The Gadget Had a Ghost

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 paperclips. 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 modem 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.

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.”

“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.