlan was panting. "Yes--I use it as a letter-opener on my desk.
How'd it get here?"

"I suspect," said Ghalil, "that Appolonius picked it up when he
visited you today."

He began to brush off his uniform. He still breathed hard.

Mannard said indignantly, "I don't get this! Did Appolonius try to kill
me? In Heaven's name why? What would he get out of it?"

Ghalil finished the brushing process. He said with a sigh:

"When M. Duval first brought me that incredible book, I put routine
police inquiries through on everyone who might be involved. You, Mr.
Mannard. Mr. Coghlan. Of course M. Duval himself. And even Appolonius
the Great. The last information about him came only today. It appears
that in Rome, in Madrid, and in Paris he has been the close friend
of three rich men of whom one died in an automobile accident, one
apparently of a heart attack, and one seemed to have committed suicide.
It is no coincidence, I imagine, that each had given Appolonius a large
check for his alleged countrymen only a few days before his death. I
think that is the answer, Mr. Mannard."

"But I've given him no money!" protested Mannard blankly. "He did say
he'd gotten money, of course, but--" and suddenly he stopped short.
"Damnation! A forged check going through the clearing-house! It had
to be deposited while I was alive! And I had to be dead before it was
cleared, or I'd say it was a forgery! If I was dead, it wouldn't be
questioned--"

"Just so," said Ghalil. "Unfortunately, the banks have not had time to
look through their records. I expect that information tomorrow."

Laurie put her hand on Coghlan's arm. Mannard said abruptly:

"You moved fast, Tommy! You and the lieutenant together. How'd you know
to jump him when the lights went out?"

"I didn't know," admitted Coghlan. "But I saw him looking at that
wrist-watch of his, with the second-hand sweeping around. He showed
me a trick today, at my apartment, that depended on his knowing to a
split-second when something was going to happen. I was just thinking
that if he'd been expecting the lights to go out last night, he could
have been triggered to throw you down-stairs. Then the lights went out
here--and I jumped."

"It was desperation," Ghalil interposed. "He has tried four several
times to assassinate you, Mr. Mannard."

"You said something like that--"

"You have been under guard," admitted Ghalil, "since the moment M.
Duval showed me that book with the strange record in it. You had
rented an automobile. My men found a newly contrived defect in its
muffler, so that deadly carbon-monoxide poured into the back of it.
It was remedied. A bomb was mailed to you, and reached you day before
yesterday--before I first spoke to Mr. Coghlan. It was--" he smiled
apologetically--"intercepted. Today he tried to poison you at the Sea
of Marmora. That failed by means he did not understand or like it.
Moreover, he was frightened by the affair of the book. He considered
that another conspiracy existed, competing with his. The mystery of it,
and the unexplained failure of attempts to assassinate you, drove him
almost to madness. When even the bomb failed to blow up my police-car--"

"Suppose," said Mannard grimly, "just suppose you explain that book
hocus-pocus you and Duval are trying to put over!"

"I cannot explain it," said Ghalil gently. "I do not understand it. But
I think Mr. Coghlan proceeds admirably--"

The door to the suite buzzed. Ghalil admitted a waiter carrying a huge
tray. The waiter said something in Turkish and placed the tray on a
table. He went out.

"A man was caught in the basement with a sweep-second wrist-watch,"
said Ghalil. "He had turned off the lights and turned them on again. He
is badly frightened. He will talk."

       *       *       *       *       *

Laurie looked at Coghlan. Then, trembling a little, she began to
uncover dishes on the tray.

Mannard roared: "But what the hell's that book business, and Tommy's
fingerprints, and the stuff on the wall? They're all part of the same
thing!"

"No," said the Turk. "You make the mistake I did, Mr. Mannard. You
assumed that things which are associated with the same thing are
connected with each other. But it is not true. Sometimes they are
merely apparently associated--by chance."

Laurie said, "Tommy, I--think we'd better eat something."

"But do you mean," demanded Mannard, "that it's not hocus-pocus? Do
you expect me to believe that there's a gadget that's got a ghost?
D'you mean that Tommy Coghlan is going to put his fingerprints under a
memorandum that says I'm going to be killed? That he's going to _write_
it?"

"No," admitted Ghalil. "Still, that unbelievable message is the reason
I set men to guard you three days ago. It is the reason you are now
alive." He looked hungrily at the uncovered dishes. "I starve," he
confessed. "May I?"

Mannard said, "It's too crazy! It'd be like a miracle! Confusion in
time so there'd be all this mix-up to save my life? Nonsense! The laws
of nature don't get suspended--"

Coghlan said thoughtfully, "When you think of it, sir, that field of
force isn't a plane surface. It's like a tube--the way a bubble can be
stretched out. That's what threw me off. When you think what a magnetic
field does to polarized light--"

"Consider me thinking of it," growled Mannard. "What of it?"

"I can duplicate that field," said Coghlan thoughtfully. "It'll take
a little puttering around, and I can't make a tube of it, but I can
make a field that will absorb energy--or heat--and yield it as power. I
can make a refrigeration gadget that will absorb heat and yield power.
It'll take some research...."

"Sure of that?" snapped Mannard.

Coghlan nodded. He was sure. He'd seen something happen. He'd figured
out part of how it happened. Now he could do things the original
makers of the gadget couldn't do. It was not an unprecedented event,
of course. A spectacle-maker in Holland once put two lenses together
and made a telescope which magnified things but showed them unhappily
upside down. And half a continent away, in Italy, one Galileo Galilei
heard a rumor of the feat and sat up all night thinking it out--and
next morning made a telescope so much better than the rumored one that
all field-glasses are made after his design to this day.

"I'll back the research," said Mannard shrewdly. "If you'll make a
contract with me. I'll play fair. That's good stuff!"

He looked at his daughter. Her face was blank. Then her eyes
brightened. She smiled at her father. He smiled back.

She said, "Tommy--if you can do that--oh, don't you _see_? Come in the
other room for a moment. I want to talk to you!"

He blinked at her. Then his shoulders straightened. He took a deep
breath, muttered four words, and said, "Hah!" He grabbed her arm and
led her through the door.

Mannard said satisfiedly: "That's sense! Refrigeration that yields
energy! Power from the tropics! Running factories from the heat of the
Gulf Stream!"

"But," said Ghalil, "does not that sound as improbable as that a gadget
should have a ghost?"

"No," said Mannard firmly. "That's science! I don't understand it, but
it's science! And Laurie wants to marry him, besides. And anyhow, I
know the boy! He'll manage it!"

The telephone rang. It rang again. They heard Coghlan answer it. He
called:

"Lieutenant! For you!"

Ghalil answered the telephone. He pointedly did not observe the new,
masterful, confident air worn by Coghlan, or the distinctly radiant
expression on Laurie's face. He talked, in Turkish. He hung up.

"I go back to 80 Hosain," he said briefly. "Something has happened.
Poor M. Duval grew hysterical. They had to send for a physician. They
do not know what occurred--but there are _changes_ in the room."

"I'm coming with you!" said Coghlan instantly.

       *       *       *       *       *

Laurie would not be left behind. Mannard expansively came too. The four
of them piled again into the police-car and headed back for the squalid
quarter of the city in which the room with the gadget's ghost was to be
found. Laurie sat next to Coghlan, and the atmosphere about them was
markedly rosy. Ghalil watched streets and buildings rush toward them,
the ways grow narrower and darker and the houses seemed to loom above
the racing car. Once he said meditatively:

"That Appolonius thought of everything! It was so desperately necessary
to kill you, Mr. Mannard, that he had even an excuse for calling on you
to murder you, though he expected a street-bomb to make it unnecessary!
It must be time for his forged check to appear at your bank! That
letter was a clever excuse, too. It would throw all suspicion upon the
engineers of the mystery of the ancient book."

Mannard grunted. "What's happened where we're going? What sort of
changes in the room?" Then he said suspiciously: "No occult stuff?"

"I doubt it very much," said Ghalil.

There was another car parked in the narrow lane. The police at the
house had gotten a doctor, who was evidently still in the building.

They went up into the room on the second floor. There were three
policemen here, with a grave, mustachioed civilian who had the
consequential air of the physician in a European--or Asiatic--country.
Duval lay on a canvas cot, evidently provided for the police who
occupied the building now. He slept heavily. His face was ravaged. His
collar was torn open at his throat, as if in a frenzy of agitation
when he felt that madness came upon him. His hands were bandaged. The
physician explained at length to Ghalil, in Turkish. Ghalil then asked
questions of the police. There was a portable electric lantern on the
floor, now. It lighted the room acceptably.

Coghlan's eyes swept about the place. Changes? No change except the
cot.... No! There had been books here beside Duval, on the floor.
Ghalil had said they were histories in which Duval tried to find some
reference to the building itself. There were still a few of those
books--half a dozen, perhaps, out of three or four times as many. The
rest had vanished.

But in their place were other things.

Coghlan was staring at them when Ghalil explained:

"The police heard him making strange sounds. They came in and he was
agitated to incoherence. His hands were frost-bitten. He held the
magnet against the appearance of silver and thrust books into it,
shouting the while. The books he thrust into the silvery film vanished.
He does not speak Turkish, but one of them thought he was shouting at
the wall in Greek. They subdued him and brought a physician. He was so
agitated that the physician gave him an injection to quiet him."

Coghlan said: "Damn!"

He bent over the objects on the floor. There was an ivory stylus and
a clumsy reed pen and an ink-pot--the ink was just beginning to thaw
from solid ice--and a sheet of parchment with fresh writing upon it.
The writing was the same cursive hand as the memo mentioning "frigid
Beyond" and "adepts" and "Appolonius" in the old, old book with
Coghlan's fingerprints. There was a leather belt with a beautifully
worked buckle. There was a dagger with an ivory handle. There were
three books. All were quite new, but they were not modern printed
books: they were manuscript books, written in graceless Middle Greek
with no spaces between words or punctuation or paragraphing. In binding
and make-up they were exactly like the _Alexiad_ of seven-hundred years
ago. Only--they were spanking new.

Coghlan picked up one of them. It was the _Alexiad_. It was an exact
duplicate of the one containing his prints, to the minutest detail of
carving in the ivory medallions with which the leather cover was inset.
It was the specifically same volume--

But it was seven-hundred years younger--

And it was bitterly, bitterly cold.

       *       *       *       *       *

Duval was more than asleep. He was unconscious. In the physician's
opinion he had been so near madness that he had had to be quieted. And
he was quieted. Definitely.

Coghlan picked up the alnico magnet. He moved toward the wall and held
the magnet near the wet spot. The silvery appearance sprang into being.
He swept the magnet back and forth. He said:

"The doctor couldn't rouse Duval, could he? So he could write something
for me in Byzantine Greek?"

He added, with a sort of quiet bitterness. "The thing is
shrinking--naturally!"

It was true. The wet spot was no longer square. It had drawn in upon
itself so that it was now an irregular oval, a foot across at its
longest, perhaps eight inches at its narrowest.

"Give me something solid," commanded Coghlan. "A flashlight will do."

Laurie handed him Lieutenant Ghalil's flashlight. He turned it on--it
burned only feebly--and pressed it close to the silvery surface. He
pushed the flashlight into contact. Into the silvery sheen. Its end
disappeared. He pushed it through the silver film into what should have
been solid plaster and stone. But it went. Then he exclaimed suddenly
and jerked his hand away. The flashlight fell through--into the
plaster. Coghlan rubbed his free hand vigorously on his trouser-leg.
His fingers were numb with cold. The flashlight had been metal, and a
good conductor of frigidity.

"I need Duval awake!" said Coghlan angrily. "He's the only one who can
write that Middle Greek--or talk it or understand it! I need him awake!"

The physician shook his head when Ghalil relayed the demand.

"He required much sedative to quiet him," said Ghalil. "He cannot be
roused. It would take hours, in any case."

"I'd like to ask them," said Coghlan bitterly, "what they did to a
mirror that would make its surface produce a ghost of itself. It must
have been something utterly silly!"

He paced up and down, clenching and unclenching his hands.

"To make a gadget Duval called a 'magic mirror'"--his tone was
sarcastic--"they might try diamond-dust or donkey-dung or a whale's
eyelashes. And one of them might work! Somebody did get this gadget, by
accident we can't hope to repeat!"

"Why not?"

"We can't think, any more, like lunatics or barbarians or Byzantine
alchemists!" snapped Coghlan. "We just can't! It's like a telephone!
Useless by itself. You have to have two telephones in two places at the
same time. We can see that. To use a thing like this, you have to have
two instruments in the same place at different times! With telephones
you need a connection of wire, joining them. With this gadget you need
a connection of place, joining the times!"

"A singularly convincing fantasy," said Ghalil, his eyes admiring. "And
just as you can detect the wire between two telephone instruments--"

"--You can detect the place where gadgets are connected in different
times! The connection is cold. It condenses moisture. Heat goes into
it and disappears. And I know," said Coghlan defiantly, "that I am
talking nonsense! But I also know how to make a connection which will
create cold, though I haven't the ghost--_hah_, damn it!--of an idea
how to make the instruments it could connect! And making the connection
is as far from making the gadgets as drawing a copper wire is from
making a telephone exchange! All I know is that an alnico magnet will
act as one instrument, so that the connection can exist!"

Mannard growled: "What the hell is all this? Stick to facts! What
happened to Duval?"

"Tomorrow," said Coghlan in angry calm, "he's going to tell us that
he heard faint voices through the silvery film when he played with
the magnet. He's going to say the voices were talking in Byzantine
Greek. He's going to say he tried to rap on the silver stuff--it looked
solid--to attract their attention. And whatever he rapped with went
through! He'll say he heard them exclaim, and that he got excited and
told them who he was--maybe he'll ask them if they were working with
Appolonius, because Appolonius was mentioned on the fly-leaf of that
book--and offer to swap them books and information about modern times
for what they could tell and give him! He'll swear he jammed books
through--mostly history-books in modern Greek and French--and they
shoved things back. His frost-bitten hands are the evidence for that!
When something comes out of that film or goes into it, it gets cold!
The 'frigid Beyond'! He'll tell us that the ghost of the gadget began
to get smaller as he swapped--the coating or whatever produced the
effect would wear terrifically with use!--and he got frantic to learn
all he could, and then your policemen came in and grabbed him, and then
he went more frantic because he partly believed and partly didn't and
couldn't make them understand. Then the doctor came and everything's
messed up!"

"You believe that?" demanded Mannard.

"I know damned well," raged Coghlan, "he wouldn't have asked them what
they did to the mirror to make it work! And the usable surface is
getting smaller every minute, and I can't slip a written note through
telling them to run-down the process because Duval's the only one here
who could ask a simple question for the crazy answer they'd give!"

       *       *       *       *       *

He almost wrung his hands. Laurie picked up the huge, five-inch-thick
book that had startled him before. Mannard stood four-square, doggedly
unbelieving. Ghalil looked at nothing, with bright eyes, as if savoring
a thought which explained much that had puzzled him.

"I'll never believe it," said Mannard doggedly. "Never in a million
years! Even if it could happen, why should it here and now? What's the
purpose--the real purpose in the nature of things? To keep me from
getting killed? That's all it's done! I'm not that important, for
natural laws to be suspended and the one thing that could never happen
again to happen just to keep Appolonius from murdering me!"

Then Ghalil nodded his head. He looked approvingly at Mannard.

"An honest man!" he said. "I can answer it, Mr. Mannard. Duval had his
history-books here. Some were modern Greek and some were French. And if
the preposterous is true, and Mr. Coghlan has described the fact, then
the man who made this--this 'gadget' back in the thirteenth century was
an alchemist and a scholar who believed implicitly in magic. When Duval
offered to trade books, would he not agree without question because of
his belief in magic? He would have no doubts! What Duval sent him would
seem to him magic. It would seem prophecy,--in flimsy magic form, less
durable than sheepskin--but magic nonetheless. He could even fumble
at the meaning of the Greek. It would be peculiar--but magic. He could
read it as 'perhaps' a modern English-speaking person can read Chaucer.
Not clearly, and fumblingly, but grasping the meaning dimly. And this
ancient alchemist would believe what he read! It would seem to him pure
prophecy. And he would be right!"

Ghalil's expression was triumphant.

"Consider! He would have not only past history but future history
in his hands! He would use the information! His prophecies would be
right! Perhaps he could even grasp a little of the French! And what
happens when superstitious men find that a soothsayer is invariably
right? They guide themselves by him! He would grow rich! He would
grow powerful! His sons would be noblemen, and they would inherit his
secret knowledge of the future! Always they would know what was next
to come in the history of Byzantium and--perhaps even elsewhere! And
men, knowing their correctness, would be guided by them! They would
make the prophecies come to pass! Perhaps Nostradamus compiled his
rhymes after spelling through a crumbling book of paper--they had no
paper in Byzantium or later in Europe itself!--and startlingly foretold
the facts narrated in a book our friend Duval sent back to ancient
Istanbul!"

Then Ghalil sat down on the foot of the cot, almost calmly.

"Knowledge of the future, in a superstitious age, would make the
future. This event, Mr. Mannard, did not come about to save your life,
but to direct the history of the world through the Dark Ages to the
coming of today. And that is surely significant enough to justify what
has happened!"

Mannard shook his head.

"You're saying now," he said flatly, "that if Tommy doesn't write
down what you showed me, all this won't happen because Duval won't
find the writing. If he doesn't find the writing, the books won't go
back to the past. All history will be different. My great-grandfather
and yours, maybe, will never be born and we won't be here. No! That's
nonsense!"

Coghlan looked at the book in Laurie's hand. He took it from her. "This
is exactly like Duval's book," he said.

"It is the same book," said Ghalil, with confidence. "And I think you
know what you will do."

"I'm not sure," said Coghlan. He frowned. "I don't know."

Laurie said urgently:

"If it isn't nonsense, Tommy, then--I could not be at all, and you
could not be at all ... we'd never meet each other, and you wouldn't
have that research to do--and--and--"

There was silence. Coghlan looked around on the floor. He picked up the
reed pen. He said, unnecessarily:

"I still don't believe this."

But he dipped the pen in the thawing ink of the ink-pot. Laurie
steadied the book for him to write. He wrote:

    _See Thomas Coghlan, 750 Fatima, Istanbul._

He looked at her and hesitated. Then he said:

"There was something I'd say to myself ... written down here, it was
what made me believe in it enough to trail along." He wrote:

    _Professor, president, so what?_

Ghalil said mildly: "I am sure you remember this address."

"Yes," said Coghlan seriously. He wrote:

    _Gadget at 80 Hosain, second floor, back room._

Mannard said grimly:

"It's still nonsense!"

Coghlan wrote:

    _Make sure of Mannard. To be killed._

"That's a slight exaggeration," he observed slowly, "but it's
necessary, to make us act as we did."

He was smudging ink on his fingers when Ghalil said politely:

"May I help? The professional touch--"

Coghlan let him smear the smudgy black ink on his fingertips. Ghalil
painstakingly rolled the four-finger-prints, the thumbprint below. He
said calmly:

"This is unique--to make a fingerprint record I will see again when it
is seven centuries old! Now what?"

Coghlan picked up the magnet. It was much brighter than a steel one.
It had the shine of aluminum, but it was heavy. He presented it to the
dwindling wet spot on the wall. The wet place turned silvery. Coghlan
thrust the book at the shining surface. It touched. It went into the
silver. It vanished. Coghlan took the magnet away. The wet place
looked, somehow, as if it were about to dry permanently. Duval breathed
stertoriously on the canvas cot.

"And now," said Ghalil blandly, "we do not need to believe it any more.
We do not believe it, do we?"

"Of course not!" growled Mannard. "It's all nonsense!"

Ghalil grinned. He brushed off his fingers.

"Undoubtedly," he said sedately, "M. Duval contrived it all. He will
never admit it. He will always insist that one of us contrived it.
We will all suspect each other, for always. There will be no record
anywhere except a very discreet report in the archives of the Istanbul
Police Department, which will assign the mystification either to M.
Duval or to Appolonius the Great--after he has gone to prison, at
least. It is a singular mystery, is it not?"

He laughed.

       *       *       *       *       *

A week later, Laurie triumphantly pointed out to Coghlan that it was
demonstrably all nonsense. The cut on his thumb had healed quite
neatly, leaving no scar at all.



*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The gadget had a ghost" ***


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