The Gadget Had a 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. 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 cam, 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 rifle-shots 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 downstairs 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 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.