Ganelon grunted. Surely that was the most intelligent thing the young man had said all night.
“But my theory has been shaken by a recent client,” said Prattmann. “May I tell you about his dream?”
Ganelon scowled through his cigar smoke, suspecting he was being led into a trap, but he signaled permission.
“On a recent trip to London, I had among my clients a straightforward-looking fellow in his fifties named Swaffham, who told me quite an extraordinary dream,” said Prattmann. “The man found himself standing at one end of a stone bridge of the Gothic style thrown across a river that divided a crowded city. The bridge was lined on either side with a jumble of small two- or three-story shops of the same material which overhung a narrow passageway busy with people in costumes of another time. He suspected they were not English. As he stood watching this scene, a voice said, ‘Return here at high noon until you learn something to your profit.’ So compelling was this dream that he would have obeyed it on waking, but neither he nor his friends knew where such a bridge existed.” Prattmann laughed.
“And of course you told him he was describing our own Bridge Saint Eloi,” said Ganelon. For centuries the shops on the bridge sheltered the Principality’s sword- and knife-making guilds and related crafts. In recent years the trade was mostly in souvenir letter-openers and novelty pocket knives.
“But here’s the amazing thing,” said Prattmann. “He’d never in his life visited San Sebastiano.”
Ganelon shrugged. “I wager his dream was in black and white, and he saw the bridge from the vantage of the southwest corner through Traitor’s Gate.” This was the ancient bridge gate where once were displayed the severed heads of those executed for treason.
When the bewildered Prattmann acknowledged this, Ganelon said. “Then perhaps your original explanation will serve, after all. I suggest that without realizing it. your man was remembering that etching Banville did for Babelon’s novel The Master Scabbard-Maker s Daughter.” In the first quarter of the Nineteenth Century, Joseph-Marie Babelon (1775–1833) had placed the Principality in the forefront of the romantic movement with an output of novels that included The Black Abbot, The Lord of the Sewer Gondoliers, The Spectre Brother-in-Law, and The Man in the Iron Boot. The Master Scabbard-Maker’s Daughter was set on and about the Bridge St. Eloi and involved a prince of San Sebastiano in disguise and a master craftsman’s beautiful, chaste daughter.
“Ah, but there’s more.” insisted Prattmann quickly. “I urged Mr. Swaffham to come here as soon as his affairs would permit. And he promised me my share should his visit prove profitable. I thought no more about it until a week ago when he appeared at my hotel in Paris in a state of great excitement. He told me he had just come back from San Sebastiano where he’d stood on the bridge at high noon as instructed by his dream. At last a man whom he’d noticed watching him curiously for several days from a shop doorway approached to ask in labored English why Swaffham came to stand there every day. When the Englishman explained his reason for traveling all the way from England, the man began to laugh.
“ ‘Dreams are all the rage, my dear sir,’ he smiled. ‘But how can a man make a living chasing across Europe after chimeras? I dream, too. In fact, last night I dreamed I found myself on a knoll where there were six tall stones erected in a circle. At the bottom of the knoll was a seventh stone as tall as the others, standing on the bank of a small river. And somehow I knew that if I dug at the foot of that seventh stone I would find a treasure.’ The man chuckled. ‘But even if I knew where those stones were, I assure you I would not close up shop on the say-so of a dream.’ Here the man gave Swaffham a look that was half pity and half amusement and, turning on his heels, went back into his shop.
“Now Mr. Swaffham stood there dumbfounded, for just outside of his own village of Briggston was a knoll with a circle of six stones called the Whispering Knights because they were canted toward the center like conspirators. And there was a seventh stone called the Dry Knight because it looked like he’d come down to the river Wye for a drink. Mr. Swaffham was on his way back home to dig for treasure when he stopped to give me the good news.”
Prattmann paused to add weight to what he was about to say. “My theory of buried memory cannot account for this meeting of two men — of two dreams, if you wish. I was hoping you might be able to provide a down-to-earth explanation for this extraordinary incident.” Prattmann waited for a moment as though expecting the detective to speak. But Ganelon had no explanation to give. His face clouded over, his ears began to redden, and his fingers drummed on the table like the ominous tattoo of an approaching army.
Prattmann gave a self-satisfied little smile. “Well, then, perhaps there is more to dreams than meets the eye,” he said at last. “What, for example, of the story of the Chinese philosopher Chuang Tzu, who, dreaming himself a butterfly, woke to wonder: was he dreaming himself the butterfly or was the butterfly dreaming himself to be Chuang Tzu?”
Ganelon came around the table with the dark look that had earned him the nickname the Ghengis Khan of detection. Without a word, he plucked the cigar from his startled guest’s lips and the brandy glass from his fingers and threw them into the fireplace. “Claptrap, sir. Utter, utter claptrap,” he growled. Then he indicated the direction to the front door with a toss of his head. “I bid you good evening.”
That night Ganelon sat up late in bed, eating a nightcap wedge of deliquescent cheese and mourning the loss of the cherished oboe. Still, a civilized man can only put up with a certain amount of drivel without bursting out. Butterflies and Chinamen, Chinamen and butterflies, and one man’s dream that fits neatly into another. Ganelon snorted sourly. Then he looked over quickly to see if he had disturbed Madame, the large shape asleep beneath the covers at his side. It was not an unfriendly glance. They had married for reasons other than love — she afraid of becoming an old maid, he because Prince Faustus was pressing for an heir to carry on the work of the detective agency. But a kind of affection had grown up between them.
Ganelon turned back to his cheese for a moment. Then, with a final sigh for the lost Black Emperor, he slipped the plate and its remains into the drawer of the bedside table, blew out the candle, and went to sleep.
And he dreamed. He found himself in total darkness on enemy ground, for he sensed danger all around him. Even the darkness was the enemy’s. He could not pierce it, yet he felt visible. Suddenly, two small pale-blue globes set close together appeared ahead of him. When Ganelon moved toward them, the blue globes winked out — to reappear again farther off in the black night. Ganelon allowed himself to be led in this fashion, his reluctance to go on increasing with each step. Then ahead of him stood a circle of tree trunks lit red by the flames of a fire he could not yet see and somehow feared to see. When he tried to stop his progress, he could not — the two blue lights pulled him irresistibly. Finally he cried out — and woke with a start, sitting up in his bed and his own darkness.
For the next several nights, the dream returned. And each time the dream ended with Ganelon closer to the fire than the time before.
But if the dream returned, so did Prattmann.
One afternoon about ten days after the disastrous dinner, old Simon, Ganelon’s clerk, ushered Prattmann into the inner office. The young dream dowser was accompanied by a nondescript little Englishman with a short moustache on a long upper lip all atremble with indignation. “You wanted your part of the treasure, sir,” Prattmann’s companion was saying. “Then come along and share the gallows with me.”