Murray Leinster - The Gadget Had a Ghost

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THE GADGET

HAD

A GHOST

HIS 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 Coghian’s flat. It was already late dusk, and Coghian

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 Coghian’s sitting-room. They held the iced

drinks which were formal hospitality. Coghian waited.

“I am afraid,” said Lieutenant Ghalil, wryly, “that you will think

us mad, Mr. Coghian.”

Duval drained his glass and said bitterly, “Surely I am mad! It

cannot be otherwise!”

Coghian raised sandy eyebrows at them. The Turkish lieutenant

of police shrugged. “I think that what we wish to ask, Mr. Coghian,

is: Have you, by any chance, been visiting the thirteenth century?”

Coghlan smiled politely. Duval made an impatient gesture.

“Pardon, M. Coghian! 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. Goghlan?”

He opened the volume very carefully and handed it to Goghlan.

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.

Coghian regarded it curiously.

“Do you by any chance read Byzantine Greek?” asked the Turk

hopefully.

Coghian 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

Departmenl~ clipped in place by modem

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.

Coghian 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.”

Goghlan 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!”

Goghlan had no inkling of what was to come. He said, puzziedly:

“Fingerprinting is pretty modem stuff. So I suppose it’s re-

markable to find prints so old. But—”

Duval, pacing up and down the room, uttered a stifled excla-

mation. He stopped by Coghlan’s desk. He played feverishly with a

wooden-handled Kurdish dagger that Goghlan used as a letter-

opener, his eyes a little wild.

Lieutenant Ghalil said resignedly:

“The fingerprints are not remarkable, Mr. Coghian. 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. Coghian, those fingerprints are

yours!”

While Goghian 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. Goghlan 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 Goghlan.

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 Coghian 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 Coghian, “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 Chalil painedly. “My

point is that it did.”

“You’re saying,” objected Goghian, “that somebody had infor-

mation three weeks before it existed!”

Ghalil made a wry face. “That is a masterpiece of understate-

ment—”

“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!”

Goghian 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 writ-

ing 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 Coghian, 750 Fatima, Istanbul.

Professor, President, so what?

Gadget at 8o 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 Coghian 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, 8o 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 in-

clination 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 parch-

ment. 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 Coghian, 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 phi-

losophy 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

8o Hosain is not in your memory. Right?”

“Quite right,” admitted Coghian.

“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 8o Hosain. This-i---”

“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. Goghlan 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 8o

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 8o Hosain. I cannot think of anything

else to do!”

“Why not tell Mannard about all this?” asked Coghian dryly.

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摘要：

THEGADGETHADAGHOSTHISwasIstanbul,andthesoundsofthecity—motor-carsandclumpingdonkeys,thenasalcriesofpeddlersandthedistantroarofajet-planesomewhereoverthecity—camemutedthroughthewindowsofCoghian’sflat.Itwasalreadylatedusk,andCoghianhadjustgottenbackfromtheAmericanCollege,wherehetaughtphysics.Herelaxed...

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Murray Leinster - The Gadget Had a Ghost

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